Her Secret Identity: The Tycoon’s Unplanned Wife
My family arranged my marriage to Silas Thorne, a Wall Street titan. There was just one problem: everyone, including my powerful new husband, believed I was a crippled, helpless girl from the countryside.
On the day of my physical therapy, my father called, not to ask how I was, but to demand I give up the marriage for his illegitimate daughter, Chloe.
"You can barely walk without a limp," he sneered. "You are going to embarrass the Vance family."
My new husband treated me with cold duty, carrying me like a fragile doll but refusing to share a bed, citing my ‘soft tissue injury’ as a pathetic excuse. The rejection was humiliating. To make matters worse, Chloe tracked me down while I was shopping, eager to mock me in public.
"Silas doesn't value you," she said, flashing a cheap ring from my father. "You’re just a crippled placeholder."
They all saw a weak girl they could push around, completely blind to the fact that my limp was a carefully crafted lie.
So I took the unlimited black card Silas gave me and bought a fifty-seven-million-dollar pink diamond, crushing her in front of New York’s elite. When I returned to our penthouse, Silas was waiting for me, a dangerous smirk on his face.
"I heard," he said, his voice a low rumble, "that you bought a star with my money today?"
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Chapter 5
The afternoon sun poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse sunroom.
Evelyn sat at a small glass table, pouring tea for her best friend, Harper Sinclair.
Harper took a bite of a Ladurée macaron and looked around the luxurious space.
"This view is insane, Evie," Harper said. Then, she leaned in, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "So? How was the wedding night? Did the Ice King melt?"
Evelyn took a slow sip of her Earl Grey tea.
"We slept in the same bed. We didn't touch," Evelyn said flatly.
Harper's jaw dropped. She nearly choked on her macaron.
"Are you kidding me?" Harper shrieked. "Silas Thorne is a healthy, red-blooded man. You are gorgeous. There is no way he is immune to you."
"He seems to be," Evelyn replied, staring at her teacup.
"Test him," Harper urged, tapping her manicured nail against the glass table. "Make the first move. See where his breaking point is."
Evelyn thought the idea was ridiculous at first.
But after Harper left, a stubborn seed of curiosity took root in her mind.
She wanted to know if her husband truly found her repulsive.
At nine o'clock, Evelyn asked the maid to light several expensive rose-scented candles in the master bedroom.
She went into the closet and selected a black, French lace nightgown. It clung to her curves and left her shoulders completely bare.
At exactly ten o'clock, she heard the front door open.
Evelyn sat up in bed, a book resting on her lap.
Silas walked into the bedroom.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The heavy scent of roses filled the air. The dim candlelight flickered across Evelyn's pale skin and the dark lace of her nightgown.
Silas's eyes locked onto her.
His throat worked visibly as he swallowed hard.
Evelyn set her book aside. She looked up at him, her dark eyes soft and inviting.
"Silas," she said softly. "Since we are married... shouldn't we fulfill our obligations to each other?"
The air in the room instantly thickened. It felt hard to breathe.
Silas's eyes turned pitch black. They were wild, hungry, and dangerous.
He took half a step toward the bed.
Evelyn's heart slammed against her ribs.
But then, Silas stopped.
He violently tore his gaze away from her body and stared at the wall.
"No," he said. His voice was a harsh, grating sound.
Evelyn flinched as if he had slapped her.
"Your soft tissue injury hasn't fully healed," Silas said, his tone turning to absolute ice. "You are in no condition for strenuous physical activity."
Evelyn stared at him in shock.
A hot flush of deep humiliation crawled up her neck. Soft tissue injury? The pathetic, clinical excuse was almost laughable coming from a layman. She was a top-tier medical mind; she knew exactly what a healed leg felt like. The utter condescension in his tone stung far more than the physical rejection itself. She bit her lower lip hard to stop it from trembling, suddenly feeling utterly foolish for even trying.
Silas didn't look at her again.
He walked stiffly to the closet, grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.
"I will sleep in the guest room tonight," he said to the wall.
He walked out of the bedroom and shut the door firmly behind him.
Evelyn sat alone in the massive bed. She let out a dry, bitter laugh.
He couldn't even stand to be in the same room as her.
Outside in the hallway, Silas leaned his back heavily against the closed door.
He let out a ragged, shaking breath.
He closed his eyes, his hands balling into tight fists at his sides. His knuckles were stark white.
His chest he heave as he fought down the violent, consuming urge to tear that lace off her and claim her.
He wanted her so badly it physically hurt his bones.
But he knew if he touched her now, with his control hanging by a thread, he would lose his mind. He would hurt her.
And he would rather die than cause her pain.
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9.3
Camila Damien has spent years avoiding Eric Sylvester-the ruthless CEO whose cold reputation precedes him. But when a career-making promotion forces them together on a billion-dollar pharmaceutical project, avoidance becomes impossible. Eric can't shake the feeling that he's seen her before. The mysterious woman in his wallpaper. The missing pieces of a night he can't remember. And now, the brilliant scientist who challenges him at every turn. But Camila is hiding something darker than career ambitions. Three weeks of her life is gone. Stolen by a drugging incident she can't remember and a saboteur she can't identify. As corporate espionage, toxic family ties, and a dangerous conspiracy close in around them, Camila and Eric must decide: trust each other with their carefully guarded hearts, or lose everything, including their lives. In the high-stakes world of pharmaceutical giants, where betrayal comes from those closest to you and the truth is buried in forgotten memories, love might be the most dangerous risk of all.
