The Mute Wife's Silent Revenge
I haven't spoken a word in three years. As a professional art restorer, I spent my days fixing seventeenth-century Dutch oils and playing the role of the perfect, silent wife to billionaire Arno Rutledge. I thought our marriage was a cold but stable arrangement, a gilded cage I had accepted to keep my father’s medical bills paid.
That illusion shattered when I found a VIP hospital pass in Arno's suit pocket. Following the trail, I discovered my husband was keeping a woman named Serena on life support in a restricted wing. He wasn't just paying for her care; he was micromanaging her vitals from a tablet like a volatile stock portfolio, obsessed with controlling her every breath while lying to me about late-night board meetings.
When I confronted him at the hospital, the mask of the refined businessman slipped. He didn't offer an apology; he offered a violent shove. I crashed into a glass display case, the shards slicing deep into my dominant hand—the hand I used to restore history. As blood pulsed onto the white tiles, Arno didn't even look back. He was too busy cradling the other woman’s hand, leaving me to stitch my own mangled flesh together with industrial glue in a public restroom.
Back at the penthouse, the nightmare only escalated. When I tried to pack my bags, Arno froze my bank accounts and reminded me that he controlled the ventilator keeping my father alive. He dragged me into my studio, snapped my custom sable brushes in front of my face, and forced himself on me atop my own workbench.
"You’re an asset, Edlyn," he whispered against my skin. "And right now, you’re underperforming."
He told me that since my hands were now "broken equipment," I had to find other ways to compensate for my lack of value. He thought he had successfully liquidated my soul, leaving me a hollow shell trapped in his high-rise fortress.
But Arno made one fatal mistake. He thinks because I am mute, I am also blind. He thinks because he broke my hand, I have lost my touch. He doesn't realize that a restorer’s greatest skill isn't her hands—it's her ability to see the hidden rot beneath the surface. He wants to treat me like a line item on a balance sheet? Fine. I’m about to show him exactly what happens when an asset decides to set the entire portfolio on fire.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 6
The alarms were getting louder.
"Tachycardia!" a doctor shouted. "She's in distress!"
Edlyn stood at the threshold. She hadn't left. She couldn't. She needed to see the depth of his devotion.
Arno turned his head. He saw her standing there. His eyes were wild.
"Get out!" he roared.
Edlyn didn't move.
A crash team arrived with a cart. The hallway was chaos. Arno stood up and charged toward the door to close it.
Edlyn instinctively reached out. She put her hand on the doorframe, trying to keep the connection open, trying to force him to acknowledge her existence.
"Don't block the way!" Arno yelled.
He shoved her. It wasn't a gentle push. It was a violent, desperate shove.
Edlyn lost her balance. She stumbled backward. Her heels slipped on the polished floor.
She fell. Her right hand-her dominant hand, the hand that held the scalpel, the hand that restored history-flailed out to break her fall.
It smashed into the glass display case lining the corridor wall.
CRASH.
The sound was sickening. The glass shattered into jagged shards.
Edlyn felt a dull impact, then a sharp, searing heat. She pulled her hand back.
Blood. So much blood. It pulsed from her palm, dark and fast. A large shard of glass was embedded deep in the muscle of her thumb.
The sound of the breaking glass silenced the room for a heartbeat.
Arno looked at her. He looked at the blood dripping onto the white tiles. He looked at the glass in her hand.
Edlyn looked up at him. She waited. She waited for the regret. She waited for him to come to her.
"Arno..." Serena moaned from the bed.
Arno's eyes snapped back to the woman in the bed. He didn't hesitate. He didn't blink.
He turned his back on Edlyn.
He slammed the door.
The click of the latch was the loudest sound Edlyn had ever heard.
She sat on the floor, surrounded by broken glass. The pain in her hand was blinding, but the pain in her chest was absolute.
"Oh my god! Your hand!"
A nurse ran over, kneeling beside her. "We need to get you to the ER."
Edlyn looked at the closed door. He knew. He saw. And he chose.
She pushed the nurse away. She struggled to her feet, clutching her bleeding wrist with her left hand. Blood soaked her sleeve. It dripped onto her shoes.
She shook her head at the nurse.
She turned and walked toward the elevators. She left a trail of red drops on the pristine floor.
The restorer was gone. Something else was taking her place.
You may also like
8.8
Scarlet's world shattered the night she discovered her husband in her bed with her own sister.
The betrayal was brutal. The humiliation, unforgivable. And what hurt the most? Neither of them felt a single ounce of remorse.
Within months, her husband divorced her and married the very woman who helped destroy her life, her sister.
They thought she would break. They thought she would disappear quietly.
They were wrong.
Ryan Marchetti-cold, calculating, and dangerously powerful, has spent years waiting for the perfect chance to destroy his business rival. Marrying that rival's ex-wife is the ultimate move. Strategic.
For Scarlet, marrying Ryan isn't about love. It's about revenge.
A calculated alliance. A public statement. A promise that she will rise from the ashes they left her in. Together, they become the scandal that shakes empires.
But revenge is never simple.
Because behind Ryan's icy control lies a secret, one tied to her past, to her ex-husband, to the very marriage that ruined her life. A truth so explosive it could unravel everything she thought she knew.
Was she just a pawn in Ryan's war from the very beginning?
Or is the man she's slowly falling for capable of betraying her too?
