Sold To The Monster: My Silent Nightmare
I’ve spent eighteen hundred days as a silent ghost in the Crawford estate, a place where the air smells of expensive cigars and terror. My father, Senator Jed Bowen, sold me to Alek Crawford to pay off his gambling debts, trading his daughter’s life for a seat in the Senate.
Alek doesn’t just want my service; he wants my complete submission. He tracks my every move through cameras and bruises my skin just to see if I’ll flinch. He thinks he owns me because he holds the contract, and his mother ensures I’m kept in my place with slaps and insults.
When a scandal involving my half-sister and Alek’s brother hit the news, the house turned into a war zone. Alek cornered me in the dark, his hands stained with blood and ink, whispering that I was nothing but a receipt for his family's money. He’s been forcing me to take pills for years, believing they’ve kept me drugged and mute.
"She needs to speak again," he told a surgeon over the phone. "Whatever it takes."
He thinks he’s fixing a broken toy, but he’s actually planning to carve the silence into my throat permanently. He has no idea that I’ve been switching those pills for years, or that I’m more awake and more dangerous than he could ever imagine.
I’ve endured the biting cold and the crushing weight of his obsession, waiting for a single sign that my nightmare could end. Tonight, a secret message reached me in the rain, confirming that the only man I ever loved has finally finished his mission.
Kole is coming back for me.
The contract review is tomorrow, but I’m not planning on signing anything. I’m planning on taking back everything they stole from me, starting with my voice.
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Chapter 3
Eva sat in the dark for ten minutes. She listened to the house. When the shouting faded, she changed.
The spare uniform she found in the closet was two sizes too big. It hung off her frame, the gray fabric coarse and smelling of dust. But it covered her.
She pushed the door open.
Hester Crawford was waiting.
She wasn't alone. Two security guards stood behind her, their arms crossed.
Eva stopped. She lowered her head, trying to make herself small, trying to sidestep toward the service stairs.
Hester stepped into her path.
Smack.
The slap came out of nowhere. It was precise, practiced. Hester's ring caught Eva's cheekbone, cutting the skin.
Eva's head snapped to the side. She tasted blood.
She didn't make a sound. She brought a hand to her face, covering the stinging flesh.
Hester didn't yell. She pulled a wet wipe from her purse and began to clean her hand, scrubbing each finger as if she had touched rotting meat.
"You are a stain on this house," Hester said. Her voice was conversational, chillingly calm. "Do not think for a second that my son cares about you. You are a receptacle for his anger. Nothing more."
Eva stared at the floor tiles.
"Go to the lower levels," Hester commanded, tossing the used wipe into a nearby bin. "You are banned from the main wing until further notice. Go clean the filth where you belong."
Eva bowed. A reflex. A survival tactic.
She turned and walked away, her spine rigid.
"Increase the dosage," she heard Hester murmur to the guard as she walked away. "She's looking too alert."
Eva's heart skipped a beat, but she didn't falter.
She reached the servants' quarters in the basement. It was louder here, the air thick with the smell of industrial cleaner and cabbage.
Three maids were gathered by the vending machine. They didn't see Eva in the shadows.
"Did you hear?" one whispered. "Senator Bowen just announced his re-election campaign."
"The nerve," another scoffed. "After selling his own daughter to pay off his gambling debts? Man has no soul."
"Alek keeps her around as a trophy," the third said, laughing darkly. "A reminder of what happens when you cross a Crawford. I bet he drugged her to shut her up. No way she just went mute on her own."
Eva pressed her back against the wall. Her fingernails dug into her palms.
Is that what they think? That I'm broken?
She slipped away before they saw her. She ducked into the laundry room.
The hum of the massive industrial washers drowned out her thoughts. She walked to the nearest machine and began shoving dirty sheets into the drum.
Her hand brushed her pocket. She felt the small plastic bottle there.
She pulled it out. It was labeled "Vitamins - Daily."
She opened it. Inside were white pills.
Hester's pills.
Eva walked to the drain in the floor. She dumped the pills out, watching them dissolve in the gray water. From a hidden pocket in her undershirt, she pulled out a nearly identical bottle. This one contained actual vitamins she had pilfered from the infirmary supply months ago, exploiting a blind spot in the west-wing camera feed she'd discovered during her first year. She'd learned to manage the rare blood tests with forced hydration and carefully timed meals.
She wasn't drugged. She had been switching them for three years.
She was awake. She was aware. And she was angry.
The TV mounted in the corner of the room flashed a breaking news banner.
SCANDAL ROCKS BOWEN FAMILY.
Eva froze. She looked up.
A photo of a blonde woman appeared on the screen. Britt Bowen. Her half-sister.
The headline scrolled: BRITT BOWEN ARRESTED FOR DUI. DRUGS FOUND IN VEHICLE.
Eva stared at the image of Britt, looking disheveled and defiant in her mugshot. Britt, who had tormented Eva as a child. Britt, who was Daddy's favorite.
The machine behind her beeped loudly, signaling the end of a cycle.
The door to the laundry room burst open.
Felicity, the young kitchen maid, ran in. Her face was flushed.
"Eva!" she gasped. "You have to come. Now."
Eva raised an eyebrow.
"It's Mr. Crawford," Felicity said, wringing her hands. "He's asking for you. He saw the news."
