The Fiancé Who Left Me to Burn
Agatha Christie · Completed · 7.8k Words
Introduction
In the middle of a raging forest fire, my fiancé Carter Hayes was piloting a fuel-leaking helicopter, forced to choose between me and my cousin Lily Sterling.
He chose me.
Lily was left behind in the inferno. She burned.
I thought surviving made me lucky — until my parents slapped me across the face at my wedding. "Why wasn't it YOU who died?"
Turns out, I was never the one they wanted to save.
Carter married me, then spent five years making me wish I'd died in that fire instead. He and my parents worked together, systematically stripping away my dignity, my career, and every reason I had to keep living.
Three years into my depression, I jumped from the top floor of the Hayes estate.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself back before the fire — before the helicopter took off, before Carter made his choice.
This time, I spoke first. "Take Lily."
If they all wanted me dead, then I'd give them exactly what they wanted.
Chapter 1
"We can only take one more person! Any heavier and we ALL go down!"
In the middle of a raging forest fire, my fiancé Carter Hayes was piloting a fuel-leaking helicopter, forced to choose between me and my cousin Lily Sterling.
He chose me.
Lily was left behind in the inferno. She burned.
I thought surviving made me lucky — until my parents slapped me across the face at my wedding. "Why wasn't it YOU who died?"
Turns out, I was never the one they wanted to save.
Carter married me, then spent five years making me wish I'd died in that fire instead. He and my parents worked together, systematically stripping away my dignity, my career, and every reason I had to keep living.
Three years into my depression, I jumped from the top floor of the Hayes estate.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself back before the fire — before the helicopter took off, before Carter made his choice.
This time, I spoke first. "Take Lily."
If they all wanted me dead, then I'd give them exactly what they wanted.
Violet's POV
"DAMN IT! Fuel line's blown!"
Carter Hayes's shout rang in my ears, and suddenly I understood — I'd been reborn.
The same scene. The same words. Even the wall of flames closing in around us — everything was identical to my previous life.
The helicopter was leaking fuel and overloaded. Only room for one more person.
Carter had to stay and pilot. That left one escape seat.
"Carter, PLEASE!" Lily grabbed his flight suit with both hands, her voice shrill with terror. "You CAN'T leave me here!"
Carter's eyes darted between me and Lily, sweat pouring down his face.
I could see the hesitation clearly.
It all came rushing back — he'd ultimately gritted his teeth and chosen me, his "official fiancée." But that choice had destroyed everyone.
"Violet, get in! NOW!" Carter finally made his decision and reached for my hand. "We're out of time!"
I took a deep breath and stepped back.
"I'll stay. Take Lily."
Carter froze, eyes wide.
Then I saw it — that flash of relief.
"Violet, are you sure—" His words tumbled out fast, afraid I'd change my mind.
"I'm sure." I cut him off and even forced a smile. "Go. You don't have much fuel left."
Carter immediately helped Lily into the helicopter.
"Violet, hang on!" Carter shouted back before closing the door. "I'll get Lily to the safe zone and send a rescue team right back for you! I SWEAR!"
He moved fast. Too fast.
The helicopter took off, its massive rotors drowning out everything else. I stood there watching it disappear into the smoke-filled sky.
I laughed bitterly.
How did I miss it in my past life? How had I not seen who he really wanted to save?
In my previous life, after we'd been rescued, we'd immediately contacted the search team.
But by the time they'd arrived, the area where Lily had been was already consumed by flames.
They'd only found a charred body.
At Lily's funeral, my parents — Lily's adoptive parents — had slapped me in front of everyone.
"Why wasn't it YOU?" my mother had screamed hysterically. "Lily lost her parents when she was just a child! You're her SISTER — you should have given her that seat!"
My father had said nothing. He'd just stared at me with the eyes of someone looking at a murderer — cold, merciless.
The most ironic part was that Carter had remained calm at the funeral. He'd even "protected" me, blocking my parents when they'd tried to attack me again.
Back then, watching the grief he was hiding, I'd thought he was just trying to hold it together.
I'd felt so guilty I'd wanted to cancel the engagement — after all, Lily and Carter had grown up together. I'd known what they meant to each other.
After Lily had lost her parents at ten and been adopted by my family, she and Carter from next door had been inseparable.
Same schools, same vacations, even the same college.
Everyone had thought they'd end up together. Including me.
Until the Hayes family had needed an alliance with the Sterling family, and he'd "had no choice" but to choose me, the legitimate heir.
"Violet, I WILL marry you." After the funeral, he'd held my hands, eyes firm as he'd refused my suggestion to call it off.
I'd actually felt relieved then, thinking maybe he had feelings for me too.
Now I understood — he'd married me just to have a legitimate reason to torture me for the rest of my life.
Even though Lily's death hadn't been my fault, he'd still hated me.
Hated me for making him lose the person he truly loved. Hated me for taking the place that should have been Lily's.
So for five years after our marriage, he'd used every method to destroy me.
Affairs. Silent treatment. Isolation. Humiliation... until I'd developed severe depression and jumped from the top floor of the Hayes estate.
