Claimed By The Ruthless Billionaire Boss
Tonight was supposed to be Cordelia's grand engagement party, the night she finally secured her future.
But an hour before the banquet, she received an anonymous video. Her fiancé was in the hotel's penthouse, tangled in the sheets with her stepsister. They had even paid off her trusted staff to keep her isolated.
Cordelia didn't shed a single tear. She walked onto the grand stage, hijacked the screens, and broadcasted their betrayal to hundreds of New York's elite. She tore up the multimillion-dollar prenup and threw the pieces in his face.
"The engagement is canceled. My legal team will seize your family's assets by tomorrow morning."
But instead of support, her own father violently grabbed her wrist, furious that she ruined their reputation. Her stepmother tried to slap her for the cameras, and her ex-fiancé threatened to completely destroy her career. Surrounded by the people who were supposed to be her family, she was treated like the villain.
Just as she was cornered, Justice Duncan, the most ruthless billionaire on Wall Street, stepped out of the shadows.
He offered her absolute protection and capital, but only if she signed a five-year contract marriage to mother his four-year-old heir.
But when Cordelia finally met the little boy, her blood ran completely cold.
The boy was the exact baby she was told she had miscarried four years ago. And the billionaire handing her the marriage contract was the same stranger who had taken him.
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Chapter 1
The heavy silk of the haute couture wedding dress felt like a straightjacket.
Cordelia stood in the center of the Plaza Hotel's VIP dressing room. She pulled a deep breath into her lungs, trying to ease the tight pressure in her chest.
Tonight was her engagement party. It was supposed to be the night she secured her future.
On the polished mahogany vanity, her backup work phone suddenly lit up. The harsh white glare cut through the dim, warm lighting of the room.
Cordelia frowned. Only her private assistant, Rosa, had this number.
She walked over and picked up the device. Her thumb swiped across the screen.
It wasn't a text from Rosa. It was an anonymous, encrypted email. The subject line was empty. The only content was a cloud video link that required no password.
A cold prickle of unease crawled up the back of her neck.
She tapped the link. The screen buffered for a second before a high-definition security feed filled the display.
The time stamp in the corner indicated the footage was from exactly one hour ago. The location was the penthouse suite of this very hotel.
Cordelia's breath hitched.
On the screen, her fiancé, Julian, was pushed against the edge of a king-sized bed. His hands were tangled in the blonde hair of the woman straddling him.
The woman threw her head back and laughed.
It was Isabelle. Cordelia's stepsister.
"Julian, stop," Isabelle moaned in the video, her voice echoing through the phone's small speaker. "What if Cordelia comes up here?"
"She won't," Julian panted, his mouth moving down Isabelle's neck. "She's busy playing the perfect bride. Besides, you said you took care of her staff."
"I did." Isabelle smirked, looking down at him. "A hundred thousand dollars was all it took for Marlene to send Rosa away on a fake errand. We have the whole floor to ourselves."
Cordelia's stomach violently dropped.
A wave of pure, acidic nausea rushed up her throat. She clamped a hand over her mouth, swallowing down the bile.
Her heart kicked into a frantic, painful rhythm against her ribs.
She stared at the screen. Her fingers gripped the edges of the phone so tightly that her knuckles turned a stark, bone-white. The metal casing dug into her palm, but she couldn't feel the pain.
Four years of building a relationship. Four years of compromising her own architectural firm to support his family's business.
All of it was a lie.
The shock only lasted for ten seconds. Then, the cold set in.
It started in her fingertips and spread through her veins like ice water, freezing the nausea and replacing it with a sharp, absolute fury.
Cordelia didn't cry. She didn't scream.
She tapped the screen, copied the video file, and opened her messaging app. She found the contact for the AV technician working the ballroom tonight-a college student she had personally sponsored two years ago.
She pasted the file and typed a single sentence: Play this on the main screens when I give the signal. Lock the booth.
She hit send.
Cordelia dropped the phone into her designer clutch. She turned around, her posture rigid, and walked toward the heavy oak door.
She grabbed the brass handle and pulled it open.
Marlene, her trusted housekeeper of five years, was standing right outside.
"Miss Cordelia!" Marlene jumped slightly, then quickly plastered a warm, practiced smile on her face. "You look absolutely breathtaking. Are you ready to go down?"
