My Rival, My Only Hope

My Rival, My Only Hope

Mystic Rose

4.2
Comment(s)
125.9K
View
21
Chapters

On my birthday, my mother told me it was time to choose a fiancé from New York's most eligible bachelors. She urged me to pick Alexander Booth, the man I loved with a foolish passion in my previous life. But I remembered how that love story ended. On the eve of our wedding, Alexander faked his death in a private jet crash. I spent years as his grieving fiancée, only to find him alive and well on a beach, laughing with the poor student I had personally sponsored. They even had a child. When I confronted him, our friends-the men who had pretended to comfort me-held me down. They helped Alexander throw me into the ocean and watched from the pier as I drowned. As the water closed over my head, only one person showed any real emotion. My childhood rival, Darrian Golden, screamed my name as they held him back, his face twisted in grief. He was the only one who cried at my funeral. Opening my eyes again, I was back in our penthouse, just a week before the big decision. This time, when my mother asked me to choose Alexander, I gave her a different name. I chose the man who mourned me. I chose Darrian Golden.

My Rival, My Only Hope Chapter 1

On my birthday, my mother told me it was time to choose a fiancé from New York's most eligible bachelors. She urged me to pick Alexander Booth, the man I loved with a foolish passion in my previous life.

But I remembered how that love story ended. On the eve of our wedding, Alexander faked his death in a private jet crash.

I spent years as his grieving fiancée, only to find him alive and well on a beach, laughing with the poor student I had personally sponsored. They even had a child.

When I confronted him, our friends-the men who had pretended to comfort me-held me down.

They helped Alexander throw me into the ocean and watched from the pier as I drowned.

As the water closed over my head, only one person showed any real emotion. My childhood rival, Darrian Golden, screamed my name as they held him back, his face twisted in grief. He was the only one who cried at my funeral.

Opening my eyes again, I was back in our penthouse, just a week before the big decision. This time, when my mother asked me to choose Alexander, I gave her a different name. I chose the man who mourned me. I chose Darrian Golden.

Chapter 1

"Just one week until your birthday, Azalea. You know what that means." My mother, Emilee Wallace, sipped her tea, her eyes fixed on me from across the polished mahogany table.

The afternoon sun streamed into our New York penthouse, but I felt none of its warmth. This was my second chance, and I would not waste it.

"It's time to choose," she continued, her voice light but firm. "Alexander, Alaric, Darrius, Jefferey, or Darrian. Their mothers are all waiting."

I stared out the window, the city a blur. A coldness spread through me, a stark contrast to the lavish room. It was a memory-not a dream, but a life I had already lived and lost.

In my last life, I chose Alexander Booth. I loved the charming tech mogul with a blind, foolish passion. But on the eve of our wedding, his private jet "crashed" with no survivors. I spent years as the grieving fiancée, a broken woman clinging to a ghost, while his friends-Alaric Lambert, Darrius Montgomery, and Jefferey Gibson-pretended to be my devoted suitors, holding my hand and offering their shoulders to cry on. They were all liars.

Eventually, a whisper of a lead took me to a secluded coastal town, where I found him. Alexander was alive and well, laughing on a sunny beach with Isolde Booker-the poor, brilliant student I had personally sponsored. They even had a child. When I confronted them, their shock quickly turned to cold fury. My "friends" appeared, not to help me, but to help him silence me for good.

They dragged me onto a boat. "A boating accident," they'd call it. I remembered the cold water closing over my head, their blank faces watching from the pier as I drowned. Only one person had shown any real emotion. Darrian Golden, my childhood rival, had followed me there. As they held him back on the shore, he screamed my name, his face twisted in grief. He was the only one who cried at my funeral.

That death, that horrifying end, was not my final chapter. It was my second chance.

"Azalea? Did you hear me?" my mother asked, her patience thinning.

I turned from the window. I looked at her, my well-meaning mother, so caught up in tradition and appearances.

"I've made my decision," I said. My voice was calm, a dead flat line.

She smiled, relieved. "Wonderful. Is it Alexander? His mother will be thrilled."

"No."

Her smile faltered. "Oh. Alaric, then? Or Darrius?"

"No."

My mother put her teacup down with a sharp clink. "Azalea, what is this about? Not Jefferey... surely not Darrian?" Her voice was a mix of disbelief and frustration. "You and Darrian can't stand each other. He's nothing like the others."

A small, bitter smile touched my lips. "You're right. He's nothing like the others."

My mother stared at me, her face pale with shock. "You can't be serious."

