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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

I stood outside my husband's study, the perfect mafia wife, only to hear him mocking me as an "ice sculpture" while he entertained his mistress, Aria. But the betrayal went deeper than infidelity. A week later, my saddle snapped mid-jump, leaving me with a shattered leg. Lying in the hospital bed, I overheard the conversation that killed the last of my love. My husband, Alessandro, knew Aria had sabotaged my gear. He knew she could have killed me. Yet, he told his men to let it go. He called my near-death experience a "lesson" because I had bruised his mistress's ego. He humiliated me publicly, freezing my accounts to buy family heirlooms for her. He stood by while she threatened to leak our private tapes to the press. He destroyed my dignity to play the hero for a woman he thought was a helpless orphan. He had no idea she was a fraud. He didn't know I had installed micro-cameras throughout the estate while he was busy pampering her. He didn't know I had hours of footage showing his "innocent" Aria sleeping with his guards, his rivals, and even his staff, laughing about how easy he was to manipulate. At the annual charity gala, in front of the entire crime family, Alessandro demanded I apologize to her. I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I simply connected my drive to the main projector and pressed play.

Today is my fifth wedding anniversary. It's also the day my husband, Ethan, asked me for a divorce for the 38th time. He does this for Ilene, his childhood friend. The woman who crashed her car on our wedding day, leaving her unable to have children. Ever since, he's been repaying a debt of guilt, and I've been the price. For five years, I endured the cycle of divorce and remarriage. But this time was different. Ilene pushed me down a flight of stairs. Ethan found me bleeding and promised me justice. He swore he would make her pay. But days later, the police called. The security footage of the incident had been mysteriously erased. There was no evidence, no case. That night, Ilene had me kidnapped. As her men tore at my clothes in the back of a van, I managed to call Ethan. He rejected my call. I jumped from the moving van. And as I ran for my life, bleeding on the cold asphalt, I made a vow. This time, there would be no 39th remarriage. This time, I would disappear.

For three years, I documented the slow death of my marriage in a black journal. It was my 100-point divorce plan: for every time my husband, Blake, chose his first love, Ariana, over me, I deducted points. When the score hit zero, I would leave. The final points vanished the night he left me bleeding out from a car crash. I was eight weeks pregnant with the child we had prayed for. In the ER, the nurses frantically called him-the star surgeon of the very hospital I was dying in. "Dr. Santos, we have a Jane Doe, O-negative, bleeding out. She's pregnant, and we're about to lose them both. We need you to authorize an emergency blood transfer." His voice came over the speaker, cold and impatient. "I can't. My priority is Miss Whitfield. Do what you can for the patient, but I can't divert anything right now." He hung up. He condemned his own child to death to ensure his ex-girlfriend had resources on standby after a minor procedure.

I was reviewing the laundering accounts when my husband asked for a hundred thousand dollars for the nanny. It took three seconds for me to realize the woman he was trying to pay off was wearing my missing vintage Chanel earrings. Damian looked me in the eye, using his best doctor's voice. "She is struggling, Ainsley. She has five boys to feed." When Casey walked in, she wasn't wearing a uniform. She was wearing my jewelry and looking at my husband with intimate familiarity. Instead of apologizing when I confronted them, Damian protected her. He looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust. "She is a good mother," he sneered. "Something you wouldn't understand." He used the infertility I had spent millions trying to cure as a weapon against me. He didn't know that I had just received the investigator's file. The file that proved those five boys were his. The file that proved he had gotten a secret vasectomy six months before we started trying for a baby. He had let me endure years of painful procedures, hormones, and shame, all while funding his secret family with my father's money. I looked at the man I had shielded from the violence of my world so he could play god in a white coat. I didn't scream. I am a Pierce. We execute. I picked up my phone and dialed my enforcer. "I want him ruined. I want him to have nothing. I want him to wish he was dead."

