Divorcing The CEO: I'll Take Your Empire
I spent three years being the perfect wife to tech mogul Cash Ferguson, a forensic accountant playing the role of a low-risk asset to stabilize his public image. My world shattered when I saw a live CNBC broadcast from Sundance showing Cash tenderly hoisting a two-year-old boy onto his hip—a secret son born to a socialite mistress while he was supposedly at a business roadshow.
When I confronted him with divorce papers, Cash didn't apologize; he laughed, calling me a "liability" and weaponizing my mother’s history of mental illness to claim I was genetically unfit to carry his heir. He didn't just reject the split; he locked the penthouse elevator and froze every one of my accounts, reclassifying me from a wife to a piece of disputed company property.
"You came from nothing, Isidora," he sneered, tossing a credit card at me like a leash. "Stop being dramatic. I can afford a pet, but don't think you can survive a day in the real world without my name."
The betrayal turned lethal when I discovered Cash had tracked down my mother’s stolen emerald brooch—my only connection to my past—and bought it as a gift for his mistress. He was using my trauma and my heritage to decorate the woman who had replaced me in his secret life.
I realized then that Cash had made a fatal accounting error: he forgot that I was the one who built his shadow accounts and knew exactly where the fraud was buried. He wanted to treat our marriage like a hostile takeover, so I decided to give him a market correction he would never forget.
I escaped down forty flights of stairs with nothing but a burner laptop and a plan to burn his empire to the ground. If he wanted to play dirty, I’d show him what happens when a forensic accountant initiates a liquidation protocol. I’m not just leaving; I’m going to make him crawl.
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Chapter 6
L'Eclat smelled of old money and lavender.
Isidora and Harper walked in. The security guard eyed Harper's combat boots with suspicion. The sales clerk, a woman with a face pulled tight by surgery, didn't even look up from her ledger.
Isidora ignored them. She walked straight to the central display case.
Her heart stopped.
There it was. The emerald brooch. It was shaped like a peacock feather, the gems glowing with a deep, verdant fire under the halogen lights. It was the only thing her mother had left her before the state took her away.
Isidora pressed her hand against the glass. The cool surface felt like a barrier between worlds.
"Excuse me," Isidora said. Her voice trembled slightly.
The clerk looked up, bored. "Yes?"
"That brooch. How much is it?"
The clerk glanced at the item, then back at Isidora's borrowed leather jacket. "That is a Victorian original. It is listed at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
The number didn't shock her; the betrayal behind it did. Two hundred and fifty thousand. He had sold her last connection to her mother for the price of a mid-range sports car.
"He stole it," Harper whispered fiercely behind her. "Frank stole it from you."
"Can I... can I see it?" Isidora asked. "Just hold it for a second?"
"I'm afraid not," the clerk said, turning back to her papers. "We only open the case for serious inquiries."
The bell above the door chimed.
Isidora turned.
Gavin walked in.
He looked nervous, checking his phone. He walked straight to the manager, who materialized from the back room instantly.
Isidora grabbed Harper's arm and dragged her behind a marble pillar.
"That's Cash's assistant," she hissed.
They watched through the reflection in a large, gilt-framed mirror.
"Mr. Ferguson sent me," Gavin said, his voice echoing in the quiet shop. "He wants the emerald peacock brooch. Wrap it up."
Isidora felt like she had been punched in the throat.
The manager beamed. "Excellent choice. For Mrs. Ferguson?"
Gavin shifted his weight. He looked uncomfortable. "Uh, no. Send it to this address." He handed over a card. "It's for Ms. Duran. And keep it discreet."
Isidora slid down the pillar until she was crouching on the floor.
Cash was buying her mother's heirloom. For his mistress.
It was a cosmic joke. A cruelty so precise it felt engineered.
"I'm going to kill him," Harper whispered, her hands balling into fists. "Let me go over there."
Isidora grabbed Harper's wrist. Her grip was iron.
"No," Isidora said. Her eyes were dry, burning with a cold, hard light. "Not here. Not like this. He has the money. But I have the intelligence."
