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 7
The emerald earring gleamed in Amanda's palm. The whispers of the crowd turned into a loud, buzzing roar of judgment directed at the woman hanging from the guards' hands.
Seraphina's makeup ran down her face in dark streaks. She shook her head violently from side to side.
"I didn't steal it!" Seraphina sobbed. She twisted her neck and locked her eyes on Julio. She bit down hard on her lower lip, her chest heaving. "Julio, please! Tell them!"
Julio's face was rigid. He looked at the earring in Amanda's hand, then down at Seraphina's tear-stained face. The muscle in his jaw ticked.
He shoved his way past a group of shocked investors. He threw his shoulder into the chest of the security guard holding Seraphina's right arm.
"Get your hands off her," Julio growled.
The crowd gasped again. The heir to the Mathews family was physically fighting security for a thief.
Julio ripped off his custom suit jacket. He wrapped it tightly around Seraphina's shaking shoulders and pulled her flush against his chest. He glared at the room, daring anyone to step forward.
Amanda watched his hands pull the fabric around the other woman. A block of solid ice formed in her chest. Her lungs felt paralyzed.
"Are you insane?" Amanda asked. Her voice cracked. She pressed her free hand hard against her stomach to stop the cramping. "She is wearing stolen jewelry. You are protecting a thief."
Julio snapped his head toward Amanda. The look in his eyes was pure, unadulterated hatred.
"She is not a thief," Julio yelled. He pointed a finger directly at Amanda's face. "You are a liar. You planted that earring on her."
The ballroom went dead silent again.
Amanda's eyes widened. She looked at the heavy emerald in her hand. She looked back at Julio. "What?"
"You are jealous of her," Julio said. His voice echoed off the high ceiling. "Seraphina is brilliant at work. You are nothing but a cold, paranoid shrew. You brought that earring down here and dropped it to frame her, just to ruin this party."
The crowd inhaled sharply. The socialites who had mocked Seraphina earlier were now looking at Amanda with deep disgust.
Amanda's hand began to shake. She held the earring up higher. "This is physical proof! I found it on the floor after she ran out of the hallway!"
Julio scoffed loudly. He pulled Seraphina closer. "You are having a psychotic break, Amanda. You have been acting crazy for months. You make up lies to get attention because you know I am tired of you."
Seraphina buried her face in Julio's chest. She let out a loud, pathetic sob. Her fingers clutched the fabric of his shirt, playing the helpless victim perfectly.
On the stage, Billie leaned into the microphone.
"Amanda, please," Billie said. Her voice was soft and full of pity. "Do not use grandmother's memory to bully someone. It is cruel."
The crowd turned entirely against Amanda. The whispers grew louder, filled with words like "crazy," "jealous," and "pathetic."
Amanda stood alone in the center of the spotlight. The physical weight of the stares pressed down on her shoulders. The room started to spin. Her vision blurred at the edges.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek until she tasted fresh blood. The sharp pain forced her brain to focus. She locked her knees to keep from falling.
She stared directly into Julio's eyes.
"You are throwing away basic facts and human dignity for her?" Amanda asked. Her voice was a raspy whisper, but the room was so quiet everyone heard it.
"The fact is you are a liar," Julio said coldly. "Apologize to Seraphina right now, or I am calling off the wedding."
The threat hung in the air.
Meredith broke through the crowd. She lunged at Amanda. Her manicured hands clamped down on Amanda's wrist. Meredith dug her nails into Amanda's skin and violently ripped the emerald earring out of her palm.
"Shut your mouth!" Meredith hissed in Amanda's ear. "You are destroying this family. Apologize to him immediately."
Amanda looked at her mother's furious face. She looked at the empty space in her palm where the earring had been.
The last thread holding her heart together snapped. It did not hurt anymore. The ice in her chest expanded, freezing everything inside her.
Amanda stood up perfectly straight. She looked at Julio. She looked at Seraphina. She looked at Meredith.
The corners of Amanda's mouth twitched. She smiled. It was a cold, dead, terrifying smile.
She turned her gaze back to Billie on the stage. "Before I apologize," Amanda said, her voice piercing the silence, "tell me, Billie. Does the earring you claim to have lost have my grandmother's initials, 'AR', engraved on the back of the gold setting? Because the one in my mother's hand does. Let us see yours."
Billie's fake tears instantly stopped. The color drained from her face. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The crowd shifted, murmuring in confusion as they noticed Billie's sudden panic.
Julio saw the smile fade from Billie's face, but he was too arrogant to understand the trap. He still thought he had won. He let out a breath and turned to lead Seraphina away.
The heavy wooden doors at the back of the ballroom slammed open.
Rosa, the housekeeper, ran into the room. She was panting heavily. In her hands, she held a silver serving tray high above her head.
"Wait!" Rosa yelled.
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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.