Falling For The Most Hated Hollywood Girl
I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Ruiz family, but the moment their true heir appeared, I was thrown away like trash.
Not long after being kicked out, my adoptive father and uncle hired a hitman to stage a fatal car crash on Mulholland Drive.
Pinned under an overturned Porsche with a shattered leg, I watched the hitman point a suppressed pistol between my eyes.
"The Ruiz family sends their regards."
Before this, my reputation had already been completely destroyed by a director, a pop idol, and a reality TV star, leaving me blacklisted and universally hated.
My adoptive family didn't just want me ruined; they wanted me permanently silenced to tie up loose ends.
The hitman pulled the trigger, and the original Alicia died in despair, tasting only rain and blood.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand.
Why did the family she loved treat her like a disposable object? Why did those three men maliciously frame her and turn the world against her?
Opening my eyes again, the fear was gone, replaced by an ancient, cosmic indifference.
I, the Arbiter, had taken over this deceased vessel.
Moving faster than the human eye, I crushed the hitman's steel gun with my bare hand and turned his soul into dust.
Looking at the memories of those who wronged this girl, I signed a contract for the very reality show they were starring in.
Since I borrowed this body, taking out the trash is a required courtesy.
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Chapter 4
The coffee shop on a quiet side street in Studio City was discreet. Alicia wore a plain white t-shirt and jeans, no makeup. Her presence was a stark, cold point in the warm, bustling room.
Elliot Vance, a man in his late forties dressed in a razor-sharp suit, walked in. He stopped when he saw her. His sharp agent's eyes had been prepared for tears, for desperation, for a broken child. He was not prepared for the woman sitting before him, as still and deep as a frozen lake.
"Alicia," he said, sliding into the booth. His voice was professionally sympathetic. "I'm sorry for what happened. But frankly, your value in this town right now is less than zero."
He laid it out brutally. Abandoned by the Ruiz family. Blacklisted by the media. Hated by the fanbases of three different male stars. No studio would touch her.
She listened without expression. When he was finished, she said, "I need a job."
Elliot gave a short, bitter laugh. "Kid, you don't need a job. You need a miracle. Go do off-Broadway for five years. Maybe they'll forget."
"I don't have five years," Alicia said. "I want a spot on 'Celestial Love'."
He stared at her as if she'd grown a second head. "'Celestial Love'? The celebrity dating show? Do you have any idea who one of the main investors is? August Hardy's production company."
He leaned forward, his voice a low hiss. "That's an S-tier production. The cast is all A-listers and rising stars. You, with your baggage, can't even get in the door."
Alicia's gaze was steady. "August Hardy's company is an investor. Which means he'll likely make an appearance, correct?"
Elliot sighed, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair. "The rumor is he'll show up in the finale as a 'love guru' or something. It's the show's biggest selling point."
"That's all I need," she said. "Get me on that show."
"Alicia, have you lost your mind?" he snapped. "You think getting close to August Hardy is your comeback plan? A thousand girls have tried. They all ended up broken."
She didn't argue. Instead, she slid a debit card across the table.
"There's five hundred thousand dollars on that card. It's not from the Ruizes. It's mine." The funds were the result of a simple, untraceable data manipulation-a few lines of code redirected from a cartel's offshore crypto wallet into a newly created anonymous account. For her, altering digital records was less taxing than lifting a finger. "That's your operating budget and a retainer. If you succeed, my agent's commission to you will be thirty percent. Well above the industry standard."
The money stopped him cold. He knew her accounts had been frozen. He had no idea where this came from.
But it was more than the money. It was the aura she projected. Not of a desperate girl, but of a queen moving her chess pieces. There was no plea in her eyes, only a target.
As a top agent, he could smell two things: immense risk, and an even more immense reward.
He was silent for a long time, his fingers drumming a nervous rhythm on the table.