"I am." I had chased a lie while surrounded by snakes. I ignored the only person whose feelings were real. I had been so stupid. So blind.

"He's the one I want," I said. "He's currently in Europe on business, isn't he?"

My mother nodded numbly.

"I need you to call him personally," I instructed. "Tell him to come back. Tell him I've chosen him to be my fiancé."

A call from my mother, the head of the Wallace-Kidd dynasty, was an order he couldn't ignore. It was a power move, and it was the only way.

"But... Azalea..."

"Do it," I said, my tone leaving no room for argument.

She stared at me for a long moment, seeing a hardness in my eyes she had never seen before. Finally, she nodded, her shoulders slumping in defeat. "Alright. I'll call him."

As she left, I walked to the fireplace. On the mantel was a framed photo of me and Alexander smiling at a charity gala. Without a second thought, I threw it into the empty hearth. The glass shattered, the sound echoing in the silent room.

It was a start.

I turned to leave, but stopped when I heard voices from the hallway.

"Is she really going to pick Darrian Golden? That's insane," I heard Alaric's voice.

"She's just being difficult," Darrius replied. "She's always loved Alexander. She'll come to her senses."

I stepped back into the shadow of the doorway, listening.

"Alexander is getting impatient," Jefferey added, his voice low. "He wants this over with so he can get the Kidd real estate assets and finally set Isolde up properly."

My blood ran cold. It was happening all over again, just like before.

Alexander walked into their view. "Don't worry. Azalea is obsessed with me. A little tantrum won't change that. She'll pick me."

He saw me then, standing in the doorway. His face immediately changed, the cold ambition replaced by his usual charming smile.

"Azalea, darling. We were just talking about you."

I said nothing. I just looked at him, at all of them, the men I once thought were my world. Now, all I saw were walking corpses.

"Are you ready for your birthday?" Alexander asked, stepping closer. "Big decision to make."

Isolde appeared behind them, hiding slightly, her wide eyes feigning innocence. The same eyes that would watch me drown. She bumped into Alexander, a clumsy little move.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr. Booth!" she cried, stumbling.

He caught her, his hands holding her a little too long, a little too familiarly. "It's alright, Isolde."

It was a test. In my past life, I would have been furious. Now, I felt nothing. I just watched them, and my silence made them uncomfortable.

"Azalea, let's go for a walk by the pool," Alexander said. It wasn't a question.

We ended up by the rooftop pool. The four of them, and me. Isolde hovered nearby.

"What's this I hear about Darrian Golden?" Alexander asked, his tone light, but his eyes were hard. "Playing hard to get?"

I didn't answer. I just looked at the water.

Isolde, seeing her chance, "accidentally" tripped again, this time lurching towards the pool's edge, right next to me.

"Oh my!" she shrieked. She grabbed my arm, pulling me with her as she fell into the water.

The shock of the cold was familiar. "Help!" I thrashed, my dress pulling me down.

Through the water, I saw Alaric, Darrius, and Jefferey dive in. They swam right past me. They all went to Isolde.

"Isolde, are you okay?" Alexander's voice was filled with panic as he cradled her.

No one looked at me. I was sinking, the water filling my lungs. It was happening all over again. The memory and reality were blurring into one horrifying moment.

They were leaving me to die.

My last clear thought before the darkness threatened to take over was of Darrian Golden's face, twisted in grief.

This time, I would not let him grieve alone. This time, I would make them pay.

Continue Reading

Other books by Mystic Rose

More
Betrayed by Her Mate: The Awakening of the White Wolf

Betrayed by Her Mate: The Awakening of the White Wolf

Werewolf

5.0

I unlocked my mate's tablet to check the time, but a notification caught my eye: Project Luna. Curiosity turned to horror as I opened the file. It wasn't a diary. It was a spreadsheet. Task #104: Public display of affection. Status: Complete. Task #215: Gift pearls. Status: Complete. I wasn't Jaxon's soulmate. I was a quarterly projection inherited from his dead brother to secure the pack's assets. The reality of his indifference nearly killed me at our engagement gala. When the massive chandelier snapped above us, Jaxon didn't shield me. He used my body as a launchpad to dive toward his mistress, Janice. I was crushed under lead crystal and silver wire, my flesh burning from the poison. While I lay bleeding on the marble floor, Jaxon carried a scratch-free Janice to safety, screaming at the guards to ignore me. But the physical scar on my arm was nothing compared to what I found next. I hacked into Janice’s private account. There was a marriage certificate from Vegas, dated six months ago. On the exact night I miscarried our child alone on the bathroom floor, begging him to answer his phone, he was marrying her. He let our pup die while he pledged his life to another. When he tried to buy my forgiveness with a necklace, only to let Janice snatch it from his hand, I finally snapped. I threw his money in his face, rejected the bond, and vanished to Norway. Jaxon thought I would die without him. He didn't know that the Alpha Supreme of Europe had been waiting a lifetime to find me.

