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 5
Abigail Cardenas POV:
The whispers in the ballroom were like a thousand tiny needles piercing my skin. I could feel their judgment, their thinly veiled contempt. "Look at her," one woman tittered, "the disgraced lawyer. What nerve, showing her face here."
What nerve? I wanted to scream. You have no idea.
My mind flashed back to that night, after the verdict, after the world had crumbled. I had raced home, my heart a raw wound, clinging to the last shred of hope that Edgar, at least, would be innocent. That he would explain.
I found his study door ajar. Inside, the walls were covered. Not with my photos, not with Kody's drawings. But with Celena. Photos of them, from college, from recent trips, intimate glances, stolen smiles. A shrine to their "love," built right under my nose, in the home we shared. The cold, sickening realization hit me then. It wasn't just a frame-up. It was a calculated, brutal betrayal of everything we had built.
I stood there, paralyzed, the chill seeping into my bones, colder than any winter night. This is it, I remembered thinking. This is how it ends.
My legs gave out. I sank to the floor, hot tears finally streaming down my face, burning tracks on my skin. "Edgar!" I choked, my voice raw. "How could you?"
He emerged from the shadows, his face pale, his eyes avoiding mine. He didn't deny it. He just stood there, a silent testament to his guilt.
"Celena was always the one, Abigail," he mumbled, his voice devoid of emotion. "She came back. I knew I had to be with her." He offered a pathetic, "I'm sorry. I'll make sure you're taken care of."
Taken care of? My heart shattered into a million pieces. "You despicable coward," I hissed, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "She left you broken, Edgar. I put you back together. And this is how you repay me? You betray me for the woman who stomped all over your heart once already?"
He flinched, but said nothing. He just stood there, watching me break, offering empty promises of "care."
Then, the final, brutal blow. As the guards led me away to prison, my hands cuffed, my world in ruins, I saw Kody. He was standing behind Celena, clinging to her leg. His eyes, usually filled with innocent love for me, were now wide with a chilling mixture of fear and something else. Disgust.
"Mama, don't come back," he'd whispered, his voice small, but clear as a bell. "You're a bad person. Aunt Celena said so."
That was the moment. The exact moment my heart turned to stone. The abandonment from Edgar was a knife. Kody's words were the acid that dissolved my very soul.
Three years. Three years in that hellhole. Three years of taunts, of physical and emotional abuse. My body, once strong and vibrant, became a canvas of bruises and scars. One particularly brutal attack in the prison yard left me with a permanent limp, a constant reminder of their cruelty.
But the fire in my gut never died. I emerged from prison, a shell of my former self, but with a new purpose. Truth. Vengeance. I would expose them.
I started digging, patiently, relentlessly. I found the cracks in their perfect facade, the digital footprints of their conspiracy. I had the evidence. It was all laid out, clear as day. I was finally ready. Ready to clear my name, to reclaim my life.
I was driving to the courthouse, a storm raging outside, mimicking the one in my heart. The evidence, carefully compiled, sat on the passenger seat. I was so close. So close to freedom.
Then, the brakes failed.
The car veered wildly, careening off the coastal highway. The last thing I remembered was the sickening crunch of metal, the roar of the ocean, and the chilling realization that this wasn't an accident. This was deliberate.
I woke up in a remote, forgotten clinic, my body broken, my memory fragmented. They had left me for dead. Presumed dead.
And now, here I stood. Alive. A ghost returned.
The whispers in the ballroom died down, replaced by Celena's saccharine voice. "Abigail, darling, we understand you might be a little... out of sorts. But this is Kody's night. And Edgar and I are celebrating our engagement." Her smile was patronizing, a thin veneer over pure malice. "Perhaps it's best if you just... leave quietly. For old times' sake."
Edgar, flushed and uncomfortable, nodded weakly. "Abigail, it's been seven years. It's time to let go. We've all moved on. Please, don't make a scene." His voice held a note of weary plea.
"Let go?" I finally spoke, my voice cutting through the elegant music, sharp and clear. "You think I can 'let go'?" My eyes burned into Edgar's. "Do you even know what you're asking me to let go of?"
His face went white. He knew. He clearly knew.
Just then, Kody, his face streaked with tears, stepped forward. He grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong. "Mom, please," he sobbed, his eyes pleading. "Just... pretend. For me. For my birthday. Just say you're sorry. Please, Mom."
I looked down at his hand, then into his tear-filled eyes. The boy who had betrayed me, the boy who had helped them push me off that cliff. The boy whose pleading tears had once melted my heart. Not anymore. That part of me was dead, buried under the wreckage.
I pulled my arm away from his grasp, slowly, deliberately. "Sorry?" I asked, my voice chillingly calm. "Sorry for what, Kody?" My gaze pierced his. "For surviving?"
He flinched, reeling back as if struck. His face was a mask of terror. Edgar stared, wide-eyed, a dawning horror spreading across his features. Celena, ever the manipulator, watched me with a calculating gleam, a faint, knowing smirk playing on her lips. She always knew.
"Did you really think," I began, my voice rising, cutting through the stunned silence in the ballroom, "that I wouldn't come back for this?" My eyes flickered to Celena, then to Edgar, then back to Kody. "Did you really think you could bury me and walk away unscathed?"
The crowd was rapt, silent, hanging on my every word. They expected a scene, and I was about to give them one. Just not the one they expected.
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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.