Blade Cut

"NO… Don't hurt my baby, PLEASE!" That day, Aria knelt on the freezing cold floor of the operating room, her desperate cries echoing off the sterile walls. But Kane’s cruelty cut deeper than any scalpel. "She is unworthy of being the mother of my child." Those words shattered her. In a final act of heartbreak and defiance, Aria threw herself out of his world—and out of his reach. Years later, she returns. Not alone. By her side is the daughter Kane never knew existed—the living proof of the love he once so cruelly denied. Now the man who cast her aside is the one left shattered—haunted by regret, consumed by obsession, willing to tear the world apart to claim what he lost. Her. Their daughter. Their second chance.

I was reborn. Right back to the day I adopted Peter. The wind cut sharp, baby cries slicing through the cold. That's when it hit me—this was the day Stuart Pete, my oh-so-loving husband, dumped his illegitimate child right in my path after work. He knew me too well. The second I picked the kid up, he'd spin it into an adoption, making the boy ours. Last time, I fell for it. This time? I walked away without a second thought. Later, I heard the kid got pneumonia from being left out in the freezing cold—fever so bad, it wrecked him for life. I laughed until my stomach hurt. What I didn't see coming? Peter was reborn too—about to experience the life he was meant to have.

My fiancee fell in love with a broke student she's been sponsoring. She insists on breaking off our engagement no matter what. She turns a deaf ear to all the advice friends and family give her. My father gets so worked up that his blood pressure skyrockets. Meanwhile, my mother comes close to fainting and almost ends up in the hospital. My family becomes a laughingstock among the elite overnight. But no one realizes that we're already discussing countermeasures. My mother pulls out her phone. "Why don't we set you up with the most beautiful woman in Seabrook?" My father says coldly, "End the partnership. Cut off the one-billion-dollar support fees to her family." My lips curl into a smile. "Mind if I handle both myself?"

They came to celebrate love, but leave with blood on their hands. Brielle Champagne has it all: beauty, brains, and the perfect fiancé. Or so it seems. Behind the sparkling estate gates, her engagement party is nothing more than a high-society stage for lies, betrayal, and blackmail. Her sister, Draya, is back in town with secrets sharp enough to cut through the family’s carefully crafted image. Her best friend, Monty, is a temptation she can’t quite outrun. And her fiancé, Kannon Maxwell, is hiding the kind of truth that could shatter them both; a truth her powerful father is using to control everyone in the room. By the end of the weekend, hidden affairs will be exposed, old flames will reignite, and one devastating revelation might rip the Champagne family apart for good. Money can buy silence and the perfect party, but it can’t buy forgiveness.

I had fallen in love with my father’s friend—the man I was supposed to call “uncle,” Kael Viremont. For a while, I thought he loved me too. We even had this silly little promise—that if I turned twenty-seven and still want to be with him, then we could be together, publicly. Five days before my twenty-seventh birthday, I overheard him saying he’d never liked me. That he was going to marry his childhood sweetheart. And as if that wasn’t cruel enough, he was planning to use the wedding to cut me off for good. So I did the one thing I should’ve done a long time ago—accepted that he and I would never belong to the same world… and disappeared from his life for good.

"You owe me, Isabel. I married you just for revenge." Emerson's cold voice cut through me. The man I loved betrayed me in the most ruthless way imaginable. In his heart, I was never more than a shadow of his first love, Lilith—the woman who destroyed my life. After the heartbreak of losing my baby, the diagnosis of a malignant tumor was another cruel blow. But Emerson wasn't done. He delivered one final, devastating strike: my father, now in a vegetative state, might have committed an unforgivable crime. The weight of it all nearly crushed my will to live. Yet when I finally walked away, Emerson became desperate to win me back. But why? Wasn’t this exactly what he wanted all along?

