Ex-Husband's Denial: Wife Reclaims Her Shattered Life
Fiona prepared a candlelit anniversary dinner, scallops glistening on porcelain, champagne chilling beside a "Three Years" card—her secret pregnancy swelling beneath her silk dress.
The doorbell rang, but it was just a delivery. Then Emmanuel called: his ex, Carley Marshall, crashed her car. He blew off their night.
Cramps hit like a vise. She collapsed, blood soaking her gown, screaming into the phone: "I'm losing the baby!" Emmanuel scoffed, "Fake ploy for attention," and hung up—Carley's voice cooed in the background.
Paramedics rushed her to ER for emergency D&C. The baby was gone. Audrey saved her life. Emmanuel sent lilies with a card: "Stop dramatizing."
She signed divorce papers. He laughed it off, contested everything, froze her out of hotels and clubs. Dragged her from the St. Regis by force, dumped her sobbing on a rainy sidewalk with her suitcase in puddles—Gus drove off without looking back.
He thought she was manipulating him, playing jealous games for attention. But she'd truly carried his child, bled out alone while he comforted Carley. How could he not believe her, even after the hospital proof? Why twist her agony into lies?
Now blacklisted and broke, Fiona clutched her grandfather's antique restoration tools. No more begging—she'd expose his cruelty, rebuild from the ashes, and make him regret ever underestimating her.
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Chapter 2
Cold.
That was the first thing Fiona felt. A deep, bone-chilling cold that seeped up from the floor and into her very marrow.
She forced her eyes open. The ceiling above her was a blur of white and gray. The smell hit her next-copper and antiseptic, a sickening combination that made her stomach heave.
She was still on the floor.
The pain in her abdomen had dulled to a throbbing ache, but the wetness between her legs was still there, still warm, still sticky.
Fiona groaned, her throat feeling like sandpaper. She moved her hand, searching blindly. Her fingers brushed against the cold glass of the phone screen.
She pulled it toward her face. The screen was locked, covered in dried, flaking blood. Her thumb pressed against the sensor. Nothing.
She wiped the screen frantically on the clean part of her dress, smearing the blood around. She tried again.
The home screen appeared.
She had to call someone. Emmanuel was dead to her. There was only one other person.
Her fingers shook so badly she nearly tapped the wrong contact. Audrey.
She pressed the phone to her ear, the ringing sounding miles away.
"Fiona?" Audrey's voice was groggy with sleep. "Why are you calling so la-"
"Help." Fiona's voice was a broken whisper. "Audrey, help me."
"Fiona? What's wrong? Where are you?"
"The apartment." Fiona gasped as another cramp seized her. "Blood. So much blood."
"Oh my God." The grogginess vanished from Audrey's voice, replaced by sheer panic. "I'm coming. Don't move. I'm calling 911. Stay with me, Fiona!"
Fiona couldn't respond. The phone slipped from her fingers, clattering to the floor.
The darkness pulled her under again.
The next time she woke, the world was a cacophony of noise. Sirens wailing. Voices shouting.
"BP is dropping! We need to get her on the table now!"
"Type and cross, stat!"
She was moving, the lights on the ceiling streaking past her like shooting stars. Faces hovered over her, masked and gowned.
Then she saw Audrey. Her best friend was running alongside the gurney, tears streaming down her face, her hand reaching for Fiona's but missing.
"Fiona! Stay awake!"
Fiona wanted to say something, to tell Audrey about the baby, but a mask was pressed over her face. The air tasted like plastic and chemicals.
"Ma'am, you need to step back!" a paramedic yelled.
"I'm her sister!" Audrey screamed back.
The doors to the trauma bay swung open, and Fiona was wheeled inside. The doors swung shut, cutting Audrey off.
A doctor loomed over her, his face serious. "Mrs. Meyers, you're hemorrhaging. We need to perform an emergency D&C. You've lost the pregnancy."
Lost the pregnancy.
The words echoed in her head, bouncing around the hollow space where the baby used to be.
"I'm sorry," Fiona mouthed, though no sound came out.