Her Pain, His Blindness

Her Pain, His Blindness

Romance

5.0

A sharp, stabbing pain woke me. 3:17 AM. Alone. I reached for my husband, Mark, but he wasn' t there. My desperate call for help was answered by Lily, his goddaughter, her voice laced with annoyance. "Mark is busy. Eleanor isn' t feeling well, so he's here with me." I tried to explain about the emergency, the searing pain in my abdomen. She dismissed it as drama and hung up. Abandoned, I crawled to the phone and dialed 911, whispering, "I think I'm dying." At the hospital, the doctor' s grim face confirmed my worst fear: a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. I was bleeding internally and needed emergency surgery. Alone, I signed the consent form, my hand trembling, tears blurring Sarah Miller into a solitary figure. When I reached Mark hours later, fresh out of surgery and groggy from anesthesia, his words were cold, clipped. "What is it now, Sarah?" Before I could explain, Lily's frantic voice in the background cut me off. "Mark, come quick! Mom\'s monitor is beeping again!" He hung up, choosing her over me, over our lost baby, over my near-death experience. The love I thought was unbreakable shattered into a million pieces. The next morning, lying in the hospital bed, a cold, hard clarity settled over me. I had to make him understand. I sent him my medical reports, hoping the undeniable proof would cut through his blindness. His reply, however, sealed my fate: "Sarah, this has gone too far. Using a fake medical report to guilt-trip me is a new low." He called me manipulative, a liar. He chose her over me, again. The fight drained out of me. I typed one word: "Okay." It was over. I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that I was done.

You'll also like

Broken Ring, Billionaire Secrets: Watch Me Shine

Broken Ring, Billionaire Secrets: Watch Me Shine

Cornelia
5.0

I sat on the edge of the examination table, the crinkle of the sanitary paper sounding like thunder in the sterile room. The doctor didn't even look at me as he confirmed the news: the pregnancy was over. My husband, Keyon, didn't answer my call. He just sent an automated text: "In a meeting." When I returned to our cold mansion, I found his iPad glowing with a message from his "muse," Katina. He was throwing her a secret gala tonight-on our third wedding anniversary. He told her he couldn't wait to escape the "boring" and "draining" atmosphere I created at home. Keyon didn't stumble in until 3 AM, smelling of Katina's perfume with a smear of red on his collar. When I handed him the divorce papers, he laughed in my face. He called me a "glorified housekeeper" with no skills and no future, promising I'd be back in three days begging for a subway ticket. He even bet his friends ten thousand dollars that I wouldn't survive a week without his name. He had his assistant cancel my credit cards and block my gate access before I even reached the end of the driveway. He wanted me to starve. He wanted me to crawl. He sat in his office, mocking the "desperate" woman who pawned her three-million-dollar wedding ring for scrap metal just to pay for a meal. I stood on the rainy curb, watching the man I had protected for three years treat my life like trash. He didn't know about the ultrasound I just threw in the bin. He didn't know that while he was calling me "dull," I was the one secretly writing the code that kept his billion-dollar empire from collapsing. As I slid into a cheap Uber, I opened a hidden, encrypted app on my phone. The screen refreshed to a dashboard for an account Keyon didn't know existed. The balance was ten figures long-the accumulated wealth of "Solaris," the world's most elusive tech genius. Keyon thinks he just evicted a parasite, but he's about to find out he just declared war on the only person who can hit "delete" on his entire life.

