Karma Akabane Fanart

The day my husband, Reece Malcolm, reached the pole for his polar expedition, his childhood sweetheart who was sent away reappeared in his bedroom. Everyone had kept it from me. Erica Lowell had been by his side day and night. Though Reece said he didn't want her there, he still allowed her to stay by his side for four years as his assistant. "You have to believe me, Lucy. There's nothing between Erica and me," he used to say. Always so sure. Always so convincing. But when he returned, it was with Erica in his arms—heavily pregnant. "She threatened to kill herself, Lucy. I didn't have a choice," he said. "The baby's coming. I need you to raise it. You know you're the only one I've ever loved." Four years. Four years of silence, of waiting alone in a house that never felt like home. Now, the lawyer is hired. The assets are tallied. The divorce papers are signed and sealed. I'm done.

When my husband returned home to visit his parents, I noticed that he forgot to bring back the specialties he had bought. I ran after him, only to find him getting out of a car in a suit. His childhood friend stepped forward to welcome him. They held hands and smiled as they looked into each other’s eyes. They looked like a happy, newlywed couple. Only when my husband saw me standing not too far away did he hurriedly distance himself from his childhood friend. “Her mother’s critically ill, and her mother’s only wish is to see her get married. I’m just helping her.” I simply smiled. I pushed him right back to his childhood friend’s side and started cheering with everyone else. “When’s the baby coming?! I’ll be sure to wrap a nice gift!”

On the night of our anniversary, I had prepared a new set of lingerie for my Mafia husband Joey, but he had prepared divorce papers for me instead. A Cuban cigar was clamped between his teeth, a look of pure entitlement on his face. "Adriana, we need to divorce. Vivian's father is a capo. If I marry her, my future's set." "Look, sweetheart, you're just a broken family's leftover daughter. You should be grateful I kept you around this long." "Once I have the family ring, maybe I'll throw you a few scraps, let you be my little side piece." Everyone expected the daughter of a fallen family to step aside for his ambition, to be the loyal dog I'd been for the past seven years. But that night, I made a deal with the devil. I accepted a match arranged by my family and married the true king of New York's underworld. I vanished from Joey's world completely. Three years later, I returned to New York on my husband's arm. We were there on family business. Dante was called away for something urgent, leaving me to wait for him at his private club. I never expected to run into Joey, the man I hadn't seen in three years. "That's enough, Adriana. Stop with the childish tantrums." "Our son Angelo's almost six. He needs care. I'm being generous, offering you a position as his nanny." I laughed. What was this idiot talking about? He was calling the most feared and revered Donna in all of New York a nanny?

I stayed by William Gavin's side for three years and proposed to him three times. He rejected me each time. With a look of utter disdain, he said, "Every time I see that scar on Whitney Spencer's stomach, I remember the baby that died in there. It just makes me think she's dirty." The words pierced my heart like a knife. And yet, I still asked him to marry me a fourth time.

When I stand in the sales office and watch my best friend beat me to purchasing the foreclosed property I have my eye on, I finally know for sure that she has been reborn too. In my previous life, both my best friend and I had some savings. She invested all her money in the stock market, while I decided to buy a house to live in. Since I didn't have much savings, I ended up buying a foreclosed property where a murder had taken place. But inside the ceiling cavity, I discovered a safe containing ten million dollars in cash and over a dozen gold bars. Meanwhile, my best friend's money was trapped in the stock market. She lost everything and even ended up in debt. When she watched me move into a villa, drive luxury cars, and spend money extravagantly every day, my best friend flew into a rage. She lured me to a highway where an oncoming freight truck killed me. After my death, my soul floated in the air as I watched her and my boyfriend deceive the police together. They claimed I had been drinking and ignored traffic rules, rushing onto the highway to my own death. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day I'm supposed to buy the foreclosed property.

I find cigarette ashes on the passenger seat of my wife's car. She brushes me off, saying, "My new assistant left it there. He's not the most sensible." When I ask for a divorce, she stares at me in disbelief. "Just because of that?" "Yeah. Just because of that!"

Jerome Morrison is busy dealing with his ex-girlfriend's lawsuit regarding the inheritance when I die in a car crash. The police officer calls him to identify my corpse, but he merely snaps impatiently, "Has she moved on to using suicide to threaten me? Too bad it won't work." Later, he finds out his ex-girlfriend caused a car crash, he chooses to destroy the evidence. He doesn't notice that I'm the one who died in that car crash.

Twenty-three years old Anna Mackenzie looks like a normal young woman in the city of New York, but beneath her surface is a scared broken girl with a dreadful past she must keep hidden; even as the smell of chaos and doom tries to drown her. One night in her sorry attempt to get away from it, she bumps into Caden Gallagher, playboy and the blunt heir to Gallagher's gallery who has his skeleton hidden in his closets, and who eventually becomes her boss. Their hatred and inability to stand each other don't create a barrier to work. An inconvenient event leads to a temporary alliance that blooms into friendship and later love. But the past comes knocking on both their doors and it doesn't take them long to realize that was coming to knock them down.

The yacht I'm steering crashes into a huge wave, scaring my husband's junior, who has a heart condition. So, my husband orders someone to tie me up and dangle me in the ocean by a rope. He even tells the captain to head straight into the waves. "You know Wren has a heart condition, yet you still scared her! How can you be so evil?" I beg him to let me go and tell him that I was following a charted path; I didn't mean for anything to happen. However, he just mocks me. "You've been a yacht driver for so long. Haven't you experienced anything like this before? I'll make you go through what Wren did! Let's see whether you'll pull this again!" After a day and night of this torment, he relents and decides to pull me back up. It's too bad he doesn't know that the waves have already torn me to shreds.

My mother, Mariana Heimann, has terminal cancer. She wants me to get married before she dies. It takes 57 days of me pleading with my boyfriend, Hayden Weatherford, before he finally agrees to marry me. On the day we agreed to register our marriage, he's a no-show even after the city hall staff have clocked off from work. At the same time, Hayden's childhood friend, Scarlett Needham, shows off a photo of her and Hayden holding up their marriage certificate. It's captioned, "Time sure flies. In another week, we'll have been married for two months." It dawns on me that Hayden and Scarlett were married on the day I first begged him to marry me. I receive a message from Hayden on my phone. He apologizes, "Scarlett's family members were forcing her into marriage, Lucy. I couldn't stand by and watch her suffer, pressured into marrying a stranger. We'll get divorced in a week, after which you and I can get married." … One week later, I send Hayden a message as he waits for me in front of the city hall, dressed in a suit. "We'll never meet again, Hayden."