Flash Marriage To My Secret Billionaire
Finley's stepfather gave her a sickening ultimatum: marry her predatory stepbrother Shane tonight, or he would throw her fragile mother out on the street.
To escape this hell, she used a matchmaking agency and hastily married a complete stranger. Garrison Strickland claimed to be an ordinary data analyst making $95,000 a year, driving a beat-up Honda Civic, and needing a wife in name only. They got their marriage license at City Hall that very afternoon.
But when Finley returned home to pack her bags and threw the certificate on the table, her family just laughed. Dozier ordered Shane to drag her into the bedroom to "teach her a lesson" and trap her forever.
"Come on, little sister," Shane crooned, lunging at her. "Don't fight it."
Finley's own mother just stared at the floor, blaming Finley for ruining the family, watching blindly as Shane cornered her.
Terrified and desperate, Finley smashed an ashtray over Shane's head and frantically dialed her new husband's number. Shane snatched the phone, mocking the "imaginary husband" before the line went dead. Finley felt a bottomless despair. Garrison was just a normal guy; he would never risk his life against her violent family. She was completely on her own, waiting for the end.
Suddenly, deafening bangs echoed through the house, and Garrison stepped into the living room radiating a cold, terrifying fury. This supposedly "frugal data analyst" effortlessly snapped Shane's wrist, leveled a ruthless death threat that made Dozier tremble, and whisked Finley away in a waiting Bentley. Looking at the powerful man beside her, Finley's heart raced: just who exactly had she married today?
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Chapter 4
Finley stared at the name on her screen. Dozier. The single word was enough to extinguish the small, warm flame of amusement that had just been lit in her chest.
She walked out of the tutoring center and down the block, finding a small alcove between two buildings that offered a sliver of privacy. The city noise felt like a buffer against what was coming. She took a shaky breath and answered.
"What do you want?"
"Don't take that tone with me," Dozier's voice crackled, full of gravel and impatience. "Have you thought about what I said? Shane's a good man. He's waiting for your answer."
A good man. The words were so ludicrous they almost made her laugh. Shane was a greasy, small-eyed predator who looked at her like she was a piece of meat.
"My answer is no," Finley said, her voice cold and hard. "I'm not marrying him."
A dry, humorless laugh came through the speaker. "Not marrying him? And how are you going to come up with one hundred thousand dollars, Finley? Don't you forget who puts a roof over your mother's head. Don't you forget who's in charge."
Her mother. The knife, twisted with expert precision. Finley's stomach clenched. Her mother, Sharon, was a gentle, broken woman, and Dozier's favorite piece of collateral.
"I'm giving you one last chance," Dozier's voice dropped to a low, menacing growl. "You come home tonight. You tell Shane yes. You put a smile on your face and you do what's best for this family. Or I swear to God, you'll find out what happens when you don't."
The line went dead.
Finley stood frozen, the phone pressed to her ear, listening to the dial tone. He would do it. He would throw her mother out. He would make their lives a living hell.
She couldn't go back there. Not to agree. If she walked through that door tonight, he'd lock it behind her.
Garrison's apartment. The thought was a flare in the darkness. The key in her pocket. The address saved in her phone. It was her only escape route.
But could she? They had just gotten married. They were strangers. He had said she could move in anytime, but was that just something people said? A polite formality? Showing up on his doorstep-or what would be his doorstep-felt like a massive imposition.
Her phone rang again. This time, it was her mother.
"Finley, baby, please," Sharon's voice was a choked sob. "Just listen to him. Just for a little while. We can't fight him, you know we can't..."
The familiar weakness in her mother's voice, the pleading for her to be the sacrifice, broke something in Finley. It wasn't anger. It was a cold, hard resignation. She was truly on her own.
"I have to go, Mom," she said, and hung up before her mother could say another word.
That was it. The last of her hesitation crumbled into dust.
She opened her message thread with Garrison. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, her mind racing. How did you ask a man you barely knew to save your life?
She typed and deleted, typed and deleted.
Hi, sorry to bother you. Too weak.
I have a problem. Too vague.
Finally, she just wrote the truth.
Garrison, I'm so sorry to bother you at work. The apartment... is the offer to move in still open? For tonight? It's an emergency.
She hit send, and her breath caught in her chest. She watched the screen, her entire future hanging on the three little dots that meant he was typing.
What if he said no? What if he asked questions she couldn't answer?
The reply came in less than a minute.
Of course. It's your home. Do you need me to arrange for movers?
