A Second Chance With Mr. Blackwood
In the roaring flames of the abandoned warehouse, my skin blistered and peeled.
Through the crackling fire, my sister Elara's malicious voice echoed. She told me my husband, Damien, was dead, and it was all my fault.
For years, I had treated Damien like a monster. I fought him, threw tantrums, and desperately tried to escape our marriage, all because I blindly followed Elara's advice.
"Remember, the harder you fight, the more disgusted he'll get."
She texted me things like that, telling me to smash vases over his head and run away, claiming she was protecting me.
In reality, she was poisoning my mind, stealing my valedictorian spot at university, and plotting to crawl into my billionaire husband's bed.
My foolish rebellion cost me everything, ultimately leading to Damien's tragic death and my own fiery end.
As the massive explosion tore my consciousness to shreds, I finally understood who truly loved me and who the real monster was.
I died suffocating on my own agonizing regret, wishing I could tear Elara apart.
Then, a rush of freezing air punched into my lungs.
I opened my eyes to the crisp scent of cedar and mint. I was back seven years ago, on the very night our marriage was supposed to go to hell.
This time, looking at Damien's flawless, unscarred face, I didn't push him away.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and made a silent vow: I would make every single person who ever hurt him bleed.
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Chapter 7
The armored Maybach glided down the highway like a silent, black shark. Ray gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, his eyes glued to the road, terrified to even glance in the rearview mirror.
Giovanna leaned back against the buttery leather seat. She closed her eyes, letting her brain sort through the files of her past life.
In her previous life, she had used her genius-level IQ to secure an Early Decision spot at Oakhaven. But Elara had paid people to spread the rumor that Giovanna was a brainless idiot who bought her way in with Damien's money.
Worse, the prestigious honor of giving the freshman valedictory speech-an honor Giovanna had earned-was stolen by Elara through the Vang family's connections.
The Maybach slowed as it passed through the towering gothic arches of Oakhaven University. Students walking on the sidewalks stopped and stared, pointing at the multi-million-dollar vehicle.
Ray parked the car near the edge of The Quad. He jumped out and opened the door.
Giovanna stepped out. Her red-soled heels clicked sharply against the pavement. The burgundy dress hugged her curves, radiating old-money elegance and absolute power.
The whispers started immediately. Groups of students turned their heads, trying to guess which billionaire family she belonged to.
Giovanna ignored them. She walked straight toward the chaotic freshman registration booths.
Her eyes scanned the crowd and locked onto a girl struggling to hold a massive stack of folders. She wore thick black glasses and a faded sweater. Fiona Daly.
In her past life, Fiona was the only person who stood by Giovanna when the whole school turned against her. Fiona had lost her own scholarship because of it.
A tight knot formed in Giovanna's throat. She walked up behind Fiona and gently tapped her shoulder.
Fiona spun around. Her eyes widened in shock, then immediately filled with panic.
"Gio!" Fiona hissed, dropping her voice. "Why are you so late? Elara's friends are already telling everyone you're a fraud."
Before Giovanna could answer, a shrill, nasal voice cut through the noise.
"Well, well. If it isn't our famous 'donation admit'."
Skylar Finch, Elara's chief minion, strutted over. Three other girls flanked her like bodyguards.
Skylar looked Giovanna up and down, her eyes burning with ugly jealousy. "What's wrong? Your old, ugly sugar daddy husband couldn't be bothered to walk you to class?"
The students standing nearby stopped talking. They pulled out their phones, hitting record, waiting for the rich girl to cry.
Fiona's face flushed red with anger. She stepped in front of Giovanna, using her small body as a shield. "Shut up, Skylar! Gio got in on her own merit!"
Skylar sneered. She shoved Fiona hard in the chest. "Merit? Everyone knows Elara is the only genius in the Vang family."
Fiona stumbled backward, her heel catching on the pavement. The folders flew out of her hands, scattering across the grass.
Giovanna's eyes went dead. The temperature around her seemed to drop. She reached out, her hand clamping onto Fiona's arm, stabilizing her instantly.
Giovanna pulled Fiona behind her back. She took one slow, deliberate step toward Skylar. The sheer, suffocating pressure of Giovanna's presence made Skylar physically shrink back.
"What are you doing?" Skylar stammered, trying to sound tough.
Giovanna didn't yell. She casually adjusted the cuff of her trench coat.
When she spoke, her voice was loud enough to carry across the entire courtyard. "Whether my husband is old or ugly is none of your business. Especially since his company has higher standards than you could ever meet in your entire pathetic life. Now, get out of my sight."
A collective gasp, followed by a wave of brutal laughter, erupted from the crowd. Skylar's face turned the color of a crushed tomato.
Giovanna leaned in, dropping her voice to a lethal whisper meant only for Skylar. "And as for Elara being a genius..."
Giovanna straightened up. A cold, wicked smile touched her lips. "Let's see how smart she looks at the assembly in thirty minutes."
Without waiting for a response, Giovanna grabbed Fiona's hand and dragged her away from the crowd, heading straight for the massive stone library.
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7.8
Helen was finally brought back to the luxurious Gallagher estate as their long-lost blood relative.
But her new family didn't welcome her; they looked at her with undisguised disgust.
The matriarch mocked her stench of poverty, while her step-sister Candice treated her like a feral animal. The patriarch, Fredy—who had built his empire by betraying Helen's mother—tried to break her spirit. He blackmailed Helen into attending a high-society gala by threatening to cut off her grandmother's medical funds.
