Healed By The Ruthless Billionaire's Touch
I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him.
Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister.
Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair.
I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people.
But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse.
I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges.
The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill.
When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell.
But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone.
His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life.
I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me.
Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference.
"I'll do it, but I control the venue."
I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.
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Chapter 8
Abigail limped through the dim, concrete expanse of the hotel's underground parking garage.
The cold air bit at her bare arms. The bathrobe belt holding her torn dress together felt heavy and ridiculous.
She spotted her Porsche in the VIP section. She dug her keys out of her bag and pressed the unlock button.
The headlights flashed twice.
Before she could take another step, the screech of heavy tires echoed through the garage.
Two massive, black Cadillac Escalades shot out from the lower ramp. They swerved violently, one braking inches from her front bumper, the other boxing her in from behind.
Abigail froze. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
She took a step back, her hand diving into her bag, her fingers wrapping around the cold metal of her pepper spray.
The rear door of the lead Escalade swung open.
A long leg stepped out.
Josephus Hodges emerged from the vehicle.
He was wearing a flawless, dark grey tailored suit. His hair was perfectly styled. His jaw was locked in a hard, unforgiving line.
He looked nothing like the feral, desperate man from the night before. He radiated cold, absolute authority.
Between his index and middle finger, he held the crumpled hundred-dollar bill she had left on the table.
He walked toward her. His sheer size and presence sucked the oxygen out of the damp garage.
He stopped two feet away, forcing Abigail to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
"Your note," Josephus said. His voice was a low, flat baritone. "Was very creative."
Abigail didn't flinch. She stared straight into his dark, calculating eyes.
"I thought it was an accurate appraisal," she shot back. "Since you seem to put a price tag on everything."
Josephus didn't blink. He didn't show a flicker of anger.
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
Alex Stone stepped out from the shadows behind the SUV. He walked forward and held out a thick, leather-bound legal document to Abigail.
"What is this?" she demanded, refusing to take it.
"A solution to both our problems," Josephus said coldly. "I require a wife to satisfy a clause in my family's trust, and a strategic entry point into the media sector. You require a shield."
Abigail let out a harsh laugh. "I don't need a shield."
"Don't you?" Josephus tilted his head. "Vance Media is burning to the ground as we speak. Preston Vance's scandal will drag you down with it. The board will freeze your assets by noon."
He stepped closer. The scent of cedar wrapped around her.
"Sign this prenuptial agreement. Be my wife in name only for one year. In exchange, I will personally dismantle Preston's empire and hand you the ashes."
Abigail snatched the folder from Alex. She flipped it open.
The terms were brutal. Total compliance for public events. No interference in his private life. She would leave with nothing after twelve months.
It was a transaction. Cold, sterile, and utterly devoid of humanity.
"Why me?" she asked, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Why pick a woman with a ruined face and a public scandal?"
Josephus looked at her left cheek. His eyes lingered on the scar for exactly one second before snapping back to her eyes.
"Because you are messy, and you are the key to a very lucrative acquisition," he stated flatly. "Vance Media's collapse will trigger an industry panic. I intend to absorb their assets at a fraction of the cost. Marrying you gives me a legitimate, inside angle to dismantle them from the top down. As for my family, they will never believe I would willingly marry someone so physically flawed and embroiled in scandal. It makes the lie perfect. They will assume it's purely a ruthless business move, satisfying their demands without them digging deeper into my personal life."
The words hit her like ice water.
Any lingering, stupid fantasy she had about the way he kissed her scar last night died instantly.
He didn't care about her pain. He just saw her defect as a convenient tool.
Abigail's blood boiled.
She raised the heavy folder and slammed it directly into the center of Josephus's chest.
The binder popped open. Dozens of pages fluttered through the air, scattering across the dirty concrete floor.
"I would rather go bankrupt," she hissed, her eyes blazing with fury, "than sell myself to a tyrant like you."
The air in the garage turned to ice.
The bodyguards by the SUVs instantly stepped forward, their hands dropping to their waists.
Josephus raised a single finger. The guards froze.
He looked down at the papers on the floor, then back at Abigail. His eyes were pitch black.
"You will regret this," he said softly.
