Accidentally married to the Right Von Duvall
(Trigger warning: this book has some elements of dark romance with an unhinged ML)
"Would you give me your surname or better take mine then? Will you be the lucky man?" I blurted out having no idea of what I was saying. My head was already in the clouds and blinded by his smile. It calmed the storm in my mind.
He laughed. Those dark abysses were truly alluring when they sparkled.
His fingers grazed my cheeks, wiping off my tears, before cupping them in his callous palms. "If you love my surname so much."
A foolish smile graced my lips, oblivious of the fact that he wasn't joking. "You can't back down now, hubby. You just got a wife."
I thought I lost everything when I walked away from Sinclair. I never imagined I'd end up as Alaric Von Duvall's wife.
*******
Her life was written in stone. A perfect life one she always dreamt of.
Everything Cassandra wanted was within reach until one night revealed the love she'd trusted was a lie. Betrayal and deceit from those she trusted the most made every belief she had crash down.
What she didn't expect was to stumble into a stranger's arms, into his bed and wake up married. Alaric gave her what she thought she wanted; now she can't take it back.
One reckless mistake became a wedding vow. Now she's trapped inside Alaric's empire of lies. Married to a stranger who knows more than he's letting on
He's dangerous. He's charming. And in front of everyone, he claimed her as his
.
Caught between Sinclair's obsession, Alaric's shadowy intentions, and her family's betrayal, Cassandra doesn't know if this marriage will be her downfall... or her salvation.
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Chapter 3
Alaric's POV
"My name is Cassandra and not 'Miss Bride-to-Be,'" she said, downing the rest of the mai tai in one brave gulp. I fought to keep a laugh from escaping.
Who was this brave little Miss bride to be?
She slammed the glass on the counter, then shot me a provocative smile, as if finishing once the glass was a great achievement.
"Who is the scared chicken now?" She retorted, keeping up the facade, she was brave and badass, trying to hide the fact that she trembled slightly, and her eyes were lost, almost looking broken.
It wasn't a big deal, but a huge improvement. It wasn't my style to intervene in others' lives, but not every night you run into a bride-to-be looking completely lost like the sash and crown didn't mean anything on a random Friday night.
She probably has a bachelorette party somewhere close by, and it would have been better to let her go back to her friend, but she wasn't the only one who needed company today.
Once again, I was no saint if not the most selfish person I know.
"Definitely not Cassandra," I chimed, playing along, then beckoned the bartender to bring another glass. The bartender immediately placed the glass beside her, he was doing his absolute best to keep a straight face.
A rare sight, it was for the owner to show up at the bar with a woman.
Cassandra blinked, her hazel eyes dazed as the second glass appeared. "I thought it was just one," she blurted, pouting.
I took a quick sip of my drink, the sweet top note gave way to a clean, sharp burn of the alcohol base that woke my head
"But we are just starting. The night is still young." I replied placing the glass back on the counter while rubbing my finger along the edges of the glass.
Her gaze was fixated on me. Once I glanced at her side, she averted her eyes, scared to hold my gaze.
My gaze lingered on her side profile for a bit, tracing the edges of her face, from her battling lashes to her pouted pink lips.
Her brows were knotted together; deep in thought, like the cocktail was some type of poison. Her naivety was her biggest charm.
"I'm not good at holding my drinks," she finally said. A reluctant sigh escaped my lips, "It's fine then, too bad the night is wasted after spending a fortune on such a handsome gigolo." I said disappointedly. The bartender almost choked on his spit
His face flushed, his awkward laugh was out of place.
Cassandra blinked once more as if letting my words sink in. A rare smirk graced her lips. "You are right, I would not let this opportunity go to waste, and besides, it is meant to be my bachelorette party." She declared, grabbing the glass to down it.
My lips parted and closed, I should have stopped her, warning her she wasn't meant to drink it all up at once, or she might get drunk despite the cocktail being rather sweet...I didn't
I was still on my first and she was done with her second. She slammed the glass on the counter, her eyes were a bit drowsy, the alcohol was slowly kicking in and her confidence got boosted.
