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 6
My chest ached so badly it was hard to breathe. The reconciliation I thought we had was nothing but my own delusion.
In his eyes, I had been nothing more than a cheap girl he could sleep with.
I forced back my tears and walked up to Babur.
"Babur, is what you said true? These past weeks, tutoring me, treating me kindly… was it all just to get me into bed?"
Babur froze for a second, clearly not expecting me to be there.
Then his expression shifted into open disdain.
"Didn't think you'd find out this soon. Figured I could keep it going for another couple of years." He said it casually, without a hint of guilt.
"Valerie, you should be grateful I even sleep with you. I'm probably the best man you'll ever have access to in your life. A woman like you, all looks and no brains, who can only cling to a man, you'll be lucky if you end up with some construction worker or plumber."
He was so arrogant, so full of himself, that I could barely recognize the gentle Babur I once knew.
Maybe I had been clinging to a ghost.
Perhaps the man who once loved me had died the day of our anniversary.
"Relax, Valerie. I know you're not exactly high society, but that's fine. After I marry Daphne, you can still be my mistress if you behave. You can keep the apartment, the card. You'll still live the carefree life you're used to. Sounds good?"
There was charity in his tone, like he was offering me mercy. He reached out to grab my hand.
I stepped aside and slapped him across the face.
"Listen carefully, Babur." I straightened my back and met his eyes without fear, like I was declaring war. "I will get into Redmont University. I'll make you see how wrong you are. Babur, I will make you regret this."
After shouting that, I turned and ran.
If I stayed even one more second, I would have broken down.
Three full years. Over a thousand days together. So many plans for our future.
How could he discard me so easily, erase me from his tomorrow like I had never existed?
I cried all night in my rented apartment.
By dawn, my decision was made.
I canceled the lease in Baybridge, returned to Asterfall, and packed up everything that had anything to do with Babur and sold it.
Only the necklace that had once given me the courage to chase him back—I held it for a long time before deciding to keep it.
I began studying those incomprehensible books with real focus.
Even when I went for spa treatments with friends, I kept a book open in my hands.
"Valerie, you don't have to work this hard. You don't even understand half of that stuff. Why not just find another man to support you? We can go back to living carefree like before," Naomi teased, glancing between me and Lacey. "Look at you two. You've been so busy lately that even spa days can't hide how exhausted you look. Especially you, Lacey."
Lacey smiled faintly. Her eyes flicked toward my neck but she said nothing.
My hand paused over the page. I looked up at Naomi seriously.
"No, Naomi. I've made up my mind. I don't want to live off a man's affection anymore, constantly fearing the day he might abandon me. I want to be proud of myself. I will get into Redmont University. I will step onto Gilded Row. I will stand higher than Babur ever will—and I'll make him realize just how extraordinary the woman he lost truly is."
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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.