He Chose Her Over Our Dead Child
Deidre went to the clinic and learned she was finally pregnant, but her failing heart meant carrying the baby would kill her.
Before she could process the grief, she received an anonymous photo of her husband, Danial, tenderly escorting a heavily pregnant woman into a VIP hospital.
The woman was his cousin, Daria.
Following them, Deidre overheard Danial call her a "sterile decoration," promising to get rid of her while securing a Cayman trust fund for his illegitimate child.
The nightmare only worsened when Daria gloatingly confessed to a horrifying truth.
Daria had stolen the credit for saving Danial in a fire—a heroic act that had actually destroyed Deidre's heart.
Even more sickening, Daria had bribed a doctor two years ago to fake Deidre's ectopic pregnancy, tricking Danial into authorizing the surgery that murdered their perfectly healthy baby daughter.
When a grief-stricken Deidre attacked the murderer, Danial furiously shoved his wife to the ground.
Ignoring her heart spasms and gasps for air, he threw her out into a freezing New York blizzard to die.
Lying in the snow, Deidre's love turned to pure ash as she realized she had sacrificed her body and her child for a blind monster.
But she didn't die that night.
Rescued by Danial's biggest Wall Street rival, Deidre marched into her husband's office the next morning alongside New York's most ruthless divorce lawyer.
"Sign it, or I'll freeze your offshore trust and burn your empire to the ground."
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Chapter 4
The next morning, the city was blanketed in white. Deidre forced herself out of bed. Her body ached, her chest was tight, but she had to do this. She dressed in a heavy black cashmere sweater and dark trousers, covering every inch of her pale skin.
She took a cab to Central Park, walking into a Michelin-starred restaurant that overlooked the frozen lake. She had a reservation for one. She needed a quiet place to mourn.
She was led to a secluded booth behind a wooden screen. She had barely sat down when a familiar laugh cut through the quiet elegance of the room.
Deidre's blood ran cold. She turned her head, peering through the slats of the screen.
Danial was sitting at a prime window table. Sunlight streamed in, catching the gold in his hair. Across from him sat Daria, looking radiant in a fitted red dress that accentuated her pregnancy. Danial was cutting a steak on his plate. He carefully speared a perfect, medium-rare piece and transferred it to Daria's dish.
Deidre's grip on her water glass tightened. The glass was thick, but she squeezed it as if she could shatter it with her bare hands. The offshore account crisis. A lie. He was wining and dining his mistress.
Daria looked up. Her gaze drifted lazily across the room and landed right on the crack in the screen. She locked eyes with Deidre. A slow, malicious smile spread across her face.
"This steak is too rare," Daria complained loudly, pushing her plate away. "It's practically bleeding. I can't eat this."
Danial immediately signaled the manager. His voice was cold and authoritative. "Take this back. Tell the chef if he can't follow a simple instruction, I'll buy this restaurant and fire him myself."
Deidre watched her husband bully the staff just to please another woman. A dull, aching throb started in her chest. She couldn't sit here and watch this grotesque display. She threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table and stood up to leave.
As she walked past their table, keeping her eyes straight ahead, a foot shot out from under the tablecloth.
Deidre tripped. She stumbled forward, her arms pinwheeling. She caught herself on the back of a chair, her ankle twisting painfully in her high heel. She gasped, steadying herself.
Danial turned his head. His eyes widened when he saw her. The surprise was quickly replaced by a flash of guilt, which morphed instantly into defensive anger. He stood up.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, his voice low and harsh. "Are you following me? Making a scene?"
Deidre straightened up, ignoring the pain in her ankle. She looked at him, her face a mask of ice. "What day is it today, Danial?"
Danial frowned, clearly thrown off by the question. He searched her face, his brain working overtime. "What are you talking about?"
Daria sniffled, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. "I just wanted a nice lunch. I didn't know I was doing something wrong. I'm sorry, Deidre."
Danial's protective instincts flared. He glared at Deidre. "Stop it. You're embarrassing yourself. If you're here to throw a tantrum, do it somewhere else."
Deidre took a deep breath. The air felt like glass in her lungs. She stared at her husband, the father of her dead child, and spoke with a clarity that cut through the noise of the restaurant.
