From Blood Bank To Billionaire's Obsession
I was the poor girl from Appalachia the wealthy Copeland family adopted out of "charity," bringing me to a life of New York luxury I could never have imagined.
But it was all a lie. I wasn't their daughter. I was a living, breathing blood bank for their precious child, Bridgette, whose life had been secretly saved by my bone marrow.
Once I was no longer useful, they decided to throw me away. On the night of Bridgette's lavish engagement party, she and her fiancé framed me. They drugged my water, lured me to a hotel suite, and tore my designer gown to stage a scene.
Her fiancé stood over me, his face twisted in disgust. "Did you really think spreading your legs would make me forget where you came from? You're just a trashy hillbilly."
Outside on Fifth Avenue, my adoptive parents screamed at me in front of the press, calling me a disgrace. My sister wept, accusing me of trying to destroy her perfect life out of jealousy.
They expected me to crumble, to become the pathetic scandal they could discard like garbage. They thought they were dealing with a scared, helpless girl from the mountains.
But they made a fatal mistake. The soul of that poor girl was already gone. And I, the top-tier operative known as Glacier, had just woken up in her body.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 8
The next morning, the Long Island Copeland estate was suffocatingly quiet.
Alanis walked into the extravagant formal dining room wearing a simple gray tracksuit.
The massive flat-screen TV mounted on the wall was tuned to a national morning news network.
On the screen, a top-tier crisis PR executive hired by the Copeland Group was speaking rapidly.
"The video circulated last night is a textbook example of a malicious deepfake," the PR mouthpiece lied smoothly. "This is a minor misunderstanding between sisters regarding a fiancé, which was cruelly exaggerated by anonymous hackers."
The scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen showed that the Copeland Group's stock had stabilized in pre-market trading. Capital always found a way to protect itself.
Alanis walked over to the long mahogany table. She pulled out a chair, sat down, and poured herself a cup of black coffee. Her face was entirely devoid of emotion.
Richard sat at the head of the table. His eyes were bloodshot from staying up all night managing the fallout.
He looked at Alanis. The panic from last night was gone, replaced by the cold, ruthless arrogance of a patriarch who had regained control of his empire.
"You are grounded indefinitely," Richard stated, his voice hard. "All your credit cards are canceled. If you do anything to jeopardize Bridgette's recital at the Lincoln Center next month, I will throw you out onto the street with nothing."
Alanis took a slow sip of her coffee. She didn't even blink at his threat.
The dining room doors swung open. Bridgette walked in, wearing a pristine white silk robe.
Her face was pale, but her eyes gleamed with the smug satisfaction of someone who knew her family's money had just saved her skin. She wasn't going to risk a direct confrontation today. She was far too calculating for that. Instead, she was going to play the grieving, forgiving sister, while executing a perfectly deniable 'accident'.
Bridgette walked over to the table, acting as if the brutal confrontation on Fifth Avenue had never happened.
She picked up a delicate bone china plate and used silver tongs to place a freshly baked croissant on it.
With a sickeningly sweet smile, Bridgette slid the plate across the polished wood toward Alanis.
"You must be exhausted from your little stunt last night, sister," Bridgette said, her voice dripping with fake concern. "Eat something. Keep your strength up."
Alanis lowered her coffee cup. Her eyes dropped to the pastry on the plate.
Alanis reached out, her fingers lightly brushing the surface of the croissant as if preparing to break it apart. The moment her skin made contact, her highly trained tactile senses registered an anomaly. The bottom layer of the flaky pastry was unnaturally damp and slightly sticky, the undeniable residue of a dissolved powder injected into the dough. She lifted the pastry slightly, bringing it just inches from her face. Beneath the overwhelming, rich scent of baked butter and yeast, her refined olfactory senses finally isolated a faint, sharp chemical bitterness.
Her brain rapidly accessed her own medical files—the records she had memorized during years of being treated as a resource.
She had a severe, lethal anaphylactic allergy to any form of almond extract. Her throat would close up in less than two minutes.
Bridgette knew this perfectly well. This wasn't a peace offering. It was an assassination attempt disguised as a tragic breakfast accident, a calculated move to eliminate the threat while playing the innocent victim of a kitchen mix-up.
