Phoenix Of Ruin: My Second Life Comes With A Better Man
Ashley gave Nicolas ten years of love and five years of loyalty as his perfect housewife, only to be repaid with betrayal, humiliation, and death at the hands of him and his mistress.
After being reborn, she vowed to make them pay.
She tore apart the mistress, kicked her useless husband aside, and returned as the heiress of a top-tier family.
Surrounded by billions, luxury, and a parade of elite bachelors, Ashley became the woman everyone wanted-including a cold, powerful tycoon.
When Nicolas came begging for forgiveness, she smiled coldly. "Fuck off! My man is worth a hundred of you."
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Chapter 1
"Nicolas Reed," the kidnapper called out with a cruel smile. "This is the last choice you'll have to make between them. Your wife, or the woman you still can't forget. Only one leaves here breathing. Which one will it be?"
At the crumbling dock by the sea, Nicolas Reed's face turned grim beneath the kidnapper's cold ultimatum.
Caroline Wheeler stood in her white dress, delicate and trembling, every inch the picture of helpless sorrow.
Tears streamed down her face as she choked out, "Nicolas, don't think about me. Save Ashley. She's your wife. Knowing you're happy is enough for me. I could die right now and feel at peace."
Across from her, Ashley Dunn was a far crueler sight—her body streaked with blood, her breathing weak, her mind fading after days of relentless torture.
Ever since she and Caroline had been kidnapped together, Nicolas was forced to choose one to suffer each day.
Three days ago, to protect Caroline, he had chosen Ashley—and watched the kidnappers tear out her fingernails one by one.
Two days ago, again to spare Caroline, he had chosen Ashley—and watched them destroy her face.
The day before, once more to spare Caroline, he had chosen Ashley—and watched them smash her legs.
Summoning every last shred of strength, Ashley forced her head up and looked at the man she had loved for ten long years, still clinging to the desperate hope that he might remember the five years they had shared as husband and wife.
Nicolas did not spare her so much as a glance.
"I'm choosing Caroline," he blurted without hesitation. "Let her go. Right now."
A violent tremor passed through Ashley's cracked lips. Days of torture had shredded her voice until it came out hoarse and broken. "Nicolas... why?"
Nothing about it made sense to her. She was his wife, so why did he look so determined to send her to her death?
At last, Nicolas turned his gaze on her, and all she found there was icy disgust and blatant contempt.
"Why?" he echoed, his voice sharp. "Ashley, because you've always been jealous of Caroline. For two whole years, you kept finding ways to go after her. For all I know, you were the one who arranged this kidnapping. If putting your own life on the line is some kind of twisted game to you, then fine—consider this your payment for everything you owe her."
Frantic, Ashley kept shaking her head, tears blurring her battered face. "I didn't... I really didn't..."
Yet Nicolas refused to listen.
Without another glance at her, he stepped forward, took Caroline the moment her restraints were undone, and gathered her tightly against his chest.
Curled against his chest, Caroline wept in soft, trembling little sobs that made her seem even more delicate and wronged.
Yet the instant Nicolas's gaze shifted away, she tilted her face just enough to catch Ashley's eye and gave her a smug, victorious smile.
With slow, deliberate precision, her lips formed the words, "You lost again."
The meaning struck Ashley like a crushing blow, and in that brutal second, she understood this had been another one of Caroline's carefully staged schemes.
"No..."
A ragged, shattered sound ripped from Ashley's throat as she struggled to tell Nicolas the truth.
In the end, Nicolas spared her one final glance.
Still, there was no trace of mercy in his eyes, only bare disgust and cold-blooded revulsion.
"Didn't you say only one of them was walking out alive?" he remarked aloofly. "I already picked Caroline. As for the other one, do whatever the hell you want with her."
Even as Ashley was hurled into the churning sea, Caroline's shaky voice still drifted faintly from the dock behind her.
"Nicolas, you shouldn't have picked me. Ashley's your wife, and if she really dies because of this, I'll never be able to live with myself…"
Not once did Nicolas turn around. He simply kept Caroline folded against his chest and murmured soft comforts into her hair.
"She owed you this. Even if she dies, she brought it on herself."
When the freezing seawater swallowed her whole, the hatred in Ashley's heart surged to its absolute limit.
So this was the man she had chosen—the one she had clung to even after severing every tie to her grandfather and her three older brothers. This was the man she had sacrificed her dreams for, the one she had loved with reckless devotion and stood beside for ten long years.
