His Betrayal Created A Ruthless Queen
My marriage ended the way the world found out about it: on a police report that landed on my desk. I was a prosecutor who had moved back to San Francisco to save my political marriage to tech billionaire Hilton Austin.
When I confronted him at the hotel, I found my husband on one knee, not proposing, but tenderly tying his influencer mistress' s shoe.
That night, he abandoned me on a dark highway to rush to her side, causing me to miscarry the child I was secretly carrying. At the hospital, he publicly accused me of faking the pregnancy, slapped me, and then cut my arm with a piece of broken glass.
"Now you have a reason to be in the hospital," he said coldly.
The love I' d held for him since I was sixteen didn't just fade; it was murdered. He thought he had broken me, but he only created a monster.
I used my family's power to have him thrown in jail. When he begged for a second chance, I brought in my childhood friend, Adrien, and delivered the final, killing blow.
"The baby wasn't yours," I said, my voice like ice. "It was his."
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Chapter 4
I found them around the corner in the VIP wing. It was a tableau of twisted devotion. Ciera was sitting on an examination table, whimpering, while Hilton held a cotton ball to the microscopic scratch on her arm as if he were performing life-saving surgery.
My presence was a stone dropped into a still pond. Hilton looked up, his expression instantly hardening into annoyance.
"Aleta? What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me now?" he sneered, his voice dripping with disdain. "Have you no shame?"
Shame. The word was so absurd, so utterly disconnected from the reality of what he had done, that I almost laughed.
"Hilton," I said, my voice raspy. "We need to talk." I took a step forward, my hand instinctively going to my stomach. "I was pregnant."
The words fell into the silence, heavy and final.
Ciera' s head snapped up, her eyes wide with shock, then narrowing with fury. She looked at Hilton. "Pregnant? You told me you never sleep with her! You lied to me, Hilty!"
She burst into tears, real this time, fueled by jealousy and the fear of losing her golden goose. "I can't do this! I can't be with a man who has a baby with another woman! We're over!"
Hilton panicked. All his cool arrogance evaporated. "No, Cici, baby, wait!" He grabbed her hands, his eyes pleading. "She's lying! It's a trick! She's trying to break us up!"
He turned to me, his face a mask of pure hatred. "You're disgusting," he spat, his voice loud enough for the gathering crowd of nurses and onlookers to hear. "Making up a pregnancy to trap me? How low can you go?"
He wrapped his arms around Ciera, stroking her hair. "Shhh, it's okay. It's not mine. I would never. You know how she is. Cold. Untouchable. We haven't been together like that in months. You're the only one I want, Cici. The only one I've ever really wanted."
Each word was a nail in my coffin. He was disowning our child, our history, my very humanity, all to soothe the crocodile tears of his mistress.
The whispers started around us.
"That's his wife, right? The Owen heiress."
"Wow, faking a pregnancy? That's desperate."
"You can't blame him. Look how much he loves Ciera. He'd never cheat on her."
I stood there, exposed, judged, and condemned by a jury of strangers who saw only the carefully constructed drama Hilton and Ciera had staged. My body was an empty vessel, my child was gone, and my husband was publicly branding me a liar and a lunatic.
The world tilted on its axis. The pain was so immense it looped back on itself and became a strange, terrifying calm.
Ciera, sensing her victory, slid off the table. She walked towards me, her face a mask of faux sympathy. "Look, Aleta," she said, her voice cloyingly sweet. "I feel for you, I really do. But you have to see that he doesn't love you. It's time to let go. For everyone's sake."
She leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "He belongs to me now. A man like Hilton needs passion. He needs fire. Not… whatever it is you are."
She smiled, a triumphant, vicious little smirk. Then, she did something that shattered the last vestiges of my composure.
She casually pulled down the collar of her hospital gown, revealing the delicate line of her collarbone. There, tattooed in elegant, looping script, was a single word: Hilton.
"He gave this to me for our one-month anniversary," she purred. "It's so he anoints me in public."
As if that wasn't enough, she reached over and tugged at the waistband of Hilton' s designer trousers, which were hanging low on his hips. Just above his hip bone, I saw it. A mirror image of her tattoo, only this one was a delicate, blooming rose. His mark of ownership.
"He says it's my brand on him," she whispered, her eyes glittering with malice. "So everyone knows who he belongs to."
The tattoos were absurd. Juvenile. And they were the most painful thing I had ever seen. The grand, all-consuming passion I had yearned for, the devotion I had dreamed of, he had given it all to this girl. He had literally branded himself for her, a willing slave to her whims.
And it was a love so profound, so all-encompassing, that it had no room for me. Not for my love, not for my loyalty, and not for our child.
My long-dead love for him had been a joke. A pathetic, one-sided fantasy.
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9.0
Colette stepped out of the federal prison, finally breathing the air of freedom after two agonizing years.
But instead of a bus home, a black armored SUV blocked her path. Ferris Vance's men kidnapped her right at the gates. He forced her to sign a marriage certificate, threatening to completely destroy her father's legacy if she refused.
The nightmare had only just begun. She soon learned her father had been driven to suicide anyway. Dragged into the Vance estate, Colette was beaten bloody by the family of Ellie, the girl she supposedly wronged. Ferris paraded her in a pure white gown for the cameras, playing the fiercely devoted husband. But the second the lenses turned away, he forced her into a coarse maid's uniform, making her scrub the freezing marble floors on her hands and knees.
