His Unwanted Wife, Her Tortured Soul

He Broke Her Heart, She Broke His Bank

I was the architect of my husband's legitimate empire, the queen to his throne as the Don of a powerful crime family. Our home was our sanctuary, our bed the one sacred place he always returned to. But in the middle of the night, I woke to a woman's moan coming from a guest room that was supposed to be empty. The space beside me was cold; my husband, Brendan, was gone. The woman's voice belonged to Kiya, my protégée—a girl I’d mentored like a sister. Through the door, I heard him call me "a piece of furniture that sleeps soundly." I heard him tell her she possessed something I didn't. Then, a video confirmed the ultimate betrayal: a four-year affair, a pregnancy, and his casual dismissal of me as a business arrangement. He called me a title, but he called another woman's child his heir. He had broken the one rule that held our world together, turning my life's work into ash. He thought I was just a fixture in his grand design, a brilliant mind he could control and discard. He was wrong. There was only one way to escape this agony. I would have every memory of him surgically cut from my mind, erase him from my soul like a cancer, and disappear so completely that not even a ghost of me remained.

Unraveling A Twisted Marriage

The doctor's words didn't just break my heart; they erased my future. I could never have children. The cause? A fall my husband, Gregory, caused when he shoved me against our marble coffee table. I had confronted him about stealing my game for his new star protégé. While I was reeling from the loss, he was on the cover of a tech magazine, beaming, with his arm wrapped around her. They were celebrating the massive success of my game. When I went home, I found her there, wearing my silk robe, directing movers to pack up my life. Gregory didn't even deny the affair. He simply stepped in front of her, shielding her from my rage. He wasn't content with just that. He issued a press release calling me an unstable plagiarist, destroying my career to ensure I couldn't leave. His mother delivered the final, crushing blow. She told me my marriage was a transaction-my parents had traded their life's work, a revolutionary patent, just so I could marry him. I was bound by their sacrifice. He had taken everything-my work, my body, my family's legacy. He thought he had me caged, a broken trophy to display. He was wrong. That night, I doused our home in gasoline and walked away as the flames consumed my old life. Calista Gardner died in that fire. And I was finally free.

The Wedding That Never Was

The last thing I remembered was the cold, seeping into my bones on the operating table, as doctors frantically tried to stop the hemorrhaging. Then, the words that shattered my world: "The baby… the baby can' t be saved." My baby, gone. And in a flash, I remembered my husband Liam' s venomous sneer just hours before, "If it' s some other man' s bastard, I' ll kill it myself." The pain of his words, worse than labor, twisted my love for my adoptive brother into pure hatred. I believed he had killed our child. Consumed by rage, I seized a scalpel and plunged it into his chest, gasping, "If my child dies, you' re dying with him." His eyes widened in despair, not anger, as consciousness faded. His frantic shouts echoed, "Save her! Get the best doctors… And find her the best lawyer… Don' t let her find out about her father. Let her hate me forever." Tears fell onto my cheek, hot and foreign. My father? What did he have to do with this? Then, darkness. "Do you, Ava Miller, take this man, Liam Hayes, to be your lawfully wedded husband?" My eyes snapped open. The blinding white of the operating room was gone. I was at the altar, clutching white roses, in a heavy wedding dress. Liam stood before me, young and handsome, looking exactly as he had ten years ago. Our wedding day. The day my nightmare began. I was back. He leaned in, his voice a low, impatient hiss, "Ava, what are you doing? Say 'I do.' Don' t make a scene." The same cold tone, the same barely-veiled annoyance. Nothing had changed. I saw Sarah Johnson in the second row, feigning heartbreak, her hand resting protectively over her stomach. Liam' s innocent victim. Then it all crashed down. Liam' s final words, his protection, Sarah' s true manipulation, my father' s death-it was all a misunderstanding, a mountain of lies. I had died because of it once. I wouldn't walk back into that cage. "No. I don' t."

