From Stand-In to Sterling

From Stand-In to Sterling

REGINA SIMONDS

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My life with Ethan seemed perfect, a carefully constructed dream built over years of quiet happiness. I believed in our future, our unwavering love. But then, his high school sweetheart, Jessica, died in a tragic accident. Weeks later, the chilling discovery of Ethan's suicide note: "Jessica was the only one. I can't live without her." My world didn't just crumble; it exploded into a million shards of brutal betrayal. Our entire marriage was a meticulously crafted lie, a painful performance. I was nothing but a stand-in, a convenient placeholder for the woman he truly loved. Every shared smile, every whispered promise, now felt like a cruel deception. The agony of that realization was a physical blow. Eight years, wasted. My heart was ripped open, not just by loss, but by the acidic burn of profound humiliation and the sickening injustice of being so utterly used and discarded. How could I have been so tragically wrong about everything? Then I woke up, gasping, back in my college dorm room, feeling the same nausea, seeing the same too-bright sunshine. My phone buzzed. A text from Ethan: "Sarah, we need to talk. It's about Jessica. I think I'm still in love with her. We can't do this anymore." The exact same words. But this time, my tears were gone. This time, I finally knew how to change my story.

From Stand-In to Sterling Introduction

My life with Ethan seemed perfect, a carefully constructed dream built over years of quiet happiness. I believed in our future, our unwavering love.

But then, his high school sweetheart, Jessica, died in a tragic accident. Weeks later, the chilling discovery of Ethan's suicide note: "Jessica was the only one. I can't live without her."

My world didn't just crumble; it exploded into a million shards of brutal betrayal. Our entire marriage was a meticulously crafted lie, a painful performance. I was nothing but a stand-in, a convenient placeholder for the woman he truly loved. Every shared smile, every whispered promise, now felt like a cruel deception.

The agony of that realization was a physical blow. Eight years, wasted. My heart was ripped open, not just by loss, but by the acidic burn of profound humiliation and the sickening injustice of being so utterly used and discarded.

How could I have been so tragically wrong about everything?

Then I woke up, gasping, back in my college dorm room, feeling the same nausea, seeing the same too-bright sunshine. My phone buzzed. A text from Ethan: "Sarah, we need to talk. It's about Jessica. I think I'm still in love with her. We can't do this anymore."

The exact same words. But this time, my tears were gone. This time, I finally knew how to change my story.

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Other books by REGINA SIMONDS

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The Billionaire's Price For My Baby

The Billionaire's Price For My Baby

Romance

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I had been Adrian Conway's executive assistant for five years, serving as the perfect, invisible shadow to the coldest billionaire in Manhattan. But a single night of weakness after a high-stakes charity gala left me staring at a positive pregnancy test in the office restroom, my heart hammering with a fear I couldn't escape. I tried to keep the secret and maintain my professionalism, but a freak accident in the lobby sent the test sliding across the marble floor-straight to the feet of Adrian's mother. The terrifying matriarch didn't offer a hand; she offered a cold, calculated ultimatum that turned my life into a high-stakes business transaction. Adrian didn't even look at me when he heard the news, his voice cutting like a scalpel as he called our night a "mistake" and an "irrelevancy." Within days, I was forced into a hollow marriage at City Hall, wearing a diamond that felt like a shackle and moving into a penthouse where I was treated like an unwanted intruder. The nightmare deepened when they slid a new contract across the table: I would carry the child to term, hand it over to the Conway family immediately after birth, and sign away all parental rights for five million dollars. "Don't expect me to play the loving husband. You are an employee who got a promotion," Adrian sneered, his eyes filled with pure loathing. He believed I had trapped him for his fortune, and his sister publicly branded me a "gold-digging parasite" while trying to force a DNA test. When I hesitated to sign the paper giving up my baby, Adrian leaned in with a terrifying calm, threatening to stop the life-saving medical payments for my dying mother. I was surrounded by unimaginable wealth but had never felt more impoverished, realizing that to the Conways, I was nothing more than a vessel for an heir. I couldn't understand how a man I had respected for years could be so monstrously cruel, holding my mother's life hostage just to steal my child. As I looked at the cold, clinical man who was now my husband, the desperation in my chest turned into a hard, freezing resolve. I picked up the pen and scrawled my name on the contract to save my mother, but I made a silent promise to the tiny life inside me. I had nine months to find a loophole, nine months to gather their secrets, and nine months to make Adrian Conway regret the day he ever thought he could own me.