The day I found out I was pregnant was the same day I learned my three-year relationship was a meticulously crafted lie. I rushed to surprise my perfect fiancé, Anthony Holden, only to overhear him talking to his twin brother. "I've endured three years of this farce," he said, his voice cold. "Not once did I touch the woman." My entire life was a revenge plot for his childhood friend, a woman who bullied me relentlessly in college. They left me to grieve my grandmother's death alone, subjected me to tortures designed from my deepest fears, and left me for dead-twice. The man who swore to protect me became my villain, convinced I deserved every moment of pain. On our wedding day, he stood at the altar, ready to deliver his final, humiliating blow. He had no idea I was miles away, about to live-stream his confession to the entire world. My revenge was just beginning.

Five years ago, I saved my fiancé' s life on a mountain in Aspen. The fall left me with a permanent vision impairment-a constant, shimmering reminder of the day I chose him over my own perfect sight. He repaid me by secretly changing our Aspen wedding to Miami because his best friend, Annmarie, complained it was too cold. I overheard him call my sacrifice "sentimental crap" and watched him buy her a fifty-thousand-dollar dress while scoffing at mine. On our wedding day, he left me waiting at the altar to rush to Annmarie' s side for a conveniently timed "panic attack." He was so sure I' d forgive him. He always was. He saw my sacrifice not as a gift, but as a contract that guaranteed my submission. So when he finally called the empty Miami venue, I let him hear the mountain wind and the chapel bells before I spoke. "My wedding is about to start," I told him. "But it' s not with you."

I was the Pack’s shame, a twenty-year-old "Runt" who had never shifted. Yet, I clung to the desperate hope that Alpha Marcus, the man I had loved my entire life, would finally claim me at the Full Moon Gala. Instead, he stood before the entire Pack with Izzy, a woman who looked at him with hunger rather than love. With eyes as cold as stone, he didn't just ignore me; he destroyed me. "I, Marcus Thorne, reject you, Olivia Hayes." The rejection snapped our bond, but the nightmare was just beginning. When Izzy framed me for poisoning her, Marcus didn't hesitate. He chained me in the dungeon and wielded the silver whip himself. Each lash burned like liquid fire, tearing through my skin as he demanded a confession I couldn't give. I woke up in a pool of my own blood, only to hear the nurse whisper the truth I was never meant to know. The silver toxicity hadn't just broken my body; it had killed the unborn pup I didn't even know I was carrying. Marcus had whipped the mother of his own child to protect a liar. He had killed his heir for a woman who was faking her own pregnancy. That night, as I crawled through the mud to escape, the weak Runt died. In the freezing waters of the river, my bones snapped and reshaped. I didn't just shift; I became the legendary White Wolf. And when Marcus finally realized the truth and came begging on his knees, I looked at him with my new, violet eyes and prepared to give him the rejection he deserved.

I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella. Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark. But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved. Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies. When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel. While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest. The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella. He ordered my father to punish me. I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth. That night, the love in my heart finally died. On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape—the only proof that I was Seven. Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney. By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.

I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York. To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen. But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table. It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test. "Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture." I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking. He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago. He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy. He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go. He was wrong. I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don. And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy. I wanted to erase him. I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built. Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa." It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul. On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial. When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth. He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife. Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.

After eight years in captivity, I was finally rescued. I thought it was the beginning of a new life with my mother. But she didn't even look at me. She ran into the arms of a handsome stranger, her real husband, and I was treated like a dirty secret from her past. They called me a contamination, a reminder of their trauma. My new stepsister set their Doberman on me, and as the dog's teeth sank into my arm, I looked up and saw my mother watching from the window. She met my eyes for a second, then slowly closed the curtains. In that moment, the last bit of hope I had died. The shallow bond of family was completely gone, and I finally gave up. But they made one mistake. The family patriarch, suspicious after a car accident, ordered a secret DNA test. The results came back on the day of my stepsister's birthday party, revealing a truth that would burn their perfect world to the ground.

