Cheated On Me? I Married a Tycoon
I spent three years building my husband, Axel Farrell, into Silicon Valley's ultimate "family man." As his lead PR strategist, I carefully managed his public image, making sure the world saw him as a perfect, devoted husband while I worked in the shadows of our estate.
The illusion shattered when he came home one night smelling of sandalwood and roses, with three deep fingernail scratches carved into his back. When I tried to check his phone, the passcode we had used for years-our wedding anniversary-had been changed.
The betrayal got worse the next morning when his mother called me a "defective product" and tried to force me into a fertility clinic. Axel didn't defend me; instead, he shoved me against a marble bar at a public gala to protect his mistress in front of the world's elite. By the time I tried to leave, Axel had frozen my bank accounts and filed a forged legal petition to have me declared mentally incompetent.
He planned to have me legally kidnapped and locked in a private psychiatric ward just to stop me from filing for divorce. He even blocked every major law firm in the city from taking my case, leaving me with no money, no identity, and no one to turn to.
I couldn't understand how the man who "saved" me from the mud years ago could be the same monster now trying to legally erase my existence. Was our entire marriage just a grooming process to exploit my genius for his billion-dollar empire?
As the deadline for my forced commitment approached, I stopped crying and opened my laptop. I leaked the video of his affair to every tech journalist in the country, watching his stock price crash in real-time.
"Axel thinks starving me out will make me crawl back to him," I whispered as I walked into the headquarters of his biggest rival.
"But he forgot that the most valuable part of his company is in my head."
I was no longer the abandoned wife; I was the one who was going to take his throne and burn it to the ground.
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Chapter 6
The rain in Manhattan came down in violent, sideways sheets, turning the evening commute into a gridlocked nightmare.
Ayla stood under the narrow awning of a deli, shivering in her black business suit. The fabric was soaked through, clinging to her freezing skin.
She had spent the entire day visiting the top three divorce litigation firms in the city.
Every single managing partner had taken one look at the name "Axel Farrell" on her intake form and politely shown her the door.
Her burner phone vibrated in her pocket.
It was an anonymous email from Jared, Axel's assistant.
Ayla opened it. It was a high-resolution photo.
The photo showed the three managing partners she had just visited, standing on a private golf course in the Hamptons, laughing and drinking scotch with Axel.
It was a psychological kill shot. Axel was showing her that she was trapped in a cage he owned.
Ayla let out a harsh, bitter laugh. She deleted the email and looked across the flooded street.
The neon sign flickered through the rain: The Obsidian Lounge.
It was a notorious, ultra-exclusive underground speakeasy. The kind of place where Wall Street predators made blood pacts.
Ayla crossed the street, ignoring the water soaking into her heels.
She walked down the concrete stairs and stood in front of the heavy iron door. The facial recognition scanner swept her face. The system registered her instantly. Her access wasn't tied to the Farrell Group, but to an old, ironclad PR contract she'd personally negotiated for the lounge's reclusive owner-a man who despised Axel. Her clearance was untouchable. The door clicked open.
The inside of the lounge was dark, smelling heavily of aged cigar smoke and expensive bourbon. Low jazz played over the speakers.
Ayla walked to the furthest, darkest corner of the marble bar and sat down.
"Cheapest bourbon you have," she told the bartender, wrapping her numb fingers around the glass when it arrived to steal its meager warmth.
She pulled her tablet out of her waterproof bag and opened the dossiers the headhunter had sent her.
She needed a target.
She felt a heavy, suffocating weight press against the side of her face. A stare so intense it felt physical.
Ayla turned her head slightly.
In the VIP booth to her right, cloaked in deep shadows, sat a man.
He was wearing a pitch-black dress shirt, the top two buttons undone. His long, scarred fingers were slowly, rhythmically turning a crystal glass of amber liquid.
The dim light caught the watch on his wrist. A Richard Mille military-grade limited edition.
