He Chose Her Lies, I Chose Revenge
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.
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Chapter 4
Seraphina Vitiello POV
The water around me was diluting into a soft, sickening pink.
The cold didn't just touch me; it seeped into the marrow of my bones, numbing the fresh, searing fire of my torn stitches.
Dante stripped off his coat and wrapped it around Isabella’s trembling shoulders.
"She tried to pull me in!" Isabella sobbed, burying her face into the solid wall of his chest. "She said if she couldn't have you, no one could!"
Dante’s gaze shifted. He looked down at me.
I was struggling to find purchase in the shallow water. My heavy cast, now waterlogged, acted like a concrete anchor dragging my broken shoulder down.
"Is this true?" he demanded. His voice was zero degrees.
"Would it matter if I said no?" I asked. My teeth chattered so hard the words were chopped into pieces.
"You're pathetic," Dante said, his lip curling. "Trying to hurt your sister? After everything your family does for you?"
"Does for me?" A wet, jagged laugh tore from my throat. "They use me for spare parts, Dante. And you... you're just blind."
The muscle in his jaw ticked.
"Get out of the water," he ordered.
I tried. I slipped against the slick tiles.
He didn't offer a hand. He didn't move. He simply watched me struggle like a drowning insect in a glass jar.
It took everything I had to drag my body over the limestone rim of the fountain. I collapsed onto the pavement, dripping wet, shivering violently.
My parents came running out, a phalanx of bodyguards flanking them.
"My baby!" My mother shrieked, rushing past me to get to Isabella.
My father stopped in front of me. He saw the blood blooming on my hospital gown. But more importantly, he saw the defiance I refused to extinguish.
He stepped into my space and slapped me.
It landed with significantly more force than the strike in his office.
My head snapped back. The metallic tang of copper filled my mouth.
"You ungrateful bitch," he roared, his face purple with rage. "Attacking your sister? In public?"
"She pushed me," I whispered through split lips.
"Liar!" Isabella screamed from the safety of Dante’s arms.
"Enough," Dante said.
The word was quiet, but it cut through the noise like a blade. He stepped forward. He was the Don here. His word was law.
"She needs to be taught a lesson," Dante said, his eyes devoid of humanity. "She needs to cool off."
My father nodded, understanding the code immediately. "The cooler?"
The cooler.
The hospital morgue. The overflow storage. It was kept at a permanent, preserving thirty-five degrees.
"No," I whispered, panic finally piercing through the shock. "Please. I'm bleeding."
"You should have thought of that before you touched her," Dante said.
He signaled the guards with a sharp jerk of his chin.
Two massive men hoisted me up by my arms.
Agony shot through my broken shoulder, blinding and white-hot. I screamed.
Dante didn't flinch. He turned his back to me, focusing entirely on wiping a stray tear from Isabella's cheek.
They dragged me through the labyrinth of basement corridors.
The air grew heavier, colder.
They hauled open a heavy steel door. The chemical stench of formaldehyde slammed into me.
Rows of body bags lay still on metal racks, waiting.
"Enjoy the quiet," the guard sneered, and shoved me inside.
The door slammed shut with a final, resounding boom.
Darkness.
Absolute, freezing darkness.
I slid down the wall, curling into a tight ball to preserve whatever heat I had left.
My wet clothes clung to my skin like sheets of ice.
My stitches were definitely open. I could feel the warm, steady trickle of blood mapping a path down my side.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
In the dark, my mind drifted back to the safe house.
I remembered Dante lying on a cot, his eyes bandaged, vulnerable.
I remembered the way he shivered from the fever.
*“I’m cold, Seven,”* he had whispered, his voice rough with pain.
I had climbed into the narrow cot with him. I had held him, pressing my body against his, whispering stories to keep him anchored to reality.
*“You’re warm,”* he had murmured into my hair. *“You’re the only warm thing in this world.”*
I laughed in the pitch black of the morgue.
A tear froze on my cheek.
You were wrong, Dante.
I'm not warm anymore.
I'm finally just as cold as you.
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7.7
My fiancé always told me he loved me. But not long after our engagement, I woke up suffocating in the dark.
He was pressing a pillow over my face, his eyes cold and dead, while my half-sister stood by watching with fake pity.
They had orchestrated everything just to steal my trust fund.
It all started with a massive hotel scandal. They had drugged me, thrown a cheap escort into my bed, and brought a mob of paparazzi to ruin my reputation.
When my fiancé broke through the crowd, playing the heartbroken victim, he knelt down with a massive diamond ring.
"I know things have been hard, but I love you. If you come home with me, I will forgive all of this."
In my past life, I cried tears of gratitude and let him slide that ring onto my finger.
That ring sealed my death warrant. I lost my company, my dignity, and eventually, my life.
Until my lungs burned and my heart stopped, I didn't understand.
How could the people I trusted most plot my murder so ruthlessly?
Why did they have to tear my entire life apart?
Opening my eyes again, I was back on the morning of the hotel scandal, exactly one year ago.
But the man lying bare-backed in my bed wasn't a random escort.
It was Johnathan Chase, my family's biggest corporate rival and the most ruthless predator on Wall Street.
Listening to the paparazzi pounding on the door, I smiled coldly.
9.1
Julian Laurent was known as the most notorious playboy in Rivermont, changing girlfriends as often as he changed his clothes and treating marriage like a joke.