A needle pierced her arm. A warm flush spread through her veins.
The last thing she saw before the darkness took her again was the bright, blinding light of the surgical lamp.
Hours later, or maybe minutes, Fiona woke up.
The room was quiet. The harsh lights of the ER were gone, replaced by the soft, ambient lighting of a VIP suite. The beeping of the heart monitor was a steady, rhythmic pulse.
She blinked, trying to clear the fog from her brain. She felt empty.
Her hand drifted down to her stomach. It was flat. Too flat. The slight swell that had been there just hours ago was gone. The tightness, the warmth, the secret life she had been carrying-it was all gone.
There was just nothing.
"Fiona?" Audrey's voice came from the chair beside the bed.
Fiona turned her head. Audrey looked terrible. Her eyes were red and puffy, her hair a mess. She was gripping Fiona's hand so hard it hurt.
"Hey," Fiona croaked. Her throat felt like it had been scrubbed with steel wool.
Audrey let out a choked sob. "You scared me to death. I thought... I thought you were going to die."
Fiona looked at the ceiling. "I didn't."
"The baby..." Audrey started, her voice trembling.
"It's gone." Fiona's voice was flat, devoid of any emotion. It was as if someone had reached inside her and scooped out all the feelings, leaving only a shell.
"I'm so sorry, Fi."
Fiona turned her head back to Audrey. She tried to smile, but her face felt stiff, the muscles refusing to cooperate. "It's okay."
"It's not okay!" Audrey's face twisted with anger. "Emmanuel is a monster. He left you there to die. I swear to God, I will kill him."
Fiona didn't say anything. She just stared at the wall.
"Give me a mirror," she said suddenly.
Audrey blinked. "What?"
"A mirror. I need to see."
Audrey hesitated, then pulled a compact from her purse and handed it over.
Fiona opened it and looked at her reflection. The woman staring back at her was pale, her lips bloodless, her eyes sunken with dark circles. She looked like a ghost.
She reached up and wiped at a tear track on her cheek. Her fingers came away dry.
She snapped the compact shut.
The door to the room opened. A nurse walked in, carrying the largest bouquet of white lilies Fiona had ever seen. The sweet, heavy scent of the flowers filled the room instantly.
"Good, you're awake!" the nurse chirped. "These just arrived for you. From your husband."
She set the vase on the bedside table. Tucked among the blooms was a small, cream-colored envelope.
Fiona stared at it. She reached out and pulled the card free.
The handwriting was sharp and familiar. Emmanuel's.
Two words.
"Stop dramatizing."
Fiona stared at the card. The black ink seemed to pulse on the white paper.
Stop dramatizing.
She had nearly bled to death on their living room floor. She had lost their child. And he thought she was putting on a show.
A sound escaped Fiona's throat. It started as a low rumble, a vibration in her chest that grew louder and higher. It was a laugh, but it was wrong. It was cold and sharp and brittle, like glass shattering.
"Fiona?" Audrey asked, her eyes wide. "Are you okay?"
Fiona didn't answer. She kept laughing, the sound echoing off the walls of the sterile room.
She grabbed the vase of lilies. The water was heavy, the glass slippery.
"Fiona, no!" Audrey shouted.
Fiona hurled the vase at the trash can in the corner. It hit the wall with a deafening crash. Water, glass, and white petals exploded everywhere, showering the floor like snow.
The laughter died instantly.
Fiona sat back against the pillows, her chest heaving. The silence in the room was absolute, save for the steady beep of the monitor.
"Get me a pen," she said. Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the silence like a blade.
Audrey stood frozen, staring at the mess on the floor.
"Now, Audrey."
Audrey scrambled, pulling a pen from her bag and handing it over with trembling hands.
Fiona snatched the pen. She looked around for paper. There was none. She looked at the discharge papers on the clipboard at the foot of the bed. She pulled them toward her.
She turned them over, finding a blank space on the back.
She wrote down a single sentence.
Then she looked up at Audrey, her eyes hard and cold as ice.
"Call the lawyer. I want divorce papers drawn up by morning."