The fire around me was spreading rapidly.
The canopy began to burn with crackling sounds, thick smoke rolling toward me.
I looked around, forcing myself to stay calm.
I knew exactly how this would end. By the time rescue teams arrived, this place would be scorched earth — just like they'd been too late to save Lily in my past life.
Carter wouldn't come back in time.
Maybe wouldn't come back at all.
After all, this time he'd already saved the person he wanted to save.
Why would he risk coming back for someone expendable like me?
I took a deep breath, my eyes sharpening.
This time, I'd given Lily the chance to live. We were even now.
But I wasn't going to just wait here to die.
I turned toward the other side of the flames and began searching for a way out.
Last Chapters
You Might Like 😍
Bloodright
Ashveil University is not what it looks like in the photographs. The students here carry something that shifts their eyes at the edges of anger. The northwest trees hold an attention that trees should not be able to hold. And the empty chair at the council table, the one nobody sits in, the one nobody explains, has been waiting three hundred years for one specific person to arrive.
Nobody told Adaline she was that person. They classified her as Dormant. A blank space in a file. Nothing.
She is the opposite of nothing.
Beneath the campus, three ancient entities are waking up. Every house in the pack world wants to control what runs in her blood. The boy sent to assess her has stopped being able to do his job. And the woman who has been three steps ahead of everyone since before Adaline was born is not a villain. She is a warning. She is what Adaline would have become if nobody had found her.
The suppression field holding everything together is failing. The clock is running. And the only way to stop what is coming requires Adaline to give up the thing she can least afford to lose.
She already knows her answer. She decided before anyone told her the full price.
Letters to a Dark Prince
Thrown into Isteros Academy—a world of old money, blood money, and cruel social games—she's an outsider by birth and an afterthought by design. Her sister Solyn is the school's untouchable queen and Mara is her favorite target.
Everyone expects Atreus to treat his fiancée’s scholarship sister like everyone else does—as if she doesn’t matter.
Instead, his dorm room sits directly across from hers, close enough that she can see his light go out at night. Some nights, he climbs the old maintenance trellis just to check on her. He teaches her chess. He shows up exactly when something's gone wrong—and never once asks to be thanked for it.
"Don't fall in love with one piece," he warns her, over a board neither of them treats like a game anymore. "It punishes the person who only sees half of it."
Mara doesn't understand why the boy who's supposed to make her life harder keeps quietly making it easier—not until she realizes the anonymous stranger she's been writing to every week already has a name.
His.
He doesn't know he's writing to her, either.
By the time they find out, it's too late to stop what's already happening. Far too dangerous for anyone to find out.
In an empty studio, in the middle of a rainstorm, she asks him: 'Am I the kind of girl who kisses a boy engaged to my sister?'
He doesn't answer.
So she asks: 'What are we?’
He told her not to fall in love with one piece.
She fell anyway.
And he was never far behind.
My Billionaire Husband's Secret
He was the CEO of the Blackwood Group — a man whose wealth and power eclipsed ninety-nine percent of the world.
He was gentle. Romantic. Attentive. I fell for him fast.
But a year into our marriage, I began to notice something — a pattern.
Lucas's sexual appetite was intense — he wanted me almost every night. Yet every single month, he arranged a solo trip to send me away. I told myself it was his way of spoiling me.
Then a message arrived from someone called Sweet An.
Do you really know your husband?
From that day on, my life filled with shadows.
I suspected my husband of having an affair.
When Lucas and I made love, something felt wrong — his body too large, too much, like something I couldn't explain.
I heard sounds during sex — animal sounds, like something feral had crawled into bed with us.
My best friend Mia said: "There are men sick enough to let dogs fuck their wives."
The family doctor, Daisy, told me: "You could never stay by Lucas's side forever. Your background doesn't make you worthy of being his wife. Do you understand?"
I went looking for whoever had been tearing my marriage apart. I fought to win my husband back.
But the deeper I searched, the larger the secret grew — something far darker hiding beneath this supposed betrayal.
Does Lucas truly love me?
And why, out of everyone in the world, did he choose to marry me?
CHASING GHOSTS
Let Them Kneel
Cast out by her pack. Forgotten by the Lycans.
She lived among humans—quiet, invisible, tucked away in a town no one looked at twice.
But when her first heat comes without warning, everything changes.
Her body ignites. Her instincts scream. And something primal stirs beneath her skin—
summoning a big, bad Alpha who knows exactly how to quench her fire.
When he claims her, it’s ecstasy and ruin.
For the first time, she believes she’s been accepted.
Seen.
Chosen.
Until he leaves her the next morning—
like a secret never to be spoken.
But Kaelani is not what they thought.
Not wolfless. Not weak.
There is something ancient inside her. Something powerful. And it’s waking.
And when it does—
they’ll all remember the girl they tried to erase.
Especially him.
She’ll be the dream he keeps chasing… the one thing that ever made him feel alive.
Because secrets never stay buried.
And neither do dreams.
