Drowning In Betrayal: Watch Me Shine Now
I was lying in the emergency room with acute gastroenteritis on my birthday, but my mother ordered me to rip out my IV needle.
She threatened to freeze all my accounts if I didn't show up to my adopted sister's high-society matchmaking party.
When I arrived, dragging my weak body, I caught my fiancé Julio protecting his mistress.
Worse, my adopted sister Billie framed me for stealing my own grandmother's heirloom earrings just to play the victim in front of New York's elite.
I refused to be their stepping stone and projected the evidence of Julio's affair on the massive ballroom screen.
In a rage, my father cursed me, and my mother slapped me across the face so hard my mouth bled.
During the ensuing physical struggle, my adopted sister, the mistress, and I all plunged into the freezing outdoor swimming pool.
My fiancé desperately swam to save his mistress, while my own brother rushed to pull my adopted sister above the water.
I stopped kicking and let my heavy, soaked clothes pull me down to the bottom of the black pool.
Why did my own flesh and blood treat me like garbage?
After a mysterious bodyguard pulled me from the water, I watched my family frantically wrap the other two women in warm blankets.
I didn't shed a single tear.
"I am no longer a part of this family. I never want to see any of you again."
I publicly canceled the engagement, turned my back on the wealthy estate, and walked away into the freezing winter night.
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Chapter 2
Amanda walked down the long, brightly lit hospital corridor. The smell of bleach and rubbing alcohol made her stomach churn. She reached the end of the hall and pushed open the heavy wooden door to the women's washroom. The thick door swung shut, cutting off the noise of the hospital.
She walked straight to the sinks. She gripped the edge of the cold marble counter with both hands. She stared at the mirror. Her face was the color of chalk. Her lips were completely white.
Another cramp ripped through her abdomen. She bent over the sink and turned on the faucet. She scooped freezing water into her hands and splashed it over her face. The shock of the cold water forced her lungs to take a deep breath.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a tube of bright red lipstick. Her fingers shook as she twisted the base. She dragged the heavy, waxy color across her lips. The vibrant red looked jarring against her dead skin, but it hid the sickness.
She pulled her phone and her wireless earbuds from her pocket. She put the right bud in her ear and dialed Jeanette's number.
Jeanette picked up on the second ring. The sound of an airport boarding announcement echoed behind her.
"Amanda?" Jeanette asked. "You sound terrible. What is wrong?"
Amanda leaned her back against the cold tile wall. She closed her eyes.
"Meredith is forcing me to go to the estate," Amanda said. "And I just called Julio. A woman laughed in the background. It was not Billie."
Jeanette cursed loudly into the phone. The sound of a laptop unzipping and keys clacking followed immediately.
"Give me a second," Jeanette said. "I am pulling up his car's tracking logs through my agency's valet contacts."
Two nurses walked into the washroom, chatting about their shift. Amanda immediately stood up straight. She smoothed the lapels of her coat and pretended to check her phone. She kept her face blank until the nurses entered the stalls.
"Got him," Jeanette said. Her voice dropped an octave. "He has been at a private club in Manhattan for the last three hours. Not Long Island."
A soft ping sounded in Amanda's ear. A photo appeared on her phone screen.
Amanda opened the message. The photo was blurry, taken from a distance by a valet. Julio was walking toward a VIP elevator. His arm was wrapped tightly around the waist of a petite woman.
Amanda zoomed in on the screen. The woman's face was turned away, but Amanda recognized the jacket. It was a limited-edition designer coat. Julio had purchased it last week using Amanda's supplementary credit card. She remembered the bank alert from last Tuesday, the one Julio had casually dismissed as 'a business gift for a crucial client's wife'. The lie was so blatant, so effortlessly delivered, it was almost insulting.
The physical pain in her stomach completely vanished. It was replaced by a cold, spreading numbness.
"It is Seraphina Vance," Amanda said. She stared at the coat on her screen.
"Post it," Jeanette demanded. "Put the picture on every social media platform right now. Burn them both to the ground."
Amanda looked up at her reflection in the mirror. The red lipstick looked like blood.
"I have spent three years taking abuse from my family to secure this marriage," Amanda said. Her voice was hollow. "The sunk cost is too high. If I walk away with nothing, they win."