Home.
The word. That one simple word hit her with the force of a physical blow. Tears pricked the back of her eyes, hot and sudden. A home. She had a home.
Her fingers were clumsy as she typed back.
No! No, thank you. I don't have much. I can handle it myself.
Okay. Be safe. Let me know when you get there.
Permission granted. Lifeline secured.
A new, steely resolve settled over her. She wasn't just going to run. She was going to walk into that house, pack her bags in front of them, and leave.
She sent a quick text to Paige, a blur of apologies and promises to pay her share of the rent, saying a family emergency had come up and she had to move out tonight. Paige, bless her, just sent back a message of support.
Finley squared her shoulders and started walking in the direction of the subway that would take her back to Queens. Back to Dozier's house.
She was going to war.
But this time, she had a place to retreat to. She opened her map app and plugged in the Brooklyn address. Her destination. Her future.
In his hotel suite in California, Garrison read her reply and immediately dialed Pierce.
"Find two of our best security guys. Plain clothes. I want them parked near Dozier Mccarthy's address in Queens in the next hour. They are not to engage unless I say so. Or unless she screams."
He hung up. It was supposed to be a test of her character. Not a trial by fire.
Things were escalating far faster than he'd anticipated.
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7.8
Helen was finally brought back to the luxurious Gallagher estate as their long-lost blood relative.
But her new family didn't welcome her; they looked at her with undisguised disgust.
The matriarch mocked her stench of poverty, while her step-sister Candice treated her like a feral animal. The patriarch, Fredy—who had built his empire by betraying Helen's mother—tried to break her spirit. He blackmailed Helen into attending a high-society gala by threatening to cut off her grandmother's medical funds.
At the gala, Candice squeezed into a diamond-encrusted gown, desperate to seduce the guest of honor, Damian Montgomery. Damian was the most powerful man in New York, and he was currently tearing the city apart looking for a mysterious woman named Jane.
Overhearing this, a sick, greedy smile spread across Candice's face. She planned to impersonate Jane to claim Damian's wealth and completely crush Helen under her heel.
"Hide in the corner tonight. Don't you dare try to speak to anyone important!"
They all thought Helen was just a helpless, uncultured country girl they could easily manipulate and step on to secure their stolen legacy.
What they didn't know was that Helen was the real Jane. She was the lethal shadow who had saved Damian in the woods, shattered his grip, and robbed his highly guarded vault just the night before.
Helen calmly adjusted her simple black dress and stepped into the ballroom, ready to tear their stolen world apart.
9.4
Six years ago, Breanna was shoved into a pitch-black hotel suite by her own uncle.
She was forced to endure a brutal night with a drugged stranger just to keep her grandmother's ventilator running.
Nine months later, she gave birth in a cold underground clinic.
But her uncle immediately snatched the crying newborn from her trembling hands, coldly announcing the baby had died.
For six years, Breanna lived in agonizing grief, working as a lowly hotel cleaner just to survive.
But a cruel setup threw her directly into the path of Elliot Finch, the arrogant billionaire from that dark night.
He did not recognize the woman whose life he had completely ruined.
Instead, he looked at her like she was rotting garbage, had his guards drag her into a wet alley, and mercilessly got her fired.
"If I ever see your face again, I will make sure you cannot get a job cleaning toilets."
Breanna was suffocating from the injustice, stripped of her dignity and her family's only lifeline.
Yet, when she instinctively protected a traumatized little boy from bullies, she discovered he was Elliot's son.
The boy clung to her neck, crying and desperately begging his father to let her stay.
But Elliot just threw a massive check at her chest, violently accusing her of brainwashing a sick child for a meal ticket.
Looking at the toxic disgust in his eyes, something inside Breanna finally broke.
She picked up the check, ripped the millions into tiny shreds, and let them rain down on his expensive shoes.
"Keep your dirty money."
She turned her back on the crying boy and the stunned billionaire, deciding she would no longer be their victim.
7.1
The night before her wedding to Wall Street billionaire Everette Baird, Deliah Quinn stood happily in her haute couture gown.
Then, her younger sister Arvilla walked in, handed her a drugged glass of champagne, and slammed an ultrasound on the vanity.
"I'm pregnant with Everette's child," Arvilla sneered.
Before Deliah's paralyzed body could react, Arvilla dragged in a canister of industrial gasoline, soaked the bridal suite, tossed a lighter, and locked the heavy oak doors from the outside.
