Deeply Engaged

Five years ago, she gave birth in a pool of blood. Her sister smothered her firstborn to death. The doctors declared her dead. Five years later, she returned to New York's high society as "Spectre", a top-tier designer, and "Nyx", a dark web hacker. By her side stood her gifted young son. Those who harmed her-she ruined their reputations. Those who stole her child, she bankrupted them. Those who murdered her mother, she drove them to madness and prison. She thought her revenge was complete, that she had no more weaknesses. Then a man of unrivaled power showed up at her door. He was her enemy's fiancé-, and the biggest variable in her carefully laid plans. She turned him down cold. "I'm not interested in my enemy's man." But the man produced a little boy from behind him. A child with aloof, brooding features, silent and sullen. Yet identical to her own son. "Would you mind a reunion," he asked, "with your other son, who's been missing for five years?"

My husband swallowed a ten-year prison sentence to save me from my abusive stepfather. When he got out, he built a mafia empire and made me his Queen. But last night, his encrypted tablet lit up with an ultrasound photo and a text from another woman. "Our little secret is growing." The mistress soon called to mock me. She was pregnant, while I had been barren for four years. When I confronted my husband, he didn't apologize. Instead, he assigned heavily armed guards to protect her and burned my divorce papers with his cigar. "The only exit from this Family is death," he warned. The nightmare deepened when I uncovered her true identity. The mistress was my half-sister, and her mastermind was the mother who had abandoned me at six. My husband knew. He even whispered our sacred vow to her-"I will shield you from the blood"-the exact words he used when I lost our child on a freezing concrete floor for his syndicate. I took bullets for him. I waited a decade outside those prison gates. Yet he used my absolute loyalty to lock me in a cage, handing my crown to the family that threw me to the wolves. He thought I was just a helpless wife, entirely dependent on his mercy. He didn't know I was Vanguard, the shadow billionaire controlling the very lifelines of his empire. I calmly picked up my phone and called my head operative. "Liquidate his supply chains. Let's see whose empire turns to ash first."

A sharp pain pulled me from the darkness. I opened my eyes to see my husband, Graves, smiling as he introduced his new "intern," Alex. Her cheap handbag couldn't hide the dark hickey on her neck. Looking at them, the cold, sharp memory of my death flooded my mind. In my previous life, my protégé sold me out, and Graves watched coldly as our company crumbled, leading to my fatal heart attack. Back then, when he brought Alex home, I screamed and threw things, starting my long nightmare of humiliation. I endured her lavish birthday party in my own home, watching him gift her the exact sports car he said was "too extravagant" for me. I even miscarried our child due to the stress of his constant affairs. He held my hand in the hospital, swearing he would change. But he lied, eventually orchestrating a hostile takeover that literally killed me. I had built his entire empire from the ground up, acting as the brilliant strategist behind the curtain. I couldn't understand how the man I loved could be such a ruthless monster, discarding me for a cheap mistress and stripping away everything I owned. The date on the nightstand confirmed it: I had traveled back in time to the exact day it all started. A strange calm washed over me. "Of course, the poor thing," I said evenly. "We should take care of her." Then, I pulled out the divorce papers. This time, I won't just walk away. I will become the ghost that tears his kingdom down.

I was the fiancée of the Chicago Outfit’s heir, a bond sealed by blood and eighteen years of history. But when his mistress pushed me into the freezing pool at our engagement gala, Jax didn’t swim toward me. He swam past me. He scooped up the girl who pushed me, cradling her like fragile glass, while I struggled against the weight of my gown in the murky water. When I finally dragged myself out, shivering and humiliated before the entire underworld, Jax didn’t offer a hand. He offered a scowl. "You’re making a scene, Eliana. Go home." Later, when that same mistress shoved me down the stairs, shattering my knee and my dance career, Jax stepped over my broken body to comfort her. I overheard him telling his friends, "I’m just breaking her spirit. She needs to learn she’s property, not a partner. Once she’s desperate enough, she’ll be the perfect obedient wife." He thought I was a dog that would always return to its master. He thought he could starve me of affection until I begged for scraps. He was wrong. While he was busy playing protector to his mistress, I wasn't crying in my room. I was packing his ring into a cardboard box. I cancelled my transfer to UCLA and enrolled at NYU instead. By the time Jax realized his "property" was missing, I was already in New York, standing next to a man who looked at me like a queen, not a possession.