With death closing in around her, a single thought burned through the darkness in her mind. If heaven ever gave her a second life, she would make both of them pay for every damn thing.
...
A furious roar exploded beside her ear like a sudden clap of thunder.
"Ashley! How much longer are you going to lie there and play dead?"
Startled, Ashley's eyes snapped open, and she sucked in frantic, desperate breaths of air.
There was no icy seawater, no crushing terror of drowning—only the familiar trace of cedar cologne filling her chest.
In front of her stood Nicolas, his face stormy with rage, his eyes blazing. "Ashley, I know you've always been jealous of Caroline. Ever since she came back, you've been making her life miserable every chance you got. But I never imagined you'd stoop this low. You actually poisoned her food."
Shock locked Ashley in place.
Poisoned her food?
That scene… Those exact words.
She had gone back two years, back to the day Caroline first set her up by claiming Ashley had poisoned her.
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7.3
I found out my husband of three years had cheated on me and his mistress is the one who told me-because he didn't have the balls to do it himself.
I move out and get a new apartment, a job as a bartender, and try to move on with a broken heart. I wonder where it all went wrong, if I hadn't been enough for him, if I'd been stupid for marrying him in the first place.
I'm at work one night when he walks inside-the most beautiful man I've ever seen. He sits at the bar and a forest fire burns between us. I was depressed the moment before he entered, but the second I look at his blue eyes, I forget the dumpster fire that my life has become. I invite him back to my place and it's the most passionate night of my life. I expect to never see him again.
I just want him as an anti-depressant-but he wants me all to himself. I just got my heart ripped out of my chest so I want something easy and no-strings-attached, but he wants all the strings because he's hooked.
I don't get much of a say in the matter, and that's not surprising when I learn why-because he's the Butcher. The crime lord of all crime lords, the boss that overshadows all of Paris, that makes everyone abide by his rules-or pay.
And now I'm his.
7.5
I spent three weeks scrubbing carbonized grease off woks at the Jade Garden, hiding my elite tactical training behind raw knuckles and a practiced, submissive stutter. My mission was the only thing keeping me sane: finding my sister, Elena, who vanished into thin air after her phone last pinged near the city’s Restricted Sector.
The breakthrough came when my boss, a bully named Uncle Wong, forced me to take a delivery to 101 Blackwood Drive—a high-security fortress where the drivers whispered that people went in and never came back right. It was a geographic match for Elena's last known location, but as I rode my battered scooter toward the massive steel gates, I realized I wasn't just investigating a lead; I was walking into a spider's web.
The mansion was a monolith of cold concrete and military-grade surveillance, owned by Hugh Bradford, a billionaire who controlled the city’s elite like puppets. During my delivery, the magnetic locks hissed shut, the lights died, and I was plunged into absolute darkness with a predator who didn't want my money. Bradford pinned me against a stainless steel counter and did something unthinkable: he sank his teeth into my shoulder, using the rhythm of my frantic pulse to anchor his own fractured mind.
I escaped with a bruised neck and a thousand-dollar "tip," feeling the crushing weight of his violation and the terrifying realization that my "clumsy immigrant" act hadn't fooled him for a second. I didn't understand why a man of his power would treat a delivery girl like a biological drug, or what he had done to the other girls who had vanished behind those black glass walls.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I realized I was being hunted by a man who could buy and sell my life a thousand times over.
"You're terrified," he had whispered in the dark, and for the first time in years, I wasn't faking it.
Back in my apartment, I found a note tucked inside the cash that confirmed my worst fears:
"For the inconvenience. See you Tuesday."
He thinks he’s found a new toy to play with, but he just gave me the one thing I needed to find my sister—an invitation to go back inside and finish what I started.
8.7
Lina Carter was just a waitress trying to make ends meet. On the other hand, Alexander Knight was a billionaire who would do anything to safeguard his empire. When he proposes a deal for her to be his fake girlfriend, it seems straightforward, he act like she loves him, stick to the rules, and walk away with a nice payday. No feelings involved. No strings attached. No room for error.
But as they share fake kisses, those moments turn into lingering glances. What starts as cold, business-like orders shifts into a quiet sense of protection. Suddenly, the line between pretense and reality begins to blur.
Then, out of nowhere, his ex-fiancée reappears-gorgeous, ruthless, and hell-bent on ruining Lina's life. When the truth about their arrangement comes to light, Lina finds herself publicly humiliated, tossed aside as if she never mattered at all. She walks away with her pride shattered, but her heart still whole.
