Billionaire's Placeholder: Now Watch Me Shine
For two years, I was the perfect shadow of another woman. I wore the silk robes Brittain Austin bought, styled my hair exactly how he liked, and spoke in a voice pitched half an octave higher than my own. I was a placeholder, a living statue in a minimalist Manhattan penthouse, waiting for a man who looked at me but never actually saw me.
Everything shattered when a news alert flashed on my phone: "Caryn Newman Spotted at JFK." The original was back. The woman I was hired to mimic had returned to claim her throne, and my secret two-year contract as her stand-in was set to expire in three days.
Brittain didn't even give me the courtesy of a phone call. While he was supposed to be on a business trip, photos surfaced of him shielding Caryn from the paparazzi, his hand on her waist with a tenderness he never showed me. When I walked into his office to return his keys, he didn't look guilty; he just looked annoyed. He pulled out a checkbook and asked, "How much for the hurt feelings?" When I refused his money, he coldly ordered his assistant to freeze every one of my accounts before I even reached the elevator.
I stood on the sidewalk with zero dollars, realizing that to him, I wasn't a partner—I was just an expired lease. I had spent two years erasing my soul to fit into his world, only to be tossed out like trash the moment the real thing came home.
But Brittain forgot one thing: before I was his doll, I was an actress. I pulled my secret weapon from under the bed—a notebook and a raw film cut he never knew existed. I called my agent and launched a high-profile "showmance" with my co-star that set the internet on fire.
As I blocked Brittain's number and moved into a dusty apartment in Queens, I realized the show wasn't over. For the first time, I was the leading lady.
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Chapter 3
The coffee shop was tucked away in the West Village, dark and smelling of roasted beans. Cara sat in a booth with Zack, going over the timeline for the fake romance rollout.
Suddenly, the bell above the door jingled aggressively. Cara looked up. Hali Moody walked in. She wasn't alone. She had two of her minions with her. She scanned the room, locked eyes with Cara, and marched over.
She didn't say hello. She slammed an iPad onto the table. The screen was bright, illuminating the dim corner.
"Thought you should see this," Hali said. "Since you clearly don't check the news."
Cara looked down. It was a photo. High resolution. Paparazzi style.
The location tag said JFK International Airport.
In the center of the frame was Brittain. He was wearing his signature charcoal coat. But he wasn't looking at his phone. He was looking at the woman next to him.
Caryn Newman.
She looked fragile. She was wearing white-she still insisted on that. Brittain's hand was resting on the small of her back. It was a protective gesture. A possessive gesture. It was the way a man touches something precious. He had never touched Cara like that in public. With Cara, he walked a step ahead. With Caryn, he was a shield.
Cara's stomach dropped. It felt like she had swallowed a stone.
"Looks like your contract is expired," Hali sneered. "The placeholder is officially retired."
Zack started to stand up. "Hey, watch it-"
Cara put a hand on Zack's arm to stop him. Her fingers were cold. She kept her face completely blank. She had practiced this face for two years.
"Thanks for the update, Hali," Cara said. Her voice was steady, boring even. "Saves me the trouble of refreshing my feed."
Hali blinked. She wanted tears. She wanted a scene. When she didn't get it, she snatched the iPad back.
"You're pathetic," she spat, and turned on her heel.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Cara crumbled. Her shoulders slumped. She grabbed her water glass, but her hand shook so hard water sloshed over the rim.
She pulled out her phone. She opened her text thread with Brittain. The last message was hers. Safe travels.
Read: Tuesday 9:00 AM.
He hadn't told her. He hadn't warned her. He just let her find out through a gossipmonger in a coffee shop.
It wasn't the breakup that hurt. She knew that was coming. It was the erasure. To him, she wasn't even worth a goodbye text. She was furniture.
She took a sip of water. It tasted like metal.
"Zack," Cara said. Her voice was hard now. "Launch Plan B. I want the rumors about me and Brady everywhere by tonight."
