Modern Books for Women
Bestsellers Ongoing Completed
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Unraveling A Family's Poison
The soft glow of fairy lights was supposed to mark a perfect first birthday for our daughter, Lily, in the grand living room of the Vance mansion. Then the front door burst open, and in walked Brenda, the nanny we' d just fired, her face a mask of bitter resentment. "Quite the party," she sneered, "A party for my granddaughter." My husband, Liam, stiffened beside me, while I tried to process her insane claim: granddaughter? "Brenda, what are you doing here?" I asked, my voice shaking slightly. "You need to leave. Now." "This is my son' s house, after all," she declared, pointing at Liam, "Liam is my son. My long-lost son." My mind reeled at the absurdity, as she brazenly twisted reality. She then called me a "gold digger" and the "help," her words dripping with venom. Before I could even respond, her hand shot out, slapping me across the face with a painful crack. Liam roared, grabbing her, "Don' t you ever touch my wife again! Get out of my house!" But Brenda simply smiled, unhinged, before her son Ethan and his thuggish friends appeared, a silent, menacing reinforcement. "This is my real family," she declared, "And we' re here to stay." She pulled out a faded photo of herself with a young Richard Vance, Liam's father, announcing, "This is the proof! Richard was there, he knows the truth!" She spun a wild tale of a secret baby swap at the hospital, claiming Richard stole Liam from her. Then, Eleanor Vance, Liam' s formidable grandmother, descended the stairs, proclaiming, "Brenda is telling the truth. Liam, she is your birth mother." She denounced my mother-in-law, Lisa, as "too plain" and "not our kind," commanding Liam to "honor your true mother." She dismissed my marriage, declaring, "This family needs a proper heir, from a proper woman!" My plea for a DNA test was met with her furious command, "You will be silent! You are a guest in this house, and you have no standing here!" Eleanor then turned to Brenda, giving her an order, "Put her in her place!" As Ethan and his friends pinned Liam, Brenda advanced on me, her eyes gleaming. She slapped me again, harder, sending me crashing to the floor, my wrist screaming in pain. Lily' s terrified wail pierced the air, and Brenda snapped, "Shut that brat up." My blood ran cold as she approached my daughter, pulling a dark vial from her pocket. She forced a few drops of dark liquid onto Lily' s tongue, casually stating, "It' s just a little something to help her sleep." Lily' s cries choked off, her body went limp, eyes fluttering shut. A primal, icy fear seized me; my daughter was silent, still./1/114486/coverorgin.jpg?v=7581e06e766ca0bc6631695233ea72b5&imageMogr2/format/webp)
My Broken Voice, My Undeniable Power
The camera flashes felt like a firing squad, dragging me back to the night I lost my baby five years ago. My husband, Faron, sat in the front row, his hand on his mistress Kassie’s thigh, utterly ignoring my public humiliation. This was the thirtieth time he’d made me a joke, and it would be the last. For three years, I played the dutiful Blackwell wife, shielding Faron from his endless affairs. At a press conference, a reporter’s question about his yacht booking with Kassie shattered my facade. Faron, smiling at his mistress, completely ignored me. The last filter I viewed him through instantly shattered. Later, Kassie deliberately spilled champagne on me at a gala. Faron, instead of helping, tenderly wiped it from her. She hissed, "Faron said you just lay there. Fucking you is like fucking a dead fish." This venomous taunt, after thirty public betrayals, snapped my sanity. Chained by my mother-in-law's threats, my pain was expected. My silence demanded. But I was finally done. With a cold, empty void, I slammed the folder shut. I dropped the family crest. "Have a wonderful evening, Faron," I said, turning and walking out. I left him and his suffocating charade behind./0/82260/coverorgin.jpg?v=20260106200151&imageMogr2/format/webp)
My Ninth Life: Breaking Free
