Puffin

At 25, Evelyn Carter was known as the luckiest woman in all of the city of Beaumont. Victor Blake, the aristocratic heir to Beaumont's most influential family fell in love with her at first sight, marrying her despite her leg disability, and pledged unwavering loyalty. Yet, when Evelyn entrusted him with her heart, she discovered that Victor was the very one responsible for her disability. With a transformative fire, Evelyn bid farewell to her past self, leaving behind her suppressed self and embracing a new beginning.

My husband was in the shower, the sound of water a familiar rhythm to our mornings. I was just placing a cup of coffee on his desk, a small ritual in our five years of what I thought was a perfect marriage. Then, an email notification flashed on his laptop: "You're invited to the Christening of Leo Thomas." Our last name. The sender: Hayden Cleveland, a social media influencer. An icy dread settled in. It was an invitation for his son, a son I didn't know existed. I went to the church, hidden in the shadows, and saw him holding a baby, a little boy with his dark hair and eyes. Hayden Cleveland, the mother, leaned on his shoulder, a picture of domestic bliss. They looked like a family. A perfect, happy family. My world crumbled. I remembered him refusing to have a baby with me, citing work pressure. All his business trips, the late nights-were they spent with them? The lie was so easy for him. How could I have been so blind? I called the Zurich Architectural Fellowship, a prestigious program I had deferred for him. "I' d like to accept the fellowship," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I can leave immediately."

My husband, Bennett, and I were New York's golden couple. But our perfect marriage was a lie, childless because of a rare genetic condition he claimed would kill any woman who carried his baby. When his dying father demanded an heir, Bennett proposed a solution: a surrogate. The woman he chose, Aria, was a younger, more vibrant version of me. Suddenly, Bennett was always busy, supporting her through "difficult IVF cycles." He missed my birthday. He forgot our anniversary. I tried to believe him, until I overheard him at a party. He confessed to his friends that his love for me was a "deep connection," but with Aria, it was "fire" and "exhilarating." He was planning a secret wedding with her in Lake Como, at the same villa he'd promised me for our anniversary. He was giving her a wedding, a family, a life—all the things he denied me, using a lie about a deadly genetic condition as his excuse. The betrayal was so complete it felt like a physical shock. When he came home that night, lying about a business trip, I smiled and played the part of the loving wife. He didn't know I'd heard everything. He didn't know that while he was planning his new life, I was already planning my escape. And he certainly didn't know I had just made a call to a service that specialized in one thing: making people disappear.

My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Damien Paul, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through. That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Eve—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister. But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Fellows talking in the library. They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Damien. Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Eve. I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen. This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Damien over. "No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Hunter Beach."

Eighteen days after giving up on Brendan Maynard, Jayde Rosario cut off her waist-length hair and called her father, announcing her decision to move to California and attend UC Berkeley. Her father, surprised, asked about the sudden change, reminding her how she' d always insisted on staying with Brendan. Jayde forced a laugh, revealing the painful truth: Brendan was getting married, and she, his stepsister, could no longer cling to him. That night, she tried to tell Brendan about her college acceptance, but his fiancée, Chloie Ellis, interrupted with a bubbly call, and Brendan' s tender words to Chloie twisted a knife in Jayde' s heart. She remembered how his tenderness used to be hers alone, how he had protected her, and how she had poured out her heart to him in a diary and a love letter, only for him to explode, tearing the letter and yelling, "I'm your brother!" He had stormed out, leaving her to painstakingly tape the shredded pieces back together. Her love, however, didn't die, not even when he brought Chloie home and told her to call her "sister-in-law." Now, she understood. She had to put that fire out herself. She had to dig Brendan out of her heart.

I was Aliana Donovan, a resident physician, finally reunited with the wealthy family I' d been lost from as a child. I had loving parents and a handsome, successful fiancé. I was safe. I was loved. It was a perfect, fragile lie. The lie shattered on a Tuesday when I discovered my fiancé, Ivan, wasn't at a board meeting but at a sprawling mansion with Kiera Reese, the woman I was told had a mental breakdown five years ago after trying to frame me. She wasn' t disgraced; she was radiant, holding a little boy, Leo, who giggled in Ivan' s arms. I overheard their conversation: Leo was their son, and I was merely a "placeholder," a means to an end until Ivan no longer needed my family's connections. My parents, the Donovans, were in on it, funding Kiera' s lavish life and their secret family. My entire reality-the loving parents, the devoted fiancé, the security I thought I' d found-was a carefully constructed stage, and I was the fool playing the lead role. The casual lie Ivan texted me, "Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you. See you at home," while he stood beside his real family, was the final blow. They thought I was pathetic. They thought I was a fool. They were about to find out just how wrong they were.