Now, the man who once paid her to pretend is realizing he wants her for real. But some betrayals cut too deep... and some love stories start with a lie that's just too painful to forgive. She was brought in to act. He ended up falling for her for real.
8.3
For three years, I was the perfect, invisible wife to Bart Brown. On our third anniversary, I stood in the kitchen for four hours, preparing his favorite meal with imported truffles, only to receive a cold text command.
"Crysta fainted again. Get to the hospital. Now."
My rare Rh-negative blood was the only thing the Brown family valued. Bart didn't want a wife; he wanted a walking blood bank for his "sick" best friend, Crysta. While I was fainting from chronic anemia, Crysta was smirking in her hospital bed, clutching Bart's hand and mocking my "peasant" lifestyle.
Even his mother treated me like a servant, demanding I vacuum the floors after I'd already offered my veins for the hundredth time. When I finally reached my breaking point and signed the divorce papers, they didn't let me go quietly. They filed a false police report, accusing me of stealing a multi-million dollar diamond necklace just to watch me crawl.
I didn't understand how a family could be so heartless. I had cooked their meals, cleaned their house, and literally bled for them, yet they were determined to ruin my life the moment I stopped being useful. Did they really think I was a nobody with nowhere to go?
Standing outside the hospital with a bruised wrist and nothing to my name, I didn't cry. I simply took off my cheap wedding ring and dialed a secure line I hadn't touched since the day I married him.
"It's me, Dad," I whispered as a fleet of black Maybachs rounded the corner. "The extraction is a go. I'm coming home."
9.5
I was the heiress to a real estate empire, celebrating my engagement to Douglas at our Manhattan penthouse.
But when I stepped into the master bedroom, I caught him sleeping with my best friend, Krystle.
Before I could even react, Douglas forced me to sign away my family's entire trust fund.
He held up a tablet and forced me to watch a live feed of my parents being burned alive in our Hamptons estate.
"The fire hasn't reached the main house yet, sign it and I'll call them off," he lied.
As soon as the ink dried, he beat me to the ground and locked me in the soundproof study.
He poured twenty-three-year-old whiskey on the carpet and dropped a lit cigar.
"You could have walked away with nothing, but alive," he sneered.
He left me to burn to death while he and Krystle went back to our engagement party to drink champagne.
As the flames melted my skin and my bones shattered against the bulletproof glass, I couldn't understand it.
How could the man who promised me forever brutally exterminate my entire family just for money?
But I didn't die in that fire.
Three years later, with a reconstructed face and a new identity as the mysterious global designer Alice Moreau, I returned to New York.
Watching Douglas and Krystle flaunt the wealth they stole from my family's ashes, I smiled behind my black veil.
It was time to make them pay with everything they had.
7.1
I lay paralyzed on stiff white sheets, a prisoner in my own skin, listening to the rain lash against the window like nails on a coffin. My father, Elmore Franco, didn't even look at my face as he checked his clipboard. He just listened to the steady, monotonous beep of the heart monitor-the only thing proving I was still alive.
Without a hint of remorse, he pulled a pen from his pocket and signed the Do Not Resuscitate order. My stepmother, Ophelia, stepped out from behind him, wearing my favorite pearl necklace and smelling of cloying perfume. She leaned close to my ear to whisper the truth that turned my blood to ice.
"It was the tea, darling. Just like your mother. A slow, tasteless poison."
She chuckled as she revealed that my fiancé, Bryce, had a two-year-old son with my sister, Daniela. My inheritance had been funding their secret life for years, and now that the money was secure, I was an inconvenience they were finally scrubbing away. As my father yanked the power cord from the wall, the beeping died, and the darkness swallowed me whole.
I was being murdered by my own flesh and blood, used as a bank account until I was no longer needed. I died in that sterile room, drowning in the realization that every person I ever loved was a monster who had been waiting for me to take my last breath.
Then, I gasped. I woke up in a luxury hotel suite surrounded by silk sheets, five years in the past-the very morning of my wedding. Next to me lay Basile Delgado, the "Wolf of Wall Street" and my family's most dangerous enemy. In my first life, I ran from this room in a panic and lost everything. This time, I looked at the man who would eventually destroy my father's empire and decided to join him.
"I'm not leaving, Basile. Marry me. Right now. Today."