The Heart That Gave Up, Found Its Way
My husband stood me up on the biggest night of my career—my first solo art exhibition.
I found him on the news, shielding another woman from a storm of cameras while the entire gallery watched my world collapse.
His text was a final, cold slap in the face: "Kacie needs me. You'll be fine."
For years, he'd called my art a "hobby," forgetting it was the foundation of his billion-dollar company. He had made me invisible.
So I called my lawyer with a plan to use his arrogance against him.
"Make the divorce papers look like a boring IP release form," I told her. "He'll sign anything to get me out of his office."
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Chapter 3
Aryana's POV:
Walking out of that glass tower, I didn't know whether to throw up or to laugh. So I just kept walking, the signed divorce paper a secret fire in my bag.
I was free. I was also terrified.
Back at the penthouse, an email was waiting for me. It was a sign. A lifeline I had thrown to myself weeks ago, now being thrown back.
From: Cascade Foothills Artist Residency
Subject: Your Application
Dear Ms. Mason,
We are thrilled to offer you a place in our fall program. Your work was a unanimous favorite among the selection committee. We require your decision within 48 hours. The residency begins in two weeks.
Two weeks. A fourteen-day countdown to a new life.
I typed my reply before I could second-guess it.
I accept with pleasure.
I booked a one-way flight to Portland, Oregon. Then I started to erase myself from the life I was leaving behind.
I spent the next few days in a blur, packing the few things that were actually mine—my books, my clothes, my art supplies—and sending them to a storage unit. The rest was just a set. Designer dresses I never felt comfortable in, cold furniture I never chose. It was easy to leave.
But a strange exhaustion had settled deep in my bones. I told myself it was stress. A week later, when a wave of nausea hit me so hard in the middle of an art supply store that I had to grip a shelf to stay upright, I told myself it was the flu.
Then I did the math.
My period was late.
A cold dread, sharp and sickening, washed over me. No. It wasn't possible.
I bought a pregnancy test along with my charcoal pencils. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely pay the cashier.
I went to my studio, the one place in this city that was truly mine. The one place that felt safe. I took the test and set the small plastic stick on the edge of the sink.
Three minutes. I had dismantled my marriage in under twenty-four hours, but now I had to wait three minutes to find out if I was still chained to him.
My heart pounded a frantic, terrified rhythm against my ribs. Please, no. Please, no.
The timer on my phone went off.
I took a deep breath and looked.
Two pink lines. Unmistakable. Positive.
The world tilted. I stumbled back, my legs giving out, and sank onto a stool. Pregnant. The memory of that last time with Cameron, just a few weeks ago, came rushing back. It hadn't been an act of love. It had been cold, detached. A duty.
And now it was a life.
My simple plan to disappear, to start over as Aryana Mason, had just been obliterated.
I wasn't just running from him anymore. I was hiding his child.
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9.5
My boyfriend, Jefferson, convinced me to give up my Yale scholarship for him. He was my secret, my escape from the shame of my mother's past, and I threw away my future for our love.
Then, at a gala, he publicly announced his engagement to Aubrey Carroll-the girl who made my high school years a living hell.
He trapped me in his mansion, forcing me to become her personal servant. She tortured me daily, culminating in her brutally killing our dog, Charlie, with a garden trowel.
When her friends arrived, they joined in, stripping me half-naked and live-streaming my panic attack for the world to see.
The man who once promised to protect me watched as they destroyed me.
But as I lay bleeding out on the floor, it wasn't an ambulance that arrived. It was the private security of Alexzander Stevens-my estranged, billionaire grandfather.
He revealed I was his sole heiress, and now, we were going to make them pay for every last tear.
7.3
Eloise was the untouchable Brandt family heiress, just one audition away from landing a lead movie role and escaping her golden cage.
But overnight, her family's empire completely collapsed.
With her father dying of heart failure, her mother forced her to beg the only man who could save them: Christian Clarke.
Christian was the ruthless billionaire who had publicly humiliated Eloise in college, ripping up her love letter in front of a laughing crowd.
Now, he tossed a fifty-million-dollar acquisition contract on the table.
"What exactly is the Brandt heiress putting up for sale today?"
