Betrayed By Him: Claimed By The Boss
After an exhausting fourteen-hour flight, Katia returned to her Upper East Side penthouse, expecting the quiet comfort of the life she had built.
Instead, she found a pair of familiar red stilettos in the foyer and her fiancé, Caleb, tangled in their bedsheets with his twenty-two-year-old assistant.
She didn't scream or cry. She simply took off her three-carat engagement ring, threw it at his bare chest, and demanded he buy out her half of the penthouse by Friday.
Seeking to numb the sickening disgust, she got blackout drunk and crashed at a luxury hotel, accidentally stumbling into the wrong suite.
Thinking the imposing man inside was a high-end escort hired by her friend, she threw him over her shoulder and spent a wild night with him.
The next morning, she left five thousand dollars on his nightstand with a lipstick-stained note.
"Good Job."
For six years, she had funded Caleb's dreams and built his startup from the ground up, only to be treated like a lifeless ATM.
With ruthless precision, she spent the next two months systematically bankrupting his company, cutting off his venture capital, and erasing his life's work.
She felt no heartbreak, only a cold, calculating need to cleanse herself of his betrayal.
But when Katia finally returned to corporate headquarters to co-lead a massive merger, she literally crashed into the new Vice President.
Strong arms caught her waist, and the sharp scent of cedarwood and whiskey hit her like a freight train.
"You came back," Jackson whispered, his eyes burning as he stared at the woman who had treated him like a cheap gigolo.
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Chapter 2
Katia walked out of the glass double doors of the luxury building.
Her bare feet were shoved hastily back into her black heels. She stepped onto the Manhattan pavement.
A sharp gust of October wind hit her face.
A violent shiver ripped through her body, rattling her bones and making her teeth click together.
She raised her hand, ignoring the dull sting in her palm where her nails had broken the skin, and waved at a passing yellow taxi.
The cab screeched to a halt against the curb.
She pulled the heavy door open and slid onto the cracked, cold leather seat.
"Where to?" the driver asked, his eyes meeting hers in the rearview mirror.
"Audrey Hale's lounge. SoHo," Katia said. Her voice was raspy, the words scratching against her dry throat.
She turned her head to look out the window.
A light drizzle began to fall, smearing the neon lights of the city into blurry, bleeding streaks across the glass.
She forced herself to take a deep breath, but her chest felt like it was wrapped in tight iron bands.
The taxi pulled up to an unmarked black door on a quiet street in SoHo.
Katia handed the driver a fifty-dollar bill and didn't wait for the change.
She pushed the door open and stepped out into the cold rain.
The drops hit her face, mixing with the cold sweat on her skin.
She walked up to the heavy steel door of the lounge and pushed it open.
A wall of deafening bass and electronic music slammed into her chest, vibrating against her ribs.
The air inside smelled of expensive perfume, sweat, and gin.
Katia pushed her way through the crowded, grinding bodies on the dance floor, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead.
She reached the mahogany bar.
The bartender, a tall guy with full tattoo sleeves, recognized her instantly. He slid a crisp white napkin across the polished wood.
"Katia. You look like hell."
"Dry martini. The strongest gin you have," she ordered, her voice cutting through the noise.
He placed the chilled glass in front of her.
Katia didn't bother with the olive. She picked up the glass and tipped her head back.
She swallowed the ice-cold liquid in one continuous, desperate gulp.
The alcohol burned a harsh, fiery trail down her throat. It hit her empty stomach like a lit match.
She coughed, her eyes watering, the edges of her vision blurring from the sharp sting.
"What the hell are you doing?" A voice cut through the heavy bass.
Audrey, wearing a skin-tight red dress, marched out of the VIP section, her heels clicking aggressively against the floor.
She reached Katia and immediately snatched the empty martini glass from her hand.
Audrey's dark eyes scanned Katia's pale face and rain-soaked clothes.
"Who did this? Who do I need to kill?" Audrey yelled over the music.
Katia turned her head. Her throat felt raw.
"Caleb," she whispered, the name tasting like ash and bile on her tongue.
Audrey's expression hardened instantly. The concern vanished, replaced by a cold, lethal fury.
She grabbed Katia's wrist and pulled her away from the bar, dragging her toward the back of the club.
Audrey pushed open the door to her private VIP room.
The heavy soundproof door clicked shut, instantly cutting off the thumping bass and the chaos of the club.
The silence in the room was heavy and suffocating.
Katia's knees buckled.
She collapsed onto the tufted leather sofa. She pulled off her damp blazer, letting it drop to the floor.
Audrey filled a glass with warm water from a pitcher and shoved it into Katia's hands.
"Drink. Now."
Katia took a sip. The warmth did nothing to thaw the ice in her veins.
She let out a dry, hollow laugh.
She stared at the blank wall and recounted the last thirty minutes. The red shoes. The open door. The white sheets.
Audrey grabbed a heavy crystal ashtray and slammed it onto the glass table.
The loud crack made Katia jump.
"That piece of shit," Audrey spat, her hands on her hips. "That absolute garbage human."
Katia leaned her head back against the leather. Her hands began to shake uncontrollably.
"I spent two years getting his startup funded, Audrey. I begged my contacts. I vouched for him."
Her voice cracked, the first sign of the dam breaking.
"I don't even feel heartbroken. I just feel... dirty. I feel sick."
Audrey moved to the sofa. She sat down and wrapped her arms tightly around Katia's thin shoulders.
She pulled Katia against her chest.
The physical contact shattered the last of Katia's control.
A sob tore out of her throat. It was an ugly, guttural sound that scraped against her vocal cords.
