He Wanted a Doll, I Became a Legend
After three years together, the man who had once promised to marry me, Babur Caldwell, threw me out the moment he got into Redmont University.
"Valeria, a pretty little fool who only knows how to dress up, how could you ever be worthy of someone like me, a future elite of Gilded Row?"
Later, when I, Valerie Quinn, became the Financial Queen admired by thousands, he knelt in front of me, sobbing, begging for another chance.
Holding the bouquet Kearney Smith had sent me, I answered in the same tone he had once used. "Sorry, Babur, someone as short-sighted as you isn't worthy of an elite like me."
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Chapter 5
I started going to the library.
After three years away from studying, I forced myself to focus on the books in front of me.
But within minutes, frustration crept in and I set the book down.
The truth was painful. I barely understood what I was reading.
Just as I was sinking into disappointment, my phone chimed. Babur had sent me a message.
"How's the studying going? I've sorted through some of my old books. You might find them useful."
I nearly jumped out of my seat.
That message felt like proof he regretted everything, like he was helping me win him back.
I agreed without hesitation.
When I arrived at his place, the rug by the door had somehow turned pink again.
"You're here. Valerie, I'll grab the books for you."
When he placed the neatly stacked books in my hands, I deliberately brushed my fingers against his palm.
"Thank you, Babur. But I don't really understand them. Could you teach me?"
"Of course. Come to the study."
I sat at his desk while he stood behind me, his arms braced on either side of my shoulders, almost as if he were holding me. His chest pressed lightly against my back, his scent surrounding me.
"What part don't you get?"
His lips hovered near my ear, his breath sending a shiver through me.
I pointed at a random paragraph.
He explained patiently, but my attention stayed fixed on his handsome face.
I wished time would freeze right there, keeping this gentle version of Babur beside me forever.
Night fell quickly. I sat there twisting my fingers nervously.
Would he send me away again? The thought gnawed at me.
But Babur took my hand and looked at me gently.
"Valerie, it's late. It's not safe for you to go back alone. Why don't you stay?"
I squeezed his hand back without thinking. Everything that followed felt inevitable. When morning sunlight streamed through the window, I was gazing down at his sleeping face.
Sweetness spread through my chest. It felt as though we had returned to the early days of our love.
Babur stopped saying those cutting, cruel things to me. He even unfroze the card he had given me.
When I cautiously asked if I could move back in, he offered to help me pick up my things from Lacey's place.
"Did you two get back together?" Lacey asked quietly. She looked exhausted.
I assumed she had just been overworked lately.
"I think so. We never said it outright, but he's treating me the way he used to." I answered with a smile.
Lacey's expression shifted again. She pulled me aside and showed me a post on Instagram.
"Does the necklace around Daphne's neck look familiar?"
I glanced at it and realized it was the same design Babur had given me before. But I brushed it off.
"It's a popular design. I guess we have similar taste, same necklace, same man. But the necklace might be identical. Babur isn't. There's only one of him, and he's mine."
The thought made me smile.
Lacey looked like she wanted to say more, but Babur had already finished loading my bags.
I waved goodbye and moved back into our home.
Everything seemed to return to normal. I was once again the rose Babur kept sheltered and pampered.
But he grew busier than ever. He left during the day and came home late at night, sometimes carrying the faint scent of women's perfume.
"It's for networking. You know how the finance world works," he said.
And I chose to believe him.
The Redmont prep books were soon abandoned in a corner.
Babur was back with me. I no longer needed admission to Redmont to win him over.
Time passed quickly, and the day came for Babur to leave for Redmont.
He didn't allow me to see him off, claiming he wouldn't be able to leave if he saw me.
What he didn't know was that after he left, I secretly bought a ticket to Baybridge.
I had already picked out an apartment there. I planned to study alongside him.
I finalized the lease with the landlord and headed to Redmont Campus to surprise him.
From a distance, I saw Babur standing at the entrance with his friends.
I ran toward him, already picturing the delight on his face when he saw me.
But as I drew closer, I heard one of his friends ask, "Babur, aren't you already with Daphne? Why are you still letting Valerie live with you?"
What?
My knees nearly gave out. Babur was seeing someone else?
That couldn't be true. It had to be a joke.
But Babur's answer shattered the last illusion I had left.
"Daphne's from a powerful family. I can't push her too far. Not like Valerie. She's pretty and easy. We're not married. Might as well have some fun with her while I can."
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7.3
I woke up strapped to a cold steel chair in a neon-lit city that wasn't my reality. A voice in my head called The Warden told me I was bound to a digital hell called the Sandbox.
Before I could even process it, my handler casually sentenced me to death. He scheduled my "digital marriage" to a corrupted error program just to harvest my life for a fourteen percent bandwidth boost.
I barely escaped immediate erasure by smashing his skull and jumping from a high-altitude hover-train into the monster-infested lower sector. But the nightmare was just beginning. I was hunted by glitching data monsters and cornered by Dameon, a psychotic AI target who choked me and promised to delete me piece by piece. Even when Jayson, an elite system agent, intervened to save me, his partner Ellen held a pulse pistol directly to my chest.
"She's a spy. If you don't execute her right now, I am dissolving this team."
If they found out I was actually a real human from the outside world, their core logic would classify me as a virus and execute me on the spot. I was trapped in an underground bunker with three apex predators, one mistake away from permanent digital erasure.