From Digital Death To Shared Reign

The final memory of my past life was a cold, digital execution. I watched David Chen, my ex-fiancé, on a hundred-foot screen at his company' s IPO launch, alive and destroying me. "Sarah Miller hacked my systems," he' d declared, pulling his new girlfriend, Emily, close. "She tried to con my grieving family and ruin Emily' s reputation." The fallout was immediate: blacklisted, our family' s digital forensics firm raided, our life' s work wiped clean. He' d sneered, "If you can' t bring back my reputation, you' ll pay." I paid. We all did. Until now. The insistent ding-dong of my doorbell cut through the silence, bringing me back to October 12th. It was the day after David Chen was reported dead, the day his parents had come seeking my help. Last time, I' d opened that door, taken their money, accepted their false promises, and poured my soul into his shattered laptop, only for him to rise from the grave to crucify me. But this time, I knew where that path led. I pressed my face against the cool wood, my voice steady. "Go away." Mrs. Chen's muffled plea followed: "Sarah, please! It's about David. We need your help." I' d lied: "No one can truly recover data from a physically destroyed device." The silence on the other side thickened with their disbelief, just before the lock on my door clicked. He was here. Already. The door swung open, revealing David Chen, perfectly alive, his charismatic smile a cruel slash. "See, Mom, Dad? I told you she was hiding something," he said, his eyes locking onto mine, a chilling, possessive fire in them. "She knew I wasn't dead." Emily slipped in behind him, a picture of deceptive innocence. He picked up my brother' s locket, a symbol of my family, and with a flick of his wrist, tossed it out the window. "You're a monster," I whispered. "No," he said, "I'm a survivor. You've had your little rebirth, your second chance. Fine. Let's see what you do with it." He knew. He was acknowledging it, and my blood ran cold. He thought he had won, confining me to this digital graveyard. But he was wrong. He hadn't just confined me. He had given me a target.

Art of Torment: A Captive's Defiance

The cold, sharp edges of the resin necklace dug into my skin, a constant, physical reminder of Alexander Vance' s twisted grasp. Just hours ago, I, Scarlett Hayes, had almost tasted freedom, only to be dragged back to this gilded cage. He didn't yell, he never did, not at first; his silence was always more terrifying than any scream. "Why do you keep trying to leave?" he would ask, his voice a smooth vibration that set my teeth on edge, entirely oblivious to the torment he inflicted. I longed to tell him that his control was suffocating, or that the fractured pieces of my destroyed art embedded in the necklace were a constant agony. Instead, I met his gaze with a defiant chin, "Maybe I like the exercise." But Alexander Vance was never fooled, not the man who saw me only as a broken bird to be possessed. My wrist still carried the faint scar from the day he broke my drawing hand, a brutal lesson in his twisted love. "Don' t lie to me," he whispered, his thumb pressing down on the mark, "You met with someone. You think there' s a single breath you take in this city that I' m not aware of?" The accusation hung thick and suffocating; he was right – I met Marcus Thorne, his rival, my only hope for escape. But what if my hope was just another cage? What if the man I thought was my savior was just as monstrous and possessive as my captor, seeing me not as a person, but as a prize to be won? The question gnawed at me with chilling certainty, just weeks before Alexander' s grand "Aion Project" launch, a monument built on the ruin of my family' s dreams. This elaborate trap, this calculated play for freedom, was not just about survival anymore. It was about discovering how deep the treachery went.

Steel & Scars: Revenge in Prison

For ten years, I put my ambitious architecture career on hold for my husband Mark, playing the dutiful wife and mother. Finally, with our son older and Mark's company stable, I returned to my dream, leading a monumental project, the Henderson building. But a fabricated crisis, orchestrated by Mark and his high school sweetheart Sarah, derailed everything; they framed me for corporate espionage and had me arrested, landing me in jail. Alone in a stark cell, Mark offered me a cruel deal: give up my son, my home, and all our assets, or face years in prison. They thought they' d broken me, but signing those papers was just the first step in reclaiming my life and making them pay.

