Bought By The Man Who Hates Me
I sat at a mahogany table in River Oaks, clutching the strap of a pilled black dress from a life I’d lost five years ago. I was an exile in a world of old money, just trying to survive a dinner party I didn't belong in.
Then the doors opened, and Baron Lowery walked in. He was no longer the boy I’d loved, but a powerful man with eyes like a storm front. When the host asked if we’d met, Baron didn't even blink.
"I don't know her," he said.
The erasure was a physical blow. His new girlfriend spent the night mocking my "quaint" legal aid work and calling me a washed-up gold digger. Baron didn't defend me; he watched my humiliation with a cold, predatory stillness. During a game of Truth or Dare, he stared me down, waiting for a confession. To protect his career and the secret of my father’s federal crimes, I looked him in the eye and told the ultimate lie: "No regrets."
He retaliated by pinning me against a concrete wall in a dark stairwell, crushing his mouth to mine in a kiss that felt like a punishment. He told me I wasn't worth the effort and left me. I retreated to my real life—a moldy trailer and a blackmailer named Harvey who was forcing me into a marriage to save my father from prison.
I thought I’d hit rock bottom until Baron’s silver Bentley pulled up to my slum. He didn't come to apologize. He flipped open a checkbook, scribbled fifty thousand dollars, and held it out like I was a common streetwalker.
"One night," he demanded. "Do whatever I say, and it's yours."
I looked at the man I’d sacrificed my entire soul for and realized he’d finally become the monster I'd tried to save him from. I shoved the check back in his face and ran into the rain, leaving the billionaire staring at the trailer park, unable to understand why the "gold digger" he hated so much wouldn't take his money.
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Chapter 5
Bethel turned to flee, but Baron moved with terrifying speed. He took the stairs two at a time, his long legs eating up the distance between them.
Before she could reach the door handle, his hand clamped around her wrist. His grip was iron, hot and unyielding.
He spun her around and slammed her back against the concrete wall.
The impact knocked the breath out of her. Baron stepped in, placing his hands on the wall on either side of her head, caging her in.
He was close. Too close. She could smell the whiskey on his breath, mixed with the smoke. It was a scent that used to mean safety, home. Now it smelled like danger.
"Baron, stop," she gasped, her hands coming up to push against his chest. It was like pushing against a brick wall.
He lowered his head until his nose was almost touching hers. "No regrets? Really?"
He was obsessed with the answer. It was eating him alive.
"You're drunk," Bethel whispered, turning her face away.
He grabbed her chin, his fingers digging into her jaw, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were bloodshot, filled with a chaotic mix of fury and desire.
"Look at me," he commanded. "Tell me again. Look me in the eye and tell me you don't regret it."
Bethel stared into the grey depths of his eyes. She saw the pain there, raw and bleeding. She wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to tell him everything.
But she couldn't.
"I..."
She didn't get the word out.
Baron crashed his mouth onto hers.
It wasn't a kiss. It was an assault. It was punishment. His lips were hard, demanding, bruising. He ground his mouth against hers, forcing her lips apart.
Bethel let out a muffled cry of shock. She struggled, hitting his chest, but he caught both her wrists in one of his large hands and pinned them above her head against the wall.
He was overwhelming her. His tongue invaded her mouth, tasting of bitterness and alcohol. For a second, just a split second, Bethel's body betrayed her. Her knees went weak. The familiarity of him, the taste of him, triggered a muscle memory of love that five years hadn't erased.
A tear leaked from her eye, sliding down her cheek to mingle with their kissing mouths.
Baron tasted the salt.
He froze.
He tore his mouth away, his chest heaving. He stared at her, his eyes wild. He looked at her wet lips, at the tear tracking down her face.
He released her wrists as if they burned him.
Bethel slumped against the wall, gasping for air, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Baron stepped back. He adjusted his tie, his face shutting down. The mask of the cold, elite engineer slammed back into place.
"You're right," he said, his voice ice cold. "You aren't worth the regret."
