The Architect of My Ruin

The Architect of My Ruin

Yi Shi

5.0
Comment(s)
127
View
11
Chapters

For ten years, my life was a straight line towards one goal: winning the National Design Excellence Award, my ticket to study under the world' s greatest architects in Italy. But on the night I reached for my dream, it was snatched away by the last people I expected. My fiancé, Mark Johnson, the lead judge, awarded the prestigious prize to Olivia Chen, a woman with no design experience, who had submitted an amateur sketch of a "dream closet." The polite applause sounded distant as I watched her embrace the trophy, while Mark beamed beside her, never once looking at me. As I confronted him, his bodyguards dragged me away, my career and my decade of dedication dismissed with a wave of his hand. Later, I overheard him tell Olivia that our engagement was merely a "debt" he had to pay, crushing every "I love you" and shared dream into dust. He laughed, calling my decade of effort a "hobby" he was willing to fund. The public backlash was immediate, but Mark, feigning sincerity, tried to minimize the scandal. He then threatened to cut off funding for my mother' s critical medical care, holding her life hostage to control me. Blacklisted from the design industry, I sold everything and took a humiliating job as a barmaid. Then, Mark and Olivia walked into my new workplace, and he deliberately humiliated me, throwing money at me and demanding I "entertain" them. When I refused, Olivia faked a theft, and Mark, seizing the opportunity, blamed me. In the chaos, I was shoved, hitting my head and collapsing. In the hospital, Mark brought a gaudy diamond necklace, expecting me to be bought. But I wasn't broken. I was done.

The Architect of My Ruin Introduction

For ten years, my life was a straight line towards one goal: winning the National Design Excellence Award, my ticket to study under the world' s greatest architects in Italy. But on the night I reached for my dream, it was snatched away by the last people I expected.

My fiancé, Mark Johnson, the lead judge, awarded the prestigious prize to Olivia Chen, a woman with no design experience, who had submitted an amateur sketch of a "dream closet." The polite applause sounded distant as I watched her embrace the trophy, while Mark beamed beside her, never once looking at me.

As I confronted him, his bodyguards dragged me away, my career and my decade of dedication dismissed with a wave of his hand. Later, I overheard him tell Olivia that our engagement was merely a "debt" he had to pay, crushing every "I love you" and shared dream into dust. He laughed, calling my decade of effort a "hobby" he was willing to fund.

The public backlash was immediate, but Mark, feigning sincerity, tried to minimize the scandal. He then threatened to cut off funding for my mother' s critical medical care, holding her life hostage to control me. Blacklisted from the design industry, I sold everything and took a humiliating job as a barmaid.

Then, Mark and Olivia walked into my new workplace, and he deliberately humiliated me, throwing money at me and demanding I "entertain" them. When I refused, Olivia faked a theft, and Mark, seizing the opportunity, blamed me. In the chaos, I was shoved, hitting my head and collapsing. In the hospital, Mark brought a gaudy diamond necklace, expecting me to be bought. But I wasn't broken. I was done.

Continue Reading

Other books by Yi Shi

More
The Canary Who Learned To Fly

The Canary Who Learned To Fly

Mafia

4.3

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.

A Ring Crushed, A Heart Broken

A Ring Crushed, A Heart Broken

Sci-fi

5.0

My shoulder felt like it was tearing apart, dangling precariously from a skyscraper' s edge, the city lights smeared far below. Wind howled, drowning out everything but the terror that coursed through me. My feet scraped against cold, smooth glass-nothing to stand on but the abyss. Then, a sharp yank on my collar pulled my head back, forcing my chin up. It was Olivia, the woman I' d spent three simulated years trying to save, her face pale and hard, eyes devoid of warmth. "Look at me, Noah," she commanded, her voice cutting through the roar. She wore the black dress we picked out together, now looking like funeral attire. "You didn' t save me," she hissed, her grip tightening on my shredded shoulder. "You played God. You pulled my strings, moved me around like a pawn in your own pathetic little hero fantasy." My attempts to speak her name were pathetic croaks, lost to the wind. "He was getting married tonight, you know," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Liam. He' s marrying someone else. He was mine! My beautiful disaster. My pain. He was mine to lose. Not yours to take away." With a guttural scream, she dragged me closer, and my ring, meant as a promise, fell from my pocket. She watched it fall, then let go of my collar, stepping on the velvet box, crushing metal and stone. "None of this was real," she said, her voice flat and dead. "You' re not real. Your help, your kindness... it was all a lie. A cage." Then, she shoved the mangled ring into my mouth, forcing me to swallow it, my own failure. "Get out," she growled, pushing me with all her rage. My feet were already in the air, my body past the point of no return. As the city rushed up to meet me, everything went white, and I gasped to find myself in a sterile white pod, still feeling every bit of her betrayal.

You'll also like

The Billionaire's Blind Bride: No Mercy

The Billionaire's Blind Bride: No Mercy

Emma
5.0

I married Clive Harrington, the coldest billionaire in Manhattan, under a strict contract that forbade any emotional burdens. When I needed a high-risk surgery to save my sight, I checked into the clinic alone, hiding the procedure from a husband who saw me as nothing more than a legal asset. I thought I could handle the darkness in silence. But while I was blind and bandaged in my hospital bed, my biological mother called, screaming that if I didn't produce a Harrington heir by the end of the fiscal year, she would cut off the life-saving treatments for my disabled sister. I was crawling on the cold hospital floor, desperately feeling for a cane I had dropped, when I touched a pair of expensive leather shoes. It was Clive. He was supposed to be in London closing a multi-million dollar deal, but there he was, watching his "contract wife" groveling in the dark like a beggar. He didn't walk away in disgust. He carried me to a five-thousand-dollar-a-night VIP suite and sat by my bed, listening in chilling silence as another voicemail from my mother filled the room, calling me a "useless broodmare" who was only worth the trust fund disbursements my marriage secured. I expected him to remind me of Clause 34B or hand me divorce papers now that I was "damaged goods." Instead, I felt his thumb brush a stray tear from my cheek, his presence shifting from a statue of ice into a predatory shield. "I thought I was just currency to you," I whispered, my voice trembling behind the gauze. "Just an investment." Clive didn't answer with words. He picked up his phone and called his head of legal with a single, terrifying command: "Kill the Douglas family’s credit lines. Every debt, every lien—trigger them all. If they want a war, I’ll give them a massacre." As he leaned down to kiss my bandaged forehead, I realized the contract was dead. My husband wasn't protecting an asset anymore; he was hunting the people who had dared to touch what belonged to him.

One Night With The Wrong Brother

One Night With The Wrong Brother

Tangye Wanzi
5.0

I thought I was waking up in the arms of Arthur, the man I loved. But as the morning light hit the Hamptons estate, the man buttoning his cuffs by the window turned around with eyes like chips of ice. It was Augustus Riddle, Arthur’s cruel younger brother, and I had just spent the night whispering confessions of love into the wrong man's ear. The night I thought was a beautiful beginning turned into a devastating nightmare. Instead of comfort, Gus treated me like a stain on his expensive carpet, scribbling a check for "services rendered" before shoving me into a dark service corridor to hide my existence from his brother. "How much does it cost to buy your silence?" He sneered, before leaving me barefoot in a torrential downpour while he drove away in a luxury Cadillac. Four years later, I am a struggling actress in Los Angeles, working double shifts as a barista just to keep the lights on. My life was finally stable until my roommate dragged me to a high-end dinner to meet her new "influential" boyfriend. The man sitting at the table, looking more arrogant and lethal than ever, was Augustus. He spent the entire night humiliating me, calling me a pathetic amateur and a social climber in front of my only friends. When I fled into the rain and collapsed on the sidewalk, skinning my knee until I bled, he watched from his car. He saw me clutching a plastic baggie containing the taped-together pieces of that four-year-old check—the only proof of my shame. He looked at me like roadkill, rolled up his window, and drove off into the dark. I couldn't understand why he was doing this. Why did he hate me enough to crush me, yet remember that I couldn't handle the smell of cigarette smoke? Why did he leave me bleeding in the street, only to send expensive medical supplies and coffee to my door the very next morning? "I'm moving out." I told my roommates, realizing that Gus Riddle didn't just want to destroy me; he wanted to haunt me. I grabbed my suitcase and walked out with eighty dollars to my name, finally ready to disappear into the city before he could burn the rest of my life to the ground.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
The Architect of My Ruin The Architect of My Ruin Yi Shi Romance
“For ten years, my life was a straight line towards one goal: winning the National Design Excellence Award, my ticket to study under the world' s greatest architects in Italy. But on the night I reached for my dream, it was snatched away by the last people I expected. My fiancé, Mark Johnson, the lead judge, awarded the prestigious prize to Olivia Chen, a woman with no design experience, who had submitted an amateur sketch of a "dream closet." The polite applause sounded distant as I watched her embrace the trophy, while Mark beamed beside her, never once looking at me. As I confronted him, his bodyguards dragged me away, my career and my decade of dedication dismissed with a wave of his hand. Later, I overheard him tell Olivia that our engagement was merely a "debt" he had to pay, crushing every "I love you" and shared dream into dust. He laughed, calling my decade of effort a "hobby" he was willing to fund. The public backlash was immediate, but Mark, feigning sincerity, tried to minimize the scandal. He then threatened to cut off funding for my mother' s critical medical care, holding her life hostage to control me. Blacklisted from the design industry, I sold everything and took a humiliating job as a barmaid. Then, Mark and Olivia walked into my new workplace, and he deliberately humiliated me, throwing money at me and demanding I "entertain" them. When I refused, Olivia faked a theft, and Mark, seizing the opportunity, blamed me. In the chaos, I was shoved, hitting my head and collapsing. In the hospital, Mark brought a gaudy diamond necklace, expecting me to be bought. But I wasn't broken. I was done.”
1

Introduction

10/07/2025

2

Chapter 1

10/07/2025

3

Chapter 2

10/07/2025

4

Chapter 3

10/07/2025

5

Chapter 4

10/07/2025

6

Chapter 5

10/07/2025

7

Chapter 6

10/07/2025

8

Chapter 7

10/07/2025

9

Chapter 8

10/07/2025

10

Chapter 9

10/07/2025

11

Chapter 10

10/07/2025