I dragged a bleeding man out of a flooded alley to get the five million dollars he promised me. He woke up with severe amnesia, so I hid him in my cramped apartment, desperate to secure the cash for my seven-year-old son's life-saving asthma medication. But while washing his ruined, custom-tailored suit, I found a heavy gold signet ring hidden inside the seam. It was deeply engraved with a vicious falcon gripping a broadsword. My blood instantly ran cold. Ten years ago, the ruthless Wall Street billionaire who dismantled my father's company and drove my parents to suicide wore that exact ring. I had just saved the monster who destroyed my family, and now he was sleeping in my bed, right down the hall from my little boy. I stood in the kitchen, gripping a heavy butcher knife until my knuckles turned white. He was completely helpless in the next room, burning with a severe infection. I could drive the blade into his chest right now and finally end this ten-year nightmare. But then I looked at the astronomical pharmacy bills and the eviction notices pinned to the fridge. Vengeance wouldn't buy my son's next breath. "I am not interested in you, I am only interested in your money." I put the knife down, grabbed the medical supplies, and walked into the bedroom to nurse my sworn enemy back to health. Revenge could wait, but until I got my five million, the devil was mine to keep.

Kelsie's biggest regret in life was getting involved with Judge, the icy Captain. She pursued him for three years, married him for two, thinking she'd warmed a stone, only to be met with nothing. Her mother-in-law disliked her, her husband was indifferent, and a fragile "white moonlight" would occasionally try to get her attention. Until she witnessed Judge and Angelique meeting secretly at a hotel, her heart shattered, and then she discovered she was pregnant. Kelsie sneered, threw down the divorce papers, and decisively ran away, disappearing without a trace. When they met again, she was a successful single mother, surrounded by suitors. In the pouring rain, the once aloof man humbly stopped her car, pleading in a hoarse voice, "Kelsie, come home with me." The car window rolled down, and a little boy, nine-tenths like him, coldly warned in a cute but fierce tone, "Want to date my mommy? Ask me first!"

For two years, my husband Hunter flaunted his affair, using his mistress's fake pregnancy to torture me. I endured it all for our daughter, trapped in a gilded cage where he expected me to mistake his strangling for passion. Then his mistress whispered cruel lies to my six-year-old, telling her that her daddy would abandon her for the new baby. My daughter vanished. While I searched frantically, Hunter was unreachable, still with her. When he finally appeared, he shielded his mistress from my desperate rage, his wedding ring glinting as he pushed me away. With our daughter still missing, he pleaded with me. "Krystal, she's pregnant, don't hurt her!" The years of suppressed anger finally exploded. After our daughter was found safe, I looked him dead in the eye and told him the truth he'd been desperate to avoid. "I want a divorce, Hunter. I never loved you. I hate you."

The roar of the crowd was a physical force, pressing in on me from all sides, a wave of sound that vibrated up into my bones. I moved my mouth, swayed my body, mimicked the gestures – but it wasn' t my voice pouring from the speakers. It was Scarlett' s, a perfect, studio-polished product of technology and longing. My fiancé, the celebrated producer Liam Stone, had turned me into his ex-pop star. This wasn' t a dazzling comeback, though. Not for me. It was a lie on a colossal scale, a holographic projection of Scarlett overlaid on my body, my voice digitally reshaped into hers. For six months, he' d been systematically erasing me, Ava Green, the indie musician known for raw lyrics and a voice that sometimes broke with emotion. "Keep going," his voice crackled through my in-ear monitor, icy and sharp. "Don't break character. The modulation is perfect." My own pain and defiance surged, a desperate desire to reclaim my sound. When I pushed past the modulation, letting a raw note escape, the hologram flickered violently, and Scarlett' s synthesized voice cracked into static. The crowd gasped. Liam' s face twisted into a snarl. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Ava? Stick to the plan." His anger, cold and calculated, filled me with a sudden, overwhelming nausea – a feeling I' d been ignoring for weeks. The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow: I was pregnant. Trapped, silenced, and carrying the child of the man actively erasing my identity, I knew one thing: I would not be erased.