The Humble Ex-wife Is Now A Brilliant Tycoon

For three quiet, patient years, Christina kept house, only to be coldly discarded by the man she once trusted. Instead, he paraded a new lover, making her the punchline of every town joke. Liberated, she honed her long-ignored gifts, astonishing the town with triumph after gleaming triumph. Upon discovering she'd been a treasure all along, her ex-husband's regret drove him to pursue her. "Honey, let's get back together!" With a cold smirk, Christina spat, "Fuck off." A silken-suited mogul slipped an arm around her waist. "She's married to me now. Guards, get him the hell out of here!"

The Substitute Wife: My Poor Husband Is A Billionaire

Janet was adopted when she was a kid -- a dream come true for orphans. However, her life was anything but happy. Her adoptive mother taunted and bullied her all her life. Janet got the love and affection of a parent from the old maid who raised her. Unfortunately, the old woman fell ill, and Janet had to marry a worthless man in place of her parents' biological daughter to meet the maid's medical expenses. Could this be a Cinderella's tale? But the man was far from a prince, except for his handsome appearance. Ethan was the illegitimate son of a wealthy family who lived a reckless life and barely made ends meet. He got married to fulfill his mother's last wish. However, on his wedding night, he had an inkling that his wife was different from what he had heard about her. Fate had united the two people with deep secrets. Was Ethan truly the man we thought he was? Surprisingly, he bore an uncanny resemblance to the impenetrable wealthiest man in the city. Would he find out that Janet married him in place of her sister? Would their marriage be a romantic tale or an utter disaster? Read on to unravel Janet and Ethan's journey.

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

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.

The Bride He Cast Away on Their Wedding Night

In the glittering world of high society and cutthroat ambition, a single sentence shatters a marriage: "Let's get a divorce." For three years, Claire Thompson has lived in exile, her marriage to the powerful Nelson Cooper a hollow shell existing only on paper. Shipped abroad on her wedding day and utterly forgotten, she returns only to be handed divorce papers. But Claire is no longer the timid, heartbroken girl she once was. Behind her quiet facade lies a woman transformed, secretly rejoicing at her newfound freedom. However, freedom comes with a price. As Claire signs the papers with relief, a chilling phone call reveals a dark truth: the threats she faced overseas were no accident, and the trail leads shockingly close to home-to the family that raised her and the husband who discarded her. Just as she prepares to sever all ties, a twist of fate pulls her back into the gilded cage. Nelson, for reasons unknown, suddenly stalls the divorce. Meanwhile, the family that disowned her and the fragile, manipulative sister who stole her life are determined to ruin her reputation and drive her out for good. But Claire is playing a different game now. With a mysterious new identity, powerful allies, and secrets of her own, she is no one's pawn. As hidden truths unravel and loyalties are tested, a stunning question emerges: In this high-stakes battle of love, betrayal, and revenge, who is truly trapping whom?

He Chose First Love, I Chose the Alpha King

I gave him three years of silent devotion behind a mask I never wanted to wear. I made a wager for our bond-he paid me off like a mistress. "Chloe's back," Zane said coldly. "It's over." I laughed, poured wine on his face, and walked away from the only love I'd ever known. "What now?" my best friend asked. I smiled. "The real me returns." But fate wasn't finished yet. That same night, Caesar Conrad-the Alpha every wolf feared-opened his car door and whispered, "Get in." Our gazes collided. The bond awakened. No games. No pretending. Just raw, unstoppable power. "Don't regret this," he warned, lips brushing mine. But I didn't. Because the mate I'd been chasing never saw me. And the one who did? He's ready to burn the world for me.

Once The Foolish Wife, Now His Eternal Obsession

For three years, Cathryn and her husband Liam lived in a sexless marriage. She believed Liam buried himself in work for their future. But on the day her mother died, she learned the truth: he had been cheating with her stepsister since their wedding night. She dropped every hope and filed for divorce. Sneers followed-she'd crawl back, they said. Instead, they saw Liam on his knees in the rain. When a reporter asked about a reunion, she shrugged. "He has no self-respect, just clings to people who don't love him." A powerful tycoon wrapped an arm around her. "Anyone coveting my wife answers to me."