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 7
At two in the afternoon, Collette had just managed to fall into a light sleep.
The door to her room swung open. A team of nurses walked in.
The head nurse smiled politely. "Ms. Norris, we are moving you to the VIP suite on the top floor."
Collette frowned. Her chest tightened with immediate rejection. "I didn't ask to be moved."
"It's a direct order from Mr. Lara," the nurse replied, already unlocking the wheels of the bed.
Before Collette could argue, two orderlies pushed her bed out of the room and into the private medical elevator.
The doors opened on the top floor.
They wheeled her into a suite that looked like a five-star hotel. Massive floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the autumn leaves of Central Park.
The nurses transferred her to the luxury bed and quietly left the room.
Collette sat in the center of the massive bed. The silk sheets felt like a golden cage pressing against her skin.
She couldn't breathe.
She ripped the empty IV tube from her hand, threw off the covers, and stood up. She needed air.
Wearing only the thin silk robe provided by the hospital, she walked barefoot out of the suite.
The thick carpet absorbed all sound. She was about to head toward the elevators when a familiar, delicate laugh echoed from down the corridor, followed by the low, commanding timbre of a man's voice. Collette's heart skipped a beat. She walked toward the lounge area at the end of the hall, hiding behind a massive potted palm tree.
A soft, rolling sound caught her attention.
Collette peeked through the green leaves. The blood drained from her face.
Hartwell was back.
He was walking slowly down the hall, his hands resting on the handles of a wheelchair.
Sitting in the wheelchair was Isabell.
She had a white bandage wrapped around her head. She was holding a paper cup of hot cocoa, giggling at something she was saying.
Hartwell, the man who never bowed his head to anyone, was leaning down slightly to listen to her. There was a faint, tolerant look on his face.
Collette's stomach lurched. A violent wave of physical disgust washed over her.
Just then, Isabell shifted in the chair. Her eyes flicked toward the potted plant. She saw the edge of Collette's silk robe.
A nasty, calculating gleam flashed in Isabell's eyes.
"Ah!" Isabell cried out.
She jerked her hand, intentionally tipping the cup. The hot cocoa spilled all over the blanket covering her legs.
She threw herself backward, crying out in pain, her head resting directly against Hartwell's stomach.
Hartwell immediately stopped the wheelchair.
He pulled a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and bent over, quickly wiping the liquid off the blanket.
While his head was down, Isabell looked up. She stared straight through the leaves at Collette and gave her a smug, victorious smirk.
Collette let out a cold, sharp laugh.
She didn't hide anymore. She stepped out from behind the plant and walked right into the middle of the hallway.
The sound of her laugh made Hartwell freeze.
He stood up straight and turned his head.
When he saw Collette standing there in a thin robe, barefoot on the floor, his eyes darkened with immediate anger.
He took long strides toward her, shrugging off his suit jacket as he walked.
He reached out, fully intending to wrap the warm jacket around her shivering shoulders.
The second the fabric touched her skin, Collette violently jerked backward.
She looked at his hands like they were covered in a deadly virus. Her eyes were filled with absolute, unfiltered disgust.
Hartwell's hands froze in mid-air. The jacket slipped halfway down his arm.
He stared at her, completely shocked by the pure repulsion in her eyes.
Collette glanced at Isabell in the wheelchair, then looked straight into Hartwell's eyes.
"Mr. Lara," Collette said, her voice dripping with ice. "Don't touch me with the same hands you use to take care of other women. I find it dirty."
The word echoed in the silent hallway.
The air around them shattered.
Collette didn't wait for his reaction. She turned around, keeping her spine perfectly straight, and walked back to her VIP suite.
She left Hartwell standing frozen in the hallway, his face turning a terrifying shade of pale.
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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+