Flash Marriage To The Coldhearted Billionaire Uncle
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.
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Chapter 4
"My name?" Ariel stared at him, completely lost. "I don't understand. My family is bankrupt. The Melton name is ruined. What possible value could it have?"
Holden didn't answer immediately. He walked behind his desk, unlocked a drawer with a key he pulled from his pocket, and took out a thick document. It was encased in a pristine leather portfolio, its pages clean and unmarked.
He placed it on the desk and slid it toward her. "Read it."
Ariel's hands shook slightly as she opened the cover. The bold letters at the top made her breath catch.
PRENUPTIAL AGREEMENT
Between: ____________________ and ____________________
She looked up at him, her mind reeling. "Prenuptial? But I'm still married to-"
"Divorce proceedings take time, but they will be finalized," Holden said, his tone leaving no room for argument. He pressed a button on his desk intercom. "Get my legal team on a secure line. Now." A moment later, a calm voice filled the room through a speaker. "Sir?"
"I'm sending you a standard prenuptial template," Holden said, never taking his eyes off Ariel. "Fill in the party names. Holden Tillman and Ariel Melton. Expedite." He then turned his full attention back to her. "Keep reading."
She forced her eyes down the page. The terms were stark, simple, and utterly shocking.
Ariel Melton would become Holden Tillman's fiancée. And, when the time was right, his legal wife.
In return, Holden would immediately pay the full medical expenses for her mother's surgery. She would live at Serenity Estate, under his protection, and receive a substantial monthly allowance.
The agreement was strictly a business arrangement. No romance. No physical relationship. It could be terminated under specific, pre-agreed conditions.
Ariel felt like the floor had dropped out from under her. She looked up at the man sitting across from her, his face unreadable.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why me? You could have any woman in New York. Why a bankrupt divorcée?"
Holden leaned back in his chair, his expression calm. "The board of the Tillman family trust has been pressuring me to marry. They want a stable, settled heir to secure the family image. I need a wife who is presentable, educated, and aware of the rules of our world."
He paused, his eyes locking onto hers. "And I need one who is easy to control. A woman with no money, no family, and a grudge against Garrick fits the profile perfectly."
Ariel's heart skipped a beat at the mention of Garrick.
"You hate Garrick," Holden stated, his voice flat. "And I find him tedious. Our goals align."
It was a cold, calculated truth. He was using her just as much as she was using him. But there was a twist-a shared enemy.
Holden uncapped a heavy fountain pen and set it next to the document. "Sign it, and your mother's surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Refuse, and Holloway will drive you back to Manhattan."
He didn't give her time to think. He didn't offer comfort. It was a choice between the devil she knew and the devil she didn't.
But the devil she didn't know was offering her mother's life.
Ariel picked up the pen. The metal was cold and heavy in her hand. She leaned over the document and signed her name. Ariel Melton.
The moment the ink dried, a subtle shift occurred in the room. Holden's eyes glinted with something that looked like satisfaction.
He took the document back and placed it in the drawer. Then, he opened another drawer and pulled out a single piece of paper, handing it to her.
It was a bank draft. Issued by a Swiss private bank. Payable to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
The amount was five hundred thousand dollars.
Ariel's jaw dropped. She stared at the number, unable to process it. "This is... exactly what I asked for."
"This is for the deposit," Holden said, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather. "Any further expenses for her recovery and rehabilitation are to be billed directly to my office. I don't want my people worrying about money."
My people.
The words sent a shiver down Ariel's spine. Before she could respond, Holden picked up the phone on his desk.
"Holloway," he said. "Deliver this draft to Dr. Fletcher personally. And effective immediately, Miss Melton's security detail is your responsibility. No one touches her."
"Yes, sir," Holloway's voice crackled through the speaker.
Holden hung up the phone and stood. He walked around the desk again, stopping right in front of her. This time, there was no predatory tension, just a quiet, commanding presence.
He held out his hand.
"Welcome to Serenity Estate," he said, his voice low and steady. "My fiancée."
Ariel looked at his hand. It was large, strong, and impeccably groomed. Taking it meant stepping into a world she didn't understand, bound to a man who saw her as an asset.
She placed her hand in his. His grip was firm and warm.
"Thank you," she said softly.
He didn't smile. He just held her hand for a moment longer than necessary, his dark eyes searching hers, before releasing it and turning away.
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8.0
When gifted cellist Vivienne Aurel inherits her late father's catastrophic $4.2 million debt, she expects to lose everything. She doesn't expect the debt to be bought by Caspian Vane, the most feared private equity magnate in New York. Caspian doesn't want to ruin her; he wants her to work exclusively for him as the artistic director of his new cultural foundation for eighteen months. Forced into his world under a binding agreement, Vivienne prepares to fight against a cold, transactional cage. But as the intense, quiet proximity between them begins to blur the lines of their contract, she discovers a terrifying truth: the man who now owns her future has been watching her from the shadows long before she ever knew his name.
