My Son's Death, His Cruel Betrayal
For seven years, I gave up my life as a genius engineer to be the perfect wife for my husband, Jonathan, a U.S. Senator. But when our five-year-old son drowned, he didn't comfort me. He comforted his adopted sister, Hailey, and blamed me for our son's death.
At the wake, he stood by as his family beat me, calling me a murderer. He watched them shove my head into a freezing pond, forcing me to feel the same terror our son felt in his last moments.
His protection was always for Hailey, never for me.
Then I learned the horrifying truth. Jonathan was there when our son fell in the water. He saw him struggling, but he chose to comfort a panicking Hailey first.
He let our son die.
So I filed for divorce in secret and vanished into a classified research project. But when he tracked me down, begging for a second chance in front of his new colleagues, I played a recording for everyone to hear. It was Hailey's voice, gleefully admitting that Jonathan had chosen her over his own dying child.
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Chapter 4
Krystal POV:
The words hung in the air, thick and foul. He accused me of killing our son. Again. Just like his mother, just like his relatives. The pain in my elbow screamed, but my heart remained utterly silent.
"Maybe," I murmured, my voice raspy from the fall. I didn't care to argue. I didn't care to defend myself. It was too late for all that. "Maybe you just needed someone to blame."
He stared at me, his grip tightening on my gown. "You think this is a joke?"
"No," I answered, my voice still flat. "I think you' re in pain, and you need a target. If that target is me, then so be it. Do what you have to do."
I knew this dance. I' d danced it countless times before. Hailey would do something, make a mistake, or simply find a way to manipulate Jonathan. And when the consequences came, or when he needed to deflect, I was always the convenient scapegoat. He wouldn't truly believe I' d poison someone. He just needed to lash out. He needed a villain. And I was always ready to play the part. He was never truly blind to Hailey' s manipulations; he just needed a cover, someone to absorb the fallout.
The casual way I accepted his accusation seemed to choke him. He let go of my gown, pushing me back until I hit the wall. Hard.
"Why are you like this, Krystal?" he demanded, his voice dropping, tinged with a raw, desperate confusion. "Why do you hate me so much? I'm not your enemy."
I closed my eyes. "I have nothing to say, Jonathan."
My silence was a wall between us. A thick, impenetrable wall I had built brick by brick. His heart, I could almost feel it, began to tremble. He was losing control. He was losing me. And that scared him.
"We need to be together, Krystal," he pleaded, his voice cracking. "For Leo. We should keep vigil for him tonight. Together. Like a family."
My body stiffened, but my eyes remained closed. His words were a cruel mockery.
"Senator," a voice called from the door, tentative. "Ms. Young is asking for you. She's had a rough night."
He let out a low growl, a flicker of his old self. "Tell her I'll be there in a moment!" he snapped. Then he turned to me, his voice softening again, though it felt like a theatrical performance. "I'll be back tomorrow, Krystal. We'll go home. Together."
He left. I stayed awake all night, the image of Leo's innocent face, so full of life, flashing behind my eyelids. The sheer agony he must have felt, alone in the cold water. My heart felt torn to shreds, a gaping wound that would never heal. His little hands, reaching, gasping. My beautiful boy.
The next morning, Jonathan was there, waiting for me. He walked me out of the hospital, his hand on my back, a picture of a devoted husband. We drove home in silence, the air heavy with unspoken grief and the chilling certainty of my impending escape.
Our house, once filled with Leo's laughter, was now a mausoleum. The scent of lilies and sorrow hung heavy in the air. The living room had been transformed into a somber wake. Leo' s tiny coffin, draped in white, sat at the front.
I walked stiffly, my injured arm aching, my heart numb. As I approached the coffin, a figure lunged at me. Jonathan's mother. Her eyes were wild, her face contorted with rage.
"You murderer!" she screamed, her hand striking my face, then my chest. "You killed my grandson! You killed Leo!"
My head snapped back from the impact of her blow. The accusation hit me harder than the physical pain. It wasn't just her anger. It was… a familiar accusation. Too familiar.
I looked at Jonathan, who stood a few feet away. His eyes shifted, avoiding mine. A cold understanding settled over me. This wasn't just his mother's grief; this was his narrative. He had told them. He wanted me to be the scapegoat.
"Get out!" she shrieked, her voice raspy. "Get out of my son's house! You don't deserve to mourn him!"
Then, a wave of other relatives, fueled by their own grief and her venom, surged forward. Hands clawed at me, pushing, hitting. Words like "monster," "evil," "unfit mother" rained down.
I stumbled backwards, falling to my knees. A cousin, a woman who used to hug me tight, now spat on me. Another, a man who once helped me fix a leaky faucet, raised a heavy wooden stick, bringing it down on my shoulder.
"She doesn't deserve to be here!" someone yelled. "Get her out! She's cursed!"
They dragged me, bruised and bleeding, out of the house. Out of Leo's wake. They threw me onto the cold, damp lawn, slamming the door shut behind me. I lay there, abandoned, alone, deprived of even the right to say goodbye to my own son.
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8.5
"You don't get to hurt me and then make me responsible for how guilty you feel about it."
"Friends don't stand next to you, learn everything about you, and then use it to get close to the one person they know matters."