She watched as the clerk removed the brooch. The emeralds flashed one last time before disappearing into a velvet box.
Gavin swiped a black card. He took the bag. He left.
Isidora stood up. She smoothed the leather jacket.
She walked to the counter. The manager was still smiling, holding the receipt.
"That brooch," Isidora said. Her voice was steady. "When it gets returned, call me."
The manager scoffed. "Mr. Ferguson doesn't return gifts."
"This one he will," Isidora said. "Trust me."
She turned and walked out of the store. The sun outside was blinding.
"He's going to give it back," Isidora said to Harper on the sidewalk. "He's going to get on his knees and hand it to me."
She didn't look back at the shop. The target was locked.
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7.4
Avery thought she'd found her happily ever after with Ethan, the charming billionaire who swept her off her feet in Willow Creek. But after one night of passion, he vanished, leaving her heartbroken and alone. She returned home to find her grandmother, her only family, had passed away.
Devastated, Avery discovered a shocking truth: she was the daughter of a millionaire who'd left her a vast fortune. Relocated to New York, she met Ethan again, but this time, he was determined to win her back. Unbeknownst to him, Avery had been hiding a life-changing secret: she's the mother of his twin babies.
As Avery navigates her complicated past and the wicked family members who despise her, Ethan's pursuit becomes relentless. He'll stop at nothing to reclaim the love they shared, but Avery's secrets threaten to tear them apart. Can she trust him with her heart and the truth about their children, or will it drive them further apart?
Ethan's words echoed in her mind: "I've been searching for you for six years, Avery. I won't let you go again." But Avery's secrets were only the beginning. Little did Ethan know, their love story was only just beginning...
8.8
Elizbeth married the wealthy heir Carlton Wilkinson to save her grandfather's life's work.
But on their wedding night, instead of a loving husband, she faced a cold tyrant. He forced her to sign a brutal prenup, stripped her of all family rights, and banished her to a dingy guest room.
He was convinced she was just a pathetic, gold-digging liar.
When a catastrophic pain attack drove Carlton to smash his own head against the wall, Elizbeth rushed in to save him using her specialized acupuncture. She risked her life to calm his spasming nerves.
But the moment he woke up, he nearly choked her to death. He threw her against the wall, bleeding and bruised, accusing her of using cheap parlor tricks to poison him.
The next morning, his greedy relatives openly mocked her cheap clothes, waiting like vultures for Carlton to drop dead so they could steal his fortune.
Elizbeth was humiliated and terrified, but she soon discovered a classified secret.
Carlton was a former Delta Force operator slowly going mad from an undetectable weaponized biotoxin. The poison made him paranoid and violent. He would rather die in agony than accept help from a woman he despised.
Begged by his desperate grandfather, Elizbeth knew she had to cure him in the shadows.
At 1:00 AM, she slipped a heavy, odorless sedative into his water and sneaked into his pitch-black bedroom to begin the detox.
But as her silver needle hovered over his skin, a massive hand shot out and pinned her violently to the mattress.
"How much did they pay you to poison me?" he hissed in the dark, his eyes wide awake and blazing with murderous fury.
9.3
"Adrian, why would you lie to me? Why would you let her push my mum like that?"
Yvonne's voice trembled, holding back tears.
Adrian smirked. "Wake up, Yvonne. You really thought I wanted you when Tricia was right here?"
That was how Adrian-her first crush, the boy she thought cared-chose to humiliate her in front of everyone as she was the cleaner's adopted daughter.
But fate had other plans.
Because the Diamond Belfort brothers-the heirs everyone adored were coming to their school in search of their missing heiress- baby sister. But the queen bee steals the chance that should have been hers. Then again, secrets don't stay buried forever. With her true identity waiting to explode, Yvonne must decide to rise from the ashes, claim her place, and bring down everyone who tried to destroy her.
Because the real heiress doesn't beg.
She takes rather.
Now, Yvonne is done playing small. It's her time to rise, reclaim her crown, and make everyone regret ever doubting her.
7.8
Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire.
