Sweet Revenge: Marrying My Ex's Ruthless Nemesis
I worked eighty-hour weeks on Wall Street just to keep my sick brother alive, enduring endless humiliation from the wealthy family that adopted us.
But when I went to surprise my boyfriend of three years, I found him kissing my spoiled adoptive sister, Tatum.
They were celebrating their engagement to merge their powerful families.
To keep me quiet, my adoptive mother, Eleanor, threatened to freeze my brother's medical trust fund unless I attended the party to play the supportive sister.
Instead, I discovered Eleanor had been embezzling from my brother's life-saving fund to cover her own bad investments.
The nightmare worsened when a drunken Ryder cornered me in my apartment stairwell.
"Once I marry Tatum, Eleanor is giving me control of Liam's trust fund to buy out my father's board members."
He planned to drain my brother's medical money, dump Tatum, and keep me as his mistress.
For a decade, I suffered their abuse hoping for a shred of decency, only to realize they were plotting to leave my brother to die on the streets for corporate greed.
Calling the police wouldn't stop these billionaires. I needed absolute power.
Remembering the dark, predatory gaze of Jaren Jarvis—the ruthless billionaire who had watched me fight back at the party—I canceled my call to 911.
If they wanted to destroy my only family, I was going to use the devil himself to crush theirs.
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Chapter 1
Audie pushed her weight against the heavy brass handles of the Waldorf Astoria ballroom doors.
The thick wood gave way, releasing a wave of warm air thick with the scent of expensive perfume and roasted meats.
She slipped inside, instantly handing her damp trench coat to a waiting attendant at the cloakroom.
She smoothed her hands down the front of her tailored pencil skirt, making sure her professional attire wasn't too wrinkled from the subway ride.
Her eyes scanned the sprawling, opulent hall.
It was a sea of Ivy League elites, men in sharp tuxedos and women in flowing gowns, all mingling under the golden glow of the chandeliers.
She was looking for Ryder.
A waiter in a crisp white shirt walked past holding a silver tray.
Audie reached out and took a flute of champagne, the chilled crystal cooling her warm fingertips.
She pulled her phone from her clutch and checked the screen.
The text from Ryder, received exactly ten minutes ago, stared back at her: Waiting for you inside.
A sudden eruption of loud, enthusiastic applause drew her attention toward the center of the room.
Directly beneath the largest crystal chandelier, a crowd had formed.
Through a gap in the tailored shoulders of the guests, Audie spotted the familiar broad back of Ryder's custom navy blue suit.
The corners of her mouth lifted into a genuine smile.
She took a step forward, ready to tap his shoulder and surprise him for their three-year anniversary.
Then, a woman in a stunning, custom Chanel gown stepped into view and intimately looped her arm through Ryder's.
Audie's heels stopped dead on the marble floor.
The sharp clack of her stilettos was swallowed by the chatter of the room.
The woman turned her profile slightly, laughing at something Ryder said.
It was Tatum.
Her older sister. The golden child of the Bell family.
Audie's chest tightened so violently it felt like her ribs were collapsing inward.
Her fingers clamped around the stem of the champagne flute.
The skin over her knuckles stretched taut and turned a stark, bloodless white.
She dragged in a sharp breath, the air burning her throat.
It's just family networking, she told herself. Just standard Manhattan social politics.
But then Ryder tilted his head down.
He pressed his lips to Tatum's forehead in a slow, lingering kiss that radiated absolute devotion.
The air vanished from Audie's lungs.
Her brain short-circuited, flashing through a hundred tiny, easily explained absences over the last three months.
She pressed her thumb hard against her opposite wrist, grinding the bone to stop her hands from shaking.
She forced her legs to move, stepping closer to the center of the crowd.
The alumni surrounding them raised their glasses, their voices blending into a chorus of congratulations on the perfect union of two powerful families.
Audie stopped less than three feet away from them.
Tatum caught movement in her peripheral vision and turned.
When her eyes landed on Audie, a slow, malicious smile spread across her perfectly painted lips.
Tatum deliberately lifted her left hand, resting it flat against Ryder's chest.
The massive diamond on her ring finger caught the light of the chandelier, refracting a blinding glare straight into Audie's eyes.
Ryder followed Tatum's gaze.
He turned his head and crashed right into Audie's dead, ice-cold stare.
The charming smile dropped from Ryder's face instantly.
Raw panic flared in his eyes.
His body jerked, an automatic reflex to pull his arm away from Tatum's grip.
But Tatum's manicured fingers dug into his bicep, holding him in place.
"Everyone," Tatum announced, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. "Look who made it. My little sister, Audie."
The surrounding guests turned in unison.
Dozens of eyes raked over Audie's plain office wear, making her feel entirely out of place in the sea of haute couture.
Whispers immediately broke out.
She heard the words adopted, charity case, and Bell family floating through the tense air.
Ryder swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"Audie," he stammered, taking a half-step forward. "I..."
Audie didn't shed a single tear.
She lifted the champagne flute to her lips and downed the alcohol in one long, burning swallow.
She slammed the empty crystal glass down onto a nearby cocktail table.
The sharp clink of glass hitting metal cut through the whispers.
