Dead Beat

Ariel Walker marries Jayson Larkin to save her adoptive brother. For three years, their marriage is kept a loveless, passionless secret. On the day she's diagnosed with a terminal illness, her husband sets off fireworks with his mistress to celebrate. When her adoptive brother is released from prison, he announces that the woman in his arms is the love of his life! Ariel decides to stop waiting when she sees the usually cold, stoic men boldly declare their love for other women. She gets a divorce, quits her job, and severs ties with her family… She picks up the pieces of her dream and goes from being a scorned housewife to a technological expert! One day, her secret identity and terminal illness are exposed. Her unruly adoptive brother comes to her with red-rimmed eyes. "Ari, can you call me your brother again?" The usually cold, ruthless Jasyon goes insane. "I'll give you my life to make up for what I've done, honey! Don't leave me…" Their love is too little, too late. Ariel has long since stopped caring…

The day after Sean Ford proposed to Nikki Sanders, he dumped her. “Vivian is pregnant,” he had told her flatly. “I have to take responsibility.” Nikki slit her wrists, filling the entire bathtub with blood. When told the news, he sounded like he couldn’t care less. “If she wants to die, let her.” Four years later, they met again. She was an ER doctor who had buried herself in work. He was the youngest captain in Air Costina’s history. But when it came to Nikki, every bit of his pride was gone. Every time she tried to start over, Sean found his way back into her life. He was falling apart over the woman he had once let go. Meanwhile, Nikki wanted nothing more than to kick him out of her life for good. “Get lost. You’ve got a wife and kid, so stop pretending you still care about me.” The usually calm and collected Sean finally snapped. “We never got married. We never even got a marriage license. Just look at the paternity test.” Piece by piece, the truth about what happened back then came to light. “So what?” Nikki said coldly. “To me, an ex is as good as dead.” “Then let me start over. Let me win you back.” “Get in line.”

Five years ago, my family died in a car crash. My parents. My adopted sister, Liz. Everyone but me. They left behind grief, an empty house, and a debt so large it swallowed my life. When the collectors came, I turned to the only person I had left—my husband, Adrian. He told me he had cut ties with his own family to marry me and had nothing left. I believed him. For five years, I worked every job I could find, paid every dollar I earned, and told myself love was worth the suffering. When the balance dropped to its final $18,000, I signed up for a paid drug trial at a private clinic. They handed me a waiver, warned me about possible delayed reactions, and promised fast money if I swallowed the experimental dose. I thought it would buy us a new beginning. Instead, I came home early and heard Adrian on the phone. “Let Liz use the card. Evelyn still doesn’t know. She took away Liz’s money five years ago, so she has to earn every dollar back herself.” Then he laughed softly. “One more year, and her punishment is over.” That was how I learned the dead were alive. The debt was fake. My husband had never been poor. And the life I had fought so hard to survive was only a sentence they had given me.

I am the biggest female drug lord in Riverdale, who gets shot in the head during a crackdown operation. As soon as the news breaks, the entire internet celebrates. People even crowdfund to take over a giant screen in the city square to display my obituary photo. They say I filled Riverdale with drugs and single-handedly destroyed countless families. They accuse me of leaking operation routes, causing the deaths of my ex-husband's 13 anti-drug force teammates. Hundreds of thousands sign a petition demanding my ashes be crushed and turned into tiles for public restrooms. To calm the overwhelming public anger, my ex-husband, Tyler Lowell, who is now captain of the anti-drug force, decides to launch a public hearing across the internet to livestream my entire life of alleged crimes. On the day of the trial, people thronged the city square. "A woman like her deserves to be cut up into a thousand pieces! How many families are destroyed because of the drugs she sells?" "I hear she is ruthless. She would even stoop to making a three-year-old do her bidding. She is inhumane!" "She got so many anti-drug officers killed. I want to see her end up in hell!" Tyler presses the start button with a blank expression. The crowd's furious curses come crashing down like waves. It is as if they want to tear me apart and condemn me forever. But in the next second, what appears on the giant screen is me in a uniform, standing under the national flag and taking a solemn oath. In that instant, the entire square falls silent.

Five years after my death, my wife, Charlotte Blake, once again asks me to take the fall for Leo Cane, her first love, in his drunk driving case. She barges into my home with fabricated evidence but finds no trace of me anywhere. Left with no other choice, she knocks on my neighbor's door. My neighbor tells her something unexpected. "Shane Foster? He's been dead for a long time. I heard the victim's family from the case he was convicted for wasn't satisfied with the verdict. "They abducted him the day he got out of prison and tortured him for three days straight." Charlotte refuses to believe it. She furiously accuses me of making up any lie to escape responsibility. She storms at the neighbor, shouting, "You think I don't know Shane paid you to cover for him? "Tell him there's no use in hiding. If he doesn't contact me within three days, he won't get a single cent of child support for that bastard." But she doesn't know that the person Leo killed in that drunk driving accident is the very "bastard" she keeps referring to.

I was sent to a correctional facility by my family for five years. The first thing I learned there was obedience. If people told me to do one thing, I would never dare do anything else. The day my wife, Casey Anderson, came to pick me up, she stood at the entrance and said coldly, "If you dare say another bad word about Roger, I'll make sure you never speak again." The moment she finished speaking, I turned and ran straight into traffic. When she saw me get thrown by the impact of the car, she nearly lost her footing. At the hospital, my foster brother stood beside my bed with a sinister smile. "So you actually managed to survive. But that's fine. I have plenty of ways to kill you and make sure you never make it home." After saying that, he smashed the bowl of porridge onto the floor, then deliberately fell onto the shattered glass as he cried out loudly, "Bobby, if you hate me that much, I'll leave! Please, just let me go!" My mother and Casey happened to walk in at that exact moment. Casey immediately rushed over to help Roger up. My mother, meanwhile, slapped me hard across the face. "You'll never change, huh? If Roger's hand is ruined because of you and he can't play the piano anymore, I'd rather see you dead in this hospital bed." Obediently, I walked toward the window and jumped. The harsh, sharp-tongued woman who had always been my mother—and Casey as well—went completely pale with fear. I happened to crash onto my father's car. Trembling, he threw open the door and shouted for the medical staff. My consciousness gradually faded. Then, a system suddenly appeared and said, "Congratulations, Host. You have completed ninety-nine tragic storylines. Finish this final one, and you will be able to return to your original world and revive your younger sister."