Breaking The Script: My Billionaire Husband
I was three million dollars in debt, forced by my agent to star in a reality show as the brainless gold-digger who married a decrepit billionaire.
But right before the live broadcast, as I touched the tacky neon dress I was supposed to wear, a violent vision struck my brain.
I realized my entire life was a script, and I was just a villainous side character designed to make America's Sweetheart look like a saint.
My agent was secretly taking payouts from her PR firm to deliberately ruin my reputation with endless hate traffic.
If I followed his orders today, I would be torn apart by the internet, lose every contract, and eventually die alone in a cheap motel.
I couldn't accept that my every fake smile and stupid decision had been manipulated to destroy me just to elevate someone else.
Why should I let them sell me out and turn my life into a complete joke?
Looking at the ugly pink dress, I threw it straight into the trash.
"You are fired, and my lawyers will be in touch about your offshore accounts."
I poured a glass of freezing water over my head to wash away the heavy makeup and the helpless persona I had worn for years.
I kicked out my backstabbing agent, put on a pair of plain black leggings, and walked out to face the live cameras.
To hell with the script. Today, I was going to expose this fake PR marriage myself.
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Chapter 9
The black SUV turned off the Pacific Coast Highway and crunched onto the white gravel driveway of the Malibu beachfront villa.
The ocean breeze was strong here, carrying the sharp scent of salt and seaweed. The massive, glass-fronted house loomed ahead, surrounded by a swarm of production assistants and camera operators.
The SUV rolled to a smooth stop.
Before the driver could get out, Augustine pushed his door open. He stepped out into the bright sunlight. He reached down and gave the hem of his suit jacket a single, sharp tug, smoothing out a non-existent wrinkle.
Justina slid across the leather seat and stepped out after him.
She was still riding the high of her viral giveaway. She kept her chin tilted up, a confident, satisfied smile playing on her lips. She felt untouchable. She had just bought the love of the internet using his money.
Julian, the director, practically sprinted across the gravel toward them. A cameraman jogged backward in front of him, keeping the lens focused tightly on the couple.
Julian's face was flushed with excitement. He shoved the microphone toward Augustine.
"Mr. Hutchinson!" Julian yelled over the sound of the crashing waves. "The internet is losing its mind! Five thousand dollars for a door-holding fee? That has to be the most expensive chivalry in Hollywood history!"
The live chat on the monitors was moving at light speed, filled with money emojis and praise for the billionaire's casual generosity.
Justina crossed her arms over her chest. She stood tall, waiting for Augustine to give a stiff nod or a cold grunt of confirmation. She was ready to bask in the glow of her newly minted power-wife persona.
Augustine stopped walking.
He turned his body slowly. His icy blue eyes locked onto the camera lens.
The faint, dark smirk that Justina had seen in the car was gone. His face was a mask of absolute, terrifying seriousness.
He looked at Julian. His voice cut through the sound of the wind like a razor blade.
"A door-holding fee?" he repeated. His tone was flat, devoid of any warmth. "I believe there has been a misunderstanding."
Justina's confident smile froze. The muscles in her face locked up. The cold drop of unease in her stomach suddenly turned into a block of ice.
Augustine turned his head. He looked down at Justina.
The look in his eyes was lethal. It was the look of a master chess player calling checkmate.
"That five thousand dollars was not a tip," Augustine said, his voice carrying perfectly into the microphone.
He paused, letting the silence stretch for one agonizing second.
"It was a reimbursement," he stated clearly. "For the batch of custom, high-altitude Guatemalan coffee beans she purchased for the estate last Tuesday when Mr. Peters could not secure our usual supplier."
The wind blew Justina's hair across her face. She did not move to brush it away.
Her brain simply stopped working. She stared at his perfect, aristocratic face. Her mind frantically scrolled through the memories of the past week. Tuesday. Mr. Peters looking stressed. A phone call to a boutique importer. She had swiped her personal black card-the one reserved for absolute emergencies, with a credit limit that was a painful reminder of her dwindling liquidity. But securing the beans, and thus maintaining the fragile peace at the estate, had felt like a survival necessity right then. Five thousand dollars. Her breath left her lungs in a sharp, painful rush.
