His Uncle, My Sweetest Revenge
My fiancé, Freddie, signed the papers to have me committed to a mental asylum. He told everyone my "episodes" were becoming a liability to his family's pristine reputation.
The truth was, he and his mistress, Jessie, wanted me out of the way. They painted me as a hysterical, unstable psycho so their affair could continue without a single complication.
I spent my last days in a chemical haze, trapped and forgotten. My final memory wasn't of love or compassion, but of orderlies forcing my head under the stagnant, drugged water of an asylum bathtub. Freddie just watched, his face cold and indifferent as I drowned.
He stole my life, my sanity, and my future. He got away with murder while playing the part of the devoted, heartbroken fiancé to a world that believed his every lie.
Until I opened my eyes again.
The blinding Hampton sun stabbed my retinas, and the smell of chlorine filled my lungs. I wasn't in the asylum. I was back at the Madden family's annual summer party, three years before my death.
Across the pool, I saw Freddie laughing with Jessie. They thought they had won.
They had no idea I was back from the dead to burn their entire world to the ground.
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Chapter 5
The crystal chandelier cast a cold, brilliant light over the long dining table in the Madden family's Manhattan townhouse.
Joanna sat perfectly straight near the center of the table. The heavy, antique emerald necklace Eleanor had given her rested against her collarbone. She calmly sliced her filet mignon, completely ignoring the murderous glare Freddie was shooting at her from across the table.
"That's a stunning piece, Joanna," Catherine, Freddie's mother, said loudly, her voice dripping with venom. "I suppose taking a little dip in the pool pays off quite well these days."
Joanna paused. She looked up, offering Catherine a flawless, polite smile. "Grandmother felt it was a fitting heirloom for the future lady of the house. I simply couldn't refuse her generosity."
Catherine's face tightened. She snapped her mouth shut, unable to argue against the matriarch's decision.
Freddie gripped his steak knife so hard his knuckles turned white. His phone had been blowing up all afternoon with declined card notifications, and Jessie's number was completely disconnected. He was a ticking time bomb.
He opened his mouth, ready to explode.
Before he could speak, the massive double doors of the dining room swung open.
A freezing gust of air seemed to follow Carlton Madden into the room. He strode in, wearing a dark, tailored suit that emphasized his massive frame. The low murmur of conversation around the table died instantly. Everyone put down their silverware. The sheer authority radiating from him demanded absolute submission.
Carlton walked to the empty chair at the head of the table, right next to Eleanor. Before sitting, his gray-blue eyes swept over the room.
His gaze stopped on Joanna for a fraction of a second.
Joanna stared down at her plate, but her stomach dropped. The invisible weight of his stare felt like a physical touch, making the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
"Carlton," Eleanor said, breaking the silence. "How is the Silicon Valley acquisition proceeding?"
Carlton sat down. He didn't reach for his napkin. He looked directly at Freddie.
"It's delayed," Carlton said. His voice was flat, devoid of any emotion, but it echoed through the silent room like a death sentence.
Eleanor frowned deeply. "Delayed? Why?"
"Because the group's stock dropped three percent in the last forty-eight hours," Carlton replied. He gestured to his assistant, Leo, who stepped out from the shadows and began placing thick financial reports in front of every board member at the table.
Carlton leaned back in his chair. "Wall Street does not like instability. And unfortunately, one of our heirs decided to turn a Hampton pool party into a tabloid spectacle, and then used company PR resources to try and hide his mistress."
Freddie shot up from his chair. His face was purple with rage. "That's a lie! The media blew it out of proportion! And she pushed her!" He pointed a shaking finger at Joanna.
Carlton's eyes darkened. He didn't raise his voice, but the lethal warning in his tone made Freddie's knees buckle.
"If you cannot control your zipper, or your fiancée," Carlton said slowly, "you have absolutely no business managing the Hudson Project."
The dining room went dead silent. The Hudson Project was Freddie's only real source of power in the company.
Freddie looked desperately at Eleanor. "Grandma, you can't let him do this. I've worked on Hudson for two years!"
Eleanor looked down at the financial losses printed on the report. Her face turned to stone. "Carlton is right. You are a liability right now. You are suspended from the Hudson Project indefinitely. A management team will take over your duties."
Freddie collapsed back into his chair, looking like he had been physically struck. He had lost his money, his mistress, and now his power.
Joanna's heart soared with vicious satisfaction. But she knew her role.
She immediately stood up and walked around the table. she placed a gentle, comforting hand on Freddie's shoulder.
"Freddie, it's okay," Joanna said, her voice loud enough for the entire room to hear. "It's just temporary. I know you'll prove yourself to the board."
Freddie jerked away from her touch like she had burned him. "Get your hands off me!" he snarled, his eyes wild with hatred. "You did this!"
Joanna stumbled backward, letting out a soft gasp. She brought a hand to her chest, her eyes widening in perfect, wounded shock.
"Freddie!" Eleanor slammed her hand on the table. "Control yourself! Go to your room immediately!"
Humiliated and broken, Freddie kicked his chair back. It crashed to the floor. He stormed out of the dining room, slamming the doors behind him.
Joanna stood frozen, pressing a napkin to the corner of her eye as if wiping away a tear.
But as she lowered her head, she shifted her gaze toward the head of the table.
Carlton had picked up his wine glass. He was taking a slow sip of red wine, his eyes locked directly onto hers. Beneath the cold, ruthless exterior, she saw a dark, knowing gleam in his eyes. He was watching her perform, and he was enjoying it.
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7.4
Four years ago, to protect the man I loved from losing his billionaire empire, I drugged his drink, told him I only used him for his money, and vanished.
Now, at a high-society gala, Callum Wyatt is back. He isn't just a CEO anymore; he's a ruthless predator, and the second his eyes lock onto me, I know I am his prey.
