Echoes of a Stolen Life

Echoes of a Stolen Life

Gertrude

4.0
Comment(s)
309
View
34
Chapters

"Liam, we need to talk." My father's flat voice cut through the tense silence of our dining room, setting the stage for a conversation I knew was coming. The university scholarship, a white rectangle of hope, lay on the table-a trap. My mother, Sarah, chimed in, her voice sickly sweet as she reminded me Noah hadn't gotten a scholarship, knowing what they truly wanted. Then came the monstrous demand: "We want you to give the scholarship to him." Hot anger surged, the desire to scream, to accuse them of their blatant, cruel favoritism. But then, the cold memory washed over me. In my last life, I had screamed. I had fought. They expelled me, had me framed for plagiarism with fake evidence under Noah's name. The university slammed its doors. My name was dragged through the mud. I watched Noah, my beloved younger brother, live my stolen life while I spiraled into poverty and despair. I died at thirty, watching his business success on TV, consumed by bitter regret. Why did they do this to me? How could my family betray me so monstrously? But now, I was eighteen again. The letter was on the table. The same demand hung in the air. This time, I would not fight them. Not here, not now. I looked up, a mask of dejection on my face, and whispered, "Okay." They expected a fight, but I had a new plan. I was taking my future back, and this time, they wouldn't even see it coming.

Introduction

"Liam, we need to talk." My father's flat voice cut through the tense silence of our dining room, setting the stage for a conversation I knew was coming. The university scholarship, a white rectangle of hope, lay on the table-a trap. My mother, Sarah, chimed in, her voice sickly sweet as she reminded me Noah hadn't gotten a scholarship, knowing what they truly wanted.

Then came the monstrous demand: "We want you to give the scholarship to him." Hot anger surged, the desire to scream, to accuse them of their blatant, cruel favoritism. But then, the cold memory washed over me. In my last life, I had screamed. I had fought. They expelled me, had me framed for plagiarism with fake evidence under Noah's name. The university slammed its doors. My name was dragged through the mud.

I watched Noah, my beloved younger brother, live my stolen life while I spiraled into poverty and despair. I died at thirty, watching his business success on TV, consumed by bitter regret. Why did they do this to me? How could my family betray me so monstrously?

But now, I was eighteen again. The letter was on the table. The same demand hung in the air. This time, I would not fight them. Not here, not now. I looked up, a mask of dejection on my face, and whispered, "Okay." They expected a fight, but I had a new plan. I was taking my future back, and this time, they wouldn't even see it coming.

Continue Reading

Other books by Gertrude

More
The Alpha Signed Away His Fated Mate

The Alpha Signed Away His Fated Mate

Werewolf

5.0

I stood center stage at my own art exhibition, surrounded by the Pack elite who looked at me with nothing but pity. My husband, the Alpha Prime, was missing. Then someone pointed at the TV. There was Dante, live on the news, shielding another woman—a leggy Beta named Isabella—from the rain with his own body. While I stood alone, treated like a defect because I couldn't shift, he was playing the perfect gentleman to his mistress. That night, I walked into his office with a stack of boring gallery logistics paperwork. Buried deep on page four was a Severance Bond—an archaic law declaring a mate unwanted property. Dante didn't even read it. He was too busy laughing with Isabella to notice he was legally signing away his wife. I took the folder, packed a bag, and vanished into the night, taking the secret of his unborn heir with me. When he finally tracked me down in the Swiss Alps during a blizzard, he expected a submissive wife ready to return. Instead, he found a woman who looked him in the eye and said, "You are not needed here." I thought I was free, until a year later, when our daughter’s blood began to burn her alive from the inside. Her powerful Alpha bloodline was at war with her body, and my magic wasn't enough to save her. Trembling, I dialed the number I swore I’d never call again. "Dante," I sobbed. "It's Luna. She’s dying." The man who once treated me like a resource tore through mountains to save us. But this time, the Alpha Prime didn't come to conquer. He came to kneel.

