The Unchosen Bride's Vengeance

“The ballroom glittered, a dazzling spectacle where tech mogul Ethan Vanderbilt was about to pick his bride. I was just Sarah Jenkins, one of 99 hopefuls, a nobody from a modest background. But I'd lived this night before. In that life, I was chosen, a pawn manipulated by his stepmother Eleanor, which eventually led to the cold, cruel death of my beloved grandfather. This time, I hacked the lottery system to avoid being selected. Yet, Ethan still picked the manipulative Lily, igniting a familiar dread as their lies began to twist my reality. When Lily feigned an allergic reaction to roses, and Ethan, fueled by his stepsister's vicious charade, threatened my grandfather's cherished garden and the sentimental old gazebo, my heart pounded with a desperate fear for my last remaining connection to home. The ultimate horror struck during my hospital visit, as Lily's fabricated attack led Ethan, blinded by rage, to wrench the life-sustaining ventilator tube from my grandfather's machine. He called to disable the backup power, leaving my frail, elderly grandfather to suffocate in the silence, a deliberate act of cruelty to punish me. I stood there, utterly helpless, forced to watch my world disintegrate as the last breath left his body, his life stolen by a man I once believed in. How could Ethan, the face of innovation and charity, commit such a monstrous act, discarding an innocent life based on a shallow girl's lies? The injustice burned through me, a searing wound that far outstripped the physical pain he inflicted; how could anyone be so effortlessly cruel, so easily fooled into becoming a murderer? My grief was absolute, but within it, a cold, hard resolve began to crystallize, transforming my shattered heart into a weapon. As I knelt, broken, beside my grandfather's lifeless form, Marcus Thorne, a reclusive and powerful financier, appeared in the doorway, an unexpected anchor in my storm of despair. In that moment, a desperate, dangerous idea took root: I would marry Marcus, step into his world of power and influence, and from that unassailable position, I would rise from the ashes of my ruined life to exact a precise, calculated revenge on every single person who conspired in my downfall. This was not the end; it was the ruthless beginning of my second act.”