The Second Life of Ashley: A Bitter Payback

The Second Life of Ashley: A Bitter Payback

Elizabeth

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Kevin' s sharp, accusing voice sliced through the heavy haze. He stood in my old room, its faded floral wallpaper mocking me, holding up a therapeutic massager. "What' s this, Ashley? Something dirty?" My heart hammered, a wild bird trapped. I blinked. It was real. I was back. This exact moment, this very massager, had been the fuse of my first life' s destruction. My younger brother, Kevin, had whined for it, then vilely twisted its purpose, spreading insidious rumors about my promiscuity at college. My mother, Brenda, instead of defending me, had blindly believed his lies. She' d screamed, called me a disgrace, and summarily forced me to drop out, shattering every one of my dreams. Then, she tried to marry me off to Earl, a monstrous, predatory man who delighted in breaking me, beating me, and finally, ending my life. I remembered their callous faces afterward, a chilling indifference as they collected money over my corpse. The suffocating stench of that past clung to the air, a physical manifestation of their betrayal. The sheer, burning injustice of it all had consumed me in my dying moments. How could my own family be so utterly cruel? But now, standing here again at the precipice of my past, a cold fire ignited deep within my chest. This time, I wouldn' t be the victim. This time, I would be the master manipulator. And their dance of destruction was about to begin.

Introduction

Kevin' s sharp, accusing voice sliced through the heavy haze. He stood in my old room, its faded floral wallpaper mocking me, holding up a therapeutic massager. "What' s this, Ashley? Something dirty?"

My heart hammered, a wild bird trapped. I blinked. It was real. I was back.

This exact moment, this very massager, had been the fuse of my first life' s destruction.

My younger brother, Kevin, had whined for it, then vilely twisted its purpose, spreading insidious rumors about my promiscuity at college.

My mother, Brenda, instead of defending me, had blindly believed his lies. She' d screamed, called me a disgrace, and summarily forced me to drop out, shattering every one of my dreams.

Then, she tried to marry me off to Earl, a monstrous, predatory man who delighted in breaking me, beating me, and finally, ending my life.

I remembered their callous faces afterward, a chilling indifference as they collected money over my corpse. The suffocating stench of that past clung to the air, a physical manifestation of their betrayal.

The sheer, burning injustice of it all had consumed me in my dying moments. How could my own family be so utterly cruel?

But now, standing here again at the precipice of my past, a cold fire ignited deep within my chest. This time, I wouldn' t be the victim. This time, I would be the master manipulator. And their dance of destruction was about to begin.

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His Unwanted Bride, Another Man's Queen

His Unwanted Bride, Another Man's Queen

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My fiancé, the ruthless Mafia Underboss, tore my dead mother's necklace from my throat and fastened it around another woman's neck. "Diana needs it," Arthur said, his eyes cold. "My blood remembers loving her. It calms her anxiety." He was referring to the bone marrow transplant that saved his life. Diana was connected to the donor, and Arthur believed his new blood made him belong to her. I became a ghost in my own home, forced to watch him crown a usurper. When Diana faked a fall at a gala, accusing me of pushing her, Arthur didn't hesitate. He decided to "discipline" me publicly to teach me respect. He raised the whip. "Arthur, please, I'm pregnant!" I screamed, shielding my stomach. "Don't lie to me," he spat, and the lash came down. I lost our baby on that cold marble floor in a pool of blood. He didn't believe me. He stepped over my body to take Diana to dinner. He didn't stop there. He let my grandmother die in the ER to tend to Diana's bruised nose. He even dug up my grandmother's grave because Diana wanted the view for a garden. I finally fled, vanishing into the night. It wasn't until months later, when he found the autopsy report of our unborn child and the toxicology results proving Diana had been drugging him, that the fog lifted. He tracked me down to a small town, where I was finally healing with a good man. The feared Underboss fell to his knees in the pouring rain, holding the whip he had used on me, shaking violently. "Beat me, Ella," he begged, tears mixing with the mud. "Hurt me. Make us even." I looked at the monster I used to love and dropped his ring into the dirt. "You can't bring back the dead, Arthur," I whispered. "And you are dead to me."

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Qing Shui
4.3

I sat in the gray, airless room of the New York State Department of Corrections, my knuckles white as the Warden delivered the news. "Parole denied." My father, Howard Sterling, had forged new evidence of financial crimes to keep me behind bars. He walked into the room, smelling of expensive cologne, and tossed a black folder onto the steel table. It was a marriage contract for Lucas Kensington, a billionaire currently lying in a vegetative state in the ICU. "Sign it. You walk out today." I laughed at the idea of being sold to a "corpse" until Howard slid a grainy photo toward me. It showed a toddler with a crescent-moon birthmark—the son Howard told me had died in an incubator five years ago. He smiled and told me the boy's safety depended entirely on my cooperation. I was thrust into the Kensington estate, where the family treated me like a "drowned rat." They dressed me in mothball-scented rags and mocked my status, unaware that I was monitoring their every move. I watched the cousin, Julian, openly waiting for Lucas to die to inherit the empire, while the doctors prepared to sign the death certificate. I didn't understand why my father would lie about my son’s death for years, or what kind of monsters would use a child as a bargaining chip. The injustice of it burned in my chest as I realized I was just a pawn in a game of old money and blood. As the monitors began to flatline and the family started to celebrate their inheritance, I locked the door and reached into the hem of my dress. I pulled out the sharpened silver wires I’d fashioned in the prison workshop. They thought they bought a submissive convict, but they actually invited "The Saint"—the world’s most dangerous underground surgeon—into their home. "Wake up, Lucas. You owe me a life." I wasn't there to be a bride; I was there to wake the dead and burn their empire to the ground.

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