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 4
The elevator numbers climbed. 1... 2... 3...
Eva watched her reflection in the polished brass doors. The cut on her cheek had stopped bleeding, but it was swelling, a jagged red line against her pale skin.
"It's bad," Felicity whispered, standing in the corner of the elevator. "They're saying Arvo was with her."
Eva turned her head sharply.
Arvo Crawford. Alek's younger brother. The family failure.
"He... he used company funds," Felicity stammered, realizing she was saying too much but unable to stop. "To bail her out. To hush it up. But the press found out."
Eva closed her eyes for a second.
It wasn't just a DUI. It was a merger of disasters. The Bowens and the Crawfords, tied together again by stupidity and greed.
Ding.
The doors opened to the penthouse.
Felicity stayed in the elevator. She pressed the 'Close' button frantically.
Eva stepped out.
The penthouse was dark. The only light came from the city skyline through the panoramic windows. The air smelled of expensive bourbon and destruction.
Glass crunched under her shoe.
Eva looked down. A crystal tumbler lay shattered on the marble floor.
"Did you know?"
Alek was sitting on the leather sofa, shrouded in shadow. The blue light of a tablet illuminated his face, making him look like a ghost.
He swiped the screen violently, then tossed the tablet onto the coffee table. It landed with a heavy clack.
The screen showed Britt's mugshot.
Alek stood up. He walked toward her, kicking a piece of broken glass across the floor.
"Your sister," he spat the word out like poison. "She's a cancer. Just like your father."
Eva shook her head. She held out her hands, palms up. I didn't know.
"Don't lie to me!" Alek roared.
He grabbed a stack of papers from the table and threw them at her.
They fluttered through the air, hitting her chest, her face. They scattered on the floor around her.
Eva looked down. Bank transfers. Arvo Crawford to Britt Bowen. Huge sums.
"My brother," Alek said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Is facing an embezzlement charge because of your sister's drug habit."
He pointed to the floor.
"Clean it up."
Eva looked at the papers.
"Not the papers," Alek said. "The glass."
He gestured to the shards of the crystal tumbler scattered near his feet.
"Use your hands."
Eva hesitated.
"Do it," he commanded.
Eva knelt. She reached for a large shard of jagged crystal. She picked it up, placing it in her other palm.
She reached for another. And another.
A tiny sliver, invisible against the marble, sliced into her thumb.
She flinched. A sharp intake of breath.
A drop of bright crimson blood welled up. It seemed to hang in the air for an eternity before falling, a single, perfect sphere of red against the pristine white carpet.
Alek's eyes snapped to the blood.
His pupils dilated. He took a step back, his breath hitching. He didn't look triumphant. He looked sick. A faint sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead, his jaw clenching as if fighting a wave of nausea.
He stared at the red spot on the carpet, then at her bleeding hand.
"Stop," he said. His voice was strained.
Eva kept picking up the glass. She needed to finish.
"I said stop!" Alek shouted. He kicked the coffee table, sending it skidding across the room. "Get out! Get out of my sight!"
Eva scrambled to her feet, clutching the shards of glass in her good hand, blood dripping from the other.
She bowed quickly and backed toward the elevator.
As the doors closed, she saw Alek turn away, running his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking.
He wasn't angry at her. He was unraveling.
Eva looked at her bleeding thumb. The pain was sharp, grounding.
He has a weakness, she thought. He can't stand the sight of real damage.
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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.