Flash Marriage To My Mysterious Paralyzed Husband
I sat at a table for two in the center of Le Coucou, clutching a gift box that had cost me two months of savings. It was our three-year anniversary, and I was waiting for Gavin to finally ask the big question.
But when the heavy oak doors opened, Gavin didn't walk toward me with a ring. He walked in with a polished blonde heiress tucked under his arm, her hand resting protectively over a small baby bump.
"This is Tiffany Stone. My fiancée," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. He didn't apologize for being late or for the three years we'd spent together. Instead, he pulled out a checkbook, scribbled a number, and slid a ten-thousand-dollar check across the white tablecloth.
"Consider it severance for your time," he added, as Tiffany mocked my cheap drugstore dress. "Don't contact me again. Tiffany doesn't need the stress." I was the entertainment for the entire restaurant—the pathetic girl dumped for a better model. By the time I walked out into the rain, I had lost my boyfriend, my home, and the funding for my secret medical research project.
I was an orphan with no safety net, facing an eviction notice and a ruined career. I had given Gavin everything, and he had discarded me like a broken tool. The injustice burned in my chest, a hot, sharp rage that replaced my tears.
Desperate and freezing, I ducked into a coffee shop where I met Colton Bentley, a reclusive billionaire in a wheelchair. After I defended him from a cruel date, he offered me a contract: a marriage of convenience and a seven-figure payment to act as his shield. I signed the papers that night, ready to use his wealth to rebuild my life. But as I watched my new husband navigate his penthouse, I noticed his "paralyzed" legs tense with a strength that shouldn't exist.
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Chapter 3
Clarice stared at the phone screen. The notification glowed with a cruel red light.
INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.
Gavin had paid the rent. Of course he had. And he had likely just canceled the auto-payment. She had two days before the eviction notice would be posted.
A second notification popped up. A calendar reminder: Research Grant Application - FINAL DEADLINE TOMORROW.
She needed five thousand dollars just to secure the lab time for the preliminary data. Without that data, the grant was a fantasy. Years of secret work, of moonlighting as the underground surgical consultant known only as 'The Savior' to fund her passion, would all turn to dust.
Clarice felt like she couldn't breathe. She was an orphan, a product of the foster system in the Rust Belt. She had no safety net, no family to call. She had clawed her way to New York, built a life from scratch, all while nurturing a revolutionary medical project in the shadows.
She was trapped.
She looked at Colton. He was sitting perfectly still, sipping the coffee she had bought him.
He was alone. He was disabled. He was wealthy, if his suit and the earlier confrontation were any indication.
A crazy, desperate thought slammed into her brain.
It wasn't a plea for romance. It was a strategic calculation. An asset exchange.
She gripped the edge of the table. Her knuckles turned white.
This time, she didn't move. She waited. The silence stretched. The man, Colton, made no move to leave. It was as if he was waiting for something.
A man in a perfectly tailored gray suit entered the coffee shop. He scanned the room, his eyes landing on Colton, then flicking to Clarice. He walked directly to their table.
"Mr. Bentley," the man said, his voice low and professional. "We should be going."
Colton didn't respond to the man. Instead, he turned his head in Clarice's direction. "Sterling, my lawyer. Sterling, this is Clarice."
Sterling gave Clarice a nod that was also a clinical assessment. "Miss Bell."
Clarice felt a chill. They knew her name. How?
Sterling placed a thin, leather-bound folder on the table and slid it in front of her. "Mr. Bentley was impressed by your... composure. He has a proposition for you."
Clarice's eyes widened. She slowly opened the folder. The top page was a single sheet of paper with bold text.
MARRIAGE PROPOSAL & CONTRACTUAL OFFER
Below it were bullet points: a seven-figure payment upon signing, all living expenses covered, and a clear list of duties, primarily acting as a companion and deterrent to unwelcome social obligations.
Clarice looked up from the paper, her gaze locking onto the dark lenses of Colton's glasses. Her mind was reeling. This was insane. It was also a lifeline.
She picked up her phone, her hands trembling slightly as she typed.
Why me?
Colton's lips curved. It was barely a smile, but it changed his face. It made him look dangerous.
