Category: English

In the hierarchy of the Serpent-shifters, a male who has tasted the intimacy of a mate finds it nearly impossible to walk away. It’s a biological tether, a soul-deep obsession. But my mate’s younger brother had been harboring dark, twisted designs on me long before the ink on our contract was dry. I never imagined that after being bought for a staggering price at a high-end auction and brought back to the Serpent’s Reach, I would actually fall for the man who claimed me. Even less expected was that I would bear his children. For our kind, conception is a rare miracle. Yet, in one breath, I defied the odds and laid three healthy eggs, eventually hatching three perfect, tiny serpents. But the man who once looked at me with a possessiveness that bordered on insanity now wore a face carved from ice. “To be honest, I regret it,” Jeffrey said suddenly. His voice held the temperature of a winter grave. I looked up at him, my heart stuttering in my chest. I didn’t understand. His gaze raked over my body—lingering on my breasts, still full from nursing, and the soft, feminine curve of my hips—with a cold, clinical scrutiny that made me feel naked in the worst way. “If I hadn’t been trying to spite Lydia back then, I never would have brought you here. Now that I look at you, you’re just… ordinary. A common female with nothing in her head but the instinct to breed.” “And my Lydia…” His voice softened with a trace of tenderness he never offered me. “She’s suffered so many years of heartache because of my pride.” The blood in my veins felt like it was turning to slush. My eyes burned, the sting of tears threatening to spill over. I forced myself to speak, my voice a mere thimble of sound, reminding him of the bond. I told him he couldn’t leave me—that his nature wouldn’t allow it. Jeffrey didn’t even flinch. Instead, he looked almost manic as he began detailing his plan to bring his “golden girl” back to his side. He spared me one last look of pure Revulsion, as if I were a piece of furniture that no longer fit the decor. “If it weren’t for that body of yours, do you really think I’d have looked at you twice?” “But don’t worry. You gave me heirs, so I won’t throw you to the wolves. My brother doesn’t have a mate yet. When Beau returns, you’ll be moving into his quarters.” … “Are you certain you want to transfer the legal guardianship of your mate to your brother?” The clerk at the Tribal Registry looked at Jeffrey as if he’d grown a second head. He glanced at me—my curves prominent and healthy—and then at the woman shivering in Jeffrey’s arms. Lydia was gaunt, frail, looking like a gust of wind might shatter her. “Once this is filed, you can’t undo it without the consent of the other male. It’s a permanent severance.” Jeffrey didn’t even look at me. He just scowled. “Of course. Just hurry it up. Lydia just got back and she’s overwhelmed. I need to get her home and settled.” The clerk let out a sharp breath of annoyance. He struck Jeffrey’s name from my record and replaced it with a new one. I was now legally bound to a man named Beau. “Fine. When your brother gets back, send him in to provide the blood-seal,” the clerk muttered. Jeffrey was too busy tucking Lydia’s head into his chest to care. “Tomorrow,” he tossed over his shoulder. When we stepped out of the Registry, I stood alone on the pavement. The wind was biting, but it was nothing compared to the void opening in my chest. I watched Lydia pout, her voice a high-pitched whine as she scolded Jeffrey for “abandoning” her years ago and buying “that woman” right in front of her. Jeffrey cooed to her, his heart on his sleeve, before finally remembering I existed. He glanced back. I must have looked pathetic, standing there in the cold with my thin coat wrapped around me. He hesitated for a second, something flickering in his eyes, but it died before it reached his lips. The silence stretched until I broke it. “Do I have to move out today?” Jeffrey’s brow furrowed. “You don’t have to be in such a rush—” “Your name is Ivy, right?” Lydia interrupted, her eyes narrowing as she cataloged every inch of me with blatant envy. “I remember you. The ‘Prize’ of the auction.” She let out a harsh, jagged laugh. “Men are so predictable. They love the tits and the ass. But honestly, aren’t you embarrassed to walk around looking like… that? If I were that top-heavy, I’d never leave the house.” She looked up at Jeffrey, her eyes brimming with fake tears. “Jeffrey, you actually like that kind of thing, don’t you?” Jeffrey panicked instantly, desperate to prove his devotion. “Who told you that? It’s repulsive. It makes my skin crawl.” I went rigid. My eyes went hot. Repulsive? The man who spent every night winding his serpent tail around me, whispering my name into the crook of my neck as he took me again and again? The man who wouldn’t let me go until I was breathless and trembling? That was what he called repulsive. Lydia smirked, tucking her arm through his, looking at me with a sickening kind of pity. “Don’t be upset, Ivy. If Jeffrey hadn’t bought you, you’d still be in a cage. You should thank me. If I hadn’t picked a fight with him back then, there never would have been a vacancy for you to fill.” I looked at Jeffrey. He didn’t defend me. He didn’t even look me in the eye. “Right,” I whispered, the word tasting like ash. Seeing that I was too broken to fight back, Lydia lost interest. She started tugging on Jeffrey’s arm, demanding they go home. He smiled at her—that soft, doting smile that used to be mine—and let her lead him away. After a few steps, he called back over his shoulder, “Ivy, since you’re so eager to go, go ahead. Move your things.” Then, as an afterthought: “Don’t take it to heart. We’re still family.” Family. Yes. We were still family. Except I was no longer his mate. I was a hand-me-down for his brother. The moment we reached the house, Lydia’s facade crumbled. She stormed into the master bedroom—our bedroom—and began tearing through my things. She threw my clothes into the hallway. She found the pair of grass-woven rings I’d made for our anniversary. She found the silk protection charm I’d spent weeks sewing, the one I’d hidden under Jeffrey’s pillow to keep him safe on his hunts. I’d worked so hard on the stitching. Every thread was a prayer for him. Now, it was under her heel, ground into the dirt. I stood there, paralyzed, watching her move like a hurricane through the home I had meticulously built, piece by piece. Jeffrey stood in the doorway, watching. He didn’t stop her. He just gave a helpless, weary smile. He caught my eye and said casually, “Just let her have her moment. I owe her this. She’s had a hard time. If she breaks anything, I’ll buy you a replacement.” My throat felt like it was closing. I shook my head. “No… it’s fine. It wasn’t anything important anyway.” Jeffrey paused, a flash of irritation crossing his face, but he said nothing. Outside in the yard, there was a row of vegetables I’d planted. Jeffrey used to complain about the dirt, saying we could just buy whatever we needed. But I wanted something of our own. He’d grumbled, but one night, I caught him secretly building a small cedar fence around the sprouts to keep the rabbits out. Now, Lydia marched right over the seedlings. She ripped my lingerie off the drying line, shaking it with disgust. “You actually hang these outside? Are you trying to advertise?” She dropped the lace to the muddy ground and stepped on it. Jeffrey let out a short, surprised laugh. His eyes were fixed on Lydia’s fiery spirit, completely oblivious to how pale my face had become. I instinctively hunched my shoulders, feeling a crushing sense of shame for my own body for the first time in my life. Lydia wasn’t done. She scouted the yard until her eyes landed on the wicker basket in the corner. It was a beautiful day. I’d brought the basket out so the hatchlings could sleep in the sun instead of the stuffy nursery. Panic spiked in my chest. “The babies are in there! Don’t—” Before I could finish, she reached for the handle, intending to hurl it over the fence. I didn’t think. I lunged forward. But I was too late. Lydia, startled by my sudden movement, stumbled back. She let out a sharp cry as she lost her balance. In a blur of motion, a dark shadow streaked past me. Jeffrey caught her, pulling her securely into his arms. The basket tumbled. The three tiny serpents, curled together in their fleece blankets, rolled out like fallen fruit. They were so small. Too small to even make a sound when they hit the grass. Only the eldest, slightly larger than the others, let out a thin, pained hiss as he woke. “My babies!” I dropped to my knees, frantically scooping the three of them into my arms. They were trembling, their tiny tails lashing out to wrap around my fingers for safety. The eldest had a scrape on his tiny head, a bead of pale blood welling up. I couldn’t breathe. The pain in my chest was physical. Jeffrey had been closer to the basket. If he had wanted to, he could have caught it. He could have saved his children. But he chose Lydia. He watched his own flesh and blood hit the ground and didn’t even blink. In the quiet hours of the night, when we were tangled together, I used to wonder if this was love. I told myself his possessiveness, his intensity, his constant need for me… that it had to mean something. In this moment, I finally realized how wrong I was. I looked up at him, my eyes red and my voice shaking. “Jeffrey, please. I’m begging you. Don’t let her touch anything else. I’ll pack. I’ll go now. I’ll take everything and I won’t leave a single trace that I was ever here.” Jeffrey went still. He slowly released Lydia. The hatchlings were still hissing at their father, their tiny voices full of hurt. They wanted him to tuck them into his scales like he used to. But before Jeffrey could speak, Lydia burst into tears. “Jeffrey! Do you feel sorry for her? You do! You care about her and those… those things she produced!” “I knew it! You say she’s repulsive, but you can’t let go!” Jeffrey’s jaw tightened. “Lydia, I didn’t—” “You promised you’d take me away!” she shrieked, tears streaming down her face. “And instead, you bought her at an auction for a record price. Everyone laughed at me for six months. They said I was delusional, that a man like you would never want someone like me.” “No one would buy me after that. I had to wash clothes, chop wood… I did the filthiest work. One winter I had a fever for seven days. I laid in the dark thinking of you, waiting for you to come for me.” “And you? Were you busy holding her? Had you already forgotten me?” She collapsed against his chest, her fists thumping weakly against his heart. “Jeffrey… we can have babies too. I’ll give you so many… just stop looking at her. Please.” I watched Jeffrey’s rigid body slowly melt. He looked away from me, away from his bleeding son, and gently wiped the tears from Lydia’s face. “Don’t cry. I’ll do whatever you want, okay?” The hatchlings watched their father, their cries growing weaker. They nudged my fingers with their small snouts, their black, obsidian eyes reflecting my own shattered face. They seemed to be asking: Why doesn’t he see us? We’re hurt. Why won’t he look? I couldn’t give them an answer. My face felt frozen. I stroked their tiny heads, forcing a bitter, broken smile. “It’s okay, my loves. Mama’s got you.” I lowered my head and started picking up my ruined belongings. Things fell out of my trembling hands as fast as I could grab them. I kept picking them up. I kept dropping them. Scalding tears hit the dirt and vanished. In the background, I heard Lydia’s voice, sweet and demanding. “I want you to build me a new bed! I won’t sleep where you laid with her.” “And dig up those vegetables. I want flowers there. And that fence? It’s hideous. Tear it down.” Jeffrey looked toward the garden. His gaze lingered on the green sprouts for a heartbeat. He looked at me, then turned back to Lydia, resting his chin on the top of her head. “Anything you want, Lydia. Anything.” Over the next few days, I moved into Beau’s quarters. He had been away for so long that the place was thick with dampness and dust. I managed to clear a small corner, layering my old clothes over some dry straw to make a nest for the babies. The humid night wind drifted through the window, carrying the cloying scent of flowers. Jeffrey had dug up my garden and replaced it with Lydia’s favorites. The hatchlings were restless, huddling against my chest. They were heartbroken. Since the day they hatched, their father had never ignored them like this. I leaned down, pressing my lips to their cool foreheads, my eyes stinging. Outside, the sound of Lydia’s muffled giggles and Jeffrey’s low voice drifted through the walls. I rolled over, pressing my hands over my ears. Then, a sudden, violent crash echoed from the main house. “Jeffrey, no! Stop! Don’t touch me! I’m scared, please!” Footsteps thundered across the porch. My body went taut. A second later, my door was kicked open. Jeffrey stood in the doorway. His eyes were a glowing, predatory green, fixed on me with a terrifying intensity. His gaze slid from my face down to the swell of my breasts, partially exposed by my loose tunic. I knew that look. It was the look of a male in his heat. In the dark of our old room, he would pull me into his lap, his tail coiling around my waist, claiming me over and over until the sun rose. He was in his cycle. I instinctively scrambled back toward the corner. Seeing me recoil, Jeffrey’s teeth ground together with an audible snap. He looked furious, though he probably didn’t even know why. The primal urge of the beast was screaming in his blood, drowning out reason. To his lizard brain, there was only one truth: I was his mate. And no one else could have me. As Jeffrey lunged forward, I shook my head violently. “No! Jeffrey, stop!” My rejection seemed to burn him. He stopped in his tracks, looking at me with a wounded, confused expression. Don’t look at me like that, I thought. You’re the one who threw me away. “I won’t do this…” Before I could finish the sentence, he had me. He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand, his strength effortless and suffocating. Suddenly, a sharp hiss cut through the air. The eldest hatchling was struggling to stand. He used his tiny tail to prop himself up, putting his miniature body between me and Jeffrey. I could feel him shaking. His eyes were wide with terror at the sight of his father’s half-shifted, monstrous form, but he didn’t back down. He bared his tiny, undeveloped fangs, letting out a fierce, desperate hiss of warning. The other two woke up and scrambled to join him, three tiny creatures no bigger than my palm, standing in a row to protect their mother. Tears flooded my eyes. “Babies, no… get back…” I tried to reach for them, but Jeffrey held me fast. His mind was gone, lost to the fog of the heat. He reached out to swat them away, his large hand catching the eldest. The little snake thrashed, lashing his tail. “No! Jeffrey, let him go! You’re hurting him!” I screamed, my nails raking across his forearm, drawing blood. Jeffrey growled, an animal sound, and tossed the hatchling aside. The tiny body hit the far wall with a sickening thud and slid to the floor. “My baby!” I felt like my soul had been ripped out. My eyes went bloodshot with rage. “You’re a monster! He’s your son! How could you throw him?!” Jeffrey blinked, a momentary flicker of clarity returning to his eyes. He looked at his hand, then at the huddle of shivering scales in the corner. But the heat was a tide that wouldn’t be stayed. His gaze locked onto me again, his hand moving to my throat, his voice a slurred, guttural mess. “Ivy…” Just then, a scream pierced the room from the doorway. “What are you doing?!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452007”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Before my best friend, April, threw herself into the pages of that trashy billionaire romance novel, she made me a promise. She swore, with the kind of confidence only a woman with a plan can have, that conquering the corporate ladder would be child’s play. She bragged that she’d secure a three-hundred-million-dollar payout within a year and come back to take me on a world tour. I actually believed her. I thought she’d breeze through the plot, collect her check, and be home for Christmas. I didn’t expect the story to go completely off the rails. Instead of being the powerful fiancée to the CEO, she was being systematically dismantled by a manipulative, “pick-me” secretary who seemed to make it her life’s mission to see April destroyed. The girl had nearly lost her job half a dozen times. But the breaking point? The secretary had forced April—who was shivering with a 102-degree fever—out into a torrential downpour to inspect a stalled, skeletal construction site just to torment her. I was beyond livid. I forced the System to bridge me in. I didn’t care about the cost; I was going to drag my friend out of that hellscape myself. The System gave me two choices. I could inhabit the body of the CEO’s “Inaccessible High School Sweetheart”—the classic trope—or the company’s CFO. I rejected both. I played my highest-tier authority card. The second I materialized in that world, the air shifted. A chorus of disciplined voices rang out around me, synchronized and heavy with respect. “Good morning, Madam Beaumont!” … The elevator doors slid open to a sea of tailored suits. The elite of the corporate world froze in their tracks, bowing their heads in unison. “Madam Beaumont.” “Welcome back, Madam Beaumont.” I gave a curt nod, my eyes fixed straight ahead as I strode through the lobby. I didn’t have time for pleasantries. As I approached the CEO’s corner office, a voice—sugary-sweet and utterly fake—drifted toward me. “Oh, Madam Beaumont! What a wonderful surprise! If I’d known you were coming, I would have arranged a proper reception.” It was Linda, my “son” Xander’s executive assistant. She rushed forward, her hands reaching for my designer tote with an eager, practiced smile. I pivoted slightly, letting her hands grasp thin air. “Where is April?” That was the only thing that mattered. Linda’s hands stiffened for a fraction of a second before she pulled them back, her smile never wavering. “Miss Dalton? Oh, she’s currently on-site at the Riverside Project, conducting a safety inspection.” “An inspection? Today?” I glanced at the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, the sky was a bruised charcoal. Rain hammered against the glass, blurring the skyline of the city into a gray smudge. Even the construction crews would have been called off in this weather. What the hell was she “inspecting”? “Go get her,” I said, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. Linda hesitated, her expression turning into a mask of faux-concern. “Madam, I’m afraid that’s not possible. Mr. Beaumont personally assigned this task. He was quite clear: Miss Dalton is to remain on-site for five hours to oversee the perimeter.” She checked her watch. “It’s only been two and a half hours. If we bring her back early, Xander… well, he won’t be pleased.” “I will deal with Xander myself,” I snapped. I ignored her and looked past her at the senior management team hovering in the hallway. “Go to the Riverside site. Bring April Dalton back. Now.” The executives scrambled. “Right away, Madam. We’ll send a car immediately.” I nodded, satisfied. It seemed that even though I had stepped down from the Chairmanship three years ago, no one had forgotten whose name was on the building’s foundation. “Don’t bother with a company car. Use mine.” I wasn’t waiting another minute. I signaled my head of security with a look and turned on my heel. The suit-clad entourage followed me like a wake behind a ship. The Beaumont Matriarch heading to a muddy, unfinished construction site in a storm? If I so much as tripped, half the board of directors would lose their jobs. Ten minutes later, the car pulled up to the skeletal remains of the Riverside Project. The site was a graveyard of steel and concrete. In the middle of the mud stood a lone figure: April. She was huddled under a concrete pillar, holding her leather handbag over her head as a pathetic shield against the rain. She was soaked to the bone, her frame trembling so violently I could see it from the car. Her lips were a terrifying shade of blue, her eyes glazed over. I threw the door open before the car had even fully stopped. I draped my cashmere coat over her, pulling her against me. “April! Stay with me!” “I’m taking her to the hospital,” I barked. My security detail moved like a well-oiled machine—one holding a massive umbrella, another handing me a warm towel, a third already on the phone with the nearest ER. I gripped her ice-cold hand, guiding her toward the car, but Linda had followed us. She stood nearby under her own umbrella, letting out a heavy, performative sigh. “Madam Beaumont, I really must say, Miss Dalton is being a bit… fragile, isn’t she? If she can’t handle a little