From Jilted Wife To The Tycoon's Queen
The harsh glare of the spotlight hit Harper's custom wedding dress as she smiled at her groom.
But a single phone call from his mistress, Lila, made Chase violently shove his way down the aisle and sprint out of the hotel.
He left Harper to face the flashing cameras and the mockery of hundreds of guests.
Her mother-in-law dragged her into a hallway and slapped her hard across the face.
"You cannot even keep your own man in the room. You are making a mockery of this family."
When Harper rushed to the hospital, Chase blamed her for Lila's theatrical, fake miscarriage.
He threatened to pull every cent of capital from Harper's investment firm if she dared to walk away.
The Young family then used the media to frame Harper, turning her into a public pariah who viciously "killed" an unborn child.
Mobbed by ruthless paparazzi, Harper was pushed into the freezing rain, her knees bleeding on the concrete.
She couldn't accept that her entire life and career were being destroyed by a mistress's pathetic lie.
When Chase later tried to buy her silence with a pink diamond—the exact same one he had just gifted Lila—her remaining love turned to absolute ice.
But fate intervened when she was rescued from the mob by Antoni Donovan, the most ruthless billionaire on Wall Street and her biggest corporate rival.
Discovering that Antoni was actually her best friend's older brother, a dangerous smile spread across Harper's face.
She picked up his gold-lettered business card.
She was done being the victim; she was going to use the wolf of Wall Street to crush her ex-husband.
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Chapter 8
The Uber pulled up to an old brick warehouse converted into luxury lofts in the Tribeca neighborhood. Harper grabbed her small bag and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
She swiped her keycard and walked into the apartment she had bought secretly with her own bonus money before the wedding. The loft was empty. There was only a gray fabric sofa and a bed.
She dropped her bag on the wooden floor. She collapsed onto the sofa and stared blankly at the high ceiling.
The doorbell rang violently. Someone started pounding on the heavy metal door. The loud noise echoed in the empty room.
Harper frowned. She dragged herself up and looked through the peephole. A woman with bright red hair and massive sunglasses was standing in the hallway.
Harper pulled the door open. Her best friend from college, Pippa Donovan, screamed and pulled her into a bone-crushing hug.
Pippa ripped off her sunglasses. She looked at Harper's pale face and the fading bruise on her forehead. "Chase is a blind, stupid piece of trash," Pippa yelled.
Pippa walked into the apartment, dropping her massive Birkin bag onto the sofa. She slammed two bottles of expensive champagne onto the kitchen counter.
"I cannot believe you hid all of this from me," Pippa complained, popping the cork on the first bottle. "If I hadn't seen the news, I wouldn't even know."
Harper took the glass of champagne Pippa handed her. She took a sip. The tension in her shoulders finally relaxed a little.
Pippa looked around the empty apartment and wrinkled her nose. She reached out and snatched the glass out of Harper's hand.
"You are not rotting in this box," Pippa ordered. "You are going back into the New York social scene tonight. We are showing everyone you are alive."
"No," Harper said, rubbing her temples. "I need to sleep. I have to fix the CGI studio mess tomorrow."
Pippa's eyes darted to the side when she heard CGI. She waved her hand. "Work is for tomorrow. Tonight, you belong to me."
Pippa grabbed Harper's arm and dragged her into the bathroom. As she passed the sofa, she snatched her Birkin bag up by its handle with her free hand, slinging it over her shoulder. "I didn't bring half of Sephora across town for nothing," she declared. "You're going to look like the warrior queen you are."
In the bathroom, Pippa dropped the Birkin bag onto the marble counter. She unzipped it and dumped a pile of high-end makeup onto the sink.
For the next hour, Pippa forced Harper to sit still. She painted Harper's face, giving her a sharp, dangerous, and aggressive look.
Pippa walked back out to the living room and pulled a black, deep-V backless designer gown from a garment bag she had left by the door. She forced Harper to put it on.
Harper looked in the mirror. The woman looking back was cold, stunning, and completely different from the quiet wife she used to be.
