The Surgeon's Revenge: My Ex-Husband's Regret
The view from our twenty-million-dollar penthouse was stunning, but all I could see was the cracked screen of my phone. A single message from a contact named Sienna had just appeared: "Game On." For four years, I had worn the shapeless beige cardigans and played the quiet, submissive wife the elite Rutledge family demanded.
"Dorothea is back in the city," my husband Hunter said, refusing to meet my eyes as he pushed the divorce papers toward me.
He offered a "generous" settlement, patronizingly claiming that with my felony record and "creative resume," I’d be living on the streets without his charity. He had no idea that while he was rehearsing his breakup speech, I was already zipping up a duffel bag filled with cash and a passport in a name he didn't recognize.
His sister Kamala didn't even wait for me to pack before she was in our bedroom, calling me a leech and trying to destroy the only photo I had of my mother. I didn't cry or beg; I simply dropped Hunter’s favorite three-million-dollar Ming vase, watched it shatter, and walked out the door with a cold smile.
That night, I traded my sensible flats for a crimson silk dress and lethal heels, leaving Hunter’s jaw on the floor when he saw me at an exclusive club. He watched in horror as I smashed a vodka bottle over a harasser's head, still believing I was a broken woman who needed his protection.
He didn't know the truth until his grandmother finally revealed that I was the anonymous investor who had rescued their company from bankruptcy. I had gone to prison to protect his father's reputation, wearing the shame for years so their family name wouldn't implode.
Hunter fell to his knees in the driveway, begging for a second chance and promising to dump his mistress, but the anger in my heart had already turned to ice. The man I had sacrificed my life for was now just a stranger I used to know.
"The opposite of love isn't hate, Hunter. It's indifference."
I climbed into a purple supercar as my phone buzzed with a call from Mount Sinai Hospital. My medical license was reinstated, and a high-profile trauma case was waiting for my hands. Iris the housewife was dead, and Dr. Gutierrez was finally back in play.
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Chapter 5
The lighting in the hallway leading to the restrooms was dim, bathed in red and purple neons. The music was muffled here, a dull throb in the background.
Iris checked her makeup in the mirror. Perfect. Not a smudge.
She pushed open the door and stepped back into the hallway.
A man was blocking her path.
He was young, maybe twenty-five, wearing a suit that was too shiny and a watch that was too big. He had the glazed look of someone who had consumed too much alcohol and too much of his father's money.
Leo Leone. The son of a shipping magnate. A notorious pest.
"Whoa," he said, leaning against the wall. "Where have you been hiding?"
Iris tried to step around him. "Excuse me."
He moved to block her again. "Don't be like that. I'm Leo. You look... expensive."
"I'm out of your budget," Iris said, her voice ice cold.
She tried to push past him, but he reached out and grabbed her wrist. His hand was clammy.
"Let go," she said.
"Just one drink," he slurred. "Come on, Red."
"Hey!"
A voice boomed from the end of the hallway.
Iris looked up. Hunter was standing there. He must have been coming to the VIP bar. He looked furious.
"Get your hands off her," Hunter shouted, striding toward them.
Leo looked at Hunter, then sneered. "Relax, grandpa. She's fair game."
Hunter reached them and shoved Leo's chest. "She said let go."
Leo stumbled back, releasing Iris's wrist. He looked at Hunter, recognizing him. "Rutledge? What is this, your escort?"
Hunter ignored him. He turned to Iris, his eyes filled with a mix of adrenaline and white-knight complex.
"Are you okay, miss? I..."
He stopped.
The red neon light flickered, illuminating Iris's face.
Hunter froze. His eyes widened, his pupils dilating. He blinked, once, twice. He looked at the red dress, the cleavage, the dark lipstick.
"Iris?" he whispered. It was a sound of pure disbelief.
Iris smoothed her wrist where Leo had touched her. "Hello, Hunter."
He shook his head, as if trying to clear a hallucination. "What... what are you doing here? You look..."
"Different?" she suggested.
"You look like a..." He didn't finish the sentence, but his eyes raked over her body with a hunger he hadn't shown in years.
Dorothea appeared behind him, breathless from chasing him in her heels.
"Hunter, what's wrong? Who is..."
She saw Iris. Her jaw dropped.
"Iris?" she squeaked.
She looked Iris up and down, her eyes narrowing instantly. She took in the dress, the setting, the man (Leo) lurking nearby.
She let out a small, theatrical gasp to cover her mouth.
"Oh my god," she said loudly. "Iris, are you... working here?"
The implication hung in the air. Prostitute.
Leo snickered. "How much, then?"
Hunter's face turned a deep shade of crimson. He looked at Iris with horror. Not because she was being insulted, but because he thought she was embarrassing him.
"Iris," he hissed. "Tell me you're not doing this. We haven't even filed the papers yet. Think of the family reputation."
Iris laughed. It was a dark, rich sound that bubbled up from her chest.
She stepped closer to Hunter. She was close enough to smell the scotch on his breath. She leaned in, her lips inches from his ear.
"I'm not working, Hunter," she whispered. "I'm celebrating."
"Celebrating what?" he asked, stiffening.
"My widowhood," she said.
She pulled back and winked at him.
Hunter looked like she had slapped him.
Leo, emboldened by the confusion, stepped forward again. "So, if you're not with him..."
He reached out and placed a hand on Iris's lower back, his fingers sliding toward her hip.
"I said, I'm fair game, right?" Leo grinned.
Hunter opened his mouth to shout again, but he was too slow.
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9.0
He drew her before he ever met her.
