Soundtrack Exit Wounds

Namaku Olin. Aku suka mengunjungi cafe seminggu sekali. Di suatu sore terjadilah pertemuan tanpa sengaja dengan laki-laki yang membawaku dalam jurang kehidupan selanjutnya. Dan aku harus sesegera mungkin menyelamatkan diri sebelum aku semakin terperosok lebih dalam.

"I agree to the divorce," I said as I dialed my mother-in-law's number. "Matteo Bellandi will never agree to divorce me, so you need to arrange a new identity for me. I need to disappear completely. He must never find me." Despite six years of marriage, I never conceived a child. In the Mafia world, how many men remarried for the sake of an heir? Yet Matteo always stood firmly at my side. To have a child, we tried everything—ninety-nine rounds of IVF that resulted in ninety-eight failures. The final pregnancy ended in fetal demise. Matteo held me and said, "Whether we have a child or not, I will always love you." Everyone said he was deeply devoted and that I was fortunate. Even I believed it. I believed it was my body that was defective. I believed I was the one holding him back. Until that day, when I went to the hospital for a follow-up exam. I saw him with my own eyes, pushing a mobile hospital bed into a VIP suite. On the bed lay a young woman named Sienna Vale, who had just given birth, holding a pair of twins—a boy and a girl. The congratulations inside the room were sharp and piercing. They praised his good fortune and Sienna's superior genes. They said the children were born to inherit the Bellandi empire. They mocked my education and my background and said I could not produce a "high-quality" heir. "Who do you think you are, daring to speak about her? My wife is not someone you get to judge. If I hear one more word of disrespect toward my Donna, you'd better weigh the consequences yourself," Matteo rebuked them coldly, preserving my dignity as Donna. In that moment, I finally understood that the marriage I had been so proud of was nothing more than a joke in everyone else's eyes. If that was the case, I would end this love story everyone envied with my own hands.

At 18 years old, Elena Carter was framed for a murder she never committed due to the painful betrayal of her sister and the man she loved deeply. She was sentenced to spend her whole life in prison, losing everything she ever had. Ten years later, with all hope lost for her ever leaving jail, she is suddenly visited by Damien Vance, the cold and ruthless billionaire brother of Lucas Vance, the man she was framed for killing. He offers her a way out but it will come at a price—a contract marriage and a new face. With desperation and hunger for revenge, she accepts the deal. With Damien as her unlikely ally, Elena must uncover the truth, and bring down those who betrayed her while also surviving Damien’s cold and ruthless hold over her. Revenge won’t be easy, but Elena is willing to risk everything to get it.

They say revenge is sweet, however for her, it’s a bitter reminder of a lifestyles packed with betrayals. Cast aside by using her family, bullied by using her very own brother, and disregarded through her husband, she lived inside the shadow of anyone else’s happiness. Her most effective sin? Loving a person who in no way cared to love her returned. When the woman he secretly cherished flaunted their affair, she became left damaged and on my own. Her loyalty intended nothing as he selected her enemy over her, even throwing her into prison for a crime she in no way meant to dedicate. But she’s achieved expecting love that was by no means hers. Now, it’s time to take lower back what belongs to her—her coronary heart, her pleasure, and her lifestyles.

I worked super hard during Cyber Monday and pulled in 20 million dollars in sales, only for my wife, Chelsea Abbott, to credit it to her childhood sweetheart, who had just returned from studying overseas. I was so furious that I confronted her, but she clung to Donald Dixon's arm and said righteously, "Donald just got back, and he doesn't have a solid footing yet. What's wrong with my helping him establish some authority? Are you really going to argue with me over this?" I swallowed it. But at the year-end conference, Donald actually pointed right at my face in front of the entire company and yelled, "I produced these results myself. You're just a deadweight living off your wife. You don't even deserve to be here! Keeping parasites like you in the company is a total waste of resources!" My performance was used to build his reputation, and this was how he repaid me? I turned to look at Chelsea, but she didn't even spare me a glance. Instead, she announced to everyone, "Donald's right. The industry's moving fast, and Will really can't keep up anymore. Starting tomorrow, all of his responsibilities will be taken over by Donald!" Faced with everyone's eager, gossipy stares, I didn't make a scene. Last night, the industry leader the company had been desperate to flatter just sent me an offer letter. Since Chelsea was determined to fight side by side with her childhood sweetheart, this was where we would end.

"System, I want to go home." The system responds to Tabitha Samson immediately. "Understood, Tabitha. Exit procedures are now activated. You'll be able to leave this world in half a month." Weirdly enough, the system, which has always followed its own programming, pauses for a few seconds. It soon brings up a question, its tone slightly confused. "You have a husband who dotes on you and a son who always takes your side, Tabitha. Isn't this your home? These people are your family, you know." The moment Tabitha hears the word "family", her gaze slowly fixes on the TV before her.

By day, I was a maid in Chester Graham's household. By night, I was nothing more than a way for him to satisfy his desires. After one encounter, he dragged me from the bed, indifferent to my pain. "You don't have to come back," he said flatly. I collapsed to the floor in terror. "Did I do something wrong? Please don't send me away." The man who had murmured comforts to me only moments earlier now gazed down with icy detachment. "Wendy has agreed to marry me. "She's afraid of pain. You were nothing more than a tool for me to practice on. Once used, you're thrown away. "You've always been obedient. You know what you're supposed to do."

By month four of my IVF treatments, my husband's childhood sweetheart posted a picture of herself cradling her baby bump. The caption? [Having a happy ending with my first love. A family of three.] And there he was—his hand in the shot, making a cutesy heart with hers. Oh, and the cherry on top? He was still wearing his wedding ring.

The book is the first-person account of a young biracial Mexican and African American woman, Evelyn Rosalyn Amiss. She repeatedly transports in time between her home in Texas and then Newark, New Jersey to different time periods. She meets and helps some of her ancestors along the way. This is my first journey into a fantasy, time travel novel. I hope you stick around for each riveting, historical and spicy page turner. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, or dead, is entirely coincidental.

At my engagement party, Flora—my adopted sister—grinned and said, "Warren's never been married, right? I should marry him first so he gets the hang of it. Sounds good?" Everyone was just waiting for me to fall apart. I didn't care about them. I cared about him. Warren laughed. "Let her have fun, Mia. Don't kill the vibe." I smiled. "Sure. But if it's about fun... one wedding won't cut it. "If you're gonna get married, make it forever."