rain, how can she expect to carry the Beaumont name as Xander’s wife?” I stopped. I turned to her, my gaze cold enough to freeze the raindrops mid-air. “Linda, who told you that the price of admission into this family was physical torture?” Linda blinked, momentarily stunned. “Miss Dalton has always been pampered, I only meant—” “I was married into this family for thirty years,” I cut her off. “And in three decades, no one ever told me I had to stand in a thunderstorm at a dead construction site to prove my worth. You, however, are an assistant. Since when do you set the rules for the Beaumonts? Who gave you that authority?” Linda’s face went bone-white. “Madam, I didn’t mean—” Just then, a black Maybach roared into the site entrance. A man stepped out—tall, sharp-featured, and radiating a cold, arrogant energy. Xander Beaumont. He didn’t look at April first. He looked at Linda to make sure she wasn’t wet, then turned his frown toward me. “Mother? What are you doing here? What’s going on?” I looked at him. This was the hero of the book—the “cold CEO” who had been putting my best friend through a meat grinder. My supposed son. Before I could speak, Linda threw herself toward him, her eyes instantly welling with tears. “Xander! Madam Beaumont is trying to take Miss Dalton away. I tried to explain your orders, but she… she told me I had no right to speak.” Xander patted her hand absently, his irritation shifting toward me. “Mother, Linda is my personal staff. Please show her some professional courtesy. The inspection was my idea, not hers.” “I wanted April to build some character,” he continued, his voice devoid of empathy. “She needs to understand the grit it takes to run a company like this. It’s for her own good.” I looked down at April in my arms. Her face was flushed with fever, her head lolling against my shoulder. She was barely conscious. “Character building?” I asked, my voice trembling with suppressed rage. “Checking a stalled site in a fever, in a storm—is that grit, or is that abuse, Xander?” Xander’s expression remained stony. “Mother, when you and Dad started this company from a garage, you dealt with worse. If she wants to be my wife, she needs to handle it. If a little rain gives her a fever, it just proves she’s too soft.” He cast a fond look at Linda. “Linda grew up in the foster system. She knows what real hardship is. She wouldn’t be complaining.” Linda looked down modestly. “I’m just used to it, Mr. Beaumont. It’s no big deal.” I felt a sharp, bitter laugh bubble up in my throat. “Xander, your father and I worked hard because we were poor and had no choice. But the Beaumonts aren’t poor anymore. We don’t need to ‘harden’ our family members by inducing pneumonia. This isn’t character building. It’s cruelty.” Xander’s jaw tightened. “Mother!” I smiled, though there was no warmth in it. I turned my focus to Linda. “Actually, Linda, you’re right. You are much more accustomed to hardship, aren’t you? Since April is clearly too ‘fragile’ and is heading to the hospital, you can take over her shift.” Linda’s eyes went wide. “The Riverside site needs an eight-hour daily inspection. Thirty days a month. Rain or shine,” I said. “I’d love to see what ‘real grit’ looks like on you.” Linda’s face drained of all color. Xander stepped forward, scowling. “Mother, Linda is a woman. She can’t be expected to stand on a muddy site all day. It’s too much.” I scoffed. “Oh? So you do realize it’s hard for a woman? Is April not a woman, Xander?” He opened his mouth, then closed it, finding no retort. Linda bit her lip, her eyes shimmering with tears. “Xander, I think Madam Beaumont just doesn’t like me…” Xander waved a hand dismissively, his tone becoming clipped and frustrated. “Fine. Whatever. Just take April to the hospital. It’ll be bad for PR if she actually gets sick on company grounds.” “I have a contract to negotiate,” he added, turning back to his car. “Linda, you’re with me.” He didn’t look back as they climbed into the Maybach and sped away. I immediately got April into my car. As we pulled away, I looked at her sleeping, pale face. Hang in there, April, I thought. I’m taking over from here. The ER light stayed on for twenty minutes before the doctor came out. He told me that if we’d been thirty minutes later, she would have been headed straight for the ICU. I stationed two of my personal guards at her door and called in Mrs. Gable, my most trusted housekeeper. “Mrs. Gable, pay attention,” I said. “April hates cilantro. She won’t touch radishes or green peppers. Her stomach is sensitive, so she needs small, frequent meals. Treat her like she’s my own daughter. Because she’s going to be the next Mrs. Beaumont, whether my son likes it or not.” Mrs. Gable nodded solemnly. I stepped into the hallway to make a call, but my guard approached me quickly. “Madam, Linda is here. She says she’s here to visit Miss Dalton. She brought ‘healing soup’.” I paused. A visit? This quickly? I turned back toward the room. As I pushed the door open, I saw Linda sitting by the bed. She was holding a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, pressing it against April’s weak lips. April turned her head away, her voice a thready whisper. “I don’t want it…” “Miss Dalton, please,” Linda said, her voice a soft, melodic coo. “I made this broth myself. It’s for your stomach. You’re sick; you have to eat.” She shoved the spoon forward again. April pushed it away, and some of the hot liquid splashed onto April’s hand. Her skin instantly turned a bright, angry red. Linda didn’t even flinch. She just smiled and scooped another spoonful. “It’s okay. Let’s try again. Open up—” “Put it down.” Linda looked up, her expression a mask of innocence. “Madam Beaumont! I just wanted to bring some soup for Miss Dalton. I felt so bad about earlier.” I ignored her and looked at Mrs. Gable. “Smell it.” Mrs. Gable leaned in, her brow furrowing deep. “Madam… this has Asarum and Pinellia in it.” My heart skipped a beat. For someone with a high fever, those herbs could cause a dangerous spike in heart rate or even respiratory distress. Linda’s face shifted slightly. “Mrs. Gable, don’t be dramatic. I just found a recipe online for wellness. I’m trying to help.” I looked at her with pure disdain. “We both know what you’re trying to do.” Linda bit her lip, her tone suddenly hardening. “Madam, you’re only targeting me because Xander values my work. But Xander is a man with his own mind. He’ll choose who he wants to marry. You don’t get the final say.” I let out a soft laugh. “Watch me.” A few minutes later, the door swung open and Xander stormed in. He saw Linda’s red eyes and his face darkened. “Mother, what now? Linda texted me saying you were berating her again.” I pointed to the bowl of soup. “She brought a ‘wellness broth’ laced with herbs that are toxic to someone in April’s condition.” Linda shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “Xander, I didn’t know! I just searched for something healthy online. I was only trying to be nice!” Xander turned to me, his voice dismissive. “Mother, Linda isn’t a doctor. She probably just made a mistake. There’s no need to make a federal case out of a bowl of soup.” “If it’s so harmless,” I said, pointing to the bowl, “have her drink the rest of it.” Xander didn’t move. After a tense silence, he turned to Linda. “Don’t bother trying so hard next time. Some people don’t deserve your kindness.” Linda nodded, looking small and victimized. “I’m sorry, Xander. I just wanted to help. Maybe… maybe I should stay and look after her? To make up for it?” “No,” Xander said, sounding bored. “Let’s go. We have the merger meeting in the morning.” Linda followed him out. As she passed me, she tilted her head just enough for me to see the smirk playing on her lips. Her eyes said it all: See? He’ll always choose me. The door clicked shut. I walked to the bedside. April was half-awake, her eyes unfocused, her cheeks burning with fever. This wasn’t the April I knew. My April was a firecracker. She had a laugh that could fill a room and enough ambition to move mountains. Now, she was drowning in an oversized hospital gown, her wrists so thin they looked like they might snap. I tucked the blanket around her. In her delirium, she murmured, “…I’m sorry. I was useless.” I clenched my fists. Xander. Linda. If you want to play this game, I’m going to flip the table. Two weeks later, April was discharged. Her parents came to see me, their faces etched with worry. “Madam Beaumont, we appreciate everything you’ve done, but… maybe we should just call off the engagement. We don’t want our daughter to suffer anymore.” I looked them in the eye. “I understand. But I give you my word: as long as I am breathing, April will be the one standing at the head of the Beaumont family.” The wedding remained set for May 18th. The day of the ceremony, the hotel was a fortress of white roses and champagne. The elite were out in full force. April sat in the dressing room, a vision in custom lace, holding her bouquet with a quiet, steady hand. I stood by the window and checked my watch. 9:15 AM. The groom’s motorcade should have arrived at the Dalton estate by now. My phone buzzed. It was my head of security. “Madam, Mr. Beaumont hasn’t left. The motorcade is still parked at the hotel entrance.” “Where is he?” “At his private villa in Emerald Bay.” I didn’t hesitate. I drove straight there. Inside the villa, Linda was sobbing as if her heart were breaking. Xander was holding her, whispering sweet nothings into her ear. “Linda, stop crying. Please.” Linda choked out a sob. “Xander, if you marry her today, I’ll have nothing. I grew up with no one, and then I found you… If I lose you, I don’t want to live.” Xander pulled her closer. “I won’t marry her. You’re the only one I love.” I walked into the room without knocking. They both bolted upright. Xander’s face went stiff. “Mother? What are you doing here?” “The wedding starts at noon,” I said calmly. “I’m not going.” Xander tightened his grip on Linda. “The wedding is off.” Linda’s sobbing slowed, a flash of triumph in her eyes. “Xander,” I said, staring him down. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Are you coming?” He leaned back, his tone arrogant. “Maybe. If you agree to give Linda a ten-percent stake in the company. She’s the one I truly want to be with. April is just a business arrangement you forced on me. I’ll give her the title of Mrs. Beaumont, but the real power stays with Linda.” I let out a cold snort. “Ten percent? Beaumont Group is valued at eighty billion dollars. You want me to hand over eight billion to an assistant?” “She deserves it,” he insisted. “April is the one who deserves it.” My smile vanished. “Linda will never see a dime of Beaumont money.” Xander laughed, a jagged, ugly sound. “Then we have nothing to talk about. We both know why the Daltons want this marriage. If I don’t show up today, April becomes the laughingstock of the city. So does our family. She can’t afford that humiliation. Neither can you.” He actually thought he was the prize. He thought without him, the world stopped turning. I didn’t argue. I turned and walked toward the door. At the threshold, I looked back at him. “Xander. Don’t regret this.” He reclined on the sofa, pulling Linda into his lap. “I won’t.” Thirty minutes later, Xander’s phone rang. It was his best friend, Marcus. “Xander! Man, your mom is a legend! Thirty percent of the voting shares and the official heirship? All tied to the marriage? If you marry April, you’re officially the King of Beaumont Group. Congrats, man!” Xander’s hand froze on the phone. “What?” “Wait, are you playing dumb? The whole city knows. Oh, and I heard your younger brother just landed from London. I see him there now…” The voice on the other end faded into static as Xander bolted upright. “Get the car! We’re going to the hotel! Now!”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452023”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When my thumb slid across my husband’s unlocked screen, I was only looking to Venmo myself a couple hundred dollars for my weekend poker buy-in. An accidental tap on a muted group chat stopped my heart. The “Wolf Pack” was on fire, buzzing with logistics for a yacht proposal scheduled for Saturday at seven. One guy reminded the group to wear black tie; they wanted to give “the future Mrs.” a surprise she’d never forget. Another voice jumped in, telling Damian to make sure he kept his wife occupied. He joked that I was “too sharp for my own good.” Damian’s reply came with a digital shrug. He’d already cleared the runway, he said. I’d told him I was planning an all-night poker game with the girls, so there was zero chance of me crashing the party. The chat exploded with laughing emojis. Someone joked that once the ring was on her finger, I wouldn’t even have a shoulder left to cry on. Then came the question about the ring. Someone warned the “Big Dog” not to let me find it like I almost did last time. Damian’s response was typed with terrifying confidence: It’s in the office vault. She doesn’t have the code. Once this is a done deal, let’s see her try to make a scene. That sentence hit me like a jagged glass shard to the eye. I scrolled up. The latest message was a voice note from Damian. I could hear the smirk in his voice as he thanked his brothers for the heavy lifting, promising to buy the first five rounds of Macallan once the deed was done. He ended it with a sharp directive: Keep a tail on her. Don’t let her slip away. The cold light of the screen washed over my face. I stared at the interface for a few seconds, the silence of our bedroom suddenly feeling predatory. My fingers began to move again. This time, I didn’t transfer two hundred dollars. I moved twenty thousand. If I was going to play a hand this big, I needed a stack that could actually break the table. 1 The air conditioning in the private club was dialed down to a crisp, biting cold. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of shuffling chips drowned out the ambient jazz. “Nina, look. Look at this piece of trash.” Beth shoved her phone in front of my face, the screen glowing with a photo that felt like a physical blow. A yacht on the Hudson. Golden hour light. Silk and shadows. Damian was down on one knee, sliding a rock the size of a postage stamp onto Kayla’s finger. The caption read: To the rest of our lives. Forever yours. For a moment, the only sound at the table was the low hum of the HVAC system. “Wait… isn’t that Damian?” Penny, sitting across from me, gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “And his assistant? Is he… is he proposing?” “Proposing? It’s a goddamn public execution!” Beth’s chest heaved with fury. She pointed at the background of the photo, where our friend Scott was grinning like an idiot. “Look at these men. Every single one of them. They’ve been playing you for a fool, Nina!” “Scott told me he had a ‘corporate retreat’ tonight. Turns out he was just the wingman for his best friend’s betrayal!” Another woman leaned in, letting out a long, slow sigh. “Nina, everyone in the city remembers how hard he chased you back in college. You were the ‘it’ couple. How did it come to this?” “Money turns them into monsters,” Penny muttered. “And let’s not forget, his firm would be a parking lot if your father hadn’t funded his first three rounds.” “I’ve met that Kayla girl. She plays the ‘sweet intern’ act well. I didn’t realize she was a vulture.” “Nina, what are you going to do? You can’t let this slide.” They were vibrating with secondhand rage, already mapping out a hundred ways to ruin him, to tear them both apart. I just listened, my eyes fixed on the card I had just drawn. An Ace of Hearts. I looked up at Beth, who looked like she was about to cry on my behalf. I let the corner of my mouth twitch into the ghost of a smile, and then I slid my entire stack of chips into the center. “I’m all in.” The chatter died instantly. They traded nervous glances, confused by my lack of tears, my lack of screaming. The atmosphere turned heavy, almost surreal. I didn’t say a word. I flipped my cards over one by one. A Royal Flush. As they stared at the table in stunned silence, I stood up and reached for my coat. “I believe the house owes me a payout,” I said softly. 2 I let myself into the penthouse, the weight of my designer bag heavy on my shoulder. The living room lights were dimmed, and Damian was sitting on the sofa, seemingly waiting for me. The moment I stepped in, he stood up, wearing that practiced, gentle smile that used to make me feel safe. “You’re back? How was the game? Did the cards love you tonight?” I didn’t answer. I walked straight to the marble coffee table and dropped the thick envelope of cash I’d collected from the club. It landed with a heavy, satisfying thud. “Card gods were on my side,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “I guess the old saying is true. Lucky in cards, unlucky in love. Though, looking at my bank account, I’d say I’m doing just fine.” Damian’s smile flickered, then held. “What’s that supposed to mean? You’re acting strange.” “Strange?” I pulled out my phone, unlocked it, and pulled up the screenshot I’d taken of his ‘forever’ moment. I turned the screen toward him. The yacht. The diamond. His knee on the deck. Kayla’s staged, virginal surprise. It was all there, vivid and disgusting. “Damian, do you want to explain this ‘game’ to me?” The color drained from his face so fast it was almost cinematic. His eyes darted around the room, looking for an exit that didn’t exist. “Nina, listen, I can explain… it’s… it was a joke. A prank for the guys. The ‘Wolf Pack’ went too far, you know how they are when they drink…” “I don’t want the script, Damian.” I cut him off and tucked my phone away. My voice was a flatline. “Tomorrow morning, bring Kayla here. To our home. We’re going to have a conversation.” Damian froze. He took a tentative step toward me, reaching for my hand. “Nina, honey, don’t do this. I know you’re hurt, but—” I stepped back, avoiding his touch like it was a contagion. I reached into the side pocket of my bag and pulled out a heavy, cream-colored business card. I held it between two fingers, offering it to him. “This is my divorce attorney,” I said. “If you have anything else to say, tell it to her tomorrow. In front of your mistress.” 3 At ten the next morning, the buzzer rang. Damian walked in, followed by a demure, downcast Kayla. The second they reached the living room, Damian grabbed Kayla by the arm and shoved her toward me, his voice harsh and performative. “Apologize to Nina! Right now!” Kayla’s eyes welled with tears instantly. It was impressive. Her voice trembled as she spoke. “Mrs. Cross, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have let things get so close. I didn’t mean for you to get the wrong idea.” “The yacht… it was just a stupid party. Everyone was drinking. It wasn’t real.” “Damian didn’t sleep a wink last night. He was so worried about you being upset. Please don’t blame him. If you have to hate someone, hate me.” She kept calling me “Mrs. Cross,” playing the role of the humble penitent. But that line about him “not sleeping a wink” was a jagged little needle. She was telling me, in code, that they had spent the night together after he stormed out of here. I leaned back against the sofa, watching the performance with clinical detachment. “Are you finished?” Kayla bit her lip and took a step forward, closing the distance. “I know you’re angry. But Damian has such a sensitive stomach. He can only sleep if he has a glass of warm milk, and he was so restless at my place last night…” “He still cares about this home, Nina. Please don’t let me be the reason you break up a marriage.” “Damian.” I ignored her and looked at the man whose face was turning a sickly shade of gray. “Did you bring her here to give me a play-by-play of your sleepover?” “Nina, don’t listen to her! She’s confused!” Damian scrambled toward me, trying to grab my hand again. I pulled away. Seeing the ice in my eyes, he pivoted to the emotional blackmail. “I stayed at the office last night. I swear. Nina, we’ve been together for six years. Don’t you remember the early days? When we were splitting a ten-dollar pizza and dreaming of this life?” “We’ve survived so much together. You’re going to throw it all away over a misunderstanding?” “It was a joke! A stupid, drunken mistake!” He was getting worked up now, playing the part of the misunderstood, devoted husband. Just as he was reaching his crescendo, Kayla spoke up. “Damian…” She didn’t call him ‘Mr. Cross’ this time. Her voice was thin, but it cut through the room like a blade. “I didn’t want to say anything. But I’m scared… I’m scared for the baby to grow up without a father.” The air in the room turned to lead. Damian’s expression shattered. He spun around to look at her, his mouth agape. “What did you say?” “I’m pregnant.” Kayla looked up, her face streaked with tears, but as her gaze flicked to mine, I caught it—a spark of pure, unadulterated triumph. “Nina, I don’t want your money. I just want Damian. You can’t give him a family, but I can. I can give him a real home.” “Shut up!” Damian let out a panicked roar, his face white as a sheet. Kayla flinched as if he’d hit her. She stumbled back half a step, her heel catching on the edge of the rug. She went down hard, landing heavily on the hardwood floor near the coffee table. “Ah—!” A sharp cry of pain escaped her. She clutched her stomach, her forehead instantly breaking into a sweat. “Damian… my stomach… it hurts so much…” Damian had been watching my reaction, but at the sound of that scream, he snapped. He lunged for her, gathering her into his arms. “Kayla! Kayla, talk to me!” His voice was vibrating with a terror I hadn’t seen in years. The “devoted husband” who was just begging for my forgiveness vanished in a heartbeat. “It hurts… the baby…” She gripped his lapels, gasping for air, tears streaming down her face. Damian didn’t even look at me. He scooped her up in his arms and bolted for the door like a man possessed. The heavy front door slammed shut with a boom that echoed through the empty penthouse. Silence rushed back in. I sat there, staring at the spot where they had just been standing. A long moment passed before my phone lit up with a notification. It was a text from Kayla. 