Bound By The Ruthless Tycoon's Contract
For three years, Blair Guzman poured her resources into turning a broke waiter into an Oscar-winning actor, letting the world believe they were a couple just to keep him under her control.
But the night he won his Oscar, he publicly betrayed her by kissing Kiana—Blair’s estranged, rival sister.
Kiana and her mother brought the scandal right to the Glover family dinner table, trying to humiliate Blair.
"You're just mad because he dumped you for me," Kiana sneered in front of the entire family.
Instead of crying, Blair ruthlessly dismantled them, exposing how their cheap tabloid stunt tanked the family's corporate value.
Impressed by her cold logic, the family matriarch handed Blair the ultimate voting power, but it was a trap.
The matriarch immediately used Blair's elevated status to force her into an arranged marriage with a notorious, debt-ridden playboy just to secure a European shipping lane.
To her family, she was never a daughter—she was just a premium asset to be traded to the highest bidder.
What her greedy family didn't know was that Blair had already made a terrifying deal.
She was secretly married to the ruthless billionaire Butler McIntyre—a man who demanded absolute possession of her body and soul.
Now, her family's arranged parasite and her secret devil of a husband were on a collision course, and the wreckage was going to be spectacular.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 3
An hour had passed. In the cold silence of the marble bathroom, Blair had methodically repaired her composure. The silver gown lay discarded on the floor like a shed skin. She had slipped into a simple black silk dress from her travel wardrobe, reapplied her lipstick with a steady hand, and stared at her reflection until the woman looking back was no one but the unshakable CEO. The diamond necklace Butler had clasped around her neck remained, its cold weight a constant, brutal reminder. It caught the light with every step she took, drawing the eye, effectively distracting from any marks that might have been left on her skin. She wore her armor well.
Blair stepped back into the bustling ballroom of the Four Seasons. The noise of the Oscar after-party hit her like a physical wave-clinking glasses, booming laughter, the constant flash of paparazzi cameras in the distance.
She plucked a champagne flute from a passing waiter and glided through the crowd. A famous director stopped her, praising her business acumen. She smiled, a perfect, practiced stretch of her lips, and exchanged pleasantries. She looked like a queen holding court.
"Blair!"
Paige's voice cut through the music. Blair turned to see her assistant pushing through a cluster of agents, her face flushed with panic. Paige grabbed Blair's arm, her grip surprisingly strong, and pulled her toward a quiet service corridor away from the main floor.
"Blair, we have a problem," Paige panted, pulling out her phone. "It happened in the last thirty minutes."
She shoved the screen in Blair's face. It was the TMZ homepage. The headline blared in bold, red letters: Oscar Winner's New Romance? Alexis Ashley & Kiana Guzman Caught Kissing Backstage!
Blair took the phone. The photo was crystal clear, clearly taken by a hidden camera. In a dimly lit corner backstage, Alexis had his hands framing Kiana's face. Their lips were locked. Kiana's eyes were closed, a look of pure, theatrical ecstasy on her face.
"It's been five minutes," Paige said, her voice tight. "The servers are crashing. It's everywhere."
Blair used her thumb to zoom in on the image. She didn't look at Alexis. She looked at Kiana. She looked at the curve of her sister's smile, the deliberate tilt of her head toward the camera. The coldness in Blair's eyes deepened.
"The breakup statement from six months ago is trending again," Paige said, her voice trembling. "Everyone is saying Alexis left you for her. You're the punchline of the whole country right now."
Blair felt nothing. No sting of betrayal. No flush of embarrassment. Her focus narrowed on one single point: Kiana Guzman.
Kiana Guzman. The other daughter of the Guzman family. Her sister. Her rival.
This wasn't just an actor acting out. This was a declaration of war from inside her own house. Alexis hadn't just jumped ship; he had swum straight into the enemy's harbor.
"Where is he?" Blair asked, handing the phone back to Paige.
"He's still in the main hall with Kiana," Paige replied, glancing over her shoulder. "They're surrounded by reporters. He's eating it up."
