Atoning

You were a three-year charity project, Elena. Now, the project is over." On their third anniversary, Julian Thorne didn't bring flowers. He brought a divorce decree and his mistress, Elena’s own adopted sister, Sarah Vance. To Julian, Elena was just the plain, penniless orphan the Vances took in after a tragic fire, a convenient pawn he used to bleed the Vance fortune dry. He never loved her; he only married her to fund a merger while secretly warming Sarah’s bed. He expected Elena to beg. He expected her to crumble. Instead, she signs the papers with a chilling smile and hands him a gift of her own: A total bankruptcy notice for the Thorne Group. Unmasked as the legendary Blackwood Heiress, Elena is ready to watch the world burn. But the trap has two sides. A hidden Reconciliation Clause forces her to still appear and be with her cheating husband and her backstabbing sister for thirty days, or she loses her claim to the Blackwood throne while Julian loses the Thorne-Vance merger. When Sarah frames her for a high-profile theft to get her out of the way, Elena finds herself in a cold jail cell, until the "Executioner" of Wall Street, Theo Sterling, appears. He offers her a Devil’s bargain: a contract marriage to save her from her predatory cousin, Lucius Blackwood, who is hellbent on declaring her mentally unfit to seize her empire. Elena falls for her savior, unaware of the blood on his hands. Theo is atoning for a sin she doesn’t know exists: his own father was the arsonist who murdered her parents. Trapped between a husband who wants her wealth, a sister who wants her life, and a lover whose family killed her past, Elena must decide.

On my eighteenth birthday, my brother Seth brought back my twin sister. She had been snatched from me by kidnappers as a child. She claimed she had nothing, not a single thing to call her own. Seth gave her everything: my room, my dresses, and my awards. He even gave her my childhood fiancé, forcing him to break off our engagement and marry her in a wedding that would take the world by storm. I tried to resist, but Seth scolded me for being childish. "She's your blood sister, yet you complain about every little thing. If you can't learn to be kind, I can't call you my sister anymore." My sister, Serena, fell into the swimming pool later that day and nearly drowned. When she woke up, she cried to our brother, claiming I had pushed her. My brother, Seth, was furious. He sent me away to a remote mountain village. "If you can't learn to be kind, you'll spend the rest of your life here, atoning for your sins. "You can come back only when you kneel before Serena and apologize." Five years passed. Serena and my fiancé held a high-profile engagement ceremony. The entire city celebrated their grand love, certain they would have a happily ever after together. Then, Seth finally remembered me. "Sylvie, five years have passed. Have you learned kindness yet?" I nodded calmly with a blank expression on my face. "Seth, I will kneel before her and apologize." He smiled, praising me for finally being sensible. However, he did not know that I had received a critical medical notice. I had only five days left to live.

When my best friend and I realized we had been reborn and traveled back several decades, we locked eyes, collapsed into each other's arms, and sobbed, shouting that we wanted to break off our engagements. The entire neighborhood whispered that we had lost our minds. But only we knew the truth. In our past lives, this was the day everything was sealed: she married a battalion commander, Ned Stark, and I became the wife of a high school teacher, Robbie Stark. My husband betrayed me. For the sake of that pretentious whore, Scarlett Wheaton, he stole my university admission letter and let her take my place on campus. The world mocked me as a failure, and Robbie stood by in silence. After we married, every time he touched me, he would immediately write another love letter to Scarlett—atoning for his supposed guilt. "Scarlett, even if I can't be with you in this life, my soul will always belong to you alone." Even my own child despised me, calling me an ignorant village woman, urging me again and again to divorce so that his father could be with his "true love," Scarlett. And my best friend, Rachel Croft—born the daughter of a factory director—was tricked by her husband, Ned, under the pretense of buying a house. He drained her savings and her wages for twenty long years. It wasn't until she fell gravely ill and went to sell the house that she discovered the deed he had given her was a forgery. The real house—the one paid in full—was in Scarlett's name. One of Scarlett's dresses cost more than my friend's entire monthly salary. When Rachel begged to reclaim what rightfully belonged to her, she was met only with contempt from Ned and her child. "All you ever care about is money. You're nothing like Scarlett, who isn't materialistic at all. Your illness is retribution," Ned had said. "Exactly. Only someone as noble and kind as Scarlett deserves to be my mother!" her child had said. Rachel and I both spent our lives working ourselves to the bone, only to end with nothing—dying bitter and broken from the injustice. But this time, fate has given us another chance. I will go to university. Rachel will become a wealthy woman. This time, without us paving the way, those shameless men and that wretched woman think they can still live happily ever after? Dream on.