His Placeholder Bride, My Bitter Revenge
On the eve of my wedding to Grant Sutton, the heir to a vast real estate empire, I discovered the devastating truth. I wasn't his great love; I was just a convenient replacement for his wild, untamable ex, Ivory.
He didn't love me. He loved that I was a polished, "suitable" version of the woman he truly wanted.
When I walked away, he didn't just let me go. He destroyed me. After I published an exposé on his company's shady dealings, he had me fired and systematically ruined my reputation, painting me as a vengeful liar in the press.
My own family turned on me, furious.
"Think about us, Avery! You owe us this!" my sister shrieked, caring only about the fortune I'd lost them.
I was left with nothing-no career, no family, no future. All because I was a placeholder in a love story that was never mine.
Three years later, I came back. Not as the broken fiancée, but as A. Trevino, the anonymous journalist whose latest investigation targeted an elite institution.
An institution with deep ties to the Sutton family. And this time, I wouldn't be the one who was destroyed.
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Chapter 5
Avery Trevino POV:
"Avery… don' t be ridiculous. This is just a misunderstanding. We can fix this, darling. We can-" Grant' s voice was calm, controlled, but I saw the flicker of surprise in his eyes. He wasn't accustomed to his carefully constructed plans unraveling.
I just shook my head, my gaze unwavering. "There's nothing to fix, Grant. There never was." The words, though quiet, carried the weight of absolute finality. I turned and walked away, not waiting for his response.
The following morning, the digital world exploded. My investigative exposé on Sutton Holdings' shady subsidiary, "Phoenix Development," hit multiple independent news outlets simultaneously. The article detailed questionable land acquisitions, leveraging offshore accounts, and circumventing environmental regulations. The backlash was immediate and fierce.
A few hours later, a sleek, embossed invitation arrived at my apartment. It was from Sutton Holdings, requesting my presence at an "informal discussion" regarding my recent article. The words "friendly communication" were printed in elegant script. I knew better. This was not an olive branch. This was a trap.
I went anyway.
The private dining room at the exclusive downtown club was bathed in soft, amber light. The air was thick with the scent of old money and unspoken threats. And there she was. Ivory Church. Sitting at the head of the polished mahogany table, a regal, almost predatory calm about her.
She rose gracefully as I entered, a faint, condescending smile playing on her lips. "A. Trevino, I presume? Welcome. I'm Ivory Church. Grant's... associate."
I forced myself to extend my hand, my fingers brushing against hers. Her grip was surprisingly firm, cold as ice. "Ms. Church," I acknowledged, my voice even. "What a surprise. I was expecting Mr. Sutton."
Ivory chuckled, a low, melodic sound that grated on my nerves. "Oh, Grant is... preoccupied. Business, you understand. But I assure you, I can handle this discussion just as well. Perhaps even better." Her eyes raked over me, a slow, deliberate assessment. "Tell me, Ms. Trevino, did you publish that piece out of journalistic integrity, or out of a desperate attempt to cling to a man who clearly doesn't want you?"
My hands clenched under the table, my knuckles turning white. The insult, delivered with such casual cruelty, twisted in my gut. "My motives are irrelevant, Ms. Church," I stated, my voice tight. "The facts in my report are not."
She waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, facts can be... manipulated. Especially by a woman scorned. I truly pity you, Avery. Chasing after a man like Grant, throwing yourself at him despite his obvious affections for someone else. It's rather undignified, don't you think? A woman should have more pride."
She leaned back, a smug triumph in her eyes. "You know, Grant and I... we have a history. A deep one. He came after me, you know. Begged me to come back. He always came back." Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "He told me he just needed someone 'suitable' for his public image. Someone who wouldn't rock the boat. Someone... like you."
The words were like daggers, piercing through the fragile shield I' d built around my heart. I remembered his descriptions of my "strength," my "resolve." How they were precisely what drew him to me. Now, the chilling truth was laid bare: I was simply a convenient reflection, a pale echo of the woman he couldn't forget. The humiliation was a burning tide, scalding my cheeks. Every carefully guarded emotion threatened to spill over.
But I wouldn't let her see me break. I took a deep breath, forcing my emotions back into their cage. My gaze met hers, cool and steady. "Perhaps I lack the... dignity to understand why you're so invested in another woman's relationship, Ms. Church. Don't you have your own life to lead? Your own... affections to pursue?"
The mocking smile vanished from Ivory' s face, replaced by an arctic chill. Her eyes narrowed, then, just as quickly, she laughed again. A brittle, humorless sound. "Temper, temper. You'll never survive in this world with such thin skin, darling."
She rose, walking to a paneled wall and pressing a hidden button. A section of the wall silently slid open, revealing another, dimly lit room. Voices, muffled at first, drifted out.
"Grant has a certain... ruthlessness. A quality you don't often find in someone with his upbringing." A familiar older male voice, from the Sutton Holdings board, chuckled. "Pity he's still tied to that reporter. What was her name again? Trevino?"
Then, Grant's voice, calm and measured. "The wedding will proceed as planned."
"Are you sure, Grant?" another voice asked, dripping with skepticism. "This... Avery. She's not exactly what the family envisioned. We need stability. A partner who understands our world."
