His Lethal Wife: The Heiress's Vicious Comeback
My sister, Eleanor, was the laughingstock of the Vance family.
She was known as the pathetic, socially crippled heiress, bullied at school and discarded by our father for his new step-daughter.
I thought she just couldn't handle the pressure, until I stood in the freezing morgue and watched the heavy industrial zipper seal her bruised face away forever.
The car crash that killed her wasn't an accident.
Our cousin paid the driver to secure the family trust fund. Our step-sister Sophia orchestrated her daily torment, and our father Arthur embezzled her inheritance to buy a fake Ivy League pedigree.
They ruined Eleanor's reputation, painted her as a disfigured lunatic, and left her to die in absolute despair.
Why did the people who shared our blood treat her worse than a stray dog? How could they smile for the cameras while her blood was still wet on their hands?
They thought with Eleanor dead, they had finally won.
But they didn't know I existed.
I scrubbed the weakness from her name and took over her identity.
I slipped into a black tactical suit, bypassed military-grade security, and walked straight into the office of Wall Street's apex predator, Ethan Thorne.
I pressed a combat knife against his aorta and looked into his cold eyes.
"I need a political marriage. And you need a wife."
Starting today, Eleanor Vance is back, and the entire family is going to burn.
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Chapter 4
The cold air of the concrete hallway hit Vivian's face as she pushed through the gym exit doors.
Heavy, frantic footsteps echoed behind her.
"Vance!" Julian roared.
Vivian didn't stop walking.
Julian lunged. He reached out to grab her shoulder, desperate to claw back his shattered pride.
Vivian felt the shift in the air current behind her. She dropped her weight. She pivoted on her left foot and drove her right elbow backward in a vicious, upward arc.
The point of her elbow connected perfectly with the soft tissue just below Julian's ribcage.
Julian's breath left his lungs in a violent rush. He doubled over, clutching his stomach. He gasped for air, his face pale.
Vivian straightened her collar. She looked down at him with cold pity.
"You throw a tantrum like a toddler," Vivian said.
Students poured out of the gym. They formed a wide circle, holding up their phones. The camera lenses focused on the heir of the Hayes family gasping on the floor.
Julian forced himself to stand. His face was twisted in ugly rage.
"You're dead!" Julian spat, clutching his ribs. "Your father's company is bleeding cash. By Friday, the Vance family will be bankrupt. I'll make sure no one on the Upper East Side throws you a single dime. You'll be sleeping on the subway!"
Vivian let out a sharp, piercing laugh. The sound bounced off the concrete walls.
She took a step toward him. Julian instinctively flinched backward.
"I don't need your pocket change, Julian," Vivian said. Her voice was deadly calm. "I am going to be Ethan Thorne's wife."
The hallway went completely still. The sound of recording phones seemed to pause.
Ethan Thorne. The apex predator of Wall Street. A man whose name was spoken in terrified whispers by the parents of everyone in this hallway.
Julian stared at her. Then, he burst into a forced, hysterical laugh.
"You're insane," Julian mocked. "You really did get brain damage. Ethan Thorne wouldn't let a piece of trash like you clean his shoes."
The crowd murmured in agreement. It was an impossible claim.
Vivian didn't argue. She reached into the pocket of her skirt.
She pulled out a thick, black envelope edged in gold foil. She held it up between her index and middle finger.
The heavy wax seal on the back caught the fluorescent light. It was the intricate, unmistakable crest of the Thorne family.
Julian's laughter died in his throat. The blood drained from his face. He recognized that seal. His father had a lesser version of it framed in his office.
Vivian stepped forward and slapped the heavy invitation against Julian's chest. He reflexively caught it.
"The Plaza Hotel. Tonight," Vivian said. "Tell your father to bring a very generous check."
She turned and walked down the hallway. The crowd parted for her in absolute, terrified silence.
Miles away, in the penthouse office of the Thorne Group.
Ethan stared at the glowing stock tickers on his massive monitors.
