He Return of the Discarded Heiress
For three years, I wasn't a foster child. I was a living, breathing cure.
Hidden away in the attic of the Thomas mansion, my sole purpose was to keep their precious daughter alive. Every week, they drained my blood to treat her rare disease, leaving me anemic, scarred, and invisible. I was the "walking blood bag" from the wrong side of the tracks-a stray they'd reluctantly taken in.
The day Katharina was finally cured, I overheard the truth. "That walking blood bag has served her purpose," the grandmother hissed. "We are done with her."
They threw me out into a freezing rainstorm, tossing a crumpled check at my feet like a tip for a beggar. Payment, they said, for the years I'd "leeched" off their family. Payment for the six thousand milliliters of blood they'd stolen, for the chronic anemia, for the scars.
I shredded their charity in front of their faces and walked into the storm.
They laughed, screaming that I'd be back, that I'd be begging on the streets by morning. But as I stood alone on that dark road, my world shifted. A sleek, black Rolls-Royce pulled up in silence. The door opened, and my real family stepped out.
I wasn't a stray from the slums. I was their lost heiress. And the Thomases are about to learn that the girl they bled dry is now the one holding all the power.
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Chapter 2
"Katharina." Preston's voice was a low snap as he caught sight of Ainsley descending.
Everyone looked up.
The first thing anyone noticed was the face. Striking. Unapologetic. She wore a simple pale blue t-shirt under an unbuttoned red-and-white striped shirt, the tails tied carelessly at her waist above denim shorts that showed off legs long and pale.
The Thomases all had fair skin. Ainsley's was paler still, almost translucent. It made her eyes-dark, depthless, unreadable-seem even more stark. Every time Preston looked at her, he felt an unbridgeable distance.
Never truly one of us, he thought.
"Ainsley." He pressed his lips together, looked away. His tone was gentler than the rest of the family's. After all, they'd raised her for over a decade. "You packed?"
She reached the bottom of the stairs, the single, light bag a stark contrast to the piles of luggage that usually accompanied their family trips. "Yeah."
Katharina finally saw her. The malicious curiosity vanished, replaced by a mask of wide-eyed, innocent concern. "Oh! Ainsley. I didn't see you there."
Ainsley didn't even grant her a glance. She stepped straight past her.
Ignored publicly. Katharina's lips pressed together in practiced resentment, her long lashes falling as she put on a wounded expression. Her pale face looked even more bloodless, fragile as a white flower swaying in the wind.
Meredith's scowl was immediate. Eleanor's cane slammed against the floor. "Katharina is speaking to you. Are you deaf?"
Katharina instantly looped her arm through her grandmother's, lifting her head to shake it weakly, biting her lip as if defending Ainsley. "Grandmother, please. It's fine. Sister's just upset. It doesn't bother me."
The performance was flawless.
Eleanor's gaze, when it landed on Ainsley, was pure venom. Every line of the old woman's face spelled contempt. "Just as I thought. No Thomas by blood. Raised her for over sixteen years, and she still can't shake that low, petty nature."
"Mother." Preston's voice was a weary plea.
He stepped before Ainsley and pulled out a bank card with practiced magnanimity. "There's a couple thousand on here."
He sighed and pressed it into her hand. The gesture of a man who wanted to believe he was being generous. "Take it. For when you get to your new home. Buy yourself some things. Clothes. Maybe for school."
Preston was always cautious. The Thomases had just secured a major government development project. A critical moment. He wanted no trouble, no loose ends.
Ainsley was a senior. Sent off to some small town now, she would never get into a decent university.
Her life, as far as he was concerned, was effectively over.
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7.1
Hana never planned to fall into the world of Kang Jae-Hyun.
She was just a struggling young woman trying to support her family when a single mistake brought her face-to-face with Seoul's coldest and most powerful CEO. What began as a contract - a fake engagement meant to satisfy a ruthless family and protect a fragile empire - quickly turns into something far more dangerous.
Behind Jae-Hyun's flawless image lies grief, pressure, and a heart he locked away long ago. Behind Hana's warm smile is quiet resilience and scars she never talks about.
As secrets surface, enemies close in, and the line between pretend and real begins to blur, Hana must decide:
Was this relationship ever just business - or was it always fate?
A slow-burn romance filled with tension, secrets, and a love that wasn't supposed to happen.
7.7
I was kneeling on the warped linoleum of my trailer, packing my life into a trash bag, when the predatory purr of a luxury SUV echoed through the thin walls. I thought it was a raid, but it was something much worse.
Julian Sterling, a federal prosecutor in a charcoal suit, stepped into the mud and bought me from my alcoholic stepfather. He didn't use cash; he used a list of felonies and a legal settlement to trade my freedom for my stepfather's silence.