Three years. Three years of nights blurring into mornings, building a company from nothing with my wife, Chloe. Tomorrow, all that sacrifice would finally pay off with our IPO, making us billionaires and allowing us to finally reveal our secret marriage. But tonight, my world stopped. I found Chloe in my office, her personal assistant, Liam, his hands on her waist, his mouth on hers. Their whispered words, "So much better than my husband," poisoned the air. As she pushed him away, she defended me with a furious hiss, calling him a mere "toy" and me her "foundation." Yet, moments later, she pulled him back, her seductive smile returning. The betrayal was clear, but her fierce, confusing defense left me reeling, adrift between anger and a painful, desperate confusion. My hands shook as I stumbled back to my desk, the words "husband" and "foundation" twisting into a cruel, empty echo. How could she betray me so utterly, yet defend me with such ferocity? What was this hollow space inside my chest? There was only one way out. My thumb hovered over a number I hadn' t called in years. "Dr. Peterson," I whispered into the phone, "that mission in the Zercian conflict zone… is there still a spot?"

"Mommy." That single word, uttered by my five-year-old daughter, Lily, should have been a moment of pure joy. Instead, it detonated the fragile peace I' d clung to for five years, ever since Lily' s mother, Sophia, abandoned us to chase after her ex. Sophia froze, her plastered-on smile for her new boyfriend, Mark, faltering. I watched in horror as Mark, red-faced and enraged by Lily's innocent affection, lashed out, knocking over a glass and then contorting in feigned agony over a minor scrape on his knee. Sophia, utterly consumed by placating him, rushed to his side, showering him with a tenderness she had never once shown our child. Then, with chilling indifference, she turned to her security guards and commanded them to lock a sobbing, asthmatic Lily in an upstairs closet. Three days, she declared, Lily needed to "learn a lesson." My pleas about Lily' s severe asthma were met with her cynical scoff: "You always make things up to get attention." The metallic click of the lock echoed a horrifying finality. I banged on the door, screaming Lily' s name, but to no avail. The guards, under Sophia' s orders, ensured no one went near. Sometime after midnight, the crying stopped. I found my little girl crumpled on the floor, blue, lifeless, and not breathing. While I was attempting to revive our daughter in one hospital room, Sophia was miles away in a luxury car showroom, buying Mark two brand-new cars – a "compensation prize" for his scraped knee, celebrating their twisted reunion at Lily' s expense. How could a mother be so utterly devoid of humanity? How could the woman I once loved, the woman I foolishly hoped would one day return to us, betray our child so completely? I had to know. I had to understand what monstrous depths she was capable of, and how I could possibly escape her toxic grasp.

My entire life was a countdown to my sister Clara' s 30th birthday, the day I was to become a spiritual donor to save her from a wasting illness. I clung to Liam, the man I loved, as my only hope of escape, only to have that hope shatter when he coldly told me I had to go through with the ritual, dismissing my desperate plea that I was too weak. He forced Momma' s drugged tea on me, rendering me immobile, then dragged me to the prayer cabin where my parents awaited, my body offered up as Clara-who gave a triumphant smirk-stole my life force, leaving me for dead, unceremoniously dumped in a shallow ditch. How could the man I' d secretly saved ten years ago, giving him half my life in a forbidden ritual to heal him after his logging accident, betray me so completely, not even remembering my sacrifice while unknowingly feeding on my dwindling vitality? Yet, after Liam and Clara died in a mysterious crash and I was arrested for their murders, a blood-stained letter from Liam revealed the horrifying truth: he had finally remembered my sacrifice and the family's monstrous conspiracy, driving to atone by attempting a reverse ritual with Clara, freeing me to live the life he ultimately gave back to me.

