Counter Attack

On my wedding day with Jack Miller, he ran off with his first love As if to taunt me, he would send a photo of himself with her from every new destination they visited. I was getting a manicure and enjoying imported French pastries with my afternoon tea when I received their ninety-ninth photo. But after three years of absence, Jack suddenly returned. He pointed at my wedding photo with someone else and shouted, “How dare you fool around with another man while I was gone!" I couldn't help but laugh. "What other man? I've been married to my husband for three years now." "Jack, you didn't actually think I was waiting for you all this time, did you?"

After my family went bankrupt, I begged my fiancé Ryan to pump cash into our business. He didn't just refuse. He turned around and got engaged to someone else. When I was at the end of my rope, Ethan Brooks stepped up, tossing all his savings into my family's mess. Sadly, we missed our shot, and our company crashed. My parents couldn't handle it. They jumped off a building. Even so, I was thankful to Ethan and married him to pay him back. Three years later, at Lily Carter's birthday party, I overheard her talking to him. "You tanked the Harper family so I could win that bid. Won't Kelly blame you?" "For you, I'd give up everything. I'll just make it up to her." My blood ran cold as I realized our marriage was all a lie. The one he loved was Lily all along. I turned and left. If he was that hooked, I'd set him free.

I was a plus-size girl, weighing about 220 pounds. On graduation day, I finally gathered the courage to confess my feelings to Calvin Preston, the heartthrob I had been crushing on for three years. Surprisingly, he said yes! To celebrate, we went out that night. But things took a dark turn. I was tricked into drinking too much and was drugged. Calvin and his buddies violated me and, to make matters worse, they filmed it all. The next thing I knew, the video had gone viral online with a cruel caption, “Who’s brave enough to try a 220-pound girl?” As the humiliating video spread like wildfire, the shock and shame were too much for my grandfather to bear. It broke his heart, quite literally.

My sister, Bella, had a baby in a back-alley shithole. Then she disappeared. A midwife tracked me down using an address Bella left behind. She shoved the newborn at me like a sack of garbage. My parents fell to their knees. Crying. Begging me to take her bastard. Just like that, my future as a promising artist was gone. The neighbors, the priest, my landlord… they all called me a whore. A sinner who had disgraced God. They ran me out of the neighborhood . My life was over. Eighteen years later, Bella waltzed back into my life. A cheap thug with a fake Rolex dangled from her arm. She held my son, crocodile tears streaming down her face. She called me jealous. Accused me of stealing her flesh and blood. Of keeping a mother from her child. And my son? The one I bled myself dry for? The son I poured every last cent into, turning him into a brilliant painter? The son I starved for, so much that I ended up in a hospital bed? The moment he saw his "real" mother, he cast me aside without a second thought. "You pathetic, broke bitch!" he spat. "You stole everything from us! All the happiness that was supposed to be ours!" My parents threw me out like a dog. Bella's thug husband had his men corner me in the red-light district. They pinned me against a wall, their threats vile and clear: Never come back. I had no way out. I threw myself off the Brooklyn Bridge. Then, I opened my eyes. I was back. Eighteen years in the past. Then came the knock. Hell had found my door. I wasn’t going to be the fool who gave everything and got nothing. This time, I took control.

When Isabelle discovers her husband Karl's three-year affair with Natalie, her world shatters. For eight years, she believed in their love, even as she struggled to conceive the child he desperately wanted. Now pregnant and heartbroken, Isabelle must decide whether to confront the betrayal or silently endure for the sake of her unborn child. But then darker truths come knocking at the door, leaving Isabelle wondering strangely on how to handle things. Where there is strength, there is also toxic love. But can she be bound to it forever?

“Do you take this woman to be your wife? For richer or poorer, in sickness and health, will you remain faithful to her for the rest of your life?” I looked at Bridget with deep affection and was just about to speak. “Wait!” shouted someone urgently. I turned around in confusion and looked toward the audience. There stood a man holding a baby in his arms. He said pleadingly, “Bridget, our child is hungry… could we pause the wedding for a moment?” Hearing this, everyone erupted in an uproar. It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck me. Only then did I realize that Bridget had a child with another man. Bridget hurried off the stage, then turned to me coldly and said, “I only agreed to marry you out of obligation. But the moment Vernon appeared, I knew it. There’s no one else I want to marry but him.” So, she took off the ring and dragged the man away without looking back. I stood alone at the end of the aisle and clutched the undelivered ring in my hand, as a flood of bitterness crashed through every corner of my heart.

