Dumped For Pennies, Returning With Billions
Cari Butler woke up in a damp, smelly dorm room, realizing she had transmigrated into the body of a disgraced fake daughter who had just been kicked out of a wealthy family.
Before she could even process her reality, the real daughter's friends kicked her door open to mock her, flaunting a custom Tiffany necklace that supposedly cost a mere eighty cents.
Cari thought they were crazy, until she saw the news: a top Manhattan mansion had just sold for a record-breaking $3,500.
The entire world's currency value had shrunk by ten thousand times!
This meant the original owner's bank balance of $854,000 gave Cari the purchasing power of eight and a half billion dollars.
But a mysterious system froze her funds, forcing her to work demeaning gig jobs to unlock the money bit by bit.
While working as a hotel server for twenty cents a day, she caught her ex-boyfriend kissing up to the real daughter, mocking Cari for being a desperate beggar.
Even her snobby roommates laughed at her, claiming she couldn't afford a ten-cent iPhone.
What truly angered Cari wasn't the humiliation, but receiving a five-cent transfer from her poor biological brother, who was starving himself just to keep her fed.
Yet, the system strictly forbade her from giving her unlocked billions directly to her family.
Looking at the restrictive system and the arrogant elites who thought they owned the city, Cari's eyes turned icy cold.
"If I can't just hand them the cash,"
Cari sneered, pulling out her phone to outright buy the luxury hotel and fire everyone who wronged her.
"Then I will just buy the entire world and place it at their feet."
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Chapter 2
The next morning, the reality of that three-thousand-five-hundred-dollar mansion still sat heavy in Cari's chest as she walked into the lecture hall.
She adjusted the straps of her worn-out backpack and stepped through the doors.
The loud chatter in the room died for a single, heavy second.
Students quickly looked away, shifting in their seats like she carried a disease. No one wanted to be near the disgraced fake daughter.
Cari kept her face blank. She walked up the steps to the very back row and sat in an empty corner seat.
She pulled out a notebook and a pen, resting her hands on the desk.
Professor Theron Wallace walked up to the podium. He tapped his knuckles against the chalkboard.
"Listen up," Professor Wallace announced. "The core film project for this semester starts today."
He explained that the class would divide into groups. They had until next week to secure a filming location that fit the theme of a high-end, luxury lifestyle.
The heavy wooden doors of the classroom swung open.
Harper Zamora walked in, surrounded by three of her followers.
Harper wore a custom-tailored suit that looked simple but screamed money. She smiled softly and waved at the class.
She walked straight to the center seat in the front row, soaking in the jealous and admiring stares from the room.
Rory Corrigan immediately leaned over from the next seat.
"Harper," Rory asked loudly, making sure the whole room could hear. "Where did you go for the weekend?"
Harper lowered her voice, but kept it just loud enough to carry.
"My parents rented a beach house for me in the Hamptons," Harper said casually.
Rory gasped, her voice echoing up the tiered seating. "The Hamptons? The prime lots? The monthly rent must be astronomical!"
Harper covered her mouth with her hand and let out a soft, fake laugh.
"It wasn't too bad, really," Harper said, looking down modestly. "Only about eight dollars a month."
The entire classroom erupted into a collective gasp.
Students in the front rows turned their heads, staring at Harper with pure worship in their eyes.
In the back corner, Cari's hand jerked.
The tip of her pen dug into the notebook paper, tearing a deep line across the page.
Her mind did the math again. A Hampton beach house for eight dollars. This world was completely insane.
Professor Wallace clapped his hands loudly, cutting through the noise.
"Alright, settle down," he said. "Which group wants to share their location plan first?"
Rory suddenly stood up. She turned around and pointed her finger straight at Cari in the back corner.
A nasty smile stretched across Rory's face.
"Professor, Cari should handle the location," Rory announced loudly. "She spent years living in the Zamora mansion. She knows all about luxury."
Every head in the room snapped toward Cari.
Their eyes were filled with mockery and cruel amusement.
Harper turned around in her seat. Her face shifted into a mask of pure pity.
"Rory, don't be mean," Harper said, her voice dripping with fake sweetness. "Cari can barely afford to eat right now."
Harper paused, letting the silence hang before delivering the final blow.
"Cari, if you really can't find a place, I can ask my parents to let you use the maid's quarters at our house for your shoot."
The words "maid's quarters" triggered a roar of laughter from the entire class.
Cari felt the malice hitting her from all sides. Her stomach tightened, but her eyes grew colder.
She slowly stood up from her chair.
Her movements were steady. There was no panic in her body.
She looked straight into Harper's fake, pitying eyes. Her voice rang out, clear and sharp.
"Keep your maid's room, Harper," Cari said flatly. "I will provide a location far more high-end than your cheap little Hampton rental."
Rory clutched her stomach and laughed loudly.
"Are you going to take us to a homeless shelter?" Rory mocked.
Professor Wallace pushed his glasses up his nose. He looked at Cari with a strict frown.
"Miss Butler, if you fail to secure a location, you will fail this course," he warned.
Cari grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder.
She walked down the steps and out the door without looking back.
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7.9
I woke up in a sterile hospital room, my head split open from a horrific car crash.
But the pain in my skull was nothing compared to the memory burned into my retinas just before the impact: my billionaire husband, Dawson, walking into a luxury hotel with a woman who looked exactly like his dead first love.
When Dawson finally arrived at the ward, there was no panic or relief in his eyes. He just coldly looked at my bloody bandages.