At eight months pregnant, I thought my husband Derek and I had it all. A perfect home, a loving marriage, and our miracle son on the way. Then, while tidying his office, I found his vasectomy certificate. It was dated a year ago, long before we even started trying. Confused and panicked, I rushed to his office, only to hear laughter from behind the door. It was Derek and his best friend, Edison. "I can't believe she still hasn't figured it out," Edison chuckled. "She walks around with that giant belly, glowing like some kind of saint." My husband's voice, the one that whispered words of love to me every night, was full of contempt. "Patience, my friend. The bigger she gets, the bigger the fall. And the bigger my payout." He said our entire marriage was a cruel game to destroy me, all for his precious adopted sister, Else. They were even running a bet on who the real father was. "So, the bet is still on?" Edison asked. "My money's still on me." My baby was a trophy in their sick contest. The world tilted on its axis. The love I felt, the family I was building—it was all a sham. In that moment, a cold, clear decision formed in the ruins of my heart. I pulled out my phone, my voice surprisingly steady as I called a private clinic. "Hello," I said. "I need to schedule an appointment. For a termination."

For ten years, I secretly loved my guardian, Ethan Hayes. After my family fell apart, he took me in and raised me. He was my entire world. On my eighteenth birthday, I gathered all my courage to confess my love to him. But his reaction was a fury I had never seen before. He swept my birthday cake to the floor and roared, "Are you insane? I am your GUARDIAN!" He then mercilessly tore the painting I had spent a year on-my confession-to shreds. Just days later, he brought home his fiancée, Chloe. The man who had promised to wait for me to grow up, who called me his brightest star, had vanished. My decade of desperate, burning love had only managed to burn myself. The person who was supposed to protect me had become the one who hurt me the most. I looked down at the NYU acceptance letter in my hand. I had to leave. I had to pull him out of my heart, no matter how much it hurt. I picked up the phone and dialed my father's number. "Dad," I said, my voice hoarse, "I've decided. I want to come be with you in New York."

Kathleen was diagnosed with liver cancer and needed a transplant. To her shock, she discovered that her husband of five years, Joshua, not only intended to give the liver to someone else but also had a mistress and an illegitimate child outside their marriage. Upon learning the truth, Kathleen was utterly heartbroken. She realized that she couldn't hold onto a man who had betrayed her, but she was determined to reclaim the liver that she had been promised as a donor match. Kathleen dialed a number she hadn't contacted in five years. "I'm going to Jaxperton for surgery. Come pick me up in three days." But after she left, Joshua was driven to desperation.

After the crash that killed my parents and stole my voice, my childhood friend Josiah swore he would be my voice. For years, I believed him, my silent world revolving around the boy who pulled me from the wreckage. I was even relearning to speak, just for him. Then I overheard the truth. To his friends, I was just the "town tragedy girl," a burden he was tired of carrying. The cruelty didn't stop. He let his new girlfriend publicly humiliate me, and when she faked an injury, he forced me to my knees to apologize in front of everyone. The final betrayal came during a storm. He abandoned me in the woods, deaf without my hearing aids, leaving me to face the same terror that shattered my life years ago. He chose her. He broke his promise. He broke me. So I left. I found my own voice, my own strength. Three years later, I returned for my first art exhibition, and when I saw his face in the crowd, I knew he was about to hear everything he'd forced me to keep silent.

I returned to the manor after four years, handing Marcus Thorne an invitation to my wedding. He looked at me with cold eyes, his arm around his fiancée, Chloe—the woman I was molded to look like. But the real blow came at lunch. A waiter tripped, sending three mugs of scalding coffee flying toward us. Marcus didn't move to protect me. He lunged to grab his phone from the table because Chloe’s face was on the screen. The boiling liquid splashed across my chest, burning my skin instantly. While I screamed in agony, Marcus simply checked his notifications. "I have to go," he said, stepping over me as my fiancé, David, desperately poured ice water on my burns. "Chloe broke a nail. She's hysterical." He walked out of the restaurant without looking back, leaving me writhing in pain. At the hospital, the doctor dropped another bombshell: I was pregnant. Marcus didn't know. He didn't know I was carrying another man's child. Just like he didn't know about the baby of his I had lost three years ago—the one I miscarried while he ignored my calls to close a business deal. I wiped my tears and looked at David. "Get the plane ready," I whispered. "We leave tonight." When Marcus finally came looking for me, all he found was a medical report of the child he killed with his neglect, and a note saying I was gone forever.

