Flash Marriage To The Secret Chairman
To escape my toxic ex-fiancé and the father who froze my assets, I entered a contract marriage with Barrett, a cold but protective corporate consultant.
I thought he was my safe harbor. I even confided my secret, ruthless strategy to take back control of my company from my ex.
But at the most critical board meeting, a mysterious new chairman dialed in.
The synthesized voice coming through the speakerphone systematically dismantled the board and took over the company, using the exact, word-for-word strategy I had only ever whispered to my husband in the dead of night.
My ex-fiancé turned pale with panic. The board members were stunned into silence.
And I sat there, my blood running completely cold.
The man who had held my hand in the hospital, who had slept in my bed, and who had promised to protect me, had just committed the ultimate corporate espionage.
Every tender touch, every late-night confession—was it all just a calculated move to steal my life's work? How could the only person who made me feel safe use my deepest vulnerabilities to orchestrate my ruin?
I packed up my files, walked straight out of that boardroom, and prepared to disappear from his life forever.
But when I fled to my best friend's apartment to hide, I looked out the window.
The ruthless mastermind who had just stolen my empire was standing completely still in the freezing downpour, waiting for me to come down.
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Chapter 5
Evangelina arrived at Per Se at 7:58 PM.
She'd chosen the dress deliberately-black silk, high neck, long sleeves. Armor disguised as elegance. Her hair was pulled back, her makeup precise, her expression carefully neutral.
The maître d' didn't check his reservation list. He simply bowed.
"Mrs. Watson. Welcome. Your table is ready."
The use of the name startled her. She followed him through the dining room, past the curved walls and the famous garden paintings, to the secluded Chef's Table with its view of Central Park. The city lights were beginning to emerge, a constellation at her feet.
Barrett was already there.
He'd abandoned the suit jacket for a dark shirt, open at the collar, the sleeves rolled to his forearms. The transformation was subtle but significant-less corporate predator, more... something else. Something that made her aware of her own breathing.
He stood as she approached, pulling out her chair with a gesture that spoke of old money and older manners.
"You found it," he said.
"I know the building." Evangelina seated herself, smoothing her skirt. "The Time Warner Center isn't exactly obscure."
"Nor is Per Se." Barrett resumed his seat. "I hope the choice wasn't presumptuous."
"How did you get this table?" The question escaped before she could edit it. "The Chef's Table requires-"
"Company account," Barrett interrupted smoothly. "My employer maintains certain relationships. I borrowed his privileges."
The sommelier approached. Barrett spoke to him in French, the accent flawless, discussing vintages with the ease of someone who had spent considerable time in vineyards. Evangelina watched him, her mental files updating.
Not mid-tier, she decided. Or if he was, he was playing a very long game.
They progressed through the tasting menu. Barrett asked questions-about her work, her family, her reasons for the municipal appointment that morning. Evangelina answered with careful omissions, revealing the pressure without revealing the resources she had hidden beneath the surface.
Her phone buzzed on the table, a persistent, angry vibration. She glanced at the screen and felt her stomach clench. A flood of notifications: three missed calls from "Avery Legal Dept." and a string of emails with subjects like "URGENT: IP License Breach."
Gus Petrovic.
"I should take this," she said, already knowing she shouldn't.
Barrett gestured permission.
Evangelina pressed the phone to her ear and walked toward the window, her back to the room. "What."
"Where are you?" Her father's voice carried the particular roughness of alcohol and entitlement. "I called your office. They said you left early."
"Personal business."
"Personal." Gus laughed, a harsh bark. "While your sister is in crisis, you're handling personal business. Typical. Selfish, just like your mother."
Evangelina's fingers whitened on the phone. "Jenelle is not my sister. And from what I saw, her crisis involved excellent lighting and a professional photographer."
"Ricky Costello." Gus's tone shifted, became transactional. "She offended him at a party. His firm holds twenty million in Petrovic Industries debt. You're going to fix it."
"How."
"His club. Tonight. Eleven o'clock. You know how to handle men like him. Better than Jenelle does. More... experienced."
The implication landed like a physical blow. Evangelina felt her vision narrow, her breath coming shallow and fast.
"You're asking me to prostitute myself for your stepdaughter's mistake."