I' d died eight times already, each a brutal end, all thanks to Caroline Hawthorne. Now, I was on my ninth life, cold in a dusty attic room, a flat digital voice repeating its impossible command inside my head: "Secure Caroline Hawthorne's genuine, exclusive romantic devotion." But this wasn' t just about winning her love; it was about survival itself. This time, the System' s chilling ultimatum echoed with no emotion: "Failure in this iteration will result in permanent dissolution." No more chances. My tormentor, Caroline, then entered, pregnant with her fiancé Derek' s child, and immediately imposed her latest cruelty: I was demoted to the gardener' s shed, while Derek' s prize-winning show dog got my warm room. She kicked me. Memories of my past deaths, stark and agonizing, flooded me: freezing in a wine cellar, drowning after being pushed overboard, a shank in prison, botched medical procedures where she watched me bleed out. I' d endured skin grafts from my own thigh because Derek faked an injury, been forced into life-threatening blood transfusions for his "recovery," and suffered public humiliation at her hands. Her blind devotion to Derek was absolute, her cruelty towards me boundless. I was broken, tired of the endless loop of torture and failure. Why did I have to suffer endless agony for a devotion she clearly didn't deserve, a woman who treated me as less than human? I just wanted it all to end, for oblivion to claim me. My silence became defiance against her rage. That yearning for freedom, once a desperate wish for death, hardened into something cold and resolute: revenge. If the System demanded her "devotion," or her "permanent removal from the equation," then I would choose freedom. After her last threat-to harm the only person who cared for me-I knew what I had to do. This time, I wouldn't just survive; I would ensure her downfall, and finally, truly break free./1/117302/coverorgin.jpg?v=10e28b171ab3e6dc7c1eca9a542d2bc2&imageMogr2/format/webp)
The Billionaire's Runaway Genius Heiress Fiancee
For years, Annabell was treated like the dirt beneath the Richmond family's shoes, forced to endure their arrogance while the favored daughter, Carisa, was handed the world. When Annabell slammed a financial report on the desk, exposing that the family's offshore accounts were completely empty, they didn't thank her. Instead, Julian tried to strike her, and Carisa played the weeping victim. Ethan Richmond pointed a trembling finger at the door, stripping Annabell of every cent and throwing her out into the freezing rain. "You are done in this house! You get nothing!" They sneered, expecting her to crawl back and beg on the streets, mocked by the entire elite circle as worthless trash. They thought she was just a helpless orphan with nothing left to her name. They had no idea that the quiet girl they just discarded was the financial genius who secretly controlled all their leverage trading codes. Annabell didn't shed a single tear. She calmly signed the inheritance renunciation, walked out, and froze 80% of the Richmonds' assets with a single keystroke. And just as her former family prepared to watch her starve, a convoy of armored Range Rovers pulled up. The patriarch of the ultra-wealthy Dixon family stepped out with tears in his eyes, handing over deeds to Manhattan skyscrapers. The true billionaire heiress had finally returned, and New York's hierarchy was about to be violently rewritten./0/82573/coverorgin.jpg?v=ffc35c8a8b1fc54c3c65fce4114af265&imageMogr2/format/webp)
Sweet Poison, Cold Revenge
My sorority sister, Brittany, always seemed like the perfect friend – sweet, glamorous, always ready with a helpful suggestion. But that sweetness was a lie, a poison. It started with a phony survey, then quickly escalated. My SSN, my bank details, all stolen overnight for a "$3,000 loan" I never truly asked for. That loan spiraled to $9,000, and soon, Brittany' s "help" forced me into something far darker – an "escort service" tied to her family's hidden cruelties. The fabricated photos, the rumors, the shame – it all broke my parents. Their car crash, the one that erased them from my life, was no accident. It was the crushing weight of their daughter' s fabricated ruin, orchestrated by the girl who smiled in my face. My rage burned even hotter than the fire in my gut when I finally collapsed, only to realize, in that fleeting moment between life and oblivion, the bitter truth: their entire scheme was illegal. Unenforceable. A sham. Knowledge that came too late. They stole everything: my future, my family, even my last breath. But then, my eyes snapped open. I was back. September 14th. The day it all began, the day Brittany first whispered about that loan. And this time, she wouldn' t just trick me. This time, I knew her game. Every single move. My blood ran cold as her sugary voice called from the door. "Kayla? You in there?" The nightmare was vivid, but so was my resolve. She thought I was an easy mark. She thought wrong. This time, I' m the one setting the trap./0/85389/coverorgin.jpg?v=91d3996bad4f95bf3cf0cb7afe324c64&imageMogr2/format/webp)
Revenge Wears a Wedding Ring