My twin sister, wanting to be with her thug boyfriend, secretly planned to apply for a junior college. When I could not talk her out of it, I told our parents and managed to stop her. However, just a month into the new semester, her thug boyfriend cheated on her. She left a suicide note, blaming it all on the long distance between them. She wrote that if she had gone to that junior college, her boyfriend would never have cheated. Grief‑stricken, my parents turned all their rage on me. "You wretched girl, this is all your fault for meddling! What business was it of yours which school your sister went to? Even if she didn't go to college, we could still support her. We didn't need your big mouth!" "If it weren't for your spiteful tongue, your sister wouldn't be dead!" "We were cursed to have a vicious, unfilial daughter like you!" They locked me in her room, ordering me to repent. Then they took her ashes on a trip, saying they wanted her to see the beautiful mountains and rivers she never got to visit in life. A month later, they returned from their travels to find me long dead, starved to a withered husk in front of my sister's photo. Their eyes held no grief, no guilt, only a faint, scornful curl of the lips. In their eyes, my death was nothing more than justice served. My broken soul saw their icy expressions, and despairing tears burned my eyes. Then my sister's familiar voice rang out again: "What business is it of yours which school I go to? You're just jealous that I have a boyfriend, aren't you?"

I’m a werewolf, eight months pregnant with my vampire mate's hybrid child. When the contractions hit, my vampire mate, Justin, locked me in an ice coffin carved with runes meant to suppress childbirth. I screamed. I begged him. He just said, "Wait." But this was all for his childhood sweetheart. Isolde. The pureblood vampire had used dark blood magic to carry his pure-blood heir without having sex. The first vampire child born in a millennium would receive the Progenitor's ultimate blessing. It would purify the bloodline. It would break a curse generations in the making. "That honor belongs to Isolde's child," Justin said, his voice pure ice. "You already have my love, Gracie. This coffin just ensures you give birth after her." The pain of the contractions tore through me. I begged him to take me to the Bloodspring Sanctuary. He leaned in, his cold fingers gripping my chin. "Stop the act. I should have seen it sooner. You never loved me. You were an outcast in the werewolf world. You only wanted my power and my title." "You're so desperate you'd risk our child with your savage wolf tricks, just to ruin a pureblood's blessing... You're poison." Tears streamed down my face. I trembled, my voice shattering. "The baby's coming—I can't stop it. Please, I'll make a blood oath. I don't care about the blessing. I just want you!" He scoffed, a hint of pained betrayal in his eyes. "If you loved me, you wouldn't have run to my mother. You wouldn't have poisoned her mind against Isolde." "I'll be back after she receives the blessing. After all, the child you're carrying is mine, too." He stood guard outside the sanctuary where Isolde's ritual was taking place. He didn't give me another thought. Not until he saw the halo of the blessing crown Isolde. He ordered his blood thrall to release me. But the thrall's voice trembled with terror. "My lord… Lady Gracie and the child… their life signs… they're gone." In that instant, Justin’s world shattered.

When my family was at its poorest, a wealthy family found me and claimed that I was their real daughter. The school heartthrob I crushed on? He was my fiancé all along! Still reeling from all these surprises, a mysterious message suddenly popped up in front of me. "This is where everything changes. The cannon fodder is taken home by the female lead's parents, forced to drop out of school, and then gets pregnant by her fiancé. In the end, everyone thinks she's a harbringer of misfortune, and she's beaten to death." My hand froze as I held the paternity test results. My mom's eyes filled with tears as she took the report from me. "My poor child, you've suffered enough all these years! Don't worry. Just come home with us and rest. You're our daughter now. The family business is enough for you to live comfortably forever. You don't even need to take the SAT if you don't want to." The school heartthrob lowered his head and whispered sensually into my ear, "Listen to me, Lucia. Studying is hard. I'll take care of you from now on."

As my due date approached, a massive discrepancy surfaced in the Galante family's arms accounts. The leadership made a swift decision. They sent me, Sophia Vitale, the Don's wife, the woman everyone claimed had nothing better to do, to personally inspect the armory and verify the inventory. I believed it was a routine check. I never imagined my husband's godsister, Monica Leone, would use it as cover to blow up the entire armory. The explosion was deafening. Fire ripped through the sky. Concrete collapsed around me, crushing my body as a searing pain tore through my abdomen. I did not call my husband on his highest-priority private line. Instead, I sent a distress signal to my father. In my previous life, the moment the explosion occurred, I had used that same priority channel to call my husband. The child had survived. Monica had been obliterated in the blast. My husband had claimed he did not blame me. He had said Monica was an outsider and that an heir mattered more. He had spared no expense, hiring elite obstetric specialists to monitor me day and night. He had told me to stay calm and wait for delivery. Then, on the day I went into labor, he personally locked me and the baby inside an abandoned warehouse drenched in gasoline and burned us alive. "If you hadn't deliberately delayed, she wouldn't have died. Do you really think playing the innocent victim could fool me? Dream on," he said. "You like playing with fire so much? Fine. I'll let you experience her despair yourself." When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the armory, at the exact moment of the explosion.