Cordelia stared at her. Her eyes were dead, stripping the older woman down to nothing.
"A hundred thousand dollars," Cordelia said. Her voice was flat, devoid of any human emotion.
Marlene's fake smile froze. The color instantly drained from her face, leaving her looking like a corpse. "I... I don't know what you mean, Miss."
"You took a hundred thousand dollars from Isabelle to leave me isolated tonight." Cordelia stepped closer. "You're fired, Marlene. Pack your things and leave my property by midnight. My lawyers will contact you in the morning regarding the breach of your NDA."
"Miss, please, let me explain-"
Cordelia didn't wait. She walked right past the trembling woman.
Her high heels clicked against the marble floor of the hallway. Each step was a hammer striking a nail into the coffin of her past life.
She reached the grand double doors of the main ballroom. The muffled sound of applause bled through the thick wood.
Cordelia pushed the doors open.
The blinding light of the crystal chandeliers hit her eyes. The ballroom was packed with hundreds of New York's elite.
Up on the main stage, Julian was holding a microphone. He wore a custom tuxedo, looking every bit the perfect, devoted fiancé.
"Cordelia is my rock," Julian said to the crowd, placing a hand over his heart. "I am the luckiest man alive to make her my wife."
High above the crowd, in the shadowed VIP balcony on the second floor, a man sat in a leather armchair.
Justice Duncan swirled the amber liquid in his crystal whiskey glass. His dark, predatory eyes locked onto Cordelia the second she entered the room.
He slowly reached up and adjusted his platinum cufflink, his gaze never leaving her rigid frame.
Down below, Julian spotted her. He smiled brightly and walked down the steps of the stage, extending his hand toward her.
"There she is," Julian announced through the mic. "My beautiful bride."
Cordelia kept walking.
When Julian reached for her fingers, she smoothly shifted her weight and stepped around him. She didn't even look at him.
She felt the confusion ripple through the crowd. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Isabelle standing near the front row, a smug, victorious smirk playing on her lips.
Cordelia walked straight up the stairs and stopped in the dead center of the stage.
She turned around to face the sea of guests. She reached out and snatched the microphone right out of Julian's hand as he hurried up behind her.
"Cordelia, what are you doing?" Julian whispered, his smile straining.
Cordelia ignored him. She raised her free hand in the air.
She snapped her fingers.
The massive LED screens behind the stage, which had been displaying their engagement photos, suddenly went black.
A second later, the high-definition security footage flashed onto the screens.
The top-tier surround sound system blasted Isabelle's moans into every corner of the silent ballroom.
"Julian, stop... What if Cordelia comes up here?"
The entire room collectively gasped. The sound sucked the air out of the massive space.
Dead silence followed, broken only by the disgusting, wet sounds of the betrayal echoing from the speakers. Then, the room exploded into chaotic whispers and shouts.
Julian's face turned the color of wet ash. He spun around, staring at the screen in pure horror.
"Turn it off!" Julian screamed, waving his arms frantically at the AV booth in the back. "Cut the power! Now!"
No one in the booth moved. The video kept playing.
In the front row, Isabelle shrieked. She threw her hands over her face and tried to duck behind her mother, Eleanor, but the flashes of a dozen paparazzi cameras had already found her.
Alistair, Cordelia's father, rushed toward the stage. His face was purple with rage.
"Cordelia! Shut this down right now!" Alistair roared over the noise. "Think about the family's reputation! You are ruining everything!"
Cordelia looked down at her father. A cold, humorless laugh escaped her lips.
She opened her clutch. She pulled out a thick stack of legal documents.
It was the prenuptial agreement. A contract worth hundreds of millions, tying her firm to Julian's sinking family business.
Cordelia held the papers up to the microphone.
She gripped the top of the stack and pulled her hands apart.
The sharp, violent sound of thick paper tearing ripped through the speakers.
She tore the contract in half. Then she put the pieces together and tore them again.
Her knuckles were white. Her breathing was steady.
She threw her hands up. The shredded pieces of the prenup fluttered down like dirty snow, landing on Julian's shoulders and hair.