She dreams of him every night... without knowing who he is.
Nora is a brilliant editor in a prestigious journalism company - confident, successful... and completely unaware of her past. But night after night, she dreams of a mysterious warrior prince in a realm that feels far too real. When Edward, the enigmatic new CEO of her branch, walks into her life, her world starts to unravel. He's the son of the company's owner, and though they've never met, he's been drawing her face for years.
As their connection deepens, strange events begin to blur the line between reality and fantasy. What neither of them knows is that their souls are bound - not just in this life, but in another.
In a parallel world, Leela is a fearless warrior and spy, sworn to protect her people. Jing, the prince of a war-torn kingdom, trusts her with his life... but must never love her. Their bond is dangerous. Forbidden. And yet, undeniable.
Two women. Two men.
Two worlds on the brink of war... and love that defies fate.
When destiny calls across dimensions, will they choose duty - or the one their soul remembers?
8.6
In my past life, the Cerberus strain leaked, turning the world into a blood-soaked hell of rotting flesh and mutated monsters.
I thought my boyfriend Declan and my best friend Hailee would have my back as we fled the quarantine zone.
Instead, when the surging crowd of the infected cornered us, they didn't hesitate.
They shoved me backward into the horde just to buy themselves three seconds to run.
As I fell into the mud, I saw them fleeing without a single backward glance.
"She's dead weight anyway!" Hailee screamed.
"Just keep running, she'll distract them!" Declan yelled back.
I was torn apart, feeling the agonizing tear of rotting teeth sinking into my neck and the hot spray of my own blood.
Before the apocalypse, my greedy uncle had locked away my ten-million-dollar trust fund, leaving me with nothing but a fake boyfriend who only wanted me for my money.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand how the people I loved most could trade my life for a head start.
Why did I blindly trust them? Why didn't I see through their perfectly choreographed lies?
Opening my eyes again, the stench of decaying flesh vanished, replaced by the sterile smell of my college dorm room.
Hailee and Declan were standing over my bed, faking tears of concern over my meningitis fever.
I was back exactly seven days before the world ended, and my spatial vault ability had come back with me.
This time, I'm extorting my uncle for every cent, hoarding the city's supplies, and leaving them all to rot.
8.5
Tyla thought Miami was her fresh start. She didn't expect to become the obsession of the city's most dangerous "Golden Boy," Daniel Thorne. He's untouchable, wealthy beyond measure, and used to getting what he wants. And right now? He wants Tyla-body, soul, and everything in between.
But the heat in Miami isn't just from the sun. While Daniel's magnetic pull draws Tyla into a world of high-stakes parties and whispered promises, a blade is being sharpened in the shadows. Summer, the "best friend" who has lived in Tyla's shadow for years, has finally reached her breaking point.
Summer doesn't just want Daniel; she wants Tyla's life. And she's willing to burn both of them to the ground to get it.
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.
9.0
I had been a wife for exactly six hours when I woke up to the sound of my husband’s heavy breathing. In the dim moonlight of our bridal suite, I watched Hardin, the man I had adored for years, intertwined with my sister Carissa on the chaise lounge.
The betrayal didn't come with an apology. Hardin stood up, unashamed, and sneered at me. "You're awake? Get out, you frumpy mute." Carissa huddled under a throw, her fake tears already welling up as she played the victim. They didn't just want me gone; they wanted me erased to protect their reputations.
When I refused to move, my world collapsed. My father didn't offer a shoulder to cry on; he threatened to have me committed to a mental asylum to save his business merger. "You're a disgrace," he bellowed, while the guards stood ready to drag me away. They had spent my life treating me like a stuttering, submissive pawn, and now they were done with me.
I felt a blinding pain in my skull, a fracture that should have broken me. But instead of tears, something dormant and lethal flickered to life. The terrified girl who walked down the aisle earlier that day simply ceased to exist. In her place, a clinical system—the Valkyrie Protocol—booted up.
My racing heart plummeted to a steady sixty beats per minute. I didn't scream. I stood up, my spine straightening for the first time in twenty years, and looked at Hardin with the detachment of a surgeon looking at a tumor.
"Correction," I said, my voice stripped of its stutter. "You're in my light."
By dawn, I had drained my father's accounts, vanished into a storm, and found a bleeding Crown Prince in a hidden safehouse. They thought they had broken a mute girl. They didn't realize they had just activated their own destruction.
9.2
I was sold to Damien Russo, the ruthless Don of Chicago, as collateral in a shipping route transaction. I was expected to be a silent, obedient bride in a cold, loveless marriage.
But the moment I stepped into the Russo estate, I realized my new family wanted to completely destroy me.
My mother-in-law, Eleonora, and her arrogant relatives immediately targeted me. They set traps in the solarium, mocked my late mother's heritage, and tried to force me into humiliating submission using their strict mafia traditions. They wanted to break my spirit so Damien would replace me with the bride they actually wanted—a purebred mafia princess. They expected me to cower in fear, isolated and helpless, while the whole family watched my public humiliation and waited for my downfall.
Did they really think I was just a fragile girl who would cry and run away? They completely underestimated the survival instincts of a woman who grew up in this bloody world. I learned long ago that tears are worthless.
"My rules are simple. Vendetta is a two-way street."
Instead of breaking, I smiled. I weaponized their own legendary ancestors and the sacred promise of an unborn heir to trap the Matriarch in her own rules, forcing her into a suffocating silence. If they wanted a war for the throne, I would gladly show them exactly why I am the undisputed Mafia Queen.