The Ruined Heiress's Vengeful Comeback
Three years ago, Collette was framed in a vicious drug and sex scandal by her half-sister. Her father didn't ask a single question before banishing her to the gutters of Europe.
She clawed her way back to New York for revenge, willingly becoming a disposable, cheap toy for the city's most dangerous billionaire, Hartwell Lara, just to use him as her weapon.
But Hartwell’s heart belonged entirely to his delicate future wife, Isabell. When Collette nearly died of severe pneumonia on a freezing balcony, Hartwell left her bleeding and alone to patiently peel apples for Isabell. Isabell then barged into Collette's hospital room, maliciously tore her life-saving CFDA design sketch to shreds, and brutally slapped her own face.
"Collette... why are you being so mean to me?!"
Isabell screamed, collapsing to the floor just as Hartwell violently pushed the door open. His dark eyes locked onto Collette, filled with the same absolute, chilling disgust her father had shown three years ago.
Why was she always the one thrown away like garbage? Why did her own blood family destroy her, and why did the man she surrendered her dignity to trample her last hope for a liar?
Staring at her ruined life's work beneath Isabell's designer shoes, the tiny crack of warmth Hartwell had left in Collette's heart froze completely. She didn't bother to explain or beg. She just smiled her signature empty smile, ready to burn the Norris family and the Lara Empire to the ground.
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Chapter 5
Collette stumbled back into her standard ward room.
Her legs gave out the second she reached the bed. She collapsed onto the thin mattress.
She grabbed the scratchy white blanket and pulled it entirely over her head.
Her body shook uncontrollably. The fever burned her skin, but inside, she felt completely hollowed out.
Heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed in the hallway.
The sound of expensive leather shoes hitting the linoleum floor grew louder, stopping right outside her door.
The door was pushed open.
"Mr. Lara," Marta's voice trembled with respect.
Hartwell walked in. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Collette kept her eyes squeezed shut. Under the blanket, her hands curled into tight fists. Her fingernails dug deep into her palms.
Hartwell stopped next to the bed.
He looked down at the blanket, then his eyes caught the drops of blood smeared on the white sheets from where she had ripped out the IV.
The space between his eyebrows pulled into a hard, deep crease.
"Get a nurse in here to fix this line. Now," Hartwell barked. His voice was thick with raw anger and heavy irritation.
The nurse rushed in, her hands shaking as she re-inserted the needle into Collette's bruised vein. As soon as she finished, she practically ran out of the room.
Hartwell reached down and violently ripped the blanket off Collette's head.
Collette was forced to open her eyes.
She stared up into his pitch-black eyes. Her own eyes were completely dead, filled with nothing but defensive spikes and cold mockery.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Hartwell demanded, towering over her. "Running out to the balcony in the middle of the night? Is this some pathetic attempt at a pity play?"
The words hit the exact center of Collette's trauma.
She let out a harsh, breathless laugh. Her chest heaved.
"A pity play?" Collette sneered. Her voice was weak, but the venom in it was lethal. "I wouldn't dare. After all, I'm not nearly as delicate as Miss Nielsen."
Hartwell's pupils contracted to pinpoints.
The air in the room turned dangerous.
He leaned down, his large hand snapping out to grip her jaw. His fingers pressed hard into her skin, forcing her to tilt her head back and look at him.
"Do not test my limits, Collette," Hartwell warned through gritted teeth. "You and she are not comparable."
Collette's heart physically ached, but she forced her chin up higher against his grip.
"You're absolutely right," she smiled, a hollow, ugly thing. "I'm just a whore you bought. She's your actual heart."
Hartwell's jaw ticked. The muscle jumped under his skin.
His fingers tightened on her jaw.
Collette sucked in a sharp breath of pain, but she didn't blink. She just stared at him, daring him to break her.
They stayed locked like that for ten agonizing seconds.
Hartwell stared at her flushed, feverish cheeks and her cracked, bleeding lip.
Slowly, he let go.
He let out a harsh breath, turned his back to her, and walked to the water dispenser in the corner of the room.
He filled a paper cup with warm water. He pressed the back of his hand against the paper to test the temperature, ensuring it was appropriately warm.
He walked back to the bed.
He slid his arm under her neck, easily lifting her upper body off the pillows. He pressed the cup to her lips.
Collette turned her face away. She kept her lips clamped shut.
"Drink it," Hartwell growled. "Or I will force it down your throat with my mouth."
Collette's eyes widened slightly. She knew he wasn't bluffing.
Humiliated, she opened her mouth and let him pour the water down her dry throat.
When he pulled the cup away, Collette tried to shift her weight. Her left arm, stiff from the IV, moved awkwardly. She let out a quiet hiss of pain.
Hartwell set the cup down.
He didn't say a word. He just reached out and grabbed her cold, stiff arm.
He placed her arm across his thigh. His large, warm hand wrapped around her wrist.
With perfect, calculated pressure, his thumb began to massage the tight muscles of her forearm, working his way up to ease the soreness from the IV fluid.
He kept his head down. His face was completely focused, his touch incredibly gentle, as if he were holding something made of fragile glass.
Collette stared at the straight line of his nose and his thick eyelashes.