"Your life isn't even worth the dirt on my shoes."
Ferris whispered those words as he threw his muddy boots at her bruised face. She was nothing but a piece of bleeding bait, a prop meant to lure his missing lover out of hiding. She was tortured and humiliated for a crime she had absolutely nothing to do with. The sheer injustice of paying the price for another woman's disappearance tore her soul apart.
When he cornered her in the bathroom, the last thread of Colette's sanity snapped. She hurled a bucket of filthy water right into his face, broke out of his grip, and threw herself out a window into a freezing storm. This time, she chose to escape, even if it meant death.
8.3
Sandra was a mistress: a temporary escape for billionaire David Kingsley.
But in the shadows of his study, "temporary" turned into a dangerous addiction.
When David brutally casts her back into the poverty she fought to escape, Sandra plays her final card: a lie about a pregnancy to keep him tied to her.
The lie becomes a terrifying reality just as David announces his "perfect" life is expanding with a child of his own.
Now, Sandra isn't just a discarded mistress; she's a woman with a secret that could topple an empire.
How far will a woman go when she has nothing left to lose but the life growing inside her?
8.8
Vesper's marriage to Julian Sterling was a gilded cage. One morning, she woke naked beside Damon Sterling, Julian's terrifying brother, then found a text: Julian's mistress was pregnant. Her world shattered, but the real nightmare had just begun.
Julian's abuse escalated, gaslighting Vesper, funding his secret life. Damon, a germaphobic billionaire, became her unsettling anchor amidst his chaos.
As "Iris," Vesper exposed Julian's mistress, Serena Sharp, sparking brutal war: poisoned drinks, a broken leg, and the horrifying truth-Julian murdered her parents, trapping Vesper in marriage.
The man she married was a killer. Broken and betrayed, Vesper was caught between monstrous brothers, burning with injustice.
Refusing victimhood, Vesper reclaimed her identity. Fueled by vengeance, she allied with Damon, who vowed to burn his empire for her. Julian faced justice, but matriarch Eleanor's counterattack forced Vesper's choice as a hitman aimed for her.
8.9
I sold three years of my life to a billionaire to save my mother. I was his pretend fiancée, a stand-in for his ex, counting down the days until the contract ended and we could finally be free.
But just as we were about to escape, his real girlfriend returned and publicly accused me of faking a pregnancy to trap him.
My fiancé, Drake, didn't hesitate. He called me a disgusting gold-digger and threatened to pull my mother's medical funding to force me into an abortion.
The shock of his cruelty sent my mother into cardiac arrest. She died right there in the hospital.
They demanded I abort a child that could never exist, a lie built to destroy me.
But they didn't know my secret. After my mother' s death, I finally told him the truth that shattered his world: I was born without a uterus. And with her last letter in my hand, I walked away from him forever.
7.1
After the one-night stand with a man who refused to tell her his name, Charlotte would figure out on TV that the man she had s*x with the previous night was the heir to a billionaire empire.
At the same time, Jace Norman-the infamous playboy heir-faces a public scandal that threatens his inheritance. To protect the family empire, his ruthless father forces him into an immediate contract marriage.
And just like that Charlotte would get married to the spoiled, reckless son of the most powerful billionaire in the city.
That One night, Room 55 and Five thousand dollars she desperately needed would change her life forever.
Weeks later, Charlotte discovers she's pregnant.
But before she can process the truth, her manipulative boyfriend claims the child is his and begins blackmailing her.
As their fake marriage becomes dangerously possessive, secrets begin to spiral. An ex-boyfriend demanding money. Jace's jealous college lover is determined to destroy Charlotte. Charlotte's sister is hiding betrayal behind sweet smiles. And a billionaire father who will eliminate anyone to protect the Norman name.
When a forged DNA test claims the baby isn't Jace's, the empire turns on Charlotte.
But the truth is far darker than any of them realize.
Because someone has been orchestrating every lie from the beginning.
And when Jace finally discovers the baby is his...
He will have to choose between his father's empire-
Or the woman carrying his heir.
9.7
Charity woke up in a hellish, acid-rain-soaked slum, trapped inside a bloated body covered in festering, toxic sores. She was the exiled Grand Princess of the Empire.
But the real nightmare wasn't her ruined body. It was the fact that the original owner had used her royal authority to force genetic marriage contracts onto four top-tier, powerful men.
Now, she was bound to them, and they absolutely loathed her.
Hjalmar, chained to a bed in her filthy room, smiled like a feral beast and promised to rip her head off the second his chains snapped.
Braden, a ruthless military officer, saved her from a mutated rat only to look at her with pure disgust.
"If you want to die, go die somewhere else. Don't dirty my patrol sector."
Even the locals mocked her fallen status, and a wealthy heiress publicly framed her for stealing a hundred-thousand-coin energy core just to see her rot in a dark cell.
She was universally despised, physically repulsive, and a lethal biological toxin gave her exactly 59 days left to live. How was she supposed to survive this absolute hell when her starting affection with her partners was at negative 100?
Then, a mechanical voice echoed in her skull, activating a survival system. To purge the poison, she had to harvest emotional energy by making these four men fall for her. Charity accepted the mandate, unlocked a top-tier culinary skill, and grabbed a rusted meat cleaver to start her counterattack.