4 The photo was a tactical nuke. Tangled silk sheets, limbs intertwined, and a profile I knew better than my own buried in the crook of a woman’s neck. The text beneath it was designed to kill: Nina, Damian is with me now. He said he’s going to take care of me and our child. After all, he’s tired. He’s tired of coming home to a cold, empty woman who can’t even hold onto a pregnancy. Cold? I stared at the word until it blurred. I wanted to laugh. So that was how he described me to the world. It made sense. Three years ago, when I had tripped and tumbled down the stairs, covered in blood and clutching my phone to call him, he’d used the same tone. The background noise on his end had been a thumping bassline and laughter. He’d sounded annoyed when he picked up. “Nina, can you just give me one night of peace? It’s Kayla’s birthday, the whole team is out celebrating. Don’t be a buzzkill.” That was the night we lost the baby. And he was out buying lemon drops for another woman. The panic and raw desperation he’d shown while carrying Kayla out of the house just now… that was a look I had never seen on his face while I was lying in a pool of my own blood. He wasn’t incapable of warmth. He just wasn’t warm for me. I wasn’t “incapable” of having a family. He just didn’t want one with me. The weight I’d been carrying for years—the guilt, the “what-ifs”—suddenly shattered. Good. Let the last of the embers burn out. I took a deep breath and dialed Beth. “Beth, are you awake?” Her voice boomed through the speaker, loud and sharp. “Awake? I’m livid! I saw Scott’s car at the hospital! I’m about to go down there and give those two a piece of my mind. How are you? Don’t you dare sit there alone.” “I’m fine,” I said, and surprisingly, I meant it. “I just wanted to ask… when you want to take out a pair of narcissists with zero mess… what’s the cleanest way to do it?” There was a three-second silence on the other end, followed by a sound that could only be described as predatory glee. “You’re finally ready? Thank God. Hold on, let me get my notebook. Class is in session.” I hung up, opened my laptop, and typed 24-hour white-glove moving service into the search bar. Booked. Paid. Confirmed. Less than an hour later, three men in blue jumpsuits were at my door. I led them to Damian’s walk-in closet and pointed at the rows of bespoke suits and limited-edition sneakers. “Everything,” I said. “Pack it all. Every shoe, every watch, every scrap of paper.” “And the desk in the study. I want it gone.” They were efficient, professional, and silent. In ninety minutes, the penthouse—a place once filled with his ego—was half-empty. As they were maneuvering his massive mahogany desk toward the elevator, the front door swung open. Damian stood there, looking haggard and drained. He froze, eyes widening as he saw the chaos in the hallway, his prized desk hovering mid-air. “What the hell is this? Who authorized this!” He lunged forward, trying to block the movers. The men stopped and looked back at me. I was standing in the center of the living room, calm as a summer lake. Damian’s gaze snapped to mine, his voice shaking. “Nina, have you lost your mind?” I didn’t answer him. I just looked at the movers. “Keep going.” They stepped around him like he was an inconvenient piece of litter. Damian stood paralyzed, glaring at me. I reached for the intercom by the door and signaled the front desk downstairs. “Starting now,” I told the security guard, “this gentleman and his belongings are no longer permitted on the premises. Revoke his key fobs and clear his name from the guest list.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452008”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The spring breeze in the Berkshires was supposed to be a gift. I stood in the open field, watching my kite catch a thermal, soaring effortlessly into the blue. I smiled, capturing the moment on my phone—a rare second of peace. But Macy’s kite was a different story. It thrashed against the grass, a broken-winged bird. Her eyes welled with practiced tears, and the moment Judy saw them, his protective instincts curdled into a dark, irrational rage. He screamed that I would pay for it. He claimed I was “flaunting” my skill, intentionally making Macy look small and incompetent in front of our friends. To him, my grace was a weapon I’d used to wound her ego. And to even the score, he decided he would fly me like a kite instead. I shook, my knees hitting the dirt as I begged for mercy. He didn’t blink. He just watched with a cold, detached amusement as his men followed his orders, tethering heavy-duty paracord to the roll bar of his custom Jeep. As the engine roared and the Jeep surged forward, I was yanked off my feet. I was dragged through the brush at high speed, the thorns and low-hanging branches shredding my skin until I was a map of jagged red lines. After that initial orbit of agony, he switched tactics. He launched the heavy-lift drone—a piece of industrial tech he’d brought for “fun”—and hoisted me into the sky. “You’ve always been so arrogant, Talia,” his voice crackled through the radio, chilled with disdain. “You love being up high? Fine. Stay there until you learn how to treat Macy with some respect.” The atmospheric pressure at that height began to wreck me. Capillaries beneath my skin burst, and a slow, steady stream of blood began to coat my limbs. Down below, inside the heated luxury tent, Judy was holding Macy’s hand. He was meticulously helping her pick out a new designer kite to fly. It wasn’t until they’d finished their intimate little celebration that they remembered I was still suspended in the clouds. That was when the driver’s frantic call came through. “Mr. Osborn… the line snapped. Mrs. Osborn… she fell. She’s… God, there’s nothing left of her.” 1 The moment they strapped me into the harness, my body wouldn’t stop betraying me. I was shaking so violently I couldn’t stand. I crawled toward Judy, clutching at the hem of his jeans, my voice a ragged whisper of desperation. “Judy, please. I’ll leave. I won’t ever interrupt your time with her again. Just let me go.” The tears were hot, blurring my vision. “Judy, we’re married. For the sake of everything we used to be, I’m begging you.” Macy stood beside him, twisting her fingers, the corners of her eyes pink. “Judy, I’m so sorry… this is all my fault. I’m just so clumsy. I shouldn’t have even tried to fly a kite; I just embarrassed you. Please don’t be mad at Talia. I’m sure she didn’t mean to make fun of me. It’s just because I’m… you know, I didn’t grow up with things like this.” Judy looked down at me, his expression devoid of anything resembling the man I’d married. “I’ve spoiled you, Talia. You knew Macy had a hard life. You knew she never got to do these things as a kid, and yet you chose today to humiliate her in front of everyone. Apologize. Now.” “No… I didn’t… that’s not what happened…” My lips trembled, but before I could finish, Judy kicked my hand away. “Still lying. After everything Macy has done to try and bridge the gap with you, you’re still a spiteful bitch.” I coughed, the metallic taste of blood blooming in my mouth. I watched as he reached out, gently taking Macy’s hand in his, his voice dropping to a tender murmur. “It’s not your fault, Macy. You’re too good, too kind to see how she really is. You wanted to fly a kite today? I’m going to give you a show you’ll never forget.” “Murphy,” he barked at his head of security. “Tie her down.” I felt the light leave my world. I watched them secure my harness to the drone’s winch, which was anchored to the Jeep. How had the man who once promised to be my sanctuary turned into my executioner? All for a woman’s bruised ego. All for a lie I didn’t tell. “You like the view from the cockpit, don’t you, Talia? Why don’t you go see it for yourself?” Judy climbed into the Jeep with Macy, never looking back. As the vehicle lurched forward, he hit the remote trigger. I was yanked into the air, dangling behind the speeding Jeep. My body slammed into branches and skipped over jagged rocks as we tore through the trail. The cord bit deep into my waist, slicing through my clothes and into my flesh. The pain was a living thing, screaming through my nerves. “Judy! Stop! You’re killing me!” “Judy, maybe we should let her down,” Macy whispered, leaning her head against his chest, her voice loud enough for the radio to pick up. “The way she’s screaming… it’s making me nervous.” Judy leaned out the window, shouting over the wind. “You never learn, do you? Since you aren’t sorry yet, you can stay up there until you are.” He pressed the button again. I saw the look on Macy’s face as she turned her head to look at me through the rear window. There was no fear there. Only a slow, triumphant smile. A second later, the world dropped away. I was winched upward, higher and higher, into the thinning, freezing air. 2 The pressure drop hit like a physical blow. My eardrums popped with a sickening crack, and blood began to leak from my nose and eyes. I choked on the copper fluid, screaming into the radio. “Judy! I apologize! I’m sorry! Put me down, please, just put me down!” The driver’s voice, hesitant and shaky, broke through. “Sir, at this altitude… her body won’t hold up. This is dangerous.” “Just drive the damn car,” Judy’s voice cut through the wind, crystal clear and cold. “Whatever she’s feeling doesn’t compare to a fraction of the pain she caused Macy today.” The driver tried to protest, but Macy’s voice chimed in, sweet as saccharine. “Oh, don’t worry about her. Talia used to be a pilot, remember? She’s used to high altitudes. This is probably nothing to her.” “You hear that, Talia?” Judy yelled. “You stay up there and say you’re sorry. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times. If you miss a single one, you aren’t coming down!” I let out a broken, hollow laugh that turned into a sob of blood. Judy, I never knew you could be this cruel. Hypoxia and hypothermia began to settle in. My consciousness flickered like a dying candle. I began to mutter the apologies, over and over, a mindless mantra, until the world finally went black. In the darkness, I went back. Back to the university where we met. I was the star of the aviation program, the girl with the perfect grades and the natural instinct for the sky. I was supposed to be a legend. Everyone wanted a piece of me, but I only wanted Judy. He was so gentle then. He took care of everything. When I started flying solo missions, he was the one waiting on the tarmac with coffee and a blanket. When he took over his family’s empire, Osborn Corp, he asked me to marry him in front of the whole world. We were the “It” couple. I was fierce then. I was confident. But I gave it all up—my wings, my career—to carry his child. The roar of the wind snapped me back for a second. I wasn’t Captain Talia Osborn anymore. I was a broken doll in the sky. Everything had ended the moment Macy appeared. I had just finished my twelve-week ultrasound. Judy was walking me home, his hand on the small of my back, both of us glowing with the secret of our new life. Then, we saw her standing at our gates. She threw herself into his arms, sobbing. “Judy, I didn’t want to leave you back then… they forced me. I have nowhere else to go. Please don’t turn me away.” Judy’s heart didn’t just soften; it completely dissolved. Macy moved into our guest room the next day. Soon, they didn’t even pretend. Macy liked spicy food, so Judy stopped caring about my pregnancy diet. He spent hours in the kitchen making elaborate Szechuan dishes just for her. When I had a fever that wouldn’t break, Judy left me at the hospital alone because Macy called him saying she had a “craving” for a specific cake from a bakery fifty miles away. I sat in that sterile hallway, rubbing my belly and crying. I told myself it would change once the baby came. I stayed quiet, hoping his own flesh and blood would bring him back to me. But my baby never had a chance. Macy handed me a glass of milk one night. Two hours later, the cramping started. I didn’t even make it to the ER before I lost her. I remember holding that tiny, perfectly formed girl in the hospital bed, shaking so hard I thought my bones would shatter. And then, I saw Macy in the doorway. 3 “Macy, what did you do? You put something in that milk! Give me back my daughter!” I lunged for her, but I didn’t even touch a hair on her head before Judy threw me to the floor. “Macy was trying to be nice to you! If you couldn’t keep the baby, it’s because your body is useless,” he hissed. He signaled the staff to drag me out. “Get her out of here. I won’t have her ruining Macy’s rest with this insanity.” It was ten degrees below zero. I stood outside in nothing but a thin hospital gown all night. That night ruined my health forever. I could never pass a flight physical again. I could never fly. The memory of the cold brought me back to the present. The wind was howling. Below me, they were back in the tent. “Judy, she’s been up there a long time. Do you think she’s okay? It’s so high…” “Macy, I bought that rig for myself. I trust the equipment. Why are you so worried about her?” Judy sounded hesitant for a moment. “But since the miscarriage, she hasn’t been the same. If something happens…” “She’s fine. Those pills you got for her—the ones the doctor said were the ‘best’ for ‘cleaning out’ her system after the loss? They were top of the line. She’s stronger than she looks.” Macy giggled. “Besides, you told her she could come down when she finished the apologies. She’s probably just being stubborn, giving us the silent treatment.” “Spiteful bitch,” Judy muttered, his voice warming up again. “At least you and the baby are well-behaved.” “Of course,” Macy whispered. “You said only I could give you your real firstborn. We’re going to be so good for you.” I heard her pull his hand toward her. “She scared me so much today, Judy. Can you feel how fast my heart is beating?” The sounds that followed over the radio were intimate and revolting. And in that moment, the last of my heart turned to ash. Judy had killed my baby. He’d given me those “supplements.” He’d orchestrated the “miscarriage” so Macy could have the first child. I had been grieving a tragedy while living with my murderers. I didn’t want to survive anymore. As if the universe heard me, a massive gust of wind slammed into the drone. The paracord, frayed from the dragging and the tension, finally gave up. I felt the snap. I was no longer tied to the earth. I was falling. I felt my bones shatter in my mind before I even hit the ground. I closed my eyes and smiled. Finally. On the other side of the mountain, a black Maybach was cutting through the mountain pass. “Sir, I think something just fell from the sky…” The window rolled down, revealing the sharp, icy profile of a man. The air in the car filled with the scent of cold cedar and rain. “Go check it out.” The weightlessness ended. The impact was a symphony of agony, a white-hot explosion that tore through my chest. Am I dead? Good. “Talia? Talia, is that you?” A voice was calling me. My eyes were filled with blood, my vision a red haze. I realized I was caught in the thick branches of an old oak tree. A pair of strong arms reached up, pulling me down with terrifying gentleness. “Talia, what did he do to you?” His voice broke. I recognized him. Gideon Blackwood. The heir to the Blackwood empire. The man Judy hated more than anyone in the world. I wondered if he was going to finish me off. But my body, despite my soul’s exhaustion, wanted to live. “Help… please…” “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.” He held me close, his stride fast and steady as he carried me toward his car. The last thing I thought before I slipped away was how strange it was that my husband’s greatest enemy was the only one who treated me like I was precious. 4 When I woke up, I was in the back of the Maybach. Every breath tasted like iron. “Talia, stay with me. Who did this? Where is Judy?” I tried to smile, but I only coughed up more blood. “Faster!” Gideon roared at his driver. “Sir, I’m doing eighty on a mountain road, we’ve already cleared eight red lights—” “I don’t care! Call the hospital. I want the best surgeons waiting at the door. Now!” Gideon’s hand was on my face, his thumb trembling as he wiped blood from my cheek. “Don’t you dare close your eyes, Talia.” His phone rang—a sharp, intrusive sound. “Sir, the local hospital says they can’t take her. Apparently, some ‘high-profile’ donor has bought out the surgical wing for the day for his wife…” “Call the chopper,” Gideon hissed, his voice vibrating with a power I’d never heard. “Get my private medical team to the city center. I want a landing pad cleared in twenty minutes. If anyone stands in the way, buy the building and fire them.” I was stunned. The Blackwoods and the Osborns were supposed to be equals, but this—this kind of shadow power was something Judy never mentioned. “Gideon… why?” I whispered, my voice barely a thread. “We’re supposed to be enemies.” “We aren’t anything of the sort, Talia,” he said, and for a second, I saw a flash of something ancient and agonizing in his eyes. We made it to the private facility. Gideon carried me inside like I was made of glass. He didn’t let go until the nurses forced him to. “Dr. Murphy, save her,” Gideon said, and then, to my shock, he actually bowed his head to the surgeon. I survived. It took ten hours of surgery and a dozen units of blood, but I stayed. When the anesthesia wore off, Gideon was there, looking like he’d aged a decade. “Talia,” he whispered. “The doctor says you’re stable. I have to step out to handle some… business. I expect Judy will be looking for you soon. If you need anything, use this phone. My number is the only one in it.” I nodded, drifting back into a heavy sleep. But peace didn’t last. I was jolted awake by the sound of boots in the hallway. My door was kicked open. “Here! We found a match! Move!” Nurses and doctors I didn’t recognize swarmed me. They didn’t ask. They pinned me down and drove a needle into my arm, drawing vial after vial of blood. “Wait… stop…” I tried to reach for the phone Gideon left, but a nurse snatched it away. “We found her! The CEO’s wife is going to make it! We have the match!” My heart went cold. The CEO’s wife. The lead doctor stripped off my oxygen mask and started unhooking my IVs. “Move her to the prep room! If we don’t save Mrs. Osborn, this whole hospital is going to burn! Move!” I fought, but I was a ghost of a person. They dragged me through the halls, my arms already bruised and weeping blood from the rapid draws. “Who are you?” I croaked. “Count your blessings, girl. You’re saving a very important woman. Mrs. Osborn had a post-miscarriage hemorrhage. We’ve exhausted the city’s supply of Type A. You’re the only match we found in the database. You’re a hero.” I closed my eyes. Judy. He was here. And even now, he was draining the literal life out of me to save the woman who had helped him kill my child. They didn’t stop. They kept drawing. My breathing became shallow, my lips turning a bruised purple. My heart, already weakened by the fall, began to falter. “Damn, she’s crashing,” the doctor muttered, looking at the full blood bags with zero remorse. “Whatever. We got what we needed. Get these to Mrs. Osborn. We’ll deal with the body later. What a mess.” In the operating room next door, Judy was pacing like a caged animal. A doctor ran up to him, holding the bags of blood. “Mr. Osborn, we found a donor! She’s going to be fine!” Judy stared at the blood. For a split second, a wave of inexplicable nausea hit him. An instinct he couldn’t name told him something was horribly wrong. But then he thought of Macy, and he nodded. “Go. Save her.” As the doctor vanished, Judy pulled out his phone. “Murphy,” he said into the receiver. “Get that bitch down from the drone. I’m tired of her games. Her screaming probably stressed Macy out and caused this relapse. Bring her to the hospital. I want her on her knees apologizing the moment Macy wakes up.” There was a long silence on the other end. Then, the driver’s voice came through, thick with horror. “Sir… the line snapped hours ago. We’ve searched the base of the mountain. We haven’t found her body yet, but… from that height? She’s probably just… gone. The coyotes might have…”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452024”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