The heavy block of ice in her chest cracked, just a fraction.
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7.2
Genevieve woke up choking on her own blood, a fatal gash tearing through her abdomen. The memories of a primitive world crashed into her mind—she had transmigrated into the body of a sadistic beastman Mistress.
But the five powerful beastmen "mates" standing over her hadn't come to her rescue. They had come to watch their tormentor die.
"We should just leave her," Kameron sneered coldly. "The scavengers will clean up the mess."
Gilberto spat in disgust, while Angelo, a silver-scaled snake-man, trembled in pure terror at the sight of her. The original owner had whipped them, humiliated them, and driven another mate to suicide. Now, they were letting her bleed out in the mud, their eyes filled with undisguised loathing and satisfaction.
She was a top-tier apocalyptic survival expert, yet here she was, paying the ultimate price for a stranger's monstrous sins. It was a bitter, unacceptable irony to die helplessly in the dirt while her supposed protectors waited for her corpse to rot.
She refused to accept this ending.
Forcing a chaotic surge of energy through their shared Biological Link, she brought all five men to their knees in agonizing pain, commanding them to carry her back. In the dark cave, without a single scream, she plunged her bare hands into a fire and brutally cauterized her own gaping wound with searing ash. As the beastmen stared in horrified awe at the unbreakable soul now occupying the tyrant's body, Genevieve wiped the blood from her face and began to rewrite her fate.
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.
7.7
Rory stood on the witness stand, forced by her father into an impossible choice: secure her dying mother's medical funding, or save her innocent boyfriend.
She looked Corbin right in his trusting eyes and lied to the court, testifying that he was the one driving the car during the fatal hit-and-run, sending him to a maximum-security prison for ten years.
The betrayal destroyed him. Corbin's father died of a heart attack upon hearing the guilty verdict. Six years later, Corbin returned as a ruthless billionaire and systematically blacklisted Rory from every job in the city. He cornered her into singing at his private club, humiliating her by forcing her to drink scotch—knowing she was severely allergic—and making her throw away his promise ring just to earn a stack of cash.
"Remember this moment. This is only the beginning."
She endured his cruel revenge because she was hiding a desperate secret: she was raising his five-year-old daughter, Willa. But when Willa's congenital heart defect suddenly worsened, requiring an impossible one-million-dollar surgery, Rory realized Corbin's calculated blockade had left her completely trapped with no way to save their child.
Staring at the sterile hospital walls, the last shred of her guilt burned away, replaced by a cold, hard resolve. He had destroyed her career and backed her into a corner, but he was the only one with the money. Wiping her tears, Rory turned and headed straight for Vance Tower.
9.0
The biopsy report slid across the cold metal desk, stamped with a brutal death sentence: advanced gastric cancer. Aretha had exactly ninety days left to live.
It was her twenty-sixth birthday, but her phone only rang with a furious call from her husband, Anders.
"Do you have any idea how much of a joke you made this family look like today? Post a public apology to Kelli right now."
He had completely forgotten her birthday, only caring that she skipped her adopted sister's yacht party.
When Aretha dragged her failing body back to the family estate, her biological mother slapped her across the face just for looking pale and embarrassing them in front of guests.
Seeing Aretha wasn't submitting to the usual abuse, Kelli deliberately threw herself down the stairs, playing the innocent, depressed victim.
Anders rushed in and shoved Aretha brutally against the wall to protect Kelli, while her biological father delivered his ultimate threat.
"I am freezing your trust fund. Get on your knees and apologize to Kelli right now, or you won't see another dime."
A massive, suffocating sense of absurdity washed over Aretha. She had spent six years lowering her head and begging for their approval, only to be treated like a disposable placeholder. Why should she spend her final days enduring this agonizing torture for people who didn't even care if she breathed?
Aretha wiped the blood from her chin and laughed. She publicly severed all ties with her family, whipped the signed divorce papers directly at Anders's face, and walked out into the freezing storm—ready to fight for her own life.
8.7
I was dying in a cold hospital bed, listening to the monitor count down my final seconds.
As a ghost, I watched my own funeral. My popular friends and wealthy family soon moved on, but one person stayed.
Cas Riley. The invisible outcast from the back of my history class.
He brought a white rose to my grave every single day, withering away until he collapsed on the frozen ground, dying of a broken heart for a girl who barely knew his name.
Opening my eyes again, the hospital smell was gone. I was reborn back in my high school classroom.
I immediately tracked him down, only to witness the brutal hell he was trapped in.
He was humiliated by a cruel foreman for pennies, violently slapped by his uncle over his sick mother's medical money, and forced into bloody street fights.
He was starving, covered in bruises, and completely alone.
When I tried to buy him medicine and step into his life to protect him, he violently pushed me away in the pouring rain.
"Stay out of my life! To protect you, I have to fight, and when I fight, I lose everything!"
He wasn't rejecting me out of hate. He was terrified that his dark, violent reality would drag me down with him.
Standing soaked in the rain, my resolve hardened like steel.
Gentle kindness wasn't going to save him from this hell.
To protect the boy who died for me, I had to become ruthless enough to tear down his entire rotten world and build him a new one.
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+