Abigail turned her back on him. She yanked the door of her Porsche open and threw herself into the driver's seat.
She slammed the door shut and hit the ignition. The engine roared, echoing violently off the concrete walls.
She slammed her foot on the gas. The tires squealed as she cut the wheel hard, the side of her car missing the Escalade's bumper by a millimeter.
She sped up the ramp and disappeared into the daylight.
Josephus stood perfectly still in the exhaust fumes.
He looked down at the scattered contract.
"Keep eyes on her," he ordered Alex. "She won't last forty-eight hours."
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9.8
Ina Holman, heiress to a failing real estate empire, was forced to attend a high-stakes matchmaking meeting to secure a financial lifeline for her family.
But the drink she was handed was secretly spiked. Desperate to avoid a public scandal that would ruin her father, she fled into a VIP elevator, only to fall directly into the arms of Buren Warner—the most ruthless billionaire predator on Wall Street.
After a blurred, chaotic night, the nightmare truly began.
A fabricated scandal of her hotel rendezvous hit the front pages. Her father slapped her across the face, using the disgrace as an excuse to freeze her accounts and kick her out onto the streets, legally severing her from the family trust before declaring bankruptcy.
Even worse, her twin sister was killed in a sudden estate explosion.
And the final, crushing blow? Ina discovered that her ex-boyfriend, Faron, the man supposed to save her family, was secretly gay. He and her best friend had orchestrated the drugging to destroy Ina's reputation, allowing Faron to break their alliance and keep his inheritance without suspicion.
Stripped of her home, her family, and her dignity, Ina screamed in agony on the freezing streets.
Her own father had murdered her sister for a fifty-million-dollar insurance payout and sacrificed Ina to hide his assets. The people she trusted most had conspired to ruin her life just for their own selfish greed.
Driven into a corner with absolutely nothing left to lose, Ina stared at the cold, calculating billionaire who had tracked her down to an abandoned cliffside estate.
"Marry me, and I will give you the power to destroy them all."
To avenge her sister and crush the people who betrayed her, Ina signed her soul to the devil.
9.7
Clarissa rushed into a crowded nightclub for one simple reason: to save her wildly drunk best friend.
But her ruthless billionaire husband, Giovanny, was watching from the VIP room. After effortlessly ruining a man just for grabbing her wrist, Giovanny punished Clarissa for breaching their public image contract with an impossible curfew.
When she inevitably arrived back at his penthouse late, he didn't just yell. He forced her to her knees by his bathtub to wash his back, making her watch an explicit, humiliating video as punishment.
A sudden family medical emergency dragged them to his parents' estate. Still in her soaked, transparent dress and his misbuttoned shirt, Giovanny's mother caught them. She joyfully assumed they had been passionately intimate.
Instead of clearing her name, Giovanny pulled Clarissa close and lied to his mother's face.
"We are working very hard on the family's future, Mother."
He locked her in the guest suite, tossed a sheer silk nightgown on the bed, and literally shattered the tablet holding their "no-contact" prenuptial agreement. He then slapped a file against the window—he had secretly bought all her father's toxic debt.
Clarissa was terrified. They were supposed to be business allies bound by a strict contract. Why was he suddenly acting like a predator determined to own her body and soul?
"Give me an heir, or your father goes to federal prison," he whispered.
Stripped of all choices, Clarissa picked up the white silk. She would surrender tonight to save her family, but as his shadow swallowed her, she made a silent vow to survive this monster, and one day, tear his empire to the ground.
8.9
I returned to New York for my welcome-home party, expecting a warm embrace from Edwin, my devoted fiancé of twenty years.
Instead, his first words to me were a cold, public warning to stay away from his new girlfriend, Kacy.
He stood in my family's hotel, shielding a girl I had never even met, and painted me as a vicious, jealous bully.
"She is very sensitive, Kaitlyn. Her background is tough. Please, be gentle with her. Don't upset her."
He humiliated me in front of our entire elite circle, allowing them to mock me as the aggressive, discarded ex while he carried her away like a fragile princess.
For twenty years, I had been his loyal shadow, fixing his mistakes and loving him unconditionally.
