Fake Marriage To The Undercover Boss
Emaline Finley was drowning in massive debt to keep her dying father alive, even enduring a humiliating blind date with an arrogant man just to find a financial lifeline.
But the fatal blow came from her former best friend, Kitty. Kitty, who was already engaged to Emaline's ex-boyfriend, deliberately told Emaline's father that his expensive treatments were bleeding his daughter dry.
Out of extreme guilt, her father threw away his life-saving medication and checked himself out of the hospital to die at home. When Emaline found him, he was coughing up pools of bright red blood, his lungs rapidly collapsing. As the paramedics rushed him away, Kitty called to gloat, mocking Emaline's poverty and telling her to go watch her father die.
Emaline was completely shattered, suffocating under the sheer injustice of it all. She had been betrayed, stripped of her dignity, and was now forced to watch her only parent slip away because of a cruel, spiteful lie.
Just as her world went dark, a wildly wealthy stranger stepped in. Cullen Preston, the mysterious man who had witnessed her humiliating date, paid the astronomical medical bills and brought in the city's top surgeon to pull her father back from death. But his salvation wasn't charity.
"Consider it a dowry."
He bought her father's life, and in exchange, he demanded Emaline as his wife.
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Chapter 2
Emaline stared at the white fabric. She did not take it.
"Were you eavesdropping?" she asked, her voice thick with unshed tears.
Cullen dropped his hand, letting the handkerchief fall back into his pocket. He shrugged.
"It was hard not to hear him," Cullen said. "The man projects like he is trying to be heard in the next state. He has the subtlety of a foghorn."
Emaline tightened her grip on her purse. She turned her body away from him, her boots scraping against the concrete. She did not have the energy for a stranger's games.
"Wait," Cullen said. He took a step to follow her. "Let me buy you a drink. Consider it compensation for the free entertainment."
Emaline stopped. She whipped her head back to look at him.
"I do not need your compensation," she snapped. "And I definitely do not need your pity."
Cullen held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. The streetlights caught the expensive glint of his watch.
"No pity," Cullen said. His tone was smooth, almost hypnotic. "Just a shared misery. My date was a disaster too. Tiffany spent forty-five minutes asking roundabout questions to figure out my net worth."
Emaline studied his face. The exhaustion in his eyes looked real. The tension in her shoulders dropped a fraction.
"Congratulations," Emaline said flatly. "We are both losers tonight."
The playful smirk vanished from Cullen's face. His dark eyes locked onto hers, suddenly intense and calculating.
"What if I told you I have a way for both of us to stop losing?" he asked.
Emaline frowned. Her brow furrowed.
Cullen closed the distance between them. He lowered his voice, forcing her to lean in slightly to hear him over the wind.
"A marriage," Cullen said. "You and me. Strictly business. We both get what we need."
Emaline's jaw dropped. The air left her lungs.
"Are you insane?" she breathed out. "We met five minutes ago."
Cullen did not blink. "I have my reasons. I need a marriage certificate to satisfy some family trust clauses. And you need money to pay those hospital bills."
A cold sweat broke out on the back of Emaline's neck.
Her hand flew to her coat pocket, covering the phone hidden inside. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
"How do you know about that?" she demanded, taking a step back. "Did you read my phone?"
Cullen stayed perfectly still. "I saw the notification light up on your phone screen when you were hunched over outside the restaurant. It is none of my business, but you looked like you needed help. I am a project manager. I make a stable income. I have no bad habits. We sign a prenuptial agreement. You get your bills paid, and I get my family off my back."
Emaline's mind spun. The pavement felt like it was tilting beneath her feet.
The proposal was madness. It was dangerous. But the image of her father's pale face in the hospital bed flashed behind her eyes.
"This is ridiculous," Emaline said, shaking her head. "Why would I ever trust you?"
Cullen reached into the inner pocket of his coat. He pulled out a crisp, white business card and extended it to her.
"My contact information," Cullen said. "I am not forcing you. But if you change your mind, call me."
Emaline hesitated. Her fingers trembled as she reached out and took the card.
