Bound By Pain: The Billionaire's Captive
I ran through the freezing rain, desperate to escape the Pennington estate. My adoptive family had raised me for one purpose: to be sold off as a bargaining chip in a wealthy arranged marriage.
But before I could reach the highway, I was cornered. Not just by my family's cruel guards, but by Hollis Wall—a terrifying, ruthless billionaire who snapped my tormentor's wrist and dragged me into his car. He didn't want a ransom. He threw a prenuptial agreement in my lap.
I thought he was insane until he took a scalpel to his own arm, and a burning agony ripped across my flawless skin. Because of a near-drowning accident three years ago, our nervous systems were linked. Every time I bled, he felt the agony. He locked me in his fortress to keep me safe, but when I finally escaped back to my adoptive parents, they didn't protect me. Instead, my adoptive father smiled and showed me a live video of my biological father on life support, a guard's hand hovering over the plug.
"You will marry Douglas Cherry tomorrow, or your father dies," he sneered.
My own family was willing to murder my only real flesh and blood just to secure their wealth. I collapsed onto the cold marble floor, my heart crushed in a vice of absolute, suffocating despair.
"I'll marry him," I sobbed, surrendering to the darkness.
But miles away, in his dark study, the ruthless Hollis Wall violently collapsed to the floor, gasping for air as my severe panic attack bled directly into his chest. Our twisted bond was killing him, and I knew he would tear the city apart to find me.
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Chapter 2
Carole lunged for the door handle. She pulled it hard, but it did not budge. The child locks were engaged.
Hollis slowly turned his head. His eyes were cold and empty.
"Keep moving," Hollis said. "And I promise you will wish you stayed in the mud."
"Who are you?" Carole yelled, her voice shaking. "You have no right to take me!"
Before Hollis could answer, a loud crash shook the Maybach.
Carole looked in the rearview mirror. Three black SUVs were riding their bumper. The Pennington guards had caught up.
Another violent jolt hit the car. Carole lost her balance. Her forehead slammed hard against the reinforced glass of the window.
A dull thud echoed in the cabin. Carole groaned, holding her head.
At the exact same second, Hollis let out a sharp hiss. He grabbed his own forehead. His face lost all color. His chest heaved, and his eyes turned murderous.
"Do I return fire, sir?" K. Sterling asked, gripping the steering wheel.
"Get rid of them," Hollis ground out through clenched teeth.
Sterling yanked the steering wheel. The Maybach drifted around a sharp curve. The heavy rear bumper clipped the first SUV, sending it spinning into the metal guardrail.
The other two SUVs swerved past the wreckage and kept coming.
Hollis reached under his seat. He pulled out a handgun with a silencer attached. He rolled down his window.
The cold wind blasted into the car. Hollis leaned out, squinting against the freezing rain and the severe, throbbing pain pounding behind his eyes. His first shot went wide, ricocheting off the pursuing SUV's side panel. He cursed under his breath, taking a sharp, agonizing breath to steady his trembling hand, and fired again. This time, the bullet found the tire.
The front tire of the pursuing SUV exploded. The vehicle flipped over, sparks flying across the wet asphalt.
The final SUV tried to speed up and cut them off. Sterling slammed the brakes and turned sharply into an abandoned warehouse district. The Maybach tore through an open loading bay. The Pennington SUV followed right behind.
Sterling hit the brakes. The Maybach slid to a halt inside the dark warehouse.
The Pennington SUV stopped, but it was instantly surrounded by ten heavily armed men stepping out of the shadows. Wall family security.
Hollis kicked his door open. He marched toward the SUV. His men had already dragged the driver out onto the concrete.
Hollis pressed the barrel of his gun against the guard's temple.
"Please," the guard begged, shaking violently. "Adalberto ordered us to bring her back."
Hollis stared at him with dead eyes. He flipped the gun and smashed the heavy metal grip directly into the guard's kneecap. The bone shattered.
"Crawl back and tell him she is mine," Hollis said.
Carole watched through the window. Her stomach twisted into a tight knot. The violence was casual to him.
Hollis turned around. He walked back to the Maybach, bringing the smell of rain and blood with him.
He got into the back seat. The moment the door closed, he suddenly grabbed his chest. He let out a low groan and leaned forward. Sweat formed on his forehead.
Carole stared at him. Her own forehead was throbbing from hitting the window. She noticed Hollis was rubbing the exact same spot on his head.
She looked down at her hands. She pinched the back of her left hand with her fingernails.
Hollis's left eyebrow twitched.
Carole's breath hitched. A crazy, impossible thought entered her mind. She reached down and pinched her own thigh as hard as she could.
Hollis sucked in a sharp breath. He turned his head and glared at her.
"Stop doing that," Hollis snarled, his voice vibrating with rage.
Carole pressed her back against the door. "What did you do to me?"
"You did this to yourself," Hollis said, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Sterling handed a clean handkerchief over his shoulder. "Sir, we should go."
Hollis grabbed Carole's wrist. His fingers dug into her skin like steel.
"From this second on," Hollis said, his face inches from hers. "You are not allowed to feel any pain. Do you understand me?"
Carole tried to pull her arm away, but he did not let go.
The Maybach drove out of the warehouse and back into the night. Carole looked down at her red wrist. She was tied to a monster, and she had no idea how to break the chain.
