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 6
"Finley?"
Before she could answer, before she could scream for help, Shane lunged. He was a wall of muscle and cheap cologne, his hand grabbing for the phone.
"Give me that!" he snarled.
Finley twisted away, a raw, terrified scream tearing from her throat. "Get away from me! Don't touch me!"
The sounds-her scream, the man's guttural voice, the sound of a struggle-shot through the phone and directly into Garrison Strickland's ear.
He was in a private dining room at one of New York's most exclusive restaurants, closing a nine-figure deal. The air was thick with the scent of expensive wine and self-congratulation.
At the sound of her scream, the world narrowed to the small black rectangle in his hand. The blood in his veins turned to ice.
His smile vanished. He placed his wine glass down with a soft, deliberate click that made everyone at the table fall silent. He gave Pierce a sharp, almost imperceptible nod, then quietly excused himself, his movements smooth but radiating an undeniable urgency.
"Finley, where are you? What's happening?" he demanded into the phone, his voice sharp and urgent.
Back in the living room, Shane had wrestled the phone from her grasp. He looked at the screen, saw the active call, and let out a derisive snort. "Oh, still talking to your imaginary husband?"
He held the phone out, his thumb hovering over the speakerphone icon. He pressed it.
"Hey, buddy," he said, his voice full of drunken bravado. "Whoever you are, the game's over. Finley's staying here. She's going to be my wife. So do us all a favor and don't call her again."
Dozier, emboldened, chimed in from his chair. "You hear that? This is a family matter. Butt out."
In the quiet hallway of the restaurant, Garrison listened. The sounds of their taunts, the faint sound of Finley crying in the background. Pierce had never seen his cousin's face look like this. It was a mask of pure, controlled rage. It was terrifying.
Garrison didn't waste his breath arguing. His voice, when he spoke, was preternaturally calm, a chilling quiet that seemed to suck all the heat from the room.
"Stay on the line," was all he said.
Then he ended the call.
The silence that followed was more menacing than any shout.
"You have her phone's location," he said to Pierce, his voice flat. "Get me there. Now. And get me the East Sector security lead. I want the two-man team I sent to that address to lock the place down. No one in or out. They are not to enter the premises. They wait for my command."
Pierce was already moving, dialing as he ran. Someone was about to have the worst night of their life.
In the living room, Shane tossed the phone back at Finley. It clattered to the floor. "See? Scared him off," he said with a triumphant grin.
Finley stared at her phone, dark and silent on the floor. He'd hung up. Garrison had heard everything, and he had hung up.
The last, fragile thread of hope inside her snapped.
He wasn't coming. No one was coming.
A cold, bottomless despair washed over her, so profound it felt like dying. Her body went limp, her strength gone.
Shane saw her surrender. He thought he had won. He took another step toward her, his hands reaching out again.
And that's when something inside Finley broke.
She looked up, her eyes no longer filled with fear, but with the flat, dead light of a cornered animal. With a speed she didn't know she possessed, she lunged for the coffee table, her hand closing around the heavy, glass ashtray.
She swung it with all the force left in her body.
It connected with the side of Shane's forehead with a sickening, wet crunch.
He let out a choked scream of pain and surprise, stumbling backward, his hand flying to his head. When he pulled it away, it was covered in blood.
The room froze. Dozier and Sharon stared, mouths agape. They had never seen Finley do anything remotely violent in her life.
Finley stood there, her knuckles white around the bloody ashtray, her chest heaving. "Stay away from me," she gasped, her voice a raw rasp. "The next person who comes near me, I swear I'll kill you."
"You little bitch!" Dozier roared, finally snapping out of his shock. He started to get up from his chair.
At that exact moment, a series of loud, insistent bangs echoed from the front door. Not a knock. A pounding. Hard, fast, and utterly commanding.
Everyone froze, turning toward the door.
"Who the hell is that?" Dozier muttered, stomping toward the entrance. He wrenched the door open, a curse on his lips.
He stopped.
Standing on the doorstep was a man. Tall, broad-shouldered, and radiating an aura of such cold fury that Dozier physically recoiled.
Garrison's eyes, chips of gray ice, swept past Dozier without a flicker of recognition. They found Finley. Standing in the middle of the room, trembling, her face streaked with tears, holding a bloody ashtray like a weapon.
His gaze took in the scene, and the last vestiges of civility in his expression vanished, replaced by something primal and terrifying.
He stepped inside, his polished leather shoes silent on the worn linoleum. He walked past Dozier as if he were a piece of furniture, his eyes never leaving Finley.
And with every step he took, the world of the Mccarthy family began to crumble.
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7.4
I single-handedly saved my family's corporate empire from a hostile takeover, securing our market share for the next decade.
But my grandfather didn't see me as a hero. He saw me as a flawed piece of inventory.
To calm the board and fix the reputation I supposedly ruined, he forced me into an arranged marriage, auctioning me off to the highest bidder.
Desperate, I turned to my childhood friend, Egnacio, the only person who ever promised to protect me.
But instead of saving me, he publicly humiliated me. He used my desperation as a networking opportunity, pitching my arranged marriage as a business deal to a ruthless private equity king named Dexter Mathews.
Later that night, I caught Egnacio holding my cruel cousin in his arms.
"What man wants to be with a woman who looks at you like she's planning a hostile takeover?"
Hearing him mock my pain shattered the last bit of hope I had.