"What next ?" Her expectant gaze met mine. I finally finished my mai tai. "Are you up for some shots?" She didn't give a verbal answer and just smiled completely carefree.
The night just started indeed. The bartender started lining up the shots. Cassandra, suddenly fearless, kept downing them one after another like it was a fruit punch.
Her hands stopped trembling with whatever emotions she was hiding, and her laughs were louder like we were the only ones that mattered. "You really didn't," she laughed at a random joke I said to lighten the mood.
"Never knew someone like you could have just an audacity." There seemed to be something in her laugh which made everything seem brighter. She was not the type who rambled on about her life while drunk. No that wasn't Cassandra, it felt like the drink made her forget her troubles for the moment.
"I tricked you out of all your money. Didn't I?" I placed the shot back on the counter. Damn, she was still dead on thinking I was a gigolo, it still baffles me what made her think that way.
Her lips pouted, then she waved off. "I don't care about the money, you can keep it." The song on the speaker changed, and she started humming. It was 'Did It First' by Ice Spice.
Her singing was off and I was barely holding back my laugh. She didn't care about my stiffening smile. Cassandra got on from her seat and started dancing and singing out loud.
The onlookers gave her curious glances, and some laughed at her. This wasn't the club downstairs, and she wasn't meant to dance here, but who was going to stop her when I made the rules?
Cassandra kept on spinning and dancing, laughing in between her lyrics. I didn't even realise my lips were curled up. If it wasn't enough to make herself the centre of attention, she rushed towards me to pull me out of my seat.
"You don't plan on making only me dance. Do you?" She asked, pulling me directly to the middle of the room, where she started dancing around me. My brow arched at her.
The laughs grew louder, and she tossed away her sash, reading bride to be before pulling me by the collar to her eye level.
"Stop standing rigid and dance Mr pretty boy. I paid for you, if I start running around naked, you'd better run along. Do you understand?" Someone was now a little boss lady.
"Yes ma'am. Your wish is my command." I agree holding back my laugh. She was the boss, although if she got drunk enough to run around naked, I would throw her over my shoulders. There was no way I would let anyone see her naked.
"Good then," she chimed and started leading the dance, luckily for me, I had a few moves to match her vibe. Song after song she got wilder by the second. I had to signal the guards to send everyone off the floor to give us a bit more privacy.
She owned the floor now. A slow song started playing, but she wasn't any less energetic. She took the initiative, placing my hand on her slender waist, which felt fragile in my grasp. I was a bit reluctant to get too close, scared of my control wavering
She didn't see the signs and leaned on me. Her bosoms pressed against my chest. Her muffled voice teased. "Now who is the chicken?" She taunted having no idea what her soft frame was doing to me or how intoxicating she smelled.
I still kept the grin, ignoring the subtle twitching from my slacks. I dug this pit for myself...
Cassandra laughed once more, she definitely felt my hardness. It was baffling how she found it funny instead of being scared. My lips could only twitch.
Her laugh died. Her gaze flicked away, and she hid her face against my shirt, pain trembling through her. My chest tightened; I pulled her closer, desperate to offer some small comfort.
Her little hand clutched my shirt, her face buried in my dark shirt. We continued dancing in a sombre mood. She didn't laugh again, instead, subtle whimpers escaped from her lips. Everything she was bottling up was now pouring out.
She didn't stop dancing, nor did her cries stop. Each sob was tearing me apart. I didn't have any words to say so I just let her. She wiggled in my hold, then slowly glanced up with those teary eyes, which almost made me weak in the knees.
Her lower lip was between her teeth. Her lips slowly parted. "Am I so boring you could never marry me?" That wasn't a casual question. Her eyes looked like her world depended on the answer.
I shook my head then leaned down. "You are many things but boring. Any man would be privileged to have you." The words came out naturally.
Her eyes glimmered with hope. "Really," she squealed excitedly. I nodded without a second thought. She hopped to grab my collar, pushing me against a nearby wall. Our foreheads were touching. "Would you give me your surname or better take mine then? Will you be the lucky man?" She asked, completely wasted and probably rumbling.
