Reborn Matriarch: Shattering The Orphan's Mask
Christa discovered her adopted daughter Evelyn was sneaking around with a street thug named Dante.
When she furiously confronted her, Evelyn squeezed out a few tears and played the tragic, abused orphan.
"Mom is so cruel to me, I just want someone to love me," Evelyn cried to the men of the house, who instantly took her side.
Christa didn't realize her anger only gave the girl the perfect victim card. Evelyn manipulated the family's guilt to drain their wealth and orchestrate a massive corporate fraud.
When the authorities closed in, Evelyn let Christa's eldest daughter Julianna take the fall, sending her to federal prison.
The Stephenson family went completely bankrupt.
Christa's husband Grant, crushed by the betrayal and debt, jumped off a Manhattan skyscraper.
Until her family was entirely destroyed, Christa couldn't understand. They had given the orphan a home, a trust fund, and endless love.
Why did Evelyn treat them like easy marks? Why did she use their kindness as a weapon to tear them apart?
Opening her eyes again, Christa saw the heavy velvet drapes letting in the pale morning light.
She was back seven years ago, on the exact day she first caught Evelyn texting that thug.
This time, Christa wouldn't scream or fight. She would cut off the money, drop the rules, and watch the parasite dig her own grave.
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Chapter 5
Evelyn's eyes filled with hot, frantic tears. She realized Grant wasn't going to save her.
She pushed violently away from the table. The wooden legs of her chair scraped against the hardwood floor with a sound like a dying animal.
"You are all so cruel!" Evelyn screamed, her voice cracking.
She spun around and sprinted out of the dining room. Her footsteps pounded against the floorboards as she bolted for the front door.
Dante sat at the table for exactly one second. He looked at the angry faces around him, realized the money tap was turning off, and decided he needed to keep his meal ticket on the hook. He cursed under his breath, shoved his chair back, and jogged after her.
The heavy front door slammed shut, shaking the walls of the foyer.
The dining room was dead silent.
Then, Camren exploded.
He slammed both hands flat onto the table, rattling the plates. He shot up from his chair, his face flushed dark red with fury. He glared directly at his mother.
"Why would you do that?!" Camren roared, his voice echoing off the ceiling. "Why would you humiliate her with money like that? You have to control everything, don't you?"
Grant slammed his fist on the table. "Camren, sit down and shut your mouth."
"No!" Camren yelled back, pointing a shaking finger at the empty doorway. "This house is a gilded cage! No wonder she wants to escape! You suffocate us!"
Christa raised her hand, signaling Grant to stop.
She stood up slowly. She looked at her son, who was a full head taller than her, his chest heaving with misplaced righteous anger. There was no anger in her eyes, only a deep, heavy pity.
"Follow me," Christa said, her tone leaving no room for argument.
She turned and walked out of the dining room, heading straight for the stairs.
Camren gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles popping. He stormed after her, his heavy footsteps echoing his rage.
Christa walked into the second-floor study. She went straight to the crystal decanter on the side table. She poured two fingers of amber bourbon into a heavy glass.
She walked over to the desk and slammed the glass down in front of Camren.
"Drink it," she ordered. "Calm your nervous system down."
Camren glared at her, but the sheer authority in her voice made his body comply. He picked up the glass and threw the liquid to the back of his throat. The alcohol burned a fiery trail down his esophagus, forcing him to take a sharp breath.
Christa opened the desk drawer. She pulled out her smartphone and tapped the screen. "There's more from that same phone call this morning," Christa said, her voice completely flat. "You should hear how she talks about you." She pressed play.
"Camren is such a moron," the recording played, Evelyn's tone dripping with absolute contempt. "I swear, all I have to do is drop two tears, and he acts like a rabid dog, ready to bite his own mother for me."
Camren's pupils dilated massively. The empty bourbon glass slipped from his fingers, bouncing off the thick carpet.
He stumbled backward, his calves hitting the edge of the leather sofa. His face turned a sickly shade of gray.
"No," Camren stammered, shaking his head rapidly. "No, that's... that's AI. You faked that to get rid of her."
Christa stepped around the desk. She closed the distance between them, invading his space.
"Two years ago," Christa said, her voice sharp and precise. "You got suspended for stealing the midterm exam. You didn't do it. Evelyn stole it, panicked, and shoved it in your locker. You took the fall because she cried and said she'd be kicked out."
Camren's breath hitched. His eyes darted wildly around the room.
"Last Thanksgiving," Christa continued relentlessly. "You screamed at your father for cutting your allowance. Grant never cut it. Evelyn told you he did, right after she maxed out your shared card on designer bags."
Christa stepped even closer, forcing Camren to look directly into her eyes.
"She is not looking for freedom, Camren," Christa whispered. "She has been gaslighting you for years. She uses you as a human shield."
Camren's chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow jerks. Memories flooded his brain-every time he took the blame, every time Evelyn looked away when he got punished, the fake apologies that always ended with her asking for a favor.
The filter he had viewed her through shattered with a violent, psychological crack.
His knees gave out. He collapsed onto the leather sofa, burying his face in his hands. A raw, painful sound tore from his throat.
Christa did not reach out to touch him. She stood over him, her posture rigid.
"I don't need you to believe me right now," Christa said coldly. "Just use your own eyes and watch her next performance."
Camren slowly pulled his hands away from his face. He looked hollowed out, like a ghost. He pushed himself off the sofa and stumbled out of the study, leaving the door wide open.
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7.2
Genevieve woke up choking on her own blood, a fatal gash tearing through her abdomen. The memories of a primitive world crashed into her mind—she had transmigrated into the body of a sadistic beastman Mistress.
But the five powerful beastmen "mates" standing over her hadn't come to her rescue. They had come to watch their tormentor die.
