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 8
Cash stormed into his office on the 40th floor. He threw the crumpled bag of fries into the trash can so hard it dented the metal mesh.
He felt dirty. He felt foolish.
His phone pinged. An email from Isidora's lawyer. Demand for Asset Disclosure.
"Gavin!" Cash yelled.
Gavin appeared, looking terrified.
"Freeze everything," Cash said. "I want a total blockade. The joint accounts, the supplementary cards, the grocery money. Everything."
"Sir," the CFO spoke up from the corner of the room. "That could be seen as financial abuse in court. The judge will-"
"I don't care!" Cash slammed his hand on the desk. "She wants to play games with lunch? Let's see how she eats when she can't buy food. Do it."
Two hours later, Isidora stood in the checkout line at a bodega in Bushwick. She had toothpaste, ramen, and a bottle of cheap wine on the counter.
She swiped her card.
Beep. Declined.
She frowned. She tried the other one. The emergency backup.
Beep. Declined.
The cashier sighed loudly. "Lady, you got money or not?"
The line behind her shuffled impatiently. A man groaned. "Come on, move it."
Isidora felt the heat rise up her neck. It was a specific kind of shame-the shame of poverty she thought she had escaped forever.
"My mistake," she said calmly, pulling a twenty from her wallet. She paid for the toothpaste and left the rest on the counter.
She walked out of the store. The bell on the door jingled cheerfully, mocking her.
She walked back to the loft. Her stomach growled.
"He cut me off," she told Harper as she walked in.
"That prick," Harper said. "Here, take my card."
"No." Isidora sat down at the burner laptop. Her eyes were dark holes. "He wants to starve me? Fine. I'm going to eat his lunch."
She opened a secure, encrypted email client. She attached the PDF file she had spent the last three nights perfecting.
Subject: Project Icarus - Short Report on Ferguson Tech.
Summary: Revenue recognition irregularities. Undisclosed related-party transactions. The Emperor has no clothes.
She sent the file to the anonymous tip lines for three of Wall Street's most feared financial journalists. Then, she activated a script. A network of burner social media accounts began seeding keywords related to the report on Twitter, creating a digital breadcrumb trail for the algorithms to follow.
She hit Enter.
That evening, Cash was at Chante's apartment.
Chante was standing in front of the mirror, holding the emerald brooch against her chest.
"It's a bit... old fashioned, isn't it?" she complained, wrinkling her nose. "I wanted the diamond choker."
Cash wasn't listening. He was staring at his phone.
"Sir!" Gavin burst into the room without knocking. He was holding a tablet. "The stock. After-hours trading."
Cash grabbed the tablet.
A red line plummeted down the screen like a falling knife.
Ferguson Tech down 12% in after-hours trading following anonymous short report.
Cash read the report. His eyes scanned the data. It was precise. It was forensic. It cited obscure accounting footnotes that only an expert would notice.
Author: Nemesis.
"Who wrote this?" Cash whispered. The blood drained from his face. "This... this is Isidora's work. The precision... it's her signature."
He thought of her quiet competence, the way she dissected financial statements for sport. "That conniving little lawyer," he muttered. "She has the guts after all."
"It's viral, sir," Gavin said. "Twitter is blowing up."
"Get PR on the line," Cash shouted. "Deny everything!"
In the loft, Isidora watched the red line drop.
It was beautiful. It was the color of vengeance.
Her phone rang. It wasn't Cash.
It was Frank Tate. Her foster father.
She answered. "Frank?"
"What the hell did you do?" Frank screamed. "My card was declined at the club! The waiter cut it in half in front of everyone!"
"Cash cut me off, Frank," Isidora said tiredly. "I told you."
"You fix this!" Frank roared. "You get back in that house and you apologize! I have bills, Isidora! You owe us!"
Isidora closed her eyes. The war was fighting on two fronts now.
"I can't," she said.
"Then come here," Frank said, his voice dropping to a menacing growl. "We need to talk. Now."
Isidora looked at the red line on the screen. She had drawn blood. But now the sharks were circling.
"I'm coming," she said.
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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.
__
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."