"You know your three little problems-Julius, Kian, and Jamie-have all been invited to be on 'Celestial Love,' don't you?" He dropped the bomb, expecting it to shatter her resolve. To put a young woman on an island with the three men who publicly destroyed her was a special kind of hell.
For the first time, a smile touched Alicia's lips. It was a cold, sharp thing. "Isn't that better? I can deal with them all at once."
Elliot flinched. She wasn't scared. She was eager.
This was not the Alicia Ruiz he knew.
He picked up the card. "I can't promise anything. The executive producer, Victoria Chase, is a she-devil. Nothing gets past her."
"You just get me in the room with her," Alicia said. "I'll handle the rest."
Elliot stood up, looking down at her for a long moment. "Three days. Wait for my call. And Alicia... whatever happened to you... welcome back."
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8.6
In my past life, the Cerberus strain leaked, turning the world into a blood-soaked hell of rotting flesh and mutated monsters.
I thought my boyfriend Declan and my best friend Hailee would have my back as we fled the quarantine zone.
Instead, when the surging crowd of the infected cornered us, they didn't hesitate.
They shoved me backward into the horde just to buy themselves three seconds to run.
As I fell into the mud, I saw them fleeing without a single backward glance.
"She's dead weight anyway!" Hailee screamed.
"Just keep running, she'll distract them!" Declan yelled back.
I was torn apart, feeling the agonizing tear of rotting teeth sinking into my neck and the hot spray of my own blood.
Before the apocalypse, my greedy uncle had locked away my ten-million-dollar trust fund, leaving me with nothing but a fake boyfriend who only wanted me for my money.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand how the people I loved most could trade my life for a head start.
Why did I blindly trust them? Why didn't I see through their perfectly choreographed lies?
Opening my eyes again, the stench of decaying flesh vanished, replaced by the sterile smell of my college dorm room.
Hailee and Declan were standing over my bed, faking tears of concern over my meningitis fever.
I was back exactly seven days before the world ended, and my spatial vault ability had come back with me.
This time, I'm extorting my uncle for every cent, hoarding the city's supplies, and leaving them all to rot.
9.1
My husband, Dante Moretti, the feared Underboss, signed the divorce papers I slipped him without a glance. Too busy texting his true love, Sofia, he was blind to the annulment decree ending everything. The Reaper couldn't see the death of his own marriage.
For three years, I was Elena, his silent wife, the "Caged Canary," cleaning his messes while meticulously planning my escape from our loveless world.
He dismissed me for Sofia's every whim, publicly shaming me after a past love letter was read, then abandoning me again for her fake crisis.
That night, he violently shoved me against a wall, leaving me bleeding and concussed, rushing instead to protect Sofia. Discarded and injured, my invisible love became a weapon against me.
His crushing blindness, the cold realization I was a mere placeholder, fueled a profound injustice. How could he be so lethal, yet oblivious to his wife, favoring the one who betrayed him?
With chilling resolve, I uploaded Sofia's confession, initiated a massive financial transfer dismantling his empire, and staged my own death. Under a new identity, I fled to San Francisco, ready to build my power, far from his bloody, deceitful world.
9.2
After catching my fiancé cheating with my adoptive sister, I broke off our engagement on the spot.
In retaliation, my abusive adoptive parents sold me to Kaelen Knight, the Lycan King, to clear our pack's debts.
He was rumored to be a ruthless, reclusive monster who had been horribly crippled in a fire centuries ago.
To ensure my absolute ruin, my sister planted fake love letters to my ex in my luggage and anonymously destroyed my university scholarship, cutting off my only escape route to the human world.
"A wolfless whore. You planned to drug me," Kaelen sneered, looking at the fake evidence with absolute disgust.
Believing I was a spy, my new husband had his guards throw me into the freezing woods with the Dire Wolves, leaving me to survive the night alone.
I was just a broken, wolfless Omega, entirely at the mercy of a cruel, powerless Lycan and a family that wanted me dead.
But I was wrong about him being powerless.