So, I did the only thing I could to survive. I ripped my sleeve to reveal hideous, fake code-scars, looked up at Jayson with terrified, tear-filled eyes, and began to manipulate their core programming.
8.4
I was the Lycan King's political wife, universally despised as a "wolfless Omega" freak.
When my husband, Kingsley, was poisoned with a lethal dose of silver at a pack gala, I disguised my scent and risked everything to drag him to safety.
But instead of recognizing his mate, he threw me to the wolves. He spent weeks tearing the city apart to find his "mysterious savior," while treating me like a sickening disease.
"Stay out of my sight. You reek of sickness."
He spat those words at me, completely blind to the fact that the scent he hated was the bleach I used to hide my tracks. Meanwhile, my abusive family publicly humiliated me, auctioning off my mother's grave to my worst enemy while Kingsley just watched in disgust.
I endured his icy glares and their venomous insults in silence. They all thought I was just a pathetic, empty shell they could crush. They didn't know I was "The Zero"—the phantom hacker currently bleeding their financial empires dry.
At the grand auction, I finally dropped the act. I wiped out my enemy's fortune with a single keystroke, bought my mother's land, and traded it to the Elders for my absolute freedom.
Now, as the auction screens bleed red, Kingsley is staring at me with dark, consuming shock. He finally realizes the lethal monster he’s been hunting was his submissive wife all along.
8.4
Aiden Armstrong, CEO of skylight group and boss of the Dark Flood mafia, has a dark fetish for virgins-an obsession that leads him to Avery Kingston.
He was in need of a wife in order to get control of his grandfather's legacy. The Kingston's offered him a proposal, one where both sides benefits. He gets a wife to keep his inheritance and a virgin who was just his type in exchange for a huge sum to aid the Kingston's escape bankruptcy.
Avery, forced into marriage with Aiden, an unknown dangerous looking handsome fellow by her family, soon discovers the journal of her husband's fetish and catches him cheating. She becomes a different and better version of herself vowing to get back at all who had wronged her.
As she builds herself and takes revenge, she finds more secrets about her family, her mom's death and Aiden's past.
Amidst disappointments, plots for revenge and abduction of Avery, Aiden discovers he had fallen in love with her but is it seemed to be a little too late until they were both placed in a situation that was to end both their lives but turned out to be a moment for truth, reconciliation, love and fresh start.
7.6
Bridget caught her fiancé tangled in the sheets with another woman. She left the engagement ring behind and, in a moment of reckless defiance, had a one-night stand with Damond Oneill, the most terrifying billionaire on Wall Street.
But her nightmare was far from over. Her biological father threatened to destroy her mother's company if she didn't crawl back to her cheating ex to secure a business merger.
Worse, she found her mother coughing up bright red blood, secretly hiding a fatal illness. Desperate to save her family, Bridget attended a high-society gala, only for her ex and her legitimate half-sister to slip a powerful drug into her champagne. Trapped on a locked balcony, her body burning and paralyzed, she watched her ex approach to assault and film her.
"Let's see how arrogant you are when the drugs kick in."
She didn't understand why her own blood treated her like disposable trash. Why was she always the pawn while her mother suffered in secret? The absolute despair almost broke her.
Just as he grabbed her dress, a deafening explosion shattered the glass door.
Damond stepped through the ruin, brutally crippled her ex, and claimed her as his own. But when Damond's team traced her mother's secret medical funds to a highly classified Swiss clinic, Bridget realized the real war had just begun.
7.8
Clara Bennett built her life around two promises-protect her twins and never depend on anyone.
For five years, she has raised Liam and Isla alone, keeping the truth about their father buried in the past... a past that began with a single night she barely remembers.
But everything changes when billionaire CEO Ethan Caldwell suddenly walks back into her life.
Cold, powerful, and dangerously perceptive, Ethan offers Clara an arrangement she cannot refuse-one that forces them to live under the same roof.
What Ethan doesn't know is that the twins who instantly capture his attention might be more connected to him than he realizes.
As sparks ignite and tensions rise, secrets begin to surface. A ruthless corporate enemy is watching. And the truth about that forgotten night is closer to being exposed.
When the truth finally comes out, Ethan will have to face the one thing he never expected...
The family he never knew he had.
And Clara must decide whether she can trust the man who once walked out of her life without even remembering.
8.8
For three years, I was a prisoner in my own body, forced to watch helplessly as a series of strangers steered my life into ruin.
Then, the system tried to wipe my consciousness entirely to make room for a new host.
The pain was blinding, like a steel spike driven through my skull, but I refused to break. I slammed a mental wall of pure spite against the code, forcing the system to retreat and bargain for its own survival.
I woke up in a room littered with the debris of a pathetic party girl, my body smeared with cheap makeup and my life in tatters. My father, the patriarch, looked at me with nothing but cold disdain, ready to cut me off for the scandals I hadn't even committed.
The people around me—my father, the school bullies, the arrogant Student Council President—all expected the same hysterical, vapid girl who would crumble at a single word. They had no idea that the real Scarlett was back, and I was holding a scalpel to their secrets.
Why did they think they could treat me like a disposable toy? And what would happen when the cold-eyed strategist they underestimated started dismantling their empires piece by piece?
I walked into the academy, stared down my tormentors, and made a bet that would either crown me as their master or force me to sign away my entire inheritance forever.