Jeanette let out a heavy sigh. "If you go to that estate tonight without a plan, they are going to use you as a floor mat for Billie."
Amanda's eyes narrowed. The dead look in her pupils shifted into something sharp and dangerous.
"I am not going for free," Amanda said.
She opened her text messages and clicked on Meredith's name. She typed quickly.
If you want me there, deposit two million dollars into my personal account right now as an appearance fee.
She hit send.
Ten seconds later, her phone screen flashed with an incoming call from Meredith. Amanda stared at it, her face completely expressionless, and pressed the red decline button.
A voice message notification popped up immediately. Amanda tapped the transcribe button. The text filled the screen: You ungrateful, extorting little bitch. How dare you-
Amanda did not read the rest. She opened her ride-sharing app, took a screenshot of a car requested to her apartment, started a live location sharing session, and sent it to Meredith.
The car is two minutes away. The money, or I am gone. She stared at the screen, her thumb hovering over the lock button. She meant every word. If the transfer did not clear, she was getting into that car and disappearing into the city.
Jeanette whistled through the earbud. "I am changing my flight. I am coming back to New York right now."
Amanda's phone vibrated in her palm. A notification from her bank appeared at the top of the screen. A wire transfer for two million dollars had just cleared. A text from Meredith followed a second later: Be perfect tonight, or else.
Amanda stared at the seven-figure balance. Her chest felt tight, but not from sadness. It was the suffocating reality of knowing her exact price tag in her mother's eyes.
"The money is in," Amanda said. "Dig up everything you can on Seraphina. I want her entire life history by the time I get to the estate."
"Done," Jeanette said. "Keep your chin up."
Amanda whispered a thank you and ended the call. She pulled the earbud out and dropped it into her bag. She looked in the mirror one last time. She did not look like a sick, abandoned fiancée anymore. She looked like a woman going to war.
She pushed open the washroom door. Her heels struck the linoleum floor with hard, sharp clicks. People in the hallway turned to look at her, but she stared straight ahead.
She walked through the hospital lobby and pushed through the revolving glass doors. The freezing winter wind hit her face like a slap. She pulled her cashmere coat tighter across her chest.
She stood on the top step of the hospital entrance. Her eyes narrowed as a sleek black Maybach pulled up to the curb and shifted into park.
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7.6
When the Pollard family kicked Alyssa out into the freezing rain, Walter threw a ten-thousand-dollar check into a dirty puddle.
"Take it and get out. Don't ever come back," he sneered.
Her adoptive mother and stepsister stood on the mansion's porch, mocking her as a worthless country girl who tarnished their wealthy name. They laughed, claiming she wouldn't even be able to afford community college and would be begging on the streets in a week.
They looked at her cheap clothes and worn backpack with absolute disgust.
They were completely unaware that for the past five years, Alyssa was the secret mastermind who had built their failing gallery into a multi-million-dollar investment empire.
Every key investment, every fortune they made, came from the anonymous notes she had slipped into their unread books. They genuinely believed they were business geniuses, while treating the true architect of their wealth like a stray dog.
Looking at their smug, arrogant faces, Alyssa didn't feel a shred of sadness, only a cold, sharp irony.
They actually believed they had raised her.
She stepped close, whispered the master code to Walter's most secret offshore account, and watched the blood completely drain from his face.
"I raised you," she said, turning her back on the mansion without hesitation.
Walking into the storm, she pulled out a heavily encrypted phone and gave a single, cold order.
"Initiate a full hostile takeover of the Pollard Group."
It was time to end this little game and step into her true life—as the world's most elusive medical genius, and the long-lost billionaire heiress of the Summers dynasty.
8.6
Marrying Theron Draix in a few days was a life long dream come true.
For seventeen years, I'd loved him, revolving my life around him, and in just three days, we should be married.
"Let's break up. I won't be attending the wedding," he said.
My life shattered in that instant.
Finding out he was in love with my adopted sister was worse. They had played me and controlled my emotions.
At the end, Mireya had killed me.
If I was given a second chance, I would never love Theron and never trust Mireya.
