Escaping My Coldhearted Billionaire Husband
Ada was eight months pregnant, sitting peacefully in her husband's Manhattan estate, looking at a baby nursery catalog.
Suddenly, her husband's mistress, Jacklyn, walked in, threw an ultrasound photo on the table, and locked the door.
Before Ada could process the betrayal, Jacklyn dragged her to the top of the marble staircase and threw herself backward just as Desmond walked through the front doors.
"She pushed me, Desmond! She tried to kill our baby!"
Desmond looked at Ada with absolute hatred.
He ignored Ada's breaking water and her agonizing screams for help, leaving her to miscarry on the freezing floor while he rushed Jacklyn to the hospital.
He sent Ada to a brutal federal prison for three years, where she was tortured and left with a body covered in horrific scars, mourning the baby she was told died at birth.
When Ada was finally released, Desmond destroyed her cousin's company to force her back to his estate as a lowly maid.
But when Ada saw Jacklyn's three-year-old son, her world stopped.
Right in the center of the little boy's palm was a faint crescent moon birthmark.
It was the exact same mark Ada had kissed on her own lifeless baby's tiny hand before the doctors took his body away.
How did her dead child become Jacklyn's little prince?
Looking at the woman who stole her life and the husband who threw her in hell, Ada clenched her scarred hands and swore she would tear their world apart to get her son back.
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Chapter 4
The interior of the Maybach was suffocating. The heavy scent of Desmond's cedar and bergamot cologne filled the enclosed space, making Ada's stomach knot with anxiety.
She pressed her body hard against the leather door panel, trying to put as much distance between them as possible.
The car merged smoothly onto the highway. Desmond leaned back against the headrest, his dark eyes watching her with a cold, predatory stillness.
Ada forced herself to breathe. She swallowed the lump of fear in her throat and broke the silence.
"I want a divorce," her voice was hoarse, barely more than a rasp.
Desmond let out a low, dark chuckle. It sounded like a threat. "A divorce? You think a convicted felon gets to make demands?"
"I have nothing left," Ada pleaded, her fingernails digging into her own palms. "You took my freedom. You took my baby. Just let me go."
Desmond lunged across the seat. His large hand clamped around her thin wrist, pinning it to the leather seat.
"You don't get to leave," he snarled, his face inches from hers. "You will spend the rest of your miserable life in the shadow of my family, paying for what you did. Until I say you're done."
He threw her hand back at her in disgust.
The car fell into a dead, freezing silence. Thirty minutes later, the Maybach pulled up to the curb on Fifth Avenue, stopping in front of an exclusive, appointment-only luxury department store.
"Take her inside," Desmond ordered his head of security. "Burn those disgusting clothes. Put her in something suitable for the family dinner tonight."
Four massive bodyguards surrounded Ada. They marched her through the glass doors like a prisoner of war.
The store was blindingly bright. Wealthy shoppers stopped and stared at the bruised, emaciated woman being escorted by armed men.
Ada was shoved into a massive VIP fitting room. Two saleswomen nervously wheeled in racks of expensive evening gowns.
Ada stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror. She stared at her own reflection. Her collarbones jutted out sharply. Her skin was pale and covered in faint bruises. A wave of deep humiliation and burning anger washed over her.
She walked to the fitting room door and opened it a crack. "I need to use the restroom," she told the bodyguard standing outside.
The guard checked the adjacent marble bathroom. There were no windows, only one door. He nodded and let her step inside.
Ada locked the door instantly. She looked up. Above the toilet stalls was a large, industrial air conditioning vent.
She climbed onto the toilet seat, her legs shaking from weakness. She pushed her fingers through the metal grates and shoved upward. The cover popped loose.
Ignoring the sharp pain in her ribs, Ada pulled herself up into the dark, dusty ventilation shaft. The metal scraped against her elbows, tearing the skin, but she didn't stop. She crawled forward on her stomach, coughing silently through the thick dust.
Ten minutes later, the bodyguard kicked the bathroom door open. The room was empty.
Alarms immediately blared through the department store.
Ada dropped out of a vent in the back alley, landing hard on a pile of cardboard boxes. Pain shot up her ankle, but she scrambled to her feet and ran.
She pushed through the crowded Manhattan sidewalks, her heart hammering wildly. She could hear the crackle of security radios and heavy footsteps behind her.