"I'm asking you to act like family." Gus's voice rose. "For once in your miserable life, consider someone other than yourself. If you don't show, don't bother coming to the funeral when I drop dead from the stress."
"Gus-"
"Eleven o'clock. The Velvet Room. Wear something that shows your assets."
The line went dead.
Evangelina stood frozen, the phone pressed to her ear, the city lights blurring into streaks of gold. She became aware of Barrett behind her, close enough to touch, his presence a warmth at her back.
She turned.
His expression was unreadable, but his right hand gripped his butter knife with unnecessary force, the silverware pressed into the porcelain with a thin, high-pitched scrape.
"Family," she said, her voice sounding distant in her own ears. "They have such wonderful ideas about my utility."
Barrett released the knife. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a handkerchief-linen, monogrammed, absurdly formal-and held it out.
"Tell me," he said.
She did. The words came in fragments, edited for dignity but complete in their humiliation. The debt. The club. The explicit expectation.
When she finished, Barrett was silent for a long moment. Then:
"Ricky Costello. The hedge fund manager. Third wife, fourth bankruptcy, currently under SEC investigation for securities fraud."
Evangelina blinked. "You know him?"
"I know of him." Barrett's eyes held hers. "He's a parasite. A bottom-feeder who mistakes desperation for opportunity." He paused. "Men like Costello operate on leverage. Financial, social... it's all data to them. My firm specializes in risk mitigation. If you'd like, I can have my people run an analysis. I'm sure we could find a way to... neutralize his influence over your family's affairs. Consider it a professional courtesy."
The phrasing was strange. Corporate, yet chilling. Evangelina almost laughed. "Neutralize his influence? What does that entail, a strongly worded email?"
"Something like that," Barrett said, his voice level, conversational, discussing weather or traffic. "It would be simple. It would be permanent. And it would cost you nothing."
Evangelina stared at him. The handsome face, the elegant hands, the absolute stillness of his posture. For a moment, she saw something else beneath the consultant's polish-something that recognized Costello not as a problem to be managed, but as an error to be corrected.
She shook her head, dismissing the impression. "You're kind to offer. But this is my mess. My family. I'll handle it."
Barrett studied her for a moment longer. Then he raised his wine glass, the gesture a silent toast.
"As you wish, Mrs. Watson."
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7.8
Alexis signed the divorce papers, leaving her with no assets, no alimony, and just the clothes on her back.
To forget her abusive husband Carlos, she got drunk and bought a high-end gigolo for the night with her last 800 dollars.
But the man she slept with wasn't an escort. He was Jarrett Hughes, a ruthless billionaire CEO.
And while she was gone, her ex-husband was busy destroying her entire life.
Carlos framed her with fake photos of her cheating to justify the penniless divorce.
Then came the real nightmare.
Carlos and her own aunt secretly drained her family's corporate accounts, driving her father to jump off a building.
At the hospital, her grieving mother blamed her for the tragedy, violently attacking her in the ER.
To top it off, her cousin Josie—who was secretly sleeping with Carlos—held her father's ashes hostage.
"Crawl on your knees and pick it up, or the ashes go in the river," Josie sneered, throwing cash into the freezing slush.
Stripped of her marriage, her father, and her dignity, Alexis sat bleeding in the snow.
She couldn't understand why the people she loved most had coordinated such a brutal slaughter against her.
But Carlos and Josie made one fatal mistake.
They didn't know the "gigolo" Alexis had accidentally bought was the most powerful man in New York.
Alexis looked at the towering billionaire standing behind her, a vengeful fire burning in her eyes.
"I need you to get my father's ashes back," she said, pulling him into a kiss right in front of her ex-husband. "I don't care what it takes."
8.2
I spent three years playing the role of a submissive, small-town wife for Evertt Baker, trading my true identity for a quiet life in a Manhattan penthouse. I thought my devotion would be enough to build a real home, but I was just a placeholder in his grand design.
The illusion shattered at 2 AM when Evertt walked in smelling of Chanel No. 5-the signature scent of his mistress, Adda. Without a word of apology, he dropped divorce papers on the table, demanding I sign them immediately so he could finally be with the woman he truly loved.