9.5
One night, I was a girl seeking vengeance in a velvet mask. He was the stranger who took me against a cold stone wall, his touch a silent, lethal promise.
Now, he is Caspian Blackwood-the most feared architecture professor at Aethelgard. When my "perfect" boyfriend, Dominic Calloway, cheats on me and sabotages my degree, Caspian offers a lifeline with a razor-thin edge: Be his silent, nude model for thirty days.
The rules are absolute. I must wear a silk mask and a weighted collar. I must never speak. I must hold the poses he demands until my muscles scream for mercy. In the lecture hall, he ignores me with arctic indifference. In the studio, his gaze is a physical weight, stripping me faster than his hands ever could. But as the charcoal scratches against the paper, I realize the "deal" isn't just for art. It's for the soul I accidentally gave him in the dark. Will the deal destroy his career, or consume me first?
9.0
Carli followed an anonymous text to a dark garage, only to find her fiancé of seven years tangled with another woman in his Porsche.
She smashed his window, threw her engagement ring at his face, and walked away.
But the betrayal didn't stop there. Her own family sided with the cheater. Her father slapped her across the face so hard she bled, demanding she hand over her late aunt's trust fund.
"If you don't do exactly as you're told tonight, I will freeze every credit card in your name," her father roared.
Forced to attend the exclusive Gutierrez family gala, Carli watched her ex-fiancé parade his cheap mistress to humiliate her, while her stepsister tried to publicly ruin her.
Suddenly, a violent screech echoed as the massive crystal chandelier above them snapped from the ceiling.
In a split second of pure instinct, Vaughn shoved his mistress to safety and threw himself to the ground, completely abandoning Carli to be crushed.
Staring up at the plummeting glass, Carli felt the crushing reality that her entire life had been surrounded by monsters.
But the fatal impact never came.
A massive force yanked her into a hard chest, shielding her body entirely from the explosive shrapnel.
Carli opened her eyes to find Fletcher Gutierrez—the ruthless billionaire king of Wall Street and the masked stranger from her reckless one-night stand—bleeding heavily over her.
Feeling his warm blood on her hands, Carli knew the game had just changed.
9.3
My husband of three years dragged me into the freezing autumn ocean because my stepsister claimed I bullied her.
When she faked a sprained ankle in the shallow water, he immediately abandoned me in the roaring waves to save her, not knowing I was eight weeks pregnant.
The icy undertow swept me away, causing a brutal miscarriage. Later in the hospital, my traumatized body started hemorrhaging, and I desperately needed a rare blood transfusion.
My stepsister, who shared my blood type, held my life hostage. She forced my husband to sign our divorce papers before she would donate a single drop.
By the time the blood reached me, my uterus was irreparably damaged. I permanently lost the right to ever be a mother.
"The Anderson family can't have an infertile matriarch."
My own parents said this as they falsified my medical records to protect her. And my husband, blinded by his misplaced loyalty, simply walked away, leaving me with a meager settlement.
I lost my baby, my fertility, and my marriage all in one week. How could the people I trusted most be so completely heartless?
But looking at the divorce papers, I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly signed my name and unsealed my Yale architecture degree.
"I'm in. Send me the files for the Manhattan project."
The weak, pathetic Mrs. Anderson died on that operating table. Crista Cherry is back, and it's time for them to pay.
9.0
Ellen had spent ten years cleaning her husband's home, a quiet devotion to the man who demanded her constant labor. But while vacuuming under their bed, her world shattered with a single, horrifying discovery. Hidden away was a secret phone, revealing a life her husband had built with another woman and child for the past eight years.
A decade of devoted homemaking for Adrian in their Los Angeles home was Ellen’s life. While cleaning, she found a hidden compartment and a new iPhone, which she shockingly unlocked. The wallpaper revealed Adrian with a secret family in Austin—a double life since her own pregnancy. Texts detailed a $1.2 million house and lavish expenses for “Angel.” Adrian stirred, forcing Ellen to hide the device. Her son was denied a $200 class, while her $50,000 inheritance funded Adrian’s secret family. Rage replaced her tears. Ellen photographed all incriminating details, hid the phone, and forced a submissive smile. Her quiet devotion was over; her war had just begun.