"Fiona, you just had surgery-"
"I'm not waiting another second." Fiona handed the pen back. "Do it."
Audrey stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. She pulled out her phone and stepped out into the hallway.
Fiona turned her head toward the window. The sun was rising over Manhattan, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. The light hit her face, but she didn't feel its warmth.
She felt nothing at all.
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7.8
Elie Joyce’s entire life was controlled by Ebert Ewing, a ruthless billionaire who held her sick grandmother's survival and her family's freedom in his hands.
But on a freezing, stormy night, he forced her into a scandalous scrap of red silk and handed her over to a notorious, disgusting predator.
"You aren't an escort. You're just a free gift."
Ebert mocked her, using her as a disposable bargaining chip to secure a corporate funding round.
When the predator humiliated her, forced high-proof vodka down her throat, and violently pinned her to the floor, Ebert simply watched with dead eyes.
And when Ebert finally intervened to brutally beat the man, it wasn't out of mercy.
"She is my property. Even if she is trash that I threw away, a filthy pig like you doesn't get to touch her."
Afterward, he dragged her battered, barefoot body into his car, only to kick her out into the torrential rain, leaving her on the dark streets to die.
Standing in the storm, shivering and bleeding from broken glass, the last shred of Elie's hope shattered.
She had sacrificed her dignity and soul, enduring his violent bites and cruel control, just to keep her family alive.
Why did she have to suffer this endless, twisted humiliation for a psychopath who only saw her as trash?
But she didn't break.
Tearing a strip of his expensive shirt to bandage her bleeding foot, Elie gripped her broken stiletto like a knife.
With her eyes turning cold and calculating, she limped out of the shadows.
She was going to survive, and Ebert Ewing would soon realize she was no longer his obedient prey.
8.0
Abigayle was the proud heir to the Pena Group, living a perfect life and engaged to Jeffery Sullivan.
But the morning after a charity gala, she woke up drugged in a hotel room, blinded by paparazzi cameras. Her fiancé and her best friend stood at the foot of the bed, throwing a forged pregnancy report at her face to publicly frame her for cheating.
The betrayal was only the beginning of the slaughter. Before she could even clear her name, the Sullivan family ruthlessly bankrupted her family's company overnight. Her father was rushed to the ICU with a heart attack, her brother was run off the road into a coma, and violent repo men raided her penthouse. Just as she was thrown out into the freezing rain, Jeffery's terrifying uncle, Donovan Sullivan—the very mastermind who engineered her family's ruin—stepped in. He offered to cover the life-saving medical bills, but only if she agreed to become his personal plaything.
Abigayle's blood turned to ice. She couldn't understand how the people she trusted most could plot such a vicious, coordinated destruction just to break an engagement. How dared the man who destroyed her entire family stand there playing the savior, trying to buy her body with her own stolen wealth?
Facing a $100,000 hospital deadline and abandoned by everyone she knew, she didn't shed another tear.
"I will never beg him."
Clutching her last diamond bracelet, she hailed a cab straight to the biggest pawnshop in the Diamond District. The Sullivans thought they had buried her, but her counterattack was just beginning.
8.6
I was the untouchable Mafia Queen, but my reign ended in the blood-soaked depths of a damp dungeon.
My half-sister, Kelsey, drove a rusted, sharpened spoon into my chest, screaming about the unfairness of fate.
In my past life, my father sold me to the ruthless Don Dante Blackwell as collateral to pay off his debts.
To survive, I took a black-market fertility drug, birthed his heir, and clawed my way to the throne through sheer ruthlessness.
But in the mafia world, a pregnant woman isn't a queen; she's a walking target.
I survived countless bombings and poisonings, only to be betrayed and slaughtered by my own family.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand. I had sacrificed everything to secure our survival in the empire. Why did my blood and tears only earn me a rusted spoon to the heart?
Opening my eyes again, I am seventeen, sitting in my father's drawing room.
Two black velvet boxes sit on the mahogany table.
Kelsey greedily snatches the box containing the fertility drug, her eyes gleaming with feverish triumph.
"I'll take this one, Papa."
