From Prison Cell To Billionaire's Target
The freezing rain lashed against my face as I clung to the iron gates of the Hendrix estate, begging for a chance to prove I didn't kill my best friend.
I had come here for mercy, but the man I had secretly loved for years had a different plan. He didn't want to hear my truth; he wanted to see me broken.
As the sun rose, the estate manager delivered the final blow. He shoved Emery’s phone into my face, showing a forged text message that framed me for her death, then turned his back as the gates slammed shut.
My own family didn't offer a lifeline, either. When the police came for me, my parents didn't fight for my innocence; they chose to disown me to save their bank accounts from Alfredo’s wrath.
I was thrown into Rikers Island, stripped of my dignity, and subjected to years of calculated, brutal torture paid for by the man who once held my heart.
How could the person I loved turn my life into a private slaughterhouse based on a lie?
After three years of hell, I walked out of those prison gates with nothing but a scarred body and a hollow soul. The woman who loved Alfredo Hendrix died in that cell. Now, I’m back in the city where it all began, and I’m done hiding.
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Chapter 1
The freezing rain slashed against Dorothea Fowler's face, washing away her tears as fast as they fell.
Her thin, silk Dior dress-a garment meant for a warm ballroom-clung to her shivering skin like a layer of ice. She stood outside the towering iron gates of the Hendrix estate, her bare feet submerged in a puddle of freezing mud. She had lost her heels miles ago.
She pressed her thumb against the cold metal of the intercom button for the tenth time. Her finger was numb, the nail turning a bruised shade of purple.
"Alfredo," she begged, her voice violently shaking. "Please. You have to listen to me. I didn't do it."
Static crackled through the speaker. Then, the stiff, emotionless voice of Mr. Beach, the estate manager, cut through the sound of the downpour.
"Miss Fowler. Mr. Hendrix does not wish to see you."
"Emery was my best friend!" Dorothea screamed at the metal box, her throat burning. "I would never hurt her! Please!"
A sudden square of yellow light spilled onto the wet driveway.
Dorothea snapped her head up. On the second floor of the massive stone mansion, a heavy curtain was pulled back. A tall, broad-shouldered silhouette stood behind the glass.
Alfredo.
He held a crystal glass of whiskey in one hand. Even from this distance, Dorothea could feel the absolute zero of his stare. He wasn't looking at a woman he had known for years. He was looking at a piece of trash that had washed up on his property.
"Alfredo!" She surged forward, her fingers wrapping around the iron bars of the gate. The cold metal bit into her palms.
He didn't flinch. He didn't speak. He simply raised his free hand and made a brief, dismissive gesture to someone out of sight in the room.
The intercom buzzed again.
"Mr. Hendrix says," Mr. Beach's voice returned, slower this time, "if you want an opportunity to explain yourself..."
Dorothea stopped breathing. Her lungs ached. She waited for the lifeline.
"...you will stand right where you are. All night. If you are still there when the sun comes up, he will consider opening the door."
The words hit her chest harder than the freezing rain. It was a bucket of ice water poured directly over her heart.
He wasn't giving her a chance. He was putting her on display. He wanted her to stand in the mud like a criminal in the stocks, stripped of her dignity, begging for a scrap of his mercy.
Her knees buckled. She hit the wet gravel, the sharp stones tearing into the delicate skin of her shins.
She looked up at the window. The curtain slowly slid shut. The yellow light vanished. Alfredo was gone, sealing her out in the dark.
She dug her fingernails into her own palms until the skin broke. The sharp sting of pain grounded her.
If this was the only way to prove her innocence, she would do it. For Emery. And for the secret, pathetic love she had harbored for Alfredo since they were teenagers.
Dorothea forced her legs to straighten. She gripped the iron bars, locking her elbows, and forced herself to stand perfectly upright.
The wind picked up, howling off the Long Island Sound. It whipped her wet hair across her face like tiny lashes.
A black security patrol vehicle rolled past the gate. The headlights washed over her pale, shivering body. The guard inside didn't even turn his head. He had his orders. She was entirely alone.
Hours bled into one another. The distant chime of a clock tower signaled midnight, then 1:00 AM, then 2:00 AM.