Tears spilled over her eyelashes, hot and fast, soaking into the fabric of Audrey's red dress.
Audrey stroked her hair, her eyes narrowing at the wall with a dark, calculating look.
"I know guys," Audrey said softly, her voice deadly serious. "I can have his office trashed by morning. His computers smashed. Everything."
Katia shook her head against Audrey's shoulder.
She pulled back, her chest heaving as she gasped for air.
She reached into her purse, pulled out a tissue, and wiped the wetness from her cheeks.
She pressed her thumb hard into her knuckle. "No."
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9.7
Luna Elena Frost was never chosen, only assigned.
Bound to Alpha Alaric Ashbourne through a cold contractual marriage, she endures three years as a Luna in name only. He never comes home, never defends her, and never looks at her, while his heart belongs to another woman.
At his grandmother's funeral, Alaric publicly dissolves their marriage, humiliating Elena before the entire pack. In that moment, she finally understands the truth. She was never wanted.
But the Moon has not abandoned her.
A forgotten night resurfaces. Her long-silent wolf begins to awaken. And secrets buried within her bloodline start to surface, drawing danger from every direction.
Cast out by the pack that once used her, Elena must flee, survive, and uncover her true power.
Only then does the Alpha realize his mistake.
By the time he turns back in regret, the Luna he rejected may already be gone forever.
9.7
Clarissa rushed into a crowded nightclub for one simple reason: to save her wildly drunk best friend.
But her ruthless billionaire husband, Giovanny, was watching from the VIP room. After effortlessly ruining a man just for grabbing her wrist, Giovanny punished Clarissa for breaching their public image contract with an impossible curfew.
When she inevitably arrived back at his penthouse late, he didn't just yell. He forced her to her knees by his bathtub to wash his back, making her watch an explicit, humiliating video as punishment.
A sudden family medical emergency dragged them to his parents' estate. Still in her soaked, transparent dress and his misbuttoned shirt, Giovanny's mother caught them. She joyfully assumed they had been passionately intimate.
Instead of clearing her name, Giovanny pulled Clarissa close and lied to his mother's face.
"We are working very hard on the family's future, Mother."
He locked her in the guest suite, tossed a sheer silk nightgown on the bed, and literally shattered the tablet holding their "no-contact" prenuptial agreement. He then slapped a file against the window—he had secretly bought all her father's toxic debt.
Clarissa was terrified. They were supposed to be business allies bound by a strict contract. Why was he suddenly acting like a predator determined to own her body and soul?
"Give me an heir, or your father goes to federal prison," he whispered.
Stripped of all choices, Clarissa picked up the white silk. She would surrender tonight to save her family, but as his shadow swallowed her, she made a silent vow to survive this monster, and one day, tear his empire to the ground.
8.9
My father was marrying a gold-digger, the mother of my cheating ex-boyfriend.
To end the charade, I crashed their luxury wedding with a ten-foot funeral wreath.
In front of hundreds of elites, my father slapped me across the face, calling me a vicious bitch while his new wife smiled in victory.
I triggered the estate's fire system to ruin them, but a terrifying stranger in the VIP section bypassed my military-grade hack in seconds.
He was Kavon Velasquez, a dangerous billionaire heir who had been missing for twelve years.
Instead of exposing me, he shielded me from my father's second blow.
When my pathetic ex tried to drag me away, I grabbed Kavon and kissed him to humiliate my ex.
I shoved a $500,000 check into Kavon's pocket as hush money and left.
I thought that was the end of it.
But why did this apex predator move into the penthouse right next to mine at 2 AM?
Why did he violently crush my ex's face the next morning just for grabbing my arm?
"She is my woman. If you ever come within ten feet of her again, I will bury you."
I didn't understand why a man with lethal skills was suddenly hunting me.
Then I found out he had just blackmailed my father with undeniable proof of corporate money laundering.
His demand wasn't money. It was me.
He ordered my father to announce our engagement by tomorrow sunset, and this dangerous game officially began.
9.7
I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him.
Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister.
Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair.
I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people.
But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse.
I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges.
The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill.
When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell.
But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone.
His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life.
I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me.
Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference.
"I'll do it, but I control the venue."
I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.
8.7
Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them.
But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father.
That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago.
Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company.
Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate.
To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison.
Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall.
"Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!"
Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child.
Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone.
He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown?
With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered.
Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.
9.7
Charity woke up in a hellish, acid-rain-soaked slum, trapped inside a bloated body covered in festering, toxic sores. She was the exiled Grand Princess of the Empire.
But the real nightmare wasn't her ruined body. It was the fact that the original owner had used her royal authority to force genetic marriage contracts onto four top-tier, powerful men.
Now, she was bound to them, and they absolutely loathed her.
Hjalmar, chained to a bed in her filthy room, smiled like a feral beast and promised to rip her head off the second his chains snapped.
Braden, a ruthless military officer, saved her from a mutated rat only to look at her with pure disgust.
"If you want to die, go die somewhere else. Don't dirty my patrol sector."
Even the locals mocked her fallen status, and a wealthy heiress publicly framed her for stealing a hundred-thousand-coin energy core just to see her rot in a dark cell.
She was universally despised, physically repulsive, and a lethal biological toxin gave her exactly 59 days left to live. How was she supposed to survive this absolute hell when her starting affection with her partners was at negative 100?
Then, a mechanical voice echoed in her skull, activating a survival system. To purge the poison, she had to harvest emotional energy by making these four men fall for her. Charity accepted the mandate, unlocked a top-tier culinary skill, and grabbed a rusted meat cleaver to start her counterattack.