Innocent

In my third year of marriage to Cassius, I saw his childhood sweetheart Serena post a photo on a luxury yacht with the caption: "My man always knows what I want."

That yacht was supposed to be my birthday gift.

I called the dealer. "Mr. Vitale transferred it to Miss Monte."

Cassius called immediately. "Stop checking up on me. I owed her this. Why are you so insecure?"

That night, he ki...

To protect my older sister's piano championship, my own brother crushed all ten of my fingers.
To win my sister's favor, my fiancé hired someone to kick the baby out of me.
After surviving a fire that nearly killed me, I finally woke up.
And when I returned, I blasted the hard proof of their affair and their schemes all over the internet. As I watched them lose their minds, lose everything, and dr...

To buy the sky-high-price cake for my blind piano prodigy girlfriend, I swallowed my pride and scrubbed toilets for three months.
But returning home early with the cake, I found her, who was supposed to be groping in the dark, entangled with her rich ex-boyfriend.
Her eyes were clear, and her face was full of sneering mockery: "Isn't letting this design genius serve me like a dog for three years t...

When my Alpha told me a rogue faction was going to destroy our Pack, I volunteered as a hostage to keep him safe.
Three years in a cage. Branded with silver. Broken like a feral. Every rogue in that compound had me. The only thing that kept me alive was a toxic root that numbed the pain — and was slowly killing me from the inside.
Then my Alpha showed up and told me the truth.
There was never any ...

I loved Lia Rockefeller for ten years, and it cost me everything.
When she said the cheerleaders were ganging up on her, I charged in and took the punches for her.
When she cried that her stepsister would ruin her at Yale, I tore up my acceptance letter right then and there.
When she held me tight in the middle of the night and whispered, "I'm so lucky to have you"—I thought it meant forever.
Thre...

My fiancé has tried to kill me seventeen times.

Everyone says I'm cursed by the Moon Goddess. Five years, seventeen mating ceremonies—all ending in blood.

An eagle's talons through my spine. Poisoned wine that stopped my heart. Ritual flames that charred my skin. Each time, I survived. Each time, Kael Silverblade held my hand and swore it was fate's cruelty, not his.

I believed him.

Until the ...

I was taking six-year-old Arabella to fit her dress for the theater's grand opening.
As we crossed the intersection, a truck suddenly lost control and T-boned our car.
When I opened my eyes again, an agonizing pain ripped through me. I opened my mouth to call out Everett's name, only to hear his hushed voice seeping through the crack in the door—
"Staging an unavoidable accident was the only way t...

My entire family betrayed me.

My husband Keith threatened divorce to force me into donating bone marrow to save my sister Berenice's life.

My parents slapped me across the face, screaming I owed her everything.

Thirty days in an underground lab, Keith wined and dined Berenice while I got steel needles driven through my spine daily.

When I begged Keith for help through the agony, he texted ba...

Returned to my biological family, I didn’t find a home. I became a living blood bag for my adopted sister.

On the night of our shared eighteenth birthday gala, I weakly tugged at my mother's dress. "Mom, please... no needles just for tonight. I only want to stand in the corner and watch the cake being cut."

"Elena is suffocating in agony, and all you care about is a slice of cake?"

Disgusted,...

That wedding in Rome was the last time I ever saw him as his “stepsister.”
I was the Roxie family’s only daughter. After my father remarried, my mother and I moved into the Corleone estate, and from that day on, Elias became my stepbrother—also the one obsession I should never have touched.
Out in public, he was always calm and controlled. At home, though, one line from him “Don’t call me brother”...

Two years ago, my best friend Maddie knelt in front of me, crying as she borrowed $50,000.
The very next day, she vanished off the face of the earth. No explanation, no apology, not even a single text message.
I was left carrying her toxic debt. I lost my fiancé, and I lost my ability to trust anyone.
Until one late night, a call came in from an unknown number originating in an abandoned mining di...

I'm dead.

Died that rainy night, desperate because I couldn't scrape together five thousand dollars to save my dog.

Liam laughed at me over the phone—my childhood friend told me to quit the sob story. His new girlfriend Sarah said I should get on my knees and beg if I wanted her to toss me some scraps. They had no idea every dollar I owed those loan sharks was to cover up Liam's hit-and-run.

My...

Our clan worships the Spider Goddess.
To keep this face, every girl in our bloodline must sacrifice a truly evil man every ten years.
Just two weeks before my twentieth birthday, my mom asked me again over the phone:
"Sweetie, is it really that hard to find a sufficiently bad guy in a place like Ashfield?"
Right now, I’m looking at my boyfriend, who just handcuffed me to a bed. He’s laughing, nego...

Someone posted a positive pregnancy stick next to my student ID on the school's anonymous forum.
By first period, eight hundred people thought I was the campus slut. By lunch, the lacrosse captain stood up in the cafeteria and told everyone he was the father. By Friday, my full-ride scholarship was frozen and the dean told me to "keep a low profile."
I've never even kissed anyone.
Margaux Aldridge...

Ten years ago, I sat in the witness stand and told the court my beloved Uncle Arthur was a monster.

My testimony sent him away for twenty years and made my father Robert a hero.

For a decade, I lived inside the perfect world my father built around me — safe and warm and suffocating. Then one afternoon, digging through boxes in the basement, I found Buster's old collar. My golden retriever. The d...

I bought my five-year-old son a Captain America shield for his birthday.

But when I landed in New York, the hospital called.

"Your son died during the medical procedure your husband authorized."

Marcus had signed Axel up as a living donor. For his mistress's kid.

While our baby bled out on the operating table, Marcus was cutting birthday cake with his new family.

Even used Axel's favorite Sup...

My brother Soren is a figure skating prodigy. Every dollar in our house, every hour, every scrap of attention — all his.
Me? I'm the kid who doesn't need to be seen.
The night before Nationals, I told my mom my stomach hurt so bad I could barely stand. She said I was making trouble. Dad told me to take a painkiller and tough it out. Then they loaded up the car and drove two hundred miles to watch ...

I loved Julian for ten years, carving every sweat-stained day into my love for him.
He once said I shined brighter than any gold medal.
Yet in five short minutes, he handed my dream, my glory, and my whole world to a scheming transfer girl.
Betrayed, discarded, and broken on the fencing strip, I lost my first love and everything I fought for.
Until the retired cold Olympic champion stepped out of ...

On the night before my sister's bone marrow transplant, my parents confiscated my EpiPen and locked me in the attic.

Their "genetic consultant" warned them that the medication would contaminate the stem cells meant for my sister.

I had eaten the meal they provided—one secretly laced with lethal traces of nuts.

The resulting anaphylactic swelling was suffocating me completely.

I fra...

When the pain started, my mother-in-law called me a monster, then drove off like a madwoman. My doctor slit his own throat in front of me. My husband locked me away "for my safety."
I thought they didn't want my baby. That they were horrified by the child I carried.
But I was wrong.
The thing growing inside me was never my child at all.