Abandoned Heiress: Married to My Brother-in-Law
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Adela stood outside the private room, holding the obsidian necklace she had spent three months hand-crafting for her boyfriend.
But through the cracked door, she heard Juston laughing with his friends, calling her a stupid, obedient pawn and her art "garbage."
After she shattered the necklace and walked out into the freezing rain, Juston texted her a far more horrifying truth.
Her own family didn't just hate her-they had actively tried to kill her.
Two years ago, her brother Kayden intentionally slipped deadly shellfish into her food at a gala, sending her into anaphylactic shock.
Worse, her parents had covered up the attempted murder as a simple kitchen mistake, all to protect the family name and elevate her adopted sister, Kara.
Adela collapsed on the wet pavement, suffocating under the weight of the ultimate betrayal.
She had spent her entire life begging for their love, secretly working as the anonymous designer keeping their failing company afloat, only to realize she was nothing but a disposable tool.
She had absolutely no one, and nowhere to go.
Just as the storm threatened to swallow her whole, a sleek black Maybach pulled up to the curb.
Harmon Holland, the ruthless Wall Street billionaire she was originally arranged to marry, stepped out into the rain.
He didn't offer her pity. Instead, he handed her a legal document.
"Marry me, Adela. For one year."
She took the pen. This time, she wouldn't be an obedient pawn; she would be their executioner.
Abandoned Heiress: Married to My Brother-in-Law Chapter 1
Adela Richmond never expected that Harmon Holland, who was still her brother-in-law yesterday, would now become her husband.
A day ago.
"So, you really aren't going to dump that boring Adela Richmond?"
The door to the Peacock Room was slightly ajar, a thin sliver of light and sound escaping into the corridor. The words bled through the crack.
Adela's hand froze inches from the brass handle. The velvet jewelry box in her other hand suddenly felt like a block of lead. Inside rested an obsidian necklace. She had spent three months sourcing the stone, grinding and polishing every single link by hand for their one-year anniversary.
Her heart, which had been racing with sweet anticipation just a second ago, slammed against her ribs.
A lazy, familiar laugh echoed from the unlatched gap of the private room. It was Juston.
"Dump her? Why would I dump her?" Juston's voice dripped with a casual cruelty she had never heard before. "She's a Richmond. She's the perfect, obedient little pawn for a strategic marriage. She doesn't cause trouble."
The blood drained from Adela's face. The dim light of the Elysium club's hallway seemed to flicker, the marble floor tilting beneath her designer heels.
"But I heard the Richmonds actually care about the adopted girl, Kara," Brock, Juston's friend, pressed, his tone thick with amusement. "Kara is the real socialite. Adela is just... there."
"So what?" Juston scoffed. The clinking of a whiskey glass against a table punctuated his words. "Adela is stupid enough to be loyal. She's desperate for validation. She thinks I actually give a shit about those ugly little design projects she makes. I throw that garbage out the second she leaves my apartment."
Adela's stomach violently contracted. Acid burned the back of her throat.
She pressed her spine against the cold wall of the corridor. Her fingernails dug so hard into the leather of her purse that the seams groaned. The obsidian necklace. The sketches she stayed up until 3:00 AM perfecting for him. Garbage.
"Her only real value to me," Juston continued, his voice lowering into a vicious sneer, "is that keeping her pisses off Harmon Holland. We all know Adela was supposed to be Harmon's little arranged bride. Taking her from him is just good business."
The room erupted into a chorus of mocking laughter.
"I'll kick her to the curb when I get bored," Juston added over the noise. "She's got nothing but the Richmond last name anyway."
Adela couldn't breathe. Her lungs felt like they were packed with wet sand. Her knees shook, threatening to give out right there on the expensive carpet. Every sweet text, every kiss, every promise of a future-it was all a calculated, sterile transaction.
She closed her eyes. The stinging heat of tears threatened to spill over her lashes.
She forced them back.
She dug her nails deeper into her palms until the sharp sting of pain grounded her. The violent churning in her stomach hardened into a block of solid ice. The ringing in her ears stopped.
The color was gone from her cheeks, but her jaw locked into place. She didn't turn around. She didn't run away crying like the weak, boring girl they thought she was.
She stepped away from the wall. She reached out, her hand perfectly steady now, and gripped the brass handle.
She pushed the door open.
The heavy wood swung inward with a soft click. The raucous laughter inside the Peacock Room died instantly.
Juston was leaning back on a leather sofa, a cigar between his fingers, a smug grin plastered on his handsome face. Brock was sitting across from him, mid-laugh. Five other men froze, their eyes darting to the doorway.
Adela stood there. Her face was a mask of pale, terrifying calm. She looked at Juston not with heartbreak, but like she was staring at a stranger.
At the far end of the dimly lit corridor, hidden entirely in the shadows of a private alcove, a man slowly lowered his crystal tumbler.
His sharp, blue eyes locked onto the scene unfolding at the door.
"Sir," Donovan Tate, his assistant, murmured from the darkness. "That's Miss Richmond."
Harmon Holland didn't reply. He adjusted the silver cufflink at his wrist. A slow, dangerous smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.
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Abandoned Heiress: Married to My Brother-in-Law of Contents
Chapter 1 Ch. 1Chapter 2 Ch. 2Chapter 3 Ch. 3Chapter 4 Ch. 4Chapter 5 Ch. 5Chapter 6 Ch. 6Chapter 7 Ch. 7Chapter 8 Ch. 8
Chapter 9 Ch. 9
Chapter 10 Ch. 10
Chapter 11 Ch. 11
All Chapters all
New Release Novels
7.3
I was tracing the gold paint on my own tombstone when a hand tapped me on the shoulder.