When my wealthy half-sister publicly humiliated me, calling me the cheap bastard child of a homewrecker, Callum stepped out of the shadows. He nearly snapped her wrist in half and declared to New York's elite that anyone who touched me would be dismantled.
In the back of his Maybach, he pinned my arms above my head, his eyes burning with psychotic obsession.
"If you run again, Aubrey, I will burn your entire world to the ground just to keep you."
My heart bled. I had spent four grueling years tearing myself apart to keep him out of my messy, blood-soaked revenge against the family that watched my mother die.
But his terrifying protection only made my biological father's family target me harder, using their massive capital to buy out my movie set and crush my acting career.
They thought I would cower.
But as I walked onto the soundstage, facing the heiress trying to steal my role, I took off my sunglasses. I wasn't running anymore; it was time to make them pay.
9.1
Leo Vance builds things that last. Bridges. Buildings. A quiet, unspoken life with the woman he loves. What he has never been able to build is the courage to name what they are.
On the morning of his wedding to botanical illustrator Elara Ashford, Leo stands in a chapel in a suit he cannot bring himself to fully button, and realizes something that stops him cold - he has already been married to her. Not in any courtroom or ceremony, but in every moment that actually counted. The night she held his hand at his mother's funeral and said nothing, because nothing was the right thing to say. The years they ate ramen so he could chase a dream she believed in before he did. The night she stood in the doorway during their worst fight and looked him in the eye and refused to let him run.
He has said I do a thousand times in a thousand unspoken ways.
So why does saying it out loud feel like the beginning of the end?
What Leo doesn't know is that Elara has been sitting with her own impossible question for three weeks - ever since she found a note in his jacket pocket that made her wonder whether the man she is about to marry proposed because he chose her, or because someone told him he was about to lose her.
What neither of them knows is that the woman he was secretly engaged to four years ago just walked into the venue. His best man is in love with his bride. His estranged father is standing outside in a rented suit, unable to go in. And the wedding videographer has been filming everything - with two cameras.
By the time the officiant asks who gives this woman, nothing about this wedding will have gone according to the blueprint.
But then again, the most important things Leo has ever built never did.
Every Vow But One is a lux serialized romance about the terrifying distance between loving someone completely and choosing them on purpose and what it can cost when you finally close the gap.
7.4
Clara Davis was trained to seduce, deceive, and destroy.
Her mission is simple: infiltrate billionaire Jeffery Rothwell's life, gain his trust, and help seize his empire in exchange for the freedom she has always craved.
But the deeper she slips into his dangerous world, the more the lines between mission and desire begin to blur. Falling for him was never part of the plan and neither was discovering that the man she was sent to manipulate may not be the real Jeffery at all.
Now trapped in a deadly web of obsession, power, and hidden identities. Clara is caught between the organization that owns her, the monster who remade her, and a love that has turned into vengeance. Clara must survive a man who sees everything, controls everything, and may be far more dangerous than the organization that created her.
Because in this game of seduction and revenge, love might be the deadliest trap of all.
7.5
Raven Noir, stolen and sold at birth, a lethal assassin scarred by a decade-old rape, infiltrates billionaire Damien Blackwood's elite nightclub empire as stripper, her cover to get close enough to torture and kill the man who unknowingly fathered her daughter. Damien, captivated by her icy control and commanding presence, pulls her deeper with lucrative nights and charged intimacy. But when he encounters her identical twin, the buried memories flood back. Mistaking the twin for his victim, guilt drives him to propose marriage. Devastated, Raven faces an impossible choice: expose the truth, seize her revenge, or let obsession destroy them all in a dark, slow-burn thriller of betrayal and forbidden desire.
8.4
Cyburris Hospital collapsed, and Director Greg sacrificed his pregnant wife, Ronda, to save his idolized love. Her right hand was crushed, she lost their baby, and he dragged her name through the mud, forcing her to leave with nothing.
With an injured hand and a stillborn child, Ronda fled the country overnight. Three years later, she returned as an international authority on neural regeneration, ready to seek revenge with both hands-one to slap faces, the other to perform surgery.
Her academic revelations exposed scandals, data breaches shook the foundations, the idolized love's reputation crumbled, and the scoundrel was left paralyzed-a complete crash and burn, all in one go.
In the end, she radiated with brilliance at a grand wedding with her ultimate partner, while her ex passed away in solitude in a hospital room.
8.8
Fyre
Everything I did was for love. Every drop of blood I shed was for him, but when it came to him, he turned his back on me. For what? Because I am doomed, the world's end. It wasn't that he never loved me; it was the fear that one day I'd become much more powerful and destroy everything he had built. My heart bleeds, and the only way I will ever get back at him for his betrayal is by seeking revenge.
Ronan
I've spent my life in the shadows since she died, since the life I loved was ripped from me and left only grief behind. I watched from the sidelines as my family crumbled, pretending I was safe from it when I knew I was not. I thought I had accepted silence until she came-not from my past, not from any recorded memory, but fully, dangerously alive, and entirely... unpredictable. Her power terrifies me. Her fire challenges me. She is someone I should stay away from, but somehow, against every rule I've lived by, she makes the grief in my chest feel... human again. I should stop her. No, hold her. Fear her. I should let nothing slip past my control. But every glance, every unguarded moment, reminds me that surviving her is no longer the same as staying in the shadows. But she is closed off... something I indirectly had a hand in.
Alistair
I should've been brave like my brother and fought for the woman who made me feel whole again. I should've fought the whole world for her and not been against her, but I failed. Now I want her back, but she is somewhere, protecting herself from me, from everything; it is all my fault. I should never have chosen duty over love.
BOOK 1 of The Shadowborne Series