Rising From Hell: The Vengeful Heiress Returns
I was the Stanton family heiress, engaged to the President's son to secure a vital military alliance.
But he cornered me in the White House sitting room, slamming a thick manila folder onto the marble table.
"I said, sign the annulment agreement, Hester."
He looked at me like I was dirt, demanding I step aside so he could be with a manipulative intern named Tricia.
In my past life, I was a naive lamb. I cried and begged him not to end it. My devotion was rewarded with absolute cruelty. He ordered my bones broken and my reputation completely shredded. My trusted assistant forced poison down my throat, and I was left to die with a rope burning my neck.
Until my last breath, I didn't understand. I had done everything perfectly for the family. Why did my unwavering loyalty only bring me a gruesome death? Why did the monsters who tortured me get to live happily in the highest seats of power?
Opening my eyes again, the suffocating terror of the noose suddenly washed away. I was sixteen again, staring at the exact same annulment papers.
"Hester, please. Just let us be happy," Tricia whimpered, reaching out her trembling hand.
This time, I didn't cry. I picked up the solid gold fountain pen, stabbed it violently through the center of the contract, and prepared to drag the entire First Family straight to hell.
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Chapter 8
Before the President could finalize his victory, the heavy doors opened one more time.
Two Secret Service agents dragged Tricia into the room. She was crying hysterically, her makeup running down her face in ugly black streaks.
Tricia took one look at Domenic bleeding on the floor and the President standing over him with a face like thunder. Her knees gave out. She collapsed onto the expensive Persian rug.
"I didn't do anything!" Tricia wailed, burying her face in her hands. "I don't know what happened!"
Domenic saw his true love crying on the floor. Like a complete fool, he tried to crawl toward her to protect her. The agent behind him slammed a hand onto his shoulder, pinning him to the ground.
Hester stepped out from behind Elba. She looked down at Tricia. The corners of Hester's mouth twitched. It was time to finish the job.
Hester's voice was frail, but it carried across the silent room.
"Tricia... in the sitting room, Domenic said you were his true love. He said he was doing this for you. Is that true?"
It was a lethal question. If Tricia said yes, she was admitting to seducing the President's son and destroying a vital political alliance. If she said no, she was throwing Domenic under the bus.
Tricia looked up. She met the President's cold, dead eyes. She knew instantly that if she claimed Domenic, Christian would have her erased from Washington by morning.
Survival instinct took over.
Tricia shook her head violently. "No! No, it's not true!" she screamed, pointing a shaking finger at Domenic. "I only see him as a friend! He's the one who keeps harassing me! I was too scared to say no to the President's son!"
Domenic froze. The blood drained from his face. He stared at the woman he had just ruined his life for, his mouth hanging open in pure agony.
"Tricia?" Domenic whispered, his voice breaking. "What are you saying? You said you loved me."
"You forced me!" Tricia shrieked, playing the victim with sickening ease.
A wave of disgust washed over the room. Even Christian looked repulsed by the blatant betrayal.
Hester smiled inwardly. Pathetic.
She didn't let up. She took a step closer to Tricia. "If he forced you, then why were you helping him try to make me sign the annulment?"
Tricia choked on her tears. She had no answer. Her eyes darted wildly around the room, looking for an escape. When she found none, she resorted to her ultimate weapon.
"If none of you believe me," Tricia screamed, her voice reaching a hysterical pitch, "then I'll just die to prove my innocence!"
She scrambled to her feet and sprinted headfirst toward the massive, solid marble Roman pillar in the corner of the room.
It was a classic manipulation tactic. Everyone in the room froze, shocked by the sudden escalation. Elba gasped and covered her mouth.
But Hester knew Tricia better than anyone. She knew Tricia was a coward. She knew Tricia would slow down at the last second and fake the impact.
Hester lunged forward.
"No! Don't do it!" Hester screamed, reaching her hands out as if to catch the running girl.
Tricia reached the pillar. Just as Hester predicted, Tricia's feet stuttered, her body bracing to fake the fall.
In that exact fraction of a second, Hester's hands hit the center of Tricia's back.
Hester didn't pull her back. She shoved her forward with a vicious, concentrated burst of force.
The push destroyed Tricia's attempt to slow down.
THUD.
The sound of Tricia's skull impacting the solid marble was sickeningly loud. There was no fake fall. There was no slowing down.
Tricia didn't even scream. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and her body dropped to the floor like a sack of wet cement. She lay completely motionless. A thick stream of dark blood began to pool on the carpet near her hairline.
Staring down at the gruesome, spreading crimson, a sudden, violent wave of nausea hit the back of Hester's throat. Her fingers trembled involuntarily at the sheer brutality of what she had just done. But as she looked at Tricia's face-the face of the woman who had laughed over her broken body in her past life-the nausea evaporated, instantly incinerated by a cold, absolute hatred. This was the cost of war. They owed her a debt of blood, and she was going to collect every single drop.
The room was paralyzed for two seconds.
Hester immediately dropped to her knees beside the unconscious girl. "Doctor! Get the doctor!" Hester cried out, her hands hovering over Tricia in perfect, panicked horror. "She actually hit it!"
Domenic screamed, thrashing wildly against the agent holding him down, but a swift punch to his gut left him gasping for air on the floor.
Christian's face was a mask of absolute fury. "Get this garbage out of my quarters," he barked at the agents. "Take her to the infirmary and keep her out of my sight."
