No More Victim: Love's Dark Turn

No More Victim: Love's Dark Turn

Noah Reed

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The last thing I saw in my first life was my sister Chloe' s enraged face, her hands squeezing the life out of me. "This is your fault," she hissed, as my parents, Sarah and Richard, watched-my mother holding me down, my father glaring at me from beside the wrecked car. They blamed me for everything: the cross-country road trip that was Chloe' s selfish whim, her high-risk pregnancy, and ultimately the fender bender that led to her premature labor and the loss of her baby. Despite my warnings, they only saw my supposed jealousy and the money Chloe's rich husband, Ethan, offered. "She was always a burden," my father' s cold voice was the last sound I heard before darkness consumed me. Then, I gasped, my eyes flying open, the smell of turpentine filling my nose. I was back in my art studio, unharmed, just as my phone began to ring. It was Mom. My blood ran cold; I knew this was the day they' d propose the trip. Every memory of their betrayal, their hatred, and my agonizing death flooded back. This time, things would be different. "Hello?" I answered, my voice steady. "Ava? Finally," my mother' s impatient voice said. "Listen, dear, we have the most wonderful news." A cold, quiet resolve settled over me. They wanted a pawn, a servant, a scapegoat, and they had gotten me killed for it once. Now, I would give them what they wanted, and watch them choke on it.

Introduction

The last thing I saw in my first life was my sister Chloe' s enraged face, her hands squeezing the life out of me.

"This is your fault," she hissed, as my parents, Sarah and Richard, watched-my mother holding me down, my father glaring at me from beside the wrecked car.

They blamed me for everything: the cross-country road trip that was Chloe' s selfish whim, her high-risk pregnancy, and ultimately the fender bender that led to her premature labor and the loss of her baby.

Despite my warnings, they only saw my supposed jealousy and the money Chloe's rich husband, Ethan, offered.

"She was always a burden," my father' s cold voice was the last sound I heard before darkness consumed me.

Then, I gasped, my eyes flying open, the smell of turpentine filling my nose.

I was back in my art studio, unharmed, just as my phone began to ring.

It was Mom.

My blood ran cold; I knew this was the day they' d propose the trip. Every memory of their betrayal, their hatred, and my agonizing death flooded back.

This time, things would be different.

"Hello?" I answered, my voice steady.

"Ava? Finally," my mother' s impatient voice said. "Listen, dear, we have the most wonderful news."

A cold, quiet resolve settled over me. They wanted a pawn, a servant, a scapegoat, and they had gotten me killed for it once.

Now, I would give them what they wanted, and watch them choke on it.

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A Mission Forged in Torment

A Mission Forged in Torment

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My mother was dying, her laughter stolen by a rare disease. A cosmic system offered me a deal: travel to another world, make a man named Ethan Stone love me, and she would be cured. It seemed easy; Ethan was sweet, attentive, and kind at first. But then, everything changed. Ethan became a monster, breaking up with me repeatedly, each time devising public, humiliating "tests" to win him back. From public apologies to standing in the pouring rain with a sign, I endured it all for my mother. The "tests" escalated - a high-stakes, uninsured motorcycle jump over a canyon that left my leg shattered, a forced tequila chugging contest that ended with me violently retching, and being forced to slap myself senseless on my knees in front of him and his new "protégé," Brittany. The ultimate humiliation came when he forced me to donate a kidney to Brittany without anesthesia, dangling the promise of marriage as incentive. I became numb, a puppet going through the motions. The love I once felt for him died, replaced by a profound emptiness. But the mission parameters were clear: get him to say he loved me, to commit, and my mother would be saved. After enduring unimaginable physical and emotional torment, I finally secured his verbal confirmation. The system announced my mission was complete, and I returned to my own world, my mother miraculously healed. I started a new life, finally free. But my hard-won peace was shattered when Ethan, having traded everything, suddenly appeared, desperate to win me back.

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Called by the Token: Her True Mate

Called by the Token: Her True Mate

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The fluorescent hum of the county clerk's office was the soundtrack to my defiance. I clutched the pen, ready to marry Liam Thorne, a man I' d run seven days and suppressed a blood-bound token for, all to rewrite a past that still haunted my reborn soul. Before the ink could touch the paper, Liam snatched the license. Rip. My heart stopped. "I have to marry Chloe first," he said, his words echoing the betrayal I remembered from a lifetime ago. He spoke of a week, of saving Chloe' s reputation, but I remembered years in a damp root cellar, the loss of our children. My blood-bound token throbbed as his guards abducted me, dragging me to his coastal estate. There, Chloe, the cousin whose manipulations haunted my first life, paraded in my wedding gown, her triumph chilling. With a staged cry and a splash of fake blood, she framed me. Liam, blinded by her fake tears, roared, "Take her to the old root cellar!" My nightmare was real again. The sting of his slap echoed the cruelty of a past he seemed to have forgotten, but I hadn't. Had he learned nothing? Did he truly believe a week could erase my agony, our lost children, the years in that dark cellar? The blood-bound token, suppressed for so long, now pulsed with a furious, undeniable call. As the heavy door of that dreaded root cellar slammed shut, I finally let go. No more running. No more pretending. My forced apology was a lie, a means to an end. It was time for my people to find me. It was time to go home. And this time, I wouldn't be marrying him. I was going home to Elijah.

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Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

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I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

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