"Your reckless driving just forced me to postpone the quarterly board meeting."
Even our seven-year-old son, who I almost died giving birth to, didn't spare me a single glance. He kicked my hospital bed in annoyance.
"The Wi-Fi here is garbage. You're a bad mom! Dad said Aunt Angelita should be the one living with us!"
My blood turned to ice. For five years, I had bent over backward, wearing the hideous pale dresses he picked, starving myself to maintain a fragile figure, all to be a perfect, obedient substitute for a ghost.
And this was what I got. An unfaithful husband who would rather bury me in debt than grant me a divorce, and a son who wished I was dead.
The weak, subservient Charlene died on that wet asphalt.
When the doctor pointed to Dawson and asked for his name, I looked at my husband with a hollow, defensive stare.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
Using retrograde amnesia as my shield, I was going to tear their perfect world apart.
7.2
I am a resident surgeon, secretly married to Dr. Barrett Walters, the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. It was a transactional marriage; he paid my mother's mounting medical bills, and I was his secret, obedient wife in the dark.
But at the hospital, he was a cold-blooded tyrant who deliberately made my life a living hell. During a major medical conference, he viciously tore apart my successful surgical repair, looking me dead in the eye as he called me incompetent in front of all my colleagues.
The humiliation didn't stop there. With his tacit approval, the senior residents bullied me, assigning me every brutal night shift. When his beautiful, wealthy heiress "girlfriend" visited the ward, he publicly mocked my background to make her smile.
"Some people get in through the back door. They're not fit for the front lines."
Even when I was forced to work as a secret banquet waitress to cover the medical copays he ignored, he found me, ruined the job out of pure possessive jealousy, and then fined my meager resident salary the very next morning just to show his absolute control.
I endured his punishing kisses and cruel rebukes, sacrificing my dignity just to keep my mother alive. But I couldn't understand why he had to destroy every shred of my peace. If he wanted the perfect heiress, why did he refuse to let me go?
Staring at his cold, controlling eyes in the stairwell, my exhaustion finally overpowered my fear. I was done being his victim, and it was time to tear up this contract.
9.3
They say you can't have it all. I'm about to prove them wrong-or destroy myself trying.
When my struggling mother married billionaire Richard Stone, I thought I was gaining a family. Instead, I found three stepbrothers who became my obsession, my downfall, and my salvation.
Dominic, the eldest, cold and commanding, who kisses me like he's claiming his kingdom and looks at me like I'm the only thing he can't control.
Julian, the charming playboy who hides a vulnerable soul beneath his perfect smile, making me feel like I'm the only woman he's ever truly seen.
Asher, the brooding artist who paints me like I'm his muse and touches me like I'm his masterpiece, seeing parts of my soul I didn't know existed.
They're forbidden. They're dangerous. They're everything I shouldn't want.
But when I discover my father didn't die by suicide that he was murdered by the very man who now calls himself my stepfather, these three powerful men becomes my unlikely allies.
First it was a forbidden attraction, now it's an arrangement that defies every rule.
The rules are simple:
I'll give each of them a chance.
I'll take everything they offer.
And in the end, I'll have to make the hardest decision of my life:
Choose one of them. Choose all of them. Or choose myself.
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
9.3
Elara Voss never imagined that a single mistake could turn her life upside down. A brilliant marketing strategist with ambition as sharp as her wit, she thrives on control, until the day she crashes her rival's luxurious wedding, causing a scandal that will haunt her in high society.
Enter Dante Cross: the notorious billionaire, charmingly arrogant, and impossibly handsome, the bride's brother. In a moment of impulsive defiance, he proposes an outrageous solution to save face: a marriage neither of them wants... but both are forced to accept.
Thrown together in a world of glitz, power, and unspoken secrets, Elara and Dante clash at every turn. Sparks ignite as pride battles attraction, and the closer they get, the more dangerous their connection becomes. With hidden rivalries, family secrets, and unexpected betrayals swirling around them, Elara must navigate a game of social intrigue and decide if love is worth risking everything.
Will their forced union survive the chaos, or will the very secrets that brought them together tear them apart forever?
9.0
I died on the cold delivery table, bleeding out while the heart monitor flatlined.
Through the blinding surgical lights, I heard my husband Damon's cold, final order to the doctors.
"The child is the priority."
He didn't care about my life. To him, I was just a vessel to produce an heir, a tool to fulfill his prenuptial clause and secure his billionaire empire.
While I took my last agonizing breath, he was already planning his future with his fragile, theatrical mistress, Jasmin.
In my past life, when he first brought her into our home claiming she was a helpless victim, I shattered.
I screamed, threw vases, and played the hysterical wife perfectly.
My desperate pleas for his affection only gave him the exact weapons he needed to ruin my reputation, isolate me, and ultimately force me onto that fatal delivery bed.
Until my very last moment, the suffocating pain in my chest wasn't just physical.
I couldn't understand how the man I loved could treat my death like a simple business transaction.
Why was my absolute devotion rewarded with a carefully calculated execution?
But then, my eyes snapped open.
I was sitting on the edge of my king-sized bed, exactly three years before my death.
From downstairs, I heard Damon's voice echoing in the foyer, bringing Jasmin into our home for the very first time.
This time, the scream building in my chest turned to ice.
I didn't cry or throw a fit.
Instead, I calmly swallowed a secret birth control pill, smiled at his mistress, and dialed the most ruthless divorce lawyer in Manhattan.