From Naive to Ruthless

From Naive to Ruthless

Leo Fairchild

5.0
Comment(s)
263
View
11
Chapters

The bell above my clinic door jingled. I was Dr. Hayes, a woman who' d finally built a life, a stable family. Pregnant with our planned baby, I believed my husband, Mark, was as excited as I was. Then Chloe, a seemingly confident student, walked in with a smile that felt sharp, unpleasant. "I'm Chloe. Mark's student," she stated, then pushed up her sleeve. There, a fresh tattoo: an infinity symbol intertwined with our anniversary date. "Mark got one too," she purred, "Matching. Cute, right? He said it symbolized forever. Our forever." My stomach clenched, the air left my lungs. That night, Mark played the doting husband, his hand resting on my pregnant belly. But I smelled her perfume, faintly. Days later, I watched on our car's security camera as Mark drove to Chloe's apartment, not a "faculty meeting." I heard him tell her, "Poor Evie. So trusting... Evie' s predictable, a bit naive." He laughed with her, calling my past, my pain, "clingy." Then came Chloe' s texts: a photo of Mark in her bed, followed by a box of my childhood cookies. "He got them for me," she wrote, "Said they reminded him of sweet, innocent things. Guess I' m his new sweet thing." He saw me as the damaged girl from the group home, easily fooled, not the woman I'd become. The man I believed saved me from my past used it to mock me with his mistress. How could I bring our baby into a home built on such casual, callous lies? The trusting, hopeful Evie was gone. I called a clinic, then a ruthless lawyer. This time, I was playing for keeps.

Introduction

The bell above my clinic door jingled.

I was Dr. Hayes, a woman who' d finally built a life, a stable family.

Pregnant with our planned baby, I believed my husband, Mark, was as excited as I was.

Then Chloe, a seemingly confident student, walked in with a smile that felt sharp, unpleasant.

"I'm Chloe. Mark's student," she stated, then pushed up her sleeve.

There, a fresh tattoo: an infinity symbol intertwined with our anniversary date.

"Mark got one too," she purred, "Matching. Cute, right? He said it symbolized forever. Our forever."

My stomach clenched, the air left my lungs.

That night, Mark played the doting husband, his hand resting on my pregnant belly.

But I smelled her perfume, faintly.

Days later, I watched on our car's security camera as Mark drove to Chloe's apartment, not a "faculty meeting."

I heard him tell her, "Poor Evie. So trusting... Evie' s predictable, a bit naive."

He laughed with her, calling my past, my pain, "clingy."

Then came Chloe' s texts: a photo of Mark in her bed, followed by a box of my childhood cookies.

"He got them for me," she wrote, "Said they reminded him of sweet, innocent things. Guess I' m his new sweet thing."

He saw me as the damaged girl from the group home, easily fooled, not the woman I'd become.

The man I believed saved me from my past used it to mock me with his mistress.

How could I bring our baby into a home built on such casual, callous lies?

The trusting, hopeful Evie was gone.

I called a clinic, then a ruthless lawyer.

This time, I was playing for keeps.

Continue Reading

Other books by Leo Fairchild

More
The Surgeon's Debt: Bound To The Beast

The Surgeon's Debt: Bound To The Beast

Romance

5.0

I was a surgeon on the most luxurious ship in the world, scrubbing my hands until they were raw to forget the name Ye Jiuting and the past I’d left behind. But at 2:15 AM, Room 404 became my graveyard when a federal agent flatlined on my table, and the world I’d built turned into a nightmare. The nurse handed me a syringe she swore was a standard antibiotic, but the ship’s medical files had been scrubbed to hide a fatal allergy. Before the body was even cold, the widow was screaming murder, and the ship’s foreman, Huston Lyons, was at my throat with a predatory grin. "You killed him, Doctor," Huston sneered, "and on this ship, people like you tend to disappear overboard." When I tried to prove the syringe was clean, Huston’s brutal grip forced the needle into my own arm, injecting me with a lethal stimulant that sent my heart into a violent, scorching frenzy. I fled into the bowels of the ship, my vision warping and my lungs burning, while a ship-wide announcement declared a five-million-dollar bounty on my head. Every desperate gambler and debt-ridden crew member was now hunting me like an animal for a chance at a clean slate. I didn't understand how the digital records could lie or why a routine dose had been replaced with poison. Was I a target, or just a convenient scapegoat for a conspiracy much larger than a single death? Just as the mercenaries were about to drag me to a black site, Clinton Collier, the terrifying "King of the Leviathan," stepped out of the shadows and claimed my life as his own. "She is my Caretaker now," he declared, wrapping a black silk ribbon around my neck to mark me as his exclusive property. I had escaped the gallows only to be collared by a monster, but as I felt his madness recede under my touch, I realized that being his only cure was the most dangerous weapon I possessed.

You'll also like

Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him

SHANA GRAY
4.3

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book