At the underground auction house, tonight's grand finale was billed as a 'premium wolf pet'. Inside the cage, a male wolf knelt with a bite-prevention muzzle locked around his neck. He was clearly a prisoner, yet his eyes held no trace of submission when he lifted his head. Instead, he looked like he was judging every single person in the room. His gaze cut through the crowd and locked onto me. My heart stuttered as excitement flooded my system. I finally knew what true attraction felt like. A well-dressed man in the front row raised his paddle. "$100 million." Gasps erupted across the venue. It was an astronomical opening bid. I smiled and slowly raised my paddle too. My voice brought the hall to dead silence. "$500 million."

My husband, Lawrence Schwartz, and I were both liars. He lied to me, saying he would forget his first love, yet his phone is filled with photos of her. I lied to him, saying I would never leave, while secretly planning a future without him. A month ago, I tricked Lawrence into signing the divorce papers. Today was the final day to complete the entire divorce process.. Three hours left. I packed all my luggage and bought a plane ticket for the next day. Two hours left. I cut up every photo of us together, leaving only myself in the album. Last hour. I thought about leaving a message, then decided against it. Today marked the tenth year I had loved him and the first day I left him.

After awakening years before the demise that once destroyed me, I, Lucy Hale, swear I will never again fall for Adrian Hawthorne. In my last life, loving him earned me nothing but humiliation, betrayal, and a future broken beyond repair. Now, armed with memories I shouldn't possess, I tuck myself away inside my boutique, determined to avoid him, avoid fate, avoid everything. But the universe has never been kind to my plans. No matter how I twist the timeline, Adrian keeps slipping back into my life, closer, impossibly entangled. His eyes linger longer than they should. His questions cut deeper than I’m ready to admit. And worst of all, he seems drawn to me in ways he never was before. And then there is Elias Ward, quiet, observant with eyes sharp enough to see through any disguise. Elias is nothing like Adrian. Where Adrian gleams with cold polish and empty promises, Elias is warmth wrapped in quiet mystery. A man who shouldn’t matter to me. Yet, somehow, he does. As I try to distance myself from the Hawthornes, Elias drifts steadily closer, noticing the cracks in my composure, the ache beneath my smile, the truth I’ve fought so hard to hide. He becomes the one thread I can’t cut, no matter how much I fear being stitched into someone else’s future again. With Adrian circling me like a ghost from the life I escaped, Elias begins to draw me toward a fate I never expected, a fate where for once, I might finally choose myself. And maybe him, too. But the past doesn't release its hold so easily. And neither do the Hawthornes.

“Camille, I’ll love you forever!” Jameson let out a low, agonized growl. Just as he was about to climax, his phone suddenly began to buzz. He ignored it, of course. Now was hardly the time. However, his phone lit up again. The moment he saw the text on the screen, his body froze. Camille heard him answer the call. “Hello?” In the deep silence of the night, the voice on the phone cut through the stillness, clear and unmistakable. “Jameson, did you know that Sylvia—” Jameson switched languages and cut in with a sharp command, “Keep it down. It's not a good time.” The other person switched languages too, though he was still loud. “The hospital results came in. Sylvia is in the final stages of cancer. She only has a month left! Her last wish is to become your wife. Can you grant her that before she passes?” Jameson’s expression changed immediately. “What?! Wait for me!” He ended the call and turned to Camille. “Camille, something urgent came up. I need to step out for a bit. Be good and stay home. I’ll be back after you’ve had some sleep.” Before she could respond, he rose to wash up, changed his clothes, and left without looking back. Moments later, her phone buzzed. Sylvia: [Camille, you lost. I told you—Jameson has always been mine.] Right above it was a message from three days ago: [If I tell him I have cancer, do you think Jameson will leave you and come to me? I bet he will.] Camille’s gaze slowly shifted from her phone screen to the open bedroom door. What Jameson did not know was that she had already picked up a new language. She understood every word of that call. After a long moment, a faint, bitter smile appeared on her face. “Yeah, I lost...”