In a game fueled by vengeance, power, and buried truths, Scarlet must decide:
Will she let betrayal destroy her again...
Or will she risk her heart for the one man who might truly love her?
9.1
Waking up naked between two strangers wasn't part of Kiara's engagement celebration. Neither was being rejected by her fated mate, disowned by her family, and stabbed by her only sister.
Six years later, she's survived. Rebuilt. Moved on.
Then Chase Knight walks back into her life, and the mate bond that should've died? It's very much alive. He still makes her feel things she thought died years ago.
There's just one problem: he's engaged to Kylie and Kiara has a secret she'd rather die than let any one of them find out about.
And Chase? He's about to find out that the woman he rejected six years ago is the only one he's ever really wanted.
9.5
Isla Rivera's mistake was being too good at her job. When she uncovers money laundering at Vitale Imports, she becomes the captive of Dante Vitale - a dangerous mafia don who needs her forensic accounting skills to find the traitor stealing from his empire.
The deal is simple: find who's taken fifty million, or lose everything she loves.
But nothing about Dante is simple. Behind the ruthless exterior is a man who never chose this life, who protects innocents even as he rules a world built on blood and power. A man whose dark eyes see straight through Isla's defenses, awakening a desire she never expected to feel for her captor.
As Isla unravels a conspiracy buried deep inside Dante's own family, the professional arrangement turns personal. Every heated glance, every stolen moment in his penthouse pulls them closer, blurring the line between fear and forbidden attraction.
When she uncovers the truth - the enemy is someone Dante once trusted - the stakes explode. Now Isla must choose between walking away safely, or standing beside the dangerous man who has claimed both her heart and her fate.
Because she's no longer just his prisoner. She's his partner. And some bonds are forged in fire, loyalty... and love.
Mafia Romance • Enemies to Lovers • Forced Proximity • Dark Romance • HEA Guarantee
7.2
I stared at the ceiling tiles of the sterile clinic, counting water stains to keep from screaming. The IVF transfer was complete, but the nurse didn’t call me a mother—she called the life inside me an "asset" for Caldwell Holdings.
When I walked into my husband Alexander’s office to demand a divorce, he didn't even look up from his desk. He just laughed, shredded my legal papers, and told me I was nothing more than a high-end broodmare for his inheritance.
The nightmare only deepened from there. To keep me in line, Alexander fabricated evidence of an affair to destroy my reputation. When I tried to run, he revealed he controlled the facility where my sister was on life support, threatening to pull the plug if I didn't submit.
"One phone call, and her ventilator stops," he whispered.
Even my own parents turned against me, demanding I apologize to Alexander’s mistress just to secure their next business merger. I was a prisoner in my own life, trapped between a husband who wanted to own me and a family that had already sold me. I couldn't understand why everyone was so obsessed with this pregnancy until I saw the fear in Alexander's eyes when his uncle, the powerful Harrison Sterling, started showing up at my door.
I finally hacked into the clinic’s high-security database and found the truth. There had been a catastrophic lab breach the day of my procedure. The donor wasn't some anonymous third party.
I wasn't carrying my husband's child. I was carrying his uncle's heir.
As Alexander sent a hitman to stage a fatal "accident" on the Manhattan Bridge, I realized the war had just begun. This time, I wasn't just fighting for my life—I was holding the nuclear leverage that would burn the Caldwell empire to the ground.
8.5
After five years in prison, Alexia longed for freedom and the family she thought awaited her-only to discover a deadly plot orchestrated by the sister they cherished.
In her final moments, she realized those years were a sacrifice made to protect a bunch of leeches.
Reborn, she abandoned all hope for family and reshaped herself in darkness, turning pain into power.
Quietly, she began her revenge, using a dangerous man as her pawn to execute every step flawlessly and crush those who betrayed her.
But as she played her game, he pulled her closer and warned, "Think you can use me and walk away? Not a chance."
8.6
Book Two of the Betrayed Luna to Alpha Queen Series
Can be read as a standalone or after Book One
-----
"They were supposed to hate me. All four of them. But the Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes, she just has a twisted sense of humor."
-----
"Let me die free rather than live as his possession."
Those were Lyralei Ravenwood's last words before she jumped off Widow's Cliff, choosing death over marriage to a monster hiding behind a charming smile.
She should have died.
Instead, she wakes in the camp of the Four Great Alphas..the most powerful, dangerous men in the ancient werewolf world. Men who look at her with resentment. Men who make it clear she's not welcome.
The Moon Goddess sent her to unite them against a rising darkness.
But they don't want unity. They don't want her.
Lyra didn't ask to be sent anywhere. She just wanted to escape a cage.
Now she's trapped with four hostile Alphas who see her as an obligation rather than a person. Who resent every breath she takes. Who make it clear that prophecy or not, she will never command their loyalty.
But something is awakening between them. Something ancient and undeniable.
The Primordial Mate Bond-a force that links one soul to multiple Alphas, pulling them together whether they want it or not.
As shadow wolves attack and an ancient evil rises, Lyra must navigate not just war, but the far more dangerous battlefield of four hearts that were determined to hate her.
Because feelings without trust are torture.
CONTENT WARNING: This book contains mature themes including explicit sexual content, violence, death of major characters, psychological trauma, and morally complex situations. Recommended for readers 18+