Rising From Ashes: The Broken Wife's Return
After years of a freezing, loveless marriage, my billionaire husband Israel finally threw me out to make room for his new lover, Ayla.
Before I even packed my bags, he ordered a crew to shred the Dogwood tree in our backyard and pour thick concrete into the crater, claiming it was a symbol of my infidelity.
He didn't know that buried beneath those roots was the urn containing the ashes of our unborn baby.
Stripped of everything, I tried to rebuild my shattered life by securing a supporting role in an indie film.
But Israel bought the entire production studio just to cast Ayla as the lead, demanding I act as her pathetic stepping stone.
When I refused, he cornered me on set with a sickening audio recording.
"We want one million dollars. This will ruin Karen forever."
It was my own parents. They had forged my medical records, planning to sell a story to the tabloids that I was a violent, delusional schizophrenic.
Israel smiled coldly, threatening to lock me in a padded room on an involuntary psychiatric hold unless I signed an unpaid contract to serve Ayla unconditionally.
My own flesh and blood had sold me out to a ruthless monster for cash.
Staring at the extortion contract, the last shred of desperation and love in my chest burned away into cold, gray ash.
To survive a monster, you have to become one.
I picked up his pen, violently signed my name, and prepared to rip his precious Ayla to shreds on camera.
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Chapter 4
Karen dragged her swollen, purple ankle across the threshold of the cramped apartment in Koreatown.
The air inside smelled heavily of mildew and old cooking oil. It was a violent contrast to the sterile luxury of Beverly Hills.
She collapsed onto the lumpy fabric sofa. She pulled a small plastic first-aid kit from the coffee table and took out a bottle of iodine.
She bit down hard on her bottom lip as she pressed the iodine-soaked cotton swab into the raw, bleeding scrape on her arm. She hissed as the pain flared.
Her phone vibrated on the table. The screen lit up with a name: Brenda McCoy (Mother).
Karen stared at the screen. A wave of exhaustion washed over her. Her finger hovered over the red reject button.
The phone kept buzzing. It wouldn't stop. She finally slid her finger across the green icon.
"Listen to me," Brenda's shrill, slurred voice blasted through the speaker before Karen could even say hello. "I need you to wire five hundred thousand dollars to a casino account in Vegas right now."
Karen closed her eyes. "Mom. I don't have it. Israel kicked me out. I have nothing."
"Bullshit!" Brenda screamed. "You useless piece of trash! You couldn't even keep a billionaire's legs wrapped around you? What good are you?"
Karen's chest hollowed out. The toxic blood of her family burned in her veins.
"I should have aborted you," Brenda spat.
The words felt like a physical knife twisting in Karen's gut. She gripped the phone so hard the plastic creaked.
"I am not paying your gambling debts anymore," Karen said. Her voice was dead. Cold.
"I'll go to the press!" Brenda threatened. "I'll tell them what an ungrateful bitch you are! I'll ruin you!"
Karen let out a dry, broken laugh. "Go ahead. I'm already ruined."
She ended the call. She went into her contacts and blocked Brenda's number.
The adrenaline left her body all at once. Karen curled into a tight ball on the sofa. A violent cough ripped through her chest.
The rain, the physical trauma, and the sheer psychological exhaustion hit her immune system like a freight train. Her skin grew burning hot. She slipped into a feverish darkness.
The next morning, a frantic pounding on the door jolted her awake.
Karen forced herself up. Her head spun. She leaned heavily against the peeling wallpaper and dragged herself to the door. She looked through the peephole.
It was Eleanor Fletcher, her agent.
Karen unlocked the door. Eleanor took one look at Karen's pale, bruised face and gasped.
Eleanor practically carried her back to the bed. She pulled a bottle of Tylenol and a thermos of hot soup from her tote bag. She forced Karen to swallow the pills.
Eleanor didn't ask questions. She just held Karen's hand until the shivering stopped.
Once Karen's eyes focused, Eleanor unzipped her leather briefcase. She pulled out a thick, slightly wrinkled script.
"Julian Carmichael watched your audition tape," Eleanor said, her voice shaking with excitement. "He fought off the investors. He wants you as the lead in Midnight in Malibu."
Karen stared at the paper. The name printed in bold letters on the cover was Karen Walsh-the stage name she had legally and permanently adopted years ago, a desperate attempt to completely sever her ties and bury the toxic Kowalski bloodline she was unfortunately born into.
"The pay is garbage," Eleanor continued, "but it's an Oscar-bait role, Karen. This is how you stand back up."
Karen reached out. Her fingers trembled as they brushed the cover of the script.
A hot tear slipped down her cheek and splashed onto the title page. She pulled the script against her chest and held it like a life raft.
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9.1
With only fifteen days of cash flow left to save her tech startup, Aida had no choice but to seek a five-million-dollar bridge loan from Brendan Walls, a ruthless billionaire predator.
He agreed to sign the check, but on one sickening condition. He demanded Aida act as bait to get close to his corporate rival, Grayson Lott, treating her like a high-end call girl for a business transaction.
Forced to comply to save her employees, Aida let Grayson take her to a windowless underground club, where he secretly spiked her whiskey.
As the drugs paralyzed her body, triggering horrific flashbacks of a brutal assault from six years ago, Aida locked herself in the bathroom. She had to shatter a mirror and slice her own thigh open with a jagged shard of glass just to stay conscious enough to call Brendan for help.