"It's Lily's anniversary," Deidre said. "Today is the day our daughter died."
Danial froze. The color drained from his face. The anger vanished, replaced by a sudden, sickening paleness. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Before he could speak, Daria let out a sharp cry. She doubled over, clutching her stomach. "Danial! The baby! It hurts!"
Danial's guilt evaporated in an instant. He spun around, gathering Daria into his arms. "What's wrong? Should I call an ambulance? Daria, talk to me!"
Deidre watched him. She watched him hold the woman who had stolen her life, comforting her over a fake pain while the memory of their real daughter hung in the air like a ghost. He didn't look back. He didn't apologize. He just held Daria tighter.
Deidre turned and walked out of the restaurant. She didn't feel the cold. She didn't feel the snow. She just felt empty.
By the afternoon, she was driving north. The roads were icy, but her hands were steady on the wheel. She pulled into a private cemetery in Westchester. The snow was falling heavily now, covering the gravestones in a thick white blanket.
She walked up the hill, her boots crunching in the snow. She stopped in front of a small, white marble headstone.
Lily Ortega
Deidre sank to her knees in the snow. The cold seeped through her trousers, biting into her skin. She reached out with bare, frozen fingers and brushed the snow off the engraved letters.
She placed a bouquet of white roses on the grave. The tears she had been holding back all day finally broke free. They fell hot and fast, hitting the snow and melting small, deep holes in the white powder.
"I'm pregnant, Lily," Deidre whispered, her voice hoarse. "You're going to have a brother or sister. But Mommy is sick. Mommy's heart is broken, and the doctors say I might not survive."
She pressed her forehead against the cold stone. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you, and I'm so sorry I couldn't protect this one."
The wind howled around her, a mournful sound that echoed her grief. She pulled out her phone. The screen was blank. No missed calls. No texts. Danial hadn't reached out. He had forgotten Lily, and he had forgotten her.
The temperature was dropping rapidly. The cold was no longer just uncomfortable; it was seeping into her bones, slowing her heartbeat. A sharp, stabbing pain lanced through her chest. She gasped, her hand flying to her heart.
It wasn't just grief. It was her heart. The muscle was spasming, struggling against the cold and the stress. Her vision blurred. The edges of the world went dark.
"Danial..." she breathed, a final, instinctive cry for the man who wasn't there.
Her body gave out. She slumped forward, her cheek pressing against the icy marble of the headstone. The snow continued to fall, covering her black sweater, hiding her from the world, as the darkness swallowed her whole.
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7.1
The last thing I remembered was the blinding flash of my starship crashing. But instead of a rescue crew, I woke up tied to a wooden post, surrounded by hostile beastmen.
My universal translator kicked in just in time to hear their priestess, Chelsea, declare that I was a cursed demon who ruined their hunt. To save the clan from winter starvation, I was to be burned alive.
The flames were already blistering my legs, and jagged stones hurled by the crowd gashed my forehead. I barely negotiated a three-day reprieve to find them food, venturing into the deadly primeval forest.
I found a massive supply of wild potatoes and even gained the protection of Bronson, a terrifyingly powerful saber-toothed tiger beastman.
But Chelsea wouldn't stop.
She labeled my food as poisonous, tried to sentence me to starve in a penitent's cave, and when my agricultural knowledge proved her wrong, she invoked an ancient law. She incited the tribe's savage warriors to fight over me, turning me into breeding property.
I was a scientist offering them endless food, yet their primitive ignorance and one woman's vicious jealousy kept pushing me toward a brutal end. I was terrified, completely powerless against their monstrous physical strength.
As five ruthless challengers drew their bone axes to claim me, I begged Bronson to leave me and run.
Instead, he pulled me against his scarred chest and kissed me fiercely in front of the entire clan.
"She is my mate," he roared, unleashing a soul-crushing aura. "Anyone who wants her, come at me together."
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
9.1
Amélie Rousseau grows up believing that honesty, hard work, and faith will save her from poverty.
Paris proves her wrong.
Despite her brilliance, every door stays closed-until the day Clara Duval, the woman Amélie once helped, steals her future through lies, favors, and corruption. When Amélie dares to speak up, the system silences her and laughs.