The sterile scent of antiseptic always brought me back. It was the smell of my last death – broken and bleeding in a dark alley. But this time, I wasn\'t dying; I was walking into Senator Maxwell' s garden party, my husband, Professor Ethan Thorne, adjusting his tie beside me. To the world, he was a rising academic star. To me, he was my future murderer. Just hours ago, in a lifetime I' d miraculously escaped, his accomplices left me for dead after his brilliant scheme to have his lover, Holly Summers, "save" the Senator' s granddaughter backfired, permanently disfiguring little Lily Maxwell. His last words echoed in my mind, "Make sure she doesn' t talk." I\'d loved him, trusted him with my life, and he' d thrown it all away for power and wealth. Now, he asked, his smile perfectly crafted but his eyes calculating, "Liv, are you ready? Holly is already in the garden." He saw his naive wife, the talented musician. He couldn\'t see the ghost in my eyes, the cold resolve that now fueled me. He had no idea he was looking at the woman who would orchestrate his ruin. I had been given a second chance. Not for love, not for happiness, but for justice. The game had just been reset, but this time, I was writing the rules./1/114017/coverorgin.jpg?v=038fd605a3e752a280af36f880f3acdb&imageMogr2/format/webp)
The Heart That Gave Up, Found Its Way
My husband stood me up on the biggest night of my career—my first solo art exhibition. I found him on the news, shielding another woman from a storm of cameras while the entire gallery watched my world collapse. His text was a final, cold slap in the face: "Kacie needs me. You'll be fine." For years, he'd called my art a "hobby," forgetting it was the foundation of his billion-dollar company. He had made me invisible. So I called my lawyer with a plan to use his arrogance against him. "Make the divorce papers look like a boring IP release form," I told her. "He'll sign anything to get me out of his office."/1/100720/coverorgin.jpg?v=bff26f621647b9443114206b14c00e4d&imageMogr2/format/webp)
Married To His Cruelty, Not His Love
I married a billionaire to escape my Appalachian roots, fully aware I was just a pawn in his toxic game with Kiarra, the woman he was truly obsessed with. I thought I knew the rules, until he let her bulldoze my childhood home for a new resort, leaving my deaf-mute mother injured in the dust. He stood by as her friends beat me senseless. He broke my arm. When I finally fought back after Kiarra threatened my mother, he broke it again, his face a mask of cold fury. His final act of cruelty was forcing me to my knees in a crowded bar, ordering me to bark like a dog for their friends' amusement. As I knelt there, humiliated and broken, I looked to my husband for a shred of mercy. He just turned away and kissed Kiarra passionately, sealing my fate with her lipstick. They thought they had destroyed the "mountain mouse." But as I boarded a private jet with a divorce settlement that could cripple his empire, I knew my story wasn't over. It was just beginning./0/91021/coverorgin.jpg?v=5f9a3c92fc5cd5e111725abf0695089b&imageMogr2/format/webp)
Beyond The Betrayal: Her Rise
After three years in prison for a murder I didn't commit, my husband, Alexander, was waiting for me at the gates. He was the perfect, devoted spouse who stood by me through everything, promising me a new beginning. But when he opened the door to our home, my new beginning ended. Standing in the foyer was Katerina, the mistress I was convicted of killing. "She lives here now, Aubrey," he said, not even looking at me. He confessed everything. The three years I spent in hell weren't a mistake; they were a "lesson" to teach me not to question him. He had let me rot in a cage while he built a life with the woman who put me there. Then, he threw me out of the house I helped design. The man I loved hadn't just cheated. He had sacrificed my freedom, my sanity, and my life just to put me in my place. The betrayal was so absolute it broke something deep inside me. The woman who walked out of prison that morning was already dead. In a cheap motel room, I whispered to the other person my mind had created to survive the trauma, "I can't do this anymore. You can have this life. Just... make them pay." When I looked in the mirror again, the reflection that stared back was not me. "Don't worry," a new voice said. "My name is Aja."/0/81322/coverorgin.jpg?v=5d1b2a9ecf2e0da35f136a89437a1234&imageMogr2/format/webp)
The Dashcam's Silent Witness
