Bound By The CEO's Cruel Contract
I was the orphaned "parasite" of the Tyler family, taken in only to be abused for fifteen years after my parents died in a tragic car crash.
To finally escape their control, I sold my first time to my ruthless billionaire boss, Ellsworth Mosley, for one million dollars.
I thought it was a clean transaction.
But the next morning, covered in severe bruises he left on me, I was handed a brutal contract with a fifty-million-dollar penalty.
He didn't just buy my silence; he bought me.
My nightmare only worsened when my adoptive family found out about my connection to the billionaire.
Instead of disgust, they invited me to a hypocritical family dinner.
"Talk to Mosley, convince him to invest in our failing business," my adoptive father demanded shamelessly.
His son, who had tormented me for years, even grabbed my hand.
"Do this, and we can be officially engaged. You'll finally be a real Tyler."
They wanted me to whore myself out to save the family that had treated me like a stray dog.
I shattered my wine glass, cursed them to go bankrupt, and walked out into the rain.
As I reached the door, my phone vibrated with a terrifying summons from Ellsworth.
But it was the panicked whisper behind me that froze my blood.
"She knows about the brakes on her parents' car. If anyone finds out what we did, we'll go to prison."
They murdered my parents.
I gripped my phone, accepting the devil's call.
Since I was already bound to a monster, I would use his power to drag them all to hell.
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Chapter 4
The elevator chimed at 12:47 PM.
Ashton Stark stepped out like she was stepping onto a runway. Chanel. This season. The skirt was too short for a business environment, the jacket cut to emphasize everything that money could buy. She removed her sunglasses with a gesture that managed to be both languid and aggressive.
The receptionist, a new girl named Chloe, rose from her seat. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, you'll need an appointment to go past this point. This is the executive floor."
Ashton didn't even look at her. "Tell Ellsworth that Ashton Stark is here. He's expecting me." She pushed past the desk toward the frosted glass doors that required badge access. When they didn't open, she turned back with a look of pure venom. "Are you deaf? Open the door."
Chloe fumbled with the console. "I-I don't have authorization without his direct approval-"
Ashton laughed, a sharp, ugly sound. "Fine." She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. "I'll just call his private line and tell him his little guard dog is refusing to let me in. How long do you think you'll have a job after that?"
Just then, a senior VP swiped his badge to exit, and Ashton seized the opportunity, slipping through the closing doors before Chloe could protest further. Her heels-Louboutin, red sole flashing-carried her down the executive corridor with the confidence of someone who had never been told no.
Claire looked up from her desk. Her pen froze above the document she was annotating.
Their eyes met across twenty feet of open office space. Claire felt the impact in her sternum, a physical blow that traveled down to her stomach and lodged there. Her fingers tightened on the pen. The nib dug into the paper, a long black line that bisected a paragraph of legalese.
"Well," Ashton said. Her voice carried. It was designed to carry. "Look what the cat dragged in. Or should I say, what crawled out of the gutter?"
She stopped at the edge of Claire's desk. She looked down, the angle calculated to emphasize the height difference, the cost difference, the world of difference between them.
"I never thought I'd see the day," Ashton continued. She didn't bother lowering her voice. The entire floor had gone silent, twenty executives frozen in various poses of professional busyness, all ears tuned to this frequency. "The little orphan parasite, working for the big boys. Did you steal someone's resume to get in here? Or did you spread something else? Judging by those marks on your neck, you've been busy. Is that how you got this job? On your knees?"
Claire stood. Her knees locked. Her spine found the straight line that had carried her through seventeen years of not belonging.
"This is a secure work area," she said. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
Ashton's smile sharpened. She'd wanted tears. Wanted begging. Wanted the satisfaction of watching Claire Page crumble like she had at seventeen, wine-soaked and humiliated.
"Ask?" Ashton repeated. "You don't ask me anything. You don't speak to me. You don't look at me." Her hand came up, open-palmed, the diamond on her fourth finger catching the overhead lights. "You-"
The slap cracked through the office like a gunshot.
Claire's head snapped sideways. The force of it traveled down her neck, into her shoulders, a whip-crack of pain that made her ears ring. Her cheek burned. Her lip split against her teeth, and she tasted the copper-salt of her own blood.
