Captive Of The Ruthless Underground Boss
June was an ordinary architect struggling to pay rent, completely estranged from her high-society mother.
But one night, she was kidnapped and beaten in an abandoned warehouse by Gage Becker, the city's most ruthless billionaire, who demanded payback for her mother's sins.
Gage pointed a high-definition camera at June's battered face and video-called her mother, threatening to release the footage and ruin her upcoming billion-dollar wedding.
"I will never throw away a billion-dollar marriage for a useless daughter."
Her mother's cold voice echoed through the warehouse before the line went dead.
From that moment, Gage systematically destroyed June's life. She was publicly humiliated and forced to hack off her own hair with a cigar cutter. She was blacklisted from every firm in the city, evicted by her landlord, and violently mugged in a freezing New York blizzard.
Curled up in an icy tunnel waiting to die, June felt a suffocating despair. She hadn't spoken to her mother in months. Why did she have to endure this hell for a woman who didn't even care if she lived or died? Why was a monster like Gage so obsessed with driving her to the grave?
When Gage's armored Maybach pulled up, he stepped into the snow to mock her, waiting for her to finally surrender and beg for his mercy.
But the absolute humiliation snapped the last thread of June's sanity.
Instead of crying, she lunged forward with feral energy and sank her teeth directly into the devil's flesh.
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Chapter 9
June sat on the carpet, pulling her knees to her chest. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, trying to erase the taste of his blood. Her hands shook uncontrollably.
Rapid footsteps echoed in the hallway. It sounded like high heels and the heavy thud of a cane. The guest room door swung open.
Beatrice stood in the doorway. Her face was red with anger. Right behind her stood Jessica Cole, wearing a designer trench coat, having just rushed to the estate, her flight indefinitely grounded by the severe winter storm.
Beatrice looked at June sitting on the floor. She saw the smear of blood on June's chin. The old woman instantly knew Gage had tricked her to get into the room.
Beatrice gripped her cane tightly. She pointed out into the hallway, cursing Gage's name, calling him a rabid animal that needed to be put down.
Jessica Cole stepped into the room. Her four-inch heels clicked on the hardwood. She looked down at June's chopped hair and bruised face. There was no motherly concern in her eyes, only deep annoyance.
Jessica Cole put her hand to her chest. She gasped dramatically, playing the role of a horrified mother for Beatrice's benefit, loudly condemning Gage's actions.
June looked up at her mother. A bitter, hollow laugh escaped her lips. She asked Jessica Cole if she finally decided to pause her honeymoon because her daughter was about to die.
Jessica Cole's face tightened. She leaned down and hissed under her breath, warning June to shut her mouth and stop embarrassing her in front of the matriarch.
Beatrice slammed her cane on the floor, cutting off the toxic whispering. She declared that June could not stay in the main house for another minute.
The old woman turned to her personal head of security. She ordered him to open the South Wing immediately.
Jessica Cole gasped. Her eyes went wide. The South Wing was the ultimate fortress of the Becker estate, reserved only for the highest-ranking family members. Even Jessica Cole had never been allowed inside.
Two heavily armed guards walked into the room. They gently pulled June to her feet and guided her out the door.
The group walked down a long, heavy stone corridor lined with reinforced steel pillars. Outside, the blizzard raged, snow piling up against the glass. Inside, the air was warm and still.
At the end of the corridor stood a massive set of double doors made of solid mahogany. Four guards with assault rifles stood at attention in front of it.
The head of security stepped up to a metal panel on the wall. He typed in a long passcode and leaned in for a retinal scan. A heavy mechanical clunk echoed through the hall. The mahogany doors slowly swung open.
June stepped inside. The South Wing looked like a luxury hotel, but the thick walls and steel-reinforced windows made it clear this was a bunker.
Beatrice stood at the threshold. She looked June in the eye. She promised that the South Wing had its own independent security grid. Without Beatrice's fingerprint, Gage could not get inside.
June looked at the men with the rifles. For the first time in days, the crushing weight on her chest lifted slightly. Fresh tears filled her eyes.
She bowed deeply to Beatrice, thanking the old woman for saving her life.
Jessica Cole stood to the side. She crossed her arms and told June to stay put and stop causing trouble for her new marriage.
June gave her mother one cold, dead look. She turned around and walked deeper into the South Wing.
The heavy mahogany doors closed behind her. The locks engaged with a loud, final click, shutting out the rest of the world.
A maid led June into a large bedroom. A fire cracked warmly in the stone fireplace.
June walked over to the reinforced window. She looked out at the dark, snowy night. She felt a strange, fragile sense of safety.
She took off the silk nightgown and changed into a thick, warm set of pajamas. She curled up on the plush sofa right in front of the fire.
She listened to the rhythmic sound of the guards pacing in the hall outside. She finally believed she was safe from him.
Exhaustion crashed over her like a tidal wave. Her eyelids grew heavy.
Right before she fell asleep, the image of Gage's dark, obsessed eyes flashed in her mind. Her body jerked slightly, but the warmth of the fire pulled her down into a deep sleep.
The South Wing was perfectly quiet. But across the estate, a monster was waking up.
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7.7
My fiancé always told me he loved me. But not long after our engagement, I woke up suffocating in the dark.
He was pressing a pillow over my face, his eyes cold and dead, while my half-sister stood by watching with fake pity.
They had orchestrated everything just to steal my trust fund.
It all started with a massive hotel scandal. They had drugged me, thrown a cheap escort into my bed, and brought a mob of paparazzi to ruin my reputation.
When my fiancé broke through the crowd, playing the heartbroken victim, he knelt down with a massive diamond ring.
"I know things have been hard, but I love you. If you come home with me, I will forgive all of this."
In my past life, I cried tears of gratitude and let him slide that ring onto my finger.