Zack looked nervous. "The contract penalty..."
"I'll handle Brittain," Cara said.
She stood up. She walked out of the coffee shop into the biting wind. She dialed Brittain's private number.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Click.
He sent her to voicemail.
That was it. The final disrespect.
She hailed a taxi. "Austin Media Tower," she told the driver.
She pulled a compact mirror out of her bag. She looked at her pale lips. She took out a tube of lipstick. Not the nude shade Brittain liked. A deep, blood red. She applied it thick. She darkened her eyebrows.
She wasn't going there to beg. She was going there to burn the bridge.
The taxi stopped in front of the glass monolith. She looked up at the top floor.
She stepped out. Her heels clicked against the pavement like gunshots.
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7.6
Kaylee's family was drowning in debt, and her stepmother locked her inside a freezing bedroom.
To save their bankrupt company, they decided to sell her off to a sixty-five-year-old man with a disgusting reputation.
They cut off her allowance and confiscated the only precious keepsake her dead mother had ever left her.
"Put on the engagement dress, or I will smash your mother's crystal box into a million pieces."
Terrified of the old man, Kaylee risked her life by jumping out of the second-story window into a violent storm.
She hit the muddy ground hard, twisting her ankle and tearing her skin on rusted iron gates as she escaped into the pitch-black night.
Dragging her bleeding bare feet across the cold sand, her lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass.
She didn't understand why she had to be the sacrifice for their endless greed, or how they could be so cruel as to hold her dead mother's memory hostage.
She had absolutely nowhere to go, and the old man's cars were already pulling into the estate to claim her.
Cornered by the blinding headlights of a motorcade on the beach, she threw herself at the feet of Ernest Blackwell, the most ruthless billionaire in New York.
"Marry me! You need a wife, and I need a husband right now!"
To buy her freedom and crush the family that sold her, she chose to sign a twenty-million-dollar fake marriage contract with the devil himself.
9.0
Once a pampered princess, Alaina now clutched a deactivated American Express card, staring out at Central Park. Her family’s fortune was gone, her life, over.
Her family's Hamptons estate, a four-generation legacy, was seized by Dyer Capital. The name hit her: Hardin Dyer, the poor boy she’d once scorned, had returned.
Hardin marched in, serving a divorce agreement. He'd orchestrated her family's downfall for revenge, giving her 24 hours to vacate his property. Penniless, her father faced prison, needing $50 million. Her mother forced her to beg Hardin, who sneered, offering the money for her body. Alaina ripped up the contract.
Hours later, her father had a heart attack. Desperate, she became "Lexi," a club girl enduring humiliation. In the Viper Room, Hardin's lackeys demanded she lick whiskey off his shoe for $10,000. Hardin watched. Outside, her brother Ashton's hand was threatened for a $3 million debt. Spirit shattered, Alaina returned, knelt on broken glass, offering to sign. But Hardin declared her family "dead," offering $10 million for her body, commanding her to use her mouth.
In a furious act of defiance, Alaina threw whiskey in his face, snatched the check, and fled. Yet, when he finally took her, a searing, foreign pain and blood on the sheets revealed a shocking truth: he had never touched her three years ago. Why had he let her believe such a monstrous lie?
9.2
She's stubborn, young, and craving love.
He's rich, famous, and impossible to read.
When 19 year old Liana Harper is suddenly arranged to marry Ethan Blackwell, the continent's most popular pop idol and heir to a vast empire, their worlds collide in a storm of arrogance, cold stares, and fiery clashes.
Thrown together by family pressure, mismatched personalities, and high expectations, Liana and Ethan must navigate a life neither of them chose filled with secrets, jealousy, and unexpected emotions.
Can a stubborn girl and a grumpy superstar survive a forced marriage? Or will their differences tear them apart before love even has a chance?
Enemies forced into marriage sparks everywhere.
8.2
They say revenge is a dish best served cold.