Blair smoothed the fabric of her dress. She didn't scream. She didn't cry. Instead, a slow, chilling smile spread across her face. It was a smile that made Paige take a step back.
"Good," Blair said softly, her voice like velvet wrapped around steel. "I was just looking for an excuse to clean house."
Paige stared at her, stunned. "Clean house? What do you mean?"
"Let him enjoy his last moment in the sun," Blair said, her tone dropping to a freezing pitch. "When the party is over, bring him to me."
She turned on her heel and walked back toward the ballroom. Her posture was immaculate, her stride confident. She looked like a woman who owned the world, not one who had just been publicly humiliated.
A prominent producer intercepted her, raising his glass. "To your success tonight, Blair. You've done it again."
Blair clinked her glass against his, the crystal ringing clear. "Success always comes with a price, doesn't it?"
The producer laughed, missing the dark undertone completely, and moved on.
Blair's eyes scanned the room. Over the sea of heads, she found them. Alexis and Kiana were holding court near the bar, flashes going off in their faces. Kiana was laughing, playing the part of the blushing new muse perfectly.
As if sensing the weight of the stare, Kiana looked up. Her eyes met Blair's across the crowded room. A slow, taunting smile spread across Kiana's face. It was the smile of a victor rubbing salt in the wound.
Blair didn't flinch. She held her sister's gaze, her own expression calm, pitying, and utterly cold.
She pulled her phone from her clutch and typed a quick message to the head of security: Ensure Mr. Ashley is escorted to the private lounge after the event. Make it 'smooth.'
She added quotation marks around the word smooth. She hit send, slipped the phone away, and took a sip of her champagne. She turned and walked toward the opposite end of the ballroom, leaving Kiana's victory to rot in the flash of the cameras.
You may also like
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.
7.4
I was a broke clinic doctor drowning in debt, so I took a confidential job to evaluate a billionaire heir's fertility.
I marched into the VIP ICU, pinned the struggling patient down, and injected a sedative. I finished the extraction and loudly declared to the family lawyer that the Holt heir was completely sterile.
But then, a chilling laugh echoed from the doorway.
The real heir, Jarrod Holt, the tyrant of Wall Street, stepped in. I had just sterilized his younger brother right in front of him.
Facing a decade in federal prison, I was completely at his mercy. To make things worse, my arrogant ex-boyfriend tried to publicly humiliate me, and my greedy uncle threatened to burn my dead mother's belongings for ransom. I was pushed to the absolute brink of ruin.
But instead of destroying me, Jarrod offered a terrifying lifeline. He bought out a Manhattan high-rise in five minutes just to ruin my ex, then handed me a marriage contract.
I was terrified and deeply confused. Why would this ruthless billionaire force a nobody into a fake marriage? He knew details about my past that no one should know. Did he discover my hidden identity as 'E', the underground surgeon the entire medical world was hunting for?
With my back against the wall, I signed the prenuptial agreement.
"I do," I whispered at City Hall.
He shoved his heavy, antique family ring onto my finger. It was supposed to be strictly business with absolutely no physical contact, but when his lips crashed violently onto mine, I knew I had just sold my soul to the devil.
7.9
Valerie Ashford, a girl who had just turned twenty-one, was introduced by her father to his business associates at a grand party, where she met a frightening, cold-blooded man.
That man was none other than her father's business partner, the CEO of a major corporation. He was taken with Valerie and had wanted her from the moment he first laid eyes on her.
For Rovano Morvane, whatever he desired was absolute and he had to have it, even by the worst means possible.
That night Valerie vanished without a trace and Rovano became the prime suspect, yet the Ashford family could not prove their allegations.
"P-please, I don't want to die, sir..." Valerie whispered so softly that Rovano had to bend down even lower.
"Didn't you just say you didn't care whether you were kidnapped or not? So shut your mouth." Rovano ordered.
Cold, Valerie felt the other side of the folding knife pressed against her cheek.
Rovano was going to mark Valerie.
It felt like something was missing if Rovano didn't take out his psychopathic urges on someone.