The knot in my stomach wasn't just anticipation for my prenatal check-up; it was the chilling premonition of a nightmare revisited. My husband Mark, our town' s revered Fire Captain, conveniently had an urgent training, leaving his childhood friend Jessica to sweetly offer me a ride to the doctor. But I knew this day, every terrifying detail, because I'd endured it once before. In my first life, Jessica had deliberately caused a horrific car crash, and Mark, the man who supposedly saved me, later turned into our baby' s and my executioner. This time, I secretly called 911, determined to change my fate, yet the horror unfolded eerily similarly. Mark arrived, doting on a minimally bruised Jessica, completely ignoring my severe injuries as I hemorrhaged, publicly shaming me while I agonizingly lost our child. The entire town, blinded by his hero status, rallied around Jessica, swiftly branding me the unstable, jealous woman who had caused all the tragedy. Isolated and shattered, the profound injustice burned through me, leaving me incredulous at their collective delusion. How could the truth be so twisted, and their eyes so firmly shut to the betrayers living among them? But they underestimated the silent resolve of a woman who had already walked through hell and returned. When Jessica pulled her next theatrical ploy, I didn't just stand there; I made a discrete call, armed with undeniable evidence from my dashcam, ready to expose the monsters and finally claim the justice my innocent baby never received./1/102441/coverorgin.jpg?v=cf296c1ea32ecf994c1fa2e8139a3c5e&imageMogr2/format/webp)
His Wish, My Dying Heart
I was dying from a terminal illness, but my husband, Broderick, thought it was just another one of my games to get his attention. He hated me, convinced I had betrayed him years ago for money. As I collapsed in agony, begging him to take me to the hospital, he grabbed my chin and whispered the words that shattered my world. "I will never forgive you. I hope you just… die." He then left me on the cold floor and rushed to the hospital to be with his true love, Kacey-my best friend. She was the one he worried about, the one whose own heart was failing. He never knew that the "betrayal" he despised was actually my sacrifice to save his family from ruin. He never knew the depth of my love, a love so absolute that even his cruelty couldn't extinguish it. So, when the doctors told me I was a perfect match, I made my final choice. I would grant his wish and give my heart to the woman he loved./0/75221/coverorgin.jpg?v=e2ac2246d349bf556bdb2f49495db2a2&imageMogr2/format/webp)
A Game of Desire
He's used to control. She wasn't supposed to matter. Now, she's the one thing he can't ignore. A chance encounter at a coffee shop lands Haylee an unexpected job-personal assistant to Martin Knight, the cold, ruthless billionaire who doesn't just run New York's real estate empire-he owns it. But from the moment she steps into Knight Enterprises, Haylee realizes this job isn't just about calendars and contracts-it's about survival. Victoria Sterling, the icy senior VP, has ruled at Martin's side for years-and she's not letting some sarcastic nobody steal her place. His ex-wife, Rebecca Carter, still holds shares and secrets-and she's watching Haylee like a snake coiled to strike. And Martin? He doesn't do connection. He does control. What begins as a clash of wills turns into something far more dangerous-a slow-burning power play where attraction twists into obsession, and trust is the biggest risk of all. Haylee knows better than to fall. But in a world where every move is a gamble, walking away might cost her more than the game itself. The question is no longer who will win. It's who will break first./0/85233/coverorgin.jpg?v=983d4673cd0844fcffdeb6abae686ead&imageMogr2/format/webp)
My Family, Their Sinister Game
For ten years, I built a wall of mediocrity around myself. After my sister Sarah vanished, an alleged suicide linked to the sinister "Blackwood Tech Curse," my parents pulled me from advanced STEM, scrubbed my online presence, and moved two states over. "Just be average, Ashley," my father pleaded, "Average is safe." I became an insurance analyst, safe and boring, believing I had outsmarted fate, that Sarah was a random tragedy. Until today, when an encrypted email landed in my inbox: "Congratulations, Ashley Miller. You've been accepted." The Blackwood curse, a digital ghost from a defunct institute, promised death wrapped in an acceptance letter, just like Sarah's. When I tried to expose it, the FBI agent who' d dismissed my fears showed me security footage-me, at the scene of a Blackwood victim's death, then a fabricated psych evaluation painting me as delusional. My own laptop was framed as the source of a federal hack, isolating me further. Even my