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 2
The sky turned a bruised, sickly gray. The rain had finally stopped, but the morning air was thick and biting.
Dorothea's lips were a pale, dead blue. Her entire body was locked in a rigid tremor. She couldn't feel her feet anymore.
The heavy gears of the iron gate groaned. The metal doors slowly swung inward.
Dorothea's heart gave a weak, painful thump. She tried to step forward, but her legs wouldn't bend. She stumbled, nearly falling face-first into the gravel.
It wasn't Alfredo walking down the driveway.
It was Mr. Beach.
"Uncle Beach," Dorothea rasped. Her voice was completely gone, reduced to a dry scrape. She looked at him with wide, hopeful eyes. He was Emery's father. He knew her. He would help her.
Mr. Beach stopped three feet away. His posture was rigidly straight, his hands clamped together. The look in his eyes made Dorothea's stomach drop. It was a chilling, bottomless grief that had frozen into something harder than hatred.
He unzipped a clear, waterproof evidence bag he was holding. He pulled out a familiar silver smartphone. Emery's phone.
He stepped closer, shoving the bright screen directly into Dorothea's face.
"Read it," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth, like stones grinding together.
Dorothea forced her blurry eyes to focus. It was a text message from Emery to her.
Dottie, I'm at The Velvet Room. You need to get here. I'm a little scared.
Dorothea nodded frantically. "I know! But I told her I couldn't go! I had a family dinner!"
Mr. Beach let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. He swiped his thumb up on the screen.
Dorothea's reply was there: Sorry Em, stuck at this family thing.
But right beneath it, timestamped ten minutes later, was another message sent from Dorothea's phone.
Fine. Since you're being such a baby, I'll come keep you company. Wait for me there.
All the blood drained from Dorothea's head. The world tilted sideways.
"No," she whispered, shaking her head so hard her neck cracked. "No, I never sent that! Someone took my phone! Or it's fake!"
"Still lying," Mr. Beach spat, his voice vibrating with a father's raw agony. "She waited for you in that hellhole because you told her to. She waited until those animals found her."
"It wasn't me!" Dorothea cried, trying to reach for the phone.
Her arms were too heavy. She couldn't lift them.
Mr. Beach snatched the phone back, stepping away from her as if she carried a disease.
"Mr. Hendrix will not see you," he said, his voice turning to ice. "He told me to give you a message. Get out of New York. Never show your face to him again."
The words hit her like a physical blow to the chest. The entire night of torture-the freezing rain, the humiliation-it was all for nothing. It was just a joke to him.
"Please," she gasped, her vision going dark at the edges.
"The biggest regret of my life," Mr. Beach said, staring down at her, "is watching my daughter befriend a poisonous snake like you."
That was the final strike.
Dorothea's legs gave out completely. She collapsed onto the wet, sharp gravel, her knees slamming into the ground.
Mr. Beach turned his back on her. He walked up the driveway, and the heavy iron gates slammed shut behind him with a deafening clang.
Dorothea knelt in the dirt. The morning sun finally broke through the clouds, hitting her back, but she couldn't feel the heat. Her brain was a flatline of panic. The evidence was there. It was fake, but it was there.
She didn't know how long she stayed on her knees.
The crunch of tires on gravel snapped her back to reality. A sleek black sedan pulled to a stop inches from her legs.
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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.