Discarded Bride: The True Heiress Returns
For twenty years, I lived as the adopted daughter of the wealthy Hill family.
But today, they forced me to sign a severance agreement and kicked me out so their precious biological daughter, Malia, could marry my fiancé.
To ruin me completely, they framed me for stealing Malia's engagement bracelet, threatening me with prison.
I calmly exposed the "sapphire" as cheap glass, then rolled up my sleeves to show the reporters my scarred, punctured arms.
For two decades, I wasn't a daughter. I was Malia's living blood and bone marrow bank.
They drained my health to keep her alive, even ordering doctors to ignore my failing organs just so she could attend a gala.
"Take this million dollars and shut your mouth," my adoptive father sneered, throwing a check at my feet.
My ex-fiancé looked at me with disgust, and Malia screamed that I was a crazy, vindictive liar.
They had stolen my life and my health, yet they still looked down on me like I was garbage.
I ripped the check into pieces and threw it in their faces.
Just as they ordered the butler to drag me out, a group of men in black suits shattered the chaos.
The heir of the untouchable Montgomery dynasty stepped through the door, ignoring the Hills' fawning, and handed me a DNA report.
I wasn't a disposable blood bag. I was the long-lost true heiress of old New York money.
And now, I was going to take back everything they stole from me.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 5
Wyatt led Kelsey into the building's small, dimly lit lobby. The elevator was an old, cage-style relic. He pressed the call button, and it descended with a groan of protesting metal.
Inside, there was only one button, a polished brass circle with no number. Wyatt placed his thumb on a scanner beside it, then leaned in as a thin red light scanned his eye.
Kelsey's eyebrows rose slightly. This was military-grade security, not something you found in a rundown apartment building. She kept her silence.
The elevator doors opened not into a hallway, but directly into a breathtaking, glass-walled penthouse that seemed to float above the Manhattan skyline. A lush indoor garden flowed into a living space so vast and elegantly furnished it looked like a museum.
Wyatt rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. "Okay, so... the whole 'down-to-earth' thing was my grandparents' idea. A test."
Kelsey looked around at the priceless art on the walls, the panoramic views, the sheer, unapologetic wealth. "Testing me with a rusty pickup truck. How original."
"They were afraid you'd be like... well, like the people you just left," Wyatt explained, his voice earnest. "They wanted to be sure you weren't just after the money."
"And if I had complained about the truck?" Kelsey asked, her voice flat. "Would you have just left me on the curb?"
Wyatt's silence was answer enough. The Montgomerys were just as ruthless as the Hills, only with better taste.
At the far end of the room, a set of large double doors swung open. A woman with silver-streaked hair and eyes the same gray as Kelsey's stood there, her hands twisting the fabric of her expensive dress. Beside her, a man with a stern, powerful face watched Kelsey with an unnerving intensity. Her parents.
Eleonora and Reginald Montgomery.
Kelsey felt a strange detachment, like watching a scene from a movie. There was no swell of emotion, no tearful reunion. Just a cold, wary observation.
Eleonora took a hesitant step forward, her hands outstretched as if to embrace her, but she stopped, afraid. "Kelsey..."
Kelsey gave a slight, formal nod. "Mrs. Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery."
The polite, distant titles struck Eleonora like a physical blow. Tears welled in her eyes and began to stream down her face. "Oh, my baby," she sobbed. "Can you ever forgive us?"
Reginald cleared his throat, his composure unwavering. "We will spend the rest of our lives making this up to you."
"I don't need a lifetime of apologies," Kelsey said, her voice cool. "I just need a place to sleep."
Suddenly, the sound of a cello filled the room, a sad, beautiful melody. In a corner of the living room, a young woman with a gentle, angelic face was playing, her eyes closed in concentration.
She finished the phrase, lowered her bow, and stood up gracefully. "Welcome home, Kelsey," she said, her smile warm and inviting.
But Kelsey saw it. A flicker of pure, unadulterated jealousy in the girl's eyes, gone as quickly as it appeared.
The girl glided over to Eleonora and linked her arm through hers. "Mom, you must be so happy."
The word "Mom" was a territorial claim, a subtle reminder of her place in this family.
"Kelsey," Reginald said, his voice formal. "This is Clare Burton. We adopted her from an orphanage years ago."
Kelsey looked from Clare's haute couture dress to her own worn jeans and faded sweater. She understood everything perfectly.
"The staff can show you to one of the guest rooms," Clare suggested, her tone dripping with false sweetness. "You must be exhausted after your... ordeal."
Before Kelsey could respond, Eleonora cut her off, her voice sharp. "Nonsense. Her room is ready."
She pulled her arm away from Clare and took Kelsey's hand. Her touch was trembling, but firm. She led Kelsey down a long hallway to the largest set of doors. "We've kept it for you. All these years."
She pushed the doors open. The room was a princess's fantasy, filled with brand new designer clothes, jewelry boxes, and every luxury a girl could dream of.
It was a gilded cage. And Kelsey felt the cold metal of the bars already closing in around her.
You may also like
9.2
Rebirth with a Twist.
