First Lie Wins Book Review Novels & Stories

Before I collapsed from hunger, I had sworn never to have anything to do with him again. Rudolf, may you never regret it for the rest of your life! The doors opened. I lay barely alive on the ground. Rudolf hurried over, voice urgent. "Water! Bring her water." He helped me up as a servant poured water down my throat. Gradually, my mind cleared after I got some water. "Lia, how are you?" Rudolf asked. I ignored him, my eyes fixed on Vivian, who was smiling triumphantly at the door. It was my delusion to think he would ever love only me. I had no one but myself to blame for my wretched state.

His voice remains calm. Controlled. That somehow makes it worse. I stare out the glass windows of my office. The city stretches endlessly below. Busy. Loud. Alive. Meanwhile my heart suddenly feels too loud inside my chest. “You left,” I say quietly. Another pause. Then— “I did.” No excuses. No lies. No attempt to deny it. And somehow that annoys me even more. “You don’t get points for honesty now.” “I know that too.” God. Why does he sound like this?

And this is not a luck story. People like to believe that men who rise from nothing do so because fate intervenes or opportunity appears at the right moment. Maybe that happens for some people. It didn’t happen for me. Instead, my beginnings were marked by betrayal—a family that should have been my foundation became my first battlefield. Before I understood or could describe it, I was fighting wars I never asked for. I was born into a lie. I didn’t know it yet.

"Aaron. Do you even know what you did wrong? Your mistake was that you liked what you thought 'a girl from the Lane family' could do for you." His face went pale. "When you saw me doing things for Sophie, you decided I was just her maid and you started to look down on me and joined Viola in humiliating me. Now that you know I'm really part of the Lane family, you've come back to beg me to take you back. Aaron, you never liked me for who I was. You simply liked the status you thought could benefit you." I stepped back, the edge of the umbrella separated us. "Ask yourself. If I weren't part of the Lane family, would you still be standing in the rain and begging me to forgive you?"

In court, faced with the mountain of evidence, Louis was deathly pale. In order to avoid paying damages, he actually stated outright that the proposal was completed independently by Flora, and that the plagiarism was her personal action, having nothing to do with the firm. Sitting in the plaintiff's seat, I watched coldly as he pushed all the blame onto Flora. This was the man I had loved for ten years. When things went wrong, his first reaction was to shirk responsibility and save his own skin. But even so, he still faced a massive penalty.

I cut him off, pointing out, "You may not know, but you touch your earlobe when you lie." His hand hung in mid-air, then dropped as he tried to pull me close. "It's not what you think. I can explain." I pulled up the video and shoved it to his face. "This is why you bailed on me seven times, right?" I looked him in the eye. He held me, flustered. "I had my reasons." I waited for him to continue, curious about the reasons that had pushed him to marry Vivian behind my back and lie for three years.

I sniffed his perfume from a distance, it was one of the most expensive he had in his collection. “Why are you acting so nervous?” He asked, his voice trembling and diminished. I was actually trying to figure out if that was true or not, as I stood so dumbfounded and stared at him, without a single word. “Are you being serious right now? why aren’t you even talking to me, Ana?” He inquired again. “Um, I think I would have to drink some water, I feel thirsty, even before you came,” That was a blatant lie though, and I knew he wouldn’t believe me, but who was he to detect what I was up to since he wasn’t telepathic?.

Men glanced at one another, shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. Amira leaned back slightly, her voice cool, almost casual. “If you fear betrayal, make loyalty more profitable. If you fear weakness, turn it into a weapon. Fear is not a chain, it is leverage. Learn to pull it, and even wolves obey.” The silence that followed was thick as smoke. Every eye fixed on her. Then Yanov laughed. His voice rang out deep as it was sudden, and unnerving. He set his glass down with a deliberate clink. “Well said, little dove,” he drawled. “I did not expect such fire from De Vitalio’s beauty. But perhaps we have underestimated her.”

There was no fucking way. "You’re lying." I growled, jumping to my feet and surging forward. "Tell me that you’re lying!" Kneeling down, I grabbed Ian’s torn shirt and tugged him towards me. He was lying. He had to be fucking lying! There was no way that everyone was dead. How could Azura and her warriors allow something like that? ‘Ashton,’ Leah huffed, reaching out a clawed hand and wrapping it around my wrist. ‘Let him speak.’

I decided to check through them and I was surprised to see Fred profile, I was hesitant on clicking on it, but then what more could happen at this point, I clicked on his profile and began to scroll through them, it turned out that starting from the day he created this account he's been posting a picture of himself and his girlfriend who was not me, none of my picture is in his wall, all this while I've been the fool, this was the reason he never wanted me on social media he didn't want me to figure out his lies and deceit, I was such a fool for a long time, he decided me, he betrayed me, he stabbed me in the back and left a wild hole in my heart that can never be filled, all I did was love