That ring sealed my death warrant. I lost my company, my dignity, and eventually, my life.
Until my lungs burned and my heart stopped, I didn't understand.
How could the people I trusted most plot my murder so ruthlessly?
Why did they have to tear my entire life apart?
Opening my eyes again, I was back on the morning of the hotel scandal, exactly one year ago.
But the man lying bare-backed in my bed wasn't a random escort.
It was Johnathan Chase, my family's biggest corporate rival and the most ruthless predator on Wall Street.
Listening to the paparazzi pounding on the door, I smiled coldly.
8.0
When gifted cellist Vivienne Aurel inherits her late father's catastrophic $4.2 million debt, she expects to lose everything. She doesn't expect the debt to be bought by Caspian Vane, the most feared private equity magnate in New York. Caspian doesn't want to ruin her; he wants her to work exclusively for him as the artistic director of his new cultural foundation for eighteen months. Forced into his world under a binding agreement, Vivienne prepares to fight against a cold, transactional cage. But as the intense, quiet proximity between them begins to blur the lines of their contract, she discovers a terrifying truth: the man who now owns her future has been watching her from the shadows long before she ever knew his name.
9.1
With only fifteen days of cash flow left to save her tech startup, Aida had no choice but to seek a five-million-dollar bridge loan from Brendan Walls, a ruthless billionaire predator.
He agreed to sign the check, but on one sickening condition. He demanded Aida act as bait to get close to his corporate rival, Grayson Lott, treating her like a high-end call girl for a business transaction.
Forced to comply to save her employees, Aida let Grayson take her to a windowless underground club, where he secretly spiked her whiskey.
As the drugs paralyzed her body, triggering horrific flashbacks of a brutal assault from six years ago, Aida locked herself in the bathroom. She had to shatter a mirror and slice her own thigh open with a jagged shard of glass just to stay conscious enough to call Brendan for help.
Brendan's armored SUV immediately smashed through the club's wall to save her, and Grayson was arrested. But lying in the hospital, the horrifying truth finally clicked in Aida's mind.
The rescue was too fast. Brendan’s men hadn't rushed from Midtown; they had been parked outside the entire time. He had watched Grayson drug her and waited for the felony to happen just so he could legally seize Grayson's company. He had gambled her life and trauma for a hostile takeover.
When Brendan casually tossed a signed contract and luxury car keys onto her hospital bed as hush money, the last thread of Aida's sanity snapped.
"The deal is dead. NovaTech is mine. If you ever come near me again, I will kill you."
Bleeding and shaking with icy rage, Aida threw the keys at his chest, formally declaring war on the monster who thought he could buy her soul.
7.5
Kaitlyn Barton POV:
After three years building my family's hotel empire abroad, I came home to New York, expecting a warm embrace from my childhood fiancé, Edwin.
Instead, he greeted me with a warning. He told me to be gentle with his new girlfriend, Kacy, painting me as a villain before I even knew her name.
At my own welcome-home party, he let her stage a dramatic fall and then publicly blamed me for it, his eyes burning with a hatred I'd never seen.
He cradled her in his arms as if she were a fragile doll I had broken.
"Happy now, Kaitlyn?" he snarled, shattering twenty years of our shared history in front of everyone we knew.
In his eyes, I was no longer his love, but a monster he needed to protect his new flame from.
As he stormed out, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Everett Rowe, the man who had quietly loved me for five years.
"If you are truly ready, I will marry you. Right now. Just say the word."
My fingers moved on their own.
"Yes," I typed. "I'll marry you."
The moment I stepped back onto New York soil, a city I had once shared completely with Edwin, he greeted me not with a hug, but with a warning about his new girlfriend, painting me as the villain before I even knew her name. Three years abroad, cultivating my family's hotel empire, had prepared me for many business battles, but nothing for the cold, calculated betrayal that awaited me at home. He had replaced me, and then twisted our shared history, turning me into the aggressor he now needed protection from. This was not the reunion I had envisioned, nor the Edwin I remembered. My heart, which had swelled with anticipation, now froze into a solid block of ice.
9.0
My ex-husband returned after a three-year bet, ready to reclaim me and the son he thought was his. He had no idea that I'd secretly aborted his child, divorced him, and remarried the day he left. His world was about to come crashing down.
His delusion turned deadly when he and his manipulative best friend, Haylee, kidnapped my son, Leo.
I found them at his family's mansion, with Leo suffocating from a severe allergic reaction to a dog they were forcing him to play with. Elliot physically restrained me, scolding me for overreacting while Haylee giggled as my son turned blue.
At the hospital, as Leo fought for his life, Elliot grabbed my arm, demanding to know who the man standing beside me was. He was convinced this was all a game to make him jealous.
That's when my real husband, billionaire Gregory Morton, stepped forward.
"Since when is this child yours, Elliot?"
7.3
Seven years ago, my fiancé, Don Dante Moretti, sent me to prison to take the fall for my adopted sister, Chiara. He called it a gift-a way to protect me from a worse fate.
Today, he picked me up from prison only to abandon me at my family's estate. His reason? Chiara was having another one of her "episodes."
My parents then informed me I'd be staying in the third-floor storage room, so as not to disturb the fragile girl who stole my life.
They celebrated her "recovery" with a lavish dinner party, while I was treated like a ghost. When I refused to join, my mother hissed that I was ungrateful, and my father called me jealous.
They assumed I couldn't understand their venomous whispers. But prison was my university. I learned Spanish. I understood every word.
It was then I realized I wasn't just a sacrifice; I was disposable. The love I once felt for all of them had turned to ash.
That night, in the dusty storage room, I logged onto an encrypted channel I'd set up years ago. A single message was waiting: "The offer stands. Do you accept?" My hands, scarred and steady, typed back, "I accept."