At the gala, Candice squeezed into a diamond-encrusted gown, desperate to seduce the guest of honor, Damian Montgomery. Damian was the most powerful man in New York, and he was currently tearing the city apart looking for a mysterious woman named Jane.
Overhearing this, a sick, greedy smile spread across Candice's face. She planned to impersonate Jane to claim Damian's wealth and completely crush Helen under her heel.
"Hide in the corner tonight. Don't you dare try to speak to anyone important!"
They all thought Helen was just a helpless, uncultured country girl they could easily manipulate and step on to secure their stolen legacy.
What they didn't know was that Helen was the real Jane. She was the lethal shadow who had saved Damian in the woods, shattered his grip, and robbed his highly guarded vault just the night before.
Helen calmly adjusted her simple black dress and stepped into the ballroom, ready to tear their stolen world apart.
7.2
Blaire woke up in a Manhattan penthouse, her body covered in bruises and her innocence stolen.
Before she could process the terror, her adoptive sister Danita burst in, acting heartbroken and accusing Blaire of shamelessly seducing the powerful Kamryn Lane. Kamryn threw a one-million-dollar check at Blaire's bleeding face, calling her a calculating gold digger.
That night, Blaire overheard a conversation in the family study that shattered her entire reality.
"Once she gives birth to the Lane family's seed, we'll stage an accident, drain her blood, and transplant her healthy heart into your chest."
Her adoptive mother and Danita were celebrating the success of their trap. She wasn't an adopted daughter; she was a living organ bank and a disposable surrogate. Even her adoptive brother, Calhoun, knew everything, trapping her in the dark hallways with a sick, possessive obsession to ensure she never escaped.
The horrific truth suffocated her. The family that had taken her in had raised her like livestock for slaughter. How could they smile at her every day while planning to carve out her heart?
Terrified but burning with a desperate will to survive, Blaire swallowed a Plan B pill to ruin their surrogate plot and fled the estate. To get the money and power she needed to crush her adoptive family, she pulled out Kamryn Lane's business card. This time, she would make a deal with the devil.
8.1
Desperate for a way out of rejection and poverty, Pearl Augustine accepts a nanny job with an outrageous salary-working for billionaire Ace Warren. What she doesn't expect is his daughter.
Mia Warren is spoiled, sharp-tongued, and feared by everyone in the mansion. Behind her cruelty is a lonely child longing for a mother. As Pearl becomes the only one who can reach her, walls begin to fall-especially those around Ace, a grieving man hiding behind wealth and control.
What started as "just a job" quickly turns into something dangerous: attachment.
Sometimes, healing begins where you least expect it.
8.7
Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them.
But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father.
That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago.
Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company.
Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate.
To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison.
Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall.
"Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!"
Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child.
Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone.
He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown?
With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered.
Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.
8.8
Clara supported her boyfriend Leo for four years, paying his rent and buying his headshots while working dead-end extra gigs.
On his twenty-sixth birthday, she caught him in their bed with Veronica, a wealthy producer's daughter who constantly stole Clara's roles.
Leo mocked Clara as a "pathetic, poor stepping stone" who was just there until he got his foot in the door.
Veronica threatened to ruin Clara's career forever.
Clara dumped him, packed her bags, and impulsively entered a contract marriage with a cold stranger she met at City Hall.
But her nightmare wasn't over.
When her mother suddenly needed a $200,000 emergency brain surgery, Clara was forced to take a demeaning extra gig to survive.
There, Veronica and her starlet friend cornered Clara.
They mocked her cheap clothes, ridiculed her new wedding ring as fake glass, and intentionally poured scalding coffee on her feet.
"Well, maid, you better clean that up."
Veronica laughed, forcing Clara to her knees to wipe up the burning liquid while snapping photos.
Clara swallowed her burning humiliation, secretly recording their abuse on her phone.
She endured the pain, desperate for the $300 day rate to save her mother's life, feeling entirely crushed by their overwhelming wealth and power.
What she didn't know was that outside the soundstage, her new contract husband—the man she thought was just a struggling, broke tech worker—was sitting in a sleek black Maybach.
He watched his wife kneeling on the floor, and his dark eyes filled with a lethal, terrifying rage.
9.7
Charity woke up in a hellish, acid-rain-soaked slum, trapped inside a bloated body covered in festering, toxic sores. She was the exiled Grand Princess of the Empire.
But the real nightmare wasn't her ruined body. It was the fact that the original owner had used her royal authority to force genetic marriage contracts onto four top-tier, powerful men.
Now, she was bound to them, and they absolutely loathed her.
Hjalmar, chained to a bed in her filthy room, smiled like a feral beast and promised to rip her head off the second his chains snapped.
Braden, a ruthless military officer, saved her from a mutated rat only to look at her with pure disgust.
"If you want to die, go die somewhere else. Don't dirty my patrol sector."
Even the locals mocked her fallen status, and a wealthy heiress publicly framed her for stealing a hundred-thousand-coin energy core just to see her rot in a dark cell.
She was universally despised, physically repulsive, and a lethal biological toxin gave her exactly 59 days left to live. How was she supposed to survive this absolute hell when her starting affection with her partners was at negative 100?
Then, a mechanical voice echoed in her skull, activating a survival system. To purge the poison, she had to harvest emotional energy by making these four men fall for her. Charity accepted the mandate, unlocked a top-tier culinary skill, and grabbed a rusted meat cleaver to start her counterattack.