She didn't fall. She didn't touch her face. She simply stood there, head turned, staring at the window while the office held its collective breath.
"Oh my God," someone whispered. Audrey, from accounting. "Someone call-"
The door to Ellsworth Mosley's office slammed open.
He moved like weather, like something that changed the pressure in a room simply by existing. The temperature dropped. Conversations died mid-sentence. Ashton turned toward him, her expression shifting in real-time from rage to confusion to the particular sweetness she used for men who mattered.
"Ellsworth, darling, I was just-"
He walked past her. He didn't look at her. His eyes found Claire's face, catalogued the red handprint blooming across her cheek, the thin line of blood at the corner of her mouth. Something happened to his expression. The mask slipped, just for a moment, and what showed underneath made Audrey from accounting take a step backward.
"Security," Ellsworth said. His voice was quiet. It carried better than Ashton's theatrical whisper. "Now."
Four men in black suits emerged from the service stairwell. They moved with the coordinated efficiency of people who had done this before.
"Remove her," Ellsworth said. He still hadn't looked at Ashton. His gaze remained fixed on Claire's face, on the mark that was darkening from red to purple. "Blacklist. Stark Holdings, Stark Industries, Stark Family Trust. No Mosley entity does business with any of them. Effective immediately."
"Ellsworth!" Ashton's voice broke. "You can't-you don't know what she-"
They had her arms. They were walking her backward, her heels skidding on the polished floor, her Chanel jacket twisting. She looked ridiculous. She looked like every bully who'd finally met someone bigger.
"Ellsworth!"
The elevator doors closed on her scream.
Ellsworth turned to Leo, who had materialized at his elbow. "The Morgan deal. Stark was providing the logistics infrastructure. Cut them out. Find a replacement by end of day."
"Sir, that's-yes, sir."
"And Leo?" Ellsworth's hand found Claire's elbow. His fingers wrapped around the bone, gentle now, terrifying in their gentleness. "Get me the first aid kit. The one with the cold packs."
He guided her toward his office. The entire floor watched them go.
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8.1
Elinor's frail daughter, Cece, died in a sterile hospital room while waiting for her father to take her to Disney World.
But her billionaire husband, Derick, never showed up. At the exact moment Cece's heart monitor flatlined, the hospital TV broadcasted Derick affectionately holding the hand of his mistress and he has booked a clearance of the entire Disneyland to celebrate mistress's daughter's birthday!.
When Elinor confronted Derick with their daughter's ashes, he sneered and accused her of hiding the child just to get his attention. Elinor's heart was torn to shreds. How could a father be so blind and ruthless? Did Kamryn use his power to steal the very kidney that belonged to Cece? Why did her innocent baby have to die for their sick affair?
The suffocating grief inside Elinor finally crystallized into a sharp blade. She wiped the blood from her lips, canceled the simple divorce, and began her ruthless revenge.
7.3
Elara Valente has lived her life under her father's control, a mafia princess trapped in luxury. But when she meets Luca, a humble baker who sees her for who she truly is, her world begins to change.
Secret meetings, stolen moments, and forbidden attraction ignite a slow-burning romance-but danger lurks at every turn. With a strict father, an arranged marriage, and watchful cousins, Elara must choose: follow her heart, or obey the world she was born into.
7.3
She never meant to become his wife.
Aria Hale had only stepped into the marriage registry to deliver her sister's documents. Yet somehow, she walked out as the legal wife of Leon Mercer-the city's most ruthless billionaire.
One signature. One mistake. One furious husband determined to make her regret it.
"You trapped me," he growls, ice lacing every word. "You'll pay for this."
But Aria isn't who he thinks she is. She carries secrets he could never imagine-an identity carefully hidden, a fortune he never suspected, and a strength that refuses to break under his cruelty.
He assumes she's a gold-digger. She lets him believe it.
When he insists she stay until the divorce is finalized, she agrees-but only because she has her own plans.
And then he notices. The way she never begs. The subtle power in her laughter. The way other men glance at her... and how his chest tightens in ways he can't explain.
By the time the truth comes crashing down-when he finally discovers who she really is-it's too late.
Aria is gone.
