Ning Ruoshui

In my past life, the Cerberus strain leaked, turning the world into a blood-soaked hell of rotting flesh and mutated monsters. I thought my boyfriend Declan and my best friend Hailee would have my back as we fled the quarantine zone. Instead, when the surging crowd of the infected cornered us, they didn't hesitate. They shoved me backward into the horde just to buy themselves three seconds to run. As I fell into the mud, I saw them fleeing without a single backward glance. "She's dead weight anyway!" Hailee screamed. "Just keep running, she'll distract them!" Declan yelled back. I was torn apart, feeling the agonizing tear of rotting teeth sinking into my neck and the hot spray of my own blood. Before the apocalypse, my greedy uncle had locked away my ten-million-dollar trust fund, leaving me with nothing but a fake boyfriend who only wanted me for my money. Until my last breath, I couldn't understand how the people I loved most could trade my life for a head start. Why did I blindly trust them? Why didn't I see through their perfectly choreographed lies? Opening my eyes again, the stench of decaying flesh vanished, replaced by the sterile smell of my college dorm room. Hailee and Declan were standing over my bed, faking tears of concern over my meningitis fever. I was back exactly seven days before the world ended, and my spatial vault ability had come back with me. This time, I'm extorting my uncle for every cent, hoarding the city's supplies, and leaving them all to rot.

I went to the Alpha Heir's office to tell him I was pregnant. I thought three years of devotion meant something. Instead, I heard him laughing with his mistress. "She's just a pet," Holden said. "A placeholder until you were ready." While I lay bleeding in the clinic, mourning my lost child, Holden sent a "prank" cake laced with ghost peppers to the only father figure I had left. The shock gave the old man a heart attack, killing him instantly. Holden didn't know about the miscarriage. He didn't know he had killed his own heir. He just dragged me out of the hospital bed and ordered me to be a bridesmaid at his wedding to the mistress. "Kneel and hold her train," he commanded, using his Alpha Voice to force me down. "That is your place." He thinks I'm broken. He thinks I'm trapped because I'm a weak Omega. But he forgot about the bet he made six months ago. He bet me as a prize in a street race against the ruthless Alpha King—and lost. I dialed the private number I swore I'd never use. "You won," I whispered into the phone. "Come get me." Holden is waiting for me at the altar, expecting a submissive servant. He has no idea that the Alpha King is coming to claim his prize, and his world is about to burn.

The surgeon told me I had one hour to save my right hand, the one that spun my soul into symphonies. My husband, Don Dante Rossi, gave that hour to his mistress for a minor fracture. The surgeon pleaded with him, explaining that every minute we delayed risked catastrophic, permanent damage. But Dante just looked at our ten-year-old son, Nico. “What do you think?” Nico met my eyes from the gurney, his own gaze chillingly calm. “Mamma is strong. She’ll understand the sacrifice. Besides,” he added, “if she’s in pain, it means she loves us more.” My hand was ruined, my career as a composer over. But for them, the game was just beginning. They needed my jealousy, my tears, my pain, to feed their sick definition of love. They pushed me down a flight of stairs just to watch me cry. I had mistaken my husband’s obsession for passion, his cruelty for a test. I finally saw it for what it was: a pathology of ownership. My suffering was their trophy. Lying broken at the bottom of the stairs, I heard my son's voice float down. “See, Dad? Now she's really crying. She really does love us.” Something inside me didn't just break; it turned to ice. When my lawyer visited me in the hospital, I took the papers he brought. In our world, a Don’s wife doesn’t leave. She endures or she disappears. I signed the divorce petition. I was choosing war.

My family' s crimes finally caught up to us. To save them, I had no choice but to "sell" myself to Sarah Jenkins, my ex. She was the daughter of my family' s biggest victim, and she made me her personal assistant, a pawn in a game of twisted revenge. For three years, her luxurious penthouse became my cage. I endured unimaginable physical and psychological torture, from electric shocks and beatings to being forced to sleep on the floor and eat scraps. When her new husband, Mark Peterson, joined in, things worsened. He carved the word "CRIMINAL" into my arm, turning me into a branded animal. Consumed by despair, I plotted to crash a private jet with them onboard, but Sarah's desperate cry to protect Mark, the man who aided in my torment, made me hesitate. Their twisted dependency baffled me; why would she protect him after all he' d done? Then, Mark found the ashes of my parents, which I had secretly saved, and began to mix them with mud, planning to use them as shark bait. My last shred of dignity shattered. I pleaded with Sarah, reminding her of her promise to leave their remains untouched, but she coldly dismissed it. As she watched, I scooped the filthy ash into my mouth, choosing to become their grave. I was broken, bleeding, and ready to die. But my desperate act triggered a response in her I hadn't seen. She pushed Mark away, protecting me in her own brutal way, just before I pulled her into the ocean with me. In the cold depths, surrounded by sharks, I found myself fighting to save the woman who had systematically destroyed me. It still bewilders me why a love so broken, so entwined with hatred, could force such a sacrifice. My death was inevitable, but it brought me a strange peace. Little did I know, Sarah had meticulously planned every cruel act, using me to destroy Mark. Yet, in her twisted revenge, she blurred the lines between love and hate so completely that my sacrifice somehow became her ultimate redemption. My story has ended, but hers has just truly begun.