My entire world revolved around Liam Vanderbilt, the dazzling heir to a New York dynasty, and the boy I'd loved since childhood. Despite being his family's housekeeper's daughter, I clung to the hope that our deep connection meant something more than just service. Then fate delivered a cruel blow: a devastating brain tumor diagnosis, leaving me with less than a year to live. As my life spiraled, the man I adored saw me only as an inconvenience, a "charity case" to be tolerated while he doted on his socialite fiancée, Chloe. He shrugged off my pain, letting Chloe steal the very screenplay I'd poured my soul into, turning it into her superficial "passion project." In front of New York's elite, he cruelly bestowed my deceased mother's precious heirloom locket upon Chloe, a final, public humiliation. His subsequent "romantic" proposal aboard a yacht, complete with a beautiful antique ring, seemed like a dream. But it swiftly descended into a nightmare when he presented organ donation papers, coldly suggesting I "be a hero" and give my lungs to Chloe. The man I loved and dedicated my life to was attempting to harvest my body, not out of care, but monstrous calculation. My heart shattered, reeling from the ultimate betrayal: how could anyone, let alone him, consider such a vile act? Then, a blinding flash of truth: an urgent email confirmed a catastrophic medical mix-up. There was no tumor; I was perfectly healthy. The heartbroken, dying girl vanished, replaced by a woman consumed by a vengeful clarity. They thought they had broken me, but they had just awakened the storm within.

My wedding to Ethan Vanderbilt marked the grand merger of two powerful American families. I hoped for love, but our new life began in a cold, silent townhouse. On our wedding night, Ethan coldly declared our marriage a business arrangement, stating he had "no desire" for me and his heart belonged to his assistant, Tiffany. The next morning, I overheard him call me a "prude" to her, shattering any last shred of my dignity. Heartbroken and seeking comfort, a desperate one-night stand unexpectedly left me pregnant. When I filed for divorce, he shamelessly attempted to coerce me into raising his mistress's child to secure my family's inheritance, then publicly shoved me to the ground in front of a taxi. How could the man I once hoped to love stoop to such callous, manipulative cruelty, weaponizing his mistress and an unborn child against me? My once-sheltered life became a public spectacle of betrayal, leaving me questioning everything. Fleeing to Paris for a fresh start, the quiet bartender father of my child, Liam, shockingly revealed himself as Alexander Sterling, an elusive tech billionaire. Now, with unexpected power by my side, I return to confront Ethan and Tiffany' s desperate scheme to ruin my legacy, ready to fight for my child and forge a destiny far beyond what any Vanderbilt could imagine, even as their own twisted drama reaches a deadly climax.

For six years, I was Ethan, an auto mechanic who found amnesiac Victoria. We built a life, had our son Liam, and a Texas home. I believed we were a family, forever. That illusion shattered in a Manhattan penthouse. Ice-cold Victoria told me our life was over. Her wealthy mother, Mrs. Sterling, offered ten million dollars and an NDA: sign it, and vanish from their high-society world. Emotionless, Victoria announced her engagement to Blake Astor, a match "appropriate" for her old money. My mind recoiled, not just from pain, but from a chilling sense of déjà vu. This wasn't new. I remembered the last time: Victoria’s first "amnesia," my desperate pleas, Blake framing me. My own son, Liam, blank-faced, delivering the "medication" that ended that life in a sanatorium. Both amnesias were lies – one to use me, the other to discard me. The bitter taste of betrayal consumed me. But this time, I wouldn't beg. I took their blood money. My hand steady, I signed the NDA. "Three days," I told Mrs. Sterling, "arrange my flight to California." They saw a gold digger. I saw escape, and the fuel to rebuild my life. Stanford's Computer Science program awaited.

