The Untouchable Widow's Ruthless Vengeance
I spent three years keeping the Baldwin tech empire from crumbling after my husband died. But his nephew, Haden, despised me, convinced I was just a gold-digging widow who stole his inheritance.
The breaking point came when our biggest rival stormed into my executive office. His daughter slapped a sonogram on my desk, claiming she was pregnant with Haden's baby to force a hostile corporate merger.
Instead of denying the obvious trap, Haden used the moment to completely humiliate me. He pointed down at his expensive leather shoe right in front of our worst enemies.
"Come tie it for me. Auntie."
After forcing me to kneel, he dragged me to his penthouse in a psychotic fit of jealousy, tore my silk shirt open, and violently accused me of carrying his dead uncle's bastard. Meanwhile, our rivals threatened to tank our stock and ruin the family name if I didn't approve the marriage contract in three days.
They all thought I was completely cornered. They thought my cold silence meant I was a fragile woman finally broken by their ruthless power plays. They didn't know I had already spotted the doctored pixels on their cheap, fake ultrasound.
I smiled and agreed to their three-day deadline.
They thought I was preparing a press release for a Wall Street wedding. They had no idea I was preparing a superyacht, a heavy-duty crane, and a bucket of bloody chum to feed the fake bride's real lover to the Great Whites on a live broadcast.
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Chapter 3
Haden stormed out of the club, ignoring the shocked stares of the patrons. He ripped open the back door of the black Maybach waiting at the curb and threw himself into the leather seat. He slammed the door shut, sealing out the sound of the rain and the distant wail of police sirens.
Mitch Kowalski, his driver, adjusted the rearview mirror. His eyes flicked to the blood smeared on his boss's lip and the red handprint on his cheek.
Mitch reached over to the console and pulled out a heated towel. "Do you need a hospital, sir?" he asked quietly, holding it out.
Haden knocked the towel out of his hand. It fell to the floorboard, steaming. He didn't wipe the blood. He let it dry on his skin.
He yanked at his silk tie, loosening the knot until he could breathe. He turned his head and stared out the window at the club's flashing neon sign.
The image of Ember's face flashed in his mind. Her cold, dead eyes. Her absolute, suffocating control.
The feeling of powerlessness made him sick. He pulled his arm back and drove his fist into the leather armrest. The impact hurt his knuckles, but the pain barely registered.
Mitch didn't say a word. He hit the button to raise the privacy partition. The glass slid up smoothly, cutting off the front seat. He put the car in drive and merged into the rainy Manhattan traffic.
The cabin was quiet. The only sound was the rhythmic thumping of the windshield wipers and Haden's harsh breathing.
Suddenly, Haden laughed. It was a low, hollow sound, completely devoid of humor. It was the laugh of a man who had lost his mind.
"Three years, Mitch," Haden said, his voice raw. "Three years I've pictured destroying her. Every single day."
Mitch's voice came through the intercom, cautious. "Sir, personal vendettas aren't good for the stock price. The board is already nervous."
"I don't give a damn about the stock price," Haden snarled. "I want to burn it all down. I want to destroy everything Efford left her. I want to see her crawl in the dirt."
He leaned his head back against the seat. The memory of the night she left hit him like a freight train. The empty apartment. The note that smelled like her perfume. The absolute despair.
His hand moved on its own. His thumb rubbed against the cuff of his sleeve. The cold metal of the old silver cuff link grounded him.
It was cheap. Tarnished. The only gift she had ever given him. He hadn't taken it off in three years.
The love he had for her and the hate he had for her twisted together in his gut, making him want to vomit.
"Call Corbin Bancroft," Haden ordered, his voice suddenly flat and deadly.
Mitch hesitated. "The CEO of Allied Capital? Sir, they are our biggest rival. They've been trying to force a marriage alliance for months."
Haden smiled. It was a cruel, sharp expression. "Good. Let the wolf in the door."