The sounds that shattered the peace of our home, the phantom echoes that made the walls feel like they were bleeding—those were all my mother’s designs. She scripted them before she died, a parting gift to ensure he would never know a moment of silence. I remember when she died. She bled out on an operating table while my father stood outside the door, screaming at her. He told her he had been more than generous by coming back to her at all. He told her she needed to “cool off” and stop being so dramatic. He didn’t know that behind that door, my mother had already stopped hearing him. She had stopped hearing everything. When he finally came home that night, his face was a mask of calculated conflict. He told me that Melanie’s children were still so young; he couldn’t bear to see them separated from their mother. It turned out that after the company’s core secrets were leaked and the capital chain snapped, the Clark family had offered a lifeline. The price? A business marriage between a daughter of our house and their eldest son, a man left paralyzed after an accident. It took three years for the truth to settle. Melanie and her twins—the ones my father pampered like royalty—weren’t enough to stop his empire from crumbling. He had even fired the security guard who dared to joke about my mother’s “ghost,” even though every man on the night shift claimed they could hear a woman sobbing in the dark. When Melanie gave birth to the twins a year later, my father simply frowned and suppressed the rumors. Their wedding had been a grander affair than his first, a spit in the face of my mother’s memory. That night, a priceless Ming vase was smashed to pieces in the foyer. When my father heard the news, a small, twisted smile touched his lips. That was the first year he had officially declared his divorce and given Melanie a “real” home. He never stepped foot in our old wing after that. My mother had thrown her wedding ring at him, screaming through her breakdown that he was never to cross the threshold again. But even that didn’t save the child she was carrying. I remember her eyes, wet with tears, fighting him with every ounce of her strength. But my father had listened to some hack spiritualist who claimed the baby in my mother’s womb was a curse upon Melanie’s future. “Melanie is upset again because of you,” he had told my mother, his voice cold as a winter grave. “I’ve already dealt with her, but you… you need to learn.” After the third time Melanie “accidentally” lost an expensive handbag, my father did the unthinkable. He had my mother bound and driven to the clinic for a forced termination. … 1 Less than ten minutes later, a driver arrived to take me to Melanie’s estate. On the way, he stole a pitiful glance at me through the rearview mirror. “Are they really sending you to marry a cripple, Miss?” Before I even crossed the threshold, I heard Melanie’s high-pitched laughter. My father was staring at a contract on the mahogany table, his silence heavy and suffocating. I sat down calmly, watching the smile on Melanie’s face slowly turn brittle under my gaze. “Franklin,” she prompted, her voice a soft, manipulative purr. “The company is your life’s work. I’m sure Wren and her mother will understand. It’s for the family.” My father didn’t move. I knew what he was doing. He was waiting for my mother to storm in, to scream, to put up a fight. But the dead don’t show up for arguments. At dusk, I took the engagement ring provided by the Clarks and returned to the other house alone. My father had flown into a rage. He cursed my mother’s “stubbornness” and froze her bank accounts. He even sent men to burn every flower in her garden, using the ashes as fertilizer for the roses he bought for Melanie. That night, I performed the final task my mother had set for me. I took the heirloom jade bracelet—the one meant for the matriarch of our family—and dropped it into the trash. For three years, Melanie had been the “Mrs. Clark” in the eyes of the world. But she had never even laid a finger on that bracelet. It was the one symbol of status she couldn’t steal. “No matter how angry she is, she shouldn’t have thrown it away,” Melanie sobbed later, tears welling perfectly in her eyes. “I don’t mind the disrespect to me, but that bracelet has been in your family for generations. Think of how heartbroken your parents would be.” She took a jagged breath, her voice trembling with practiced grace. “About the baby… I know your mother blames me. Franklin, maybe it’s better if you just let Wren go. Let her marry into the Clark family and be done with it.” My father’s eyes turned a violent shade of red. He ordered the maid to unlock the door and kicked my mother’s bedroom door off its hinges. Every word he spoke felt like it was being dragged through gravel. “Evelyn! I’ve made my decision! In seven days, Wren is getting married. And you? You will stay in this empty house. You won’t see her. Not for the wedding, not ever!” My mother had loved me more than life itself. Before she died, she had looked at me, her eyes struggling to stay open, whispering, “If I could do it again, I’d take you away, Wren. We’d go somewhere he could never find us.” She didn’t want to leave me. But when she refused to “cooperate” with the termination, my father had ordered the doctors to sedate her. He forced her onto that table. He cut off her only way out. Now, looking at the empty room, I was suddenly grateful she was in the ground. At least there, he couldn’t hurt her anymore. On the bed, the duvet was bunched up into a shape that looked like a sleeping body. Melanie glanced at it, a flicker of a triumphant smile crossing her lips before she masked it with worry. “Franklin, the Clarks are a top-tier family. Evelyn… well, everyone knows she’s your ex-wife now. I’m worried Wren will be looked down upon if she comes from a ‘broken’ home.” She had stolen my mother’s husband, her home, and her dignity. Now, she wanted to erase her motherhood too. A cold stone of defiance settled in my chest. But my father didn’t hesitate. He nodded, following Melanie’s lead perfectly. “I’ll have Wren’s legal records updated immediately. She’ll be listed as your daughter. It’s better for her future.” Seven days from now, I would be married. It was also my mother’s birthday. Melanie was right about one thing: my mother wanted revenge. She and my father had been “the” couple for decades. Then Melanie appeared, and he treated twenty years of love like a piece of scrap paper. My mother couldn’t swallow that insult. “Evelyn, Wren is grown now, and you’ve taught her nothing! Melanie is the one who does everything, who looks after her!” my father screamed at the empty bed. “You weren’t the only victim back then. Melanie suffered too! She battled depression in silence while you made everyone’s life a living hell with your tantrums! How long are you going to keep being this selfish?” Three years ago, he took me away and forbade me from seeing her. Now, he blamed her for our distance. The bed remained still. My father’s brow furrowed, and he instinctively moved toward the bedside. 2 But Melanie’s eyes darted quickly, and she suddenly doubled over, clutching her stomach. “Franklin… I have a sharp pain. The baby…” He forgot all about the bed. He scooped her up and rushed her to the hospital. Before they left, Melanie cast a gloating, razor-sharp smile back at the room. I followed them, silently counting down the final seven days. “Congratulations, Mr. Clark. She’s pregnant!” The doctor’s words hit the room like a physical weight. Melanie’s eyes went wide as she stared at the flickering grey image on the ultrasound monitor. “Franklin, we’re having another baby,” she whispered, her voice thick with joy. My father laughed, a sound of pure, unadulterated happiness. He threw my mother out of his mind instantly. For three days, he never left Melanie’s side. The servants were given massive bonuses, and everyone whispered about how much he adored her—how she was the true love of his life. But I remembered. When my mother was pregnant with me, my father started dozens of charitable foundations just to “earn blessings” for her. He spent money without blinking. He was so careful at night that he wouldn’t even sleep in the bed, terrified he might roll over and hurt her. He spent his days in cathedrals and temples, kneeling until his knees bled, praying for her safety. He used to sit on a stool by her feet at night, just watching her sleep with a look of terrifyingly intense devotion. “Franklin,” Melanie murmured, her voice soft as silk. “It’s been so long since the last time. And right after we visited Evelyn’s house… Do you think the baby we lost finally found its way back to us? I’m so happy.” My father froze for a second. And just like that, because of a few sweet words, he gave the name my mother had picked for her lost child to Melanie’s unborn baby. I remember my mother holding my hand, her eyes shining as she told me, “When you were born, your father cried all night. He was so obsessed with finding the perfect name. This second one… I have to think carefully. I won’t let him outdo me this time.” She had spent months agonized over the perfect name. Now, it was being used as a trophy for another woman. “Tell Evelyn to come to the hospital,” my father said, his fingers stroking Melanie’s belly. “And tell her to bring that heirloom silver locket she made for the baby.” The driver returned, trembling. “Everything… it was all burned, sir. And she… she refused to come.” The air in the room turned arctic. With a violent crash, my father kicked over a table. The veins in his neck were bulging. “I arranged the tests myself back then! That fetus wasn’t viable! If she were smart, she’d realize the baby left her because she was so full of malice and jealousy! The child knew Melanie had a kind heart and chose her instead. And she still refuses to repent? She’s still nursing her grudges?” Not viable. That was the lie Melanie and the doctor had crafted together. I saw them exchange a quick, triumphant look. “She’s just hurting, Franklin,” Melanie said, playing the martyr. “She misses the baby as much as we do. Don’t be angry. I’ll take the children and visit her more often. We’ll keep her company.” My father’s face softened. He pulled her into his arms, his gaze melting with tenderness. He would do anything for her now. When Melanie asked to personally prepare my dowry, he agreed. When Melanie suggested digging up the small memorial marker my mother had placed for the lost baby, he agreed to that too. “The child is back with us now,” he said. “That grave is just a morbid reminder of a bad time.” The guards went into my mother’s garden. They kicked and trampled the flowerbeds and tore the small headstone from the earth. My mother and the baby had died together. I had buried her long ago in a place he would never find. This grave was just an empty shell I had built for the performance. Melanie watched the destruction with a satisfied smile. My father looked at the house—the house that had been silent for three years—and sneered. “This place has been a tomb for three years. It’s time to move on.” 3 “She burned the baby’s clothes? Fine. Burn the whole wing. Leave nothing behind!” Melanie looked like she had won the lottery. I, too, felt a strange surge of joy for my mother. He had killed her. He was selling me off. And now, he was erasing every physical trace of our existence. Soon, he would realize that when he wanted to find her again, there wouldn’t even be a shadow left to grasp. “Franklin, what about that cherry blossom tree behind Wren?” Melanie asked, her voice laced with poison. When Melanie first met my father, she had seen my mother painting under that tree many times. The falling petals, the elegant silhouette—it was an image that had once captivated my father so much he couldn’t breathe. Melanie hated it. My father’s gaze shifted to me and locked. My face is seventy percent my mother’s. For a heartbeat, he lost himself. He took a step toward me as if he were seeing a ghost. Then he remembered. “I don’t like the smell of cherry blossoms,” Melanie complained, rubbing her stomach. “It makes me nauseous. And think of the baby, Franklin.” The trees would bloom in a few months. My father pressed a hand to the sudden hollow in his chest. Then he turned and kissed Melanie’s forehead. “Whatever you want.” The smell of smoke began to fill the air. He led Melanie away, not even bothering to suggest where my “mother” should sleep tonight. On the final day, the dowry was delivered to my room. But except for the wedding dress, every diamond necklace and gold bar had been replaced with common stones. The guard turned pale and immediately called my father. Within the hour, I was hauled back to Melanie’s villa. Melanie sat beside my father, sobbing as if her heart were breaking. “Where is your mother?” my father roared. “She stole the dowry just to stop you from leaving? Those were the Clark family heirlooms you were supposed to wear at the ceremony!” The money didn’t matter, but the Clarks’ pride was not something to be trifled with. I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Melanie’s wailing grew louder. “I only wanted to show her the jewelry to see if she wanted any changes! I was trying to be kind! And this is how she treats me?” My father swept everything off the coffee table in a fit of rage. The atmospheric pressure in the room dropped. “Search the city. I don’t care if you have to tear up every floorboard in the state. Find her!” Hours passed. Nothing. Melanie began to hyperventilate, clutching her stomach. “She doesn’t want Wren to be happy. She doesn’t want my baby to be born. It’s all my fault. Who am I to upset the Great Evelyn?” She collapsed into his arms, refusing to see a doctor. “If I lose the baby, I lose the baby. If it makes her happy, then maybe Franklin can finally have some peace. I’ll accept it.” My half-sister, Paige, came running in from school, out of breath. “Dad, I’ll go! I’ll marry into the Clark family if I have to. I’m not afraid. I know the company is in trouble. I can handle it.” My father’s face was like frost. After a long, terrifying silence, his cold gaze landed on me. “Take her outside. Fifty lashes with the rod.” Melanie dabbed at her eyes, the corner of her mouth twitching for a fraction of a second. To avoid upsetting Melanie’s “delicate state,” they gagged me before they started. My father told the guards to keep going until my mother “showed herself.” By the time they finished, my back was a mess of blood and torn skin. “Franklin, is this too much? What if something happens to her?” Melanie asked. She had taken her “medicine” and her complexion was perfectly rosy. My father glanced at me through the window and looked away just as quickly. “Evelyn won’t let Wren suffer forever. If she isn’t here in an hour, throw the girl in the basement.” 4 In the haze of pain, I thought I heard my mother’s voice. She was crying for me, telling me to just say it, to stop carrying the burden. I forced my eyes open. The voice was gone. In the brightly lit living room, I saw my father stroking Paige’s hair, smiling at her with a warmth I had never known. “Sir… the girl fainted.” My father paused. He walked out to me, his expression flat. He looked at the empty driveway, the empty gates. “Where is Evelyn?” The guard wiped sweat from his brow. “Sir… we still haven’t found a trace of her.” A flicker of disbelief crossed my father’s eyes. Then, he let out a sharp, angry laugh. I was tossed into the basement. Someone smeared a bit of ointment on my back, but otherwise, I was left in the dark. Late that night, a shadow approached. “Do you know what this is?” my father asked. A guard held out a wooden box. My father opened it. Inside was a severed hand. I froze. In my ears, I could hear my mother’s scream again. “This belongs to your aunt. The only relative your mother has left. She was in a ‘car accident’ half an hour ago.” When my mother died, my aunt had nearly followed her. It was my mother’s final wish that kept her alive. But even my mother’s last hope had been crushed by his cruelty. “Wren, I’ll ask you one last time. Where is she?” My face was ghost-white. I shook my head. My father’s lip curled. “The news of the accident is all over the wires. And she still won’t come out? Does she think hiding will save you?” He turned and vanished into the night. I curled into a ball in the corner, haunted by nightmares. The next morning, Melanie sent people to do my makeup. A long fleet of Clark family cars lined the driveway. I knelt and bowed once toward the direction of my mother’s grave, then got into the back of the Maybach. At the office, my father was staring at the wedding ring my mother had discarded. When his assistant burst in, he stood up abruptly. “Did you find her? Where is she?” He had set the trap. He assumed she would try to see me one last time before I was driven away. But as he prepared to go catch her, a guard trembling with fear handed him a letter. “Sir… the girl gave me this. For you. From her mother.” The guard’s voice cracked. “She said… she’s gone, sir.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452009”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Today was the thirtieth time Silas dragged me to that sterile, white-walled nightmare to act as a human guinea pig for his so-called stepsister. I didn’t scream or fight like I used to. I simply reached out, took the bowl of experimental sludge, and swallowed it in one long, bitter gulp. Elaine was curled into Silas’s side, her head resting on his shoulder. When she saw me finish, a triumphant smirk flickered across her flushed face. She made a show of trying to drop to her knees in front of me—a pathetic, fake gesture of gratitude—but Silas caught her instantly. He glared at me, his eyes like chips of blue ice. His voice was laced with a chilling frost as he reminded me that this was my “debt” to Elaine. He claimed that if I hadn’t spent years “bullying” her, her constitution wouldn’t be this fragile. Yet, as he looked at my bloodless face and trembling hands, a flicker of something—guilt, perhaps—ghosted through his expression. His tone softened, repeating the same hollow promise he’d been feeding me for six years: Once Elaine is healthy, I’ll marry you. I’ve heard that sentence thirty times. I have twenty-nine fake marriage certificates tucked away in a drawer at home to prove it. But today, the last spark of hope inside me finally went dark. 1 The acrid taste of the medicine coated my tongue, followed by a wave of violent nausea and a searing headache. I collapsed, dignity forgotten, retching on the cold tile floor. I curled into a ball, my body writhing in pain. Silas just stood there, watching me with the detached clinical gaze of a scientist observing a lab rat. He signaled his assistants to strap me onto the gurney to draw blood and log the vitals. When the pain became a living thing, tearing a jagged scream from my throat, Silas didn’t reach for me. Instead, he reached for Elaine, gently covering her ears so she wouldn’t have to hear my agony. This humiliation has been my life for thirty cycles. Six years ago, Elaine was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder. The specialized treatments were experimental and scarce. Because we were close in age and half-sisters, I was the perfect “buffer.” Silas poured millions into this private lab, turning me into Elaine’s living shield. At first, I fought him with everything I had. I smashed every vase, every mirror, and every piece of furniture in the house he’d bought for our future. In the middle of the wreckage, I sobbed, asking him why. We were the ones who grew up together. We were the ones who had a “forever” pact. Back then, Silas had treated Elaine’s obsessive pursuit of him with nothing but contempt. When she had once stripped naked and crawled into his bed, he had blocked her number and thrown every gift she’d ever given him into the trash. I remember the way he used to hold me, whispering that Elaine was the child of the woman who destroyed my family—a shadow he would never acknowledge. But her persistence was a slow poison. Eventually, the way he spoke her name changed. A softness crept in, a tenderness he didn’t even seem to notice. At our engagement party, when Elaine fainted in the middle of the ballroom, Silas didn’t hesitate. He scooped her up and sprinted for the hospital, leaving me standing in the center of a hundred pitying stares, my engagement ring feeling like a lead weight. Now, his voice was nothing but cold steel. “You owe her this, Olivia.” “If Elaine hadn’t told me about the past, I never would have known how cruel you were. You tormented her for years.” “You know how much I loathe a bully.” I looked at the “evidence” Elaine had fed him—photoshopped images of bruises, fabricated diary entries. My heart felt like it was being squeezed by a vice. The truth was simpler: He just didn’t love me anymore. If he did, Elaine’s clumsy lies would have crumbled under the slightest bit of scrutiny. In the end, Silas used the only thing I had left to lose: my mother’s life. “Olivia, I’m the only one who can fund your mother’s specialized care. You wouldn’t want her to die because of your selfishness, would you?” That was the day I broke. That was the day I surrendered. Later, I found out I was pregnant. I begged him to delay the trials for just a few months. I told him I’d do anything—be his slave, disappear forever—if he just let our baby be born safely. For a moment, he seemed moved. Maybe he felt a shred of connection to the life growing inside me. He agreed. But in my fifth month, Elaine “collapsed” again. I remember that day with terrifying clarity. Silas burst into the house, his eyes bloodshot, looking like a man possessed. He dragged me toward the lab, ignoring my screams, my pleas, and my desperate hands clawing at his sleeves. “Elaine’s condition has spiked!” he roared. “You used that child to manipulate me, to delay her cure!” I was strapped to the table. The leather restraints tore at my skin until I was raw and bleeding, but that was nothing compared to the agony of what came next. I felt the life—the tiny, vivid spark of my child—drain out of me in a hot, dark rush. Seeing the hollow, dead look in my eyes afterward, Silas actually showed a moment of pity. He handed me a marriage certificate, his voice a gentle caress. “You’re healthy, Olivia. We can have other children. But Elaine… if she doesn’t get this treatment, she’ll die.” “Be good. Once she’s well, we’ll have a real wedding. Think of it as penance for your sins.” I used every ounce of strength I had to slap him. I tore that certificate into confetti, but it didn’t make me feel better. I just felt empty. Like an ocean that could never be filled again. 