"My family is trying to marry me off to a suitable heiress," he said, his voice a low rumble. "I find the process tedious. You, on the other hand, are not an heiress. You are... an interruption. An orphan from the Rust Belt with a clean record and no ties. You are the perfect shield."
His lawyer, Sterling, had clearly done a thorough background check. In minutes.
In his right ear, a tiny, invisible earpiece crackled with Sterling's earlier report.
Sterling (via earpiece): Clarice Bell. 24. Orphan, no living relatives. Top of her class, but works a low-level admin job. No debt, except for a recently bounced rent check. Clean record. Just dumped by Gavin Mercer at Le Coucou. She's desperate, Boss. But she's clean.
Colton tapped his finger against the ceramic cup. One tap.
"You aren't afraid I'm a bad person?" he asked.
Clarice let out a dry, bitter laugh in her mind. She typed her response, her words sharp and to the point.
Right now? A bad person is better than being homeless.
Colton's smile widened slightly.
"My name is Colton Bentley," he said. "I have a bad temper. And as you can see, I am paralyzed."
Clarice met his unseen gaze, her own resolve hardening. She typed her reply instantly.
My name is Clarice Bell. I have a lot of patience. And I'm not easily intimidated.
Colton nodded once. Sharp.
"Deal."
Clarice blinked. She pointed at the folder, then at him. A silent question: That's it?
"Deal," he repeated. He gestured toward the door with his head. "Sterling will handle the details."
"Where are we going?" Clarice typed.
"City Hall," Colton said. "Before I change my mind."
Clarice stared at him. Then, she stood up. Sterling held the back of her chair for her.
She walked beside Colton's wheelchair as Sterling pushed him toward the door.
Outside, a black sedan was idling at the curb. Sterling was already on the phone, printing documents from a device inside the car.
Clarice stepped out into the rain, walking next to a stranger's wheelchair, unaware she had just signed a contract with the devil.
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7.8
Alayna was working a grueling catering shift in worn-out heels to support her broke college boyfriend, Caiden, who claimed to be studying at the library.
But through the crack of a VIP suite door, she saw him wearing a bespoke suit and a Patek Philippe watch, sipping expensive liquor.
"It's a little poverty role-play. Keeps things interesting."
He was laughing with his rich friends, mocking her as his clueless "charity case."
To make matters worse, she was forced into a humiliating mascot costume just in time to watch him passionately kiss his wealthy ex-girlfriend.
That same night, Alayna's mother collapsed with gastric cancer, requiring a half-million-dollar surgery.
When a desperate Alayna begged Caiden for help, he refused.
"Why don't you just apply for Medicaid? That's the path for people like you."
For two years, she had starved herself to buy his textbooks, his tickets, and his shoes.
He had stolen her sweat and her sacrifices, all for a cruel game.
The sheer audacity of his betrayal made her blood run cold.
When a billionaire stranger stepped in to pay her mother's medical bills in exchange for a one-year fake marriage, Alayna didn't hesitate to sign the contract.
She slipped the flawless diamond ring onto her finger, opened a spreadsheet, and sent Caiden an invoice for every single cent.
This time, she was going to dismantle his entire life.
8.7
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.
7.4
My mother was dying and desperately needed a half-million-dollar deposit for an experimental heart surgery by tomorrow.
I swallowed my pride and begged my wealthy husband, Garrick, to save her life.
Instead of helping, he laughed coldly and threw a thick stack of divorce papers right in my face.
"A hen that can't lay eggs gets slaughtered," he sneered, ruthlessly poking my flat stomach.
He revealed that his secretary, my supposed friend Lacey, was already pregnant with his heir.
To him, our three years of marriage was just a business transaction, and now that my family was bankrupt, I was nothing but damaged goods.
He flicked a humiliating five-thousand-dollar check at me as his final act of charity, then locked me out of our townhouse into the freezing, pouring rain.
I had spent years enduring agonizing hormone treatments for a fertility issue that wasn't even my fault, only to be discarded like trash when I needed him the most.
Was my dignity, my absolute devotion, and my mother's life really worth nothing to him?