It was her money.
He had just paid her back her own money.
And she had just given it away to ten random strangers on the internet.
The live chat on the monitors went completely still for two seconds as the math clicked in a million different brains.
Then, the internet exploded in a tidal wave of absolute, hysterical laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA NO WAY!"
"OMG SHE GAVE AWAY HER OWN MONEY!"
"HE SET HER UP! THE ICE KING IS A SAVAGE!"
"I am crying. She looked so proud of herself and he just destroyed her."
Justina felt a rush of heat explode in her chest and shoot straight up her neck. Her cheeks burned with a fierce, humiliating fire.
She dropped her arms from her chest. Her hands curled into tight fists at her sides. Her fingernails dug painfully into her palms.
She glared at Augustine. Her eyes were wide, burning with pure, unadulterated rage. She looked like she wanted to lunge forward and rip the expensive silk tie right off his neck.
"You..." she started, her voice trembling with anger. "You did that on purpose."
Augustine did not flinch. He did not laugh. He maintained his perfect, aristocratic posture.
He simply tilted his head a fraction of an inch to the right.
"I always settle my debts, Mrs. Hutchinson," he said smoothly. "What you choose to do with your own funds is entirely your business."
He held her furious gaze. The air between them crackled with electricity. It was a silent, violent clash of wills. He was challenging her. He was mocking her.
And the worst part was, he had won.
The camera captured every second of the standoff. The intense, burning glare from Justina. The cool, arrogant dominance from Augustine.
The audience at home stopped laughing and started screaming for a different reason.
"The tension! You could cut it with a knife!"
"They hate each other but the chemistry is insane!"
"Enemies to lovers trope in real life! I am eating this up!"
Augustine held her gaze for one more second, letting his victory sink in. Then, he turned his back on her and walked calmly toward the entrance of the villa, leaving her standing in the gravel, fuming in the California sun.
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9.7
Eliana Rivera is the firstborn daughter of business tycoon Cassian Rivera. When her father's company falls into debt, he marries her off to the arrogant and ruthless billionaire, Alexander Grayson, as part of a business contract and under the threat of blackmail.
Alexander, the billionaire CEO, never planned to marry, but the pressure of blackmail forces him into a union with a woman he barely knows. Although Eliana doesn't see Alexander as her ideal partner, she agrees to the marriage out of a sense of duty.
Once engaged, however, he barely acknowledges her presence and harbours disdain for her because of her father's actions and their relationship. But as they navigate their newfound relationship, the unexpected desire for each other's touch ignites-a twist neither of them planned, leading them toward an unforeseen love.
9.0
Flora Sawyer was backed into a corner by a wealthy, married doctor who relentlessly harassed her at the hospital.
Desperate for a way out, she signed a prenuptial agreement in a rundown diner to marry a complete stranger.
Josiah Vance claimed to be a bankrupt, failed IT programmer. He offered to be her legal shield, and in return, she let him sleep on her cramped apartment couch.
But the nightmare only escalated. Grant, her wealthy tormentor, cornered them at a dinner party.
He poured red wine all over Josiah's cheap thrift-store shirt, mocking him as a pathetic parasite living off a public nurse's meager salary.
The entire room laughed, watching Flora's new husband endure the ultimate public humiliation.
They didn't know that to help Josiah start over, Flora had just emptied her entire life savings of fifty thousand dollars, leaving herself with exactly eighty-four dollars.
Watching the man who had offered her a lifeline be treated like garbage, something inside Flora completely snapped.
She couldn't understand why money gave these arrogant people the right to crush others. Her chest burned with a fierce, undeniable rage.
She stepped directly in front of Josiah, shielding him with her own body, and slammed a stack of papers onto the table.
"My husband might be broke, but you are the real parasite."
What Flora didn't know was that the silent, bankrupt man standing behind her was actually a trillionaire, and his game to destroy her enemies had already begun.
