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 7
The staff dormitory was quiet, save for the rhythmic wheezing coming from the bottom bunk.
Eva slipped inside, closing the door softly. She had avoided the security patrol by seconds.
Sarah, her roommate, rolled over. Her face was flushed with fever.
"Eva?" Sarah rasped. She squinted in the dark. "Your face..."
Eva touched her cheek. It was raw, swollen from the scrubbing.
She nodded.
Sarah sighed, a rattling sound in her chest. "He's spiraling. I heard the kitchen staff talking. If Britt dies..."
Eva grabbed a notepad from the nightstand. She scribbled quickly.
I'm not afraid of him.
She showed it to Sarah.
Sarah laughed, a weak, humorless sound. "You should be. But... he wasn't always like this."
Eva frowned.
"My aunt worked here thirty years ago," Sarah whispered. "She saw it. Alek's birth mother, Elara. She wasn't like Hester. The pressure of this family... it broke her. They said she lost her mind. Jumped from the east tower roof. Alek saw it. He was seven." Sarah coughed, a dry, rattling sound. "Hester was her replacement, brought in to manage the family... and the boy. That's why he hates weakness," Sarah said. "And that's why he's obsessed with you. My aunt said you have Elara's eyes. Sad eyes."
Eva lowered the notepad. She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the drafty room. She didn't want his projection. She didn't want his twisted trauma bonding.
She wrote again. I am leaving.
"Nobody leaves," Sarah coughed.
Eva reached into her pocket and touched Emory's note. Someone helps.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The PA system screeched to life.
"All staff to the main hall. Immediately. Mr. Crawford has returned." Arthur's voice was strained.
Eva checked the clock on the wall. 10:00 PM. Emory's meeting was at midnight.
"Go," Sarah whispered, trying to sit up.
Eva pushed her back down gently. She put a finger to her lips. Stay.
Eva pulled her hood up and walked out.
The hallway was full of nervous staff shuffling toward the main hall. The air smelled of fear.
Eva entered the grand foyer.
Alek was standing in the center of the room.
He was covered in blood.
It splattered his white dress shirt, his hands, his face. But he wasn't injured. He wasn't triumphant. His face was stark white beneath the crimson streaks, his eyes holding a hollow, feverish glaze. He moved with a terrifying, coiled energy, like a man running from his own skin.
In his right hand, he held a bent iron golf club. The head of the club was distorted.
Silence fell over the fifty staff members.
Alek's eyes scanned the crowd. Hunting.
They landed on Eva. He took a half-step toward her, his gaze fixing on her cheek. The raw, scrubbed skin was a flag of defiance. A flicker of something cold and sharp crossed his face before he masked it, pointing the bent club at her.
"You."
Eva stepped forward. Her legs felt like lead. Every eye was on her.
Alek reached into his pocket and pulled out a pristine white towel. He threw it at her.
It landed at her feet.
"Clean it," he said, gesturing to the club.
Eva bent down. She picked up the towel. She walked toward him.
The smell of metallic blood hit her nose. It was fresh.
Whose blood is this?
She wrapped the towel around the club head and began to wipe.
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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.