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 8
Rosa pushed through the crowd of wealthy guests. Her chest heaved as she stopped at the edge of the spotlight. She lowered the silver tray.
Laying in the center of the polished metal was a single, antique emerald earring surrounded by crushed diamonds.
Meredith dropped Amanda's wrist. She snatched the earring from the tray and held it up next to the one she had just ripped from Amanda's hand. They were an exact match.
"Where did you find this?" Meredith demanded.
Rosa caught her breath. "The maid was cleaning Miss Billie's room. She found it wedged behind Miss Billie's vanity mirror. It was never stolen."
The words hit the room like a physical shockwave. The theft was a lie.
On the stage, Billie gasped loudly. She slapped both hands over her mouth. She dropped the microphone and ran down the stairs. She rushed over to Amanda. Her eyes were wide, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.
"Oh my god," Billie cried. She reached out and grabbed Amanda's cold hands. "Amanda, I am so sorry! I must have misplaced them when I was trying them on. It was an accident. Please forgive me."
The crowd immediately softened. Whispers of "poor Billie" and "an honest mistake" rippled through the room.
Amanda looked down at Billie's hands holding hers. She felt absolutely nothing.
Julio let out a loud, triumphant scoff. He tightened his grip on Seraphina.
"See?" Julio said loudly. He glared at Amanda. "It was just an honest mistake! Billie misplaced them. And yet you brought this fake witch hunt down here and nearly ruined the entire party! You are always so dramatic and mentally unstable over nothing. You owe everyone an apology for your psychotic behavior!"
Seraphina peeked out from under Julio's jacket. She looked at Amanda. A tiny, vicious smirk flashed across Seraphina's lips before she hid her face again.
Amanda stared at the smirk. She stared at Billie's fake tears. She stared at Julio's arrogant face.
They had set her up. They had planned to humiliate her, and even when the truth came out, they still demanded she bleed for them.
The numbness in Amanda's chest shattered. A violent, reckless energy surged through her veins. Her stomach pain vanished entirely, replaced by pure adrenaline.
Amanda violently ripped her hands out of Billie's grip. She pushed Billie backward. Billie stumbled in her heavy dress and let out a shocked cry.
Amanda reached into her coat pocket. She pulled out her phone.
She did not look at anyone. She walked straight toward the small soundboard set up near the edge of the stage for the string quartet. The musicians were staring at the drama, completely ignoring their equipment. Amanda reached out, grabbed the auxiliary cable plugged into the main mixer, and shoved it directly into her phone's headphone jack.
She opened her voice memos. She pressed play.
The audio blasted through the massive speakers mounted in the corners of the ballroom.
"Julio," Seraphina's whiny, high-pitched voice echoed off the crystal chandelier. "Some girls just bullied me in the hallway. They were so mean. Come find me, please."
The crowd froze.
"Okay, I am coming back in," the recording finished.
Everyone turned their heads and stared at Seraphina. The helpless victim act was instantly destroyed by the sound of her calculating voice.
Amanda did not stop. She opened her photo gallery. She selected the picture Jeanette had sent her-the photo of Julio's hand wrapped tightly around Seraphina's waist at the private club.
She tapped the share button. She did not use AirDrop. Instead, she opened a group message containing the contacts of three notorious society gossip bloggers she had spotted near the champagne pyramid earlier. She hit send. A second later, a chorus of digital pings erupted from the back of the room. One of the bloggers gasped loudly, practically shoving her phone into the face of a wealthy socialite next to her. The picture spread like a digital wildfire. Within seconds, dozens of phones vibrated at the exact same time.
Guests pulled their phones from their pockets and purses. They looked at the screens. The sharp intake of breath from a hundred people sucked the oxygen out of the room.
Julio's face turned the color of ash. He looked around at the staring crowd. He realized what had just happened.
He ripped his arm away from Seraphina. He shoved her away from him like she was on fire. Seraphina stumbled and fell to her knees. She reached out for the guests, but the socialites stepped backward, looking at her with pure disgust.
Amanda stood in the center of the chaos. The heavy weight that had been crushing her for three years was gone. She smiled. It was a massive, genuine, terrifying smile.
She reached over and grabbed the microphone Billie had dropped on the floor.
"Since you love putting on a show," Amanda said into the mic, her voice echoing over the whispers, "I decided to host the premiere of your affair for the whole city."
The ballroom exploded into shouting.
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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.