It was Clayton.
The same man who, five years ago, had left me bleeding out in a ditch because he didn't want to be late for my sister's engagement party.
"Die quietly, Ivy," he had said over the phone before hanging up.
Now, standing over my grave, he dropped his cheap plastic flowers in shock.
"Ivy? You're... we buried you."
They hadn't buried me.
They had buried an empty box to save face, mourning a "troubled" daughter they had actually discarded like broken trash the moment I became a liability.
Clayton's shock quickly turned to that familiar, arrogant anger.
He accused me of faking my death for attention.
He told me I was sick for putting the family through such pain.
He even reached out to grab my arm, intending to drag me back to my father to apologize.
"You're coming with me," he spat. "You owe us an explanation."
But he made a fatal mistake.
He thought he was talking to Ivy Dillard, the soft girl who cried when she skinned her knees.
He didn't notice the town car waiting at the curb, or the man stepping out of it.
Before Clayton's fingers could graze my coat, a hand made of steel caught his wrist.
Collin Richardson, the most feared Capo in Chicago, stepped between us.
"Touch my wife again," Collin whispered, his voice promising violence. "And you lose the hand."
I smiled at the terror draining the color from Clayton's face.
I didn't come back from the dead to explain myself.
I came back to bury them.
9.1
Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys.
Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero.
Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold.
I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth.
But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me."
Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again.
Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.
7.7
Not only was I drugged, blinded and assaulted. I was deceived into carrying a baby by a stranger I never knew. Then he appeared and took my child away.
I was sent to a militia by the father of my child. I thought I was rescued but I was recruited to be a weapon for killing. Who was manipulating me, I didn't know. The answers were far from what I knew.
Forced to blend into the world that I could never believe I would be to, a place where brutality reigned, kill or be killed was the only language. I have survived but he has to pay for everything he did to me, because I believed every phase of my life was set by him and him alone. Have I really survived?
Who would have thought, he existed twice in the same world? Do I really know who I should take revenge on? Him or the person I would sacrifice everything for?
Was my mother the one who orchestrated everything? What kind of pawn am I?
9.0
I died alone in the medical wing giving birth to our son.
"Tell her to calm down and stop the theatrics."
Those were the last words my mate, the Alpha, said about me while I bled out.
Instead of passing on, my soul was tethered to the packhouse. I was forced to watch my best friend Seraphina seamlessly step into my life, taking my baby and my husband before my body was even cold.
To secure her place, she planted my blood-soaked birthing blanket in the woods to frame me for faking my own kidnapping.
Ryker swallowed her lies completely. He refused to send a search party, telling the entire pack my disappearance was just a pathetic plea for attention and money.
As a helpless ghost, I watched Seraphina brainwash my one-year-old son into calling her his mother and teach him to joyfully trample my beloved garden.
"Bad mommy ran away. Don't love Kaelen."
Hearing my own child parrot those venomous words was a dagger to my soul.
Whenever anyone questioned my absence, Ryker fiercely defended her, dismissing the desperate warnings of my loyal friends and his own elders.
The man I loved and died for treated my memory like a malicious joke, grateful for an excuse to replace me while living with my murderer.
But when Seraphina's mask finally slipped, and the horrifying truth of my death crashed down on him, it was far too late.
Seeing him crumble in agonizing regret brought me no comfort.
I no longer wanted his love or his desperate apologies.
Now, I only wanted his absolute ruin.
7.5
On the morning of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I found a cream-colored document tucked inside my husband's suit pocket.
It was a twenty-million-dollar asset transfer for his former receptionist, Carmen. But what made my blood run cold was the contingent beneficiary: Leo, my newborn son who the hospital claimed was kidnapped twenty-three years ago.
When I confronted Devonte, he didn't even try to explain. He handed me a fake Cartier watch, canceled all my credit cards, and publicly called me delusional.
The next day, he moved Carmen into our mansion and emptied all our joint accounts into offshore trusts.
"If you don't sign these papers and walk away, I will have you committed," he threatened, his mother nodding in agreement.
They had orchestrated the kidnapping of my baby, hiding him with the mistress while I spent half my life sedated and screaming in grief. Now, to keep his secret, Devonte was going to lock me in a psychiatric ward and bury me in debt.
I didn't understand how the man I loved could be such a monster. Why did he steal my child? What else was hidden in that confidential adoption file?
Pushed to the absolute brink, I refused to be his victim.
When his goons came to my temporary apartment to drag me away, I turned to the rugged union electrician who had just fixed my lights.
"If you need a husband to keep you out of a psych ward, I'll marry you," he said, offering himself as my legal shield.
I took his hand. It was time to tear my husband's perfect life apart.
7.9
Elena Crane wakes up in a hospital bed after barely surviving a resort fire, only to discover the devastating truth. The kidney she donated to her husband Leo three days ago wasn't for him. It was for his mistress, Lydia. Worse, she overhears Leo instructing a doctor to kill her within five days and make it look like surgical complications so he can collect two hundred million dollars in life insurance. Their entire five year marriage was an elaborate scheme to steal her organs and murder her for money.
What Leo and Lydia don't know is that Elena is actually Roberta Alfred, the legendary jewelry designer and billionaire heiress who abandoned her empire for love. After enduring multiple murder attempts, including being locked in a morgue and losing her uterus to forced hysterectomy, Elena escapes. She divorces Leo, claims the insurance money herself, and returns home to reclaim her identity and her family's billion dollar empire.