parents, panicked by the lies, asked, "Ashley, honey… Did you… have you been seeing someone?" The one person I thought I could trust, Davies, believed the frame job. "The hack came from your laptop," he said, his voice flat. But then, my own hand clenched, tried to strike me, until Davies, who' d burst in, saw it wasn' t me. "You' re not suicidal," he whispered. "Something else was controlling you." He set up a livestream, making my forced stay at a "safe house" public, only for a chilling message to appear on my screen, "WE CAN GET TO YOU ANYWHERE." Then, a porcelain doll-Sarah' s childhood doll, supposedly lost for years-appeared at my window, its face frozen in a scream. The lights went out, and in the darkness, my mother, her eyes wide and blank, attacked me with a shard of glass, whispering, "The signal is the vessel." The next morning, the doctors diagnosed me with "severe schizoaffective disorder, with acute paranoid delusions." My parents finally broke, signing the commitment papers when a psychiatrist presented a photo altered to show me with a different sister, Eva, claiming Sarah was just my cousin, that their decade of lies was to "protect" me. I realized then, in the sterile silence of the psychiatric facility, that this wasn' t a ghost story, but a controlled experiment. And I heard a name whispered in the halls: Marcus Thorne, the vanished founder of Blackwood Tech, now a VIP patient on the top floor. They thought they had trapped me, broken me. But they had just given me a new purpose, a new identity, and a clear target./0/84138/coverorgin.jpg?v=c4287f59fed932572bcc87ec3d6f4694&imageMogr2/format/webp)
When the Golden Goose Bites Back
The annual end-of-year meeting at Lester Properties was always a performance, and as their top broker, I was ready for my big commission payout-over $500,000. I was the firm's golden goose, the one who closed impossible deals, and my massive year-end bonus was my true salary. But this year, my boss, Matthew Lester, decided to turn my success into a public ambush. He announced there would be no bonuses due to a "tough market," then, with a predatory smile, suggested I "volunteer" my record-breaking commission to be distributed among the team. The room erupted, not with gratitude for me, but with greedy demands from my colleagues, led by the jealous Molly Chadwick. They piled on the pressure, painting me as selfish if I refused, celebrating as I made a forced "agreement." My hard-earned money was being stripped away, stolen by my boss and celebrated by my colleagues. How could my own company, the people I' d made millions for, do this to me? How could they, and Matthew, so casually demand a year of my life's work while my "teammates" cheered? They thought they had broken me. They thought I was a fool who would meekly surrender. Oh, no. They had no idea what they had just started./0/86641/coverorgin.jpg?v=32b9b6fb745d28eb73b2198df594b662&imageMogr2/format/webp)
Unmasking The Monster: A Wife's Fight
The crisp white envelope from the lab looked utterly normal on my kitchen counter, but a knot of dread still tightened in my stomach. It was just a routine health screening, something I, Ava Williams, a professional athlete, did every year. Then I tore it open, and the bold letters screamed at me: Positive: Chlamydia trachomatis. My world, carefully built on discipline and a loving engagement to Mark Johnson, shattered in an instant. I confronted Mark, but his casual dismissal and a text from "Jessica" on his phone exposed a sickening truth-a web of betrayal including Sarah, Emily, and Chloe, each message a punch to my gut confirming his depravity. The situation spiraled out of control when his mother, Carol, burst in, attacking me, dismissing me as a "gold-digger" when she saw his phone. How could the man I loved, the man my entire family adored, be such a monster? What twisted game were they playing? Later that night, I overheard Mark and Carol. "It' s…it' s HIV," Mark whispered, followed by Carol' s chilling plan to frame me, destroy my career, and ruin my academic parents. My father then collapsed from a stress-induced heart attack during their public smear campaign against me. The fear inside me calcified into pure, unadulterated fury. This wasn't just about infidelity anymore; it was war./0/99156/coverorgin.jpg?v=1d29c1ef3367ba4e3c59754268b687c7&imageMogr2/format/webp)
The Heart I Married For