My family and fiancé begged me to donate my last remaining kidney to my twin sister, Kyleigh. They didn't know I was already dying. My fiancé, Axel, gave me an ultimatum. "Donate the kidney, or I'll break our engagement and marry Kyleigh. It's her dying wish." I agreed, only for them to frame me for plagiarism with my own thesis, forcing me to confess on camera. They never knew I was the one who secretly saved our father with my other kidney five years ago-a sacrifice Kyleigh had stolen all the credit for. As they wheeled me into the operating room, they celebrated with Kyleigh, promising her a future built on my death. I was already a ghost to them. But I died on the table. The surgeon, seeing the old surgical scar and the poison riddling my body, walked out to face them. "This wasn't a donation," she announced, her voice cold as steel. "This was murder."

I thought I was the center of Michael’s universe, carrying the heir to his shipping empire. That illusion shattered the day I found his journal. It turned out I was just a "vessel" to launder money, while his "cousin" Selena was his true love. The cruelty peaked at lunch. When a tureen of scalding lobster bisque tipped over, Michael didn't lunge for his pregnant wife. He threw his body over Selena to protect her silk dress. The boiling soup soaked my stomach. As I screamed in agony, feeling the life slip from my womb, Michael only glared at me. "Stop making a scene, Liv! It would have ruined her outfit." That fall killed his son. But I didn't tell him. Instead, I watched him panic when Selena went into kidney failure days later. He begged me to get tested as a donor. "She's family, Liv. Please." I asked him, "If it were me dying, would you ask her to cut herself open?" "No," he whispered. "I wouldn't let anyone hurt her." That was the answer I needed. I agreed to the test just to distract him. While he liquidated his entire fortune to buy her a black-market organ, I finalized the divorce, emptied the accounts, and vanished. I left him with nothing but a medical report on his desk: *Fetal Demise due to abdominal trauma.* He saved her dress. But he killed his heir.

At the family dinner, the waiter stumbled, sending a tray of boiling onion soup flying toward the table. My husband, Marcus, moved instantly. But not for me. He threw his body over my cousin Chloe, shielding her completely in his arms. I was left exposed. The scalding liquid hit my chest and arm, burning my skin instantly. While I screamed in agony on the floor, Marcus was frantically checking Chloe for scratches, whispering, "Thank God it missed you. You are more important than her. Always." In the hospital, he handed me a check for fifty thousand dollars. "It was an instinct," he said, avoiding my eyes. "Don't make a scene." He didn't notice my hollow expression. He didn't ask why the doctors were looking at him with pity. And he certainly didn't know that the shock and trauma had caused me to miscarry our six-week-old baby. For four years, I had been his perfect doll. I dressed like Chloe, painted like Chloe, and waited for him to love me. I thought I was his wife. I didn't realize I was just a placeholder until he sacrificed our child to save his true love from a splash of soup. When he left to comfort Chloe again, I pulled the IV from my arm. I placed the signed divorce papers on the bedside table. Underneath them, I left the medical report confirming the miscarriage of his child. Then, I vanished.

For seven years, I hid my identity as a wealthy heiress to be with my boyfriend, Ewing. I followed him across the country and made myself small so he could feel big. On Thanksgiving, he ditched our celebration for his first love, Bree, who supposedly had a "burst pipe." Later, she posted an intimate selfie with him, calling him her "hero." Then she sent me a video of him at a bar, laughing with his friends. "She's just being dramatic," he slurred, smirking at the camera. "A new necklace and she'll forget all about it. She's easy." Easy. Seven years of my life, my love, my sacrifice-all reduced to that one word. I realized I was never his partner. I was just a placeholder. I didn't cry. I packed my bags, booked a one-way flight to New York, and sent him one final text before blocking his number. "Don't bother coming home. I'm getting married."