"Throw it away," Julian ordered, pointing at the bag containing everything I owned. I watched my sister's stuffed bear fall into an oil puddle as he forced me into a world of cold leather and silence. By the time we reached Boston, Faith Vance was dead. He forced me to sign papers changing my name to Elara, erasing my past to fit a narrative of Swiss boarding schools and high-society breeding.
The horror didn't stop there. The family patriarch, Arthur Sterling, looked at us with hawk-like eyes and issued a command that turned my blood to ice. To avoid scandal, Julian and I were to be introduced as "Brother" and "Sister." Julian's jaw tightened until a vein throbbed in his temple, and when he finally called me "Sister," the word sounded like a curse.
I was a prisoner in a mansion with bars on the windows, caught between a "brother" who loathed my existence and a cousin who tried to assault me in my own room. They dressed me in silk armor and expected me to be a doll, a manageable piece of a legacy I never asked for.
I sat at a dinner table worth more than my hometown, swallowing oysters that tasted like salt and iodine, while Julian created a physical barrier between me and the wolves. Under the tablecloth, I reached out and squeezed his clenched fist.
His fingers uncurled and captured mine in a grip so crushing it felt like a pact signed in the dark. I have a jagged shard of glass in my pocket and five thousand dollars a month to hoard. Julian says the law is a weapon that breaks weak people, but he's about to find out that I'm not a lamb. I'm a survivor, and I'm ready for the casualties.
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
8.4
Everly spent four years playing the perfect, accommodating wife to Carson Moss, swallowing every grievance just to secure medical treatments for their sick daughter.
But at a high-society banquet she exhausted herself organizing, Carson's pregnant mistress crashed the party.
The woman shoved an ultrasound of Carson's "real heir" directly into Everly's frail grandfather's face.
The shock triggered a massive heart attack.
Carson refused to use his private helicopter to save the dying old man, choosing to protect his mistress and his company's IPO instead. Her grandfather died on the hospital table.
Instead of remorse, her mother-in-law demanded Everly publicly cover up the murder.
"You will do exactly as I say, or I will freeze every single cent of the medical trust fund paying for your crippled daughter's treatments."
When a battered Everly returned to the estate, she discovered her three-year-old daughter covered in dark bruises and pinch marks. Her in-laws were deliberately torturing her disabled child.
Everly couldn't comprehend how a family could be so utterly heartless. Her only family was murdered, her child was abused, and her husband threw a five-million-dollar check at her face as hush money.
They thought she would just break and quietly disappear.
But when a terrifyingly powerful billionaire unexpectedly blocked Carson's security team from locking her up, Everly finally saw her window.
She grabbed her sleeping daughter and ran out into the freezing storm, making a blood-bound vow to make the entire Moss family bleed.
9.3
He was supposed to be my brother. The cold CEO everyone feared. The man who controlled the entire country's business world.
But one night, he looked at me and calmly destroyed everything I thought I knew.
"We're getting married."
I laughed, but he didn't.
Now every door in my life is closing, every choice is disappearing, and the one man I'm not supposed to love refuses to let me go.
Because to Lucien Hale, this was never forbidden. It was inevitable.
And the most terrifying part? The closer I get to him, the harder it becomes to run.
8.2
My ex-boyfriend of three years, Axel, married a perfect wealthy heiress.
I attended his wedding, not to mourn our relationship, but because he had spent the last three years bleeding me dry.
He left me with absolutely nothing but a final notice from the hospital for my dying brother's life support.
Instead of feeling guilty, Axel cornered me in the church hallway, crushing my wrist.
"I'll set you up with an apartment. You won't have to work another day in your life."
He thought he could buy my silence with spare change, while leaving my seventeen-year-old brother, Julian, to die when his treatments were cut off the very next day.
When I refused to be his dirty little secret, Axel used his power to utterly destroy my acting career.
He had my talent agency terminate my contract under a fake morals clause, publicly humiliated me on set, and blacklisted me across the entire industry.
I was shoved out into the freezing rain, left with a torn dress and absolutely no way to pay the five hundred thousand dollar medical bill.
He actually believed he could step on my brother's dying body to build his own fake empire.
He thought I was just a weak, pathetic victim who would eventually crawl back to him on my knees.
But he forgot about the one monster he was absolutely terrified of: his legitimate, ruthless billionaire half-brother, Jace Bauer.
Looking at the three positive pregnancy tests hidden in my drawer, I stepped right in front of Jace's armored Maybach.
"Marry me, and I'll give you the heir you need to secure your empire."