I died on a Tuesday, a stress-induced heart attack ending the brilliant career of Gabrielle Smith, Chicago's corporate law star. My spirit lingered, an invisible spectator at my own memorial, watching Andrew Clark, my childhood friend and secret love, console Molly Johns, the paralegal I'd taken under my wing. Then came the whispered confession that shattered my spectral peace: Molly, hysterical, admitted she swapped the evidence file to protect the client, promised a fortune. But Andrew's next words were the real kill shot. Stroking her hair, he revealed he knew all along, that he helped her cover it up, that he was tired of living in my shadow and wanted me to take the fall. The betrayal was a jolt, a blinding flash that ripped through my disembodied form, extinguishing the scent of funeral lilies and replacing it with the familiar smell of my office. I gasped, a lung-filling breath, snapping my eyes open to see my hand resting on my mahogany desk, the clock reading 3:15 PM. A knock came at the door. "Gabrielle? I have the final discovery files for the Russo case," Molly's voice said. I looked at the calendar. It was the very day my downfall began. But not this time. This time, I knew.

Lily went straight to the bar and drowned herself in alcohol the day she found out about her boyfriend cheating on her. Drunkenly, she staggered towards him and whispered, "Is one million enough for you?" An irritated Kevin merely took her to his room. As if this news wasn't bad enough, the following day, Lily was told that her family went broke. Kevin didn't seem the least bit fazed. Instead, he offered to marry her to help her out. Unbeknownst to her, Kevin had other reasons why he wanted to put their relationship on a marriage contract. Albeit he knew this was an irrational move, he couldn't seem to shake off his feelings for her... It was as though he were obsessed.

For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse. Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée. She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm. "Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital." As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire. I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit. "I'm done with you." The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies.

Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town. They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done." Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me." As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world. When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?"

Ashley gave Nicolas ten years of love and five years of loyalty as his perfect housewife, only to be repaid with betrayal, humiliation, and death at the hands of him and his mistress. After being reborn, she vowed to make them pay. She tore apart the mistress, kicked her useless husband aside, and returned as the heiress of a top-tier family. Surrounded by billions, luxury, and a parade of elite bachelors, Ashley became the woman everyone wanted-including a cold, powerful tycoon. When Nicolas came begging for forgiveness, she smiled coldly. "Fuck off! My man is worth a hundred of you."

My five-year-old daughter was dying in the ICU, her heartbeat replaced by the continuous, electronic scream of a flatline. I gripped her cold hand, my throat sealed shut by a terror so absolute I couldn't even cry out. I dialed my husband Grayson's private number, the one reserved only for me and his assistants. He declined the call instantly. A second later, a text buzzed against my palm: "In a meeting. Do not disturb. Stop calling." Five miles away, Grayson was at a luxury gala, adjusting his silk tie and laughing with Belle Escobar. He told her I was just being "dramatic" and using our daughter's "fever" as an excuse to avoid the event. He had no idea Effie's heart had already stopped. When I finally reached our penthouse, soaked from the rain and carrying Effie's small socks in a plastic bag, Grayson didn't even look at me. He snapped at me for ruining the hardwood floors and asked if I'd left Effie with the nanny just to "feel sorry for myself." Three days later, while I buried our daughter in a small, lonely ceremony, Grayson was at the Hamptons. Belle posted a photo of him golfing with the caption: "A mental health day with the boys." He didn't even attend the funeral, but he returned home demanding I clear out Effie's room to make a study for Belle's son. The injustice burned through me until there was nothing left. I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, desperate to join my daughter. But instead of the darkness, I woke up to blinding lights and the scent of Grayson's expensive cologne. I was standing in a ballroom, wearing a blue silk dress I had already burned. Above me, a banner read: "Happy 5th Birthday Kaiden & Effie." I was back, exactly one year before the tragedy. This time, I wasn't going to be the grieving wife. I was going to be their worst nightmare.