One night, I accidentally saw him rise from his wheelchair, his tall frame radiating an overwhelming, lethal aura.
He wasn't crippled at all.
The secret I thought was my shield was actually a loaded gun pointed at my head. Trapped with a terrifying predator, I had to stop playing the victim and fight for my life.
9.0
Carli followed an anonymous text to a dark garage, only to find her fiancé of seven years tangled with another woman in his Porsche.
She smashed his window, threw her engagement ring at his face, and walked away.
But the betrayal didn't stop there. Her own family sided with the cheater. Her father slapped her across the face so hard she bled, demanding she hand over her late aunt's trust fund.
"If you don't do exactly as you're told tonight, I will freeze every credit card in your name," her father roared.
Forced to attend the exclusive Gutierrez family gala, Carli watched her ex-fiancé parade his cheap mistress to humiliate her, while her stepsister tried to publicly ruin her.
Suddenly, a violent screech echoed as the massive crystal chandelier above them snapped from the ceiling.
In a split second of pure instinct, Vaughn shoved his mistress to safety and threw himself to the ground, completely abandoning Carli to be crushed.
Staring up at the plummeting glass, Carli felt the crushing reality that her entire life had been surrounded by monsters.
But the fatal impact never came.
A massive force yanked her into a hard chest, shielding her body entirely from the explosive shrapnel.
Carli opened her eyes to find Fletcher Gutierrez—the ruthless billionaire king of Wall Street and the masked stranger from her reckless one-night stand—bleeding heavily over her.
Feeling his warm blood on her hands, Carli knew the game had just changed.
7.1
I worked eighty-hour weeks on Wall Street just to keep my sick brother alive, enduring endless humiliation from the wealthy family that adopted us.
But when I went to surprise my boyfriend of three years, I found him kissing my spoiled adoptive sister, Tatum.
They were celebrating their engagement to merge their powerful families.
To keep me quiet, my adoptive mother, Eleanor, threatened to freeze my brother's medical trust fund unless I attended the party to play the supportive sister.
Instead, I discovered Eleanor had been embezzling from my brother's life-saving fund to cover her own bad investments.
The nightmare worsened when a drunken Ryder cornered me in my apartment stairwell.
"Once I marry Tatum, Eleanor is giving me control of Liam's trust fund to buy out my father's board members."
He planned to drain my brother's medical money, dump Tatum, and keep me as his mistress.
For a decade, I suffered their abuse hoping for a shred of decency, only to realize they were plotting to leave my brother to die on the streets for corporate greed.
Calling the police wouldn't stop these billionaires. I needed absolute power.
Remembering the dark, predatory gaze of Jaren Jarvis—the ruthless billionaire who had watched me fight back at the party—I canceled my call to 911.
If they wanted to destroy my only family, I was going to use the devil himself to crush theirs.
8.8
My little boy died on the operating table during a minor, routine surgery.
That exact same night, my billionaire husband bought out the Hudson River for a massive, million-dollar fireworks show.
It wasn't to mourn our child. It was to celebrate his first love's son being discharged from the hospital.
When I confronted him with our son's death certificate, he sneered and accused me of hiding the boy to get his attention.
He held his mistress in our home, watched her fake a panic attack, and threatened to bankrupt my family if I didn't get on my knees and apologize to her.
But the most horrifying truth came from a terrified hospital nurse.
My son's anesthesia was deliberately kept low during the procedure to keep his tissue viable to save the mistress's child.
He was awake and in agonizing pain while his own father planned a grand celebration for another man's son.
I couldn't understand how a father could be so completely heartless.
How could he sacrifice his own flesh and blood just to please a woman who constantly manipulated him?
Looking at the ashes on my son's favorite toy, my paralyzing grief evaporated, replaced by a cold, unyielding rage.
I arranged my little boy's funeral alone in the freezing rain, left my wedding ring on the counter, and walked straight into the private hotel suite of my husband's most ruthless business rival.
"Let's take him down," I said.