Clara Sterling, on the other hand, had always been the most quiet and obedient daughter of the Sterling family. Raised as the heir since childhood, she had been flawless in every word and every gesture.
A family-arranged marriage forced these two complete opposites into the same life.
On their wedding night, Julian openly made out with a young model at a nightclub.
For the first time, Clara cast aside her propriety, slapping him and demanding a divorce on the spot.
But before the next day was over, their families had forced them to remarry.
This time, Julian managed to stay faithful for a month before he cheated again.
Clara filed for divorce once more, cutting ties with him completely.
However, that very same day, it was revealed that Clara was not the real daughter of the Sterling family, and she was thrown out.
At her lowest point, Julian found her and solemnly promised to protect her from then on.
They remarried again, and from that day forward, the scandals surrounding Julian ceased.
Everyone said Clara was lucky. Even her best friend insisted that Julian had truly settled down, and Clara believed it.
Until she saw him in a hospital corridor, holding her best friend's hand, his voice strained with deep emotion, "I never liked her. You're the one I've always loved!"
It turned out all of his tenderness had been a lie.
This time, she walked away and never looked back.
And the man who had once treated her as disposable only realized after she was gone that he had long since drowned in her quiet love, unable to escape.
8.6
Lilac Stone once wanted nothing more than being unnoticed. But everything changed the moment she met Adrian Cole, the new lecturer.
He's distant and completely off-limits. She's quiet, guarded, and unprepared for the way he sees right through her.
What begins as harmless conversations after class quickly turns into something far more dangerous-something neither of them can stop no matter how hard they try.
But then they're living in a world where rules are meant to be followed, and their connection is one line they were never supposed to cross.
Whispers turn to accusations. Secrets are exposed. Their futures are at risk.
They are merely two opposites-a lecturer and a student, a male and a female-but they are bound to destroy each other as long as they are huddled in one space at the same time.
What then can they choose: forfeit their futures and embrace their happiness, or let the latter slip while keeping their careers intact?
7.7
Rory stood on the witness stand, forced by her father into an impossible choice: secure her dying mother's medical funding, or save her innocent boyfriend.
She looked Corbin right in his trusting eyes and lied to the court, testifying that he was the one driving the car during the fatal hit-and-run, sending him to a maximum-security prison for ten years.
The betrayal destroyed him. Corbin's father died of a heart attack upon hearing the guilty verdict. Six years later, Corbin returned as a ruthless billionaire and systematically blacklisted Rory from every job in the city. He cornered her into singing at his private club, humiliating her by forcing her to drink scotch—knowing she was severely allergic—and making her throw away his promise ring just to earn a stack of cash.
"Remember this moment. This is only the beginning."
She endured his cruel revenge because she was hiding a desperate secret: she was raising his five-year-old daughter, Willa. But when Willa's congenital heart defect suddenly worsened, requiring an impossible one-million-dollar surgery, Rory realized Corbin's calculated blockade had left her completely trapped with no way to save their child.
Staring at the sterile hospital walls, the last shred of her guilt burned away, replaced by a cold, hard resolve. He had destroyed her career and backed her into a corner, but he was the only one with the money. Wiping her tears, Rory turned and headed straight for Vance Tower.
9.5
"You shouldn't be here, Fiona," his deep voice rasped against her ear, his hand still pressed against the wall behind her.
"Then tell me to leave," she whispered, her lips trembling inches from his. He didn't move. He didn't breathe. And in that moment, she knew he wanted her just as much as she wanted him.
Fiona Harry has lived her whole life in a golden cage of wealth, reputation, and suffocating rules. University was supposed to be her escape, her first taste of freedom. But nothing could prepare her for the moment she came face-to-face with Professor Jalen Hart, her father's best friend. One reckless night changes everything. A drunken mistake turns into an irresistible obsession, pulling her deeper into Jalen's forbidden world. But secrets don't stay hidden forever. Between Jude, her possessive friend who knows too much, Marian, Jalen's wicked wife, and the dangerous power of desire, Fiona is about to risk not only hers and her family's reputation but her entire future.
And what happens when the truth comes out especially to Marian?
9.0
My father was dying in the ICU, and our family company, the Martin Group, was on the verge of total collapse.
While I was desperately trying to sign the consent form for his life-saving surgery, my fiancé, Eston, sent me a text.
"I told you not to be stubborn. The company is mine by Friday. Beg me, and I might pay for the funeral."
He had been secretly looting my family's assets from the inside, waiting for me to break so he could steal everything. He thought I would crawl back to him in absolute despair, surrendering my father's legacy just to survive. The sheer weight of my helplessness crushed my chest as the heart monitor next to my father's bed let out a frantic, high-pitched scream.
The betrayal tore through me, but the despair quickly hardened into a cold, sharp stone.
Why should I let the man who ruined me dance on my family's grave? Why should I let him walk away with everything while I lost the only family I had left?
I wiped away my tears and blocked his number permanently.
Then, I stepped out into the freezing Manhattan rain and went straight to the top floor of the Maxwell building.
I threw my remaining shares onto the desk of Ellwood Maxwell—the apex predator of Wall Street, and Eston's untouchable, ruthless uncle.
"I want you to marry me," Ellwood said, pushing a marriage contract toward me. "That is the only way your company survives."
I picked up the pen. If Eston wanted to destroy my life, I would become his aunt and make him bow.