The Mute Heiress: Her Cold Silent Revenge

The Mute Heiress: Her Cold Silent Revenge

Tu Tu
5.0

The Pierre Hotel smelled of old money and stale ambition, but all I could taste was the copper of my own rage. I stood in the back of the ballroom, a "mute" shadow in a silk dress, watching my sister Brande play the grieving saint on stage. She wiped away a fake tear, telling the crowd I was too "unstable" to attend my own engagement party. In reality, I was watching her share a secret, intimate squeeze with my fiancé, Chase Sterling, right under the blinding spotlight. When I finally hit "execute" and projected the video of them together in a hotel suite for the entire elite crowd to see, the room went cold. But the nightmare was just beginning. Instead of apologizing, my father crushed his scotch glass and told me to fix the mess. He demanded I issue a public statement claiming I had a mental breakdown and "hallucinated" the whole thing. "If you don't corroborate the Deepfake story, I'll have you committed to a facility with barred windows," he hissed. Brande just smirked from the corner, mocking me for being a "mute waste of space" who didn't even realize my own trust fund had paid for the diamonds around her neck. I realized then that in this family, silence wasn't a disability—it was a target. They thought because I didn't speak, I didn't have a voice. They thought they could use my silence to bury the truth and save their precious stock prices. They were wrong. I didn't just leak a video; I had the keys to every secret they ever tried to hide. I walked out of that hotel and straight into the black sedan of Julian Curtis, my father’s most ruthless rival and the only man who knew what really happened the night of the blizzard in Aspen. I handed him the encrypted files that would trigger a hostile takeover of my family’s empire. As the city blurred past, I looked at the man who held my future in his hands and typed one final message on my phone. "I'm not here to be saved. I'm here to be the knife."

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Dorine Koestler
4.2

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

HIS DOE, HIS DAMNATION(An Erotic Billionaire Romance)

HIS DOE, HIS DAMNATION(An Erotic Billionaire Romance)

Viviene
4.9

Trigger/Content Warning: This story contains mature themes and explicit content intended for adult audiences(18+). Reader discretion is advised. It includes elements such as BDSM dynamics, explicit sexual content, toxic family relationships, occasional violence and strong language. This is not a fluffy romance. It is intense, raw and messy, and explores the darker side of desire. ***** "Take off your dress, Meadow." "Why?" "Because your ex is watching," he said, leaning back into his seat. "And I want him to see what he lost." ••••*••••*••••* Meadow Russell was supposed to get married to the love of her life in Vegas. Instead, she walked in on her twin sister riding her fiance. One drink at the bar turned to ten. One drunken mistake turned into reality. And one stranger's offer turned into a contract that she signed with shaking hands and a diamond ring. Alaric Ashford is the devil in a tailored Tom Ford suit. Billionaire CEO, brutal, possessive. A man born into an empire of blood and steel. He also suffers from a neurological condition-he can't feel. Not objects, not pain, not even human touch. Until Meadow touches him, and he feels everything. And now he owns her. On paper and in his bed. She wants him to ruin her. Take what no one else could have. He wants control, obedience... revenge. But what starts as a transaction slowly turns into something Meadow never saw coming. Obsession, secrets that were never meant to surface, and a pain from the past that threatens to break everything. Alaric doesn't share what's his. Not his company. Not his wife. And definitely not his vengeance.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
My Rival, My Only Hope My Rival, My Only Hope Mystic Rose Romance
“On my birthday, my mother told me it was time to choose a fiancé from New York's most eligible bachelors. She urged me to pick Alexander Booth, the man I loved with a foolish passion in my previous life. But I remembered how that love story ended. On the eve of our wedding, Alexander faked his death in a private jet crash. I spent years as his grieving fiancée, only to find him alive and well on a beach, laughing with the poor student I had personally sponsored. They even had a child. When I confronted him, our friends-the men who had pretended to comfort me-held me down. They helped Alexander throw me into the ocean and watched from the pier as I drowned. As the water closed over my head, only one person showed any real emotion. My childhood rival, Darrian Golden, screamed my name as they held him back, his face twisted in grief. He was the only one who cried at my funeral. Opening my eyes again, I was back in our penthouse, just a week before the big decision. This time, when my mother asked me to choose Alexander, I gave her a different name. I chose the man who mourned me. I chose Darrian Golden.”
1

Chapter 1

19/07/2025

2

Chapter 2

19/07/2025

3

Chapter 3

19/07/2025

4

Chapter 4

19/07/2025

5

Chapter 5

19/07/2025

6

Chapter 6

19/07/2025

7

Chapter 7

19/07/2025

8

Chapter 8

19/07/2025

9

Chapter 9

19/07/2025

10

Chapter 10

19/07/2025

11

Chapter 11

19/07/2025

12

Chapter 12

19/07/2025

13

Chapter 13

19/07/2025

14

Chapter 14

19/07/2025

15

Chapter 15

19/07/2025

16

Chapter 16

19/07/2025

17

Chapter 17

19/07/2025

18

Chapter 18

19/07/2025

19

Chapter 19

19/07/2025

20

Chapter 20

19/07/2025

21

Chapter 21

19/07/2025