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7.9
I woke up in a sterile hospital room, my head split open from a horrific car crash.
But the pain in my skull was nothing compared to the memory burned into my retinas just before the impact: my billionaire husband, Dawson, walking into a luxury hotel with a woman who looked exactly like his dead first love.
When Dawson finally arrived at the ward, there was no panic or relief in his eyes. He just coldly looked at my bloody bandages.
"Your reckless driving just forced me to postpone the quarterly board meeting."
Even our seven-year-old son, who I almost died giving birth to, didn't spare me a single glance. He kicked my hospital bed in annoyance.
"The Wi-Fi here is garbage. You're a bad mom! Dad said Aunt Angelita should be the one living with us!"
My blood turned to ice. For five years, I had bent over backward, wearing the hideous pale dresses he picked, starving myself to maintain a fragile figure, all to be a perfect, obedient substitute for a ghost.
And this was what I got. An unfaithful husband who would rather bury me in debt than grant me a divorce, and a son who wished I was dead.
The weak, subservient Charlene died on that wet asphalt.
When the doctor pointed to Dawson and asked for his name, I looked at my husband with a hollow, defensive stare.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
Using retrograde amnesia as my shield, I was going to tear their perfect world apart.
7.6
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.
8.6
For two years, I was trapped behind my own eyes, a prisoner in my own skull.
A crazed fan had hijacked my body after a brutal car crash, wearing my skin like a cheap suit.
When my soul finally locked back into my flesh in a cramped hospital room, I realized she had destroyed everything I built.
This parasitic stalker had drained my massive fortune to zero, buying luxury gifts for a mediocre actor and turning me into the internet's most hated woman.
My phone was flooded with death threats, and the hashtag demanding I go to hell was trending at number one.
Even the hospital nurses despised me. One marched into my room, raising her hand to violently slap my pale cheek.
"You psychotic bitch, you make me sick!"
Worse, my sprawling Beverly Hills estate had been foreclosed and sold to a mysterious billionaire named Kasey Dominguez.
I had absolutely nothing left. No money. No reputation. No home.
The sheer violation of watching a psychotic stranger ruin my life while I was locked in the passenger seat of my own mind made my blood boil.
I refused to let her destroy my legacy.
As the nurse's hand descended, my atrophied muscles snapped into action.
I twisted her wrist until the joint popped, grabbed the keys to my freedom, and slipped out into the cold Los Angeles night.
I was going to take my life back, starting with the billionaire who thought he owned my house.
9.5
After her step sister ran away from her marriage to the billion dollar heir, they took Emerald Jane Campbell as a stand-in to fill in the position of her step sister. Forced by her evil mother, Emerald can't do anything but to follow. She was tied to the disabled billion dollar heir for three years and all she got was cold treatment from him. Years later, a kidnapper appears in their lives. The kidnapper threatens the life of Emerald until Jude Rafael Sanders- the billion-dollar decides to do what it takes to protect his wife, Emerald.
Secrets began to unravel one by one. But what if Jude finds out his beloved wife has something up beneath her sleeves? Find out how tension intensifies in their roller coaster marriage.
7.4
Frieda married Dewitt believing he was just a struggling middle-manager, living in a cramped apartment with only seventy-two dollars left to her name.
She had no idea her cold husband was actually a ruthless billionaire running a cruel psychological test on her. Convinced she might be a gold digger, Dewitt gave her a meager allowance, keeping the divorce papers ready the moment she showed any greed.
While Dewitt secretly judged her every move, Frieda suffered endlessly. At her toxic workplace, she was relentlessly bullied by her arrogant in-laws and mocked for her scuffed shoes. Even after she risked her life to protect his grandmother from an armed mugger and exposed her own hidden tech genius, her coworkers still treated her like trailer-park trash. They cornered her on the street, pointing fingers in her face.
"You are a shameless, gold-digging whore! A billionaire would never want you!"
She endured the humiliation, having just rejected a priceless no-limit black card from his family out of pure principle. She truly believed she and her husband were fighting through poverty together. She had no idea her "poor" husband was watching her every struggle from the tinted windows of a hidden Maybach across the street.
But when her bullies finally pushed too far and raised a hand to strike her, the icy wall around the billionaire's heart completely shattered. Dewitt tore up the divorce papers, his eyes turning pitch black with murderous rage.
"If anyone ever raises a hand to her again, break it."
7.8
For three years, Elena endured a husband who barely acknowledged her, a mother-in-law who treated her like hired help, and a sister-in-law who sneered that she was nothing but a golddigger. All the while, her husband, Damien, pined after his "perfect" ex, like his own wife didn't exist.
Until the day Elena had enough.
She signed the divorce papers, packed a single bag, and vanished.
Damien was certain she'd come crawling back within a week. But the woman they all dismissed? Turns out Elena is a billionaire heiress, the CEO of the very empire Damien has been desperate to partner with and the one now signing his paychecks.
Oops.
Now Damien is spiraling, realizing too late what he lost. But Elena has choices she never had before. Like her childhood best friend, an NFL star who's been in love with her all along.
So who will it be?
The ex-husband who finally woke up?
The best friend who never left?
Or has Elena finally decided she's done with men who don't deserve her?