I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper.
I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he’d dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family’s land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock.
I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim.
"If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned.
So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell—the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months.
Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I’ve suspended Hugh’s executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I’m just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout.
But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.
8.4
I'm Kailee Lynn. On the night of my engagement party, my fiancé Julian left me standing alone in front of every wealthy guest in the city, humiliating me without a single shred of mercy. I became the biggest laughingstock of high society overnight, written off as a nobody from a small town with no status, no backing, and no right to stand among them.
Everyone looked down on me, convinced I was weak and easy to push around. But I've never been one to swallow insults or accept defeat. Instead of fleeing in shame, I turned and walked straight toward the darkest, most intimidating figure in the entire banquet hall-Ervin Hendricks, the reclusive and ruthless fifth heir of the powerful Hendricks family.
Rumors followed him everywhere: they said he was confined to a wheelchair, cold-blooded, dangerously unhinged, and cruel enough to ruin anyone who crossed him. The entire room held its breath, certain I was walking straight to my doom. I lifted my chin, met his sharp gaze steadily, and spoke in a calm, unshakable tone:
"Ervin Hendricks. Marry me. I'll clear every obstacle in your path and help you seize everything that belongs to you. In return, you'll stand by my side and shield me from this world's cruelty."
In the blink of an eye, I went from Julian's discarded fiancée to his aunt by marriage, the official Mrs. Hendricks. The whole town waited eagerly to watch me break down, to see me suffer at Ervin's hands and beg for mercy. They had no clue I was hiding far more than they could ever imagine.
I'm the elite medical genius that top hospitals beg to consult, the unbeatable hacker who can crack any system in minutes, the hidden tycoon pulling strings behind global empires, and the secret powerhouse even the most elite families dare not cross. One by one, my true identities were unveiled, and every person who once mocked me fell silent, bowing to my power.
As for Julian? He watched me rise from a social outcast to the most feared and respected woman in the city, standing proudly beside the all-powerful Ervin Hendricks. Meanwhile, his own fortune crumbled, his reputation was in tatters, and the life he'd chased after leaving me turned into a complete disaster.
He was consumed by regret, so desperate he lost his mind. He chased me down at every high-society event, his eyes red with guilt and desperation, pleading for forgiveness, groveling to take back every cruel word, begging me to give him a second chance. He whined about how he'd made the worst mistake of his life, how he'd thrown away the only person who could have made him truly successful.
I felt nothing but cold contempt for him. You cast me aside like worthless trash when you thought I had nothing to offer. You chose arrogance and greed over loyalty, and now you think a few empty apologies can erase that? I didn't even spare him a glance, simply linking my arm through Ervin's and stepping past him without a second thought.
And then, the man everyone believed would never walk again suddenly rose from his wheelchair, pulled me tight against his chest, and whispered in a deep, soft, and utterly possessive voice that only I could hear:
"Kailee. You're my little treasure, my only obsession, and the only person I'll ever love and protect with everything I have."
This life, I'm taking down every enemy that wronged me, dominating every circle I step into, and making the most powerful man in the city wrap himself entirely around my finger.
7.1
"You're mine now, Brittany." He whispered in my ears. I froze. I don't remember telling him my name.
Zayne...Zayne...oh God. Now, I remember why his name sounded so familiar...but it was too late, I thought as I lost consciousness.
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Brittany's life has been full of heartbreaks and pain, from her father's death to her mother's manipulation and abuse, while using religion as a weapon.
She grews up with fear, guarding her virginity like a cloak because of her mother's constant words in her ears.
Until she meets Zayne, known throughout New York as the CEO for his ruthlessness, he turns out to be Mafia too.
Zayne claims her as his refusing to let her go. Will Brittany grow to love him and give him a chance after what he did to her?
What happens when she's the only one who can save him from enemies flocking around him?
__
"I'm letting you go, doll." He mumbled as he held on to me, his eyes growing weak.
My heart twisted in my chest as tears fell down my cheeks.
No... "I don't regret a thing. You taking me was the best thing that ever happened to me."