To secure her father's medical care, Eloise was forced to sign a suffocating marriage contract, selling herself as a corporate tax shield.
He moved her into his freezing penthouse and treated her like a purchased asset. He mocked her attempts to cook him dinner, yet pinned her against the wall with punishing, possessive kisses whenever she tried to pull away.
Eloise's pride was entirely shattered.
She didn't understand why he was doing this. If he hated her so much and only wanted revenge, why did his touch carry such an agonizing, desperate heat?
Determined to survive, she went to her final audition and miraculously won the lead role, crying tears of joy because she had finally earned something on her own.
She had no idea that the cold-blooded monster sleeping beside her had just secretly threatened to destroy all of Hollywood to give it to her.
8.3
He laid me on the sheets, climbed over me, caged me with his arms. "Last chance to run," he said, voice low."I need the money," I whispered, feeling so tiny in his arms."You're soaking," he muttered. "Virgin or not, your pussy wants this."I moaned, looking away, couldn't help it,"Eyes on me, sweetheart," he pushed his tip in slowly."Fuck," he groaned. "So tight."He fucked me like he was claiming something. "Come for me," he whispered in my ears, moving faster."Damien," I cried out his name as I came."That's it," he growled. After a long minute he pulled out slowly. "One night," he said again, almost like a reminder....weeks later, I walked through the quiet hall of my school. A massive portrait stared back at me.Damien BlackwoodPrincipal Benefactor and OwnerColumbia University.Same man who'd just taken my virginity for money. My stomach dropped. "Oh fuck... what have I done?"
7.3
Lukas Reiner built his life based off a promise 9 years ago with Viktor Volkov... the only person who actually saw him and knew him for what he actually was. They dreamed of the same future, the same ice, the same victory together. Until Viktor disappeared without a word, leaving Lukas behind with nothing but silence, rain... and feelings he never got to confess.
Now, Lukas is at the top of college... Captain, prodigy and untouchable on ice until Viktor comes back.
Colder and older, acting like the past never existed.
Their reunion explodes into violence, but being forced to work together drags them into something far more dangerous than hate.
The tension turns into stolen moments and those moments turn into a habit but before either of them can stop it, the line between resentment and desire begins to blur.
Lukas never let go of the past.
Viktor never planned to face it.
But on the ice, there's nowhere left to run.
9.2
When Alma's father stood in front of the bulldozers to protest, the energy company's thugs beat him half to death in the mud.
Instead of arresting the attackers, the police handcuffed her bleeding father and threw him into a cruiser.
"Stay back, kid," the officer barked, shoving Alma away.
Her father was denied bail and framed for assaulting an officer. The corrupt mayor just smiled and told her not to cause a scene. Meanwhile, the company mailed her weeping mother a severance check that barely covered a month of groceries.
Alma was forced to watch her family be completely destroyed by men with money and power.
Kneeling in the cold dirt where her father's blood had spilled, she didn't shed a single tear. The panic in her chest died, replaced by a cold, absolute hatred.
She realized that crying wouldn't do anything. In this world, justice didn't exist for the weak.
Years later, Alma stepped onto a prestigious Ivy League campus, her cheap backpack slung over her shoulder.
She was surrounded by the arrogant children of the very executives who ruined her life.
She lowered her head, hiding her dead eyes, and put on the perfect mask of a timid, helpless charity case.
Undergrad was just a training ground, and these elite kids were just her practice dummies. The hunt was officially on.
9.3
After eight years in captivity, I was finally rescued. I thought it was the beginning of a new life with my mother.
But she didn't even look at me. She ran into the arms of a handsome stranger, her real husband, and I was treated like a dirty secret from her past.
They called me a contamination, a reminder of their trauma. My new stepsister set their Doberman on me, and as the dog's teeth sank into my arm, I looked up and saw my mother watching from the window.
She met my eyes for a second, then slowly closed the curtains.
In that moment, the last bit of hope I had died. The shallow bond of family was completely gone, and I finally gave up.
But they made one mistake. The family patriarch, suspicious after a car accident, ordered a secret DNA test.
The results came back on the day of my stepsister's birthday party, revealing a truth that would burn their perfect world to the ground.