Rising From The Ashes Of Betrayal
I spent my whole life trying to fit into the "Kensington aesthetic," dyeing my hair blonde and playing dumb just to earn a crumb of my father's approval. But when the manor went up in flames, I realized I was never a daughter to them-I was just an inconvenience.
I lay pinned under a heavy oak beam, the smell of copper and burnt sugar filling my lungs. My father, Arthur, stood in the doorway with my brothers, looking like a phalanx of saviors, but their eyes weren't on me.
They rushed past my outstretched, bloody hand to save my sister, Karly, who was huddled in a corner without a scratch on her. My brother Archer scooped her up like spun glass, stepping over my crushed leg without a second glance. Just before they crossed the threshold, Karly looked back at me and smiled-a small, victorious, terrifying smile. My father didn't offer help; he just shouted that I was an arsonist and slammed the door, sentencing me to burn alive in my own bedroom.
As the crystal chandelier melted and crashed toward me, I didn't feel fear anymore. I felt a guttural, distilled hate for the family that left me to die because of a lie. I had spent my life begging for scraps at a table that was never meant for me, and I died realizing they never loved me at all.
"If I come back," I promised into the void, "I will burn you all down."
I gasped for air and woke up in my bed, the smell of lavender replacing the smoke. It was September 14th, five years before the fire, the exact week I had started ruining myself to please them. I looked in the mirror, scrubbed off the pathetic makeup mask, and realized the old, desperate Kala was dead. If I was going to burn, I'd make sure they were the ones who felt the heat first.
"Queen is back online," I whispered.
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Chapter 3
The click of Kala's heels on the marble stairs echoed through the cavernous foyer. It was a sharp, deliberate rhythm. Click. Click. Click.
Below, the murmuring ceased. Four pairs of eyes shifted upward.
Karly sat nestled into the velvet cushions of the sofa, looking like a porcelain doll that had been dropped and glued back together. Her lower lip trembled-a practiced quiver. Doloris was stroking Karly's hair, murmuring soothing nonsense, her face a mask of maternal concern that Kala had never once received.
Arthur held a newspaper, but his knuckles were white where he gripped the pages. His jaw was set in a hard line.
Kala descended, feeling the gaze of the family press against her skin. In the past, this weight would have crushed her. She would have hunched her shoulders, looked at her feet, and begun her apology before reaching the bottom step.
Today, she kept her back straight. She looked at them not as family, but as targets.
She reached the ground floor and didn't stop at the designated "interrogation spot" in front of the coffee table. Instead, she walked past them, toward the wet bar in the corner.
Arthur snapped the newspaper shut. The sound was like a gunshot.
"I am speaking to you, Kala," Arthur said, his voice a low rumble. "Where do you think you're going?"
Kala didn't turn around. She picked up a crystal pitcher and poured water into a glass. She watched the liquid swirl, clear and pure. She took a sip, letting the cool water soothe her dry throat.
"I was thirsty," she said, turning slowly to lean her hips against the bar.
Karly let out a soft, strangled sob. It was timed perfectly.
"She doesn't care," Karly whispered to Doloris, loud enough for the room to hear. "She hates me."
Jules, standing behind the sofa like a loyal guard dog, sneered. "Stop acting like a brat, Kala. That vase was from the Ming Dynasty. It's worth more than you'll ever earn in your pathetic life."
Kala looked at Jules. He was wearing a cashmere sweater that cost more than her foster family's car. He thought he was a genius because he could code in Python.
"Since it was so valuable," Kala said, her voice calm, cutting through the emotional static, "why was it placed in the dead end of the East Hallway? Nobody walks there."
Jules blinked. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. It was a valid point. The East Hallway was a service corridor.
Karly sniffled, sensing the shift. "I... I went there to find Snowball. I thought I heard him crying."
Snowball. The white Persian cat.
Kala swirled the water in her glass. "Snowball?"
"Yes," Karly said, her voice gaining a little strength. "I was worried about him."
"That's strange," Kala said. She took another sip of water, her eyes locking onto Arthur. "Because Dad is violently allergic to cats. Snowball is strictly confined to the carriage house. He hasn't been allowed in the main manor for three years."
Silence descended on the room. It was heavy and thick.
Arthur frowned. He looked at Karly. "She's right. The cat is never in the house."
Karly's face paled. The tear tracks on her cheeks suddenly looked very dry. She had forgotten. In her haste to construct a victim narrative, she had forgotten the basic rules of the house.
"I... maybe I heard something else," Karly stammered. "I was just scared..."
Doloris jumped in, her protective instincts flaring. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Kala! She was confused! She was traumatized by your aggression! Why are you picking apart her words when she's clearly the victim here?"
Kala laughed. It was a short, sharp sound.
"My aggression?" Kala asked. "I wasn't even in the hallway when the vase broke. I was in the library."
"Liar!" Archer shouted, coming down the last few steps to stand behind his father. "We heard the crash, and then we saw you standing over her!"
"You saw me help her up," Kala corrected. "After I ran from the library to see what the noise was."
"You pushed her!" Archer accused. "Admit it! Apologize!"
Kala set the glass down on the marble counter. Clink.
She walked toward the center of the room. She stopped five feet from Arthur.
"I didn't push her," Kala said. "I didn't break the vase. And I certainly won't apologize for a fiction created to cover up Karly's clumsiness."
"If you don't apologize," Archer stepped forward, his fists clenched, "I will make you wish you were never born."
Kala looked at Archer. Really looked at him. He was a bully. A child in a man's body.
"If I don't apologize?" Kala repeated softly. "Then what?"
The air left the room. Nobody challenged Archer. Nobody challenged the narrative.