The flashbulbs were blinding, the “Rising Critic” statuette heavy and cold in my grasp. Outside the hotel, amidst the swarm of photographers, a familiar figure pushed through and knelt before me. Jake Brown, my ex-fiancé, held open a velvet box, a diamond winking under the harsh lights. “Emily,” he rasped, a sound I once knew intimately, “Marry me. Again.” His family materialized behind him, beaming, a well-rehearsed chorus expecting my tears and a trembling, “Yes, oh, yes!” But they’d forgotten—or perhaps never knew—the full story of how he’d publicly accused me of sabotaging his signature dish. How he’d whispered lies to the restaurant owner, implying I pilfered expensive ingredients. How I was fired on the spot, my name dragged through the mud, my culinary dreams torched. His mother, Carol, tried to paint him as a suffering hero, claiming he’d spent a fortune clearing my name from the food poisoning incident. Yet, I remembered the real origins: the cheap, peanut-contaminated oil, the plagiarism he later framed me for. I remembered being left with a shattered wrist in a dark alley, as he walked away, abandoning me to a mob that *he* had stirred against me. His grand gesture now felt like the ultimate insult, dripping with manufactured sympathy—and unbearable blame. Three years had been long enough to heal, to rebuild, to find a love that didn’t demand sacrifice, yet they had the audacity to stage this performance. How could they stand here, rewriting history, when *he* had ripped everything from me? My voice was even, devoid of the storm that once raged, as I held up my left hand. A simple, elegant gold band gleamed beside my engagement ring—Noah’s ring. “Jake and I ended things three years ago,” I stated, my eyes steady. “And for your information, I’m already married.” The collective gasp and intensifying flashbulbs signaled that *my* story, the real one, was just beginning.

In my senior year of high school, my best friend fell for a rebellious school bully. He took her out of class to party, causing her grades to plummet. To stop her, I went to great lengths and revealed everything to her parents. I managed to pull her back onto the right path. But on the day of the SAT, she handed me a drugged drink. She said, "You ruined my dream of a wealthy life, so I’ll ruin your future. We're even now." Having been reborn, I not only want to send them to hell, but I also want to reclaim the glory that belongs to me!

Chloe had just given birth to twins, lying exhausted in a cramped, bustling hospital ward. When she called her husband, Julian, he was busy partying with his actress mistress. He coldly hung up on her, having already drafted a brutal divorce agreement that would leave her with a pittance. Strangers in the next bed loudly mocked her pitiful state, gossiping about how Julian was dumping her. For years, Chloe had erased her own identity to fit into his elite world, only to be thrown away like garbage. She was completely alone, clutching her helpless babies, bracing herself to sign the cruel papers just to survive. She couldn't understand why her absolute devotion was met with such chilling indifference. Why did she have to suffer this ultimate humiliation while he celebrated with the woman who ruined her life? But then, a senior doctor noticed a unique mole on her wrist and ran a secret DNA test. The results were staggering: Chloe was the long-lost daughter of the billionaire Beaumont family. With her fiercely protective parents and three powerful brothers suddenly forming an impenetrable fortress around her, Chloe picked up her phone and texted her arrogant husband. "City Hall tomorrow at 10 AM. If you don't show up, my lawyer will handle everything. And trust me, you won't like their terms."

My stepmother’s bodyguards were seconds away from dragging me back to a life that was essentially a prison cell wrapped in silk. I couldn't even scream for help because the words always died in my throat—a clinical condition called selective mutism that felt like drowning on dry land. I had just discovered the sickening truth: my father was planning to sell me to a sleazy investor named Sterling to cover his company’s bankruptcy. They were going to drug me, ship me off to a private island, and strip away the only thing I had left—my late mother’s multimillion-dollar art trust. When I arrived at the manor, my stepmother Lydia handed me a glass of wine laced with bitter sedatives, her smile sharp as a razor. "Drink up, darling. It’ll make the transition to Mr. Sterling much easier." My stepsister Harper stood in the corner, wearing a dress bought with my mother’s stolen money, mocking my inability to speak. My father didn't even look me in the eye as he calculated my price tag, treating his own daughter like a piece of damaged, mute inventory. They thought because I didn't speak, I didn't hear them laughing about the "accident" that killed my mother or how they planned to burn her final restoration work. They assumed my silence was a sign of surrender, a white flag waved by a broken girl who would never fight back. How could the people who were supposed to be my family treat me like a commodity to be traded? Did they really think my silence meant I was weak, or that I didn't know every dirty secret they were hiding in their ledgers? I didn't drink the wine. Instead, I burst into the VIP suite of Carlisle Pierce, the most cold-blooded billionaire in New York, and slammed a crumpled napkin on his table with a desperate, last-second gambit. "MARRY ME. NOW. $1 MILLION."