"I'm going to back her into a corner," Haden said, staring at the rain sliding down the glass. "I want to see the look on my dear aunt's face when she has to beg me for mercy."
Mitch knew better than to argue. "Yes, sir."
The Maybach accelerated, the engine roaring as it hydroplaned slightly on the wet pavement. It took the corner sharply, heading straight for the Bancroft estate.
Haden closed his eyes. The red haze of rage faded into cold, hard calculation. He wasn't going to let her go this time. Never again.
The car vanished into the storm, leaving the club behind.
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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.
7.7
Not only was I drugged, blinded and assaulted. I was deceived into carrying a baby by a stranger I never knew. Then he appeared and took my child away.
I was sent to a militia by the father of my child. I thought I was rescued but I was recruited to be a weapon for killing. Who was manipulating me, I didn't know. The answers were far from what I knew.
Forced to blend into the world that I could never believe I would be to, a place where brutality reigned, kill or be killed was the only language. I have survived but he has to pay for everything he did to me, because I believed every phase of my life was set by him and him alone. Have I really survived?
Who would have thought, he existed twice in the same world? Do I really know who I should take revenge on? Him or the person I would sacrifice everything for?
Was my mother the one who orchestrated everything? What kind of pawn am I?
7.6
Dumped by her fiancé just days before their wedding, only to watch him marry someone else-what would you do? Cry yourself to sleep, or dress to kill for revenge?
That was Elaina's reality. She's no Cinderella, yet she lost a shoe while recklessly crashing her ex's wedding. Her revenge plan went up in flames, but fate had other ideas, throwing her into the path of Alister-a man who is handsome, charismatic, and dangerous... and ironically, the person closest to her ex-fiancé.
Amidst heartbreak and vendettas, Alister paints her world in new colors, turning Elaina into a modern-day Cinderella. But will this story end in "happily ever after," or is Alister merely leading her into a much more dangerous game?
8.6
Lilac Stone once wanted nothing more than being unnoticed. But everything changed the moment she met Adrian Cole, the new lecturer.
He's distant and completely off-limits. She's quiet, guarded, and unprepared for the way he sees right through her.
What begins as harmless conversations after class quickly turns into something far more dangerous-something neither of them can stop no matter how hard they try.
But then they're living in a world where rules are meant to be followed, and their connection is one line they were never supposed to cross.
Whispers turn to accusations. Secrets are exposed. Their futures are at risk.
They are merely two opposites-a lecturer and a student, a male and a female-but they are bound to destroy each other as long as they are huddled in one space at the same time.
What then can they choose: forfeit their futures and embrace their happiness, or let the latter slip while keeping their careers intact?
8.7
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.
8.1
I died on an apocalyptic battlefield, only to wake up pinned down by a lead-lined blanket of my own fat.
A violent download of memories hit me. I had transmigrated into the body of an exiled, sadistic noblewoman who was three million coins in debt.
The original owner was an absolute monster. She had purchased beastman guards just to torture them for fun. In the corner of the filthy room, a golden retriever boy cowered, his back shredded by her barbed whip. In the basement, a snake guard was frozen and scarred from constant electro-shocks. When the white tiger guard returned from hard labor, he looked at me with pure, murderous hatred, ready to tear me apart to protect the others. Even the local elites kicked down my door to mock my pathetic life and try to steal my men.
I was a decorated commander who bled for humanity. Why was I trapped in this ruined vessel, bearing the sins of a degenerate abuser?
It was all a setup by her sweet-faced cousin, Debera, who stole her royal life and sent her to this outer-rim hellhole to rot.
I gritted my teeth and plunged a military-grade gene repair serum into my arm, letting the agony burn away the black filth and weakness.
"The crazy woman you knew before is dead."
I tossed a medical kit to the trembling guards, loaded my old electromagnetic pistol, and headed for the deadly Demon Hunting Zone to start my revenge.