Ayla looked away immediately. She didn't have time for arrogant billionaires looking for a hookup. She stared back at her tablet.
The bartender walked over and tapped a leather checkbook on the bar in front of her.
"Miss, this section has a two-thousand-dollar minimum spend," the bartender said, his tone dripping with elitist disdain.
Ayla's stomach tightened. She had the cashier's checks, but she only had about four hundred dollars in physical cash left from buying the burner phone.
"I'll move," Ayla said, reaching for her bag.
Before her fingers could touch the strap, a solid black Centurion card slid across the marble bar, pinning the checkbook down.
Ayla's breath hitched.
The man from the shadows was suddenly standing right next to her. He moved with the terrifying, silent grace of an apex predator.
"Put it on my tab," a voice rumbled. It was deep, gravelly, and laced with absolute authority.
Ayla spun around, her muscles tensing defensively. "I don't need your charity. What do you want?"
The man leaned down slightly. The dim light finally hit his face.
He looked like a fallen angel carved from marble. Pale, sharp jawline, and a faint, jagged scar cutting through his left eyebrow.
Cassius didn't look at her face. His dark, dangerous eyes dropped to the glowing screen of her tablet.
He was looking at the financial acquisition blueprints for the Gilliam Group.
A slow, wicked smirk pulled at the corner of Cassius's mouth.
"You have good taste," Cassius murmured, his voice sending a shiver down Ayla's spine. "But Gilliam's firewalls aren't that easy to hack."
Ayla's heart slammed against her ribs. She slammed the tablet shut.
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9.7
Luna Elena Frost was never chosen, only assigned.
Bound to Alpha Alaric Ashbourne through a cold contractual marriage, she endures three years as a Luna in name only. He never comes home, never defends her, and never looks at her, while his heart belongs to another woman.
At his grandmother's funeral, Alaric publicly dissolves their marriage, humiliating Elena before the entire pack. In that moment, she finally understands the truth. She was never wanted.
But the Moon has not abandoned her.
A forgotten night resurfaces. Her long-silent wolf begins to awaken. And secrets buried within her bloodline start to surface, drawing danger from every direction.
Cast out by the pack that once used her, Elena must flee, survive, and uncover her true power.
Only then does the Alpha realize his mistake.
By the time he turns back in regret, the Luna he rejected may already be gone forever.
8.9
Sienna Jones only wanted a one week escape in Miami but woke up one morning legally married to a stranger who happens to be Eric Macmillan, a British Billionaire heir.
Before Sienna can process the disaster she accidentally signed up for, the internet has crowned her the mystery wife of a billionaire.
Now, stuck navigating lawyers, paparazzi, angry parents, and a marriage they never meant to happen, can Sienna and Eric keep things civil until they quietly annul it?
7.6
I spent three years as the hidden mistress of Wall Street tyrant Damon Vaughn. Our no-strings arrangement meant I was his to command, a secret he kept locked away in the dark.
Then I saw the Instagram post. It was Damon, raising a champagne glass with his perfect high-society fiancée, the caption hinting that wedding bells were just around the corner.
I ended it that night, leaving his black card on his nightstand and blocking his number for good. But a man like Damon doesn't accept being told no. He retaliated by buying the entire building my tech startup was in. He cornered me on the street, slamming his fist into my car's hood, his face a mask of terrifying rage.
He was a possessive monster, planning his perfect marriage while refusing to release me from my cage. The humiliation of being his disposable secret burned hotter than my anger.
To finally break him, I lied about having a blind date. But the lie became a terrifying reality when my mother forced me into that exact date. Now, Damon has kidnapped me, and as he shoves me out of his car in front of the restaurant, his voice is a low, dangerous whisper meant only for me.
"Remember who you belong to."
7.8
I was Grayson Warren’s "broken doll," a disgraced socialite kept on a short leash to pay off my family’s debts. To the world, I was a fragile liability; to Grayson, I was a pet he could humiliate for sport, forcing me to play the role of a mentally unstable girl while I secretly gathered evidence against his empire.