She thinks she is stealing my golden ticket to the crown, completely unaware that she just chose a death sentence.
I lower my gaze, letting my eyelashes mask the cold, lethal amusement pooling in my eyes as I take the remaining box.
Inside is the detailed psychological profile of the Don's dead fiancée.
This time, I won't be a breeding mare fighting off assassins. I will dissect the devil himself.
7.2
Azura Briggs was just a broke college student working freezing valet shifts to pay her adoptive mother's crushing medical debt.
Her desperate life shattered the night a bulletproof Maybach violently cornered her in an alley, and a ruthless billionaire kidnapped her by mistake.
After a harrowing escape, Azura was forced to take a humiliating "plus-one" gig at a high-end gala just to survive. But her date turned out to be the billionaire's arrogant nephew, who promptly abandoned her to the wolves. Cornered by a sleazy executive and his psychotic wife, Azura was publicly slapped, her dress torn, and left bleeding on the floor while hundreds of elites watched in disgust.
Just as she prepared to fight to the death, the crowd violently parted. Hunter Mcintosh, the terrifying man who had kidnapped her days ago, dropped to his knees in the broken glass and wrapped his bespoke jacket around her trembling shoulders.
Azura was completely paralyzed. Why was the monster who threatened her life now destroying billionaires just to protect her?
But the illusion of safety didn't last. Trapped in his Maybach hours later, Hunter threw a draconian employment contract at her feet.
"Sign it, and her care is covered. Forever."
He knew exactly how to break her. He was offering to pay off her mother's debt, but only if she signed her life away to become his personal assistant. With no other way out, Azura picked up the heavy pen.
9.5
As a highborn succubus, I somehow managed to starve myself to death-thanks to my obsessive cleanliness and ridiculously picky appetite.
When I opened my eyes again, I had transmigrated into Vivian Hartwell-the long-lost "real" daughter with a tragically cursed fate.
I had barely been taken back into the Hartwell family before they forced me to attend a so-called "death matchmaking" event in Kingsford-on behalf of Natalie Hartwell, the fake heiress-to meet Damian Blackwood, the infamous "living reaper."
Rumor had it Damian was brutal and bloodthirsty-every woman who'd ever been involved with him either ended up dead or driven insane.
At the event, over a hundred socialites were trembling on their knees, silently praying they wouldn't be the one chosen.
Just as Damian let out a cold smirk and reached to pick his unlucky victim, I took a deep breath from the back of the crowd.
The scent emanating from him was a rare, potent masculine essence-something encountered perhaps once in ten millennia.
For a painfully picky succubus like me, this was nothing short of salvation.
I kicked aside the girl blocking my way, my eyes practically glowing as I threw both hands up. "Pick me! Hurry, pick me!"
9.5
Gina was locked in Blackwood Asylum for five years, framed as a violent lunatic by her own wealthy family.
Her brother suddenly dragged her out, but not to save her. He forced her into an arranged marriage with Kerr Brooks, the billionaire emperor of New York, just to save the Rollins family's failing company.
Back at the estate, her parents treated her like a biohazard. They showered her adopted sister, Hailie, with love and luxury, while forcing Gina into a freezing servant's room. They threw a brutal prenuptial agreement at her face and threatened to leak a deepfake scandal video to the press if she didn't play the perfect bride. To ensure Gina's absolute ruin, Hailie even ordered a maid to spike her dinner with a massive dose of LSD. They were ruthlessly sacrificing her to a man who was secretly in a deep, unresponsive coma.
"She is just a tool, Hailie. Do not waste your pity on a broken thing."
Her mother's cold words echoed in the foyer. They looked at Gina's faded jumpsuit and vacant eyes, fully believing she was a heavily sedated pawn they could easily manipulate and discard.
But they didn't know Gina was a master hacker, a lethal underground surgeon, and the secret owner of the world's top luxury brand. She neutralized the poison in seconds and slipped into her comatose fiancé's heavily guarded ICU. Disabling the secret neuro-suppressants keeping him asleep, Gina smiled in the dark. If they wanted her to marry a corpse, she would use his empire to bury them all alive.