At 25, Evelyn Carter was known as the luckiest woman in all of the city of Beaumont. Victor Blake, the aristocratic heir to Beaumont's most influential family fell in love with her at first sight, marrying her despite her leg disability, and pledged unwavering loyalty. Yet, when Evelyn entrusted him with her heart, she discovered that Victor was the very one responsible for her disability. With a transformative fire, Evelyn bid farewell to her past self, leaving behind her suppressed self and embracing a new beginning.

For five years, I was Julian Heath's dirty little secret. As the CEO of a tech empire, he was a king, but a rare neurotoxin made him a prisoner. My unique biochemistry was his only antidote, requiring hours of intimate contact to keep him alive. He was convinced I was the one who poisoned him—an obsessed stalker who had trapped him in a disgusting dependency. Tonight, he gave me the "attention" he said I always craved, live-streaming a video of our most private moments to a private auction. As the bids climbed, he introduced me to his new fiancée, Cassandra. She was his real savior, he announced. Her family had developed a permanent cure, derived from my own blood. After tonight, he would finally be free of me. He had it all wrong. I wasn't born with the antidote. I was a biochemist who spent a year in a hidden lab modifying my own genetic code, turning myself into a living cure to save the man I'd loved since childhood. He left me in that room with the live stream still playing, his laughter echoing down the hall. The love I had for him turned to ash. I walked out, found a payphone, and made a call to the only person who knew the truth. "I want you to help me fake my death."

For eight years, I was the girlfriend of New York's most untouchable billionaire, Dean Lee. To the public, we were a fairy tale: the brilliant, cold CEO who was utterly devoted to me, a simple artist he had plucked from obscurity. He built a fortress of luxury and safety around me. But it was all a lie. On our anniversary, I overheard him with another woman. He called me a "decoy," a "shield" he used to absorb the threats and scrutiny meant for his real love, Karina. His mask came off. He allowed Karina to humiliate me publicly, destroy my dead mother’s heirloom, and then, as punishment, had me force-fed soup made from my beloved cat. His final "lesson" was to throw me into an underground fight club. As I lay beaten and bleeding on the canvas, I saw him in the VIP booth, watching with bored detachment as Karina laughed beside him. The eight years of protection weren't love; they were just maintenance on his human shield. On the verge of death, I was rescued by his biggest rival, Brennen Finley. With my last breath, I gave him the secrets that would bring Dean's empire to its knees. In exchange, I asked for just one thing. "Make Hayley York disappear," I whispered. "Help me die."

I was the fiancée of Bryant Barnes, the cold heir to a tech empire. Our engagement was a dynastic merger, a picture-perfect lie splashed across magazines. But behind closed doors, our life was a bizarre war fought with money and public humiliation. The war turned brutal when his mistress, Kalia, broke into our home with her friends and had me beaten, stomping on my hand until it broke. I pressed charges, but when Bryant arrived at the police station, he took one look at my bruised face and walked past me to comfort a sobbing Kalia. "Don't make a scene, Charlotte," he said, his voice laced with annoyance. He had them released without a second thought. The final betrayal came when Kalia pulled me into a lake. I can't swim. Bryant dove in, swam right past me to save her, and turned his back as I sank beneath the water, leaving me to die. A stranger pulled me out. In that moment, I finally understood. It wasn't that he was incapable of love; he was just incapable of loving me. For the one he loved, he would destroy anyone. For the one he didn't, he would leave her for dead. The last embers of my foolish love turned to ash. Lying in my hospital bed, I took out my phone and called the one man who had ever shown me kindness. "Jaden," I said, my voice steady. "I'm ready to burn it all to the ground."

I woke up after five years in a coma, a miracle, the doctors said. The last thing I remembered was pushing my husband, Derek, out of the way of an oncoming truck. I saved him. But a week later, at the county clerk's office, I discovered a death certificate filed two years ago. My parents' names were on it. And then, Derek's signature. My husband, the man I saved, had declared me dead. Shock turned to a hollow numbness. I returned to our home, only to find Anjelica Hardin, the woman who caused the crash, living there. She kissed Derek, casually, familiarly. My son, Errol, called her "Mommy." My parents, Alva and Glyn, defended her, saying she was "one of the family now." They wanted me to forgive, to forget, to understand. They wanted me to share my husband, my son, my life, with the woman who had stolen it all. My own son, the child I had carried and loved, screamed, "I want her to go away! Go away! That's my mommy!" pointing at Anjelica. I was an outsider, a ghost haunting their happy new life. My awakening wasn't a miracle; it was an inconvenience. I had lost everything: my husband, my child, my parents, my very identity. But then, a call from Zurich. A new identity. A new life. Catherine Anderson was dead. And I would live only for myself.