I couldn't understand how decades of deep devotion could be instantly erased by a few crocodile tears and a manipulative damsel act.
He was absolutely certain I would throw a tantrum, cry, and eventually crawl back to beg for his attention.
But he was wrong.
He didn't know that Everett Rowe, a billionaire tech mogul, had been patiently waiting five years to marry me.
He also didn't know that during my three years abroad, I wasn't just studying art—I became "K.B.", the ruthless Wall Street predator who could swallow his family's empire whole.
I calmly pulled out my phone, ignored the mocking whispers around me, and typed a single message to Everett.
"Yes. I'll marry you."
7.2
Two years ago, Amaya Bennett witnessed a murder.
A powerful man was killed in cold blood, right in front of her. She should have died that night too.
Instead, she woke up in a hospital with no memory of what happened. No faces, no names and no clues. Just fragments, blurred images that slip through her fingers every time she tries to hold on.
Now, Amaya lives a quiet life, piecing herself back together. She works part-time, avoids trouble, and stays invisible. Until she lands a job at Twilight Global.
A company owned by Jake Anderson, the cold and untouchable CEO whose father was murdered the same night Aria lost her memory. Jake spent years searching for the only witness. But she vanished without any trace. Or so he thought.
But somehow, they cross path again, working under his roof, completely unaware of the truth she carries.
The killer is still out there.
And when Amaya starts getting flashes of blood, a voice, a ring glinting under the dim light, the hunt begins again.
But this time, she's not alone. Because even before he realizes who she is... Jake has already started protecting her. In the most relentless and dangerous way.
8.9
For three years, Alana acted as the sole tactical brain for the Dawnbreaker squad, keeping them alive despite being labeled a useless "Dud" Conduit.
But right before the crucial Ascension Trials, squad leader Cash handed her a corporate sponsorship contract. The condition? She had to become the "private companion" to a greasy corporate heir just so the squad could get high-tier gear.
When she refused, the teammates she had bled for unanimously voted to kick her out.
"You're just window dressing, a liability."
They revoked her safehouse access, burned her belongings, and the academy advisor even tried to force her into a state-sanctioned breeding program. They left her to freeze in the slums, betting she would desperately crawl into the rich man's bed.
What they didn't know was that her inability to summon an Eidolon wasn't a lack of talent. Her teammate Dallin had been secretly sabotaging her rituals for years, crippling her potential just to keep her chained as their free tactician.
Stripped of everything and pushed to the absolute brink, Alana's despair morphed into a deadly resolve.
Using a million-credit black market loan and a forbidden blood matrix, she forcibly anchored an Apex-Tier cosmic wolf disguised as a harmless silver pup.
When her ex-squad tried to publicly humiliate her and burn her new "pet" alive in the cafeteria, a flash of silver light severed Dallin's hand instantly.
Looking at her screaming former teammates, Alana finally smiled.
8.8
I was the despised adopted daughter of the Sanders family, hiding behind heavy gothic makeup and enduring their daily disgust.
The day my adoptive father died in a severe car crash, my adoptive mother and stepsister didn't even bother to call me.
Instead, while his body was still warm, my mother filed a multi-million dollar life insurance claim.
"I am not feeding a useless freak for another day. Pack your trash and get out."
She kicked me out into the freezing rain, but that wasn't the worst of it.
My stepsister Cornelia stole my greatest secret. Five years ago, I saved the life of Fidel Vaughan, a ruthless billionaire heir, from a burning estate.
Cornelia claimed my identity, accepted a million-dollar reward, and secured a marriage proposal from him, burning my only proof to ashes.
They thought I was just a helpless, pathetic high schooler they could discard and replace.
But when I hacked the police files, I discovered my father's crash wasn't an accident. It was a targeted hit, and the Vaughan Group had hijacked the traffic cameras to cover it up.
I washed off the ugly black makeup, shedding the disguise of a pathetic outcast.
I am Spectre, the world's most elusive hacker and underground doctor.
I intercepted the billionaire heir's heavily armed convoy in the dead of night. They thought they could steal my life and murder my father, but now, I hold the needle that controls Fidel Vaughan's sanity, and I will make them all pay.