It was thick cardstock. It just said 'Cullen Preston' and a phone number. No company name. No title.
Before she could say another word, her phone vibrated violently in her pocket.
She pulled it out. The screen showed an incoming video call from her younger brother, Leo.
Emaline swiped to answer.
Leo's face appeared on the screen. He was frantic. His hands moved in rapid sign language, a blur of panicked motion.
The mechanical voice of the translation app echoed from the phone speaker. "Emaline. Dad discharged himself. He will not stay at the hospital."
All the blood drained from Emaline's face. Her stomach plummeted into a bottomless pit.
"What?" Emaline gasped, her voice cracking. "Where is he?"
Leo signed faster. The app translated: "He is home. He looks awful. He is coughing. He threw his pills in the trash."
The world tilted violently. Emaline could not breathe. The edges of her vision went black.
"I am coming right now," Emaline shouted at the screen. "Do not let him move!"
She ended the call. Her fingers fumbled as she opened a ride-sharing app. The screen spun with a loading circle. No cars available. She looked up at the street. The Manhattan traffic was a solid wall of red taillights, but not a single empty yellow cab was in sight.
A wave of pure terror crashed over her.
"Get in," Cullen's voice cut through her panic.
Emaline looked up. Cullen was standing by the open rear door of a clean but unremarkable dark sedan that had just pulled up to the corner.
She looked at the ordinary vehicle. She looked at the stranger holding the door. Her instincts screamed at her to run away.
But her father was dying in their living room.
Emaline clenched her jaw. She gripped the business card so hard the edges dug into her palm.
She walked past Cullen and slid into the back seat of the sedan.
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9.0
Ashlyn was supposed to be just a fragile college student, selling her rare blood to a vicious crime syndicate enforcer to keep his dying sister alive.
But the dynamic shattered when Alex returned from a two-month disappearance. He stepped into the penthouse covered in dirt and blood, sporting a horrific, jagged knife wound slashed completely across his face.
Knowing exactly how to exploit his insecurities, Ashlyn played the role of the terrified victim to perfection. She screamed, pushed against his chest, and called him a terrifying monster. Humiliated and enraged by her blatant disgust, Alex violently smashed a marble table and kicked her out. He forced her out into a freezing, torrential rainstorm without a coat, vowing to kill her if she ever showed her face again.
What the ruthless enforcer didn't know was that her pathetic, trembling tears were a flawless, calculated lie. She wasn't a helpless, greedy girl. She was a cold-blooded corporate mastermind hiding from a family of elite assassins. She desperately needed his impenetrable penthouse fortress to stay alive, and she knew the only way to secure her place wasn't to ask for it, but to make him beg for her return.
Three days later, his sister's organs began to fail, and the hospital's blood bank ran dry.
"I'll pay you whatever you want. Just get here."
Listening to the desperate, broken voice of the monster over her burner phone, Ashlyn smiled coldly in the dark. The trap had snapped shut, and he had just handed her all the power.
7.6
Jocelyn Yang lived in the grand Turner Mansion, not as a guest, but as a prisoner. Ever since her father's death, the ruthless billionaire Elam Turner forced her to atone for sins her father never committed.
On her nineteenth birthday, a male classmate secretly sent her a diamond necklace. Elam, who had flown back from London overnight, flew into a psychotic, jealous rage at the sight of another man's gift.
He mercilessly crushed the delicate necklace into the marble floor with his custom leather shoe.
"Did you forget what you are?" Elam hissed, dragging her into a pitch-black storage room. "You take gifts from other men behind my back?"
He pinned her to the dusty floorboards and violently assaulted her. The next morning, a wire transfer of $500,000 hit her bank account. He had humiliated her, broken her spirit, and was now casually trying to buy her silence. Later, when a broken bike left her walking miles through a freezing rainstorm, he just shoved scalding tea into her bleeding hands.
"Look at you," he sneered. "You look like a stray dog ruining my floors."
Jocelyn curled up in the cold, her lips bleeding and her heart shattered. She couldn't understand his terrifying obsession. If he hated her so much, why did he refuse to let her go? Why did he look at her with such manic hunger while systematically destroying her life?