For four years, I endured my husband Alex' s coldness and his very public affair. I did it all for the heart beating in his chest-the one I believed belonged to my dead fiancé, Dale. Then, a phone call from a private investigator shattered everything. It was all a lie, a simple clerical error. Dale' s heart wasn' t in my husband. It was beating inside a tech CEO in Austin named Cash Carter. Suddenly, the man I married for a ghost was just a cruel stranger. When his mistress caused me to fall into a pool, he left me to drown, demanding I apologize to her before he' d help me. Four years of humiliation and heartbreak, all for a devastating coincidence. My entire life was built on nothing. So I filed for divorce and booked a one-way ticket to Austin. When Alex finally tracked me down, begging me to come back, he didn't understand. I wasn't running from him. I was running toward the last piece of the man I truly loved./0/83043/coverorgin.jpg?v=04c89d58ab2d10767ab9e5b6bb169220&imageMogr2/format/webp)
They Never Saw Me
Ethan Miller always felt like a ghost, invisible in his own home. He yearned for his biological parents' love, but their affection, their very sight, was reserved for his adopted brother, Kyle – the golden boy who perfectly filled the void Ethan had left. Then, terror struck. He was kidnapped, brutally tormented. A desperate call reached his FBI profiler father, who, in Ethan' s darkest hour, dismissed him as a mere nuisance: "Your brother's debate is what matters today!" Days later, Ethan's body was found, brutally murdered. His own parents-an FBI agent and a medical examiner-worked the scene, professionally examining the unrecognizable remains. They handled his personal effects, his ruined clothing, utterly blind to the son they held in their hands, prioritizing another' s success over his very life. How could they not see him? How could he be so utterly erased, dismissed even in death, by the people who gave him life? The gut-wrenching irony was an agony even for a ghost. But the truth couldn't stay buried forever. A small receipt and security footage would shatter their denial, forcing them to confront the unrecognizable horror. And when the kidnapper' s chilling confession revealed Kyle' s calculated betrayal as the mastermind, their perfect family would finally, explosively, unravel before the world./1/104475/coverorgin.jpg?v=35dd22ea569a8cd9646f782fe81ee1bf&imageMogr2/format/webp)
My Ex-husband Regretted it After I Left Him
After donating bone marrow for my husband, Jake Hayes, I stumbled upon a viral video when I was at the hospital. "I entered the game, staking myself, all for the sake of making her willingly donate marrow for the one I love. In order for you to survive, I had to sacrifice my own love. Goodbye, my beloved." The guy in the video had deep-set eyes and gently kissed the lips of a woman sleeping beside him. His actions were restrained yet full of affection. In the comments, a lot of people lamented. "Finally, a bittersweet ending where he can grow old with his love." "But the poor woman who donated the bone marrow probably remains unaware of the truth." I stared at the face I had been close to for months, feeling a dull ache in my side from the puncture. I went through the discharge procedures myself. I said goodbye to everyone at the orphanage. But after I completely vanished from Jake's world, he was determined to find me, even if it meant searching high and low./0/85859/coverorgin.jpg?v=b0b8f0501a515a2f3107652f349ea6c1&imageMogr2/format/webp)
A Husband's Fatal Choice
Today was our fifth wedding anniversary. My husband, Mark, walked in with a woman who was young, Chinese, and very pregnant. He introduced her as his assistant, Mei, as she surveyed our home with an air of ownership, her eyes pointedly avoiding mine. Mei' s gaze finally landed on me, laced with cold condescension. "Sarah, right?" she purred. "Hand-wash my lingerie. And later, when Mark and I are together, you can kneel and serve us." My heart turned to ice as Mark just smiled, seeing nothing wrong. I saw the tech-neck, the calculated cruelty in her eyes - this wasn' t just an affair; it was a deliberate humiliation. Then, Mark scoffed, "Oh, here we go again. This tired act. Honestly, Sarah, I' m more bored of this than I am of sleeping with you." Their cruel laughter echoed, and I knew: something inside me had finally snapped. I walked forward, took their hands, forced them together. "For people from such a 'cultured' background," I said, my voice low and clear, "you both sure act like animals." "Since the 'Mrs. Miller' title is so great, you can have it. You two enjoy your happily ever after. Just leave the rest of us out of your mess." I turned my back, walking out, remembering my father' s forgotten warning: Men change, Sarah. Be careful who you give your heart to. I barely stepped onto the cold pavement when