Framed By Love, Unleashed By Vengeance
I was a top patent lawyer until my husband and his lover framed me, destroyed my career, and sent me to prison. For seven years after, I was presumed dead, living as a ghost in a warehouse.
Then, they found me. My ex-husband, Edgar, and our son, Kody, showed up, shocked to see me alive.
They lured me to Kody' s 18th birthday party, but it was a lie. The party was a surprise engagement celebration for Edgar and Celena, the very woman who ruined my life.
In front of everyone, Edgar told me to "let go."
My own son even begged me.
"Mom, please," he cried. "Just say you're sorry."
Sorry? For what? For surviving the car crash they orchestrated to kill me?
I looked at the boy I once loved more than life itself. In the sudden silence of the ballroom, I smiled and asked, "Kody, do you remember the night Celena asked you to slash my tires?"
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Chapter 2
Abigail Cardenas POV:
The warehouse hummed with a different kind of silence after they left. One where their lingering presence still pricked at my skin. Edgar had wanted to say more, I knew it. But there was nothing left to say. For him, maybe. For me? Everything.
But that "everything" was buried deep, under concrete and steel. My life was about survival now, not reliving ghosts. My hands, calloused and stained, were a testament to that. They were for lifting boxes, not holding hands.
My shift ended, and the cold night air bit at my exposed skin as I walked home. Home. The word was a cruel joke. It was a single room above a greasy spoon diner, the air thick with stale cooking oil and desperation. The mattress sagged in the middle, a perpetual valley of my weariness. The single window looked out onto a graffiti-scarred brick wall. It was a far cry from the sleek penthouse I once shared with Edgar, the one with panoramic city views.
A sudden, insistent pounding on my thin door startled me. My heart jumped into my throat. Rent was due yesterday. Mrs. Henderson, the landlady, was notorious for her late-night demands.
"Just a minute!" I called out, my voice raspy. I tightened the belt on my worn bathrobe, bracing myself for the usual tirade about overdue payments.
I unlatched the deadbolt, pulling the door open just enough to peer through the crack. My eyes widened. Not Mrs. Henderson.
Edgar stood there, his expensive suit looking ridiculously out of place in the grimy hallway. Next to him, Celena Lamb, draped in a silk coat that probably cost more than my annual rent, her perfect blonde hair gleaming under the weak hallway light. She clutched a designer bag, and her eyes, once predatory in a courtroom, now held a calculating gleam.
"Abigail," Edgar breathed, his face etched with concern.
I tried to slam the door shut, my hand stinging as Edgar' s foot jammed in the gap. He pushed it open with surprising force, propelling himself and Celena into my tiny room.
Celena took a step inside and instantly recoiled, a hand flying to her nose. Her gaze swept over the cramped space, the peeling wallpaper, the single hotplate on the floor. A shudder ran through her, a clear shiver of disgust.
"My God, Edgar," she whispered, her voice dripping with fake pity. "Is this really how she lives?"
I glared at her, my fists clenching at my sides. "Get out," I hissed, pointing to the door. "Both of you."
Celena ignored me, her eyes finally landing on my face. She let out a small, theatrical gasp. "It truly is you. Edwin and I were just saying... you know, after all these years, being presumed dead, the funeral, everything..."
My blood ran cold. The funeral. The mockery of it all. "What do you want?" I asked, my voice dangerously low.
She smiled, a saccharine, venomous smile. "We just came to see if you were... alright. After all, you were declared legally deceased." Her gaze flickered around my squalid room again, a silent judgment. "Though 'alright' seems a bit of a stretch, doesn't it?"
My hands trembled with a rage so potent it threatened to consume me. "Are you finished gloating?"
Celena chuckled, a brittle, unpleasant sound. "Oh, Abigail, don't be so dramatic. We're just trying to help." She paused, then placed a hand on her slightly rounded belly. "Edgar and I, we're expecting. A fresh start for our family, you know?" Her eyes, cold and triumphant, met mine. "A real family."
My breath caught in my throat. I stared at her, then at Edgar, who was avoiding my gaze, his face pale. The news hit me like a physical blow, even though it shouldn't have. What was one more betrayal in a lifetime of them?
"Are you quite done?" I said, my voice barely a whisper, but laced with an icy dismissal that seemed to surprise her. "Then leave."
Celena blinked, caught off guard by my lack of reaction. She had expected tears, hysterics, a scene. Instead, she got nothing.
Edgar, his voice hoarse with what sounded like genuine regret, finally spoke. "Abigail, please. Let us help you. You don't have to live like this." He pulled out a thick wad of cash from his wallet, offering it to me. "And here. For a fresh start. Celena and I, we've even found a position for you at one of our branch offices. It' s a clean slate. A new identity, even."
Celena chimed in, "Think of it as... old friends catching up. We were worried about you, after all." Her smile was sickly sweet.
I looked at the cash, then at the sleek business card she held out. "Friends?" I laughed, a harsh, dry sound. "You call this friendship?"
Celena grabbed Edgar's arm, pulling him towards the door. "Come on, darling. We've done our good deed. She clearly doesn't appreciate it."
Edgar hesitated, his eyes lingering on me, filled with a desperate plea. "Kody misses you, Abigail. He talks about you all the time."
I didn' t flinch. Not anymore. I slammed the door shut with all my might, the flimsy wood rattling in its frame.