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9.1
My husband, Dante Moretti, the feared Underboss, signed the divorce papers I slipped him without a glance. Too busy texting his true love, Sofia, he was blind to the annulment decree ending everything. The Reaper couldn't see the death of his own marriage.
For three years, I was Elena, his silent wife, the "Caged Canary," cleaning his messes while meticulously planning my escape from our loveless world.
He dismissed me for Sofia's every whim, publicly shaming me after a past love letter was read, then abandoning me again for her fake crisis.
That night, he violently shoved me against a wall, leaving me bleeding and concussed, rushing instead to protect Sofia. Discarded and injured, my invisible love became a weapon against me.
His crushing blindness, the cold realization I was a mere placeholder, fueled a profound injustice. How could he be so lethal, yet oblivious to his wife, favoring the one who betrayed him?
With chilling resolve, I uploaded Sofia's confession, initiated a massive financial transfer dismantling his empire, and staged my own death. Under a new identity, I fled to San Francisco, ready to build my power, far from his bloody, deceitful world.
9.2
Slave to her pack, Delilah Hunt has suffered the worst betrayal from those she considered family. Turning from a Sentinel to a wolfless member of the pack, she has lost all hope. Not until she met General Kane, the executioner.
Kane lost all empathy and developed a stony heart years ago when his birth mother was banished by his father. He never bothered to search for his mate, refusing to love or be loved by anyone. He lived closed off from the rest of the world except a few of his pack members. But an encounter with Delilah Hunt, one of his many prisoners, sets off something in him.
For how long would he be able to resist their bond?
8.1
My fiancé, Freddie, signed the papers to have me committed to a mental asylum. He told everyone my "episodes" were becoming a liability to his family's pristine reputation.
The truth was, he and his mistress, Jessie, wanted me out of the way. They painted me as a hysterical, unstable psycho so their affair could continue without a single complication.
I spent my last days in a chemical haze, trapped and forgotten. My final memory wasn't of love or compassion, but of orderlies forcing my head under the stagnant, drugged water of an asylum bathtub. Freddie just watched, his face cold and indifferent as I drowned.
He stole my life, my sanity, and my future. He got away with murder while playing the part of the devoted, heartbroken fiancé to a world that believed his every lie.
Until I opened my eyes again.
The blinding Hampton sun stabbed my retinas, and the smell of chlorine filled my lungs. I wasn't in the asylum. I was back at the Madden family's annual summer party, three years before my death.
Across the pool, I saw Freddie laughing with Jessie. They thought they had won.
They had no idea I was back from the dead to burn their entire world to the ground.
9.4
Hayley was betrayed by those who should have loved her most. To save their precious adopted daughter from a punishment she deserved, her own parents sent Hayley straight into a living hell—an infamous prison where survival demanded cruelty, and weakness meant death.
Four years later, the girl who had entered those iron gates no longer existed. She emerged with a single, unbreakable rule carved into her soul: Every betrayal would be repaid tenfold.
The day she walked free, the world trembled. A convoy of luxury cars lined the road. A legion of loyal followers awaited her triumphant return.
Her father tried to buy her silence with money. But money had long lost its power over her.
Her adopted sister hid behind sweet words and false kindness. But empty smiles no longer fooled her.
Everything that had once been stolen would be reclaimed—piece by piece.
When her parents attempted to tie themselves to the city's most feared man by offering their adopted daughter, Hayley's lips curved into a cold smirk. "Not on my watch."
Backed by a legendary hacker, shadowy allies, and an entire prison willing to burn the world for her, Hayley dismantled her enemies with terrifying precision.
Then the tyrant noticed her. "You're interesting," he said. "Be my woman, and the city is yours."
Hayley raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "You want to own me? Survive me first."
High society became their battlefield. Power collided with desire. Ambition clashed with obsession. In this ruthless game of dominance and temptation, only one would kneel first.
The girl once abandoned in hell rose from its ashes, crowned by fire and vengeance—And in the end, even the most feared ruler in the city would bow, offering his empire to the woman who had conquered both hell… and him.
8.1
She never imagined love would begin with a marriage she didn't want.
Forced into a union to save her family, Elena promised herself one thing, she would never love her husband.
But the man she hated was nothing like she expected...
And the heart she tried to protect slowly betrayed her.
8.4
Eleven years ago, Damien Falcone pulled me from the freezing waters, and I thought I was marrying my savior.
Instead, he orchestrated my absolute ruin by forging evidence to frame me for selling a vital mafia bootlegging route to the FBI.
Under the guise of saving me from the family's brutal death sentence, he stripped away my future as his Mafia Queen. He dragged me to New York and locked me in a gilded penthouse cage. For eleven years, I rotted away as his secret prisoner until my failing body finally gave out.
As I collapsed in the freezing New York snow, he caught me, his hands trembling as he held my dying body against his chest.
"No, Fia, stay with me. I did it to keep you alive. I had to—"
I didn't want to hear his monstrous lies anymore. I had given him all my love, and he repaid me with a tomb. Loving him was the only unforgivable sin I ever committed.
"I pray... we never meet again."
When the howling wind faded, I opened my eyes to the heavy stench of rust and lake water. I wasn't dead.
I was back in the cramped cabin of a cargo freighter, exactly sixteen years old again. It was the very night my jealous cousin sent an assassin to carve up my face and void my marriage to the Falcone family.
This time, I quietly gripped the heavy oak slat under my mattress.