7.3
Elara Valente has lived her life under her father's control, a mafia princess trapped in luxury. But when she meets Luca, a humble baker who sees her for who she truly is, her world begins to change.
Secret meetings, stolen moments, and forbidden attraction ignite a slow-burning romance-but danger lurks at every turn. With a strict father, an arranged marriage, and watchful cousins, Elara must choose: follow her heart, or obey the world she was born into.
7.6
Overnight, Ella lost her family, her home, and her entire life. Discarded by the foster system, she was left shivering in the freezing mud outside her ruined estate.
That was when Javier Shepherd appeared. The terrifyingly cold, powerful billionaire pulled her from the dirt, threw her into a massive glass penthouse, handed her an unlimited black card, and vanished overseas, leaving her in the hands of a cruel caretaker.
The caretaker treated Ella like garbage, feeding her cheap, processed meals while using the black card to buy designer bags. The toxic food triggered a severe allergic reaction. Ella collapsed in the dark hallway, her throat swelling shut, gasping for air while the caretaker locked the door and turned up the TV. She almost died on that cold hardwood floor.
When Javier found out, he ruthlessly destroyed the caretaker and sent her to prison. He guarded Ella's hospital bed with terrifying intensity and even moved into her apartment to stop her panic attacks. Yet, when Ella finally broke down crying over her dead parents, his eyes turned to ice.
"Losing emotional control over a juvenile past is an inefficient waste of energy."
He sneered, treating her grief like a bad financial investment. Ella was completely bewildered. Why did this dangerous man protect her so fiercely, yet hate her past so deeply?
It wasn't until his cousin visited the hospital that the cruel truth was revealed. Javier wasn't saving her out of kindness. He had been obsessed with Ella's mother—his family's adopted daughter who ran away years ago. To him, Ella wasn't a person to be loved. She was just a replacement asset, a ghost of the woman he never got over.
8.4
To save my toxic family's bankrupt company, I was sold for fifty million dollars to marry Arch Rush III, a notoriously ruthless and paralyzed billionaire.
Because of my severe face blindness, I couldn't even recognize my new husband. I was just a cheap, replaceable pawn. Yet, while my own parents physically abused me and treated me like livestock, my terrifying new husband actually protected me.
But entering the Rush family estate was like stepping into a snake pit. His aristocratic relatives mocked my cheap clothes and even tried to disfigure me with boiling tea.
To further humiliate me in front of a world-renowned neurologist, his grandmother pointed a bony finger at me.
"Go massage his muscles, this is your daily duty now."
Arch glared at me with a lethal warning, but I had no choice. Trembling, I pressed my hands into his thigh.
My heart instantly dropped. Beneath his expensive suit, there was no soft, withered flesh. The muscle contours were tight, dense, and incredibly firm.
How could a man completely paralyzed from the waist down have the legs of an athlete?
Before I could process the terrifying truth, my strong fingers dug into a nerve cluster. Under my touch, his "dead" muscle violently twitched.
The doctor dropped his pen in absolute shock, and I realized I had just accidentally exposed the ruthless billionaire's deadliest secret.
8.7
On the night of her engagement, Lila Hart discovers that her fiancé isn't just cheating-he's selling her to the cruel Alpha of the Silvermoon Pack to settle a debt.
Dragged into the arms of Damien Blackwood, a ruthless billionaire Alpha feared across the werewolf world, Lila vows to escape. But Damien isn't what he seems-behind his icy exterior lies a dangerous secret... one that ties Lila to him in ways neither can deny.
9.5
I married Clive Harrington, the coldest billionaire in Manhattan, under a strict contract that forbade any emotional burdens. When I needed a high-risk surgery to save my sight, I checked into the clinic alone, hiding the procedure from a husband who saw me as nothing more than a legal asset.
I thought I could handle the darkness in silence. But while I was blind and bandaged in my hospital bed, my biological mother called, screaming that if I didn't produce a Harrington heir by the end of the fiscal year, she would cut off the life-saving treatments for my disabled sister.
I was crawling on the cold hospital floor, desperately feeling for a cane I had dropped, when I touched a pair of expensive leather shoes. It was Clive. He was supposed to be in London closing a multi-million dollar deal, but there he was, watching his "contract wife" groveling in the dark like a beggar.
He didn't walk away in disgust. He carried me to a five-thousand-dollar-a-night VIP suite and sat by my bed, listening in chilling silence as another voicemail from my mother filled the room, calling me a "useless broodmare" who was only worth the trust fund disbursements my marriage secured.
I expected him to remind me of Clause 34B or hand me divorce papers now that I was "damaged goods." Instead, I felt his thumb brush a stray tear from my cheek, his presence shifting from a statue of ice into a predatory shield.
"I thought I was just currency to you," I whispered, my voice trembling behind the gauze. "Just an investment."
Clive didn't answer with words. He picked up his phone and called his head of legal with a single, terrifying command: "Kill the Douglas family’s credit lines. Every debt, every lien—trigger them all. If they want a war, I’ll give them a massacre."
As he leaned down to kiss my bandaged forehead, I realized the contract was dead. My husband wasn't protecting an asset anymore; he was hunting the people who had dared to touch what belonged to him.