He looked at her with pure disdain.
"Disappear, Bethel. If I see you in Houston again, I won't be this polite."
He turned and pushed through the stairwell door, leaving her alone in the dark.
Bethel slid down the wall until she hit the concrete floor. She pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face in her arms, sobbing silently into the darkness.
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7.1
Hana never planned to fall into the world of Kang Jae-Hyun.
She was just a struggling young woman trying to support her family when a single mistake brought her face-to-face with Seoul's coldest and most powerful CEO. What began as a contract - a fake engagement meant to satisfy a ruthless family and protect a fragile empire - quickly turns into something far more dangerous.
Behind Jae-Hyun's flawless image lies grief, pressure, and a heart he locked away long ago. Behind Hana's warm smile is quiet resilience and scars she never talks about.
As secrets surface, enemies close in, and the line between pretend and real begins to blur, Hana must decide:
Was this relationship ever just business - or was it always fate?
A slow-burn romance filled with tension, secrets, and a love that wasn't supposed to happen.
8.4
For three years, Aletha sold her soul to her adoptive family, enduring a toxic, loveless marriage to Wall Street tyrant Kristopher.
But the illusion shattered when Kristopher brought his crying mistress into Aletha's ER.
He violently shoved Aletha into a metal cart just because she applied standard medical pressure to the mistress's minor scratch.
"If you ever handle her like that again, I will have your medical license revoked."
The nightmare quickly escalated. Kristopher froze Aletha's bank cards, publicly humiliated her, and forced her to hand over a priceless gown to his mistress.
When he was injured in a car crash protecting the mistress, Aletha flawlessly stitched his hand back together.
In return, he dragged her to a freezing warehouse at 3 AM to illegally save the mistress's criminal brother, only to abandon Aletha alone in the dangerous streets of Brooklyn.
Her adoptive parents didn't care if she lived or died. They only called to scream at her, demanding she get on her knees and beg Kristopher to restore their company's funding.
Staring at her bruised reflection, Aletha felt entirely hollowed out. She couldn't understand why her absolute submission only bought her betrayal and abuse from everyone she called family.
But as the tears dried, the fear that had controlled her evaporated, replaced by cold steel.
She opened her hidden wall safe and pulled out the documents proving she was "Lan," the world's most sought-after millionaire designer.
Aletha shredded her family's contract, put on a sharp black power suit, and headed to her husband's company.
This time, she wasn't going to beg.
9.6
Haylie waited nervously at the Wall Street charity gala for her boyfriend Bryan, but a spiked drink hit her hard, leaving her stumbling into a VIP lounge.
There, Chester Steele, the ruthless CEO of Steele Industrial, found her—drugged and vulnerable. What started as a frantic claiming in the shadows ended with him whispering she was his.
But moments later, a security alert shattered everything: data breach traced to Haylie's terminal. Chester's fury exploded. He saw her brush past a Logan Group rival on footage and dumped her in the rain, firing her as a corporate spy.
Bryan answered her desperate call with ice: "It's over." Reporters swarmed her door, branding her a traitor. Arrested at the office by FBI agents, she watched smug coworker Erin wave goodbye.
Thrown in a cell, chained and grilled with fake evidence—offshore accounts in her name—Haylie learned the worst: charges now included her sick father, Ernest, framed for laundering the leak money. Plead guilty or he dies in prison.
Innocent and raging, she couldn't fathom who planted it all—the gala bump, the logs, the forgeries. Why her? Who hated her enough to destroy her life?
Chester burst in, posting unlimited bail but forcing her signature on a slave contract: live in his penthouse, serve him 24/7. As she collapsed in his arms, trapped in his gilded cage, Haylie vowed silently—she'd uncover the real traitor and make them pay.
9.0
After giving birth, I lost my beauty when I started gaining weight in all the wrong places.
Stretch marks. Soft stomach. Tired eyes.
The same body that carried our child became the body my husband couldn't stand to look at.