7.4
Alaya woke up in the sterile hospital room to a devastating reality: her six-month-old baby was gone, lost in a horrific car crash.
But as the memories crashed into her, she realized she had been reborn. She was back three years before her ultimate death, back to the moment she remembered lying bleeding on the asphalt while her husband, Hardy, shielded his mistress from the freezing rain.
When Hardy finally showed up at the ward, he coldly dismissed the crash as a mere accident and immediately left to comfort his young lover. To make matters worse, Alaya secretly checked her medical files and found a terrifying detail: someone had intentionally slipped beta-blockers into her system, a lethal drug for her transplanted heart. And Hardy didn't care about her dead baby or her irreversible infertility. He only coldly confirmed with the doctor that her heart was still viable.
A horrifying suspicion made Alaya's blood run cold. Why was her husband so obsessed with protecting her transplanted heart while treating her like garbage? And why was his perfectly healthy mistress secretly racking up massive bills at an advanced cardiac hospital?
Realizing she was nothing but a vessel in a twisted, deadly game, Alaya didn't shed another tear.
She packed her belongings, left her flawless diamond wedding ring on the cold marble table, and vanished from their penthouse.
When Hardy finally tracked her down, she threw a thick stack of documents onto the table.
"Sign the divorce papers," she said, her eyes completely dead.
7.2
My grandfather sold me to a man named Maverick to settle his gambling debts. I stood on the private platform at Union Station, a human payment waiting to be collected.
But he never came. An hour later, his assistant called to say the deal was off. I was told to disappear by morning or face the consequences.
My family blamed me for their ruin and threw me out onto the street. Homeless and disowned, I had no choice but to take a low-level job at Prosperity Group, the biggest investment firm in Chicago. I needed to survive.
I never understood why he rejected me. I had followed every rule, worn the red dress he demanded, and waited like a lamb for slaughter. Why would he agree to save my family only to destroy us at the last second?
On my first day, I was called into the CEO's office. The man behind the desk was Damien Maddox, the city's most ruthless billionaire. He looked at me with a chilling familiarity. He was the man who had bought me. And he was the man who had thrown me away.
7.9
Everyone knew Kristine loved Colton. Still, his heart clung to a woman overseas-someone he spent most days with, now pregnant with his baby-and Kristine still asked him to marry her.
On their registration day, however, he never came; his "true love" had flown back.
Seven years of loyalty later, Kristine walked away, blocked him, and left his city.
Colton didn't blink-until he saw her at the courthouse, arm-in-arm with another man, and the proud CEO went pale. He went after her, desperation overtaking him.
"I'm sorry. Please give me another chance."
She snapped, "Could you stop? I'm already married."
7.4
My husband stood by the window of his Manhattan office, his silhouette cutting through the storm like a blade. He didn't even look at me as he tossed the divorce papers onto the desk, his voice a cold baritone. "Sign it," Isaiah commanded, "or your brother’s dialysis treatment ends today."
He believed the lie that I had pushed his pregnant mistress down a flight of stairs in a jealous rage. To save my dying brother, I signed the confession and accepted the role of a murderer, trading my freedom for a life of disgrace.
At the funeral, Isaiah forced me to crawl on my knees through the freezing mud to the grave while a mob of mourners spat on me and cursed my name. When I went to prison, his influence followed me into the showers, where inmates told me the King wanted me to "remember my crime" before they used rusty shears to hack off my finger.
Five years later, I was a ghost living in a damp basement with the son Isaiah never knew I had, hiding my mangled hand under a leather glove. When he eventually tracked us down, he didn't show mercy; he tore my son from my arms, calling me an unfit monster and swearing I would rot in a cage.
I couldn't understand how the man I once loved could look at my broken body and see only a criminal, never realizing that every scar I carried was a gift from his own hatred.
As he walked away with my child, I swallowed a bottle of pills to end the nightmare, leaving Isaiah to rip the glove from my hand and discover the mangled truth just as my eyes finally closed.