Beneath The Surface: A Family's Secret

Beneath The Surface: A Family's Secret

JESSICA KIRK

5.0
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My life was a laundry cycle of servitude. A straight-A student, yet at home, I was just the maid, my younger brother Kevin' s muddy jersey a constant reminder. My parents, Karen and Rick, lived through his fleeting athletic glories, barely acknowledging my existence. Then came the Spring Break survivalist trip to the Nevada desert, Kevin's latest TikTok obsession, eagerly championed by my parents. I warned them about the aggressive wildlife, the missing hikers, but my mother's hand found my cheek, silencing me. Deep in the desert, our SUV got stuck, and as darkness fell, a chilling tap on my window turned our ill-fated adventure into a nightmare. A starving mountain lion shattered the glass, its claws tearing into my arm. But the real terror wasn't the beast; it was the cold calculation in my mother's eyes. With a sickening shove, Karen pushed me out of the car, right into the lion's path. The door slammed shut, the lock clicked, and my last sight was their taillights speeding away, leaving me for dead in the dark. Their relief was palpable, and I died knowing they abandoned me without a second thought. I was consumed by the grit of the sand, the tearing pain, the animal' s hot breath, but most of all, the chilling indifference of my own family. How could they? How could my own mother make such a conscious, fatal decision to discard me? Why was I always the problem they needed to eliminate, the buzzkill they had to silence? Then, the familiar smell of bleach filled my lungs. I gasped, eyes flying open, standing in the laundry room, Kevin' s muddy jersey in my hand. I was back, and this time, the cold, hard block settling in my chest wasn't sorrow or fear, but a thirst for revenge. Not this time. This time, they would pay.

Introduction

My life was a laundry cycle of servitude.

A straight-A student, yet at home, I was just the maid, my younger brother Kevin' s muddy jersey a constant reminder.

My parents, Karen and Rick, lived through his fleeting athletic glories, barely acknowledging my existence.

Then came the Spring Break survivalist trip to the Nevada desert, Kevin's latest TikTok obsession, eagerly championed by my parents.

I warned them about the aggressive wildlife, the missing hikers, but my mother's hand found my cheek, silencing me.

Deep in the desert, our SUV got stuck, and as darkness fell, a chilling tap on my window turned our ill-fated adventure into a nightmare.

A starving mountain lion shattered the glass, its claws tearing into my arm.

But the real terror wasn't the beast; it was the cold calculation in my mother's eyes.

With a sickening shove, Karen pushed me out of the car, right into the lion's path.

The door slammed shut, the lock clicked, and my last sight was their taillights speeding away, leaving me for dead in the dark.

Their relief was palpable, and I died knowing they abandoned me without a second thought.

I was consumed by the grit of the sand, the tearing pain, the animal' s hot breath, but most of all, the chilling indifference of my own family.

How could they? How could my own mother make such a conscious, fatal decision to discard me?

Why was I always the problem they needed to eliminate, the buzzkill they had to silence?

Then, the familiar smell of bleach filled my lungs.

I gasped, eyes flying open, standing in the laundry room, Kevin' s muddy jersey in my hand.

I was back, and this time, the cold, hard block settling in my chest wasn't sorrow or fear, but a thirst for revenge.

Not this time. This time, they would pay.

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The Dormant Wolf: Rejected By My Alpha Husband

The Dormant Wolf: Rejected By My Alpha Husband

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I took a silver bullet for my fated mate, Derek, and fell into a coma for five years. When I finally opened my eyes, I wasn't greeted as a hero. I was handed a deportation order. Because I had burned out my wolf spirit to save his life, I was now "human" and useless to the pack. My marriage had been annulled years ago without my consent. I dragged my atrophied body to our home, only to find Derek with Anjelica, a woman I once called a friend. She was wearing my jewelry and carrying his heir. But the knife in my heart wasn't seeing them together. It was my son. My five-year-old boy, Errol, didn't run to me. He screamed in terror and sprayed me with a bottle of liquid he had been hiding. It hissed against my skin. Wolfsbane. "Go away, monster!" he sobbed, pointing the bottle at me like a weapon. "Mommy Anjelica said this burns the bad things!" I had lost my wolf, my husband, and my child. But they weren't done taking from me. When Anjelica faked a medical emergency, Derek signed a general proxy form. I was dragged into surgery, not as a patient, but as a harvest. I heard the doctor whisper, "She wants her dry." They thought draining my blood would kill me. They didn't know that my "human" shell was just a cocoon for something ancient. I escaped the hospital that night. Standing by the ocean, I threw my wedding ring into the waves. "I, Catherine, reject the bond." Miles away, Derek fell to his knees, vomiting blood as the connection snapped. He thought I was dead. He didn't know the White Wolf had just awakened.

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The Billionaire's Secret Twins: Her Revenge

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Shearwater
4.4

I was four months pregnant, weighing over two hundred pounds, and my heart was failing from experimental treatments forced on me as a child. My doctor looked at me with clinical detachment and told me I was in a death sentence: if I kept the baby, I would die, and if I tried to remove it, I would die. Desperate for a lifeline, I called my father, Francis Acosta, to tell him I was sick and pregnant. I expected a father's love, but all I got was a cold, sharp blade of a voice. "Then do it quietly," he said. "Don't embarrass Candi. Her debutante ball is coming up." He didn't just reject me; he erased me. My trust fund was frozen, and I was told I was no longer an Acosta. My fiancé, Auston, had already discarded me, calling me a "bloated whale" while he looked for a thinner, wealthier replacement. I left New York on a Greyhound bus, weeping into a bag of chips, a broken woman the world considered a mistake. I couldn't understand how my own father could tell me to die "quietly" just to save face for a party. I didn't know why I had been a lab rat for my family’s pharmaceutical ambitions, or how they could sleep at night while I was left to rot in the gray drizzle of the city. Five years later, the doors of JFK International Airport slid open. I stepped onto the marble floor in red-soled stilettos, my body lean, lethal, and carved from years of blood and sweat. I wasn't the "whale" anymore; I was a ghost coming back to haunt them. With my daughter by my side and a medical reputation that terrified the global elite, I was ready to dismantle the Acosta empire piece by piece. "Tell Francis to wash his neck," I whispered to the skyline. "I'm home."

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