Her Own Kind of Happy Ever After

Her Own Kind of Happy Ever After

Romance

5.0

My lake trip with Ethan, my fiancé and a rising finance star, was supposed to be our last pre-wedding hurrah. I' d meticulously packed for two, my suitcase sitting beside his, ready for our perfect getaway. Then Chloe, the estate manager's daughter my family oddly favored, pulled up with her child, claiming Ethan had invited them. Without a glance, Ethan shooed me out of the car, promising to return after dropping them off at the resort an hour away. The humiliation burned as I watched him drive away, Chloe smugly waving from the passenger seat. Hours later, my phone buzzed with Chloe' s Instagram stories: Ethan laughing, steering a speedboat, his arm casually around her shoulder in a sunset photo. They were celebrating lake life while I was abandoned. When I confronted him, my own mother and brother, Liam, sided with Chloe, accusing me of just being "jealous" and "dramatic." The final blow came on my birthday. Ethan gifted me a beautiful diamond necklace, only for Chloe to reveal she had an identical one, saying Ethan got it for her as a "thank you" for helping him choose mine. It wasn't just betrayal; it was a brazen insult, confirming I was nothing but an afterthought, discarded by my fiancé and dismissed by my family. But in that moment, pain sharpened into an unyielding clarity. I wouldn't wait anymore, not for anyone. I blocked Ethan, then secretly packed a single bag, leaving my engagement ring and the mocking necklace behind. My gilded cage was about to open as I boarded a bus, bound for a new life, far from the Hawthornes and their suffocating expectations.

Bought by the Billionaire: The Debt's Price

Bought by the Billionaire: The Debt's Price

Modern

5.0

I was the "fallen princess" of New York, living in a charcoal silk cage while paying off my father’s millions in debt with my own body. My owner was Braxton Kensington, a man who looked at me with the same cold interest he gave a fluctuating stock graph. One morning, a New York Times alert shattered the silence: Braxton was getting engaged to a billionaire socialite in the merger of the decade. When I demanded my freedom and the five-million-dollar severance promised in our contract, he just smirked and pointed to the fine print. "In a court of law, an engagement is just an intention," he whispered, gripping my chin until it bruised. "Until I sign that marriage license, you belong to me." He flicked a black AmEx at my feet like I was a tragic charity case, ordering me to buy a dress for his engagement gala. To save my dying mother from eviction, I took a secret translation job, only to realize my client was his new fiancée, Caroline. She dragged me to Braxton’s office to humiliate me, and after he hid me in a secret room to avoid a scandal, he branded me a "security risk" and froze every cent I had. I stood in a CVS with my last sixty dollars, swallowing a Plan B pill dry while watching a news report about Braxton demolishing my family’s last legacy. He didn't just want my body; he wanted to erase my entire existence and leave me with nothing. The cruelty was breathtaking, but Braxton forgot that a woman with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous player in the game. I reached out to the only man he truly feared—his billionaire half-brother and the boy whose heart I broke years ago, Ansel Neal. "Coffee isn't enough," Ansel replied to my message in seconds. "Dinner. Our old spot. 8 PM." As I walked into the club to meet Braxton's greatest rival, I knew the game wasn't over. I was just changing the rules.

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Abandoned Ex-Wife: Now Untouchable

