The Girl Who Cheated Death

My husband, Andre Grimes, was a newly-elected senator, and I was a celebrated chef pregnant with our first child. On the night of his victory, our world was supposed to be perfect. Instead, I watched him on live TV, his arm around his pregnant mistress, as he announced their relationship to the world. He then looked into the camera and called my own pregnancy a lie, a fabrication to create a scandal. His powerful family, along with my own adoptive parents, locked me in our home. They moved his mistress into my bedroom and planned to force me to have an abortion to protect his career. His mother looked at me with cold eyes. "It's for the best, Kyra. No loose ends." I was trapped, betrayed by everyone, facing the murder of my unborn child. But they made one mistake: they gave me back my phone. With trembling hands, I found a long-forgotten number and dialed. A man's voice answered. "My name is Kyra Moore," I choked out. "I think you might be my father. They're going to take my baby."

For three years, I acted as a substitute for my twin sister, married to the most powerful Alpha on the East Coast. To the world, I was Isabella, the spoiled princess. To my husband, Donovan, I was a nuisance he couldn't wait to divorce. I counted down the seconds until the contract expired so I could take my money and disappear. But three days before my freedom, his mistress was kidnapped. The rogues demanded a trade: the wife for the mistress. Donovan didn't hesitate. He dragged me to the warehouse and threw me to the wolves. To prove he didn't care about me, the rogue handed him a silver dagger. Donovan looked me in the eye and drove the blade into my thigh. As I screamed in agony, the smell of burning flesh filling the air, he stepped over my bleeding body to carry his mistress to safety. He left me there to die on the cold concrete, convinced he was punishing a cruel woman. He didn't know I was the one who had secretly given my rare blood to save that same mistress just a week prior. He didn't know I wasn't Isabella. He didn't know he had just tortured Ava—his true Fated Mate hiding in plain sight. When the real Isabella returned to claim the fortune, Donovan finally realized the woman in his house smelled wrong. He tore the world apart to find me, eventually falling to his knees in the rain to beg for a second chance. But I just looked at him, my hand resting in the grip of a new, kinder Alpha, and whispered: "I reject you."

I stood outside the mahogany doors, balancing a tray of espresso, when I heard my husband promise his sister that my reign as the Queen of Chicago was over. I thought being the Don's wife meant safety. I was wrong. In a warehouse reeking of rust, faced with an ultimatum from our enemies to choose who lives, Brennan made his choice. "Alyssa is strong," he justified, shielding his mistress, Debbi, who was faking a pregnancy. "She knows the life." He walked out into the sunlight with her, leaving me in the dark with a gun to my head. He abandoned me to be tortured and murdered by his rivals, weaponizing my resilience to absolve his guilt. He thought I died that day. He even mourned me after he eventually found out Debbi was a traitor. But he didn't know the new security guard was an undercover FBI agent who pulled me from the edge. Two years later, I've built a quiet life running a bistro in Maine under a new name. But then the bell above the door chimes during the lunch rush. I look up, and there he is. The husband who sacrificed me. He's looking at me not with guilt, but with a terrifying, obsessive hope. He says he burned down the world to fix his mistake. He says he won't let me go again. I smile, but my hand is already reaching for the wire the FBI gave me. I'm not a wife anymore, Brennan. I'm the executioner.

My best friend is pregnant with my husband's child. An hour ago, she stood in my living room, holding a positive pregnancy test and a grainy ultrasound photo that felt like a death sentence to my world. But the true nightmare began when my mother-in-law swept in, praised my friend for "doing the family a great service," and moved her into our home to care for the "Patton heir." My husband, the man who swore my infertility didn't matter, called her a mere "vessel" for our family. He then orchestrated an "accident" that shattered my hand, ending my career as a cardiothoracic surgeon. He didn't stop there. He sacrificed my father's life-saving heart transplant for my friend's brother and left me for dead in a landfill when I discovered the truth. I was a brilliant surgeon who could hold a life in my hands, yet I was blind to the fact that my own life was being systematically destroyed by the two people I trusted most. After faking my death and disappearing for two years, I've built a new life, a new face, and a new love. But now, he's found me. And this time, he's not just trying to control me-he's trying to bury me.

For fifteen years, I was Isabella Moretti, the perfect wife to the city's most powerful Don. We were a power couple, a carefully curated masterpiece of influence and affection. Our life was flawless. That masterpiece shattered on our anniversary when a burner phone lit up with a picture of his assistant’s hand on my husband's thigh. Soon, I found his second phone and discovered the full scope of his betrayal. His mistress, Sofia, was pregnant. He lied to my face about "work emergencies" while she began a campaign of terror, sending me photos of them together, a grainy ultrasound, and a video of her parading in my silk robe, bragging about becoming the new Mrs. Moretti. I was supposed to endure it in silence. That's the rule for a Don's wife. But all the pain hollowed out, leaving only a cold, chilling certainty. He truly believed I was nothing without him. "Where would you go, Bella?" he'd once laughed, his voice dripping with condescension. "Everything you have, everything you are, is because of me. You wouldn't last a week." He thought it was a game. "I'll take that bet," he'd said. So while he was away on a final "business trip" with her, I made my move. I liquidated our assets and hired movers to strip our mansion bare, erasing every trace of my existence. I walked out forever, but not before leaving two gifts on the empty mattress where we once slept: the signed divorce papers, and the melted, grotesque slug of gold that used to be my wedding ring.

The Miller family living room, usually a hub of quiet prestige, hummed with a different kind of energy. My adoptive father, Mr. Miller, beamed, the air thick with anticipation for the grand unveiling. Lined up before him were the five men he had raised alongside me: Ethan Hayes, Justin Bell, Ryan Stone, Kevin White. And me, Chloe Miller, the prize in a twisted game I was forced to play. "Chloe, my dear," Mr. Miller' s voice, warm and loving, cut through the tension. "Who do you choose?" Ethan, the man I had tragically chosen in another life, smiled. A perfect, practiced mask of devotion. This time, his smile felt like a cruel joke. I remembered the cheers, the naive happiness of that last life. He' d been the perfect husband, the perfect son-in-law. Until my father' s funeral. That night, he handed me divorce papers, his voice stripped of all warmth. "Now that your father is gone, there' s no need to continue this." Confusion turned to horror as he confessed: our marriage was an act of gratitude. A pact. A lottery among the boys to see who would "care for me" while they waited for Sophia, my sweet, innocent adoptive sister, to come of age. Every love letter, every tender touch, every whispered promise, now tainted. I was a pawn. A well-behaved doll. Then came the final, devastating blow: he left me to drown in a flooded subway tunnel for Sophia' s sprained ankle. But then, impossibly, I woke up. Back in my bedroom, on the very day I was supposed to choose. This time, my choice would not be a game. It would be my freedom. "I choose Liam Black," I declared, my voice ringing clear and steady in the stunned silence. A quiet, stoic Navy SEAL, an outsider. My escape. The shock on their faces was a masterpiece of disbelief. Their carefully constructed world shattered by a single, powerful truth. And I was just getting started.