Her vision started to blur at the edges. Her brain misfired, flashing warm memories behind her eyelids. Sitting in a sunlit cafe with Emery. Laughing over a cup of Earl Grey tea.
Then, the image shattered. It was replaced by the news broadcast. Emery's lifeless body being carried out of that club on a stretcher.
A sob ripped out of Dorothea's throat. Her stomach violently cramped, and she doubled over, coughing until she tasted copper in the back of her mouth. Her lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass.
She looked up at the massive, black silhouette of the Hendrix mansion. It sat there like a silent monster, waiting to chew her up.
She closed her eyes, the rain mixing with the hot tears on her cheeks.
You will regret this, Alfredo, she thought, her body swaying in the wind. You will.
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7.4
Four years ago, to protect the man I loved from losing his billionaire empire, I drugged his drink, told him I only used him for his money, and vanished.
Now, at a high-society gala, Callum Wyatt is back. He isn't just a CEO anymore; he's a ruthless predator, and the second his eyes lock onto me, I know I am his prey.
When my wealthy half-sister publicly humiliated me, calling me the cheap bastard child of a homewrecker, Callum stepped out of the shadows. He nearly snapped her wrist in half and declared to New York's elite that anyone who touched me would be dismantled.
In the back of his Maybach, he pinned my arms above my head, his eyes burning with psychotic obsession.
"If you run again, Aubrey, I will burn your entire world to the ground just to keep you."
My heart bled. I had spent four grueling years tearing myself apart to keep him out of my messy, blood-soaked revenge against the family that watched my mother die.
But his terrifying protection only made my biological father's family target me harder, using their massive capital to buy out my movie set and crush my acting career.
They thought I would cower.
But as I walked onto the soundstage, facing the heiress trying to steal my role, I took off my sunglasses. I wasn't running anymore; it was time to make them pay.
7.8
The clerk at the Registry couldn't look me in the eye when she turned the screen around.
My status didn't say "Luna" anymore. It said "Rogue."
My mate, Alpha Jackson, had secretly replaced me on the official paperwork three years ago with his mistress, Candida.
When I returned to the Pack House, Jackson didn't just bring Candida home; he brought a five-year-old boy he claimed was an orphan.
"This is Joey," he announced, his eyes cold and glazed over. "Since you are barren, he will be the future Alpha."
I tried to accept my fate as a servant in my own home, but they wanted me dead.
The boy, looking like an angel, brought me a bowl of soup.
"For you, Mama," he smiled.
But as I reached for it, he splashed the scalding liquid over my hands.
It wasn't just hot soup. It was laced with concentrated Wolfsbane.
As my skin sizzled and peeled, the boy threw himself on the floor, screaming that I had attacked him.
Jackson didn't check my burns. He didn't listen to my pleas.
"Submit!" he roared, using the Alpha Command to force me to my knees.
He made me apologize to the child who had just poisoned me.
That night, listening to Jackson mate with Candida in the room next to mine, the bond finally snapped.
They wanted the Luna gone? Fine.
I dialed a number I hadn't used in years.
"Hamilton," I whispered to the Lycan King. "I need a plane. And I need it to crash."
9.8
After three agonizing months, I finally found my fiancé, Barnett Spencer, at a gala at The Plaza. He had vanished without a trace, and I was on the verge of losing my mind.
But when I saw him on stage, my blood turned to ice. He had a strange woman tucked into his arm, and a lawyer announced that a recent accident had erased the last six years of his memory-our entire relationship.
In front of a sea of reporters, Barnett looked right through me with freezing hostility.
"Miss, you have the wrong person."
He then declared that the woman beside him, Joslyn, was not only the person who saved his life but also his new, legal wife. The news hit me like a physical blow, and the camera flashes swallowed me whole as reporters shoved microphones in my face, asking how it felt to be publicly dumped.
The man I had loved for six years had turned me into a national joke, a delusional stranger trying to cling to his wealth.
That night, as I was drowning my humiliation in a martini, his ruthless younger brother, Dixon, found me. He slid a marriage contract across the bar.