To escape the roaring inferno, Deliah smashed the glass balcony and threw herself into the freezing, violent waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
For five agonizing years, everyone believed the Quinn heiress was dead.
Deliah returned to New York entirely reborn—a top architectural designer and a single mother, having scrubbed her past clean and forgotten the people who destroyed her.
She only wanted a peaceful life with her five-year-old genius son, Leo.
But she had no idea her son was secretly hacking airport security cameras to find himself a wealthy stepdad.
Leo deliberately bumped into a terrifying, cold-blooded tycoon, spilling scalding coffee on his custom suit to get his attention.
When Deliah frantically rushed over to protect her son and apologize, the air in the terminal vanished.
Everette Baird stared at the exact face he had obsessively mourned for five years, his eyes turning pitch black as he crushed his phone in his bare hand.
7.2
I lay in the hospital bed, every breath feeling like I was inhaling wet concrete. My husband, Trent, stood by the window, more interested in his reflection in the glass than his dying wife.
My sister, Cristi, sat nearby, complaining about how the rain would ruin her expensive shoes on the way to the car.
Trent walked to my bedside and brushed a finger against my oxygen tube.
"The liver failure is aggressive," he whispered. "But we expected that, didn't we? After all those 'vitamins' you've been taking."
I tried to scream, but my vocal cords were paralyzed. Cristi just giggled, telling me not to struggle because they needed my trust fund voting power by midnight. They held up a Do Not Resuscitate order and told me my hand had "signed" it with a little help.
"You were a depreciating asset, Cleora," Trent said, his lips cold against my forehead. "Now, you're finally liquidated."
As the darkness swallowed me, I saw flashes of my life—my mother’s suspicious car crash, my stolen sketchbooks, and the bitter almond taste in my morning juice. I died in a state of pure, helpless rage, realizing I had been murdered by the only people I ever loved.
How could they be so heartless? How could I have been so blind to the monsters living in my own home?
Then came the sensation of falling.
I sat up with a gasp, my lungs burning with fresh, salty air. The hospital was gone. I was in a luxury stateroom on our family’s charity cruise, three years before my death. I was alive, healthy, and back at the beginning.
When a blood-stained billionaire named Clemente Pennington walked out of the suite's bathroom, I didn't run. I looked him in the eye and realized that this time, I wouldn't be the one liquidated. I was going to make them pay for every drop of poison they ever fed me.
7.9
Everyone knew Kristine loved Colton. Still, his heart clung to a woman overseas-someone he spent most days with, now pregnant with his baby-and Kristine still asked him to marry her.
On their registration day, however, he never came; his "true love" had flown back.
Seven years of loyalty later, Kristine walked away, blocked him, and left his city.
Colton didn't blink-until he saw her at the courthouse, arm-in-arm with another man, and the proud CEO went pale. He went after her, desperation overtaking him.
"I'm sorry. Please give me another chance."
She snapped, "Could you stop? I'm already married."
8.3
I was a ghost in the rafters of Sotheby’s, five floors above the most expensive pavement in New York, clutching a ten-million-dollar ledger hidden inside a drop of blood-red agate. I had the perfect exit planned, but I didn't count on Harding Bishop, a security predator who could track a shadow through a rainstorm.
When the exits were sealed and the tactical teams started swarming, I made a split-second choice to survive. I stepped out of the shadows and looked into the eyes of a billionaire socialite searching for her missing daughter, whispering a single, broken word: "Mom?"
Just like that, I wasn't a thief anymore; I was Cassandra Sterling, the heiress who had been gone for five years. But the homecoming was a nightmare. My new "sister" promised to send me back to the gutter, my "father" held a gold-plated pistol to my knee the moment the limo doors closed, and the family patriarch tried to strike me down with his cane just for breathing his air.
Every second was a high-wire act. I had to play the part of a traumatized victim while a ten-million-dollar stone was literally sewn into the raw, bleeding wound on my shoulder. If I moved wrong, I’d bleed out; if I spoke wrong, I’d be buried in the backyard of the Hamptons estate.
Harding Bishop didn't believe a word of it. He moved into the room next to mine, watching my every breath and checking my hands for gun calluses under the guise of protection. He thinks he’s the warden and I’m his prisoner, but he’s about to find out that a cornered rat is the most dangerous thing in the house.
"Sleep tight, Vesper," he whispered as he locked my door, using my real name for the first time.
He thinks he’s won, but he has no idea that I’m already reaching for the Agate hidden under my pillow, ready to burn his empire to the ground.