I laughed unable to hold it back any more. Can she get any bolder?
My fingers grazed her cheeks, wiping off her tears, before cupping them in my palms. "If you love my surname so much."
She smiled, and even the tears looked stunning. "You can't back down now, hubby. You just got a wife."
Still pondering on how lovely the word hubby sounded on the tip of her lips, something soft clashed against my lips, throwing every other thought out the window.
Her lips weren't gentle. They were fierce and hungry like the flames of hell consuming completely. She grabbed my hair and hauled me closer.
Fuck it.
I just found my new cravings and obsession I don't think I can ever get enough of.
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7.1
I sat alone at my long marble dining table, staring at a plate of cold truffle risotto. My husband, Jere, was late again, claiming he was stuck in a "war zone" of a board meeting for a multi-billion dollar merger.
A single Instagram notification shattered the silence. It was a photo of a candlelit birthday dinner, featuring a man's hand resting on a white tablecloth. I recognized the slight veins, the jagged scar on the thumb, and the navy-faced Patek Philippe watch I had spent six months tracking down as a wedding gift. Jere wasn't in a boardroom; he was celebrating his ex-girlfriend Irina's birthday while texting me to "don't wait up."
The next morning, I followed him to a VIP hospital wing. I watched through a cracked door as my husband cuddled a five-year-old boy and whispered tender promises to Irina. When he came home, he tried to buy my silence with a rare pink diamond bracelet, but I found the receipt: he had bought two identical ones. He had branded his wife and his mistress with matching jewelry, using hidden trackers to keep us both on a leash. When I confronted him, he didn't flinch. He coldly reminded me that he owned my father's massive debts and could send him to prison for insolvency fraud with one phone call.
"Stop with the attitude, Deliah," he said.
I felt like a ghost haunting my own life, trapped in a gilded cage by the man who paid for my mother's heart surgery while keeping a secret family across town. The humiliation peaked at our rescheduled anniversary dinner when Jere received a text, threw a stack of hundreds at me like I was a stranger, and abandoned me in a crowded restaurant to rush back to her.
"Pay the bill," he commanded before walking out.
Standing in the wreckage of a shattered crystal vase back at the penthouse, I realized my silence was the only thing keeping his empire standing. I pulled the crumpled divorce papers from my purse and signed my name with a steady hand. I wasn't just walking away; I was calling his sister to help me burn his perfect world to the ground.
8.3
I woke up in a bedroom that screamed old money, but the body I occupied felt sluggish and fragile. I was now Chris Olson, a man known as a pathetic failure who spent his marriage groveling at his wife's feet for a single look of approval.
Elizabeth didn't even wait for me to clear my head before she threw the divorce papers on the nightstand. She stood there in her silk robe, eyes cold as ice, demanding I sign them before breakfast so she could finally go public with her "White Moonlight," Greg.
"You're walking away with nothing," she snapped, her voice full of the disgust she'd harbored for years. She reminded me that my family had disowned me and that I'd be on the streets within a week without her charity.
As I sat up, a metallic, garlic-like scent on my breath confirmed a terrifying truth: the Olson family hadn't just disowned me; they had been micro-dosing me with arsenic for years. They wanted me weak and mentally unstable so they could split the inheritance without a fight.
The original Chris would have cried and begged for her to stay, but I just looked at her like she was a target. I realized then that my "loving" family and my "faithful" wife had been watching me die in slow motion, and neither of them had lifted a finger to stop it.
I signed the papers without reading a single line and walked out with nothing but a duffel bag and a rusted sedan. I didn't need her alimony; I had already called her greatest rival, Adelia Cherry, to discuss a merger that would rock the city.
"I'm not here to save this marriage," I told Elizabeth as I moved into the mansion right next door to hers. "I'm here to bury it, along with everyone who thought they could poison me and get away with it."
7.4
Tonight was supposed to be Cordelia's grand engagement party, the night she finally secured her future.
But an hour before the banquet, she received an anonymous video. Her fiancé was in the hotel's penthouse, tangled in the sheets with her stepsister. They had even paid off her trusted staff to keep her isolated.