2 The details of the months that followed are a blur of pain. I remember the physical ache of the miscarriage hadn’t even subsided before Silas sent me back for the next round of trials. But the physical pain was secondary to the recurring emptiness of losing child after child. Twice more, I fell pregnant. Twice more, Elaine had a “crisis” during my second trimester. Three times in total. Three babies lost. Each time, just as they were becoming real, Silas would look at me with those cold eyes and say, “Elaine can’t wait that long.” Then, he’d slide a new marriage certificate across the table like a consolation prize. The bitter pills burned my throat today, my stomach feeling like it was on fire. But my heart? My heart was an iceberg. The side effects of the trials were ravaging me. My hair came out in clumps. My skin turned a sallow, sickly yellow, and my weight plummeted until I was a ghost of myself. My mind was constantly foggy, a thick veil of exhaustion making it hard to tell where my love for Silas ended and my hatred began. I spent my first New Year’s Eve in the lab, hooked up to an IV. Outside, the fireworks over the harbor exploded in a riot of color for hours. A young nurse sighed in envy. “I heard Dr. Thomas set those off to celebrate his childhood sweetheart being discharged,” she whispered. Another nurse corrected her. “The girl in this bed is his childhood sweetheart.” The first nurse scoffed. “Yeah, right. The other girl is in the VIP wing. Dr. Thomas is there every day, holding her hand, acting like the world is ending if she sneezes. This one? He just told us to make sure she doesn’t die. That’s it.” My phone buzzed. It was a message from Elaine. The photo showed her and Silas locked in a passionate kiss under the exploding fireworks. [Olivia, while you’ve been stuck in that lab for me, I’ve had Silas in every place you two used to go. I even asked him who’s better in bed.] [He said it’s me, obviously. He said just thinking about how you looked bleeding out after those abortions makes him sick.] The words were jagged glass in my soul. I broke. I began screaming, smashing everything in the hospital room until they tackled me and jammed a sedative into my arm. When I woke up, looking at the bloody crescent marks in my palms where I’d bitten down on my own skin, I realized I couldn’t just wait to die. I had to expose them. I took the latest marriage certificate and went to the city’s biggest news outlet. I told them everything—the infidelity, the forced medical trials. The story of the “Medical Genius and His Secret Sin” exploded. But just as the public outrage reached its peak, Silas held a press conference. Under the blinding camera flashes, he held Elaine against him as if she were a precious gem. “I have no legal marital ties to Olivia Raymond,” he said calmly. “As for the certificate she’s brandishing, I can only assume it’s a forgery she created out of a delusional obsession with me.” Then, he released “evidence.” “Furthermore, she has spent years systematically bullying her sister, Elaine. She is a deeply troubled woman who has twisted the truth to hide her own malice.” The tide turned instantly. I became the villain—the obsessed, vengeful ex. That was when I learned the truth: every single certificate he had given me was a fake. The online vitriol was suffocating. Silas didn’t stop it; he encouraged it. He let people send me death threats and boxes containing dead rats. I became a prisoner in my own home, a creature of the dark who spent my nights weeping until my eyes were raw. But Silas wasn’t done punishing me. He would come home late at night, find me shaking with a panic attack, and pull me into a “tender” embrace. And just when I would finally let my guard down, he would deliver the killing blow. 3 The twenty-ninth trial ended on Elaine’s birthday. Silas threw her a gala that was the talk of the town. Under a literal tower of champagne, they stood together, the picture of a power couple. The crowd started chanting, “Propose! Propose!” Silas’s eyes instinctively drifted to the corner where I was shrinking into the shadows. He gripped Elaine’s shoulders and spoke clearly. “I’m sorry, Elaine. I can give you everything, but I cannot give you a wedding.” Elaine laughed it off gracefully, but the flash of pure venom in her eyes told a different story. Toward the end of the night, she leaned into the microphone. “Silas, I’ve decided on my birthday wish. Since I can’t have my own wedding yet, I want to host a vow renewal for my mother and Silas’s father. Let’s give them the grand celebration they never had.” The world tilted. My mother was still legally married to my father, though they lived apart. Elaine’s mother was the mistress who had shattered our home. I lunged forward and slapped Elaine across the face with everything I had. “Your mother is a home-wrecker who hid in the shadows! How dare you suggest a wedding!” Before I could even finish the sentence, Silas’s hand caught me. The force of the blow sent me spinning to the floor. My lip split, and my ears rang with a deafening roar. I was the evening’s entertainment—the madwoman at the party. Silas shielded Elaine, his voice like liquid nitrogen. “Olivia! You think because you were born a Raymond you can treat Elaine like dirt? You hit her in front of all these people?” “You care so much about your status? Fine. I’m giving it to Elaine. Let’s see how much power you have when you’re a nobody.” He pulled out his phone right there and called my father. He gave him an ultimatum: divorce my mother and marry Elaine’s mother, or Silas would pull every cent of investment from the Raymond family business. I thought of my mother’s fragile health, her pale face. The shock would kill her. A roar of humiliated rage burned in my chest, but I suppressed it. I dropped to my knees at Silas’s feet, stripping away the last of my pride. “You know what that woman did,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “She harassed my mother for years. She’s the reason my mom is sick. If you do this, you aren’t just insulting her. You’re killing her.” Silas didn’t look moved. He pulled Elaine over so she could watch me grovel. His eyes were cruel, relishing the sight of my ruin. “Olivia, if your father loved your mother, he wouldn’t have cheated. In love, the one who isn’t loved is the real intruder.” “Be a good girl. Give Elaine the family name, and I’ll give you the title of Mrs. Thomas.” He tossed a marriage certificate at me like a scrap of meat to a dog. The cheap paper and the crooked ink of the “official” seal crushed the last remnants of my heart into dust. The guests whispered and laughed. “Another fake, probably.” “How can she be so shameless?” Elaine strutted past me like a peacock, her designer heel stepping directly onto the fake certificate. “Come on, Silas. I bought that schoolgirl outfit you like for tonight.” “Careful,” Silas murmured, his hand on her waist. “You’re pregnant. Don’t make me lose my self-control.” Pregnant. The word was a physical blow. I remembered the third time I’d lost a baby, when the doctor had looked at me with deep sorrow. “Olivia, your uterine lining is too thin from the repeated trauma. It’s unlikely you’ll ever carry a child to term again.” I had tried to run from the clinic that day. Silas had caught me in the parking lot. “Elaine isn’t cured yet. How dare you try to escape your responsibility?” He had forced me back onto the table. That day, I lost my ability to be a mother forever. And to ensure I “learned my lesson,” Silas had “accidentally” botched a minor corrective surgery for my mother, landing her in the ICU. The memory fueled a hatred so intense it threatened to swallow my sanity. My phone buzzed in my pocket. A message from an unknown number. [Olivia, you shouldn’t have to wither away in the hands of a monster. I can help you leave. I can help you start over.] Like a person drowning who finally sees a light on the shore, my heart hammered. Without a second thought, I typed back one word: Yes. 4 After the thirtieth trial, Elaine’s labs finally came back clear. Silas came to me, looking triumphant. “Olivia, you’ve finally paid for your sins. Now, we can be together with a clean slate. I’m going to give you the most lavish wedding this city has ever seen.” At the ceremony, I looked at the massive diamond ring. I didn’t smile. I didn’t cry. I just let him slide it onto my finger. For years, I had dreamed of him coming back to me, of him saying, I believe you. Now? I felt nothing. Just the calm of a countdown reaching zero. But the “accident” happened right on schedule. Halfway through the reception, Silas’s phone rang. Elaine’s voice, shrill and terrified, bled through the speaker. “Silas! Help me! Olivia sent men to take me! She wants me gone so she can have you all to herself… I’m so scared…” Then came the video. Elaine, tied up, dangling over a jagged cliffside with the Atlantic Ocean churning below. Silas’s face contorted. The veins in his neck popped as he grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me violently. “Olivia! I was marrying you! Why couldn’t you just leave her alone?” His eyes were murderous. “I see you haven’t changed. Fine. I guess I have to teach you one last lesson.” I knew exactly what he meant. My mother. Since he’d forced the divorce, she was a shell of a person. She couldn’t survive any more of his “lessons.” “Silas, think!” I screamed, tears finally breaking through. “I’ve been standing here in front of a hundred people! How could I have kidnapped her?” But Silas was beyond logic. He called the hospital, his voice cold and final. “Turn off all the life support equipment in Martha Raymond’s room.” “NO!” I lunged for him, but his security team pinned me down. “Get the car,” Silas barked. “We’re going to save Elaine.” I watched his back as he sprinted away. The panic was a tidal wave, but I forced myself up. I ran. I ran until my feet were shredded by my wedding shoes, until I was barefoot on the asphalt, pushing toward the hospital. But I was too late. I burst into the room and saw the flat line on the monitor. The silence was deafening. I stood there, frozen, my soul being ripped from my body by the sheer weight of the grief. Suddenly, someone appeared at the door and locked it from the inside. A bitter smell of gasoline hit me. “Elaine’s orders,” the man whispered before slipping out the window. The flames began to lick at the curtains. I had nowhere to go. In the thick, black smoke, I sank to the floor next to my mother’s bed and closed my eyes. On the other side of town, Silas reached the docks and “rescued” Elaine. She was perfectly fine, clinging to him and sobbing about her trauma. But as he held her, a sickening dread began to settle in Silas’s gut. He kept seeing Olivia’s face at the wedding—not angry, just… hollow. He needed to go back. He needed to finish the wedding. He’d loved her for so long; he just needed her to be “good.” But when he returned to the venue, Olivia was gone. Then, his assistant called, his voice shaking. “Mr. Thomas… there’s been a fire at the hospital. It was Mrs. Raymond’s wing. I think Olivia was inside.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452025”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When my eyes flew open, the scent hit me first—stale tobacco layered beneath a suffocating, synthetic pine air freshener. I was back in the backseat of the rideshare, and my three roommates were in the middle of their favorite game: playing at being filthy rich. The phantom pains of my past life violently crashed into me. In that previous timeline, I had scrambled to de-escalate the situation, warning the driver that they were just joking, knowing full well that you never flaunt wealth in front of a desperate stranger. My roommates, feeling humiliated and stripped of their manufactured glamour, had stormed out of the car in a rage. But the driver hadn’t let me leave. He locked the doors, a sickening grin spreading across his face as he told me that since I had saved them, I would have to pay their toll. The assault was brutal. I fought with every ounce of my being, barely escaping with my life. I went straight to the police. Yet, when the detectives questioned my roommates, they formed a united front of lies. They claimed I had intentionally sat in the front seat to seduce him, that I refused to get out of the car because I “wanted a thrill.” The driver’s wife caught wind of this, dragged me by my hair through the street, branded me a homewrecker, and plastered my battered face all over the internet. The digital mob tore me apart. The final nail in the coffin was when the driver sent photos of my violated body to my mother. The shock triggered a massive heart attack. She died before the ambulance even arrived. Shattered, hollowed out, and utterly alone, I took my own life. And my roommates? They used the “trauma” of my tragic suicide to secure full-ride fellowships to graduate school, smiling for the cameras as they accepted their offers. … 1. “God, what is this, an early two-thousands Chevy? My family’s housekeeper wouldn’t even be caught dead driving this piece of junk to the grocery store.” The moment I blinked the disorientation away, Kendall’s sickeningly sweet, nasal voice pierced the heavy air of the car. “And what is up with these seat covers? Polyester?” On the other side of me, Jocelyn pinched the fabric of the seat cover, her face contorting in exaggerated disgust as she shoved it down toward the floor mats. “My golden retriever sleeps on higher thread counts.” “Seriously. I wouldn’t even wipe my shoes on it.” My phone vibrated in my palm. It was our dorm group chat. Kendall was texting beneath the sightline of the rearview mirror, egging them on. Look at this guy in the rearview. He looks like a total creep. Bet he folds the second someone stands up to him. We are whoever we say we are outside of campus. Keep acting rich, let’s freak him out! The absurdity of the scene playing out in front of me perfectly overlapped with the nightmare of my past life. Back then, terrified that their reckless roleplaying would invite a tragedy, I had tried to smooth things over. Their reward for my kindness was leaving me trapped in a moving vehicle, completely deaf to my screams for help. This time, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them from digging their own graves. In the driver’s seat, the man’s face visibly darkened. The muscles in his jaw locked as he let out a dry, chilling chuckle. “You ruin those mats, little girl, and you’re paying for them.” “How much could a cheap piece of fabric possibly cost?” Jocelyn scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much the Persian rug in my foyer is worth? Forty thousand dollars.” “Exactly. Only people from your… tax bracket obsess over pennies.” Phoebe, sitting in the middle, offered a careless shrug. Suddenly, she pointed a manicured finger at the generic, plastic water bottle resting in the driver’s cupholder. “Oh my god, how do you drink that tap water garbage? Aren’t you afraid of getting parasites?” Watching their theatrical performance, I slowly shifted my gaze out the window, my mind racing. The sun was dipping below the horizon, bleeding the sky into a bruised purple. I needed to find a way out of this car, and fast. I absolutely refused to be dragged down to hell by these idiots again. The driver’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. He grabbed the water bottle, his neck stiffening as he kept his eyes on the road. “Well, when your life isn’t worth anything to begin with, I guess you just drink whatever’s cheap,” Kendall smirked, practically preening with self-satisfaction. “Unlike us. I literally can’t hydrate with anything except Voss, shipped straight from the aquifer.” Phoebe giggled, her eyes curving into cruel crescents. “Kendall, stop. The guy probably doesn’t even know what Voss is.” “True. It’s a socioeconomic thing. He couldn’t grasp it in a lifetime.” The three of them dissolved into high-pitched, grating laughter. Outside, the wind whipping against the windows began to howl, growing sharper, colder. I gripped my seatbelt tightly. A dangerous, desperate plan began to take shape in my mind. Before the driver could snap back at them, I turned my head and cut through the noise. “Can you guys just stop? You’re going too far.” The three girls in the back stopped laughing, turning to stare at me in stunned silence for a fraction of a second. Kendall recovered first, shooting me a venomous side-eye. “Giselle? You’re taking his side? Oh, wait, that makes sense. You’re from some trailer park in the rust belt, aren’t you?” “I heard your mom cleans out diners for a living,” Phoebe sneered, looking down at me with an air of aristocratic pity. Even when they weren’t pretending to be heiresses, their upper-middle-class backgrounds eclipsed my reality by miles. “No wonder you always smell like cheap bleach and old grease.” “God, you and the driver really are from the same gutter. You guys must have so much in common,” Kendall chimed in. “What do you talk about? Food stamps?” As their insults rained down on me, I bit my lower lip, feigning deep hurt. “You can say whatever you want about me, but leave the driver alone. He’s just trying to make an honest living for his family.” Jocelyn raised an eyebrow, letting out a sharp scoff. “Family?” Kendall lazily kicked the back of the driver’s seat with her designer sneaker. “Hey, old man. Someone as broke as you actually has a wife and kids?” The driver let out a low, breathy laugh. His foot slammed down on the gas pedal. I whipped my head toward the windshield. The car violently jerked into another lane. In my palm, my phone began to vibrate incessantly, the rideshare app flashing a glaring warning. He had deviated from the route. 