Alanis slowly lifted her gaze. She stared at Bridgette with the cold, dead eyes of a mortician looking at a corpse.
She didn't say a word. She simply raised the back of her hand and casually swiped it sideways.
Smash.
The bone china plate flew off the table and shattered violently against the marble floor. The poisoned croissant rolled into the dust.
Bridgette let out a shrill scream and jumped back, her hip crashing into a chair.
Richard slammed his fists on the table, his face turning purple. "What the hell is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?"
Alanis ignored him. She stood up, placing both hands flat on the mahogany table. She leaned forward, her presence suddenly filling the room with a suffocating pressure.
She locked eyes with Bridgette and spoke in a low, terrifying whisper that only the two of them understood.
"Your poison is cheap."
Keep Reading
The story is getting intense! Switch to App to
Unlock All Chapters
You may also like
8.9
Betrayed by the people she trusted most, Ava Lin's perfect life shatters overnight. From losing her mother under mysterious circumstances to being tormented by her stepmother and stepsister, Ava learns early that love in her world comes at a price. But nothing prepares her for the ultimate betrayal,catching her fiancé in bed with her own sister just weeks before their wedding.
Humiliated and heartbroken, Ava makes a reckless decision that changes everything: a contract marriage to a stranger. What she doesn't know is that her new husband is Elias Ward,a powerful, cold-hearted billionaire with secrets of his own.
Thrown into a world of wealth, power, and hidden enemies, Ava finds herself entangled in a dangerous game of revenge, lies, and unexpected passion. As she rises from the ashes of betrayal, those who once destroyed her will stop at nothing to bring her down even if it means exposing deadly secrets buried in her past.
But when love begins to bloom in the most unexpected place, Ava must decide,will she continue fighting for revenge, or risk everything for a second chance at love?
In a story filled with scandal, heartbreak, and justice, one woman's pain becomes her greatest strength... and her ultimate weapon.
8.5
For two years, I was the perfect shadow of another woman. I wore the silk robes Brittain Austin bought, styled my hair exactly how he liked, and spoke in a voice pitched half an octave higher than my own. I was a placeholder, a living statue in a minimalist Manhattan penthouse, waiting for a man who looked at me but never actually saw me.
Everything shattered when a news alert flashed on my phone: "Caryn Newman Spotted at JFK." The original was back. The woman I was hired to mimic had returned to claim her throne, and my secret two-year contract as her stand-in was set to expire in three days.
Brittain didn't even give me the courtesy of a phone call. While he was supposed to be on a business trip, photos surfaced of him shielding Caryn from the paparazzi, his hand on her waist with a tenderness he never showed me. When I walked into his office to return his keys, he didn't look guilty; he just looked annoyed. He pulled out a checkbook and asked, "How much for the hurt feelings?" When I refused his money, he coldly ordered his assistant to freeze every one of my accounts before I even reached the elevator.
I stood on the sidewalk with zero dollars, realizing that to him, I wasn't a partner—I was just an expired lease. I had spent two years erasing my soul to fit into his world, only to be tossed out like trash the moment the real thing came home.
But Brittain forgot one thing: before I was his doll, I was an actress. I pulled my secret weapon from under the bed—a notebook and a raw film cut he never knew existed. I called my agent and launched a high-profile "showmance" with my co-star that set the internet on fire.
As I blocked Brittain's number and moved into a dusty apartment in Queens, I realized the show wasn't over. For the first time, I was the leading lady.
9.8
I married an S-class Alpha to save my family's bankrupt company.
But my husband, Braydon, treated me worse than a stray dog.
When my heat cycle triggered early, the fever was agonizing. I crawled to our master bedroom, crying and begging him for just one temporary bite to save my life.
Instead, he locked the door from the inside.
"Go back to your room. I told you I didn't want to deal with you this weekend."
Through the crack under the door, I smelled the cheap perfume of his mistress. While I was dying in the hallway, forced to inject a toxic black-market suppressant that made me vomit blood, he was sleeping with her in our bed.
Days later, a drunk Braydon pinned me to the floor, trying to violently force a permanent mark on my neck just to assert his dominance.
When I fought him off, he blamed me for provoking him and casually tossed a credit card at me to buy my silence.