I realized I was never family to them. I was just a sharp knife, used to cut down their enemies and then traded for cash before I got dull.
The heartbreak vanished, replaced by a cold, violent rage.
I didn't break, and I didn't run.
Instead, I got into the back of Dexter Mathews's car. He had watched my family tear me apart, but he didn't see a broken pawn. He saw a queen.
And together, we were going to burn their entire empire to the ground.
7.3
Eloise was the untouchable Brandt family heiress, just one audition away from landing a lead movie role and escaping her golden cage.
But overnight, her family's empire completely collapsed.
With her father dying of heart failure, her mother forced her to beg the only man who could save them: Christian Clarke.
Christian was the ruthless billionaire who had publicly humiliated Eloise in college, ripping up her love letter in front of a laughing crowd.
Now, he tossed a fifty-million-dollar acquisition contract on the table.
"What exactly is the Brandt heiress putting up for sale today?"
To secure her father's medical care, Eloise was forced to sign a suffocating marriage contract, selling herself as a corporate tax shield.
He moved her into his freezing penthouse and treated her like a purchased asset. He mocked her attempts to cook him dinner, yet pinned her against the wall with punishing, possessive kisses whenever she tried to pull away.
Eloise's pride was entirely shattered.
She didn't understand why he was doing this. If he hated her so much and only wanted revenge, why did his touch carry such an agonizing, desperate heat?
Determined to survive, she went to her final audition and miraculously won the lead role, crying tears of joy because she had finally earned something on her own.
She had no idea that the cold-blooded monster sleeping beside her had just secretly threatened to destroy all of Hollywood to give it to her.
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.
9.7
For three years, I was the dutiful wife of billionaire Ervin Valdez.
On our third wedding anniversary, he came home smelling of his mistress's perfume, pinned me down, and brutally mocked me.
His mistress, Sylvia, had even sent me a fake ultrasound report to force me out of the picture.
In Ervin's eyes, I was just a vicious, calculating liar who used a pregnancy to trap him into marriage.
He didn't care that I had actually lost that baby, nor did he know the trauma of my gambling father selling me to a dark club where I was assaulted by a stranger.
When I finally handed him the signed divorce papers, giving up all assets, and left the penthouse with nothing but an old suitcase, he just sneered.
"She is playing a game of hard to get. She won't last three days before she comes crying back."
He froze all my bank accounts, let his mistress humiliate me in public, and waited coldly for me to starve and beg.
He thought my entire existence relied on his wealth, completely confident that I would inevitably surrender to his control.
But he was wrong.
I calmly opened my old laptop, bypassed the complex encryptions, and looked at the dozens of unread emails from top-tier global brands begging for my return.
I resurrected my hidden identity as the legendary jewelry designer "R," and walked straight into the top design firm in Manhattan.
"It is time to find myself again."
7.6
I am the illegitimate, mute daughter of the wealthy Owen family, kept hidden in the attic like a shameful secret.
To save his failing company, my father decided to sell me off to a repulsive, predatory investor named Grossman.
At the family dinner, Grossman's sweaty hands roamed my bare legs while my half-sister Kaleigh intentionally spilled red wine on my dress, laughing as she watched me suffer.
When I grabbed a steak knife to defend myself, my father slammed his fist on the table.
"Sit down, or I will cut off the maintenance payments for your mother's grave."
My stepmother and sister sneered, treating me like a piece of meat meant to be sacrificed for their luxury. I was starved, locked away, and treated worse than a stray dog, all while my family paraded their high-society status to the world.
I couldn't understand why they hated me so deeply, or who really ordered the hit that killed my mother twenty years ago. The police reports were buried, and I was entirely powerless, trapped in a house of monsters.
But they didn't know that the night before, I had accidentally stumbled into the secret life of Burleigh Livingston—the ruthless, supposedly paralyzed billionaire who was faking his madness.
When Burleigh suddenly crashed our family dinner and threw a limitless Black Card on the table to outbid Grossman and buy me for the night, I didn't hesitate.
I grabbed the handles of his wheelchair, accepted his twisted deal, and prepared to use the devil himself to tear my family apart.
9.6
To escape my sister-in-law selling me off to a local thug, I married a complete stranger I met at City Hall.
My new husband, Drake, claimed to be a broke Uber driver who could barely make rent.
He even made me sign a brutal ten-page prenup just to ensure I wouldn't take his rusted, beat-up Ford sedan if we ever divorced.
I thought I was just sharing a decaying Brooklyn apartment with a struggling man at the bottom of the ladder.
But things quickly stopped making sense.
When that local thug cornered me at a restaurant, my "weak" husband didn't cower.
Instead, he dismantled three massive mobsters in ten seconds with the terrifying, fluid speed of an apex predator.
"I used to be a human punching bag in an underground boxing gym to pay off debts."
I believed his excuse, until his supposedly homeless grandfather showed up at our door in a moth-eaten sweater, begging to sleep on our lumpy sofa.
Before going to sleep, the old man casually pressed a heavy, intricately engraved pocket watch into my hand as a wedding gift.
He claimed it was a cheap flea market find that didn't even keep time.
But the sheer weight of the solid rose gold and the flawless mechanical gears inside screamed otherwise.
Why did a destitute driver have the aura of a man who controlled empires?
And what kind of homeless old man casually hands over a priceless, museum-grade antique?
I had no idea the "broke driver" sleeping on my floor was actually a ruthless billionaire CEO, and I had just walked straight into his trap.