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 7
I threw myself into studying, spending nearly every day in the library.
Even my spa days with friends became rare.
Whenever we went out to eat, Naomi would make jokes at my expense.
"Hey, Valerie, what chapter are you on today? Let's hope next year your score isn't in the single digits."
The others burst into laughter.
Almost no one believed I could get into Redmont.
Not even Lacey, my best friend.
"Valerie, you should get a job, or find a man to support you. Not sit in my house talking about studying while I pay your bills."
Lacey asked me to move out.
With the little money I had left, I rented a tiny basement room.
After that, I couldn't even afford to spend long hours at the library.
I survived on three slices of bread a day, cramming myself into a basement barely big enough for a bed, studying until my eyes burned.
My friends couldn't stand watching me like that and tried to set me up with new men.
One handsome man after another showed up with flowers. None of them were inferior to Babur.
One even proposed.
I refused them all and told them honestly, "I'm focused on getting into Redmont University. I'm not looking for a relationship right now."
Somehow, word got back to Babur.
When he came to see me, arrogance was written all over his face.
"Valerie, I heard about you. I know you're still in love with me. No need to make up excuses like that."
He extended his hand as if offering charity.
"I told you before, Valerie. If you behave, I don't mind supporting you. Stop pretending you're suffering. Come home."
I looked at his outstretched hand and remembered how, three years ago, he had held it out the same way, inviting me into his home.
Back then, he had promised me a lifetime of happiness.
It turned out his "lifetime" had lasted only three years.
I raised my hand, and in the middle of his expectant smile, I slapped his hand away.
"Don't flatter yourself, Babur. I already believed a man's empty promises once. I won't do it again. This time, I'm working for my own future, and I'm getting into Redmont."
Babur's expression darkened. He stared at me for a long moment before a mocking smile curved his lips.
"Fine, Valerie. See you in a year. Let's hope you actually show up at Redmont's exam hall instead of just talking big."
His visit only fueled the fire inside me.
I poured nearly every ounce of energy into studying.
One year later, I stepped into the exam hall.
When I saw the test paper, relief washed over me.
Every topic on it was something I had studied.
Hours later, when I walked out, I felt lighter than I had in years.
I didn't expect to run into Babur there.
He wore a green suit with a bright red tie and brown shoes.
Like a walking Christmas tree, I thought silently as I turned to leave. But he spotted me.
"Valerie!"
He stepped in front of me, surprise flashing in his eyes.
"You've gotten even prettier. Didn't expect you to actually show up for the exam."
Babur casually pulled out a cigarette and lit it, arrogance settling over him again.
"Or did you hear I'd be helping out here and come looking for me? Valerie. I told you before, if you change your mind, you're always welcome to be my mis—"
I cut him off.
"You're overestimating yourself. Babur, the world doesn't revolve around you. And honestly, Redmont is far more appealing than you are."
His smile froze. He exhaled a cloud of smoke straight into my face, making me cough.
Then he laughed.
"Stop pretending, Valerie. Look at you. A bar suits you better than an exam hall."
I heard the mockery clearly, and for a second, it still stung.
This was the man I had loved for three years, now comparing me to a hostess.
But I was no longer the Valerie who would cry herself to sleep over a single insult.
The moment I decided to stop loving him, I decided to stop wasting my emotions on him.
The sting faded. I looked at him calmly.
"Babur, beauty has nothing to do with intelligence. If I can stay beautiful and still study, that's because I'm capable of it. If you believe people can't have both looks and good grades, maybe that says more about your limitations than mine. As for whether I get into Redmont, we'll find out when the results come out."
I turned and walked away without looking back.
A few days later, on the day results were released, Babur showed up at my apartment.
"I'm really looking forward to seeing your score."
His expression was dripping with mockery. He had come to watch me fail.
This time, he was the one who would be disappointed.
I opened the results page.
When I saw the score displayed on the screen, my eyes widened.
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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.