Elba rushed forward, pulling Hester away from the bleeding girl. "Hester, stop. Don't touch her. You tried to save her, that's enough."
Hester buried her face in Elba's shoulder, letting her body shake with "shock."
But if anyone had looked at Hester's face, they would have seen her blue eyes shining with cold, terrifying delight.
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7.2
After a one night stand with the woman whose house Jason broke into, his life has never been the same. Like a siren's call, he can't get the nymphomaniac woman off his mind. Weeks later, while getting intel for the crew's next heist, Jason lays eyes upon the woman and follows her into a secret strip club. She appears to lead a double life. One where she's the CEO of a multimillion company and her father's golden child. The other side of her life is that she owns a strip club and is extremely erotic. Can Jason learn to live with her as she is? Will he put his pride aside to be with the woman? ... especially when his crew is hired to kidnap a woman who turns out to be the love of his life.
9.5
On the day she discovers she is pregnant, Amara is handed divorce papers by the man she loved for three years. Betrayed by her husband and her best friend, she walks away with nothing-except the secret growing inside her.
But what Ethan Cole doesn't know is that the woman he abandoned is not weak... and not alone.
When Amara returns as a powerful heiress, no longer the woman he could control, Ethan begins to regret everything. But as secrets unravel and the truth about her pregnancy comes closer to light, one question remains-
When he finally finds out the child is his... will it already be too late?
8.9
At my million-dollar wedding to the Hoffman heir, the priest was interrupted by a ringing phone.
My groom, Elijah, didn't silence it. He answered it right at the altar, yanked his arm from my grasp, and walked out because his "true love" Jalyn needed him.
I was left standing alone in front of three hundred elite guests, blinded by mocking camera flashes. My own mother rolled her eyes in disgust, later threatening to freeze my trust fund and sell me to a notorious playboy to recoup her losses. Elijah even had the nerve to call me, demanding I take the blame for the canceled wedding to save his PR, while live news feeds showed him cradling a fragile Jalyn in the hospital.
I had spent two years bending over backward to be his perfect bride, only to be discarded like trash. What made it sicker was finding out that Jalyn's sudden "medical emergency" was actually a ruptured cyst caused by having vigorous sex with Elijah right before he walked down the aisle.
I refused to let them destroy me.
Kicking off my six-inch heels, I stepped down from the altar and walked straight to the back row where Cristian Lowe sat. He was the ruthless iceberg of Wall Street and Elijah's most terrifying rival.
I looked up at his sharp jawline and asked the craziest question of my life.
"Will you marry me?"
He stood up, his dark eyes locking onto mine.
"As you wish."
9.3
Elliana sat on the cold marble floor, staring at the two pink lines on the pregnancy test. Overjoyed, she went to her husband Garrett’s study to surprise him.
But the room was empty. On his iPad, she accidentally opened a muted security video from the night before. As a graphic novelist trained in facial anatomy, she easily read Garrett’s lips as he spoke to their housekeeper.
"Increase the hallucinogens and the birth control. Let her become a complete lunatic."
The truth shattered her reality. Her three years of inexplicable exhaustion and mental collapses were orchestrated to keep her away from her ex-fiancé, who was now married to Garrett’s sister, Cristina. The nightmare worsened during a horrific highway crash. As their SUV flipped and caught fire, Garrett ruthlessly abandoned a pregnant Elliana in the crushed backseat. He dragged Cristina to safety, leaving Elliana to burn. She survived, but her right hand—her drawing hand—was permanently destroyed.
Lying in the hospital with her career ruined and her intellectual property stolen by the husband who forged her signature while she was drugged, a freezing void of hatred consumed her. She was nothing but a sedated decoy to hide Garrett's twisted, incestuous obsession with his own sister.
When Garrett knelt by her hospital bed with fake tears, Elliana didn't scream or expose him. Instead, she forced a pathetic, dependent smile, playing the perfect broken wife. She was going back to his penthouse to steal his encrypted files, ready to feed him to Manhattan's most cutthroat divorce lawyer and watch his empire burn.
7.6
Elliana Lewis lay dying on the freezing concrete of a federal penitentiary, her ribs shattered by a guard's heavy boot.
She had been flawlessly framed for murder by the one person she trusted with her life: her sweet, innocent stepsister, Jovita.
During her final prison visit, Jovita wore their mother's diamonds and smiled cruelly behind the glass. She revealed she had liquidated the family company, caused their father's stroke, and paid the guards to ensure Elliana suffered a grueling, agonizing death.
"Your marriage was a joke from day one, Ellie. You have nothing left."
As her lungs stopped, the tragic truth finally dawned on Elliana. She had spent months screaming for a divorce and publicly humiliating her billionaire husband, Damon Stirling, believing his silence was weakness. She didn't realize until it was too late that his endless tolerance was the deepest form of protection. She had pushed away the only man who would have burned the world down to keep her safe.
Why had she been so incredibly stupid? Why did she blindly trust a monster and destroy the only person who truly loved her?
Then, a blinding light pierced her retinas. Elliana bolted upright, gasping for air on a massive, king-sized bed.
There was no pain. No broken bones. The digital clock on the nightstand flashed a date from exactly ten years ago.
It was the morning after her disastrous wedding night.
This time, she would tear Jovita's life apart piece by piece. And she would hold onto Damon so tightly that nothing could ever pry them apart.
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?