Fawn Jones doesn't get a chance to resolve the issues with her marriage. No, she gets murdered in her own bathtub. Drowned by the husband she hated after he had moved his mistress into their bed, Fawn's last lucid thought is a promise before death. "I will not stay weak. I will make you pay. If not in this life, then the next." Then she wakes up. Different room. Different body. Different life. Cassandra Huntington – rich, infamous, beautiful in a way Fawn never had been. Cassie had been in a coma for six months after a car crash. Her billionaire husband, Blake, had just signed the paperwork to turn off her life support when she suddenly started breathing on her own. Now everyone thinks Fawn is Cassandra. The media calls it a miracle. Blake calls it complicated. The woman wearing his wife's face is softer, sharper, funnier... and so tempting he hates himself for wanting her. Fawn calls it an opportunity for revenge. Her killers are still out there. Her old body is in the ground under a lie. And the only weapons she has now are Cassandra's money, Cassandra's reputation... and Cassandra's husband. So, she plays the role. Learns to walk in six-inch heels. Smiles for the cameras. Seduces a man who once couldn't stand his wife and now can't seem to stay away from her. While she quietly buys into the company that ruined her old life. While she gets close enough to the man who killed her to watch him crack. They drowned the wrong woman. Now she's awake. And she's not done.
7.2
Two years ago, Amaya Bennett witnessed a murder.
A powerful man was killed in cold blood, right in front of her. She should have died that night too.
Instead, she woke up in a hospital with no memory of what happened. No faces, no names and no clues. Just fragments, blurred images that slip through her fingers every time she tries to hold on.
Now, Amaya lives a quiet life, piecing herself back together. She works part-time, avoids trouble, and stays invisible. Until she lands a job at Twilight Global.
A company owned by Jake Anderson, the cold and untouchable CEO whose father was murdered the same night Aria lost her memory. Jake spent years searching for the only witness. But she vanished without any trace. Or so he thought.
But somehow, they cross path again, working under his roof, completely unaware of the truth she carries.
The killer is still out there.
And when Amaya starts getting flashes of blood, a voice, a ring glinting under the dim light, the hunt begins again.
But this time, she's not alone. Because even before he realizes who she is... Jake has already started protecting her. In the most relentless and dangerous way.
9.3
Grace finally decided to end her toxic, one-sided relationship with Adelbert, the arrogant heir to a global empire, by texting him to terminate their family trust.
His response was a single, freezing word: "Done."
When they accidentally bumped into each other in a law firm elevator, Adelbert looked right through her.
"I don't know her," he stated coldly to his frat brothers, treating her like invisible trash.
Humiliated and completely exhausted, Grace sought an escape in a brutal shooter game called PUBG.
But by a sick twist of fate, the random matchmaking threw her into a squad with Adelbert's frat brothers and a god-tier, toxic player named 'Ø'.
'Ø' relentlessly mocked her terrible skills, humiliating her and calling her a "pig" over the voice chat.
Yet, during the final shootout, this ruthless player suddenly threw his character in front of hers, taking a fatal barrage of bullets just to keep her alive.
Grace soon uncovered the terrifying truth: the top-ranked 'Ø' was actually Adelbert himself.
She was utterly confused and furious.
Why would the untouchable billionaire who ignored her legal texts and publicly humiliated her suddenly sacrifice himself for her in a cheap video game?
Refusing to swallow her pride in both the real and digital worlds, Grace sent a direct challenge to his gaming profile.
"I'll prove I'm not a pig."
Across the city, Adelbert stared at the notification, a dark smirk curling his lips, and clicked accept.
8.3
Hovering as a translucent soul in the freezing cemetery, I watched Corbin Mendez—the ruthless billionaire I had spent my entire life despising—violently smash open my tomb.
I thought he had come to desecrate my corpse. Instead, he collapsed to his knees, reverently kissed my dead lips, and swallowed a lethal bottle of pills without a drop of water.
In my past life, I was betrayed by my ex-fiancé, framed by my vicious step-family, and trapped in a suffocating marriage with Corbin. I thought he was a paranoid, abusive monster who only wanted to control me. I fought his madness every single day until I died sick, exhausted, and utterly defeated.
But watching him climb into my casket, wrapping his massive arms around my cold body to die beside me, my non-existent heart shattered.
Why hadn't I seen the truth? He wasn't a monster; he was a deeply traumatized man suffering from severe PTSD, and his obsessive love for me was his only tether to sanity.
The regret and agony tore my soul to pieces.
"My love, I'm too late."
Those were his last words before his heart stopped.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't floating in a dark tomb. I was lying in Corbin's bed, exactly two years in the past.
This time, I wouldn't run away. I would heal the broken beast who died for me, and I would personally put a bullet in everyone who ruined us.
9.8
When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future.
For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed.
Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone.
I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back.
But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours.
When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along.
"What's in your pocket, Felicie?"
This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands.
7.2
For ten years, Aurora was abandoned by her wealthy family to rot in the countryside.
When she finally returned, there was no warm welcome. The Lott family only brought her back to replace her adopted sister in an arranged marriage with Damian Yates, a notoriously violent, crippled billionaire, just to save their bankrupt company.
Her grandmother mocked her as uneducated trash. Her fake sister feigned disgust at her very presence.
When her biological father desperately tried to stop them from sending his daughter to her death, the family turned on him.
Her grandmother struck her father across the face, kicked the three of them out of the manor into the freezing rain, and arrogantly declared they would starve on the streets by nightfall.
They thought Aurora was just a helpless, pathetic hillbilly who would quietly accept being sold as livestock.
They had no idea that over the past decade, she had survived the darkest corners of the world, becoming a lethal operative with unimaginable power.
Standing in the cold rain, Aurora didn't shed a single tear.
She calmly pulled out her encrypted phone, personally canceled the billionaire's marriage contract, and ordered her hacker to completely freeze the Lott family's accounts.
"Total financial annihilation. Burn them to the ground."
But as she watched her abusers' legacy crumble, a classified file arrived on her phone, revealing that the very billionaire she just rejected was tied to her mother's unsolved murder.
The real hunt was just beginning.