His Betrayal Forged My Ruthless Soul
Seven years ago, my fiancé, Don Dante Moretti, sent me to prison to take the fall for my adopted sister, Chiara. He called it a gift-a way to protect me from a worse fate.
Today, he picked me up from prison only to abandon me at my family's estate. His reason? Chiara was having another one of her "episodes."
My parents then informed me I'd be staying in the third-floor storage room, so as not to disturb the fragile girl who stole my life.
They celebrated her "recovery" with a lavish dinner party, while I was treated like a ghost. When I refused to join, my mother hissed that I was ungrateful, and my father called me jealous.
They assumed I couldn't understand their venomous whispers. But prison was my university. I learned Spanish. I understood every word.
It was then I realized I wasn't just a sacrifice; I was disposable. The love I once felt for all of them had turned to ash.
That night, in the dusty storage room, I logged onto an encrypted channel I'd set up years ago. A single message was waiting: "The offer stands. Do you accept?" My hands, scarred and steady, typed back, "I accept."
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Chapter 5
Alessia POV:
"Get on your knees and apologize to your sister right now!" Marco's roar echoed through the lavish Beverly Hills banquet hall, the sheer volume of his voice making the crystal chandelier above us vibrate.
That was Marco Salinas. A dictator in his own home. In this family, I was always the guilty party, the one who had to bend, the one with no bottom line.
Chiara stood a few feet away. Her eyelashes fluttered violently. Her knees suddenly gave out, and she collapsed backward.
It was her favorite survival tactic. Whenever she played the weak victim, I was the one who bled for it.
Dante's body reacted before his brain did. His long arm shot out, his muscles contracting as he caught Chiara by the waist. Seven years of protecting her had turned his responses into pure muscle memory.
Chiara rested her head against Dante's solid chest. She let out a pained gasp, squeezing two pathetic tears from the corners of her eyes.
Isabella let out a shrill scream. She grabbed the hem of her haute couture gown and lunged toward Chiara.
She shoved me out of her way. The force of Isabella's hands hitting my shoulders made my heels stumble against the thick Persian rug. She had never looked at me as a human being. To her, I was just a mobile blood bank.
I steadied myself. I did not lower my head. I did not apologize. Seven years of my people-pleasing persona died right there on that expensive rug. I just stared at the circus in front of me with a cold gaze.
Marco marched up to me. He raised his right hand, the air whistling as his palm swung toward my face.
I raised my arm. My fingers clamped down on his wrist with precise, brutal force. My knuckles turned white.
Marco's eyes widened in shock. He tried to yank his arm back, but his pampered muscles were no match for the strength I had built in secret.
I let out a short, cold laugh. I twisted my grip and shoved his arm away. Marco stumbled backward, his hip crashing into the edge of the dining table.
The surrounding California socialites gasped. The room filled with the buzzing sound of their disdainful whispers.
Dante handed Chiara over to Isabella. His face darkened as he closed the distance between us. His towering frame blocked the light, his mafia aura sucking the oxygen out of the air.
"Stop acting crazy," Dante warned, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "Apologize to your elders right now."
He was so used to controlling everything. He actually thought my rebellion was just a desperate plea for his attention.
I tilted my head up. I met his deep blue eyes, my gaze completely empty of the love that used to live there.
I reached out. My movements were slow, deliberate, and entirely provocative. I grabbed the knot of his silk tie and adjusted it.
Dante froze. His chest stopped moving for a full second. A complicated emotion flickered in his eyes at the sudden intimacy.
I leaned in close to his ear.
"You hold a liar in your arms and treat her like a treasure," I whispered, my voice dropping to a freezing temperature. "You are just a pathetic blind man."
Dante's pupils contracted violently. His breath hitched, and his hand twitched, reaching out to grab my arm.
I sidestepped smoothly, avoiding his touch. I turned my back on him and walked toward the massive carved wooden doors of the hall.
"Sister," Chiara called out weakly from behind me, her voice dripping with fake forgiveness.
I did not stop walking. I did not even grant them a glance over my shoulder.
Two Salinas bodyguards stepped into my path, using their bulk to block the exit.
I opened my clutch. I pulled out a silver switchblade. The metal snapped open with a sharp click, the blade catching the chandelier's light. It was the weapon I carried when I lived in the slums, the weapon I needed again today.
The bodyguards looked at my eyes. They saw the absolute lack of hesitation in my stare. They stepped aside.
I pushed the heavy doors open. The cold Los Angeles night wind rushed into the stifling hall, hitting my face.
Dante stood frozen in the center of the room. I could hear his breathing turn ragged as a sudden panic gripped his throat.