Pippa smiled, satisfaction gleaming in her eyes. She pulled a sleek evening clutch from her Birkin bag, transferring only her phone and lipstick into it, and left the large designer bag resting on the gray fabric sofa. She linked her arm through Harper's and marched her out the door.
A McLaren sports car roared up to the valet stand at The Pierre hotel. Harper and Pippa got out and walked up the red carpet toward the ballroom. The security guards bowed to Pippa.
Harper looked at the wealthy crowd. "What kind of event is this?" she asked quietly.
Pippa smirked. "It is a fake charity gala. My dad threw it to force my workaholic brother to go on blind dates."
Harper's brain stopped working. The word brother echoed in her head. She turned to Pippa, a sudden chill spreading through her chest. "Wait. Your last name is Donovan."
Pippa looked at her, confused. "Antoni Donovan. Did you not know that?" She waved a hand dismissively. "I used my mother's maiden name, Miller, all through college to avoid the paparazzi. I only officially changed it back to Donovan last year, right around the time you were drowning in wedding planning and vendor meetings every weekend. I told you at that brunch, remember? You were on the phone with the florist the whole time."
Harper's stomach dropped. She vaguely remembered a brunch months ago where Pippa had mentioned something about paperwork, but Harper had been so consumed with Chase's demands and the wedding arrangements that she had barely registered the words. And Pippa never talked about her family. In four years of friendship, she had never once mentioned a brother, never posted family photos, never invited Harper to family events. She had always been just Pippa Miller, the wild redhead from the art history seminar.
Now, standing on the red carpet of The Pierre, Harper realized her best friend was the sister of her biggest rival. The man who stole her project and threw her out into the rain.
Harper turned around to run away. Pippa grabbed her arm and dragged her forcefully through the doors.
The heavy doors opened. Bright crystal light poured over them. Everyone in the room turned to look.
Harper was forced to lift her head. She looked across the crowded room. Her eyes locked perfectly with the dark, dangerous eyes of Antoni Donovan, who was standing in the center of the room surrounded by women.
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9.7
Clarissa rushed into a crowded nightclub for one simple reason: to save her wildly drunk best friend.
But her ruthless billionaire husband, Giovanny, was watching from the VIP room. After effortlessly ruining a man just for grabbing her wrist, Giovanny punished Clarissa for breaching their public image contract with an impossible curfew.
When she inevitably arrived back at his penthouse late, he didn't just yell. He forced her to her knees by his bathtub to wash his back, making her watch an explicit, humiliating video as punishment.
A sudden family medical emergency dragged them to his parents' estate. Still in her soaked, transparent dress and his misbuttoned shirt, Giovanny's mother caught them. She joyfully assumed they had been passionately intimate.
Instead of clearing her name, Giovanny pulled Clarissa close and lied to his mother's face.
"We are working very hard on the family's future, Mother."
He locked her in the guest suite, tossed a sheer silk nightgown on the bed, and literally shattered the tablet holding their "no-contact" prenuptial agreement. He then slapped a file against the window—he had secretly bought all her father's toxic debt.
Clarissa was terrified. They were supposed to be business allies bound by a strict contract. Why was he suddenly acting like a predator determined to own her body and soul?
"Give me an heir, or your father goes to federal prison," he whispered.
Stripped of all choices, Clarissa picked up the white silk. She would surrender tonight to save her family, but as his shadow swallowed her, she made a silent vow to survive this monster, and one day, tear his empire to the ground.
8.5
Alexandrea woke up with a splitting headache in a strange hotel bed, terrified to find a brutally handsome, half-naked stranger beside her.
Before she could even scream, the door burst open. Her adoptive mother, Ivette, stormed in with a swarm of reporters and flashing cameras.
"How could you disgrace our family name like this?"
Ivette sobbed, putting on a theatrical performance of a heartbroken mother. It was a setup to completely ruin Alexandrea's reputation in front of New York's elite.
For ten years, Alexandrea had lived in a house of horrors. Her back and arms were covered in silvery scars and puckered cigarette burns left by Ivette's vicious abuse.