The heavy mahogany doors opened. J.D. Rivers, his chief intelligence officer, walked in. J.D.'s face was grim. He placed a red classified folder on Ethan's desk.
"We dug into Eleanor Vance's medical records from the car crash," J.D. said.
Ethan opened the folder.
Page after page was blacked out. Thick, heavy redaction ink covered the text. The only visible text was a string of alphanumeric codes.
"We hit a wall," J.D. explained. "It's a military-grade firewall. Department of Defense level encryption. Whoever scrubbed her files has serious power."
Ethan's jaw tightened. He stared at the black ink.
"She's not just a traumatized heiress," J.D. warned. "She's a liability. We don't know who she works for. I strongly advise terminating the engagement contract immediately."
Ethan closed the folder. He remembered the cold, dead look in Vivian's eyes when she pressed the knife to his aorta. He remembered the steady, slow rhythm of her pulse under his hand.
A dark heat flared in Ethan's chest. The thrill of the hunt.
"No," Ethan said. His voice was a low growl.
J.D. blinked in surprise. "Sir?"
"Take over the security for the engagement party tonight," Ethan ordered. He stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. "Deploy the Blackwater team. I want eyes on her at all times."
Ethan looked out the window at the city below.
"I'm going to keep this little monster right next to me," Ethan murmured. "I want to see whose throat she rips out first."
J.D. swallowed hard. He nodded and quickly left the office.
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9.5
My adoptive sister drugged me and sent me to a hotel for a fake audition, where a powerful stranger assaulted me in the pitch-black suite.
When I escaped home, my fiancé, Ethan, and my entire family ambushed me. They threw staged photos in my face, accusing me of selling my body to a sleazy director.
They called me a whore, stripped me of my trust fund, and threw me onto the street. But Ethan refused to let me go. He had me blacklisted from every job and even froze my only friend's bank accounts, trying to break me completely.
Forced into a corner, I had no choice but to attend a high-society party as his date, where he and my sister made sure everyone in New York saw me as worthless trash.
I couldn't understand the depths of their cruelty. Why would the very family who took me from an orphanage orchestrate such an elaborate plot to ruin me?
But during a sudden blackout at the party, I ran straight into the arms of my attacker. When the lights came back on, I finally saw his face. He wasn't a director—he was Abraham Bush, the most ruthless billionaire in the country. And just as my ex-fiancé is about to strike me after discovering I'm pregnant, Abraham's men have surrounded the house.
7.6
After an exhausting fourteen-hour flight, Katia returned to her Upper East Side penthouse, expecting the quiet comfort of the life she had built.
Instead, she found a pair of familiar red stilettos in the foyer and her fiancé, Caleb, tangled in their bedsheets with his twenty-two-year-old assistant.
She didn't scream or cry. She simply took off her three-carat engagement ring, threw it at his bare chest, and demanded he buy out her half of the penthouse by Friday.
Seeking to numb the sickening disgust, she got blackout drunk and crashed at a luxury hotel, accidentally stumbling into the wrong suite.
Thinking the imposing man inside was a high-end escort hired by her friend, she threw him over her shoulder and spent a wild night with him.
The next morning, she left five thousand dollars on his nightstand with a lipstick-stained note.
"Good Job."
For six years, she had funded Caleb's dreams and built his startup from the ground up, only to be treated like a lifeless ATM.
With ruthless precision, she spent the next two months systematically bankrupting his company, cutting off his venture capital, and erasing his life's work.
She felt no heartbreak, only a cold, calculating need to cleanse herself of his betrayal.
But when Katia finally returned to corporate headquarters to co-lead a massive merger, she literally crashed into the new Vice President.
Strong arms caught her waist, and the sharp scent of cedarwood and whiskey hit her like a freight train.
"You came back," Jackson whispered, his eyes burning as he stared at the woman who had treated him like a cheap gigolo.
9.4
I was the eldest daughter of the powerful Kirk family, sent away to a Swiss sanatorium to recover from my supposed mental illness.
But my stepmother, Johnie, never intended for me to get better. She sent her personal cleaners to drag me onto a plane back to Washington D.C.