That is when Monsieur Lefèvre offers her a way out.
Under his guidance, Amélie learns the true language of power-deception, loyalty, and sacrifice. One lie leads to another, and soon she rises in the same world that once rejected her.
But Julien Moreau, the man who loves the girl she used to be, watches her change.
At the height of her success, Amélie must choose: destroy Julien to protect her empire, or expose the corruption and lose everything.
Because in Paris, goodness is not free-
and survival always demands a price.
9.7
Giana woke up drugged and burning with fever in a luxurious hotel suite. Standing before her was Cornel Stark, the most ruthless billionaire in New York.
Memories of her past life stabbed into her brain. In that life, her adoptive family and her fiancé Gary had stolen her inheritance and left her to die a brutal, agonizing death.
She also remembered how fighting Cornel only made him more violent. So this time, she didn't scream.
She endured his brutal punishment, escaped the moment he let his guard down, and swallowed a Plan B pill on the freezing streets.
Returning to her adoptive family's mansion, she faced the people who had destroyed her. Her fiancé and her stepsister put on masks of fake concern, secretly mocking her.
Instead of throwing a useless tantrum like before, Giana deliberately threw herself down the steep wooden stairs.
She smashed her head against the marble floor, using her own blood to shatter their plans and win back her mother's trust.
She thought she had finally taken control. She was ready to crush the people who had betrayed her and live for herself.
But she didn't understand why the billionaire she had just escaped was suddenly turning her life upside down.
When she woke up in the hospital, her room wasn't filled with her family's fake tears, but an ocean of blood-red roses.
The heavy door swung open, and Cornel Stark walked in, his gray eyes locking onto her with a dark, predatory hunger.
"Remember this feeling, Giana. Every breath you take belongs to me now."
9.4
I married Alistair Montgomery out of duty, enduring five years of his coldness and his mother stealing my son, hoping my love would eventually warm his heart.
Then, his "dead" first love, Cordelia, returned.
The second he heard her voice on the phone, he ordered me out of his car on a deserted dirt road and left me in the dust to rush to her side.
She faked a suicide attempt and framed me. Alistair didn't even give me a chance to explain.
"If she doesn't survive this, I will destroy you."
He roared those words over the phone, openly declaring he would spend the night guarding her hospital bed.
The very next day, Cordelia's secret son publicly attacked me and my child at the kindergarten gates, pointing at me and screaming that I was a thief who stole his father.
For five years, I swallowed my pride and let his family strip me of my dignity, only to realize I was nothing but a temporary placeholder for a ghost.
He actually thought he could just toss me the empty title of "wife" while giving his heart and his nights to another woman.
I finally woke up from this pathetic joke.
I didn't shed another tear or beg him to look at me.
Instead, I calmly opened my tablet and searched for the most ruthless divorce lawyer in New York.
The war was about to begin.
7.3
I was summoned home from boarding school for a funeral, thinking my family finally wanted me back. I stood in the pouring rain, watching a mahogany casket disappear into the mud, while the silence in my head felt like it was drowning me.
That night, I hid behind a tapestry and listened through a vent to my father’s study. He wasn't talking about grief. He was talking about "tissue compatibility" and "near-perfect matches" with the family lawyer.
They didn't want a daughter; they wanted a donor. My father’s voice was devoid of emotion as he discussed "the harvest." My half-sister was dying, and I was the spare part they had been growing for years. They had even removed the lock from my bedroom door so I could never truly shut them out.
The realization shattered me. I was just a biological backup plan, a life deemed less valuable than the one they preferred. How could a father look at his own child and see nothing but a heart to be cut out and transplanted?
I didn't wait for them to come for me. I stuffed a backpack, flushed my SIM card, and climbed out the window into a thunderstorm. I caught a bus to the middle of nowhere, ending up in a seat next to a massive, predatory man named Hoyt who looked like he’d killed people for less than a seat preference.
He pinned my wrist with a grip like iron and growled, "Who sent you?"
I couldn't speak to defend myself, but as we rolled into a dying town called Blackwood Creek, I knew one thing for certain. I would rather take my chances with a stranger with a gun than stay another night with the family that wanted me dead.