She stared at the two of them, her stomach churning with pure bile.
"Disgusting," she said.
She turned on her heel and walked toward the heavy brass doors.
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9.1
Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys.
Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero.
Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold.
I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth.
But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me."
Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again.
Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.
7.7
Not only was I drugged, blinded and assaulted. I was deceived into carrying a baby by a stranger I never knew. Then he appeared and took my child away.
I was sent to a militia by the father of my child. I thought I was rescued but I was recruited to be a weapon for killing. Who was manipulating me, I didn't know. The answers were far from what I knew.
Forced to blend into the world that I could never believe I would be to, a place where brutality reigned, kill or be killed was the only language. I have survived but he has to pay for everything he did to me, because I believed every phase of my life was set by him and him alone. Have I really survived?
Who would have thought, he existed twice in the same world? Do I really know who I should take revenge on? Him or the person I would sacrifice everything for?
Was my mother the one who orchestrated everything? What kind of pawn am I?
9.3
She sells flowers. He spills blood. And he will stop at nothing to make her his. Elena Rossi has always lived quietly among roses and lilies, dreaming of love as gentle as the petals she arranges. She thought she found it in Daniel, the man she planned to marry. Until her wedding day when a dangerous stranger walked into the church and shattered everything. Adrian Volkov is a king in the underworld, a man feared for his ruthlessness and power. But to him, Elena is not just a prize. She is an obsession. A storm he cannot live without. And he will burn the world and anyone in it, to claim her. Torn from the life she knew, Elena resists him, manipulates him, and even runs from him. But Adrian is relentless. His love is dark, his touch both punishing and tender, and his obsession inescapable. When betrayal and bloodshed close in, Elena must face the truth: She doesn't just fear him. She doesn't just hate him. She loves him. Petals and Blood is a haunting, passionate tale of obsession, betrayal, and the dangerous kind of love that blooms in shadows.
7.9
June was an ordinary architect struggling to pay rent, completely estranged from her high-society mother.
But one night, she was kidnapped and beaten in an abandoned warehouse by Gage Becker, the city's most ruthless billionaire, who demanded payback for her mother's sins.
Gage pointed a high-definition camera at June's battered face and video-called her mother, threatening to release the footage and ruin her upcoming billion-dollar wedding.
"I will never throw away a billion-dollar marriage for a useless daughter."
Her mother's cold voice echoed through the warehouse before the line went dead.
From that moment, Gage systematically destroyed June's life. She was publicly humiliated and forced to hack off her own hair with a cigar cutter. She was blacklisted from every firm in the city, evicted by her landlord, and violently mugged in a freezing New York blizzard.
Curled up in an icy tunnel waiting to die, June felt a suffocating despair. She hadn't spoken to her mother in months. Why did she have to endure this hell for a woman who didn't even care if she lived or died? Why was a monster like Gage so obsessed with driving her to the grave?
When Gage's armored Maybach pulled up, he stepped into the snow to mock her, waiting for her to finally surrender and beg for his mercy.
But the absolute humiliation snapped the last thread of June's sanity.
Instead of crying, she lunged forward with feral energy and sank her teeth directly into the devil's flesh.
8.9
The mangled car teetered on the cliff's edge, my leg crushed, gasoline fumes thick in the air. My husband, Holden, stood safe on the highway, directing the rescue – but not for me. He was saving her, the woman in the passenger seat, leaving me and our unborn child to the ocean below.
I woke trapped in the crushed Maybach, leg pinned. The cliff loomed; the driver's seat was empty.
Holden, safe outside, directed paramedics past me to Giana, his "most valuable asset," ordering her rescue first.
I watched him comfort Giana, oblivious, as the car slid. My baby barely viable. Holden offered a black card for silence; Giana gloated.
Ten years of devotion, a cruel lie. Rage fueled me: how could he abandon his wife and child?
I swore a venomous oath: never again an accessory. I flicked his card away, shielded my pregnancy, and promised my baby escape.
8.9
Aubree Hamilton was the top-tier executive assistant to Wall Street's most ruthless titan, Beck Franco. A month ago, she made a catastrophic mistake and spent the night in his bed.
Thinking she had erased the mistake with a morning-after pill, she panicked upon his return and lied about being engaged to push him away.
But Beck, a man who despised disloyalty above all else, immediately suspended her and ordered her escorted out of the building. Her nightmare only escalated when her toxic ex-boyfriend attacked her on the street, tearing her purse open and exposing the empty morning-after pill box to the public—and to Beck, who was watching from his penthouse. After having his security rescue her, Beck trapped her in his car, ruthlessly tearing apart her fake engagement. Later in her apartment, the suffocating tension between them almost ignited into a kiss, but a violent wave of nausea suddenly hit Aubree.
She shoved him away with all her strength and violently threw up in the bathroom.
Beck took it as the ultimate physical disgust. He walked out, deeply humiliated and dangerously obsessed, unleashing his resources to investigate her every move.
Left alone and trembling, Aubree finally checked the crushed white box. The pill she took had expired a month ago.
Staring at the two bright pink lines on the pregnancy test, she made a desperate vow: Beck Franco could never know she was carrying his child, and she had to disappear before he found out.