2. My breath hitched, my heart hammering so violently it felt like it might crack my ribs. Time was up. I immediately leaned forward, grabbing the driver’s phone from the dashboard mount and waking the screen. I turned to the girls, raising my voice. “What are you talking about? Look, here’s his family right here!” The cracked screen illuminated a faded, happy photo of a family of three. The driver looked years younger, a testament to how old the picture was. The little boy in the photo was strikingly pale, his skin translucent, his head completely bald from intensive treatments. In my past life, I had learned the truth much later. The driver’s intense hatred for the wealthy stemmed from a broken medical system. His son had battled severe leukemia, and because he couldn’t afford the exorbitant experimental treatments that rich families could easily buy, the boy died at only six years old. His son was the absolute line you did not cross. Kendall snatched the phone from my hand, her face immediately twisting into open disgust. “What kind of knock-off trash phone is this? The pixels are huge.” She squinted at the lock screen. “Ew. Why does that kid look like a ghost? It’s genuinely creepy.” The driver whipped his head around, his face contorted into something demonic. “What did you just say!?” The car swerved wildly, the tires screeching as we narrowly missed a concrete divider. Kendall shrieked, tossing the phone carelessly onto the console. “Watch the road, you psycho!” Phoebe gripped the headrest, her chest heaving as she glared at the man. “You almost killed us! Over a stupid lock screen?!” “Seriously. If you’re that defensive over a picture, maybe the kid isn’t even yours,” Jocelyn sneered, raking a hand through her messy hair. “Wife probably cheated on you.” The phone had slipped into the crack between the seats. Moving faster than the driver, I dove for it, retrieved it, and glared righteously at my roommates. “Just because you have money doesn’t give you the right to strip away someone’s dignity!” Jocelyn looked me up and down, deeply annoyed. “Giselle, look at yourself. You really think you’re in a position to play savior?” “We let you be the roommate coordinator out of pity, don’t let it go to your head!” Hearing that, my fists clenched so tight my nails dug into my palms. I almost laughed at the sheer audacity. Freshman year, the three of them had bullied and manipulated me into being the “roommate coordinator” simply because they couldn’t be bothered to pick up after themselves. I was the one scrubbing the toilets. I was the one mopping the floors. When the drain clogged with their hair, or when they were too hungover to get their own food, it was always me fetching and cleaning. In my previous life, I genuinely believed that because I had poured my heart out serving them, they would at least have the decency to tell the police the truth. Instead, they framed me as a slut who threw herself at a predator. This time around, I was going to make sure they tasted every single drop of the agony I endured. The driver retrieved his phone, his thumb brushing over the cracked screen. The shadow over his face briefly receded, replaced by a haunting, hollow smile. “I apologize,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “That is the last photo taken of my son before he passed away. I lost my temper.” Kendall shrieked, frantically pulling a bottle of hand sanitizer from her purse and scrubbing her hands. “Dead? Oh my god, that is such bad energy. I literally touched it.” Phoebe pulled out a pack of wet wipes, handing one to Kendall with a worried frown. “Ken, you’re totally going to have nightmares tonight.” Jocelyn shrugged, thoroughly unbothered. “Just drink it off. I brought a bottle of Dom we can pop when we get to the rental.” “Ugh, thank god for you.” They chatted back and forth, entirely ignoring the man in the front seat, acting as if the death of a child was a minor inconvenience compared to Kendall potentially having a bad dream. I watched the driver’s face in the rearview mirror. For a split second, his expression completely fractured. In my last life, mere wealth-flaunting had planted a seed of violent hatred in him. This time, they had crossed lines so deeply depraved I couldn’t even fathom the horrors this broken man was dreaming up for them. The notifications on my phone multiplied. Rerouting. Rerouting. Rerouting. The vibration in my hand matched the frantic tempo of my pulse. I took shallow, quiet breaths. In my calculated panic, I intentionally flipped the mute switch off. Instantly, the loud, rhythmic pinging of the GPS warnings echoed through the suffocating cabin. 3. The driver slowly turned his head to look at me. His eyes were completely dead. A terrifying pool of eerie calm. They were the eyes that had haunted my nightmares, night after agonizing night. I looked away instantly, a physical shudder ripping through my spine. Hearing the chimes, Phoebe peered out the dark window, her perfectly plucked eyebrows knitting together. “Why are there no streetlights out here? Do you even know how to use a GPS?” The driver let out two dry, rhythmic laughs. He kept his hands casually draped over the steering wheel. “There’s a massive pile-up on the interstate. I’m taking a shortcut to get you girls there.” I thought that after the screaming match, they would at least have a baseline level of situational awareness. But I severely overestimated their survival instincts. Jocelyn crossed her arms, letting out a haughty huff. “At least you’re marginally useful.” The other two nodded in agreement. “Well, this car smells like a dumpster, so we aren’t paying extra for the detour,” Kendall complained, waving a hand in front of her nose. The driver remained perfectly placid. Not a single muscle in his face twitched in anger. “Just go into your app and change the drop-off location to wherever we are now. The rest of the ride is on the house.” The three of them paused at the mention of a free ride. They exchanged a look, then collectively turned to me, snapping their fingers. “Cancel the ride, Giselle. Quick.” I clutched my phone tightly. Watching their faces soften at the prospect of saving a few bucks, I knew my window had finally opened. “No.” I sat rigidly in my seat, staring straight ahead. “I’m not cancelling it.” Jocelyn’s eyes bulged. “Giselle, what the hell is wrong with you? If you need a therapist, go find one, but stop dragging us into your weird complexes!” “Seriously. You’re broke and you’re obnoxious. Just do it!” They fired off insults, their faces flushed with irritation. Jocelyn started spamming my phone with texts in the group chat. Do you have money to burn or something?! Do you know how expensive a ride from the airport to the estate is?! The driver caught my eye in the mirror and offered a warm, almost grandfatherly smile. “Are you worried about safety, sweetheart? There are cameras everywhere these days. Who’d be stupid enough to try anything?” He paused, his gaze slowly dragging across the three girls in the back. “Besides… you ladies are clearly very important people. I wouldn’t dare offend you.” “Exactly!” “Why would he do anything to us? He’s not an idiot.” Jocelyn, her ego sufficiently stroked by the driver’s feigned submission, looked at me like I was something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. Listening to their absolute delusion, a cold, bitter laugh bubbled up in my chest. This man drove these roads for a living. He knew exactly where the city’s cameras stopped and the dark country roads began. And the fake billionaire identities these girls were parading around? They didn’t intimidate him. They only fueled his desire to watch them bleed. But this time, I wasn’t going to be the voice of reason. “I don’t care what you say. I am not changing the destination.” I crossed my arms, immovable. My stubbornness was the spark that blew Kendall’s notoriously volatile temper wide open. “Fine. If you won’t change it, get the hell out.” She glared at me with pure venom, pointing toward the desolate, fog-covered bridge rolling past the windows. “It’s pitch black out here. Good luck walking back to civilization.” “And if you get jumped by some local meth heads, don’t bother calling us to save you!” I let the insults wash over me, refusing to touch the app. My phone chimed with the third major route deviation warning. Kendall let out a bark of bitter laughter. “Giselle, you asked for this.” She delivered a brutal kick to the back of the driver’s seat. “Pull over!” The driver didn’t hit the brakes. “Ladies, why don’t you just take her phone and do it yourselves? It’s awfully dangerous for a young girl to be out here alone at night.” But Kendall wasn’t the type to be reasoned with. In my past life, it was her blinding rage that caused them to abandon the car in the first place. She kicked the seat again, harder, her voice turning shrill and violent. “I said pull the car over! Are you deaf!?” Jocelyn and Phoebe leaned forward, aggressively shoving the driver’s shoulder. Between the blaring GPS alarms, Kendall’s screaming, and the physical struggle, the cabin erupted into absolute chaos. The car slammed to a violent halt. “Get out!” Kendall threw her door open, stomped around to the other side, ripped my door open, and grabbed my arm, yanking me toward the asphalt. “You want to play the martyr? Let’s see how you like it out here, you ungrateful bitch!” I didn’t fight back. I stumbled out of the car, my knees slamming into the loose gravel of the shoulder. The sharp pain brought hot tears to my eyes—but not from sadness. I was alive. The loop was broken. I had survived the car ride. Jocelyn slid out right behind me and snatched the phone from my unresisting hands. She tapped the screen a few times, altered the destination, and finalized the drop-off. Then, she looked down at me, holding my phone over the guardrail of the bridge. She flashed me a radiant, wicked smile. “Want it back?” Before I could even open my mouth, she opened her fingers. My phone plummeted into the dark, rushing river below. “Oops. Butterfingers.” She shrugged, her laugh a nasty, metallic sound. I sat slumped on the wet gravel, watching as the two of them triumphantly climbed back into the vehicle. Kendall, wanting more legroom, had even taken the passenger seat in the front. Through the glass, I caught the driver’s eyes. They were fixed on me, dark and seething with a twisted sense of disappointment that his first prey had slipped away. Jocelyn slammed her door shut and, with the haughty command of a queen, ordered him to drive. The driver tore his eyes away from me and hit the gas. I sat there, utterly still, watching the red taillights bleed into the impenetrable darkness of the tree line ahead. Beyond that point, there were no cameras. No cell towers. Nothing but miles of dense, unforgiving woods. Under the cover of the night, a slow, deep smile spread across my face. Welcome to your personal hell, girls.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452010”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

Coming back to this exact moment—this familiar, jagged edge of my life—the first thing I decided was that I would not spend another second drowning in debt to pay for my mother’s cancer treatment. In my previous life, that choice cost me everything. I had mentioned, perhaps too loudly, that I’d managed to scrape together nearly half a million dollars in savings. That was all it took for the new intern to mark me. She’d used a predatory digital “tethering” exploit—a glitch in the banking app she’d bragged about—to link our accounts. In a heartbeat, my life savings evaporated. My balance hit zero, while her account bloated with my blood, sweat, and tears. But the theft wasn’t the worst part. It was the betrayal. I had swallowed my pride and begged friends and family for loans to keep my mother alive. That money, too, vanished the moment it touched my account. While my mother gasped for air in an ICU bed, that girl was throwing lavish catered parties at the office, playing the role of the generous socialite with my mother’s life insurance. She didn’t stop at the money. She whispered in the breakroom, painting me as a delusional sociopath. She told everyone I was trying to embezzle company funds, and worse, that I was a cold-hearted daughter who refused to pay for her own mother’s surgery. At my lowest point, she posted a “takedown” thread on a viral gossip site. The headline still burned in my mind: Local Monster Exposed! This Woman is Letting Her Mother Die While Hoarding Millions. The internet did what it does best. They doxxed me. They hunted me. I was cornered in a dark alley behind my apartment and beaten to death by a “vigilante” mob. My mother died alone in a hospital hallway three days later because her bed was needed for a paying patient. This time, I’m choosing to walk away. If there’s no medical fund for her to steal, she loses her leverage. I want to see what she does when there’s nothing left to take. 1 “Ms. Kennedy, your mother’s vitals are crashing! She won’t last forty-eight hours without the surgery!” The doctor’s voice crackled through the phone, sharp with a desperation I knew all too well. It hit me then, like a physical blow to the chest: I was really back. I was standing in the middle of the office, holding the phone that was supposed to be my death warrant. This was the day. The day I’d discover my bank account was a hollow shell. And standing right across from me, “helping” herself to a cup of premium roast, was Kaylee. It was her first day as an intern. She heard the doctor’s frantic words and dropped her spoon with a theatrical clatter. “Oh my god, June! Is your mom okay?” Kaylee cried out, her voice loud enough to make every head in the open-plan office turn. “That sounds expensive. Like, life-altering expensive!” She clutched her heart, her eyes wide and shimmering with fake tears. “Look, I’m just an intern and totally broke, but I’m skipping my Starbucks today. Here—take twenty bucks. For your mom.” Last time, that “generous” twenty-dollar gesture made her the office saint. It built the shield of innocence that made it impossible for anyone to believe me when I eventually accused her of theft. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I was tracing the lines of her face, looking for the monster beneath the Botox. “June?” Kaylee prodded, her voice turning into a sharp, lethal sweetness. “The doctor said it’s urgent. Why are you just standing there? Pay the bill!” She was vibrating with anticipation. She was waiting for the moment I opened the app. She wanted to watch the light go out of my eyes when I saw the number 0.00. I stayed frozen, calculating. Kaylee didn’t like the silence. She lunged forward, snatching my phone right out of my hand. “You’re clearly in shock! Let me help you,” she chirped, her fingers flying over my screen. “We can’t let your mom suffer because you’ve got ‘tech-panic’!” She bypassed my face ID—I realized now she must have been recording my passcode for days—and opened the banking app. Then, she gasped, turning the screen outward so the entire marketing team could see. “Wait… June? It says your balance is zero. How is that possible? You’ve been a Senior Lead for five years!” She looked at me, her head tilted like a confused puppy. “Did you… did you move the money because you didn’t want to pay for the ICU? Or is it something else? Do you have a… a gambling problem? I’ve heard about people hiding secret lives…” I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a breakdown. I just watched her. Behind her, the murmurs started. “No way. June Kennedy? I thought she was a rockstar,” whispered Bill from accounting. “My god, her own mother is dying and she’s hiding the cash? That’s cold. That’s psychopathic.” “And look at Kaylee. First day here and she’s trying to donate her lunch money. The contrast is insane.” “We shouldn’t even have people like this in the building. I’m calling HR. This is a PR nightmare waiting to happen.” Suddenly, Bill—who I’d shared a thousand coffee breaks with—marched over and shoved me back against my desk. “If my daughter grew up to be a parasite like you, I’d have walked into traffic years ago,” he spat, his face a mask of disgusted fury. He raised his hand and delivered a stinging slap across my cheek. “That’s for your mother. You’re a disgrace to this company. Being in the same room as you makes me sick.” Kaylee stepped in then, playing the peacemaker. She gently pulled Bill back, her hand resting on his arm in a way that felt sickeningly possessive. “Don’t, Bill. It’s fine. Some girls just… they like expensive things more than their family. I get it.” She turned back to me, her voice a soft, venomous coo. “June, if you’re short on cash, why don’t you call some of your old friends? Take out a few personal loans? Money comes and goes, but you only have one mom.” In my first life, I had fallen for it. I had spent the next three hours on the phone, crying, begging my aunts and cousins for every cent they had. I’d raised over a hundred thousand dollars in an afternoon. And the second those wire transfers hit my account, they vanished into the void of Kaylee’s digital tether. My family saw the “success” notifications on their end. They thought I’d taken the money and run. They never spoke to me again. This time, I looked at Kaylee’s porcelain-doll face and let the corner of my mouth twitch into a smile. “Who said I was saving her?” 2 The office went dead silent. Then, the explosion. “You absolute bitch!” someone screamed. “I hope you rot!” another yelled. The people I’d worked with for years—people I’d helped with their mortgages, people whose kids’ birthdays I never missed—were suddenly a lynch mob. I let the insults wash over me. They were weather. They were irrelevant. Kaylee’s eyes flickered. This wasn’t the reaction she wanted. She needed me desperate, not indifferent. She stepped closer, dropping the “sweet girl” act for a moment to take a tone of moral authority. “June, think about what you’re saying. Everyone is watching. If you just stand by and let her die, the internet is going to find out. Your reputation will be charred. You’ll never work in this industry again.” I arched an eyebrow. “And what exactly do you suggest I do, Kaylee?” Her eyes danced. She had the hook ready. “There are plenty of those fast-approval payday sites! High-limit personal lines! You can get the money in minutes and figure out the interest later. I actually know a few lenders who specialize in ’emergency’ cases. I’ll text you the links.” I knew those links. They weren’t just high-interest; they were the digital equivalent of a blood-pact. Anything borrowed through those portals would be automatically routed through her “transfer system.” But I needed her to think she’d won. “Fine,” I said, my voice tight and feigned with “desperation.” “Send them. I’ll do it.” Kaylee’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. She practically vibrated as she watched me “apply” on my phone. Because my credit was impeccable, the approvals came in waves. Within twenty minutes, I had “borrowed” nearly six hundred thousand dollars across five different predatory platforms. The “Approved” notifications chimed one after another. Kaylee clapped her hands, turning to the office. “See! I knew June had a heart. She just needed a little push. She just took out six hundred thousand dollars to save her mom!” The mood shifted slightly. People were still disgusted that I’d waited so long, but they looked at Kaylee with awe. “You’re an angel, Kaylee,” Bill said, shaking his head. “To care this much about a stranger’s family… you’re one in a million.” Kaylee beamed. “I’m just so happy! Everyone, listen—tonight, dinner is on me! We’re going to that new steakhouse on the waterfront. Seafood towers for everyone!” “Actually,” she added, her voice ringing with performative joy, “Let’s make it a three-day celebration. My treat!” The office cheered. They were celebrating with my blood money, and they loved her for it. I leaned against my desk, watching her play the room. She was so drunk on her own power she didn’t notice the coldness in my eyes. Finally, she turned back to me, her voice loud enough for the back row to hear. “So, June… the money’s in. Why haven’t you paid the hospital yet?” “Maybe I’m having trouble with the app,” I suggested. “Oh, here! Let me!” She snatched the phone again. She tapped the screen, then held it up high, her face a mask of “shock.” “Account Balance: $0.00.” The room gasped. “Wait, we just saw the approvals!” Kaylee cried, her voice reaching a frantic pitch. “June, what did you do? Did you have secret debts? Did the banks freeze it? Or… oh my god, are you a ‘blacklisted’ borrower?” The vultures circled again. “She’s a fraud,” Bill spat. “She took the loans and the money just… disappeared into her past debts. She’s a bottomless pit of lies.” Kaylee didn’t even pretend to be nice anymore. She pulled out her own phone, her thumbs flying. “I can’t stay silent. I’m posting the truth. People need to know who you really are.” Within minutes, her post was trending locally. SCAMMER DAUGHTER LETS MOTHER DIE: A THREAD. The comments poured in like a flood of sewage. Fire her! Boycott the company if she stays! I hope she loses everything. My phone began to vibrate non-stop—death threats, vitriol, people telling me they’d found my address. And then, a familiar shadow fell across the office floor. “What is going on here?” 3 I looked up. It was Tyler. My boyfriend. My college sweetheart. The man I’d helped get a management position at this very company so we could be together. Before I could speak, Kaylee was all over him. “Tyler! Thank god you’re here. June… she’s done something horrible. She’s letting her mom die, and now the whole internet is attacking the company because of her. We’re being boycotted!” She shoved her phone in his