Professor

"First, unlimited funds. Second, you clean up every mess I make. Third, keep out of my private life."
Those were the arrogant demands my student laid out when I, the top art professor in New York, offered to make him my exclusive protégé.
The entire faculty gasped. No one dared speak to a Voss heiress like that.
Instead, looking at his face, I gave a slow, quiet nod.
"Agreed," I whispered. "Just...

My biggest regret? Trusting my husband with my mother's life.

The day the mudslide hit, I was on my knees. Begging him to send a helicopter.

He told me to wait. Twenty minutes. But when the helicopter came, it went for his adoptive sister Vivian instead.

I held my mother in the ruins. Her body was shutting down. I waited. Waited until she went cold in my arms.

When he finally showed up at the ...

Three days after I lost our baby, my husband finally remembered to call.

I was packing when Adrian Whitmore's name appeared on my screen.

"Vanessa told me you caused another scene over the medical bills," he said, sounding irritated. "I've authorized the payment. Can we please move on?"

I stared at the tiny knitted sweater lying in my suitcase.

I'd bought it the day I learned I was pregnant.

...

When I was nine months pregnant, my husband, Torin, forced doctors to extract my baby's cord blood to save his ex-wife's son. My baby died of suffocation ten minutes after birth, right before my eyes.
Instigated by his biological mother, my stepson sneaked into my room late at night and poured silver powder all over me. My skin rotted; the scars would last forever.
Later, the hospital ward caught ...

The night I graduated from college, Bianca Moretti asked what I was going to do next. My Mafia family had only recently brought their biological daughter home.
I didn't get a chance to answer. The four men I'd grown up with answered first, each taking his turn.
They all had paperwork showing that they were moving to California.
Then Dante Romano, the future head of one of Chicago's most powerful c...

For eighteen months, I loved Asher in secret, betting all my pride and heart on our hidden affair. He took my tenderness while prioritizing his rich fiancée, mocking my love and sacrificing my future for his family’s marriage deal. Shamed online, shunned at school and tormented, I made no fuss. I repaid every dollar he gave me, cut all ties, transferred schools and rebuilt myself. He broke off his...

I was five months pregnant, carrying lunch to my husband, when a conversation between two young women around the corner drifted into my ears.
"I still don't get why he married her. Now she’s nothing but a glorified housewife, waddling around with that massive bump just to bring him his meals. She doesn't deserve a guy like him."
"Hey, are you seriously into your own professor? He’s married. You’re...

A man's luxurious watch slipped out of my wife's purse. Without batting an eye, she lied, "It's a gift for your dad." Looking at the youthful, trendy style and thinking of the remote-controlled toy that had mysteriously appeared in the nightstand, I felt nothing but utter disgust.
In the surveillance footage, the domineering homewrecker not only wore my clothes but also arrogantly taunted me.
And ...

"You're too brilliant, Lyra. It makes me sick. I had to ruin MIT for you, just so you'd never leave me."

I died in a puddle of my own blood on a rainy night, watching the boy I’d known for eighteen years walk away with Alice, the varsity cheerleader. No ambulance. Just taillights disappearing into the dark.

But instead of fading to black, I blink and find myself staring at my Common App dashboar...

I died watching my fiancé check another woman for scratches while three bullets tore through my chest.

I was his human shield. She was his true love.

Then, I blinked—and I was back. Reborn on the exact day I was supposed to sign our Mafia marriage pact.

Matteo slammed the sacred blood-oath on the desk. "Sign the damn paper, Serena. And stop being jealous of Anna. She’s fragile."

He wanted m...

My mother studied wolf decay for a living.

For three years, I'd been dying of it—and she thought I was faking.

When I begged her to sign the form for my body donation, she laughed. "You'd better actually be dying this time."

I was.

Days later, my heart sat in a glass case at the front of her lecture hall, and she taught a room full of students how to spot my disease.

She had no idea it was mi...

I lost my memory.
When I woke up, my biological parents and aloof wife were fussing over the fake young master's bedside.
I, the real young master who had just awakened from a coma, only received my wife's cold command: "Sebastian needs a blood transfusion. Go donate."
Looking at the scars on my wrists from her suicide attempt, my amnesiac mind only felt absurdity.
I calmly donated blood, then...

Twenty-five years I cooked, cleaned, and worshipped my husband David.

Then I found the Hawaii tickets on his phone. For him and his secretary Lily.

"You're just a free maid, Helen," David laughed when I confronted him. "Lily's young, smart, useful. You? You're nothing."

My son Luke not only covered for his affair but high-fived him in celebration. "Finally, Dad! Mom's so embarrassing. Lily's wa...

Ten years loving Liam Rockefeller cost me everything.

He said the football team jumped him—so I charged in and took the punches. He sobbed that his stepbrother would destroy him at Yale—so I ripped up my acceptance letter. He held me at midnight whispering "I'm so lucky to have you"—and I thought that meant forever.

Three months later, I heard him laughing in the locker room—laughing about me.

...

Everyone says I’m crazy.
My husband, Adrien, is Ashmont College’s most esteemed professor—suave, composed, and highly logical. I, on the other hand, am an investigative journalist whose nerves are fried by looming deadlines and too much caffeine. Yet, I insist there’s a woman who shares my exact face, who crawls out of our bedroom mirror every night and slips into my husband’s bed.
Our security ca...

During the day, I was his brightest student,
and at night, his most compatible bed partner.
I thought he had genuine feelings for me,
but it turned out I was just a tool for him to satisfy his desires because he couldn't bring himself to touch his fiancée.
He made me understand my place,
telling me not to delude myself into him down with a child,
saying that we were just satisfying each other's ne...

I nearly died in the freezing ocean at my adopted sister Jane's birthday party.

When the yacht started tilting and alarms shrieked through the corridors, Dad grabbed Jane and bolted for the deck without looking back. Mom clutched Jane's ragdoll cat in her arms, following close behind under the bodyguards' protection.

They saved the cat.

But left their biological daughter to drown.

Three days l...

On a rainy night, I lay in a pool of my own blood, barely alive.
My wife, Juliana, was kneeling beside a man named Sebastian. "Take my husband's blood! I will take full responsibility if anything happens!"
Drop by drop, my lifeblood was drained from me, flowing into the body of her first love.
After three days and nights of struggling in the ICU, I finally regained consciousness, only to hear her ...

I've got a reputation on campus as a doormat with zero dignity. I bring Wyatt Langley food, do his homework, act as his emotional dumping ground. Been at it for a year.

His rich friends mock my cheap clothes and say I'm reaching way out of my league. He never stops them. Sometimes he even laughs along.

Finally, he announces in front of everyone that he's breaking up with me. His first love is co...

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...