"I can't take you anywhere like this."
That was what Marcus Hawthorne my powerful, untouchable CEO husband said to me the night he stopped bringing me to events.
The whispers started after that.
She let herself go.
He deserves better.
How embarrassing for a man like him.
I heard them all.
And Marcus?
He never defended me.
Instead, he grew colder crueler and distant each day.
The same man I sacrificed my everything for made me feel like I was no longer worth loving.
And when tragedy struck and I lost the only thing keeping me togheter -our child.
I realized the bitter truth not only was I meant to grieve a failed marriage alone but a dead child too because Marcus didn't hesitate to replace us with his new family.
And that was the breaking point for me.
Determined to start over, I fled the country for my own sanity.
Worked on the weight that had made me feel unattractive.
Rebuilt the career I had abandoned for love until I became the successful woman I was always meant to be.
Now seven years later I'm back.
And guess who can't take his eyes of my new body?
Marcus!
Only he isn't the man I left behind. He's now being haunted with a very serious problem.
One that only I could help him with and he's ready to do whatever it takes to get me back.
But here's the problem.
The woman who would have forgiven him no longer exists.
And this woman here?
She's not sure if she want to have anything to do with him again.
8.8
After eleven years in a maximum-security black site, ex-Delta Force operator Alton Combs was paroled and exiled to a toxic Appalachian wasteland.
The corrupt town mayor thought he was bullying a broken man, tricking Alton into trading his family's prime estate for a poisoned, worthless shale field.
The locals treated Alton like a rabid beast, spitting on his shoes and waiting for him to rot in a collapsed cabin. But they had no idea the "worthless" land hid a billion-dollar rare-earth mineral vein. While surviving the town's hostility, Alton found a freezing baby girl dumped in a biohazard bin with needle marks on her tiny arm.
He took her in, named her Eden, and built an electrified fortress guarded by a tamed mountain lion and a rattlesnake. He spent the next seven years quietly extracting the minerals to build a massive mining empire, raising the girl not as a victim, but as a ruthless apex predator.
Hundreds of miles away in Washington D.C., a high-ranking Pentagon official wept over an empty grave, completely unaware that his evil second wife had ordered his infant daughter thrown to the wolves. He also didn't know the baby had been rescued by the most dangerous killing machine alive.
Now, his parole was officially over.
Alton handed his seven-year-old daughter an elite academy acceptance letter.
"If the dogs try to bite you, you tear their throats out. I will handle the bodies."
Stepping into a bulletproof Hummer, the undisputed king of the valley prepared to unleash his little wolf into the human world.
8.9
I lived as the "scarred ghost" of the Stephens penthouse, a wife kept in the shadows because my facial burns offended my billionaire husband's aesthetic. For years, I endured Kason's coldness and my family's abuse, a submissive puppet who believed she had nowhere else to go.
The end came with a blue folder tossed onto my silk sheets. Kason's mistress was back, and he wanted me out by sunset, offering a five-million-dollar "silence fee" to go hide my face in the countryside.
The betrayal cut deep when I discovered my father had already traded my divorce for a corporate bailout. My step-sister mocked my "trashy" appearance at a high-end boutique, while the sales staff treated me like a common thief. At home, my father threatened to cut off my mother's life-saving medicine unless I crawled back to Kason to beg for a better deal.
I was the girl who took the blame for a fire she didn't start, the wife who worshipped a man who never looked her in the eye, and the daughter used as a human bargaining chip. I was supposed to be broken, penniless, and desperate.
But the woman who stood up wasn't the weak Elease Finch anymore; she was Phoenix, a tactical predator with a $500 million secret. I signed the divorce papers without a single tear, walked past my stunned husband, and wiped the Finch family's bank accounts clean with a few taps on my phone.
"Your money is dirty," I told Kason with a cold smile. "I prefer clean hands."
The cage is open, the hunt has begun, and I'm starting with the people who thought a scar made me weak.