"Marry me," he said, his voice a low rumble. "I want his shares. You want his pain. We both get what we want."
Fueled by alcohol and a burning need for revenge, I grabbed his pen and signed my name. I was no longer the abandoned fiancée. I was about to become my ex's worst nightmare: his new sister-in-law.
9.0
I was sitting in the Presidential Suite of The Pierre, wearing a Vera Wang gown worth more than most people earn in a decade. It was supposed to be the wedding of the century, the final move to merge two of Manhattan's most powerful empires.
Then my phone buzzed. It was an Instagram Story from my fiancé, Jameson. He was at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris with a caption that read: "Fuck the chains. Chasing freedom." He hadn't just gotten cold feet; he had abandoned me at the altar to run across the world.
My father didn't come in to comfort me. He burst through the door roaring about a lost acquisition deal, telling me the Holland Group would strip our family for parts if the ceremony didn't happen by noon. My stepmother wailed about us becoming the laughingstock of the Upper East Side. The Holland PR director even suggested I fake a "panic attack" to make myself look weak and sympathetic to save their stock price. Then Jameson’s sleazy cousin, Pierce, walked in with a lopsided grin, offering to "step in" and marry me just to get his hands on my assets.
I looked at them and realized I wasn't a daughter or a bride to anyone in that room. I was a failed asset, a bouncing check, a girl whose own father told her to go to Paris and "beg" the man who had just publicly humiliated her.
The girl who wanted to be loved died in that mirror. I realized that if I was going to be sold to save a merger, I was going to sell myself to the one who actually controlled the money.
I marched past my parents and walked straight into the VIP holding room. I looked the most powerful man in the room—Jameson’s cold, ruthless uncle, Fletcher Holland—dead in the eye and threw the iPad on the table.
"Jameson is gone," I said, my voice as hard as stone. "Marry me instead."
8.4
Cyburris Hospital collapsed, and Director Greg sacrificed his pregnant wife, Ronda, to save his idolized love. Her right hand was crushed, she lost their baby, and he dragged her name through the mud, forcing her to leave with nothing.
With an injured hand and a stillborn child, Ronda fled the country overnight. Three years later, she returned as an international authority on neural regeneration, ready to seek revenge with both hands-one to slap faces, the other to perform surgery.
Her academic revelations exposed scandals, data breaches shook the foundations, the idolized love's reputation crumbled, and the scoundrel was left paralyzed-a complete crash and burn, all in one go.
In the end, she radiated with brilliance at a grand wedding with her ultimate partner, while her ex passed away in solitude in a hospital room.
9.3
I lay on the wet asphalt, the cold rain mixing with the metallic taste of blood pooling in my mouth. My lungs were heavy, filling with fluid as my life ebbed away. Through swollen eyelids, I saw my lover, Clovis, and my stepsister, Alanna, standing over me with looks of pure triumph.
"Thanks for the trust fund, sister," Alanna whispered, shoving a phone screen in front of my dying eyes. The headline was a jagged blade to my soul: Caesar Williamson, the "tyrant" husband I had fled from, was dead in a multi-car collision. He had died trying to rescue me, thinking I was in danger.
The realization shattered what was left of my heart. The man I had spent years painting as a monster had driven into hell to save me, while the man I thought was my safety was the one who had just crushed my ribs with an iron bar. I had played right into their hands, ruining my reputation and my marriage for a lie. I watched them walk away, leaving me to choke on my own blood in the dark, discarded like a bag of trash.
I wanted to scream, to beg the universe for a rewind button, to tell Caesar I was sorry. The darkness pressed down on me, heavier than the betrayal, as my world finally went black.
Then, I was screaming.
I shot up in bed, gasping for air like a drowning woman breaking the surface. I scrambled at my abdomen—smooth skin, no blood, no tear. I grabbed my phone and saw the date: it was three years ago, the morning of my wedding to the Williamson estate.
I didn't waste a second. I scrubbed the "unstable" makeup from my face, threw on a white silk dress, and blocked the man who would eventually kill me. This time, I wasn't running away from the manor. I was going back to the husband I had once feared, ready to save the only man who had ever truly loved me.