"We should just leave her," Kameron sneered coldly. "The scavengers will clean up the mess."
Gilberto spat in disgust, while Angelo, a silver-scaled snake-man, trembled in pure terror at the sight of her. The original owner had whipped them, humiliated them, and driven another mate to suicide. Now, they were letting her bleed out in the mud, their eyes filled with undisguised loathing and satisfaction.
She was a top-tier apocalyptic survival expert, yet here she was, paying the ultimate price for a stranger's monstrous sins. It was a bitter, unacceptable irony to die helplessly in the dirt while her supposed protectors waited for her corpse to rot.
She refused to accept this ending.
Forcing a chaotic surge of energy through their shared Biological Link, she brought all five men to their knees in agonizing pain, commanding them to carry her back. In the dark cave, without a single scream, she plunged her bare hands into a fire and brutally cauterized her own gaping wound with searing ash. As the beastmen stared in horrified awe at the unbreakable soul now occupying the tyrant's body, Genevieve wiped the blood from her face and began to rewrite her fate.
8.1
She thought patience would earn her love.
She was wrong.
After years of waiting for her best friend to finally see her, she meets the one man she should never want-his older brother. Dark, forbidden, and dangerously perceptive, he sees through every excuse she's ever made for being overlooked.
Now she must choose between a safe fantasy that keeps breaking her heart and a dangerous truth that offers no escape once it begins.
Because the brother who looks at her like that?
He doesn't believe in halfway love.
7.1
I was eight months pregnant, waiting on the sofa for my billionaire husband to come home.
But when the heavy oak doors opened, Cayden threw a fake DNA test on the glass table, showing a zero percent probability of paternity.
He accused me of carrying another man's bastard. I cried and begged, swearing I was framed by his childhood friend, Carmella. He didn't listen. Instead, he ordered his massive bodyguards to pin me down while a private doctor forced an abortion pill down my throat.
"The Merritt family does not raise bastards. Get rid of it."
He forced me to sign divorce papers and ordered his men to throw me out into the freezing storm. Before I was dragged away, I desperately told him the truth: I was the anonymous donor who gave him a kidney to save his life three years ago.
He just sneered, saying Carmella had the surgical scar to prove she was the donor, and kicked me out to die.
Lying in the freezing rain, vomiting up the half-dissolved poison to save my baby, I didn't understand how the man I loved could be so completely blind. How could he let that woman steal my kidney, my marriage, and murder his own flesh and blood?
Five years later, I returned to New York not as his pathetic discarded wife, but as a top-tier medical fixer for the global elite.
And my genius five-year-old son has already infiltrated his mansion, ready to tear his empire apart from the inside.
9.2
Lainey spent her last life destroying herself for Larry, only to become the woman he discarded most cruelly. He never loved her, never wanted her, and made no secret that his first love still owned his heart.
On their wedding day, he abandoned Lainey at the altar for that woman, then later used Lainey as nothing more than a stepping stone for his company's rise. In the end, he even had her kidney ripped from her.
Reborn at the very moment everything began, Lainey called off the wedding without hesitation. But after losing her, Larry begged desperately.
Lainey shot him a cold look, then turned and walked straight into the arms of a powerful, aloof man, who stared down at Larry with pure contempt. "She's my wife now."
7.5
I am the biological daughter of the wealthy Fitzpatrick family, but I spent my childhood eating out of dumpsters.
When I was finally brought back to the estate at age seven, I thought I would experience my parents' love.
Instead, my biological parents looked at my dirty clothes with raw disgust. They only cared about Hallie, the fake daughter who lived like a princess.
The moment I walked in, Hallie hurled a heavy ceramic cup at my head, slicing my hand open.
"Get out of my house!"
My father didn't even look at the blood. He raised his hand to strike me, accusing me of bringing trailer park rules into his home.
In my past life, I dropped to my knees and begged for their forgiveness. I endured their abuse, hoping they would eventually love me.
But they let the maids humiliate me, let Hallie steal my identity, and eventually threw me back onto the streets to die. Even my playboy Uncle Byron, the only person who ever showed me mercy, was driven to suicide by them.
I didn't understand why my own flesh and blood hated me so much, or why a vicious liar deserved everything while I was treated like a jinx.
Opening my eyes again, I was back on the exact day I first returned to the estate.
As my father raised his hand to hit me, I didn't cower.
Instead, I looked at the family patriarch and pointed directly at my notorious, alcoholic uncle.
"I want him to be my new guardian."
9.4
I was lying in a sterile hospital room, dying of cancer, with only a fake infertility report to keep me company.
Right before my heart monitor flatlined, a stranger walked in and handed me a medical file.
He told me that my fiancé, Garret, had zero sperm viability. The baby my adoptive sister, Beryl, was carrying wasn't his.
When Beryl got pregnant years ago, my adoptive parents forced me to break my engagement and take the blame for being barren.
I was discarded by Garret, mocked by Beryl's triumphant smiles, and kicked out of the house.
I was left to rot alone in a hospital bed while they lived the perfect life stolen from me.
My entire existence had been a cage built on a single, disgusting lie.
The anger burned away my despair. Why was I the only one who didn't know?
Why did I let them use me as a maid and a shield for their filthy secrets?
As the darkness swallowed me, I prayed for just one more chance.
I opened my eyes to the sound of my adoptive mother yelling my name.
The calendar on the wall read March 15, 2019—the exact day they forced me to give up Garret.
This time, I didn't cry or beg.
"You want Beryl to have Garret? Fine," I told my shocked adoptive parents. "But I want a cash buyout, and we are legally severing this adoption."
Then, I set my sights on Douglass Ward—the stranger from the hospital room.