Best Romance Novels

At her grand engagement party at the Plaza Hotel, Elsie Phillips thought she was the happiest woman in the world. Until a high-definition video of her being pinned down by a strange man in a hotel bed was suddenly broadcast on the ballroom's massive screen. Her fiancé, Kelvin, violently ripped his arm away in revulsion. His mother marched on stage, slapped Elsie across the face, and publicly canceled the wedding. Her "sweet" cousin Belle dug her nails into Elsie's arm, whispering that she looked exactly like the cheap slut she was. It was a vicious setup. Chased into the freezing rain by blinding tabloid cameras, Elsie hit rock bottom. But the nightmare was just beginning. An encrypted phone left by her late father suddenly rang, revealing a terrifying truth. Her parents' fatal car crash three years ago wasn't an accident. It was murder, bought and paid for by her uncle Fenton, who had since stolen her family's entire corporate empire. When Elsie tried to fight back, Fenton's guards locked her in a dark room. They forced her into degrading sheer lace, planning to sell her to a sadistic Wall Street psychopath for fifty million dollars. Standing on the edge of a second-story balcony, shivering in the freezing wind, Elsie's eyes burned with blinding hatred. Her parents were murdered, her legacy stolen, and her reputation dragged through the mud by her own blood. Was she really going to die here, completely ruined? Just as she let go of the railing to jump, a convoy of black armored SUVs smashed through the estate gates. Arthur Michael, the most ruthless billionaire in the country, caught her in his arms. He wrapped his custom jacket around her trembling body and handed her a fifty-page prenuptial agreement. "Marry me." He commanded, his eyes completely cold. "And I will help you send every single one of them to hell."

Years ago, when I was very small, we lived in a great house in a long, straight, brown-coloured street, in the east end of London. It was a noisy, crowded street in the daytime; but a silent, lonesome street at night, when the gas-lights, few and far between, partook of the character of lighthouses rather than of illuminants, and the tramp, tramp of the policeman on his long beat seemed to be ever drawing nearer, or fading away, except for brief moments when the footsteps ceased, as he paused to rattle a door or window, or to flash his lantern into some dark passage leading down towards the river.

Claire spent every waking moment protecting the transplanted heart beating inside her billionaire husband, Cooper. Though his grandfather forced their marriage, she loved him enough to endure his endless coldness. When she received a frantic text saying Cooper was in a fatal car wreck, she ran through a freezing storm to save him. But she pushed open the VIP club doors only to find no doctors. Instead, Cooper was making out with his mistress, Kendall, while his wealthy friends erupted into malicious laughter at Claire's soaked, panicked state. It was all a cruel prank. To force a divorce, Cooper treated her like garbage. He threw the custom meals she secretly cooked for his failing liver into the trash, giving Kendall the credit. When Claire begged him to stop drinking hard liquor for the sake of his fragile heart, he made a sickening demand. "Go kiss that waiter on the mouth right now, and I won't touch another drop." To keep him alive, Claire swallowed her pride and kissed the terrified boy while cameras flashed. But her total degradation didn't earn his mercy. Cooper called her a sickening gold digger and walked out with his mistress, leaving Claire to the wolves. His best friend poured a sticky martini over her head, tore the strap of her dress, and raised a massive fist to smash her face. She had sacrificed her soul to keep his heart beating, only to be destroyed by it. Just as the fist swung down, the heavy oak door was kicked off its hinges. Cooper stood in the doorway, his eyes burning with a terrifying, primal fury. He had only returned for a forgotten phone, but seeing another man's hands on his legal wife ignited a possessive rage that was about to burn the entire room down.

For eight years, I hid my identity as the sole heiress to the Stafford family fortune, playing the role of a meek, dependent girlfriend just to see if Evan could love me for who I truly was. But today, he slid a severance check across the table and told me to pack my things. He said his company was going bankrupt and he had no choice but to marry Piper Finch, a woman claiming to have Stafford family backing, to save his business. "You will not survive a week out there! You cannot even afford subway fare without me!" The next day, he paraded Piper around the office, letting her mock me before publicly firing me. His mother even threw a five million dollar check in my face, demanding I disappear so I would not ruin his marriage to the wealthy elite. I looked at the fake heiress wearing a cheap, lab-grown diamond and felt a bitter laugh lodge in my throat. After eight years of my devotion, he was throwing away the real Stafford princess for a pathetic fraud, utterly convinced I was just a worthless, broke burden. Instead of begging, I ripped his check in half and walked out. I pulled out my encrypted satellite phone and told my family to unfreeze my limitless black card. I was done playing the helpless girlfriend. It was time to show him what real power looks like.

For three years, nineteen-year-old Ella Campbell rotted in a freezing psychiatric isolation room. Her billionaire family didn't visit her once, only pulling her out today to force her to publicly apologize to Ashlyn, the perfect sister who had framed her. At Ashlyn's glamorous engagement gala, Ella was treated worse than a stray dog and forced to watch her childhood sweetheart propose to her sister. When Ella showed no jealousy, her brother Ivan dragged her onto a dark balcony and nearly choked her to death. Her mother didn't even check if Ella was breathing, merely ordering a makeup artist to paint thick concealer over the dark purple handprints on Ella's neck so the family's stock price wouldn't drop. Standing under the blinding stage lights in a shapeless gray dress, facing three hundred mocking Wall Street executives, Ella was supposed to be the broken, obedient psycho the Campbells needed. "I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused." She was supposed to end the apology there and bow to her abusers, but Ella didn't shed a single tear. "My only regret is that I didn't insist on waiting for the police to arrive that night. I deeply regret that I didn't demand a full, legal toxicology report to prove to everyone exactly what happened." As the ballroom erupted into suspicious whispers and her paralyzed twin brother finally saw the violent bruises hidden beneath her makeup, Ella's counterattack against the Campbell family officially began.

Corey Hendrix was the family's dirty secret, a forgotten stepdaughter deliberately hidden away in rural Montana for twenty years. But today, her stepfather Isham summoned her to his study and slid a marriage contract across the desk. He was forcing her to marry Lucas Fitzgerald—a powerful billionaire rumored to be paralyzed from the waist down—simply so her favored stepsister Brandi wouldn't have to waste her life on a "cripple." "If you refuse, you'll be on the street before dinner. Let's see how long you last." Isham threatened her with cold disdain, treating her like a worthless commodity to be traded for a corporate alliance. Her stepsister Brandi kicked her door open just to mock her, calling her a pathetic country bumpkin. They even used Corey's tragically deceased mother as emotional blackmail, entirely confident in their control, secretly hiding the fact that Isham had embezzled the five-million-dollar trust fund her mother left behind. The entire Copeland family looked down on her, convinced she was just a timid, helpless outcast who had no choice but to accept this deeply unfair fate. They had no idea that the moment Corey walked out of that study, her submissive mask dissolved. Locking her bedroom door, she pulled out an encrypted, military-grade laptop and logged in under her real title: Commander "Argent" of the BTO special ops. This forced marriage wasn't a cage, but her perfect cover to infiltrate New York's elite and finally avenge her mother's murder.