She married him out of desperation, becoming the perfect docile wife while he treated her like dirt beneath his shoes. But everything shattered the night she overheard him mocking her with his friends-and discovered the necklace she'd cherished, her only link to the boy who once saved her life, didn't even belong to him. It was all a lie. No longer the doormat he married, she discards her fake identity and reclaims her birthright as the hidden heiress of Salvadore City. Now she's on a mission: find the necklace's true owner among his circle of friends, no matter how many hearts she has to break along the way. But her husband isn't ready to let go. Convinced she's playing games to make him jealous, he's blindsided when divorce papers land in his hands. By the time he realizes the woman he dismissed was never who he thought she was, she's already moved on-living her truth, chasing her destiny, and leaving him choking on regret. Some cages, once opened, can never be closed again.

On our third anniversary, my husband canceled our dinner, claiming a sudden work emergency. I tracked his phone to an exclusive French restaurant, only to find him tenderly fastening a blessed bracelet—one I had flown across the world to get for him—onto his college ex-girlfriend's wrist. The sheer shock triggered a violent placental abruption. Bleeding out in my car just across the street, I frantically called his number. Through the window, I watched him glance at his screen, frown in annoyance, and press decline to focus on his lover. While I was wheeled into a freezing operating room for an emergency C-section utterly alone, he took his mistress back to our marital bed. He didn't even bother to check if I was alive, completely oblivious that our premature daughter was fighting for her life in the NICU. I soon discovered our entire marriage was a sham. He had used my family's wealth to save his company, and now he was trading me to secure a massive business deal with his ex's father. The man I loved didn't exist; he only saw me as a disposable asset. "I'm going to make him wish he had never been born." After secretly securing my baby in a private retreat, I ordered a medical-grade silicone pregnancy belly to hide my flat stomach. I stepped back into our penthouse, ready to burn his precious empire to the ground.

As I lay on the floor of our manor, bleeding out from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, I used my last ounce of strength to call my husband, Cole. I begged him for help, my vision blurring. But the only thing I heard was the clinking of champagne glasses and his mistress's giggle in the background. "Stop the drama, June," Cole snapped, his voice cold. "We're about to go on stage. Don't call again." He hung up, leaving me to die alone on the Persian rug while he accepted an award with another woman on his arm. I woke up in the hospital days later. My baby was gone. They had removed my fallopian tube. Cole finally arrived, smelling of expensive scotch and his mistress's perfume. He didn't hug me. He didn't cry. Instead, he leaned over my hospital bed, pressing his knee into the mattress until my fresh stitches tore open and bled. "You embarrassed me by calling an ambulance," he hissed. "My mistress, Alycia, says you're faking it. Clean yourself up." He left me bleeding again to go announce a $10 million donation to Alycia's "groundbreaking" medical research. I stared at the TV screen, numb. The research Alycia was taking credit for? It was mine. I wrote that patent years ago under a pseudonym. They thought I was just a poor, orphan housewife who needed Cole's money to survive. They had no idea I was actually a billionaire scientist hiding my identity. I pulled the IV needle out of my arm. A drop of blood fell onto the divorce papers I had been hiding. I didn't wipe it off. I signed my name right over it. Then I walked into the bank, reactivated my dormant account with $128 million, and bought the penthouse directly overlooking Cole's house. The mourning widow is dead. The avenger is born.

I was an intern nurse working exhausting shifts, yet my mother constantly forced me into blind dates with wealthy, arrogant men to secure our family's social standing. During a terrifying hospital lockdown, an assassin disguised as a doctor held a scalpel to my throat. I was almost killed, but a high-ranking military colonel threw his own body down a flight of concrete stairs to shield me. I survived with cuts and bruises, but when I went home, my mother didn't care about my near-death experience. She was only furious that I had rushed out on my blind date with Preston, a rich financial analyst. She forced me to meet him to apologize. When Preston grabbed my arm, bruised me, and mocked my attack as a pathetic lie, my mother still took his side. "Men get angry," she told me coldly. "It's your job not to provoke them. You will beg for his forgiveness, or you are no longer welcome in this house." I had narrowly escaped an assassin, yet my own family was willing to feed me to a monster just for a fat paycheck and neighborhood gossip. My heart went completely dead. So, when the intimidating Colonel appeared, offering me maximum military protection through a sudden marriage, I didn't hesitate. I walked back into my parents' house and calmly slapped a crisp marriage certificate onto the coffee table. "I won't be apologizing to Preston. I got married today."