Reborn and Unleashed: The Boss Lady Takes No Prisoners
Now reborn, Vivian refuses to hide her strength. She's revealing her true identity, claiming her power, and rewriting her fate. No more submission, no more misunderstandings—this time, she'll take control of her life and her love.
As regretful brothers beg for forgiveness and powerful enemies fall at her feet, Vivian has one goal: to rise without mercy and make the man she once loved fall for her all over again—on her terms.
Accardi
“I thought you said you were done chasing me?” Gen mocked.
“I am done chasing you.”
Before she could formulate a witty remark, Matteo threw her down. She landed hard on her back atop his dining room table. She tried to sit up when she noticed what he was doing. His hands were working on his belt. It came free of his pants with a violent yank. She collapsed back on her elbows, her mouth gaping open at the display. His face was a mask of sheer determination, his eyes were a dark gold swimming with heat and desire. His hands wrapped around her thighs and pulled her to the edge of the table. He glided his fingers up her thighs and hooked several around the inside of her panties. His knuckles brushed her dripping sex.
“You’re soaking wet, Genevieve. Tell me, was it me that made you this way or him?” his voice told her to be careful with her answer. His knuckles slid down through her folds and she threw her head back as she moaned. “Weakness?”
“You…” she breathed.
Genevieve loses a bet she can’t afford to pay. In a compromise, she agrees to convince any man her opponent chooses to go home with her that night. What she doesn’t realize when her sister’s friend points out the brooding man sitting alone at the bar, is that man won’t be okay with just one night with her. No, Matteo Accardi, Don of one of the largest gangs in New York City doesn’t do one night stands. Not with her anyway.
MOONLIT CHASE
But no, I had to walk through the park at midnight like an idiot. Now I've seen something I can't unsee—a massive black wolf tearing apart three men, then shifting into the hottest guy I've ever laid eyes on.
Kieran Vaughn. Wealthy lawyer, werewolf, and apparently, he thinks I'm his mate.
Here's the problem: I don't do relationships. I definitely don't do supernatural things. I absolutely don't do rich guys who think they can control my life just because their inner wolf has decided I smell like home.
When hunters start targeting me to get to him, Kieran drags me into his pristine penthouse for "protection." Now I'm living with a man who looks at me like I'm his last meal, whose touch sets my skin on fire, and who's barely holding onto his control.
He says everyone he loves dies. I say that's not my problem except it is because I'm falling for this broken, dangerous man and his beast.
And in his world? Love will get you killed.
Mission: Steal the Male Lead
But the more Morwenna changes the story, the stranger the world becomes. The heroine seems to know the future, unseen spectators begin commenting on her life, and the gods watching from above grow obsessed with the drama unfolding before them. Trapped in a story where fate has already decided the ending, Morwenna must choose whether to follow the script or rewrite it entirely. But if the world itself was never meant to belong to its characters, can she steal the male lead before fate steals her freedom first?
THE CHRONO WITCH: BENDING TIME TO SAVE HIM
What she wasn't ready for was finding out Zayn Ponteris had been dead the entire time.
The grief shatters something inside her. And before anyone can stop it, Kayla does something no sorceress should be able to do—she travels back in time.
Suddenly she's fifteen again, standing at their end of year formal, with Zayn alive and right in front of her, completely unaware that in another timeline she watched his parents mourn him.
This time, Kayla is determined to save him. Except nothing goes according to plan.
Zayn has a girlfriend. And the closer Kayla gets to changing his fate, the more she realizes her powers are bigger and more dangerous than she ever imagined.
The supernatural world is closing in. The clock is running out. And the one person standing between Kayla and everything hunting her is the same boy she keeps bending time to protect.
Kayla has no idea what's in store for her.
Because when you bend time, fate bends back.
The Spy Who Left
"I still can't believe she actually did it. Aria Hart, filing for divorce. Who saw that coming?"
"How long do we think it'll take before she comes crawling back?" Another voice joins the conversation.
"Three days," Victoria declares. "Five at most. She has no money, no skills, no family. Where's she going to go?"
When Aria Chen divorced billionaire Leon Hart, New York's elite sneered, betting she'd crawl back within days. She never did.
Three years later, the world is rocked when Dr. Aria Vale, CEO of a revolutionary cybersecurity empire, steps into the spotlight. The mysterious genius who built a billion-dollar company from nothing is none other than Leon's discarded wife, the woman everyone thought was just a pretty ornament.
Now, every powerful man wants the queen Leon threw away a renowned scientist seeking partnership, a financial titan proposing an empire, and an actor offering devotion. Each sees the brilliance Leon ignored.
Then Leon discovers the truth: Aria's sacrifices, her secret double life, and the daughter she's been raising without him. For the first time, the man who once took her for granted must fight for her love. But can he compete with men who valued her from the beginning?
A story of love, betrayal, and power where the king must kneel before the queen who never needed saving.
Taste of Fate: The Vampire King's Human Mate
He reached for the back of my head and pulled me up just enough to reach my neck. When his fangs slid into me, the pain was instant, electric. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My hands found his shoulders, clawing for something to hold. My legs kicked. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
He moaned against my throat as he drank, and the sound was devastating.