9.5
The disgraced daughter of the Patton family is back from the countryside.At the news, everyone spurned her with contempt!
A good-for-nothing young lady, a crude village wench, a vicious devil...
Until one day--The world-famous life-saving medical sovereign is her.The enigmatic top forensic specialist is her.The grandmaster hacker hunted across the globe is also her.
One hidden identity of the young miss came to light after another.Shocked and dumbfounded, the crowd fell to their knees to beg for forgiveness.
In an instant, Evie was cornered by the mysterious powerhouse.Hartwell's voice lured and mesmerized:"Darling, you have countless secret identities. Would you mind taking on one more, being my wife!"
9.3
On her wedding night at The Plaza Hotel, Clara went looking for her husband.
Instead, she found him in the dimly lit parking garage, passionately pinning down her bridesmaid.
She couldn't even scream or expose them. Just hours before the ceremony, Julian had tricked her into signing away her twenty percent shares of their co-founded company, leaving her completely penniless and unable to pay her grandmother's life-saving medical bills.
Fleeing in absolute despair, a sudden hotel blackout plunged her into a second nightmare. She was dragged into a pitch-black room and brutally violated by a heavily drugged stranger.
When a shattered Clara returned to the office to audit the books and reclaim her power, Julian demoted her to a dusty desk by the trash cans.
He flaunted his mistress in the executive suite and deliberately sent Clara into a horrifying trap. He arranged for vicious clients to drug and assault her, demanding high-definition blackmail photos so he could divorce her with absolutely nothing.
"Since you want to play rough, you can service Mr. Petrocelli tonight," the thug sneered, locking the VIP room door.
Clara was pushed to the brink of hell. Why was the man she devoted three years of her life to trying to destroy her so completely? And why did the freezing cedarwood scent of the stranger who ruined her in the dark perfectly match Conrad Vance, the ruthless CEO and Julian's untouchable uncle?
Rather than let Julian win, Clara smashed a glass bottle, held the jagged edge to her own throat to force the men back, and threw herself off the second-floor balcony into the freezing night.
But the bone-crushing impact never came. A massive figure shot out from the shadows and caught her, and her brutal counterattack finally began.
9.0
Once a pampered princess, Alaina now clutched a deactivated American Express card, staring out at Central Park. Her family’s fortune was gone, her life, over.
Her family's Hamptons estate, a four-generation legacy, was seized by Dyer Capital. The name hit her: Hardin Dyer, the poor boy she’d once scorned, had returned.
Hardin marched in, serving a divorce agreement. He'd orchestrated her family's downfall for revenge, giving her 24 hours to vacate his property. Penniless, her father faced prison, needing $50 million. Her mother forced her to beg Hardin, who sneered, offering the money for her body. Alaina ripped up the contract.
Hours later, her father had a heart attack. Desperate, she became "Lexi," a club girl enduring humiliation. In the Viper Room, Hardin's lackeys demanded she lick whiskey off his shoe for $10,000. Hardin watched. Outside, her brother Ashton's hand was threatened for a $3 million debt. Spirit shattered, Alaina returned, knelt on broken glass, offering to sign. But Hardin declared her family "dead," offering $10 million for her body, commanding her to use her mouth.
In a furious act of defiance, Alaina threw whiskey in his face, snatched the check, and fled. Yet, when he finally took her, a searing, foreign pain and blood on the sheets revealed a shocking truth: he had never touched her three years ago. Why had he let her believe such a monstrous lie?
8.7
Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them.
But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father.
That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago.
Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company.
Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate.
To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison.
Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall.
"Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!"
Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child.
Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone.
He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown?
With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered.
Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.
7.7
I trusted the wrong people in my past life.
My supposed lover and my sweet sister conspired against me, locking me inside a burning warehouse to die.
But the man I had spent my life hating, my ruthless captor Damien Sterling, rushed straight into that inferno and burned alive just to try and save me.
In my past life, I was utterly blind. I believed Julian's forged documents and Scarlett's fake affection. I even tried to assassinate Damien with a silver dagger they provided, breaking the heart of the only man who truly loved me. I died choking on thick ash, realizing too late who the real monsters were.
Why was I so incredibly foolish? Why did I let their vicious manipulation turn me into a weapon against the one person who would sacrifice absolutely everything for me?
Opening my eyes again, the phantom smell of smoke vanished.
I was sitting in the bloody water of Damien's bathtub, right after my staged suicide attempt.
When my sister sneaked into my penthouse suite and handed me the dagger to kill him again, I didn't hesitate.
I grabbed her hand tightly and plunged the sharp blade directly into my own shoulder.
"Please don't kill me, Scarlett!"
This time, I will ruthlessly ruin them both, and I will never let Damien go.