Cordelia didn't shed a single tear. She walked onto the grand stage, hijacked the screens, and broadcasted their betrayal to hundreds of New York's elite. She tore up the multimillion-dollar prenup and threw the pieces in his face.
"The engagement is canceled. My legal team will seize your family's assets by tomorrow morning."
But instead of support, her own father violently grabbed her wrist, furious that she ruined their reputation. Her stepmother tried to slap her for the cameras, and her ex-fiancé threatened to completely destroy her career. Surrounded by the people who were supposed to be her family, she was treated like the villain.
Just as she was cornered, Justice Duncan, the most ruthless billionaire on Wall Street, stepped out of the shadows.
He offered her absolute protection and capital, but only if she signed a five-year contract marriage to mother his four-year-old heir.
But when Cordelia finally met the little boy, her blood ran completely cold.
The boy was the exact baby she was told she had miscarried four years ago. And the billionaire handing her the marriage contract was the same stranger who had taken him.
7.2
My family went bankrupt overnight, leaving me to face a mountain of predatory debt.
Instead of standing by my side, my billionaire fiancé's mother threw a five-million-dollar check on the marble table, demanding I take the money and disappear from her son's life forever.
Meanwhile, my former social circle mocked my downfall. They secretly took photos of me meeting with ruthless loan sharks, waiting for me to come crawling back to beg for charity.
I didn't give them the satisfaction. I legally took on my father's massive debt, threw the check back, and ruthlessly dumped my fiancé.
To stop my heartbroken mother from worrying, I lied and told her I had already found a new, reliable boyfriend.
But the lie was a ticking time bomb. My malicious rival even forced her way into my cramped apartment, demanding to meet this mysterious man, laughing that he must live in a dumpster.
I was suffocating under the pressure. I had nothing, and I had no idea how I was supposed to magically produce a husband to get these toxic people off my back.
Until a dying stranger I helped in the park made a final wish.
His grandson—my cold, aloof high school upperclassman, Caleb Barnes—handed me a watertight prenuptial agreement at the hospital.
"Marry me," Caleb said flatly. "I get to give my grandfather peace. You get a shield against your family."
I picked up the pen and signed my name.
8.8
After three years together, the man who had once promised to marry me, Babur Caldwell, threw me out the moment he got into Redmont University.
"Valeria, a pretty little fool who only knows how to dress up, how could you ever be worthy of someone like me, a future elite of Gilded Row?"
Later, when I, Valerie Quinn, became the Financial Queen admired by thousands, he knelt in front of me, sobbing, begging for another chance.
Holding the bouquet Kearney Smith had sent me, I answered in the same tone he had once used. "Sorry, Babur, someone as short-sighted as you isn't worthy of an elite like me."
9.8
Adeline's stepmother had secretly drugged her for years, turning a child genius into a drooling, mentally disabled laughingstock just so her stepsister could steal her life.
But when her greedy father sold her off to Griffin Herring—a violent, untouchable billionaire psychopath—to save his company, things took a deadly turn.
Before the wedding, Griffin attacked her in a dark alley, nearly snapping her neck before stealing her grandfather's silver necklace.
That necklace held a micro-drive with her family's deepest secrets, and without it, she had nothing.
Back at the estate, her situation only worsened. Her stepsister Damaris paraded around in the Herring family's diamond engagement gifts, trying to force-feed Adeline wet dog food on an Instagram live stream.
When Adeline's calculated "clumsiness" ruined the video, her furious father locked her in a damp, rusted basement.
"Give her to the psycho," her stepmother hissed through the door. "Let him lock her away forever."
Listening from the shadows, Adeline's fists clenched until her palms bled.
Her supposed mental fog wasn't a tragedy—it was a calculated assassination of her mind. They had destroyed her childhood and were now throwing her to a monster just to keep the billions.
The dull, empty look in Adeline's eyes vanished instantly, replaced by a razor-sharp, chilling clarity.
She pulled a thin surgical needle from her messy bun and picked the heavy iron padlock in ten seconds. It was time to break into the billionaire's penthouse, take back her necklace, and tear them all apart.