Now the hunter becomes the hunted. The billionaire married the wrong woman by mistake. And losing her will be his greatest regret.
8.9
My family's company went bankrupt, and my biological father was lying in the ICU, kept alive by machines that cost tens of thousands a day.
I thought it was just a tragic business failure, until I caught my mother in bed with my stepfather.
They had secretly transferred all our assets months ago, deliberately bankrupting the company and leaving my father to die.
To pay the hospital bills, my stepfather forced me to a private club, trying to sell me to a sleazy investor.
When I refused, he slapped me across the face, and my mother just looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"Be realistic, Jaelynn. A woman's body is a tool. Use it to get what you need."
Later, right before my father's emergency surgery, my stepfather signed a Do Not Resuscitate order and froze the medical accounts.
"If you don't get on your knees and spread your legs for him, I will tell the hospital to pull your father's plug."
Standing in the freezing rain, covered in mud and blood, I stared at the astronomical hospital bill in my hand.
My own family had plotted to murder my father and sell me to the highest bidder. The betrayal shattered every ounce of sanity I had left.
I didn't cry or beg them anymore.
Instead, I pulled out a water-stained, gold-embossed business card.
It belonged to Dolph Valentine, the most ruthless billionaire in New York and my ex-fiancé's uncle.
If they wanted to destroy my life, I was going to sell my soul to the biggest monster of them all and drag them straight to hell.
9.6
I sat at a mahogany table long enough to land a plane on, signing the papers that ended my two-year marriage to billionaire Eric Koch.
He didn't even show up for the divorce; he was in a private cigar lounge downstairs, sending his lawyer to hand me a five-million-dollar check to buy my silence like I was a discarded employee.
For two years, I had perfected the role of the "mouse"—the plain, timid wife Eric looked right past, never suspecting I was actually Rose, the world-renowned designer behind a secret fashion empire. I never told him I was the "angel" who dragged his unconscious body from a burning car years ago, the woman he’d been searching for while he ignored the one across the breakfast table. To celebrate my freedom, I had a one-night stand with a stranger in a penthouse, only to wake up and realize the man I’d just slept with was my ex-husband.
Before the ink on our divorce was dry, Eric used his billions to buy my studio, trapping me in a contract that forces me to work for him as a "lowly assistant" or face a fifty-million-dollar penalty.
I watched in silence as a fame-hungry actress paraded around his office wearing my stolen heirloom locket—the only proof of my true identity—claiming she was the mystery woman from his bed. Eric looked right through my frumpy disguise with the same cold indifference he showed his wife, never realizing the woman he was hunting was standing right in front of him.
I couldn't understand how he could be so obsessed with finding a ghost while treating the living woman who saved him like garbage. Why was he so determined to own every piece of Rose while he had spent two years throwing Aislinn away?
"Tell him nothing," I whispered to my reflection as I reapplied the thick foundation that masked my face.
"You're dangerous, Ann Reese," he told me later, his eyes narrowing as he sensed a familiar spark behind my thick glasses.
I adjusted my bun and looked him in the eye, ready to play the long game. He thinks he’s bought my future, but he’s about to find out that Rose doesn’t just design couture—she designs ruins.
7.8
The anniversary candles were burning down, and the Wagyu beef had long gone cold. I waited for two hours, but Brigham never came home.
Instead, a push notification shattered the silence. It was a live video from an exclusive club, showing my husband laughing with Giselle Leach—the woman he claimed was just a business acquaintance. In the footage, he pulled her into his chest to shield her from a champagne spray, his hand possessive on her hip.
The humiliation stung, but the printed apology card he sent via his butler later that night was the final insult. He didn't even bother to sign it by hand. My life felt like a hollow performance, a series of lies meant to keep up appearances for a man who kept me as a placeholder while his heart belonged to someone else.
I felt like an idiot, holding onto a marriage that had been dead for years. Why did I keep trying to fix something that was never mine to begin with?
Then, the email arrived—a three-year research expedition in Antarctica. It required me to cut off all outside contact. I looked at the man who had treated me like a disposable accessory, then at the screen. I didn't hesitate. I typed my acceptance, ready to leave the life, the lies, and the man who never saw me behind forever.