Count On Your Love

I woke up in a sterile hospital bed with the smell of antiseptic burning my throat, having just had my stomach pumped six hours ago. Before the sedatives even wore off, my mother called, not to ask if I was alive, but to demand I show up at my sister’s birthday gala in two hours. To her, I wasn't a daughter; I was a three-hundred-million-dollar signature needed for a corporate merger. She didn't care that I was suicidal, or that my fiancé, Franco, was currently at a luxury hotel with his "secretary" while I was hooked up to an IV. At the gala, the humiliation only deepened. I watched my fiancé walk in with his mistress, the air thick with her cloying perfume. When my grandmother’s "lost" emeralds—my rightful inheritance—spilled out of the mistress’s purse, my mother didn't flinch. Instead, she hissed at me to give them back to avoid a scene. My sister, the "perfect" golden child, took the stage and told the elite crowd that I was mentally unstable and "confused" due to my medication. I stood there, drenched in champagne and bleeding from a glass shard, while my own family gaslighted me in front of the world's press. Franco didn't even look at me as he shielded his mistress from the cameras, leaving me to stand alone in the wreckage of a life they had dismantled. I realized then that my parents didn't want a daughter; they wanted a pawn who wouldn't talk back. Why was my life worth less than a line item in a budget? How could a mother hand her daughter’s legacy to a mistress just to keep a contract intact? As my sister lunged at me in a fit of rage, I kicked her into the infinity pool and watched the "perfect" family mask finally shatter. I didn't wait for them to pull me down; I let the weight of my gown drag me into the dark water myself. Let them think the broken Kalea Alexander is gone. When I surface, I’m not coming back as a daughter—I’m coming back as their worst nightmare.

I married billionaire Gregorio Harrison to pay off my father's massive debt and keep my dying mother on life support. But his true love, Kiersten, drugged him with an aphrodisiac, and he used my body to survive the night. The next day, Kiersten threatened my mother's life with loan sharks, forcing me to sign a surrogacy contract because she was completely infertile. When Gregorio caught us together, he didn't care about the brutal bruises he had left on my skin. He thought I was blackmailing his beloved. He dragged me to his family estate, locking me in a room to be treated like a mindless breeding mare by his cruel mother. Later, Kiersten tricked me into a humiliating, nude painting session to save my mother's medical funds, setting me up for a media scandal. When Gregorio smelled her studio's incense on my clothes, he didn't ask for the truth. "If you're that desperate to sell yourself, I'll show you what a real transaction looks like." He violently assaulted me as punishment, shoved a digital money transfer in my face, and slammed the door behind him. I lay on the cold leather sofa, my body broken and my heart completely dead. Why did I have to suffer for their twisted love game? Why was my mother's life just a bargaining chip to them? The despair finally burned away, leaving only a cold, hard instinct for survival. I picked up my phone and dialed his rival, Dr. Martin. "I need you to secure my mother's hospital transfer right now."

My husband, Colton, the Wall Street mogul, slid annulment papers across the table, coldly discarding me and our unborn child. He thought he was getting rid of a useless wife, but he was actually throwing away the secret architect of his entire empire. Now, I'm ready to make him pay for every insult, every lie, and every single secret I've kept. For three years, eight months pregnant, I secretly saved Colton's ten-billion-dollar company from collapse, enduring a cold, transactional marriage. One night, he shattered that illusion, serving annulment papers and callously discarding me and our unborn child. I signed, leaving luxury behind. Exposing his butler's fraud, I escaped. Colton later found his wedding ring gone and, on his desk, my SEC compliance fixes—proof I was his hidden genius. Blindsided, he realized he’d destroyed his own empire. His mother then called, gloating. The injustice ignited a fierce resolve within me. The next morning, I launched Kidd Legal Consulting. I'd use forty-seven folders of Farmer Capital's un-patched loopholes to force a fair settlement, securing my daughter's future.

Iverson played the role of a rebellious, useless loser to survive in his mother's new wealthy family. He deliberately tanked his grades and hid his genius so his perfect stepbrother wouldn't feel threatened. But when a violent gang extorted Brenda, the only woman who actually acted like a real mother to him, Iverson dropped the act. He brutally dismantled four armed thugs with a broken aluminum pole to save her life. At the police station, he faked being a terrified victim to avoid jail. But when his biological mother arrived, she didn't even ask if he was hurt. Instead, she glared at him with pure disgust. "How much more humiliation are you going to put me through?" She threw a tutoring folder at his chest, praising his stepbrother's Ivy League prospects while threatening to cut off Iverson's trust fund for fighting over slum trash. Iverson clenched his fists in silence. He had deliberately played the idiot and ruined his own reputation just to keep her safe in that toxic mansion. Yet, she looked at him like he was absolute garbage. She truly believed he was just a brainless thug holding her back. Back in his room, Iverson locked the heavy oak door and booted up his highly encrypted laptop. The screen loaded into the world's most elite underground academic network. "Welcome back, Rank 1." He stared at the glowing screen with a cold, dangerous smile. He was done playing the fool.

I was Jocelyn Cruz, heiress to a billion-dollar empire, and I was supposed to marry my childhood sweetheart, Jake. My father had groomed him to be my king, and our life was a storybook romance. But just before my 25th birthday gala, I saw him kissing Djuna-the fragile orphan my father took in, the woman I treated like a sister. Their betrayal ran deeper than I could imagine. They drugged me to cause a riding accident, then gaslit me to make me think I was losing my mind. At a public auction, Jake froze my accounts and bought a family heirloom I cherished, only to gift it to her in front of everyone, leaving me broken and humiliated. He wanted to shatter me, to turn me into a mindless puppet he could control. So when he played a secret video of me crying for him at my own birthday party, I didn't break. Instead, I smiled. Because I had my own recordings, and I was about to show everyone the vipers he and his "true love" really were.

At eight months pregnant, I discovered my husband Holden' s secret living trust. The password wasn't our anniversary, but the birthday of his young protégée, Anika. His entire fortune wasn't for me or our unborn child. It was all for her. When I confronted him, the truth was a death sentence. He called me a "vessel," a surrogate to carry an heir for Anika, who was too fragile to bear a child herself. "She will raise him," he said, his eyes cold. Then I found the recordings. Once our son was born, I was to be eliminated in a "tragic accident." My seven-year marriage was a lie, a transaction to produce an heir. They wanted me dead and my baby stolen. So I gave them one of their wishes. I faked my own death, burned my old life to the ground, and disappeared with my son.