In my past life, I didn't know they were assassins. I was forcefully injected with heavy sedatives and locked in a secret torture chamber inside our luxury estate.
My stepmother and cousin skimmed my inheritance while watching me suffer.
They framed me as a crazy addict, and my own father, a sitting Senator, turned a blind eye to protect his political career.
"Her political value is gone, just get rid of her quietly."
That was the last thing I heard my father say before I was brutally slaughtered by my own family.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why they hated me so much.
Why did my father let them force those pills down my throat?
Why was my life worth less than my stepmother's public image?
Opening my eyes again, the freezing sensation of lake water filling my lungs vanished.
I was back in the VIP room of the St. Moritz Sanatorium in 2023.
It was the exact morning before the cleaners walked through my door with uncapped syringes.
This time, I wouldn't just survive. I was going to cut the throat of the Kirk family.
8.4
Running from her father's rejection, Isabella arrives in London determined to start over, only to walk straight into temptation and danger. Her obsessive ex is waiting at the airport. And the stranger from her one reckless, unforgettable night in New York is now her new billionaire boss.
*************
"Hello, Isabella." Mateo Rossi's voice is low, smooth, and dangerously familiar, sending heat curling through her before she can stop it.
She freezes. He leans back, eyes dark and unreadable, lingering on her just a little too long.
"I never knew Nathan had a daughter like you," he says softly. "All grown up." Relief floods her.
He doesn't recognize her. Not the girl from that night. Not the one who lost control in his arms. Or he does, and he is choosing to pretend. Because Mateo watches her like she belongs to him. He tests her, corners her, pushes her past every limit she thought she had. Doors close.
Tempers snap. Boundaries blur. And Isabella realizes something far more dangerous than her past catching up to her. London was never her escape. It is his world. And this time, Mateo Rossi has no intention of letting her walk away.
8.9
Dylan Fontanilla had everything...money, fame, a future, and the woman he loved more than life itself. He thought his world was complete.
Until the morning, he learned she was marrying another man.
Her betrayal cost him everything. In a single moment, the woman he believed was his forever was gone and forced into a marriage she could no longer escape.
Then came one reckless, drunken night.
That was when Dylan met Kaia Clemente, the best friend and secret love of the man who stole his girlfriend. Two strangers, bound by the same betrayal, collided in the worst possible way.
From that night, a dangerous idea took shape.
If he couldn't have the woman he loved, he would take the woman meant for his enemy.
What started as revenge became desire.
Love was never part of the plan.
But fate had other intentions.
Their game ended at the altar, bound by vows neither of them meant to make.
And now, only one question remains...
Was their marriage built on revenge or was it always meant to become real?
7.5
Julianna was drowning in a corporate warzone, fighting a massive department deficit while fending off her mother’s relentless matchmaking.
Then, a ghost from her past returned to shatter her reality.
Eight years ago, Aidan Caldwell walked out of her life without a word. Now, he was back in New York as a ruthless billionaire, and a pitch-black Maybach started stalking her in the dim underground garage.
She had no idea the driver hiding behind the obsidian-tinted glass was Aidan.
She didn't know he had just choked a confession out of an executive, discovering that her "betrayal" eight years ago was a complete lie.
"Stay away from her. The rules are mine now."
Aidan had warned his rivals, his sanity tearing at the seams as he watched from the shadows while a creepy coworker put an arm around her shoulder.
He shattered glasses and crushed her favorite white flowers in his penthouse, driven by a lethal, obsessive jealousy seeing other men touch what belonged to him.
Julianna was completely in the dark, feeling only a heavy, predatory stare pinning her to the cold concrete.
When a sudden, heartbreaking scent of cedarwood rolled out of the cracked car window, her brain short-circuited.
Why was this terrifying stranger stalking her in the shadows?
Desperate to save her career, Julianna recklessly agreed to fake an engagement with a wealthy heir this weekend.
But she had no idea Aidan had already rigged her company's crisis, and the predator was about to tear her world apart to claim her back.