My Savior, My Obsession

Ava Jenkins stared at the stark white medical report. The black letters spelled out Idiopathic Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. A death sentence. She had maybe a year left to live. The man she loved, Liam Hayes, whom she called "Uncle Liam," rejected her publicly, his coldness a stark contrast to her vibrant pleas. He dismissed her with disdain, ignoring her desperate attempts to connect. Her stepmother, Martha, added to her agony with a slap and an engagement invitation: Liam Hayes and Chloe Jenkins, her stepsister. When Ava, desperate, confronted Liam, he shoved her out, slamming the door. The world crumbled around her. Her grandmother, Rose, her only comfort, was brutally attacked, leaving Ava with blood on her hands and heart. Liam, the star lawyer, refused to help her, choosing his "duty" to his future mother-in-law, Martha, over Ava' s desperate pleas. His cold, cynical smile as he questioned if she could afford his fees, his outright refusal to defend her, telling her it was his duty to defend Chloe' s mother. How could he? How could the man she loved so deeply, the man who was once her only solace, betray her so completely? Left with nothing, Ava became a bar girl to pay her grandmother' s medical bills, only to be publicly humiliated by Liam, who accused her of selling herself. Devastated, yet determined, she filed a lawsuit, seeking justice for Rose, only to find Liam opposing her in court. She confessed to a crime she didn't commit, sentenced to three years in prison, pushing him away forever. Just as he received news of her impending death, his true feelings surfaced, but it was too late.

My husband, Mark Reynolds, was dead. The news hit me like a physical blow, but the real shock came when the funeral home director handed me a notice. Mark owed five million dollars. Five million. We were always struggling, barely making rent. Now, he was gone, leaving me and our five-year-old son, Leo, with an impossible debt. My best friend, Jessica Miller, put her arm around my shoulder, her voice dripping with concern. "Liv, you can' t do this. You have to renounce the inheritance. Think about Leo." I knew this moment. The exact moment it all went wrong before. In my past life, I listened. I signed away everything, desperate to escape the debt. But the debt collectors came anyway. They didn't care about the law. They took Leo. They sent me a small, bloody box. A single, tiny finger bone. My son was murdered. I was trafficked, sold into a hellhole in Myanmar. Years later, I saw a news report. Mark wasn't the broke man I knew. He was the founder of a multi-billion-dollar global conglomerate. His estate, tens of billions, was going to his sole heir. A young boy, standing next to his mother. The mother was Jessica Miller. The boy was her son, Ethan. My best friend, my husband, their son. My life, my poverty, my son' s death-it was all a lie. A sick game they played to ensure her child got everything. The rage burned me alive. I found a way to end my life, seething with impotent hatred. And then, I opened my eyes. The sterile scent of the funeral home. Leo, alive, his small, warm hand in mine. Jessica, standing right in front of me, her face a mask of perfect concern. "Liv, you can' t do this," she said. "You have to renounce the inheritance. Think about Leo." It was the same day. The same moment. This time, I would not make the same mistake. This time, I would claim what was mine. I would burn her world to the ground.

My wife, Scarlett, doubled her company' s stock value overnight, and her idea of celebrating involved a new pair of men, not for her investors, but seemingly for me to "coach." It was the peak of our three-year marriage, a performance where I was a mere accessory, like a thousand-dollar vase-present, but never truly seen. She ordered me, her 'good little cuckold,' to buy protection and champagne for an hour-long tryst with two strangers, right in our penthouse, while her friends tittered with malicious laughter. The final straw broke when she smirked, "You' ve been my good little cuckold for so long, you should be an expert by now." That night, Liam wasn' t just going to buy the champagne; he was going to turn her perfect world upside down.

The kitchen was filled with the scent of garlic and basil, a testament to the perfect life Ethan Thorne was building with his fiancée, Olivia. They were soulmates, partners in love and in their shared dream: a restaurant of their own, with a wedding just two weeks away. Then, a whispered phone conversation shattered his world. Olivia, the woman he adored, speaking with venom about his deceased sister, Isabella, and laughing about him as "that fool chef" and "just a toy." He was a pawn in a chilling revenge plot, destined for public humiliation at their wedding. His heart, so full moments before, became a hollow, aching void. Every shared laugh, every tender kiss, twisted into a grotesque lie. His fiancée wasn't his partner; she was his executioner, meticulously planning his destruction for a perceived wrong from five years ago. How could the woman he poured his entire being into be so cruel? How could she look him in the eye, whisper "I love you," and plot his utter breaking? The depth of her betrayal was an open wound, an injustice that screamed silently within him. But Ethan Thorne wouldn't be a victim. He would play her game, right up to the very end. He wiped the tears from his eyes, picked up his phone, and called Professor Davies. "Tell me more about Paris."

My family keeps an ancient power, trading years of our lives for unbreakable promises. It was always a debt of the soul, always collected. When the powerful Scott family owed us, I, Sabrina, was forced to marry their heir, Ethan. But on my wedding day, his charming younger brother, Caleb, took his place, declaring his undying love. I was a naive mountain girl, completely out of my depth, and I fell for him. A year later, pregnant and blissful, I truly believed I had the perfect life. Then, my world shattered. My entire hometown, all one hundred residents, were massacred. The official story called it an accident, but a private report revealed they were ritually murdered. As I recovered from a near-miscarriage, Caleb, my devoted husband, seemed my only comfort. Until I found his emails. He orchestrated the massacre. It was all for Jennifer, Ethan's fiancée, to "channel their life force" to save her. Caleb even planned to use our unborn child as a sacrifice. My loving husband was a monster, his grief a cruel charade. Trapped, pregnant, and horrified, I knew I had to make a choice. The life of a Pact Keeper is not something you take for free. A soul for a soul. One hundred souls for one hundred souls. It was time to collect.

Ava Miller, a fresh-faced civil engineering graduate, yearned to prove herself at her father' s esteemed construction firm, not just as "Colonel Miller's daughter." Then came the lottery: a grueling federal rebuilding project in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, managed by the notoriously ruthless Marcus Thorne. Everyone, including ex-boyfriend Liam Peterson, assumed her father's influence would shield her. But the name pulled from the army helmet was hers: Ava Miller. Liam, utterly shaken, begged her to refuse, his horror betraying his casual dismissals – he' d believed her selection was "just for show." His sweet-faced cousin, Chloe Vance, whose insidious whispers already chipped at Ava' s reputation back home, seemed to revel. The Louisiana camp was a stark, muddy nightmare, and Thorne swiftly shredded her meticulously crafted academic plans as worthless "ivory tower" ideas. How could those she trusted so fundamentally underestimate her? Was she doomed to forever be just "Colonel Miller's Daughter," unworthy of a real test? And Liam, why had he so easily believed Chloe' s venomous lies? The sting of Thorne's dismissal, coupled with Liam' s casual betrayal, didn't break her-it ignited a furious resolve. Instead of breaking, Ava snapped. She wouldn't just survive this brutal assignment; she would master it. She would prove them all profoundly wrong, starting with the Louisiana mud beneath her boots, forging academic theories into hard-won, real-world triumphs.