"The engagement is canceled," Cordelia spoke into the mic, her voice cutting through the chaos like a steel blade. "And as per the infidelity clause in the draft you just watched me destroy, my legal team will be seizing your family's remaining liquid assets by tomorrow morning."
Julian fell to his knees, his hands grabbing at the torn pieces of paper on the floor.
Cordelia reached for her left hand. She grabbed the massive diamond ring on her finger and yanked it off.
She threw it hard. The heavy metal hit Julian squarely in the chest and bounced off, rolling away into the shadows.
Cordelia dropped the microphone. It hit the stage with a loud, piercing feedback screech.
She turned her back on the stage, the screaming crowd, and her ruined family. She walked toward the exit, her spine completely straight.
The gossip reporters at the back of the room surged forward like a pack of starving wolves, blocking the main doors.
Up in the VIP balcony, Justice Duncan set his whiskey glass down on the table. The glass made a sharp clink.
He looked at the head of his security detail standing in the shadows behind him.
"Clear the floor," Justice ordered. His voice was low, rough, and absolute. "Get her out of there."
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9.3
On her wedding night at The Plaza Hotel, Clara went looking for her husband.
Instead, she found him in the dimly lit parking garage, passionately pinning down her bridesmaid.
She couldn't even scream or expose them. Just hours before the ceremony, Julian had tricked her into signing away her twenty percent shares of their co-founded company, leaving her completely penniless and unable to pay her grandmother's life-saving medical bills.
Fleeing in absolute despair, a sudden hotel blackout plunged her into a second nightmare. She was dragged into a pitch-black room and brutally violated by a heavily drugged stranger.
When a shattered Clara returned to the office to audit the books and reclaim her power, Julian demoted her to a dusty desk by the trash cans.
He flaunted his mistress in the executive suite and deliberately sent Clara into a horrifying trap. He arranged for vicious clients to drug and assault her, demanding high-definition blackmail photos so he could divorce her with absolutely nothing.
"Since you want to play rough, you can service Mr. Petrocelli tonight," the thug sneered, locking the VIP room door.
Clara was pushed to the brink of hell. Why was the man she devoted three years of her life to trying to destroy her so completely? And why did the freezing cedarwood scent of the stranger who ruined her in the dark perfectly match Conrad Vance, the ruthless CEO and Julian's untouchable uncle?
Rather than let Julian win, Clara smashed a glass bottle, held the jagged edge to her own throat to force the men back, and threw herself off the second-floor balcony into the freezing night.
But the bone-crushing impact never came. A massive figure shot out from the shadows and caught her, and her brutal counterattack finally began.
8.0
Finley's stepfather gave her a sickening ultimatum: marry her predatory stepbrother Shane tonight, or he would throw her fragile mother out on the street.
To escape this hell, she used a matchmaking agency and hastily married a complete stranger. Garrison Strickland claimed to be an ordinary data analyst making $95,000 a year, driving a beat-up Honda Civic, and needing a wife in name only. They got their marriage license at City Hall that very afternoon.
But when Finley returned home to pack her bags and threw the certificate on the table, her family just laughed. Dozier ordered Shane to drag her into the bedroom to "teach her a lesson" and trap her forever.
"Come on, little sister," Shane crooned, lunging at her. "Don't fight it."
Finley's own mother just stared at the floor, blaming Finley for ruining the family, watching blindly as Shane cornered her.
Terrified and desperate, Finley smashed an ashtray over Shane's head and frantically dialed her new husband's number. Shane snatched the phone, mocking the "imaginary husband" before the line went dead. Finley felt a bottomless despair. Garrison was just a normal guy; he would never risk his life against her violent family. She was completely on her own, waiting for the end.
Suddenly, deafening bangs echoed through the house, and Garrison stepped into the living room radiating a cold, terrifying fury. This supposedly "frugal data analyst" effortlessly snapped Shane's wrist, leveled a ruthless death threat that made Dozier tremble, and whisked Finley away in a waiting Bentley. Looking at the powerful man beside her, Finley's heart raced: just who exactly had she married today?
8.8
When Nigerian financial analyst Eniola Adeyemi exposes a 2.3 billion naira money laundering scheme, she becomes the target of powerful criminals who'll stop at nothing to silence her. Her only protection? A contract marriage to Elijah Kingston-the cold, ruthless, American billionaire CEO whose own family is at the heart of the conspiracy. What begins as a transactional arrangement for safety and an heir becomes a dangerous game of power, betrayal, and undeniable passion as they're forced to choose between empire and love.