I paused at the threshold. I turned my head slightly, letting the cold wind whip my hair across my face.
"Dante, go to hell with your fools."
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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.
8.2
For three years, nineteen-year-old Ella Campbell rotted in a freezing psychiatric isolation room.
Her billionaire family didn't visit her once, only pulling her out today to force her to publicly apologize to Ashlyn, the perfect sister who had framed her.
At Ashlyn's glamorous engagement gala, Ella was treated worse than a stray dog and forced to watch her childhood sweetheart propose to her sister.
When Ella showed no jealousy, her brother Ivan dragged her onto a dark balcony and nearly choked her to death.
Her mother didn't even check if Ella was breathing, merely ordering a makeup artist to paint thick concealer over the dark purple handprints on Ella's neck so the family's stock price wouldn't drop.
Standing under the blinding stage lights in a shapeless gray dress, facing three hundred mocking Wall Street executives, Ella was supposed to be the broken, obedient psycho the Campbells needed.
"I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused."
She was supposed to end the apology there and bow to her abusers, but Ella didn't shed a single tear.
"My only regret is that I didn't insist on waiting for the police to arrive that night. I deeply regret that I didn't demand a full, legal toxicology report to prove to everyone exactly what happened."
As the ballroom erupted into suspicious whispers and her paralyzed twin brother finally saw the violent bruises hidden beneath her makeup, Ella's counterattack against the Campbell family officially began.
7.6
Jocelyn Yang lived in the grand Turner Mansion, not as a guest, but as a prisoner. Ever since her father's death, the ruthless billionaire Elam Turner forced her to atone for sins her father never committed.
On her nineteenth birthday, a male classmate secretly sent her a diamond necklace. Elam, who had flown back from London overnight, flew into a psychotic, jealous rage at the sight of another man's gift.
He mercilessly crushed the delicate necklace into the marble floor with his custom leather shoe.
"Did you forget what you are?" Elam hissed, dragging her into a pitch-black storage room. "You take gifts from other men behind my back?"
He pinned her to the dusty floorboards and violently assaulted her. The next morning, a wire transfer of $500,000 hit her bank account. He had humiliated her, broken her spirit, and was now casually trying to buy her silence. Later, when a broken bike left her walking miles through a freezing rainstorm, he just shoved scalding tea into her bleeding hands.
"Look at you," he sneered. "You look like a stray dog ruining my floors."
Jocelyn curled up in the cold, her lips bleeding and her heart shattered. She couldn't understand his terrifying obsession. If he hated her so much, why did he refuse to let her go? Why did he look at her with such manic hunger while systematically destroying her life?
Staring at the massive sum of hush money on her phone, a desperate spark of vengeance flared in her chest. Jocelyn wired every single cent back to Elam's account. She picked up her charcoal pencil, vowing to win the upcoming art competition and buy her escape from this monster forever.
7.6
Dumped by her fiancé just days before their wedding, only to watch him marry someone else-what would you do? Cry yourself to sleep, or dress to kill for revenge?
That was Elaina's reality. She's no Cinderella, yet she lost a shoe while recklessly crashing her ex's wedding. Her revenge plan went up in flames, but fate had other ideas, throwing her into the path of Alister-a man who is handsome, charismatic, and dangerous... and ironically, the person closest to her ex-fiancé.
Amidst heartbreak and vendettas, Alister paints her world in new colors, turning Elaina into a modern-day Cinderella. But will this story end in "happily ever after," or is Alister merely leading her into a much more dangerous game?
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."
7.5
I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Ruiz family, but the moment their true heir appeared, I was thrown away like trash.
Not long after being kicked out, my adoptive father and uncle hired a hitman to stage a fatal car crash on Mulholland Drive.
Pinned under an overturned Porsche with a shattered leg, I watched the hitman point a suppressed pistol between my eyes.
"The Ruiz family sends their regards."
Before this, my reputation had already been completely destroyed by a director, a pop idol, and a reality TV star, leaving me blacklisted and universally hated.
My adoptive family didn't just want me ruined; they wanted me permanently silenced to tie up loose ends.
The hitman pulled the trigger, and the original Alicia died in despair, tasting only rain and blood.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand.
Why did the family she loved treat her like a disposable object? Why did those three men maliciously frame her and turn the world against her?
Opening my eyes again, the fear was gone, replaced by an ancient, cosmic indifference.
I, the Arbiter, had taken over this deceased vessel.
Moving faster than the human eye, I crushed the hitman's steel gun with my bare hand and turned his soul into dust.
Looking at the memories of those who wronged this girl, I signed a contract for the very reality show they were starring in.
Since I borrowed this body, taking out the trash is a required courtesy.