Staring at the massive sum of hush money on her phone, a desperate spark of vengeance flared in her chest. Jocelyn wired every single cent back to Elam's account. She picked up her charcoal pencil, vowing to win the upcoming art competition and buy her escape from this monster forever.
8.4
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.
9.6
For five years, I was Barron Santana's elite bodyguard and loyal shadow. I stood between him and bullets, giving him my youth and my entire heart.
But last night, the CEO announced his engagement to a flawless socialite on national television.
Heartbroken, I got blackout drunk and ended up crashing on the couch of Cassidy Gross, a billionaire tech CEO who saved me from a bar creep.
When I showed up late to work, Barron locked me in his freezing office. He pinned me against the glass, smelling Cassidy's cologne on my clothes.
"Are you already looking for your next meal ticket?"
He snarled the words, treating me like a cheap whore. When I defended myself, he pulled out a silk handkerchief and wiped his fingers, acting as if my very touch contaminated him.
Then, he coldly ordered his assistant to draft my termination papers.
Five years of risking my life for him, thrown away like garbage just because of his twisted ego.
Devastated, I ran out and collapsed in the hallway, sobbing uncontrollably until a kind coworker gently pulled me into his arms to comfort me.
I didn't know Barron had followed me out.
Seeing me clinging to another man, his legendary control completely shattered, replaced by a dark, violent possessiveness.
But it was too late. I was done playing his obedient dog, and it was time to take Cassidy up on his offer.
8.7
I woke up from a coma in the hospital, universally condemned as the vicious daughter who pushed the beloved fake heiress, Georgina, down the stairs.
My ruthless billionaire brother, Angelo, stood over my bed with cold eyes, ready to destroy me for hurting his precious sister.
But as I looked at him, a terrifying prophecy from my coma flooded my brain. Our entire family was doomed.
In the original timeline, Georgina would team up with corporate rivals to bankrupt the company, frame Angelo, and send him to federal prison, while our parents would abandon me to die miserably.
Lying there, I didn't dare speak. I just desperately cursed my idiot brother in my head.
"This stupid brother is still yelling at me for that fake heiress. He doesn't even know he's going to be framed and sent to prison next month!"
I just wanted to stay quiet, let them ruin themselves, and run away from this toxic family.
But strangely, Angelo didn't strangle me. Instead, his attitude took a shocking turn.
He abruptly fired the driver plotting to kill him, destroyed the abusive fiancé of a family ally, and publicly humiliated Georgina at a high-society gala.
He even shielded me from our abusive parents, declaring to the world that I was the only sister he would ever protect.
I was completely terrified and confused. Why was the tyrant brother suddenly acting like a protective beast?
It wasn't until he flawlessly crushed a massive corporate attack using the exact financial secrets I had just complained about in my mind that a horrifying realization hit me.
He could hear my inner thoughts!
7.1
After the one-night stand with a man who refused to tell her his name, Charlotte would figure out on TV that the man she had s*x with the previous night was the heir to a billionaire empire.
At the same time, Jace Norman-the infamous playboy heir-faces a public scandal that threatens his inheritance. To protect the family empire, his ruthless father forces him into an immediate contract marriage.
And just like that Charlotte would get married to the spoiled, reckless son of the most powerful billionaire in the city.
That One night, Room 55 and Five thousand dollars she desperately needed would change her life forever.
Weeks later, Charlotte discovers she's pregnant.
But before she can process the truth, her manipulative boyfriend claims the child is his and begins blackmailing her.
As their fake marriage becomes dangerously possessive, secrets begin to spiral. An ex-boyfriend demanding money. Jace's jealous college lover is determined to destroy Charlotte. Charlotte's sister is hiding betrayal behind sweet smiles. And a billionaire father who will eliminate anyone to protect the Norman name.
When a forged DNA test claims the baby isn't Jace's, the empire turns on Charlotte.
But the truth is far darker than any of them realize.
Because someone has been orchestrating every lie from the beginning.
And when Jace finally discovers the baby is his...
He will have to choose between his father's empire-
Or the woman carrying his heir.