8.9
Ava Kidd just wanted to escape her abusive stepmother when she got drunk at a high-end club and stumbled into the wrong hotel room.
She woke up the next morning in a luxury penthouse, lying naked next to a terrifyingly handsome man covered in her scratch marks.
Recalling rumors of the hotel's secret underground concierge, she immediately assumed she had accidentally slept with an elite male escort.
Desperate to settle the bill, she offered him her only debit card with a pathetic $1,800.
But the man, who was actually Garrison Terry, the ruthless billionaire CEO, was deeply insulted by the cheap plastic.
He trapped her against the bed, coldly demanding a half-million-dollar service fee.
When Ava frantically offered her dead mother's tarnished locket as collateral, he cruelly dismissed it as worthless junk.
Ava was humiliated, her heart pounding with absolute terror.
She didn't understand why this arrogant gigolo was acting like a deranged extortionist, demanding a fortune from a broke girl who had clearly made a mistake.
Furious and refusing to cower, she sneaked out, put on his oversized designer shirt, and aggressively ate his $800 truffle breakfast.
Having no money left, she grabbed her cheap red lipstick, wrote a defiant IOU on his expensive linen napkin, and fled the hotel.
She thought she had escaped a criminal, but upstairs, the billionaire traced her lipstick-stained name with a predatory smile.
"Ava Kidd, I will absolutely find you."
7.5
Bryn hovered as a translucent soul over her own fresh grave, just three days after she was buried.
She had been shoved off a cliff by Keifer, the boyfriend she provided for, while her adopted sister Fabiola watched and laughed.
Now, they stood at her grave crying fake tears, ready to steal her massive inheritance.
Suddenly, Dominic Hutchinson, the arrogant school tyrant who made her life a living hell, arrived.
He didn't come to mock her. He dug up her grave with his bare, bleeding hands, hugging her freezing urn as he sobbed in pure despair.
He ruthlessly exposed Keifer and Fabiola's murder plot, sending them to federal prison.
Three months later, Dominic stood before her rebuilt headstone in a pristine white tuxedo.
"It's finally over. I can finally come pick you up."
He pulled out a silver scalpel and slit his own wrist, leaving a bloody kiss above her carved name as he died.
Bryn fell to her knees, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably.
The boy she thought hated her had loved her with his entire life, while the parasites she trusted had killed her.
Why had she been so utterly blind?
A blinding light swallowed her soul, and Bryn suddenly snapped her eyes open.
She was standing by her high school lockers, completely alive.
She had returned to exactly three years before her death.
7.5
Daisy spent her birthday cooking a perfect dinner, waiting in their massive penthouse for her billionaire husband, Emmett.
Instead of coming home, a breaking news alert flashed on her screen: Emmett was at the hospital, protectively shielding his old flame, Eryn. When Daisy rushed to the VIP ward, Emmett physically blocked her to comfort a crying Eryn, completely forgetting it was his wife's birthday.
Heartbroken, Daisy demanded a divorce and fled. In response, Emmett ruthlessly froze all her bank accounts and trust funds, leaving her penniless in the freezing Manhattan rain. When she cornered him with divorce papers at a public funeral, a heavy metal cart slammed into her, tearing her calf wide open. Bleeding onto the marble floor, she begged him to sign. Instead, Emmett violently ripped the bloody papers to shreds.
"Unless I am dead, you are my wife," he snarled, locking her inside a room.
Daisy risked her life to escape through a window, dragging her bleeding leg to a dingy motel. But the real nightmare began when Eryn called. The tragic car crash that killed Daisy's adoptive parents ten years ago wasn't an accident—the brake lines were cut. And Emmett, the man she loved, had been using his vast corporate empire to protect the murderers all along.
Why did Emmett bury the police report? What was the deadly secret behind her true identity and the antique "Venus" necklace? Staring at her blood-stained hands in the cracked mirror, the terrified wife died. Daisy grabbed her coat and limped out into the dark, heading straight for the Navy Yard to burn his empire to the ground.