Reborn Heiress: Dragging Traitors To Hell

Reborn Heiress: Dragging Traitors To Hell

Mafia

5.0

The world was a symphony of agony, played on the strings of my own body. I was tied to a chair in a damp basement, the metallic tang of blood filling my mouth as my fingernails were ripped from their beds by a pair of rusty pliers. My best friend, Corrine, stepped into the flickering light wearing my favorite Chanel suit and the engagement ring that was supposed to be mine. Beside her, my fiancé Aldo held the pliers, his voice smooth and cultured as he demanded I sign over my entire inheritance to them. As I struggled, a news report flashed on an old TV in the corner: Hunter Gallagher, the man I had treated like dirt but who had always tried to protect me, was dead in a horrific car explosion. Corrine laughed, whispering in my ear that they had lured him to his death using a fake kidnapping tip. He died trying to save me from a trap set by the people I trusted most. They didn't just want my money; they wanted to erase me. They plunged a needle full of heroin into my neck, watching with cold, mocking eyes as my heart hammered against my ribs and finally seized into nothingness. I died in that basement, a blind, spoiled girl who had let her true protector be murdered. As the darkness closed in, my soul burned with a single, silent vow: If I ever get another life, I will drag you both to hell with me. Suddenly, I gasped for air, my lungs fighting against a weight that wasn't there. I wasn't in the basement; I was in my own bed, my fingernails intact and my skin unbroken. I checked my phone, and my heart stopped—it was May 20th, exactly one year before my death. Hunter was still alive, and this time, I wasn't the prey.

You'll also like

The Mute Heiress's Fake Marriage Pact

The Mute Heiress's Fake Marriage Pact

Alma
5.0

I was finally brought back to the billionaire Vance estate after years in the grimy foster system, but the luxury Lincoln felt more like a funeral procession. My biological family didn't welcome me with open arms; they looked at me like a stain on a silk shirt. They thought I was a "defective" mute with cognitive delays, a spare part to be traded away. Within hours of my arrival, my father decided to sell me to Julian Thorne, a bitter, paralyzed heir, just to secure a corporate merger. My sister Tiffany treated me like trash, whispering for me to "go back to the gutter" before pouring red wine over my dress in front of Manhattan's elite. When a drunk cousin tried to lay hands on me at the engagement gala, my grandmother didn't protect me-she raised her silver-topped cane to strike my face for "embarrassing the family." They called me a sacrificial lamb, laughing as they signed the prenuptial agreement that stripped me of my freedom. They had no idea I was E-11, the underground hacker-artist the world was obsessed with, or that I had already breached their private servers. I found the hidden medical records-blood types A, A, and B-a biological impossibility that proved my "parents" were harboring a scandal that could ruin them. Why bring me back just to discard me again? And why was Julian Thorne, the man supposedly bound to a wheelchair, secretly running miles at dawn on his private estate? Standing in the middle of the ballroom, I didn't plead for mercy. I used a text-to-speech app to broadcast a cold, synthetic threat: "I have the records, Richard. Do you want me to explain genetics to the press, or should we leave quietly?" With the "paralyzed" billionaire as my unexpected accomplice, I walked out of the Vance house and into a much more dangerous game.

Secret Baby: The Jilted Wife's Final Goodbye

Secret Baby: The Jilted Wife's Final Goodbye

Cait
5.0

I sat on the cold tile floor of our Upper East Side penthouse, staring at the two pink lines until my vision blurred. After ten years of loving Julian Sterling and three years of a hollow marriage, I finally had the one thing that could bridge the distance between us. I was pregnant. But Julian didn't come home with flowers for our anniversary. He tossed a thick manila envelope onto the marble coffee table with a heavy thud. Fiona, the woman he'd truly loved for years, was back in New York, and he told me our "business deal" was officially over. "Sign it," He said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. He looked at me with the cold detachment of a man selling a piece of unwanted furniture. When I hesitated, he told me to add a zero to the alimony if the money wasn't enough. I realized in that moment that if he knew about the baby, he wouldn't love me; he would simply take my child and give it to Fiona to raise. I shoved the pregnancy test into my pocket, signed the papers with a shaking hand, and lied through my teeth. When my morning sickness hit, I slumped to the floor to hide the truth. "It's just cramps," I gasped, watching him recoil as if I were contagious. To make him stay away, I invented a man named Jack-a fake boyfriend who supposedly gave me the kindness Julian never could. Suddenly, the man who wanted me gone became a monster of possessiveness. He threatened to "bury" a man who didn't exist while leaving me humiliated at his family's dinner to rush to Fiona's side. I was so broken that I even ate a cake I was deathly allergic to, then had to refuse life-saving steroids at the hospital because they would harm the fetus. Julian thinks he's stalling the divorce for two months to protect the family's reputation for his father's Jubilee. He thinks he's keeping his "property" on a short leash until the press dies down. He has no idea I'm using those sixty days to build a fortress for my child. By the time he realizes the truth, I'll be gone, and the Sterling heir will be far beyond his reach.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book