face, showing him the viral thread. Tyler looked at the screen, then at me. His face was a mask of cold disappointment. “This is a nightmare, June. These comments… they’re saying things I can’t even defend.” He sighed, stepping toward me with a look of feigned agony. “Look, for the sake of the company’s survival… I have to let you go. Effective immediately.” When he saw the spark of anger in my eyes, he leaned in, his voice dropping to a “gentle” whisper. “I’m doing this for you, babe. Once the heat dies down, I’ll bring you back. I promise. But right now, you’re radioactive.” I looked at the man I had once planned to marry and felt nothing but the chill of a grave. I didn’t fight. I walked to HR, signed the papers, and watched Tyler “generously” authorize my final payout. “Your accrued PTO and salary come to four thousand,” he said loudly, for the benefit of the HR rep. “And the company is adding a ten-thousand-dollar ‘compassion bonus’ to help with your mother’s expenses. We’re not monsters, June.” The notification hit my phone. Deposit received. Kaylee was lurking by the door. “Wow, ten thousand! That’s so much! Surely you’ll pay the hospital now, June? Unless… oh, don’t tell me… is that gone too?” I looked at my screen. Balance: $0.00. “I guess I’m just unlucky,” I said softly. “Unlucky? You’re a curse,” Kaylee sneered. “Anyway, I have to go. My mom just venmo’ed me ten grand for a ‘new job’ gift. I’m thinking the new Chanel seasonal bag. Bye, June!” I left the building with a single box of belongings. I didn’t go home. I knew the mobs would be waiting there. Instead, I drove three hours out of the city to a dilapidated roadside motel in the mountains. “I can’t pay much,” I told the owner, an old man who looked like he hadn’t seen a guest in years. “But I’ll work. Cleaning, laundry, maintenance. Just give me a room and three meals a day.” He took one look at my tired eyes and nodded. He gave me a cramped storage room with a cot and put me to work fifteen hours a day. I followed the news from a flickering black-and-white TV in the lobby. The “June Kennedy” story had become a national obsession. A GoFundMe had been started—not for me, but for my mother. The internet had raised half a million dollars for her “rescue.” A week later, I saw my mother on the morning news. She was sitting up in a hospital bed, looking frail but alive. The surgery had been a success. A reporter was leaning in, microphone extended like a weapon. “Mrs. Kennedy, your daughter abandoned you. She stole your medical funds and disappeared. How does it feel to know you were saved by the kindness of strangers instead of your own flesh and blood?” My mother looked confused, her eyes searching the camera. “That’s not right… my June… she’s a good girl. She must have had a reason…” The reporter cut her off. “She told her entire office she wasn’t going to save you. She took out loans and let the money vanish. She’s hiding in the dark while you suffer.” My mother’s face crumbled. The monitors hooked up to her began to beep frantically. The doctors rushed in, pushing the reporters out. The reporter turned back to the camera, her face tight with righteous fury. “June Kennedy, if you’re watching this: look at what you’ve done. Your mother is heartbroken because of your cowardice. Come out and face the world.” I turned off the TV, my heart feeling like it was being squeezed by a vice. I hated that she was hurting, but I had to stay the course. The internet’s rage reached a fever pitch. People were posting “bounties” for my location. They wanted to find the alleyway I died in last time. Then, the silence of the mountains was shattered. A fleet of SUVs and news vans roared into the motel parking lot. At the front of the pack was Kaylee, dressed in head-to-toe designer gear, a limited-edition Chanel bag swinging from her arm. She pointed a manicured finger at me as I stood on the porch in my work clothes. “There she is!” she screamed to the cameras. “The monster of the year! Found her hiding in the dirt like the rat she is!” The mob surged forward. I stood my ground, a small smile playing on my lips. They’d finally found me.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452026”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

When Grandpa Howard received my message, he was likely turning that old jade seal over in his hands—the one that had stamped the wardship-to-marriage contract twenty years ago. The text was brief: She doesn’t need me anymore. Per our agreement, it’s time for me to go. Today was our fourth wedding anniversary. When Gemma handed me the hotel key card earlier that evening, the glint in her eyes was like honey laced with arsenic. “Jamie, I have a surprise for you,” she’d said. There was a lilt in her voice, a spark of life I hadn’t heard in the two decades I’d spent by her side. The moment I pushed the door open, I heard it—that rhythmic, familiar hitch in breath that I knew better than my own. The two figures were tangled on the bed. The man pinned beneath her, his hands buried in her hair, was Dillon. My best friend. The brother I’d grown up with, the one I thought would take a bullet for me. Gemma didn’t scramble. She didn’t scream. She simply pulled her silk robe closed with the clinical precision of a surgeon. Her voice was colder than a scalpel. “My emotional apathy didn’t just vanish because of you, Jamie. You weren’t the cure.” She let out a soft, jagged laugh. “Dillon was the one who taught me what desire actually feels like. He doesn’t want to ruin your ‘brotherhood,’ and I’m not leaving you. If you can just accept us, we can keep this marriage going.” Nobody knew how many times I had laid on a sterile operating table, undergoing invasive, experimental fertility treatments just so she could have the child she claimed she wanted. And nobody knew that from the day I was brought into the Whitaker estate as her “companion”—a boy groomed to be the anchor for the heiress—my life had been nothing but a long-term rescue mission with an expiration date. 1 Gemma leisurely pulled the duvet over Dillon’s bare chest before walking toward me barefoot. “Why are you crying?” she asked, tilting her head. “Shouldn’t you be happy for me? I finally feel something. Someone else is finally reaching me.” I tried to speak, but my throat felt like it was filled with powdered glass. Silence was the only thing that came out, followed by the heavy thud of tears hitting the hardwood floor. Dillon sat up, the bruising marks on his neck stark against his skin. His eyes were rimmed with red, his voice a raspy whisper. “Jamie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go this far.” “You can hit me, you can hate me,” he continued, his voice trembling with a rehearsed kind of guilt. “Just don’t blame Gemma. It’s all on me.” Gemma frowned, pulling Dillon into her arms. She looked at me with a flicker of impatience. “Stop scaring him, Jamie. I know this is a lot to take in, but there’s no point in a scene.” “Dillon isn’t asking for your title. And I’m not discarding you. Can’t you just be sensible for once?” I stared at her hand—the hand I had held through her night terrors, the hand that had remained limp and cold for years—as it stroked Dillon’s hair with genuine tenderness. It was almost funny. During her years of treatment, when she’d go into fits of rage and shatter everything in sight, I was the one who swept up the glass in silence. When she retreated into weeks of catatonic silence, I was the one who kept the house running, hovering nearby like a ghost just so she wouldn’t be alone. I had swallowed every bit of resentment, every lonely night, and every ounce of pain just to keep her stable. I didn’t even let her see me cry, fearing it would trigger her. And this was the reward for my “sensibility.” I took a shaky breath, the bitterness coating my tongue. “How long?” Gemma picked up her phone, tapped the screen a few times, and held it out to me. “See for yourself.” I scrolled through the photos with numb fingers. A year ago: they were at a concert, Dillon leaning on her shoulder, Gemma laughing—a real, vibrant laugh I’d never seen. Two months ago: at a carnival, her face smeared with cotton candy as she made a silly face at the camera. Last week: while I was at the clinic alone, recovering from another round of hormone injections, they were watching the sunrise on a mountain peak. I had known her since I was five years old. I had been her shadow through the darkest parts of her adolescence. When she first started showing signs of recovery, she told me, “Jamie, I feel like I can ignore the whole world, but you’re the only one who makes me feel like being alive has a purpose.” I thought I was the one who had finally cracked the ice. Now I realized I was just the ferryman who had carried her across the dark river. I was never the destination. I threw the phone to the floor. The screen shattered, echoing the mess inside my chest. “You lied to me for a year!” I screamed, the sound raw and ugly. “Gemma, do you remember what you told me? You said you’d learn how to love for me. You said as long as I was there, it was enough!” There was no guilt in her eyes. Only a flat, terrifying indifference. “People change, Jamie. You can’t hold me to things I said when I was sick.” “And stop crying,” she added, her lip curling in a slight sneer. “You look pathetic. I’m not trying to hurt you; I’m just tired of lying. You gave me habit and dependency. You spent twenty years failing to make my heart race. Dillon did it in one.” While I was curled in a ball on a cold clinic bed, weeping from the physical toll of trying to give her a family, she was out discovering “excitement” with my best friend. Twenty years of devotion. Dozens of procedures. All of it rendered worthless in the face of a “spark.” “Are you done?” Gemma’s voice snapped me back to the room. Dillon buried his face in her neck. “Gemma, stop. He’s allowed to be angry. Maybe I should go… let you guys talk…” Gemma held him down, her grip firm. “You aren’t going anywhere.” She turned to me, her gaze turning icy. “If you can’t handle this, then leave. But let me remind you—you’ve been under my wing for your entire life. If you walk out that door, who else is ever going to want you?” I didn’t answer. I turned and walked out. Behind me, I heard Dillon’s weak, performative voice: “Jamie, wait! Don’t leave like this!” And then Gemma’s low, soothing murmur: “Let him go. He just needs to throw his tantrum.” 2 After leaving the house, I received a call from Grandpa Howard. “Jamie, you’ve done enough,” he said, his voice heavy with a fatigue that matched mine. “I’ve heard. We’ll handle the divorce when I’m back in the country.” I checked into a hotel he arranged and spent two days in a catatonic fog. Then, Dillon called. “Jamie, please come home,” he begged, sounding like the brother I used to know. “Let’s just talk. I promise I’ll never see her again. I’ll leave the city. Just come back.” Before the Whitakers took me in, Dillon and I had grown up in the same foster home. When he found out I was being “sold” to a wealthy family to be a companion for a sick girl, he had held me and cried for two hours. He had even given up his dreams of pro sports to study psychology, claiming he wanted to help me fix my marriage, to ensure I had a “normal” life. “Our Jamie deserves the best,” he’d said back then. “I’m going to make sure you’re the happiest man alive.” I had believed him. I thought having a brother like him was the greatest blessing of my life. He became Gemma’s therapist, just as he said he would. But it turned out he didn’t just cure her; he cured himself right into her bed. I hesitated, then agreed to meet him. Not because I forgave him, but because some things needed to be finished face-to-face. When I arrived at the house, Dillon ushered me in. He sat me down on the sofa and handed me a bowl of warm peach cobbler—the comfort food he used to make for me whenever I was down. “Jamie, I just lost control of my heart. Please, just take a bite. Let me feel like I’m doing one thing right.” I didn’t want to argue. I took a few bites just to get it over with. Minutes later, the world began to tilt. My vision blurred into a hazy gray. Dillon helped me into the master bedroom, where Gemma was already asleep. My head was spinning, my body burning with a sudden, localized fever. Through the fog, I saw Dillon standing at the door. He wasn’t crying anymore. He was wearing a cold, triumphant smile. The drug hit like a freight train. Every inch of my skin screamed for contact. My body, acting on a chemical impulse I couldn’t control, began to thrash, seeking the coldness of Gemma’s skin. A sudden, sharp pain jolted me into a moment of horrifying clarity. My voice was a broken rasp. “No… please, stop…” But Gemma didn’t stop. I was too weak to push her away, trapped in a nightmare where pleasure was indistinguishable from agony. Then, a sickening cramp seized my abdomen. A warmth began to spread beneath me, soaking the sheets. Gemma finally pulled away, her brow furrowing for a second before a sneer twisted her features. “Really, Jamie? You’re going this low now? Drugging yourself to trap me? You’re disgusting.” There was no pity in her eyes. Only revulsion, as if she were looking at something rotting. I tried to tell her. I tried to say it was Dillon. I tried to beg for help. But Gemma just slammed the door, leaving me in the dark. I couldn’t utter a single word. When I woke up, the housekeeper had already called an ambulance. The nurse in the recovery room sighed, her eyes full of pity. “You lost a lot of blood, honey. You’re lucky to be alive.” “Rest now. Your body needs to heal. You… you can try again for children later.” My eyes felt like they had been scorched dry. I couldn’t even cry. My mind was a slideshow of the last twenty years. Gemma at seven years old, witnessing her mother’s affair and her father’s subsequent suicide. She had stopped speaking that day. The doctors called it a trauma-induced apathy—a defensive wall so thick she couldn’t feel or express a thing. Grandpa Howard had brought me in as a “fiancé” in a desperate bid to give her a reason to connect. He told me when I got older that he would respect my choice; once she was better, I could leave. But I had fallen in love with her. I threw my choice away. I spent twenty years smiling at her stone-cold face. I studied every psychological text I could find. I put in every ounce of effort to make her “normal.” On our wedding day, she had looked me in the eye and promised, “If we ever have a child, I’ll make sure they are the happiest baby in the world.” But she had spent her life hating her mother, only to grow into the exact same woman. 3 I spent three days in the hospital. Gemma didn’t send a single text. As I was signing my discharge papers, my phone rang. It was the police. “Is this the husband of Gemma Whitaker? She’s been brought in on a sexual assault allegation. We need you down at the station.” When I arrived, a young officer pulled me aside. “The complainant is a man named Dillon. He claims that after a heated argument yesterday, Mrs. Whitaker forced herself on him.” “We brought her in for a statement, but now Dillon’s phone is off. We can’t reach him. If he doesn’t drop the charges, we have to proceed.” Gemma walked out of the interrogation room, her face livid. “Are you happy now? If you hadn’t played the ‘wronged husband’ and run away, Dillon wouldn’t be acting out like this!” “He didn’t even want to replace you, Jamie! But you pushed him!” The young officer taking notes froze, staring at us in pure disbelief. I felt the heat rise to my face. Looking at her—so self-righteous, so utterly delusional—I realized that words were a waste of breath. “You called me here… so I could convince Dillon to drop the charges?” Gemma shrugged as if it were obvious. “I’m telling you to go apologize to him. Fix whatever you broke so he stops being dramatic.” She truly believed it was my fault. That my “lack of grace” was the reason she was in a precinct. I didn’t want any more drama. I just wanted to be gone. I contacted Dillon and met him at a quiet cafe he’d pinned. He was leaning back in his chair, a smug, careless grin on his face. “Recovered already? That was fast.” I didn’t play the game. “The drugs, the police report… what are you doing, Dillon?” He leaned in, his voice a low purr. “I want to see you crawl, Jamie. I want to see you on your knees, begging me.” I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just looked at him and asked one thing. “Dillon… was any of it real? When we were kids?” “In the group home, you always gave me the bigger half of the bread. You took the beatings for me. The day I left for the Whitakers, you gave me that bag of candy you’d saved for months and told me to never look back.” A tear escaped, rolling down my cheek. “I thought you were my brother. I thought you wanted me to be happy.” He flinched. His chest began to heave. “I did, at first,” he spat. “But then I watched you get everything. And I started to hate you.” “Jamie, I was stronger than you. Smarter. But the Whitakers didn’t choose me!” “When I finally got fostered, my ‘mother’ abused me for years. While you were living in a mansion, eating five-star meals, and driving luxury cars. Gemma was a statue, sure, but you had a bottomless credit card. Do you know how much it killed me every time I saw you?” I stared at him, speechless. He had been nursing this venom for over a decade. Dillon laughed bitterly. “I didn’t study psychology for you. I studied it because if the Whitakers wanted a ‘good, obedient boy’ like you, I knew I could play that part better. If the family wouldn’t pick me, I’d make the heiress pick me herself.” He sat back, waiting for me to break. Waiting for me to beg for Gemma’s freedom. I felt my nails bite into my palms. I forced myself to stand, then, with a heavy heart, I lowered myself to the floor. I knelt. The other patrons whispered, their eyes full of judgment, but Dillon just reached out and patted my cheek. “I’ll drop the charges. I wouldn’t want her behind bars, after all. But I don’t want to see your face in that house ever again.” I got back to the estate late that evening. Gemma was already there, looking as composed and elegant as ever. When she saw me, she didn’t ask how I was. She just said, “Dillon told me. He said you were the one who told him to call the police.” 4 I stood rooted to the spot. “Gemma, I have never played games like that. He drugged me, I was hospitalized, and then he turned on you!” Gemma lit a cigarette, her eyes full of mocking disdain. “I never realized how manipulative you were, Jamie.” “You’re getting quite good at fiction. You expect me to believe you were pregnant with my child and didn’t tell me? Do I look like a fool?” Before I could answer, the front door burst open. Dillon stumbled in, looking like a wreck. His hair was a mess, his shirt torn, his face streaked with tears. Gemma’s expression shifted instantly. “Dillon? What happened?” He looked at me with a gaze full of practiced terror. He pointed a trembling finger. “He… he hired people. Women. They cornered me in the alley… I barely got away.” I stood there, my mind blank. It was so brazen, so absurd, that I couldn’t even find the words to deny it. Gemma didn’t wait for an explanation. She crossed the room and slapped me across the face so hard my head snapped back. I fell, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. Gemma looked down at me with pure disgust. “You make me sick, Jamie.” “You like playing these little games? Fine. Let’s play.” A few minutes later, the housekeepers brought in several rough-looking women from the local dive bars—women who smelled of stale beer and desperation. They circled me. They tore at my clothes, pinning my wrists to the floor. I fought. I kicked. But it only made them more aggressive. Gemma was already gone, cradling Dillon, whispering that she’d take him to the hospital to get checked out. As the heavy oak door slammed shut, a familiar, agonizing cramp ripped through my gut. Blood began to pool beneath me, dark and hot, spreading across the white rug. The women finally stopped, their eyes wide with sudden panic. “Wait, why is he bleeding like that? Is he dying?” Without a word, they turned and fled, leaving the door wide open. I lay there in the cold, red mess, unable to even lift a finger. I don’t know how long I was there before Mr. Bradley, Grandpa Howard’s longtime butler, rushed in with two security guards. “Mr. Whitaker… oh, heavens. Master Howard sent me to get you out. You’ve suffered enough.” … At the hospital, while Dillon was getting a few scratches treated, Gemma’s phone rang. “Grandpa? You’re back?” Grandpa Howard’s voice was like stone. “Get to the estate. Now.” Gemma let out a dry laugh. “Did Jamie tattle? He brought this on himself, Grandpa. I just gave him a little scare to teach him a lesson.” The silence on the other end lasted for an eternity. Then, the old man spoke. “I’ve already sent him away. You’re coming here to sign the divorce papers.”

