Broken Doll No More: Her Ruthless Revenge
I stood before the heavy oak door with a positive pregnancy test burning a hole in my pocket, ready to tell the Underboss, Anthony Holden, that his legacy was secured.
But before I could turn the handle, I heard his twin brother laughing from inside.
"She screams your name, not mine. It is a little insulting, brother," Emmanuel mocked.
"Three years of celibacy for the alliance while you play with my toy," Anthony sighed. "I deserve a medal."
My world shattered. For three years, I thought I was the exception to their violence, but I had been sleeping with a monster in the dark.
When I kicked the door open, Bianca House—my high school tormentor—was sitting there like a queen.
"Happy anniversary, Erica," she sneered. "You were just a placeholder for the territory deal."
They didn't stop there. They took my dignity, and then they took my life.
At a dinner intended to show unity, they watched me choke on peanuts. Anthony looked me in the eye and used my EpiPen on Bianca’s fake faint while I suffocated on the floor.
They threw my grandmother’s ashes off a balcony just to watch me scream. They pushed me into traffic to ensure I’d be a compliant prop for their wedding.
They killed the baby in my womb.
They thought they had broken me. They thought I was just a nurse, a civilian, a loose end.
But on the day of the wedding, I wasn't in the pews.
I was on a bus out of state, hacking the church's livestream.
As the priest began to speak, I replaced the image of the cross with the video of their confession.
I watched their empire crumble from a cracked phone screen, leaving the monsters behind to find a man who would actually burn the world for me.
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Chapter 5
Erica POV
The dinner was supposed to be a peace treaty.
The Holdens and the Houses were gathered at one long table, an uneasy truce displayed in silver and linen.
I was seated at the far end—exiled from the conversation, and far removed from the power.
I had spent the afternoon at a clinic.
I took a pill.
It was the hardest thing I had ever done, but I couldn't bring a child into this world.
Not this world.
I was bleeding.
Physically and emotionally, I was draining away. Yet, I sat straight, a statue of composure.
I wore the diamond earrings Emmanuel gave me. They felt heavy on my ears, like stones.
Waiters brought out the food.
Thai curry.
It smelled strong, a cloying mix of spices and coconut milk.
I was allergic to peanuts.
Deadly allergic.
And Anthony knew this.
He carried an EpiPen in his jacket pocket specifically for me. In the past, he used to obsessively check ingredients at every restaurant we visited.
My mind hazy with exhaustion, I looked down at my bowl.
It looked safe enough.
I took a bite.
The reaction was instant.
My throat slammed shut. My lips swelled, stinging with heat.
I couldn't breathe.
Panic seized me. I clawed at my neck, desperate for air.
I knocked my water glass over, and it shattered against the table, the sound cutting through the dinner chatter.
Everyone looked at me.
"Help," I wheezed, the sound barely escaping my constricted windpipe.
I locked eyes with Anthony.
He was staring right at me.
His face was blank, devoid of recognition or alarm.
Slowly, he reached into his pocket.
He pulled out the EpiPen.
Hope flared in my chest, bright and desperate.
He stood up.
But he didn't walk to me.
He walked to Bianca.
Bianca let out a dramatic, theatrical gasp.
"Oh no," she cried, bringing a hand to her forehead. "I feel faint! The fumes!"
She slumped in her chair.
She was faking. It was painfully, insultingly obvious.
Anthony uncapped the EpiPen.
"Stay with me, my love," he said loudly, his voice thick with performative concern.
He jammed the needle into Bianca's thigh.
She yelped in genuine surprise.
He wasted the medicine on her.
He was wasting my life on her.
I fell to the floor.
Black spots danced in my vision, obscuring the cruel tableau above me.
I gasped for air that wouldn't come, my chest heaving uselessly.
Emmanuel was watching.
He was calmly drinking his wine, looking down at me dying on the carpet as if I were a stain.
"She should have checked the menu," he said dismissively. "Careless nurse."
The room started to spin.