She ducked into a subway station, rushing down the stairs toward the crowded platform. A train was just pulling in, the doors sliding open.
She lunged for the open doors.
A massive, iron-grip hand clamped down on the back of her trench coat collar.
Ada screamed, a raw sound of pure terror. She was jerked backward so hard her feet left the ground.
She spun around and crashed into a solid chest. She looked up into Desmond's eyes. They were pitch black, burning with a murderous rage.
The commuters around them backed away in fear, intimidated by the wall of bodyguards behind him.
Desmond didn't say a word. He bent down, threw Ada over his broad shoulder like a sack of flour, and turned around.
Ada kicked her legs and beat her fists against his back. "Let me go! You monster! Let me go!"
Desmond ignored her completely. He carried her out of the station and threw her violently into the back of the Maybach.
"Back to the manor," Desmond ordered the driver, his voice dripping with venom. "Now."
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7.0
Eight years ago, Alaina forced herself to say the most vicious, heartless things to break up with her fiercely loyal college boyfriend, protecting him from his billionaire family's wrath.
Now, she is a top maxillofacial surgeon, and Jarred Mcknight has returned as the ruthless CEO of Wall Street's most powerful corporation.
Their worlds collide in the ER, but Jarred isn't alone. He is accompanying his rumored heiress fiancée.
His eyes are pure ice. He treats Alaina with a suffocating, clinical detachment, fiercely protecting the heiress from Alaina's medical examination. The professional slap in the face shatters Alaina's heart all over again.
Later, at an exclusive restaurant, Jarred catches Alaina on a miserable, forced blind date. Still believing she left him for money and status, he publicly mocks her for working herself to the bone just to climb the ladder.
Her sleazy date, humiliated by the billionaire's sheer dominance, turns his bruised ego on Alaina. On the dark street outside, the lawyer aggressively grabs her arm, trying to force himself on her.
Alaina thought Jarred despised her. She thought he had completely moved on, leaving her to drown in the memories of the future they never had.
But why did Jarred suddenly explode from the shadows like a lethal predator, brutally snapping the lawyer's wrist just for touching her?
Pinning her trapped against the cold brick wall, Jarred's dark eyes burn with a terrifying, unhinged possessiveness.
"Is this the kind of garbage you date now?"
The eight years of separation mean nothing. The billionaire hasn't let her go, and this time, there is no escape.
7.4
Evelina Barrett was the legitimate daughter, yet she was framed for a disgusting sex scandal, expelled from the Ivy League, and locked out of her late mother's massive trust fund.
While she was thrown out to rot on the streets with a jagged, hideous red scar covering half her face, her father and step-family were throwing a lavish charity gala to celebrate her total ruin.
They laughed as they officially published her disownment notice in the Times to cut her off forever.
"Without the school halo, that ugly freak will be begging on the streets by tomorrow," her sister Aspen sneered.
Her stepmother Annabella toasted to taking out the trash, perfectly happy to steal Evelina's inheritance while ignoring the fact that Evelina knew exactly how they had murdered her mother.
For years, Evelina had been locked in a dark basement, abused by bodyguards, and treated worse than a stray dog.
Why should she, the true heir, suffer in the gutter while the leeches who destroyed her life enjoyed the wealth that rightfully belonged to her?
She refused to be their victim anymore.
Washing away her fake scar to reveal her true, breathtaking face, Evelina blackmailed New York's most lethal billionaire into marriage to secure the ultimate shield.
Then, she put on a black mourning dress, ordered a dark web ghost crew, and climbed into a heavy semi-truck.
At exactly 6:00 PM, she smashed through the iron gates of her family's elegant gala, delivering three pure black coffins directly to the lawn.
8.4
Kathern was forced out of her sister's home by her abusive brother-in-law, who violently demanded she pay half the rent or get out.
To protect her sister from his rage, Kathern agreed to a six-month paper marriage with a stranger—an old woman's grandson, Bronson—in exchange for a simple apartment.
But her new husband treated her like a scheming gold digger from the very first second.
He showed up to City Hall in a cheap suit, shoved a brutal prenup in her face, and dumped her in a completely empty, dust-filled apartment.
"Just don't cause any trouble," he warned coldly, before leaving her alone.