Antonela was left at the altar by Benjamin, a mysterious billionaire she had never met. Devastated by the most humiliating heartbreak of her life, she went to a bar, where she met a strikingly handsome stranger and, in a moment of impulsive passion, gave herself to him completely. Days later, she discovered that she was pregnant. Worse still, when she finally met Benjamin in person, she realized that the man who had left her at the altar was the very same man she had encountered at the bar. Pregnant and alone, rejected even by her own family, Antonela had no choice but to leave town to have her child in peace. Three years later, her world was turned upside down again when her mother passed away suddenly, forcing her to return to her hometown. There, she crossed paths with Benjamin once more. Now, he was engaged to her sister, and Antonela found herself struggling to keep her secret, determined to keep the truth hidden-that Benjamin was the father of her child.

Her sister is marrying her ex. So she brings her best friend as her fake fiancé. What could possibly go wrong? Savannah Hart thought she was over Dean Archer-until her sister, Chloe announces she's marrying him. The same man Savannah never stopped loving. The man who left her heartbroken... and now belongs to her sister. A weeklong wedding in New Hope. One mansion full of guests. And a very bitter maid of honor. To survive it, Savannah brings a date-her charming, clean-cut best friend, Roman Blackwood. The one man who's always had her back. He owes her a favor, and pretending to be her fiancé? Easy. Until fake kisses start to feel real. Now Savannah's torn between keeping up the act... or risking everything for the one man she was never supposed to fall for.

Veronica Demoore was the girl everyone despised. Mocked for her weight, humiliated for her grades, and crushed beneath a brutal home life, she lived every day as the target of ridicule-until the day she couldn't bear it anymore. The world thought Veronica died that night. But when she opens her eyes again. someone else is looking through them. Savanna. A woman once raised in the shadows of a powerful organization. A genius trained to survive, manipulate, and dominate. In her previous life, she had wealth, intelligence, and strength. In this one, she has none of those things-only Veronica's broken body and shattered reputation. But weakness is temporary. Bullies who once laughed at Veronica soon discover the girl they tormented is no longer the same. Her mind is sharper. Her gaze is colder. And the quiet girl they used to push around now carries a dangerous confidence. As Savanna begins transforming Veronica's life piece by piece-losing weight, exposing enemies, and rising to the top of the school-the truth behind her rebirth slowly unfolds. Because Savanna didn't die by accident. And the people who killed her are still out there. This time, she won't be their victim. This time- she's coming for everything.

I was once the heiress to the Solomon empire, but after it crumbled, I became the "charity case" ward of the wealthy Hyde family. For years, I lived in their shadows, clinging to the promise that Anson Hyde would always be my protector. That promise shattered when Anson walked into the ballroom with Claudine Chapman on his arm. Claudine was the girl who had spent years making my life a living hell, and now Anson was announcing their engagement to the world. The humiliation was instant. Guests sneered at my cheap dress, and a waiter intentionally sloshed champagne over me, knowing I was a nobody. Anson didn't even look my way; he was too busy whispering possessively to his new fiancée. I was a ghost in my own home, watching my protector celebrate with my tormentor. The betrayal burned. I realized I wasn't a ward; I was a pawn Anson had kept on a shelf until he found a better trade. I had no money, no allies, and a legal trust fund that Anson controlled with a flick of his wrist. Fleeing to the library, I stumbled into Dallas Koch-a titan of industry and my best friend's father. He was a wall of cold, absolute power that even the Hydes feared. "Marry me," I blurted out, desperate to find a shield Anson couldn't climb. Dallas didn't laugh. He pulled out a marriage agreement and a heavy fountain pen. "Sign," he commanded, his voice a low rumble. "But if you walk out that door with me, you never go back." I signed my name, trading my life for the only man dangerous enough to keep me safe.