Mine's been chilling for five years.
The night James Reed kicked me out of his life, I was pregnant, penniless, and naive enough to believe love mattered more than money.
He taught me better. When you're bleeding out in the rain, clutching your stomach while your best friend laughs from his doorway, you learn exactly what you're worth to people like them.
Zero.
But the woman who nearly died that night? She stayed dead. The one who came back is someone else entirely.
Anna Quinn. Lost daughter of California's most powerful family. CEO of her own pharmaceutical empire. And the silent majority shareholder in James Reed's failing company.
He's about to learn what happens when you build an empire on stolen foundations. His marriage has cracks he doesn't see. And the investors keeping him afloat? They answer to me now.
He thinks he's untouchable. That my formula made him invincible.
But success built on stolen work has a way of crumbling when the original genius decides to pull the rug out.
I don't want him back.
I want him ruined.
And this time, I'm the one holding all the cards.
9.8
I stood at my mother's open grave in the freezing rain, my heels sinking into the mud. The space beside me was empty. My husband, Hilliard Holloway, had promised to cherish me in bad times, but apparently, burying my mother didn't fit into his busy schedule.
While the priest's voice droned on, a news alert lit up my phone. It was a livestream of the Metropolitan Charity Gala. There was Hilliard, looking impeccable in a custom tuxedo, with his ex-girlfriend Charla English draped over his arm. The headline read: "Holloway & English: A Power Couple Reunited?"
When he finally returned to our penthouse at 2 AM, he didn't come alone-he brought Charla with him. He claimed she'd had a "medical emergency" at the gala and couldn't be left alone. I found a Tiffany diamond necklace on our coffee table meant for her birthday, and a smudge of her signature red lipstick on his collar. When I confronted him, he simply told me to stop being "hysterical" and "acting like a child."
He had no idea I was seven months pregnant with his child. He thought so little of my grief that he didn't even bother to craft a convincing lie, laughing with his mistress in our home while I sat in the dark with a shattered heart and a secret life growing inside me.
"He doesn't deserve us," I whispered to the darkness. I didn't scream or beg. I simply left a folder on his desk containing signed divorce papers and a forged medical report for a terminated pregnancy. I disappeared into the night, letting him believe he had successfully killed his own legacy through his neglect.
Five years later, Hilliard walked into "The Vault," the city's most exclusive underground auction, looking for a broker to manage his estate. He didn't recognize me behind my Venetian mask, but he couldn't ignore the neon pink graffiti on his armored Maybach that read "DEADBEAT." He had no clue that the three brilliant triplets currently hacking his security system were the very children he thought had been erased years ago. This time, I wasn't just a wife in the way; I was the one holding all the cards.
8.1
I was just a cleaner making fifteen dollars an hour, scrubbing floors to hide from a past that haunted me.
But when I walked into a billionaire's pristine penthouse, the suffocating visions hit me again. I saw a woman brutally murdered in a room that had been bleached spotless.
I called 911, and that brought the one man I had spent three years running from right to my door: NYPD Captain Kelvin O'Brien.
The patrol cops wanted to lock me up because I found the hidden blood too fast. To avoid a psych ward, I had to pretend my horrific supernatural visions were just brilliant deductive logic.
I had to physically endure the phantom sensation of the victim's throat being crushed and poison burning her stomach. All while Kelvin cornered me, demanding to know why I abandoned him and my title as the department's greatest asset, "The Oracle."
I didn't want to look at dead bodies anymore. I didn't want to feel their agonizing deaths. Why couldn't they just let me disappear?
But when the victim's wealthy husband walked into the precinct with a smug smile, ready to get away with murder, I couldn't stand it.
I forced myself to relive the victim's dying moments, guiding Kelvin to cut open her decomposed stomach to find the diamond ring she had swallowed.
"We have your blood inside her stomach."
His perfect alibi was shattered. But when we found an underground syndicate token hidden in his wallet, I knew my quiet life was over.