He looked at me with pure disgust, flicking a five-million-dollar check toward me as if he were paying off an incompetent employee. He told me it was more money than anyone from my "trailer park" background would ever see and ordered me to hurry because Adda was waiting in the car downstairs. He didn't care that I had spent years nursing him through illness and tolerating his family's insults; he only cared about his own convenience.
The sheer arrogance of his payout and the blatant disrespect of bringing his mistress to our home was the final blow. I realized that the man I loved never actually saw me, only the submissive shadow I had forced myself to become.
I signed the papers with a fluid scrawl he didn't bother to check, then I fed his millions into the office shredder. I pulled a hidden, encrypted device from a kitchen drawer and dialed a number I hadn't called in three years.
"Brother," I said, my voice finally steady. "Come get me. The game is over."
Evertt thought he was discarding a penniless nobody, but he was about to find out that he had just declared war on the Stafford empire.
9.2
Averie spent hours preparing a perfect third-anniversary dinner for her billionaire husband, Jarett Sharp.
Instead of celebrating, she received an anonymous photo of him intimately holding another woman.
When Jarett finally arrived, he didn't even look guilty.
"Candida. It's okay. Don't be scared. I'm on my way."
He simply took a call from his mistress, shoved Averie aside, and walked right back out the door.
That same night, Averie's father suffered a massive heart attack.
The hospital demanded a half-million-dollar deposit before they would operate.
But when Averie frantically tried to use the emergency medical trust card Jarett had given her, it was declined.
Jarett had deliberately frozen her access to the funds just hours earlier.
While she begged his assistant on the phone, Jarett refused to be disturbed, busy wrapping his expensive coat around his mistress in the hospital garden.
Averie collapsed in the hallway, realizing the man she loved was deliberately letting her father die.
In the end, a childhood friend stepped in to pay the bill and save her father's life, while her billionaire husband later pinned her to their bed, throwing a check at her and reminding her he had bought her for three million dollars.
Averie didn't shed a single tear.
She slowly ripped his check into pieces, left her massive diamond ring on the dresser, and walked out into the cold New York night with nothing but her old suitcase.
She pulled out her phone and dialed her old ballet professor.
She wasn't just going to leave Jarett Sharp. She was going to destroy him.
9.2
After his father passes away, Darnell becomes the new heir to King Hotels. But his grandfather-who owns shares of the hotels-wants Darnell to marry to earn his (Grandfather's) shares before his death.
After her father's death, Sasha and her family are left to deal with the burden he leaves behind-a huge debt owed to loan sharks.
Darnell approaches Sasha with a two-month marriage contract for five million dollars-enough to pay off her father's debt and be free from her traditional mother. She accepts.
Things are complicated when grandfather doesn't die after two months, and Sasha is being extorted by loan sharks. She and Darnell must stay married for their benefit, despite their lack of affection for each other. Eventually, they fall in love.
But drama unfolds when family secrets are exposed, old lovers resurface, and unknown families appear. Darnell and Sasha must decide if their love is worth it all.
7.0
"Sign the divorce papers, Olivia... or I'll make sure you never wake up again."
I thought marriage meant love, loyalty, and forever. But the night I overheard my husband plotting my downfall with my sister-in-law, my world shattered. The man I had sacrificed everything for was only after my family's wealth and worse, he wanted me dead.
Drugged. Betrayed. Left bleeding while he ran to the arms of his ex. That was Marcus Thompson, the man everyone believed was the perfect billionaire husband.
But I won't go down quietly. With enemies in my own family and assassins at my doorstep, I must fight back. And when David, the man who risked his life to save mine, steps in, I begin to see what true love really feels like.
Now, I'm trapped between a husband who would rather bury me than let me go, and a man willing to risk everything to protect me.
In a world built on lies, betrayal, and deadly secrets... who can I trust when even love could be a weapon?
8.6
Desperation is one of the world's worst vices. It can control the lives of people, including the poor, the middle class, and surprisingly, the wealthy.
Elena Parker is the only child of Mr and Mrs Desmond Parker,the well known billionaires in the city ranked among the top three richest men in the world.
Her relentless search for a partner to produce an heir to the riches seemed to no avail until one faithful day which forever changed her life.