I went to the City Clerk's office for a routine copy of my marriage license to finalize a trust fund audit. I expected a simple piece of paper, but the clerk's pitying look told me my entire life was a lie. "The license was never finalized, Ms. Oliver. In the eyes of the state, you are single." The three-hundred-guest wedding at the Plaza and the Vogue features meant nothing. My husband, Gray Cooley, had intentionally filed the documents with a "procedural defect" so he could discard me without a legal divorce. Moments later, an iCloud invite titled "Our Little Secret" popped up on my screen. It was a photo of my best friend, Brylee, holding a positive pregnancy test at our Hamptons estate. Gray's text to her was the final blow: "Happy anniversary, babe. This baby is the best gift. Once the trust unlocks today, we're done with the charade." I soon discovered they were even stealing my career, reassigning my architectural masterpiece to Brylee while preparing my eviction notice. Gray's mother called me a "barren mule" in a leaked recording, mocking the infertility I suffered after saving Gray's life in a construction accident. I wasn't a wife; I was a three-year placeholder used to secure his inheritance. How could the man I bled for treat me like a disposable prop? How could my best friend carry his child while pretending to comfort me through my darkest moments? The betrayal burned until it turned into a cold, hard stone of fury. I didn't cry. Instead, I walked into the penthouse of the Barretts, the Cooleys' most powerful rivals. I signed a marriage contract with Kane Barrett, the man the tabloids called the "Beast of Wall Street." "I want a wedding," I told his father, my voice steady and lethal. "Bigger than the one I had with Gray." If they wanted me gone, they would have to watch me become the woman who owns their world.

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he’d dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family’s land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell—the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I’ve suspended Hugh’s executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I’m just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

I lived as the "scarred ghost" of the Stephens penthouse, a wife kept in the shadows because my facial burns offended my billionaire husband's aesthetic. For years, I endured Kason's coldness and my family's abuse, a submissive puppet who believed she had nowhere else to go. The end came with a blue folder tossed onto my silk sheets. Kason's mistress was back, and he wanted me out by sunset, offering a five-million-dollar "silence fee" to go hide my face in the countryside. The betrayal cut deep when I discovered my father had already traded my divorce for a corporate bailout. My step-sister mocked my "trashy" appearance at a high-end boutique, while the sales staff treated me like a common thief. At home, my father threatened to cut off my mother's life-saving medicine unless I crawled back to Kason to beg for a better deal. I was the girl who took the blame for a fire she didn't start, the wife who worshipped a man who never looked her in the eye, and the daughter used as a human bargaining chip. I was supposed to be broken, penniless, and desperate. But the woman who stood up wasn't the weak Elease Finch anymore; she was Phoenix, a tactical predator with a $500 million secret. I signed the divorce papers without a single tear, walked past my stunned husband, and wiped the Finch family's bank accounts clean with a few taps on my phone. "Your money is dirty," I told Kason with a cold smile. "I prefer clean hands." The cage is open, the hunt has begun, and I'm starting with the people who thought a scar made me weak.

For three quiet, patient years, Christina kept house, only to be coldly discarded by the man she once trusted. Instead, he paraded a new lover, making her the punchline of every town joke. Liberated, she honed her long-ignored gifts, astonishing the town with triumph after gleaming triumph. Upon discovering she'd been a treasure all along, her ex-husband's regret drove him to pursue her. "Honey, let's get back together!" With a cold smirk, Christina spat, "Fuck off." A silken-suited mogul slipped an arm around her waist. "She's married to me now. Guards, get him the hell out of here!"

Elliana, the unfavored "ugly duckling" of her family, was humiliated by her stepsister, Paige, who everyone admired. Paige, engaged to the CEO Cole, was the perfect woman-until Cole married Elliana on the day of the wedding. Shocked, everyone wondered why he chose the "ugly" woman. As they waited for her to be cast aside, Elliana stunned everyone by revealing her true identity: a miracle healer, financial mogul, appraisal prodigy, and AI genius. When her mistreatment became known, Cole revealed Elliana's stunning, makeup-free photo, sending shockwaves through the media. "My wife doesn't need anyone's approval."

I spent three years building my husband, Axel Farrell, into Silicon Valley's ultimate "family man." As his lead PR strategist, I carefully managed his public image, making sure the world saw him as a perfect, devoted husband while I worked in the shadows of our estate. The illusion shattered when he came home one night smelling of sandalwood and roses, with three deep fingernail scratches carved into his back. When I tried to check his phone, the passcode we had used for years-our wedding anniversary-had been changed. The betrayal got worse the next morning when his mother called me a "defective product" and tried to force me into a fertility clinic. Axel didn't defend me; instead, he shoved me against a marble bar at a public gala to protect his mistress in front of the world's elite. By the time I tried to leave, Axel had frozen my bank accounts and filed a forged legal petition to have me declared mentally incompetent. He planned to have me legally kidnapped and locked in a private psychiatric ward just to stop me from filing for divorce. He even blocked every major law firm in the city from taking my case, leaving me with no money, no identity, and no one to turn to. I couldn't understand how the man who "saved" me from the mud years ago could be the same monster now trying to legally erase my existence. Was our entire marriage just a grooming process to exploit my genius for his billion-dollar empire? As the deadline for my forced commitment approached, I stopped crying and opened my laptop. I leaked the video of his affair to every tech journalist in the country, watching his stock price crash in real-time. "Axel thinks starving me out will make me crawl back to him," I whispered as I walked into the headquarters of his biggest rival. "But he forgot that the most valuable part of his company is in my head." I was no longer the abandoned wife; I was the one who was going to take his throne and burn it to the ground.