The cruelty peaked when Grayson forced me to break three years of sobriety in front of his investors, mocking my struggle before making me kneel on a golf course to scrub his shoes. He treated my life like a game, literally betting my sanity against a corporate board seat while he soft-launched a new relationship with a high-profile PR queen.
When the pressure triggered a massive panic attack, Grayson abandoned me in a private clinic just so he wouldn't miss a dinner reservation. Even my own mother turned against me, threatening to leak my psychiatric records and brand me a "violent delusional" if I didn't beg for Grayson’s forgiveness. I was trapped between a man who owned my debt and a mother who valued her estate over my daughter’s life.
I realized then that they would never let me go; they would only break me until there was nothing left. They thought they had erased my soul, but they forgot I was the only witness to the night my true love, Felix, was murdered. I was done being the victim.
I faked a suicide jump off the Queensboro Bridge to go off the grid, then crashed Grayson’s elite gala in a dress that signaled his downfall. Just as Grayson tried to physically crush me one last time, the room went silent. Felix Law, the man the world thought was dead for three years, walked out of the shadows with a federal warrant in his hand.
"Take your hands off her, Warren."
The game didn't just change; it ended. Felix was back from the dead, and this time, we were burning the empire to the ground together.
7.2
For three years, I was imprisoned by Anderson Hopper, the monster who forced me to watch my fiancé, Kendall, plummet into a freezing river.
But when I saw the morning news, I realized Kendall wasn't dead. He had returned as Eben Gill, a ruthless tech billionaire.
I risked my life to escape and find him, only to be met with eyes full of absolute hatred.
He publicly humiliated me, dragged me to the exact bridge where he "died," and sneered at the C-section scar on my stomach.
"Anderson Hopper's bastard," he spat, completely unaware that the baby was actually his—the very child Anderson had murdered in the operating room to break me.
To make matters worse, Anderson used Kendall's dying mother as a hostage to force me back into my cage.
I knelt on the freezing asphalt, begging the man I loved to just visit his mother, while he coldly ordered his driver to run me over.
I had lost my baby, my freedom, and my dignity, all to protect him from Anderson's blackmail. Why was I the one being tortured and treated like a traitor?
"Don't think your little kneeling stunt earned you my forgiveness."
He whispered those cruel words before walking away without looking back.
Staring at his cold, retreating figure, the last shred of my love finally turned to ash.
That night, under the cover of a torrential storm, I bypassed the estate's laser grids and walked out into the dark.
7.2
Elmore Thomas rushed into the emergency room, clutching his feverish seven-year-old son, Buddy, tightly to his chest.
When the privacy curtain was pulled back, the air in Elmore's lungs vanished. The attending physician standing under the harsh lights was his wife, Kendal—the woman everyone believed had burned to death eight years ago.
But there was no tearful reunion. Kendal looked at him, and her eyes froze into impenetrable ice. She treated him like a biohazard, strictly referring to him as the family member.
Worse, she didn't recognize Buddy. She comforted their crying son with the same gentle warmth she used to reserve for Elmore, completely unaware she was soothing the baby she thought had died.
Days later, Elmore watched from the shadows as she picked up another boy outside a prep school, her left hand flashing a massive diamond engagement ring.
When his butler accidentally recognized her, Kendal shielded her new stepson with pure disgust in her eyes.
"Tell that psychopath to sign the divorce papers immediately. I have a new family now."
The words 'new family' echoed in Elmore's skull, tearing him apart. For eight years, he had lived in a hell of guilt and madness, raising their son in the shadow of her ghost. How could she just erase their past? How could she give her tender smiles to a stranger and look at him with absolute revulsion?
Standing in a luxury ballroom, Elmore squeezed his hand until his crystal champagne flute shattered, thick blood dripping onto the rug. The murderous obsession in his dark eyes returned as he called his lawyer.
"Freeze her divorce application. Use every dirty trick in the book. She isn't leaving."