The darkness was coming back.
But this time, it wasn't a closet.
It was death.
Through the haze, I saw the shoes of the waiters rushing over.
Someone called 911.
Not Anthony.
Not Emmanuel.
A waiter. A stranger.
As my eyes closed, the last thing I saw was Anthony kissing Bianca's forehead.
He was comforting her.
While I suffocated.
I didn't die.
The paramedics arrived in a blur of motion and noise.
They gave me a shot.
My lungs opened.
I sucked in air, and it burned like fire.
They loaded me onto a stretcher.
I looked back at the table.
They were still eating.
They didn't stop dinner.
I closed my eyes.
The sadness was gone.
The fear was gone.
There was only the cold.
I touched my empty stomach.
I touched my swollen throat.
They wanted me dead.
They tried to kill me.
Okay.
I would die.
Erica the nurse would die.
And something else would rise from the ashes.
I thought of the soldier's card in my purse.
*When you are ready to burn it down.*
I was ready.
I was the match.
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8.2
They say Alpha Kael Vorthrane is not a man.
He is a curse.
A beast born from betrayal.
A ruler who destroyed entire packs to build his throne.
And now... he owns mine.
I am Liora Ashwyn.
Daughter of the Dark Moon Alpha.
The girl my own parents handed over like a peace offering when Alpha Kael came for revenge.
I watched him slaughter my pack.
I watched my parents choose me to save themselves.
And I watched his soldiers drag me away to be his "gift."
But when Alpha Kael finally looked at me...
He didn't see a slave.
He saw the daughter of the people who ruined his life.
And he decided I would pay for their sins.
Kael doesn't just want my body.
He wants my fear.
My pride.
My spirit.
He wants to break me slowly.
Because his wolf is insatiable.
Cruel.
Hungry for revenge.
And I am the perfect victim.
But Alpha Kael doesn't know one thing...
I am not as weak as I look.
And the girl he plans to destroy might be the only one capable of destroying him.
Or worse...
Becoming the one thing his wolf never expected.
His perfect mate.
9.2
Jacqueline Blackburn, a desperate Ivy League tutor, walked into the sleazy Veridian VIP club just to save her job.
But her billionaire client, the ruthless Christian Montgomery, mistook her for a cheap escort, blowing cigar smoke in her face and treating her like trash.
When she furiously turned to leave, a drunk former client attacked her in the hallway, tearing her white dress open and pinning her by the throat.
She fought back, stabbing the man's hand with a pen, only for Christian to emerge from the shadows and brutally crush the attacker's bleeding hand under his heel.
Instead of letting her go, Christian draped his heavy suit jacket over her exposed skin, trapped her in his dark suite, and forced her to sign a suffocating contract.
"You have exactly ninety days, or I will personally ensure you cease to exist in my city."
She thought she could just keep her head down, teach his nephew, and survive.
But she didn't understand why this terrifying underground tyrant was suddenly so fixated on her.
Why did he use his immense power to isolate her, publicly claim her at a billionaire gala, and track her every move?
When she received a chilling midnight text demanding she pack her bags and move into his sprawling estate by 8:00 AM, the terrifying reality set in.
She hadn't escaped the wolf. She had just walked directly into his cage.
7.1
*
**One night of betrayal. One night of passion. A lifetime of consequences.**
Celine was always the shadow-the reliable twin who worked while her sister, Celeste, basked in the spotlight. But when she finds her boyfriend of five months in her sister's bed, the shadow finally snaps. A reckless night at a dive bar with a hazel-eyed stranger was supposed to be her escape, a way to forget the people who saw her as a spare part.
But the stranger wasn't just a face in the crowd. He was **Idris Al-Miraj**, the billionaire Sheikh and the owner of the very hotel where Celine works.
When her parents attempt to sell her into a sacrificial marriage to save the family's reputation, Celine finds herself hunted by her past and trapped by her future. Idris doesn't just want her back in his bed; he wants to own every brick of the wall she's built around her heart.