When Kathern politely texted him to ask if he was coming home for dinner, he immediately blocked her number.
Kathern was furious and baffled. She didn't want a dime of his money, nor did she care about his boring middle-management job.
She had only agreed to this marriage for a place to sleep, yet this arrogant man treated her like absolute garbage.
Refusing to swallow the insult, Kathern immediately dialed his grandmother to expose his behavior.
She was going to build her own independent life, completely unaware that her "cheap corporate loser" of a husband was actually the ruthless billionaire CEO of the Vaughan empire.
8.8
Alaia Dudley spent her life playing the devoted partner, completely unaware that her fiancé Austen was sleeping with another woman.
She thought the worst he could do was break her heart, until she found herself pinned to a cold operating table.
Austen held her down with a cruel smirk while a scalpel sliced through her sternum.
They cracked her chest open while she was still fully conscious.
The agonizing pain of her heart being cut out burned into her nerve endings.
She realized then that to him, she was never a lover—just a spare organ, a boring piece of wood to be discarded the second his true love needed it.
She died in excruciating agony, choking on her own blood while the man she loved walked away with her heart.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand why she had to suffer so brutally.
Why did she waste her life begging for a monster's attention? Why did they get a happy ending while she was carved up like an animal?
But then, ice-cold water flooded her lungs, and Alaia violently broke the surface of her bathwater.
Her trembling fingers touched her smooth, flawless chest. No scars. Her heart was still beating.
The date on her phone glared back at her: it was exactly five years ago.
Tonight was the exact night Austen first took his mistress to a hotel room.
This time, she wouldn't just expose them. She would use Wall Street's most terrifying tyrant as her personal weapon to strip them of everything they had.
8.0
Aliya woke up in a dingy, freezing apartment with a throbbing headache, only to realize a horrifying truth.
She had transmigrated into the American romance novel she read just last night, becoming the ultimate vicious supporting character. The exhausted man walking through the front door was Cyrus Pace, an amnesiac billionaire currently living under the delusion that he was a broke laborer.
The original owner had trapped him with fabricated memories of being childhood sweethearts. Worse, she relentlessly abused him. Her phone was filled with toxic texts calling him a useless loser, and she had just staged a psychotic hunger strike to force him to buy a designer bag. Cyrus already looked at her with bone-deep, visceral disgust. In the original plot, the moment he regained his memory, his ruthless revenge would send her straight to a maximum-security prison for the rest of her life.
"Are you done playing your hunger strike game?"
Hearing his cold, mocking voice, the sheer terror made Aliya's blood run cold. How was she supposed to survive living with a future tyrant who already despised her? Every time his massive shadow fell over their cramped, shared mattress, her heart stopped. A single wrong move—even a microscopic mistake like accidentally crossing a physical line—would completely seal her doom.
Staring at the torn box of condoms hidden under the bed, Aliya made a desperate, life-or-death decision.
She had to completely rewrite her toxic persona, secretly hustle a high-commission real estate job, and save enough money to flee the country before the billionaire remembered exactly who he was.
7.7
Dasia's twin brother, Gerald, was an e-sports prodigy, the rising star of the Glory team.
But during a crucial moment, he was framed by his own teammates. They orchestrated a trap that completely destroyed his reputation and left his right hand brutally crushed.
Instead of getting him medical help, the club threw him out into the freezing rain, bleeding and disgraced. The manager labeled him useless trash and slapped him with a five-million-dollar termination fee to bleed him dry. Stripped of his pro status, the wealthy bullies at his prep school relentlessly targeted him, mocking his crippled hand and beating him down.
Dasia watched her twin brother cry in his room, his life and dreams shattered by the people he trusted. A violent, suffocating rage boiled in her chest. How could they smile while crushing his hand? Why should the victim be treated like a rotting piece of garbage while the perpetrators get rich and celebrated?
She didn't shed a single tear. She stood in front of the mirror, took a pair of scissors, and ruthlessly hacked off her waist-length hair. She wrapped her chest in coarse medical bandages until her ribs screamed, and pulled on his oversized black hoodie.
"Everything you took from him, I am going to take back with interest."
The girl in the mirror was gone. She was Gerald now. She secretly passed the brutal online tryouts for Glory's biggest rival, the elite Blackflame team, and signed their official contract. The revenge had officially begun.