Arthur stood up. He rose to his full height, casting a long shadow over Kala. He was used to people shrinking in his presence.
"Then what?" Arthur repeated, his voice dropping an octave. "Then you will learn your place in this family."
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8.2
In her previous life, Eliana took the fall for her adopted sister Iris and lost everything, even being forced into a marriage where her work was stolen to build another man's empire.
Meanwhile, her sister's "perfect" marriage ended in tragedy-her husband turned out disabled and died young.
Reborn, the sisters swapped their fates, Iris claiming the handsome man for herself while Eliana marrying the allegedly sick billionaire.
Eliana only smiled-she knew the truth behind her marriage in the previous life. This time, she chose a different path, bringing her brilliance into the light while using marriage as a mere tool.
Yet the man she married stood firmly by her side, saying, "With me behind you, no one will dare touch you."
7.6
Sophia's life turns upside down when her husband, Donald, leaves her for his childhood love. Heartbroken and alone, she's forced to confront the harsh reality that her marriage was a sham. But as she digs deeper, she discovers a shocking truth – her entire life has been a lie.
The people she trusted, the memories she cherished, everything was a carefully constructed facade. Her biological father, a billionaire, has been searching for her, and she's forced to confront the dark secrets surrounding her mother's tragic death.
With her emotions raw and her trust shattered, Sophia must navigate this new reality and make a choice: forgive and forget or fight for what's rightfully hers. Will she find love again or will the secrets of her past destroy her future?
7.8
Alexis signed the divorce papers, leaving her with no assets, no alimony, and just the clothes on her back.
To forget her abusive husband Carlos, she got drunk and bought a high-end gigolo for the night with her last 800 dollars.
But the man she slept with wasn't an escort. He was Jarrett Hughes, a ruthless billionaire CEO.
And while she was gone, her ex-husband was busy destroying her entire life.
Carlos framed her with fake photos of her cheating to justify the penniless divorce.
Then came the real nightmare.
Carlos and her own aunt secretly drained her family's corporate accounts, driving her father to jump off a building.
At the hospital, her grieving mother blamed her for the tragedy, violently attacking her in the ER.
To top it off, her cousin Josie—who was secretly sleeping with Carlos—held her father's ashes hostage.
"Crawl on your knees and pick it up, or the ashes go in the river," Josie sneered, throwing cash into the freezing slush.
Stripped of her marriage, her father, and her dignity, Alexis sat bleeding in the snow.
She couldn't understand why the people she loved most had coordinated such a brutal slaughter against her.
But Carlos and Josie made one fatal mistake.
They didn't know the "gigolo" Alexis had accidentally bought was the most powerful man in New York.
Alexis looked at the towering billionaire standing behind her, a vengeful fire burning in her eyes.
"I need you to get my father's ashes back," she said, pulling him into a kiss right in front of her ex-husband. "I don't care what it takes."
9.5
BLURB
"This...this is wrong." I whispered, shivering as Rowan's fingers traced along the lines of my slit.
"Wrong?" Ellis' lips brushed my neck, his teeth grazing my skin. "Honey, forbidden is what makes it irresistible."
Noah's lips grazed my ear, his warm breath fanning my ears as his soft voice slipped in. "And you'll learn... We take what we want."
*****
Isla North had always followed her brother's rules, until she tasted what it was like to break them. Her brother, Asher North, captain of the college hockey team, made one rule when his sister resumed freshman year:
"You can fuck with other girls for all I care, but do not go close to my sister."
They all easily agreed; after all, brotherhood came first. Until three men broke that rule-his best friends. Rowan, the teasing and sinfully hot strategist. Ellis, the calm, gorgeously hot destruction, and Noah, the reckless, untamed, and sexily wild.
Between secret locker room encounters, broken rules, and nights ending in trembling submission, Isla discovers that forbidden desire is intoxicating and dangerous.
The ice isn't the only thing Isla is playing on. Power, lust, and obsession blur the lines, and once she surrenders... there's no going back.
8.9
Three years ago, Corinna had been an orphan, taken in by an influential family to marry their comatose heir.
Then the groom woke up, and the vows curdled; he treated her like worthless, disposable trash.
After her car wreck, she lay bleeding on the asphalt while he cheated with the woman he truly wanted. Something in her snapped, and she asked for a divorce with numb, shattered calm.
After walking away from the marriage, her secrets unraveled-a top-tier heiress, a hacker beyond reach, and a once-in-a-generation healer.
Her ex came crawling back, begging, unraveling, and losing control. But it was all too late.
8.2
I spent a year in a Swiss asylum, swallowing pills to cure a madness that didn’t exist.
It turned out the medication was just sugar.
My insanity was a script written by Jaxon Francis, the Don of New York, just so he could marry a Cartel princess without his ward getting in the way.
When I finally escaped and tried to leave him, his new wife staged her own kidnapping and framed me.
Jaxon didn’t ask for proof. He didn’t look at the evidence.
Instead, he tied a rope around my ankles and dragged me behind a helicopter across the jagged rocks of the Wastelands.
He held his wife close and watched as my skin was flayed and my bones shattered, believing he was executing a traitor.
He left me for dead in the dirt, convinced he had cleansed his empire.
I took the hush money his mother threw at me and vanished, letting Alina Phillips die in that field.
Three years later, I returned to New York as "Echo," the elusive artist the world was obsessing over.
At a charity auction, Jaxon bid one hundred million dollars for a painting of a woman’s scarred back, desperate to buy redemption for the ghost he thought he killed.
He chased me into the rain, begging for a second chance, swearing he had destroyed his wife for me.
I looked at the man who once held my heart and simply smiled.
Then I turned to the man standing beside me.
"Jaxon, meet Darwin," I said, linking my arm through his.
"My husband."