Jobless, homeless, and backed into a corner by a family that only needs her when they can use her, Celine prepares to run again. But Idris has other plans. He doesn't want her to run. He doesn't even want her to surrender.
He wants her to fight back.
**"Use me,"** he says.
In a world where power is the only currency, Celine must decide if the man who dismantled her life is her greatest enemy-or the only weapon she has left.
7.1
They ruined her face. Stole her child. Now she's back-and nothing will stop her.
Five years ago, Raina Carrington lost everything: her beauty, her family, and her newborn baby.
Now she's returned-unrecognizable, unbreakable, and with one goal in mind: to find her son and make them pay. But revenge is never simple, especially when it draws the attention of Leif Vexley-the most powerful and dangerous man in the city-who just might hold the key to her child's past.
Yet she's not the victim anymore.
She's the storm-and she's ready to strike.
7.4
I was only fifteen when my venomous family orchestrated my doom by forcing me into an arranged marriage with mafia heir Javier Velasquez.
On our wedding night, Javier paraded strippers into our suite to show his absolute contempt, turning me into the ultimate joke of the underworld overnight.
But being a joke was a luxury compared to what came next.
Three years later, Javier needed to be a widower to marry into a heavily armed family and secure their backing for a coup.
He didn't grant me the mercy of a bullet.
Instead, he dragged me to an abandoned underground safehouse, locked me in the damp, rotting dark, and told the world I had been assassinated.
For six months, I starved in that dungeon, surviving only on the desperate hope that my family was safe.
Then, on the day of his lavish new wedding, a cruel maid kicked a plate of spoiled food onto my floor and delivered the final, fatal blow.
"Annabel is dead. Pined away and died of a broken heart two weeks ago."
My gentle mother was dead, all because she actually believed his lie about my tragic murder.
Driven by pure agony and an all-consuming hatred, I shattered crates of smuggled chemical solvents and struck a match, letting the roaring inferno turn their bloody wedding into my funeral pyre.
I thought the fire was the end.
But when I opened my eyes, the suffocating smoke vanished, replaced by the biting chill of a Long Island winter.
I was standing in the snow, back on the exact day my descent into hell began.
This time, the terrified girl was dead, and I would use their own ruthless rules to tear their empire apart.
9.7
I was sitting in a Starbucks, staring at a cold Americano, while the girl I thought was the love of my life looked at me with pure disgust.
Hailee Baxter slammed her latte down and told me we were done, claiming she couldn’t start her career at City Hall with a "diner kid" dragging her down.
She wasn't just breaking my heart; she was trading me in for Kyler Craft, the son of a powerful politician who could buy her the future she craved. In my past life, this was the moment I shattered, beginning a twenty-year spiral into alcoholism, poverty, and watching my parents work themselves into an early grave while I failed at everything. I vividly remembered the smell of cheap whiskey and the obituary of my father that I was too broke to even attend.
But as I looked down at my hands, they weren't the calloused, shaking hands of a forty-year-old failure; they were smooth, young, and steady. The silver Motorola flip phone in my pocket felt like a relic from a museum, and the girl in front of me looked like a shallow stranger rather than the woman of my dreams.
The crushing pain in my chest wasn't a heart attack—it was forty years of bitter regret colliding with a twenty-two-year-old body. Hailee was waiting for me to beg for another chance, her napkin ready to wipe away the pathetic tears she expected, but all I felt was a cold, clinical clarity.
How could I have been so blind to her greed, and why did I let one failed exam and a rich boy’s bullying destroy my entire family’s legacy?
I glanced at the newspaper on the table: May 12, 2005. This was the day I supposedly lost the City Hall fellowship, but I remembered a secret about the "Supplemental Candidate Protocol" that no one else would know for another week. I stood up, ignored Hailee's insults, and dialed the number etched into my soul.
"Mom," I whispered into the flip phone, "I'm coming home. And this time, I’m going to take back everything we lost."