Brendan's armored SUV immediately smashed through the club's wall to save her, and Grayson was arrested. But lying in the hospital, the horrifying truth finally clicked in Aida's mind.
The rescue was too fast. Brendan’s men hadn't rushed from Midtown; they had been parked outside the entire time. He had watched Grayson drug her and waited for the felony to happen just so he could legally seize Grayson's company. He had gambled her life and trauma for a hostile takeover.
When Brendan casually tossed a signed contract and luxury car keys onto her hospital bed as hush money, the last thread of Aida's sanity snapped.
"The deal is dead. NovaTech is mine. If you ever come near me again, I will kill you."
Bleeding and shaking with icy rage, Aida threw the keys at his chest, formally declaring war on the monster who thought he could buy her soul.
7.2
Two years ago, Amaya Bennett witnessed a murder.
A powerful man was killed in cold blood, right in front of her. She should have died that night too.
Instead, she woke up in a hospital with no memory of what happened. No faces, no names and no clues. Just fragments, blurred images that slip through her fingers every time she tries to hold on.
Now, Amaya lives a quiet life, piecing herself back together. She works part-time, avoids trouble, and stays invisible. Until she lands a job at Twilight Global.
A company owned by Jake Anderson, the cold and untouchable CEO whose father was murdered the same night Aria lost her memory. Jake spent years searching for the only witness. But she vanished without any trace. Or so he thought.
But somehow, they cross path again, working under his roof, completely unaware of the truth she carries.
The killer is still out there.
And when Amaya starts getting flashes of blood, a voice, a ring glinting under the dim light, the hunt begins again.
But this time, she's not alone. Because even before he realizes who she is... Jake has already started protecting her. In the most relentless and dangerous way.
8.5
Cecile jolted awake from months of prescription haze, only to realize she was trapped in a live reality show designed to destroy her.
Her billionaire husband had orchestrated the broadcast to publicly humiliate her and elevate his own PR image. He ordered her to follow a degrading script. What was worse, her five-year-old son, Damien, was genuinely terrified of her. When an empty wine bottle rolled across the floor, the tiny boy instantly threw his arms over his head, bracing for a hit.
The production crew shoved microphones into the trembling child's face, trying to trigger his trauma for ratings. The live chat cursed Cecile as a toxic abuser. The show's golden girl maliciously tried to poach Damien on camera to prove Cecile was an unfit mother. The crew even rigged the game, forcing Cecile and her son into a freezing, rotting mud shack with a collapsed roof. They were all just waiting for her to break down and beg.
"A toxic woman like you doesn't deserve to be a mother."
The crew read the hateful comments aloud, expecting a hysterical meltdown. The realization that she had been manipulated into destroying her own child hit Cecile like a physical blow. How could a father subject his own son to this public cruelty?
The weak, easily manipulated Cecile was dead. She threw the PR script away, rolled up her sleeves, and picked up a rusted hammer. This time, she would protect her son and tear down anyone who stood in her way.
9.8
When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future.
For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed.
Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone.
I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back.
But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours.
When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along.
"What's in your pocket, Felicie?"
This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands.
9.5
For twenty years, Krista lived as the perfect daughter of the wealthy Cain family.
But a single DNA report shattered her entire world. Her adoptive parents coldly declared she was just a mistake and immediately replaced her with the true bloodline.
Desperate, she ran through the freezing rain to find her fiancé, only to hear him laughing with his friends.
"Marry a fake? I don't collect the Cain family's second-hand trash."
She slapped him, threw her diamond ring at his chest, and stumbled into a jazz lounge to drown her pain.
Drunk and heartbroken, she accidentally crashed into a stranger, clinging to him like a lifeline, which ended in a wild night in a luxury penthouse.
When she woke up, she realized the man she had ravaged was Jasper Stone, the most ruthless, cold-blooded billionaire on Wall Street.
At the same time, her phone lit up with notifications. Her bank accounts were frozen, and the Cain family had just released a brutal public statement permanently cutting her off.
She was completely abandoned, stripped of her home, her family, and her dignity in a single night. Why was twenty years of loyalty erased so easily?
But instead of kicking her out, Jasper tossed a prenuptial agreement onto the bed.
"Pay off your debt with marriage. Stay, and you are the untouchable Mrs. Stone."
Looking at the contract, Krista wiped her tears, put on bold red lipstick, and signed her name.
8.8
Sold for scraps.Saved by a monster. Destined to rule them all.
Faith is a "Dud", a wolfless orphan living in the shadows of the trenches. Treated as a servant by her own family, she hides a mind more brilliant than any Alpha's instinct. But in the process of winning a life-changing scholarship, she is betrayed. Drugged and sold to traffickers by her own aunt, Faith thought her life was over -until she falls from a third-story window and lands on the hood of a car that belongs to the most dangerous man in the country.
Killian Nightshade. Billionaire. Alpha of the Blackwood Pack. A man who rules with ice in his veins and power in his hands.
Killian doesn't do favors. He makes investments. He claims Faith as his "Personal Shadow" to work off the debt of his ruined car. But as he forces her into the shark-infested waters of the North Elite Academy, he finds himself breaking his own rule: Never get attached to the help.
While Faith battles ruthless bullies and the predatory interest of Killian's rival, Silas, a twenty-year-old secret begins to stir in her blood. She isn't just a Dud. She is a legend. And when the girl who was sold for scraps finally shifts, the entire werewolf world will have to decide: Will they bow to their new Queen, or be burned by her fire?