Driven by pure, reckless desperation, I threw myself directly into the path of a moving Rolls-Royce Phantom on Fifth Avenue.
It belonged to Holden Tillman, the ruthless patriarch of the Tillman empire—and the uncle Garrick lived in absolute terror of.
I thought I was walking into my death, but instead, I became his fiancée, ready to make Garrick and Lacey pay for every tear I shed.
9.0
Seventeen years after going missing, Brooklyn was finally brought back to her ultra-wealthy biological family.
But instead of a tearful reunion, her parents and sisters treated her like infectious garbage, mocking her cheap clothes and calling her a country bumpkin.
They dumped her into a remedial class to hide her away, cut off her allowance, and threatened to lock down her trust fund to force her into absolute submission.
One night, Brooklyn stood in the shadows of the estate and overheard a conversation that shattered everything.
She hadn't wandered off as a child.
Her parents had deliberately thrown her away because a fake fortune teller claimed her birth chart was a jinx to the family's wealth.
They felt zero remorse, only plotting to banish her again the moment she turned eighteen.
Her biological father thought he was putting a leash on a helpless, uneducated girl by cutting off her pocket change.
He had no idea that Brooklyn was the anonymous VIP who casually dropped sixty million dollars on an emerald at the city's most exclusive auction.
He didn't know she was the elusive medical genius that the world's most powerful billionaires were currently tearing the city apart to find.
The last microscopic shred of hope for a family withered into cold ash in her chest.
"Lock down my trust fund?"
She pulled out her encrypted phone and activated her shadow networks, severing herself entirely from their pathetic surveillance.
Since they believed she was a jinx, she was going to show them exactly what a real curse looked like.
7.4
Ardella caught her fiancé Braden cheating with an actress in a downtown VIP room.
It was supposed to be a simple business marriage to save her family's bankrupt company.
But instead of supporting her, her uncle and aunt demanded she get on her knees and apologize to the cheating fiancé.
They didn't care about her dignity; they only cared about the merger capital.
Her cousin publicly mocked her, and her uncle threatened to permanently hide the police file revealing who murdered her father if she ruined the deal.
To make matters worse, Ethelbert Stone, the terrifying billionaire who raised her—and the man she was desperately trying to escape—publicly claimed he didn't know her.
Yet, moments later, he trapped her in his car, his eyes filled with a sick, possessive rage, reminding her that every inch of her belonged to him.
She was completely cornered by a cheating fiancé, a parasitic family, and an obsessed former guardian.
They had drained her father's trust fund dry and now wanted to sell her off to cover their debts.
They really thought she was just a helpless pawn they could manipulate and discard at will.
But they were dead wrong.
Ardella calmly wiped her hands after throwing scalding tea at her aunt's feet, staring down at her greedy family.
"The headline tomorrow will read: Price Group Bankrupt, Fails to Sell Niece to Cover Debts."
She backed up the video of her fiancé's betrayal to ten different servers and sent a text to her private investigator.
Tonight, at the elite society dinner, she was going to blow the scandal wide open and drag them all down with her.
7.8
"Error. The social security number associated with this user was registered as deceased five years ago. Account legally closed." Those words, glaring from a stolen hospital iPad, confirmed my darkest fear: my family had murdered me.
I awoke in a sterile room after five years in a coma, my body weak but my mind sharp. My husband, Dante, the Syndicate Don, rushed in with fake grief. My parents, who'd raised me as a pawn, showed terror, avoiding my gaze. Armed guards outside confirmed I was a prisoner.
Dante frantically silenced me when I asked about my son, Leo, offering a flimsy excuse. My hacker skills led me to my secret trust account, where I found myself officially declared dead. Rage replaced panic.
I ripped out my IV, stumbled to the Director's office, and forced him to reveal my death certificate. It stated "Accidental drowning, brain death," signed by Dante and witnessed by my own parents.
"So, I was murdered by my entire family," I declared, my voice a dead rasp. I used the forged document to blackmail Dante, demanding to be taken to Leo, my counterattack already forming. I slapped away my mother's manipulative hand, ready to reclaim my life and my son.