Mark' s voice cut through the air. "Come back here and sign the divorce papers." He thrust them at me, demanding I sign for Mei' s peace of mind, promising to remarry me later. His words were hollow, a broken record of lies. Then, his eyes landed on my jade pendant, a gift from our first anniversary. "Mei has been having nightmares," he said, demanding it. "She needs it." I hesitated, clutching the last symbol of the man I thought I married. "What, you can' t even pretend to be composed now? It' s just a necklace." With a sharp movement, I tore it off. Mei snatched it, her triumphant glint turning to feigned clumsiness as she let it shatter at her feet. "Oh, dear," she cooed, then gasped, pressing her leg. "Ouch! A shard… it cut me." Mark panicked, fumbling for his phone. Mei looked up at me, her voice just loud enough, "Sarah… I know you' re upset. But you didn' t have to do that. I know you weren' t trying to curse my baby on purpose… right?" Mark' s head snapped up, his fury now blazing at me. "What did you say?" he snarled. "It' s nothing, Mark," Mei sobbed, clinging to him. "Sarah didn' t mean it." His hand swung through the air. SLAP. I stumbled, falling onto the shattered jade. A sharp pain shot through my hand as green shards embedded themselves in my palm. Blood welled. Mark stood over me, chest heaving. "Apologize! What the hell is wrong with you, Sarah? You were never like this!" He roared for an apology, for a crime I didn' t commit. The man who once defended me was now a stranger, consumed by hate. I laughed, a bitter, broken sound. Slowly, I pushed myself up, ignoring the intense pain. "I can' t do it," I said, my voice steady. "I can' t apologize." His face turned a dangerous red. He grabbed my other arm, fingers digging in. "Fine! If you won' t apologize, then you' ll compensate her. Give me that bracelet." It was my mother' s, my last connection to her. "No! You can' t have this!" I clutched my wrist, pulling back. Just as he lunged, a terrifying grinding sound came from above. The huge chandelier swayed, then plummeted towards me. There was no time to think. So this is how it ends. Mark yanked Mei away, shielding her, not even glancing at me. "Sarah!" he screamed, but it was too late. The world exploded in a crash of shattering glass. I was alive, somehow. Mark, seeing Mei was safe, scrambled over, his panic replaced by cold suspicion. I woke in a sterile hospital room, Mark by my bed, his face stone. "You' re awake? Stop pretending. It didn' t even hit you." "The chandelier…" My voice was hoarse. "Don' t bother," he cut me off. "The servants confessed. You paid them to loosen the screws. You wanted to hurt Mei." It was a complete, fabricated lie. Mei was wheeled in, dabbing her eyes. "Oh, Mark," she trembled. "Don' t be so hard on her. I' m sure she didn' t mean for it to be so… dramatic. I forgive her." Her flawless performance painted me as the crazy, jealous wife. I wanted to scream, but what was the point? The truth didn' t matter. It was whatever Mei said it was. I just laughed, a dry, bitter sound. Exhaustion washed over me. It was hopeless. Mark took my silence as admission. "Since you refuse to apologize," he said, chillingly matter-of-fact, "we' ll have to find another way for you to compensate Mei." He gestured to Mei. "Her leg was scratched. The doctor said it might leave a scar. We' ve arranged a small skin graft surgery. We' ll use some of your skin to repair the damage." Skin graft? From me? "You… what?" I stammered. "It' s just a small patch," he soothed, "from your inner arm. A doctor will be here soon." He was serious. My body, to punish me. A primal scream tore from my throat. "NO!" I thrashed wildly. The IV needle ripped out, blood trickling. "You can' t do this! What did I do wrong? Why are you bullying me?!" He grabbed my shoulders. "Sarah, stop it! Mei is all alone here. She' s been crying nonstop!" His pathetic excuses blurred. He knew I had no one, having rebelled against my family for him. He was using it to destroy me. "Sarah, just calm down," he pleaded. "After the baby is born, I' ll divorce Mei. I' ll remarry you, I swear it!" The same old promise. The same meaningless lie. This lie, finally, gave me clarity. My screaming stopped. My thrashing ceased. "Get out," I said, my voice eerily calm. I reached for my phone, hands shaking, and scrolled to a single entry untouched for seven years: "A." I pressed call. He answered on the first ring. "Come and get me," I whispered, then hung up. My life was about to change forever, but first, I had to survive./1/114487/coverorgin.jpg?v=3843a6f00cbc00fb5c4136872abf0522&imageMogr2/format/webp)
