Ninety-Nine Lashes: A Heiress's Reckoning

My fiancé, a Navy SEAL Commander, postponed our wedding 99 times for my manipulative sister. For our 100th attempt, I put my foot down. This date, or no date. He called two weeks before the wedding to cancel again. But this time, he threatened my career to force my compliance. Then I overheard the truth. He was planning to marry my sister-a "temporary" arrangement to get her into an exclusive therapy program. After he divorced her, he'd come back to me. I was his "certainty." His backup plan. My own mother supported it, slapping me when I refused to play along. "You will be a proper wife," she hissed. I had spent five years as a placeholder, my life put on hold for their drama. I was done waiting. I hung up the phone, canceled the wedding permanently, and volunteered for a three-year, off-the-grid assignment. But first, I took my wedding dress and a pair of scissors.

My marriage to the cold New York tycoon, Eli Drake, was supposed to be an impossible love story. I was the rebellious artist who had chased him across continents, believing I' d found my soulmate. Then I overheard a conversation that shattered everything. Our three-year marriage was a lie, a charade designed to protect his fragile sister-in-law, Kala. I was just the "lightning rod," strong enough to take the hits meant for her. The worst part? He' d secretly had a vasectomy, letting me endure his family' s scorn for being "barren" while he knew the truth all along. It all clicked into place: the public humiliations, the framed financial crimes, the "accidents" that left me scarred. They systematically broke me, forcing me to give a piece of my own skin to heal Kala and staging a car crash that landed me in prison. Eli' s justification was always the same: "Kala is delicate. Not like you." He thought I was strong enough to take it, that my defiance was a tool he could use. He exiled me, thinking I was broken and forgotten. He was wrong. I reinvented myself as the celebrated artist 'Lark.' And when he came crawling back, begging for forgiveness on a global stage, I knew my moment had come. My revenge would be a masterpiece.

My husband, Don Lorenzo Bianchi, the man who once took ninety-nine lashes for me, had just locked me in a guest room. I was four months pregnant with our child, the heir to his mafia empire. My crime was throwing a glass of wine on his mistress, a woman he had moved into our home. She cornered me in the garden, gloating that once the baby was born, he would give it to her to raise as her own. Later, she shoved me down the grand staircase, then threw herself down after me, screaming to my husband that I had tried to kill her. As I lay in a pool of my own blood, Lorenzo rushed past me, scooping her into his arms and carrying her away without a single backward glance. To force me to apologize, he had my parents brought to my hospital room and brutally whipped until they collapsed at his feet. He was no longer the man who had 999 crystals sewn into my wedding dress. He was a monster who believed every lie she told and punished me for her crimes. How could the man who swore to love me forever become this cruel stranger? But he didn't know the truth. Days before the fall, I had secretly terminated the pregnancy. I took the urn containing our child's ashes, filed for divorce, and disappeared from his world forever.

It was the night of my first solo art exhibition, but my Alpha mate, Cameron, was nowhere to be seen. The air was thick with champagne and praise, but every compliment felt like a slap, calling me "the Alpha's mate," not an artist. Then I saw him on the news feed. He was shielding another woman, an Alpha Female, from camera flashes. The whispers in the room confirmed it: their packs were merging, sealed by a new mating. This wasn't just him being late; it was a public execution of our bond. His voice cut into my mind, cold and detached. "Kacie needs me. You're an Omega, handle this." Not an apology, just an order. That was the moment the last thread of hope I’d clung to for four years finally snapped. He hadn't just forgotten me; he had systematically erased me, even taking credit for the billion-dollar app born from my secret visions, dismissing my art as a mere "hobby." But the quiet, submissive part of me died that night. I walked into a back office and sent a message to my lawyer. I told her to draft a Rejection Ritual document, disguised as an Intellectual Property transfer for my "worthless" art. He would never read the fine print. With the same arrogance he used to shatter my soul, he was about to sign his own away.

I've been married to Emit Arnold for three years. It was a shotgun wedding, forced after I woke up in his bed, drugged and confused. On that same day, the woman he truly loved died in a car crash, and I was instantly recast as the villain who had stolen her life. Now, my adopted sister, Gigi, a hauntingly perfect copy of his dead lover, lives with us. He adores her, while my own children run past me to throw their arms around her instead. He humiliates me in front of our family, suggesting I'm unstable and need to be sent away "to rest." The final blow came at the annual charity gala. He took the sapphire necklace he once gave me, the last symbol of a love I thought we had, and fastened it around Gigi's neck for the whole world to see. Watching him gently brush a stray hair from her face, a gesture once reserved only for me, I knew it was over. He wasn't just ignoring our marriage; he was publicly executing it. That night, I walked out into a raging storm. The next morning, I collapsed on a cold bathroom floor, miscarrying a child I never knew I was carrying. As I cleaned myself up, alone, I felt the last of my love die. My divorce summons was served on Gigi's birthday.

Ava Green was dying, her body failing her with terminal illness. She returned to her hometown, seeking a peaceful end, only to confront the ghost of her first love, Liam Carter. He greeted her with a smirk and a diamond on another woman' s finger, his words laced with venom, tearing down her childhood home before her eyes. Liam, manipulated by his mother, believed Ava had abandoned him for money eight years prior, blind to her selfless sacrifice to save their beloved teacher. She died, heartbroken and alone, leaving him consumed by a guilt that twisted his life into a lonely monument to her memory. But death was not the end. Two years later, Ava woke in a stranger' s body, a rebellious punk teen named Riley, thrust back into the city she' d fled. With fragmented memories and a dead girl' s vengeful wishes burning on her skin, she found herself face-to-face with Liam again. He didn't recognize her, yet offered an unexpected marriage of convenience, unknowingly fulfilling her desperate need for a way to complete Riley' s final, unfinished business while navigating a love that refused to die.