Abandoned Ex-Wife: Now Untouchable

Tao Yaoyao
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My five-year-old daughter was dying in the ICU, her heartbeat replaced by the continuous, electronic scream of a flatline. I gripped her cold hand, my throat sealed shut by a terror so absolute I couldn't even cry out. I dialed my husband Grayson's private number, the one reserved only for me and his assistants. He declined the call instantly. A second later, a text buzzed against my palm: "In a meeting. Do not disturb. Stop calling." Five miles away, Grayson was at a luxury gala, adjusting his silk tie and laughing with Belle Escobar. He told her I was just being "dramatic" and using our daughter's "fever" as an excuse to avoid the event. He had no idea Effie's heart had already stopped. When I finally reached our penthouse, soaked from the rain and carrying Effie's small socks in a plastic bag, Grayson didn't even look at me. He snapped at me for ruining the hardwood floors and asked if I'd left Effie with the nanny just to "feel sorry for myself." Three days later, while I buried our daughter in a small, lonely ceremony, Grayson was at the Hamptons. Belle posted a photo of him golfing with the caption: "A mental health day with the boys." He didn't even attend the funeral, but he returned home demanding I clear out Effie's room to make a study for Belle's son. The injustice burned through me until there was nothing left. I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, desperate to join my daughter. But instead of the darkness, I woke up to blinding lights and the scent of Grayson's expensive cologne. I was standing in a ballroom, wearing a blue silk dress I had already burned. Above me, a banner read: "Happy 5th Birthday Kaiden & Effie." I was back, exactly one year before the tragedy. This time, I wasn't going to be the grieving wife. I was going to be their worst nightmare.

The Mute Bride Is The Secret Mastermind

The Mute Bride Is The Secret Mastermind

Jin Yi
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I was the titan of Wall Street until an indictment and an ankle monitor turned my penthouse into a gilded cage. To save face, I was forced into a marriage with Elza, a "mute" girl from the Schmidt family whom I treated as nothing more than a silent piece of furniture while my empire crumbled. The night I was poisoned at a high-society gala, a mysterious server in an oversized uniform saved my life with terrifying, clinical precision. They disappeared into the night, leaving me with a silver cufflink and a burning obsession to find the shadow who held my life in their hands. Back home, I took my frustration out on Elza, telling her she was "exhausting to look at" and "smelled like sickness" after her charity visits. Her own family treated her like a stray dog, trying to humiliate her at the next gala by dressing her in what they claimed was a cheap knockoff while whispering to the press that she was nothing but a high-end escort. "Stay out of my way," I would growl at her, never noticing the steel in her eyes. I sat at my table, watching my rivals' stocks plummet and wondering who "The Zero"—the legendary financial ghost—really was. I never suspected that the woman I ignored was the same one solving the equations that were currently burning Manhattan to the ground. The injustice peaked when Elza stood before the city's elite, not as a victim, but as a queen. She dropped over a hundred million dollars to buy back her family’s legacy, revealing a secret fortune that made my own empire look like pocket change. As I grabbed her wrist and saw the small red mole hidden beneath her watch, the truth hit me like a physical blow. The silent wife I had despised was the savior I had been hunting, and she was finally done playing the victim. "We have a lot to talk about, wife," I whispered, realizing I had been sleeping next to the most dangerous woman in the world.

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From Stand-In to Sterling From Stand-In to Sterling REGINA SIMONDS Romance
“My life with Ethan seemed perfect, a carefully constructed dream built over years of quiet happiness. I believed in our future, our unwavering love. But then, his high school sweetheart, Jessica, died in a tragic accident. Weeks later, the chilling discovery of Ethan's suicide note: "Jessica was the only one. I can't live without her." My world didn't just crumble; it exploded into a million shards of brutal betrayal. Our entire marriage was a meticulously crafted lie, a painful performance. I was nothing but a stand-in, a convenient placeholder for the woman he truly loved. Every shared smile, every whispered promise, now felt like a cruel deception. The agony of that realization was a physical blow. Eight years, wasted. My heart was ripped open, not just by loss, but by the acidic burn of profound humiliation and the sickening injustice of being so utterly used and discarded. How could I have been so tragically wrong about everything? Then I woke up, gasping, back in my college dorm room, feeling the same nausea, seeing the same too-bright sunshine. My phone buzzed. A text from Ethan: "Sarah, we need to talk. It's about Jessica. I think I'm still in love with her. We can't do this anymore." The exact same words. But this time, my tears were gone. This time, I finally knew how to change my story.”
1

Introduction

10/06/2025

2

Chapter 1

10/06/2025

3

Chapter 2

10/06/2025

4

Chapter 3

10/06/2025

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Chapter 4

10/06/2025

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Chapter 5

10/06/2025

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Chapter 6

10/06/2025

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Chapter 7

10/06/2025

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Chapter 8

10/06/2025

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Chapter 9

10/06/2025