The silence that followed was a relief, but it was short-lived. I looked at the cash Edgar had pressed into my hand, then at the business card. With a snarl of disgust, I tore the card into tiny pieces, letting them flutter to the floor like ash. The money I threw onto the hotplate, watching the cheap bills curl and blacken at the edges.
Their 'help' wasn't help. It was guilt. An attempt to buy absolution for the wreckage they had caused. But my life, my dignity, wasn't for sale. Not anymore. And certainly not to them.
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7.7
A deep bone-melting groan vibrates from his chest. "I want to see you malyshka.Every inch of you."
I shiver in anticipation as his fingers trail down my back, lowering the zipper of my dress, the fabric pooling at my waist. My tits come into view as cool air kisses my bare skin.
His sharp intake of breath makes my stomach flip.
"Damn," the word is rough, almost reverent as his large hand cups my left tit, squeezing softly. "They look even better than I had imagined." His grip tightens slightly. "A perfect fit for my hands."
☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎☦︎
Serafina had only one dream: to take center stage at the New York Opera. But if wishes were horses, even beggars would have a ride.Thrown into an arranged marriage, She is determined to hate him but soon discovers that there's a thin line between love and hate.
Adriko has no use for love. His focus is power, his goal is revenge. But what do you do when your greatest threat is your most sinful desire?
A pawn in the game...
A Bride for a truce...
9.7
When Dante Moretti discovers his arranged husband is the son of the man who massacred his family, he sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. Alessandro Santoro accepts the marriage as penance for sins he couldn't prevent, expecting nothing but the punishment he believes he deserves.
But living together reveals cracks in the story both families told. Alessandro wasn't the enemy Dante thought. Dante isn't the monster Alessandro feared. As they uncover the real conspiracy behind the massacre, they're forced to choose between the vengeance that's defined them and the fragile connection growing between them.
9.0
My boyfriend and stepsister murdered me for my inheritance, their celebratory kiss a final insult above my broken body on the rain-slicked concrete of the port.
As my soul floated inches from my own face, a tyrant the world knew only as a disfigured cripple, Charles Moses, arrived with a team of soldiers.
He ignored my killers, who were now begging for their lives. Instead, he fell to his knees in the mud and blood.
He cradled my lifeless head in his hands, and a gut-wrenching sob of pure agony tore from his throat before he carried my body into the black ocean.
As the water closed over us, I didn't understand. Why did this monster, a man I had never met, weep for me as if I was his entire world?
My eyes snapped open. I was five years in the past, coughing up water in a hospital bed. It was the night my family screamed at me for ruining my stepsister's dress after she'd tried to drown me.
When they offered to marry me off to the "crippled monster" Charles Moses to save my perfect stepsister from that fate, I didn't fight them.
I smiled and said yes.
This time, I would walk straight into the lion's den myself.
9.7
Amy has lived in the shadows of her twin all her life-unwanted by her parents, erased by lies, and forgotten by the only boy she ever loved.
Now, years later, she returns not as the broken girl they abandoned, but as a woman ready to fight. When she demands marriage from Lucas Tyson-her sister's powerful fiancé, but her first love-the world gasps.
To them, she looks greedy. To her, it is the first step in reclaiming everything stolen from her: her name, her dignity, and the one heart that belongs to her.
But Lucas remembers only betrayal, Ava will do anything to keep her lies hidden, and Amy is walking into a war she may not survive.
Who will win the love fight?
9.0
My fiancé, the Underboss of the DeLuca Crime Family, promised he would burn the world down for me.
But when my mother was dying in the hospital, he chose a ski trip with another woman.
It was that woman's dog that attacked my mother, but when I called him, shaking, he was annoyed. He was in Aspen with Isabella, and I could hear her laughing in the background. He dismissed my mother's injuries as a "minor scrape" and told me not to "make a big deal out of this."
While my mother's fever spiked, he ignored my desperate pleas. Instead, my phone lit up with an Instagram post of him and Isabella smiling by a fireplace, sipping hot chocolate.
My mother slipped into septic shock. That picture was a public declaration, a judgment on my mother's worth, and my own. A cold fury burned away every last bit of love I had for him.
She died at 3:17 a.m. I held her hand until it was cold, then walked out of the hospital and called the one number I was never supposed to use—the number for my father.
"She's dead," I said. "I'm coming to Chicago. I'm leaving this life, and I'm going to burn his world to the ground."
7.5
I didn't fall for him.
I crashed.
Liam Cage wasn't supposed to matter. He was just the arrogant stranger with a dangerous smile and eyes that undressed me in a single glance. Just a man passing through my life.
Until our parents got married.
Now he's everywhere, in the kitchen at midnight, leaning against doorframes like he owns the air I breathe. In the hallway, too close. Always too close. Every look between us feels like a secret. Every argument feels like foreplay. Every silence feels loaded.
We don't talk about it.
We don't have to.
Because the truth is there in the way my pulse stutters when he says my name. In the way he watches me like he's trying to decide whether to ruin me - or save me.
He's wrong.
For me.
For my family.
For my sanity.
But when he touches me, the world narrows down to skin and heat and the terrifying realization that some mistakes don't feel like mistakes at all.
They feel inevitable.
This story is about craving what you shouldn't, crossing lines you swore you wouldn't, and discovering that sometimes the most dangerous love is the one that feels the most real.