"Go buy whatever you want. Just tell the clinic you slipped in the shower."
Staring at the man who was supposed to protect me, my heart went completely cold. Why did I ever think this monster would change? This wasn't a marriage anymore; it was a cage, and the animal inside it was trying to kill me.
I quietly pressed the record button on my phone, capturing every single word of his twisted bribe.
Then, I pulled out a matte black business card and called the terrifying Enigma CEO who had been waiting for me in the shadows.
8.6
I spent three years being the perfect wife to tech mogul Cash Ferguson, a forensic accountant playing the role of a low-risk asset to stabilize his public image. My world shattered when I saw a live CNBC broadcast from Sundance showing Cash tenderly hoisting a two-year-old boy onto his hip—a secret son born to a socialite mistress while he was supposedly at a business roadshow.
When I confronted him with divorce papers, Cash didn't apologize; he laughed, calling me a "liability" and weaponizing my mother’s history of mental illness to claim I was genetically unfit to carry his heir. He didn't just reject the split; he locked the penthouse elevator and froze every one of my accounts, reclassifying me from a wife to a piece of disputed company property.
"You came from nothing, Isidora," he sneered, tossing a credit card at me like a leash. "Stop being dramatic. I can afford a pet, but don't think you can survive a day in the real world without my name."
The betrayal turned lethal when I discovered Cash had tracked down my mother’s stolen emerald brooch—my only connection to my past—and bought it as a gift for his mistress. He was using my trauma and my heritage to decorate the woman who had replaced me in his secret life.
I realized then that Cash had made a fatal accounting error: he forgot that I was the one who built his shadow accounts and knew exactly where the fraud was buried. He wanted to treat our marriage like a hostile takeover, so I decided to give him a market correction he would never forget.
I escaped down forty flights of stairs with nothing but a burner laptop and a plan to burn his empire to the ground. If he wanted to play dirty, I’d show him what happens when a forensic accountant initiates a liquidation protocol. I’m not just leaving; I’m going to make him crawl.
9.5
I was in a Zurich boardroom signing a contract worth fifty million dollars when I saw the photo that ended my marriage.
It was an Instagram notification from the woman I paid to scrub my toilets.
The caption read: "My little prince deserves the world."
The photo showed her son holding a custom-made porcelain doll with diamond-dust eyes. It was the only one in the world, commissioned specifically for my daughter, Lily.
I cancelled the deal and flew home immediately.
When I arrived at my daughter's school, I found the housekeeper wearing my vintage Chanel coat and driving my car.
My husband, Austyn, didn't run to greet me. He ran past our crying daughter to comfort the housekeeper's son.
"Don't you dare touch my son!" he screamed at me, protecting the boy while our daughter scraped her knees on the pavement.
He looked at me with pure hate, confident that he could take half my assets in a divorce.
He forgot that I wasn't just a wife. I was the Duchess of the Miller Syndicate, the most powerful crime family in New York.
I pulled out my phone and froze every account he had.
"You want a divorce?" I asked, signaling my security team to step forward.
"Take off the suit, Austyn. I paid for it."
"You are leaving this marriage exactly how you entered it. With nothing."
9.0
Irina Volkov has three rules: no emotions, no real names, and never meet in person. For two years she has survived on those rules alone - running romance scams on wealthy men, funneling every stolen dollar toward the crushing debt her abusive stepfather signed in her name before she escaped. She is not greedy. She is desperate. And she is very, very good.
Until she targets Nikolai Dragunov.
What Irina doesn't know is that Nikolai has known about her from the beginning. He created the perfect bait - a lonely businessman with money to burn - and waited for her to find him. Because in a world Nikolai controls down to the last detail, Irina Volkov is the only unpredictable thing left. He wanted to see how far she would go.
Now the game is over. The con is exposed. And Nikolai isn't asking for his money back. He's keeping her.
Trapped in his penthouse with nowhere to run and a Bratva boss who looks at her like she's both a puzzle and a prize, Irina has to survive the most dangerous mark she's ever made - and somehow stop herself from falling for him in the process.
She's a liar. He's a monster. And neither of them expected to fall.
"You took my money, malyshka. Now you belong to me."