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452011”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel

I finally chose to let go. After the ink dried on the divorce papers, I packed up my life and my daughter, scrubbed our digital footprints, and moved across the Atlantic to start over in London. The decision didn’t come from a single blow, but from a viral video I stumbled upon. In it, someone asked Damian what his happiest memory was from the last few years. He leaned back, a casual, almost nostalgic smile playing on his lips, and replied that it was probably last week—after he’d finally tucked Zoey into bed and managed to steal a private moment with Talia in the bathroom. The roar of laughter from the crowd in the video felt like an ice pick driven straight through my chest. For the three years he had been working “abroad,” he hadn’t been alone. He had been living with his first love, Talia, in a domestic bliss I could only dream of. Zoey was Talia’s daughter, and every whispered rumor I’d ignored turned out to be the sickening truth. To be honest, my heart had started to turn to ash the very day he returned to the States. I had canceled a high-stakes board meeting and driven Mandy to the airport to surprise him. When Mandy reached out her tiny hands, begging for a hug from the father she’d only seen on a screen, he didn’t even bend down. He just spared me a cold, sideways glance and muttered, “Sorry, I’ve developed a bit of a germaphobia. I need a shower first.” Because of that one sentence, Mandy and I spent the next few months washing our hands until they were raw. I kept the house like a sterile museum, scrubbing the floors until they shone, yet he still rarely came home. He never held her. Not once. Mandy was born while he was away. I went through labor alone and raised her alone for three long years, waiting for a man who was playing house with someone else. Our marriage had never been a fairytale. It started in the shadows of a scandal—my father, desperate to see his daughter married to the man she’d loved since she was eighteen, took advantage of Damian’s intoxication at a gala and maneuvered him into my bed. When Damian woke up the next morning, he didn’t scream or rage. He simply agreed to marry me with a face as cold as marble. 1 The nanny brought Mandy home from preschool, and her eyes were so swollen she could barely see. “Mommy… do I not have a daddy?” she sobbed, her little chest heaving with hiccups. “Daddy promised to come to the parent-teacher mixer… but when he got there, he told everyone he was Zoey’s dad.” “Mommy, they all said I’m a liar. They said I don’t have a father.” A sharp, throbbing pain bloomed in my chest. I pulled her into my arms, my own eyes stinging. I wanted to tell her something—anything—to comfort her, but the image of Damian’s indifferent face stayed stuck in my throat. I was drowning in regret. I thought that after three years, he had finally moved past his resentment and was coming home to be a family. I didn’t realize he only returned because Talia wanted to move back to the city. He’d booked the flights, arranged the penthouse, and even secured a spot for her daughter at the most prestigious preschool in the district—all while I was waiting at the airport in a dress he didn’t notice. That day at the terminal, Mandy had been so nervous. “Will Daddy like me, Mommy?” “You’re his only daughter, honey,” I’d told her, smoothing her hair. “Of course he will.” But when we arrived, we saw Damian walking through the terminal holding Talia’s hand, his other arm cradling a three-year-old girl. He looked at me as if I were a stranger blocking his path. “Sorry,” he said, his voice flat. “I need to get Talia and Zoey settled first. You two go on home.” He didn’t even look at Mandy. But the way he looked at Zoey—it was a tenderness I had never seen. Closing my eyes, I felt the weight of my mistakes. “I’m so sorry, Mandy. It’s my fault. Next time, Mommy will be there for everything. I promise.” I washed her face and tucked her in, but even in her sleep, her brow was furrowed. “Daddy, hold me…” she whispered. Every word felt like a needle. My father had thought he was doing me a favor ten years ago. “Gwen, I can see it,” he’d said back then. “You love him, and the boy has feelings for you too, he’s just too stubborn to admit it. I heard him call your name when he was drunk once. Let’s just skip the formalities and give him a reason to stay.” I had protested, but then he’d locked the door, and the room had grown warm. That night, Damian had looked at me with such icy clarity when it was over. “I’ll do the right thing, Gwen. I’ll marry you.” I thought I could win him over. Then, at a party months later, I overheard him talking to his friends. “Come on, Damian,” one of them said. “Gwen is gorgeous, she’s brilliant, and she’s obsessed with you. Just enjoy it.” Damian took a long drag of his cigarette, his lip curling. “I actually liked her once. But I never realized she was that desperate. Thinking about how she threw herself at me that night… it’s honestly pathetic. It’s repulsive.” I never got the chance to explain. Two weeks later, he filed for a long-term overseas assignment. He left me with a ring and a secret—I was pregnant. I raised Mandy in a quiet, empty mansion, counting the days until he’d return. And he did. But not to us. The house was silent when the front door finally clicked open at midnight. Damian walked in, his eyes skipping over the sleeping form of his daughter on the couch. “Zoey wants to come over to play tomorrow,” he said casually, as if he were discussing the weather. “You and Mandy should head out for the day. Take her to the zoo or something.” I looked at him, stunned. He actually smiled—a small, cruel twist of the lips. “Zoey’s very territorial. She’s not comfortable seeing other little girls call me ‘Dad’.” 2 The anger that had been simmering in my gut finally boiled over. I let out a sharp, dry laugh. “Damian, do you even remember which child is actually yours?” “Do you have any idea what happened to Mandy at school today because you—” He cut me off with a frown. “Gwen, I don’t need a lecture.” “I know the mixer was today. I’m sorry, but Talia is a single mother now, and she’s overwhelmed. Zoey needed me there.” “Besides, I made a promise to Talia long before I ever married you. I swore I’d never let her down again. I’ve given you the marriage you wanted. You don’t get to tell me who I can care for. I owe them.” He threw his blazer on the chair and headed for the master bath. The sound of the shower drowned out the sob I couldn’t hold back. If I had known that being his wife meant being a ghost in my own home, I would have fought my father tooth and nail that night. I looked at the divorce decree I’d been drafting on my laptop. If it weren’t for Mandy, I would have left years ago. But I had been selfish—I wanted her to have a father. I didn’t realize that a father who was physically present but emotionally absent was a far worse poison. The next morning, Mandy woke up and forgot her heartbreak the moment she heard her dad was home. She jumped on her bed, clutching a drawing she’d spent a week on. “I have to show Daddy!” Kids are resilient, or maybe just tragically hopeful. She ran downstairs, only to find Talia and Zoey already in the kitchen. Damian was sitting at the island, peeling an orange for Zoey with a look of pure patience. “Daddy? Who are they?” Mandy asked, stopping short. Damian’s face darkened. “Why are you still here? I thought I told your mother to take you out.” Mandy shrank back, but she still held out her drawing—a colorful depiction of the three of us. “It’s a family portrait… I made it for when you came home.” Before Damian could reach for it, a small hand snatched it away. “This is ugly!” Zoey shouted, tearing the paper in half. She shoved Mandy hard, sending her tumbling to the hardwood floor. “He’s my daddy! Everyone at school says you’re a nobody, Mandy. You’re not allowed to call him that!” Mandy burst into tears. I rushed over, pulling her up and staring down at Zoey. “Apologize. Now.” Damian stood up, his jaw set. “Gwen, don’t scream at a child.” He picked Zoey up and tucked her against his chest. “I told you last night, she’s sensitive about this. She’s just upset. She didn’t mean to push her.” I didn’t budge. “Did you not hear what she just called Mandy? She called her a bastard, Damian. Are you going to tell her the truth, or are you just going to let her bully your own daughter in her own house?” Damian hesitated, but then he just rubbed Zoey’s back. He wouldn’t look at me. Talia stepped forward, wearing a soft, practiced smile. “Gwen, I am so sorry. Zoey spent her formative years in Europe; she’s very blunt. She doesn’t mean anything by it. Please don’t take it to heart.” The little girl in Damian’s arms looked at us with a smug, triumphant grin. “I’m not lying! The kids at school said it! Mandy is a mistake! She stole my daddy!” I looked at Damian. I had tolerated his “germaphobia.” I had tolerated his long absences and the obvious lies about working late. But I would not tolerate this. “Damian, I’m going to ask you one last time. Is Mandy your daughter, or isn’t she?” He let out a cold, sharp laugh. “You really want to talk about how she became my daughter? Do you really want to revisit that ‘miracle’ of a night?” “Enough. Today is about Zoey. Let’s not ruin it with your drama.” Talia and her daughter exchanged a look of pure satisfaction. Damian kissed Zoey’s cheek. “How about we go get that Elsa dress you wanted? And some new toys?” “Yes! And the castle!” “Anything you want,” he murmured. As they walked toward the door, something inside me finally snapped. The love I’d carried for ten years didn’t just break; it evaporated. “Damian,” I called out, my voice strangely calm. “I want a divorce.” 3 Damian paused at the door, turning back with an arrogant sneer. “Gwen, haven’t we played this game enough? If you think threatening me is going to work, then fine. Have it your way. Get the papers ready.” He didn’t wait for a response. He walked out, the heavy oak door thudding shut behind him. Talia lingered for a second, a flicker of a smile crossing her face before she masked it with “concern.” She walked back to me, holding out her phone. “I’m so sorry, Gwen. Damian and I… we’re just friends. He’s just such a loyal man. He knows how hard it is for me after my divorce, and he just wants to help. Please don’t let this ruin your marriage.” She insisted on adding my contact info, claiming she wanted to “reimburse” Mandy for the ruined drawing. “Talia, come on!” Damian’s voice called from the driveway, soft and melodic. “Coming!” she chirped, running out to join them. Through the open window, I heard her voice drifting back. “Damian, you shouldn’t have said that. Gwen was just upset. You know she didn’t mean it.” Damian’s reply was loud enough for the neighbors to hear. “She worked too hard to trap me into this marriage to ever actually leave. She’s just throwing a tantrum because I’m giving Zoey attention. Trust me, she’ll be begging me to come home by dinner.” I leaned against the kitchen counter and laughed. It was a hollow, jagged sound. The Gwen who loved you is dead, Damian. And the mother who is left has work to do. Mandy cried herself to sleep in her room. “Mommy, the kids said he’s Zoey’s daddy… but I wasn’t trying to take him away…” I stayed awake. My phone buzzed. Talia had posted a photo on Instagram: the three of them at a toy store, looking like a perfect, sun-drenched family. The caption read: Zoey finally has the father figure she deserves. Some things are just meant to be. I “liked” the post. Seconds later, a DM arrived from Talia. It was a video file. I opened it. It was from a few months ago, back when Damian was still “working” overseas. In the video, a friend asked him, “Damian, what’s the best part of being back with Talia?” He was nursing a glass of scotch, looking more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. “Probably the quiet moments,” he said, his eyes dark with something like lust. “Last week, after we finally got the kid to sleep, I pulled Talia into the bathroom for an hour. Best hour of the trip.” The room spun. Talia’s caption on an old post flashed in my mind: Since having a kid, private time is hard to find. We have to sneak around when she’s asleep… My phone buzzed again. Another message from Talia: Oh my god, I am SO sorry! I meant to send that to someone else. I can’t believe I sent that to you. Please ignore it! But honestly, Gwen… you know where his heart is. You forced this marriage with a cheap trick, but he spent three years choosing us every single day. He might not be Zoey’s biological father, but he loves her more than he could ever love a child he was ‘forced’ to have. You have money, you have status—don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Just walk away. She followed it with a photo of Damian kissing Zoey on one cheek and Talia on the other. A perfect portrait of a family that didn’t include me. I typed back two words: You’re right. Then, I called my father. “Dad, I’ve made a decision. I’m taking Mandy and moving to London. We leave in three days.” My father sounded shocked. “Three days? But I heard Damian just got back. You finally have your family together. Does he know?” I looked at the torn drawing on the floor. “He’ll be thrilled.” 4 For the first time in our marriage, I didn’t stay up waiting for him. When he stumbled in at 2:00 AM, the house was pitch black. No porch light, no warm meal in the oven. For the next three days, I was a ghost. I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t ask where he was going. I just packed. Sensing something was off, Damian came home on the third evening with a Tiffany box. “Gwen,” he said, sounding almost sheepish. “I know things have been tense. Zoey was out of line the other day. I’m sorry.” He opened the box to reveal a necklace—a heart pendant that was clearly from an older collection. I recognized it immediately. Talia had posted it on her “sell” story months ago, calling it “outdated junk.” He tried to step closer to put it on me. I stepped back. “Don’t bother.” I walked past him, wearing a sharp, tailored blazer. I was heading out to finalize the sale of my car. He stared at me, his eyes lingering on my outfit. “You… you look different today. Where are you going? I’ll drive you.” He was being uncharacteristically attentive. It was pathetic. For three years, I’d worn the soft, feminine dresses he liked. I’d played the part of the doting, waiting wife. But in his absence, I’d built a multi-million dollar tech firm. I’d handled lawsuits, boardrooms, and plumbing emergencies. I didn’t need a driver. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m a better driver than you anyway.” I was actually going to the consulate to finalize the paperwork for our relocation. Three hours later, as I walked out of the government building with Mandy, I saw Damian’s car idling at the curb. He looked frantic. “Gwen, what the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, jumping out of the car. He’d followed me. “You’ve been in there for three hours.” I smiled, a cold, empty thing. “Just updating some records. Our IDs were expiring.” “Don’t you have a job? I heard Talia was looking for a personal assistant. Maybe you should go help her.” Damian flinched, his expression darkening. “Fine. You want to push me away? Go ahead. I was trying to be nice, but you’re making it impossible.” He slammed his car door so hard the frame rattled and sped off. Later that afternoon, his assistant, Marcus, called me. “Ma’am, Mr. Sterling actually cleared his entire schedule today to spend time with you and Mandy. Why did you upset him? He’s at a bar right now, drinking himself into a stupor before heading over to Talia’s place…” Marcus had always tried to play peacemaker. I almost felt sorry for him. “Thanks for the update, Marcus,” I said. “But let him go. He’s exactly where he wants to be.” I had two days left. But I didn’t make it to the flight without one last nightmare. On the day I went to pick up Mandy’s final school records, Zoey pushed her into the decorative fountain at the school plaza. Mandy hit her head and went into a localized seizure—a complication from an undiagnosed condition. I was screaming, cradling my daughter’s limp, wet body as the ambulance arrived. At the hospital, the ER was in chaos. I was told that a “VIP” had redirected the city’s top pediatric neurologists to another wing for an emergency allergy consult. Damian had moved heaven and earth for Zoey’s hives while his own daughter was fighting for air. I called Damian, my hands shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone. “Damian, please. Mandy is in the ER. She needs a specialist. You have the connections—please, help her!” On the other end, I could hear Talia sobbing about “rashes.” Damian’s voice came through, cold and mocking. “Gwen, enough with the pathetic stunts. Mandy is fine. She was fine this morning.” “I tried to spend the day with you and you kicked me out. Now Zoey is having a real medical crisis, and you’re trying to fake an emergency to get attention? You’re sick.” “Damian, I’m not lying! She’s—” Click. The dial tone was the loudest sound I’d ever heard. I felt the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. I looked at Mandy. She was awake now, hooked up to an oxygen mask, her eyes too old for her face. She didn’t cry. She just reached out and wiped a tear from my cheek with a weak, pale hand. “Mommy… Daddy really doesn’t want me, does he?” She smiled, a heartbreakingly sad expression. “It’s okay, Mommy. I don’t want him either.” I called my father. Within thirty minutes, a specialist was flown in from a neighboring state. Damian never showed up. That night, the local news ran a segment on “The Heroic Father,” praising Damian Sterling for mobilizing the city’s medical resources to save a child from a “life-threatening” allergic reaction. They showed a clip of him looking “devastated” in the waiting room. I stared at the screen, at the man I had loved for a decade. You win, Damian. You can have them. The day Mandy was discharged, we went straight to the airport. I shredded my SIM card, left the keys to the mansion in a locker, and boarded a one-way flight to London.

🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “MotoNovel” app 🔍 search for “452027”, and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel