Second Chances: Love After Betrayal

Second Chances: Love After Betrayal

Kattie Eaton

5.0
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My best friend, Emily, and I married into the powerful Thorne family on the same day. We thought we had it all, living a dream life as two of the luckiest women in the world. That illusion shattered on a Tuesday afternoon when Emily burst into my sunroom, her face pale, shoving her phone at me. The screen showed paparazzi photos of her husband, Liam, with another woman – his "childhood sweetheart," Olivia Hayes. Before I could process Emily's fury, my own tablet lit up. A press release from my husband Ethan' s company announced Olivia as the new face of his lifestyle brand, complete with a smiling photo of her next to him. Not only was Olivia the source of my best friend's pain, but my own husband, who had been distant and forgotten our anniversary, had made her our company's public face without a word to me. All my grievances, the neglect, the loneliness-they all flooded back. He didn't even think to mention it, treating me like just another asset to manage, not a wife to love. A cold resolve settled over me. Emily, still raging about her post-divorce plans, saw the press release on my tablet. A dangerous smile spread across her face. "Well," she said, "Looks like we' re both in the market for an upgrade." "Okay," I declared, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. "I' m in. We' re getting divorced. And I' ll find male models who are better than Ethan." Our laughter, wild and unhinged, was cut short by a low, cold voice from the doorway: "Better than me?" My husband, Ethan, stood there. He must have heard everything.

Introduction

My best friend, Emily, and I married into the powerful Thorne family on the same day. We thought we had it all, living a dream life as two of the luckiest women in the world.

That illusion shattered on a Tuesday afternoon when Emily burst into my sunroom, her face pale, shoving her phone at me. The screen showed paparazzi photos of her husband, Liam, with another woman – his "childhood sweetheart," Olivia Hayes.

Before I could process Emily's fury, my own tablet lit up. A press release from my husband Ethan' s company announced Olivia as the new face of his lifestyle brand, complete with a smiling photo of her next to him. Not only was Olivia the source of my best friend's pain, but my own husband, who had been distant and forgotten our anniversary, had made her our company's public face without a word to me.

All my grievances, the neglect, the loneliness-they all flooded back. He didn't even think to mention it, treating me like just another asset to manage, not a wife to love.

A cold resolve settled over me. Emily, still raging about her post-divorce plans, saw the press release on my tablet. A dangerous smile spread across her face.

"Well," she said, "Looks like we' re both in the market for an upgrade."

"Okay," I declared, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. "I' m in. We' re getting divorced. And I' ll find male models who are better than Ethan."

Our laughter, wild and unhinged, was cut short by a low, cold voice from the doorway: "Better than me?" My husband, Ethan, stood there. He must have heard everything.

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Too Late For Regret: The Mafia King's Despair

Too Late For Regret: The Mafia King's Despair

Mafia

5.0

My twin sister Haleigh returned with a fake diagnosis of Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer and a "dying wish" to marry my fiancé, Jameson Blair. Without a second thought, Jameson, the most feared Underboss in New York, took the three-carat diamond meant for me and slid it onto her finger. I became the spare. The obstacle standing in the way of a tragedy's happy ending. When Haleigh planted a brown recluse spider in my room, I was the one bitten and poisoned. Yet, my brothers kicked me while I was delirious with fever, accusing me of trying to terrorize their "dying" angel. On her birthday yacht party, a grill tipped over during a storm. My synthetic dress caught fire instantly. As flames seared the skin off my legs, I screamed for help. But Jameson and my brothers formed a human shield around Haleigh, frantically checking her hand for a single speck of ash while I burned alive just ten feet away. The final straw came at the cliffs. Haleigh staged a suicide attempt to frame me for bullying her. To teach me a lesson, Jameson bound my wrists and hung me over the edge of the abyss on a rope, leaving me dangling helplessly over the churning ocean. They thought they were punishing a monster. They didn't know I had a jagged rock in my hand. As they drove away to comfort the liar, I didn't wait for them to come back. I sawed through the rope myself and let the ocean take me. Three years later, after discovering Haleigh never had cancer, my brothers and Jameson found me alive in Florence. They knelt on the cobblestones, weeping, begging for a second chance. I looked at the men who had watched me burn. "You aren't sorry you hurt me," I said, turning to walk away with another man. "You're just sorry you bet on the wrong sister."

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Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

SHANA GRAY
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.

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