Yet to the public, Ivette had carefully crafted Alexandrea's image as a wild, ungrateful, and manipulative liar.
Trapped under the duvet, Alexandrea was drowning in shame, her voice lost in the storm of accusations.
She didn't understand why her adoptive family hated her so much, treating her worse than a stray dog while using her brother's future to keep her chained.
But what she understood even less was the stranger beside her.
Instead of panicking, the man slowly sat up, his presence alone silencing the frantic room. He was Ace Griffith, the billionaire heir who owned half of Manhattan.
He wrapped his suit jacket around her trembling shoulders, looked Ivette dead in the eye, and dropped a bomb.
"I will be marrying her."
Then, he carried Alexandrea away from her ten-year prison, ordering his men to dig up the Terry family's darkest secrets and her true identity.
8.9
Five years ago, Arabella Sterling vanished without a trace, disgraced, heartbroken, and branded her billionaire benefactor's dirty secret.
What the world never knew was that she'd also been his wife.
Or that the man she loved-and the son she gave everything for-chose another woman over her.
Now, she's back as The Reformer, a world-renowned business strategist celebrated for resurrecting dying empires.
Her newest client? The Sterling Group.
Her ex-husband's empire.
Adrian Sterling has spent years trying to atone for the lies that destroyed them both.
But when Arabella walks into his boardroom, colder, sharper, untouchable...he realizes redemption may come at a cost he can't pay.
Because this time, she's not here to save him.
She's here to ruin him.
9.5
For nine years, I poured my soul into proving I was worthy of my wealthy boyfriend, Clayton Wright. I endured his endless, humiliating "tests," sacrificing everything for a place in his world.
But at our engagement party, the final test was revealed. He stood by as his ex-girlfriend, Anjelica, framed me for shattering a priceless family heirloom.
"You manipulative bitch!" he snarled, slapping me across the face. He then ordered his bodyguard to force me to my knees, grinding them into the sharp, broken fragments of the watch.
As I bled on the floor, he pulled out his phone and gave a single command: demolish my childhood home, the last piece I had of my deceased father.
He destroyed my past and my dignity, yet minutes later, my phone buzzed with a message from him.
"The engagement is just for show. I'll still marry you. You're my destiny."
That night, clutching the last of my father's life insurance, I booked a one-way ticket and vanished. He thought he had finally broken his little project, but he had just unleashed a woman with nothing left to lose.
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.
7.8
Evelyn was already suffocating under her family's impending bankruptcy when she rear-ended a ten-million-dollar Rolls Royce in the freezing rain.
The tinted window rolled down, revealing the cold, predatory face of Julian Hawthorne—the man she had brutally abandoned three years ago.
Now a ruthless billionaire, he demanded a seven-figure repair check she couldn't afford, or she would have to pay with her body.
Desperate, she went to her wealthy fiancé, Preston, for the money, only to find him in a VIP club with another woman straddling his lap.
Instead of helping, Preston threw the repair bill on the floor and laughed with his rich friends.
"You want the money? Fine. Get on your knees, crawl over here, and kiss the tip of my shoe in front of everyone."
Evelyn trembled with pure humiliation.
Three years ago, she had sacrificed the only man she truly loved to save her family from ruin, only to end up engaged to this pathetic, cheating scum.
Just as her knees bent toward the carpet, the heavy velvet door was kicked completely off its hinges.
Julian walked in like the grim reaper, beat Preston half to death, and dragged Evelyn away.
He pinned her in his car, threatening to destroy everyone she cared about if she didn't return to him.
Evelyn was terrified and confused. Why was this powerful tyrant going to such extreme, violent lengths to trap a woman who had thrown him away?
The answer slipped out through an accidental phone call: the cold-blooded CEO had spent the previous night drunk, crying and screaming her name.
Realizing the monster caging her was actually just a desperate, heartbroken man, Evelyn wiped her tears and made a decision.
She was going to break her engagement, walk into his corporate fortress, and finally face the terrifying debt of their past.