New Orleans' Burning Heart

“New Orleans was a powder keg, teetering on the brink of explosion. I, Isabelle "Izzy" Beaumont, the Mayor's daughter, believed I could save it. I offered myself in a desperate union to Jackson "Jax" Moreau, the charismatic gang leader I once loved, hoping to bridge the chasm between our warring worlds. But Jax's "union" was a brutal charade. He betrayed me, wiping out my family – my father mauled by his dogs, my brother crushed, my mother shamed to death. I became his prisoner, forced to watch as New Orleans burned and my world crumbled. Confined to a crumbling outbuilding, I endured constant torment. He even ordered the abortion of our unborn child. My former best friend, Clara, became his new queen, wearing my dead mother's necklace, reveling in my humiliation. All the while, a silent curse, a "living decay," gnawed at me, slowly consuming my life. Why this relentless hatred? Why did he ignore my silent suffering, my hidden sacrifice, claiming I was only paying for "my family's sins"? Didn't he remember when I' d dared to enter the dark bayou for him? It took me coughing up blood and collapsing, my body finally failing, for an ancient healer to appear. She revealed the impossible truth: the insidious curse eating me alive was the secret price I paid years ago, to save his life from a deadly cottonmouth bite. With my last breaths, can this shattering realization break the monster he's become, or is it simply too late for redemption in the ashes of our destroyed love?”