And this time, for the first time, he wanted a girl: Valerie Ashford.
Would Valerie's life end here?
7.9
In my past life, I was the naive surrogate who fell desperately in love with Karson King, an untouchable Wall Street billionaire.
I thought my blind devotion would earn me a place in his family. Instead, his cruel mother forced me to sign away my parental rights to my three-year-old daughter.
I was locked in a dark, freezing basement. I watched helplessly as his arrogant relatives tormented my child, pushing her down a flight of marble stairs and shattering her tiny arm.
When we finally died in a horrific car crash, my face covered in blood amidst the shattered glass, Karson didn't shed a single tear. To him, my death was just the convenient erasure of a cheap mistake.
I sacrificed my dignity for his approval, but they treated us worse than stray dogs. Why did my innocent daughter have to pay the ultimate price for their ruthless arrogance?
Opening my eyes again, the harsh glare of a massive crystal chandelier pierced my vision. I was back in the grand foyer of the King estate, exactly five years ago.
"Sign it. You are nothing but a gold digger."
My soon-to-be mother-in-law slammed the thick legal contract onto the marble table, demanding I give up my daughter.
This time, the paralyzing fear evaporated, replaced by absolute, icy clarity.
I didn't cower. I picked up the pen, looked right at the billionaire who despised me, and prepared to manipulate his entire empire.
7.2
For ten years, Aurora was abandoned by her wealthy family to rot in the countryside.
When she finally returned, there was no warm welcome. The Lott family only brought her back to replace her adopted sister in an arranged marriage with Damian Yates, a notoriously violent, crippled billionaire, just to save their bankrupt company.
Her grandmother mocked her as uneducated trash. Her fake sister feigned disgust at her very presence.
When her biological father desperately tried to stop them from sending his daughter to her death, the family turned on him.
Her grandmother struck her father across the face, kicked the three of them out of the manor into the freezing rain, and arrogantly declared they would starve on the streets by nightfall.
They thought Aurora was just a helpless, pathetic hillbilly who would quietly accept being sold as livestock.
They had no idea that over the past decade, she had survived the darkest corners of the world, becoming a lethal operative with unimaginable power.
Standing in the cold rain, Aurora didn't shed a single tear.
She calmly pulled out her encrypted phone, personally canceled the billionaire's marriage contract, and ordered her hacker to completely freeze the Lott family's accounts.
"Total financial annihilation. Burn them to the ground."
But as she watched her abusers' legacy crumble, a classified file arrived on her phone, revealing that the very billionaire she just rejected was tied to her mother's unsolved murder.
The real hunt was just beginning.
7.2
Hope worked eighty-hour weeks on Wall Street, enduring daily humiliation from her boss just to be her mother's golden ticket out of poverty.
But when a severe kidney infection left her bleeding and collapsing in the middle of a boardroom presentation, her boss didn't call an ambulance.
He slammed his hand on the table, publicly accused her of popping pills like a junkie, and threw her out of the building.
Dragging her agonizing, feverish body back home, Hope desperately needed a mother's comfort.
Instead, the moment her mother heard she had lost her six-figure job, the woman's face contorted with pure rage.
She didn't care that Hope's kidneys were failing; she grabbed a heavy glass ashtray and hurled it directly at Hope's head.
"You threw away a six-figure job? You threw away our ticket out of this dump?!"
The glass shattered against the wall, slicing Hope's bare leg open.
For twenty-nine years, Hope had sacrificed her health, her dignity, and her sanity to be the perfect daughter.
She didn't understand why her life was only worth the paycheck she brought home, or why her own mother would rather see her dead than unemployed.
Looking at the blood dripping down her calf, the guilt that had chained her for a lifetime suddenly vanished.
She pulled out her phone and hit send on a brutally honest resignation email to her toxic boss.
Then, she opened a text from the intimidating, billionaire doctor who had treated her at the clinic—the only man who had ever told her she was a fighter.
She packed her bags and walked out the door.
This time, she was going to live for herself.