Aria thought she knew two things for certain: she was going to graduate with her best friend, Iris, by her side, and she was in love with her boyfriend, Liam.
One kiss changed everything. But as the secrets of their "before" come to light, Aria realizes the betrayal didn't start at a party or in a moment of weakness. It started weeks ago, in the conversations she wasn't part of and the moments she wasn't invited to.
Now, Aria has to decide if she can find herself again in the wreckage of the people she trusted most-or if some bridges are meant to be burned
8.4
"You don't belong in my world," he growled, his hand tightening around my waist.
"Then why do you keep pulling me deeper into it?" I whispered.
Ten years ago, I lost everything, my parents, my innocence, my trust in fate.
I only remember his shaking hands... and the birthmark on his arm.
Now, the most feared man in the city wants me.
A billionaire who commands blood and silence.
A mafia king who kneels only in the dark, only for me.
But what happens when I discover that the man I love...
...is the same man who destroyed my life?
8.4
My love. My ruin.
Ashton Hampton saved me from my mother's scandal. I gave him my whole heart.
Then he told me he was marrying another woman for business. My role? His hidden mistress.
At our engagement party, his new fiancée accused me of ruining her brooch. Ashton didn't question it. He demanded I apologize.
The crowd attacked. He watched.
I climbed onto a helicopter and disappeared.
Eighteen years later, I saw him on a park bench—broken, hollow, begging for one more word.
I gave him two: “No comment.”
7.4
Standing on the edge of a limestone quarry in the pouring rain, I thought we were just having another family argument.
Then my mother, Ardell, screamed that I’d let the life insurance lapse, and my brother, Hakeem, stepped out of the shadows with a cold, calculating look in his eyes.
I told them I knew the truth—that Hakeem had cut the brake lines on my father’s car—but they didn't flinch. Instead, Hakeem shoved me hard, sending me tumbling into the abyss.
I hit a jagged ledge thirty feet down, the sound of my spine snapping like a dry branch echoing through the rain. As I lay paralyzed and broken, my mother watched from above, asking if I was dead yet, before Hakeem whistled for the starving wild dogs that lived in the quarry floor.
"Nature will clean up the mess,"
Hakeem said, walking away while the first set of teeth sank into my throat.
The agony was a tidal wave, but the rage was hotter, a nuclear hatred for the family that stole my future and the daughter I’d never see grow up. I died in that dirt, consumed by fire and teeth, wondering how a mother could choose a car payment over her own child's life.
But then, I gasped for air, sitting bolt upright in my old trailer bedroom. I looked at the calendar: May 12, 2014.
I was seventeen again, but I wasn't the same girl. Inside this malnourished body was the mind of a world-class trauma surgeon and the elite hacker known as 'Phantom.'
This time, I wasn't going to the quarry; I was going for their throats.
8.2
April Scott only wanted to help her family until she crossed paths with Dr. Adrian Smith, the ruthless billionaire and her childhood crush, who is aware of her dark past and turns her life upside down in twenty-four hours. Her sister is hospitalized, her home is suddenly sold. April becomes the target of a deadly plot she doesn't understand.
Every time she tries to escape, Adrian is there... saving her, controlling her, or destroying her, she can't tell which. She could only sense he wanted something from her and she also finds herself drawn to him. But when a confrontation ends with Adrian presumed dead, April becomes a fugitive overnight. And the only person willing to protect her is a stranger with secrets of his own.
8.4
She was the daughter they lost. Now she's the daughter they're willing to sell.
Emma spent eighteen years as a forgotten girl in a forgotten village, until the day her wealthy biological family came to claim her. But her homecoming is no fairytale. Her place has already been taken by Fiona, the perfect adopted sister who sees Emma as nothing but a threat. And her parents? They didn't bring her back out of love. They brought her back to sign a contract.
Alex Hawthorne is the billionaire heir to the most powerful empire in the city, a genius reduced to a wheelchair after a mysterious accident. The world sees him as broken. His family sees him as a bargaining chip. When the Hawthornes demand a bride from the Williams family, Emma is offered up as the sacrifice.
The contract is simple: one year of marriage, and she walks away with enough money to disappear forever.
But no one knows who they're really dealing with.
They see a quiet country girl who doesn't belong. They don't know she's the secret protégé of a world-famous jewelry designer. They don't know she's the anonymous street racer who conquered every mountain road before she ever saw a city street. They don't know she entered an elite academy with the lowest score and rose to the top in a single semester because Emma never forgets anything.
And Alex? He knows none of this.
To him, she's just the contract bride. The quiet stand-in who agreed to a business transaction. He makes her a deal: play the part, and he'll sign the divorce papers when the year is up.
Until their wedding night, when he leans close with a teasing smirk and says, "If you want to give me a child in ten months, you will have to be on top."
She looks him straight in the eye, her lips curving into the faintest smile.
"Fine. But keep still, or I might accidentally tell everyone your legs work just fine."
He says nothing.
Three months later, the billionaire who once pitied his quiet bride cannot go a single day without her. Because every time he thinks he has figured her out, she surprises him all over again.
But in a world of gilded cages and hidden daggers, their marriage is built on a contract and the biggest clause hasn't been revealed yet.
He thinks he bought a pawn.
She's about to show him she's the queen.
And when the contract ends, one of them will break.