Tragic

I'd been married to Matteo—the Lamberti Don—for five years. No one knew I was his wife. I didn't want the perks. The spotlight. So I stayed invisible. We were in love. Still felt like dating every single day. Then my first day at the new hospital wrecked everything. "Dr. Accardi, you won't believe this." A coworker leaned in, grinning. "Guess who that new patient's husband is? Matteo freaking Lamberti." I froze. If she was his wife—then who was I? She was pregnant. Carrying the future Lamberti heir. So what did that make the baby inside me? I held it together. Did the exam. Played the calm, capable doctor. No one saw the panic clawing through me. I told myself it was gossip. Lies. It had to be. Then I heard Matteo call her 'my princess.' That was it. He had a new 'princess.' And I had to let him go.

I was a sketch artist acting for the police. On a secret mission, I was discovered by a murderer. My eyes were gouged out, and my body was dismembered, unceremoniously dumped in a garbage bin. On the brink of death, I called my boyfriend, a criminal investigator. However, he hung up on me because he was busy accompanying his first love to a prenatal checkup. A few days later, he received a painting that was a vital clue to finding the murderer, but he thought I was playing tricks on him. In his anger, he tore that portrait to shreds. After he found out the truth, he spent the whole night searching through the garbage to piece it back together.

My husband, who was a drug enforcement police officer, personally got me into rehab. My son was cheering on the side, saying that he no longer had to see me under the influence for a long time. After I was discharged, I discovered my husband moved in with his lover and our son. I begged him to come back and told him that someone would kill me. He did not believe me. Instead, he said coldly, “If you die, you better end up in a trash can. Otherwise, I’d have to deal with your body.” My son cheered at the side. “Mommy is finally gone!” After a week, I was dismembered. My body parts were found in multiple trash cans. He was the police in charge of the case.

My husband and I go on a road trip back to my hometown before Christmas. I want to ride shotgun, but he chases me to the backseat so his female colleague can sit in front. He says, "Isabel gets carsick easily. You are my wife, so you should be more considerate of her." He seems to have forgotten that I'm pregnant—my morning sickness is at its peak. Halfway through the journey, he and Isabel Slater start smoking. They make me throw up. The smell disgusts them, and my husband wants to teach me a lesson. He and Isabel leave me at the rest stop. Unbeknownst to them, my family is already waiting there. This time, I'm going back with them and getting an abortion and divorce. Later, my husband is filled with regret when he learns the child is gone.

To celebrate our daughter's eighteenth birthday, my husband, James Miller, decided to go nude cycling. I told him he was too old for that and would embarrass himself, but he looked at me with disdain and said, "Liliana, your life is so boring. You refuse to embrace new things." Then he brought the dog belonging to his first love, Sophia Lewis, and placed it before me. It was then I realized it was Sophia who had organized the nude cycling event. I felt my anger boiling beneath the surface as our son, Thomas, took the leash and handed it to me. "Dad, you can go have fun with Sophia. Mom will take care of the dog," Thomas said. But when the dog lunged at me later, Thomas protected it. Meanwhile, my daughter, Alice, fought to shield me. In the end, both Alice and I were bitten to death. James didn't even take us to the hospital. Instead, he dragged our bodies straight to the crematorium. Just before I turned into a wisp of smoke, I saw Alice rolling in the flames. During that time, James and Thomas were comforting Sophia. At that moment, I felt a deep rage—rage at myself for being so naive and for causing my daughter's death. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day when my son handed me the leash. This time, I was determined to make them all pay.

For three years, Emerie had been married to Allan, the son of an Alpha. Allan had always believed it was Emerie who drugged him, forcing him into the marriage. Determined to divorce her, he chose to be with her sister Jolene instead. But what he didn’t know was that Emerie was already terminally ill when she left him. When Allan finally uncovered the truth and desperately searched for her—could he still win her back?

When the kidnapper fired the gun, I shielded Scott with my body. The bullet pierced my heart, and I was sent overseas to have my heart exchanged with an artificial one—one that ran on a battery. Because of this heart, Scott married me, and my friends congratulated me for finally having my wish granted, for finally marrying my childhood sweetheart. Later, when I laid there on the operating table with my chest cut open, he was kissing another woman under the moonlight. I didn't react to this in the slightest, recovering my heart in silence. Scott resented my numbness, grabbing my shoulders as he demanded, "Wendy, aren't you angry about this?" He didn't know the reason, and to be honest, it was quite simple. Why be angry when my heart was on the verge of giving out? Every passionate day he spent chasing after love… Was another tick in the countdown to the end of my life.

A kidnapper's gun was pressed to Lena's temple and mine, the whole scene streaming live online. "Nolan," the kidnapper said, "your wife, Donna, or your first love. Only one of them walks away alive. Choose." On the other side of the screen, my husband, Don Nolan Winston, head of the Winston family, did not hesitate for even a second. "Let Lena go. As for that woman, do whatever you want with her." I looked into the camera and laughed until tears ran down my face. For seven years, I had stood by him as he rose from the Winston family's illegitimate son to the first Don of the Italvia mafia. I had taken knives for him, drunk with him, even lost a child along the way. So in the end, in his eyes, I had been nothing more than a pawn he could discard at any moment. "Did you hear that?" the kidnapper sneered at me. I turned and ran toward the cliff. Facing the camera, I spoke my final words. "Nolan, I'm giving this life back to you. We're even now."

The day that I divorced my third husband, the system told me that I had completely failed my mission. I had married three times in this world and they were all targets that were supposed to fall for me. But every single one of them chose to divorce me because of Wendy Somerfield. The system pitied me for doing my best for the past 30 years, so it asked me to target my son. It said that if my son could confidently choose me, between me and Wendy, then I could live. However, it was no exception that the son I gave birth to after 40 weeks of pregnancy chose Wendy, just like my three ex-husbands. They all even pinned the cause of Wendy's illness on me. My first husband, who was my childhood sweetheart, pretended to be softhearted, but he was actually ruthless. He actually tried to convince me to donate one of my kidneys to Wendy. My second husband, who I met on a blind date, used a scalpel to personally cut open my body. My third husband, who I fell in love with at first sight, even threatened me with my son. While spitting out blood from my mouth, I agreed to their requests with a smile. However, when they saw me being pushed out of the operating room, those people who turned their backs on me went crazy.

My husband's first love, the woman he had once idolized, had left him for a powerful and influential school bully. Years later, she found herself in the midst of a bitter divorce and in need of a lawyer. And who else but my husband, now an accomplished attorney, ended up back in her orbit? As he moved toward her once more, I decided it was time to step aside. After all, there was no stopping someone determined to chase after a lost cause.