"She's... agreeable," Grant conceded, his voice devoid of warmth. "And she's a journalist. She's intelligent, resourceful. She's capable of understanding the nuances of our business. She' s... suitable. I don't want to tie Ivory down with a marriage she doesn't want."
My fingers went numb. The carefully orchestrated cruelty was breathtaking. This wasn't a discussion; it was a public execution of my last vestiges of hope, a calculated demolition of my worth. My entire body trembled. My vision swam, the room tilting precariously. I felt a sudden, desperate urge to vomit.
Every single one of my illusions, every whispered hope, every carefully constructed belief, was crushed under the weight of his calculated words. "Suitable." "Agreeable." "Capable." Not cherished. Not loved. Not wanted. Just... functional. A convenient, disposable accessory.
I stumbled backward, my legs giving out. I had to get out. Now.
I scrambled to my feet, pushing past Ivory, past the open portal to the hidden room, a raw guttural cry tearing through my throat. I burst through the doors of the private room, then through the main entrance of the club, gasping for breath, the cool night air doing little to extinguish the flames of shame and agony burning within me. My eyes were burning, raw and dry, unable to shed a single tear.
My phone vibrated violently in my hand. It was Leo, my junior reporter. His voice was frantic. "Avery! Turn on the news! Sutton Holdings just released an official statement! They're calling your report 'maliciously fabricated,' 'unsubstantiated claims,' and 'journalistic misconduct'! His voice cracked. "They're threatening to sue you, Avery! For defamation! They're going to destroy you!"
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9.7
I was an intern nurse working exhausting shifts, yet my mother constantly forced me into blind dates with wealthy, arrogant men to secure our family's social standing.
During a terrifying hospital lockdown, an assassin disguised as a doctor held a scalpel to my throat. I was almost killed, but a high-ranking military colonel threw his own body down a flight of concrete stairs to shield me.
I survived with cuts and bruises, but when I went home, my mother didn't care about my near-death experience. She was only furious that I had rushed out on my blind date with Preston, a rich financial analyst.
She forced me to meet him to apologize. When Preston grabbed my arm, bruised me, and mocked my attack as a pathetic lie, my mother still took his side.
"Men get angry," she told me coldly. "It's your job not to provoke them. You will beg for his forgiveness, or you are no longer welcome in this house."
I had narrowly escaped an assassin, yet my own family was willing to feed me to a monster just for a fat paycheck and neighborhood gossip.
My heart went completely dead.
So, when the intimidating Colonel appeared, offering me maximum military protection through a sudden marriage, I didn't hesitate.
I walked back into my parents' house and calmly slapped a crisp marriage certificate onto the coffee table.
"I won't be apologizing to Preston. I got married today."
9.2
He married her to control her.
To break her.
To own her.
Seraphina let him believe it.
She plays the quiet wife-
soft voice, lowered eyes, perfect obedience.
But behind every smile...
is a plan he was never meant to survive.
Because this marriage was never about love.
Not even power.
It was revenge.
And when Lucien finally uncovers the truth-
when he realizes who she really is...
he won't be fighting to keep her.
He'll be begging to escape her.
9.8
When Dawn Collins agrees to marry a stranger, love is the last thing on her mind.
All she wants is to protect her siblings and give them a better life. But fate leads her into the arms of Adam Manchester-a man whose heart belongs to a wife lying in a coma.
As Dawn slowly melts the ice around Adam's heart, she begins to believe that maybe, just maybe, love can bloom from sacrifice.
But on the night she's ready to claim her happiness, Adam's wife wakes up.
Now, caught between guilt, love, and heartbreak, Dawn must decide whether to fight for the man she's grown to love... or walk away from the life she risked everything to build.
Because some hearts never let go-and some love stories were never meant to have an easy ending.
7.3
I was the daughter of a loyal Mafia Capo, arranged to marry the Underboss of the Moretti family. But I gave my heart to his brother, Marco, who promised to break the betrothal and protect me.
When I went into premature labor in a freezing, abandoned warehouse, Marco didn't come to save me. He sent my cousin, Caitlin.
With a mocking smile, she told me Marco despised my "filthy Irish blood" and that my pregnancy was just a temporary amusement.
Then, she pulled out a hunting knife.
She pinned me down, sliced my abdomen open, and smothered my newborn baby right in front of my eyes.
"He agreed that this inconvenience needs to be removed," she whispered.
She revealed that she and Marco had orchestrated my father's murder to secure Mafia shipping routes. Then, she casually knocked over a kerosene lantern, locking the heavy metal door to let me and my dead child burn to ash.
While they headed to a high-society gala to celebrate my "accidental" death and their new power, I lay in the roaring flames.
As the fire blistered my skin and I held my baby's lifeless body, my suffocating despair froze into a razor-sharp rage. My entire life, my family, and my love had been built on their calculated lies.
But they made one fatal mistake. I didn't die in that inferno.
I dragged my ruined body out of the ashes, wrapped myself in a blood-soaked coat, and walked straight into their celebration banquet to become their goddamn reckoning.
8.2
The sensation of falling wasn't like flying; it was heavy, violent, and smelled of burning flesh. Above us, on the crumbling balcony of the Sears manor, Duke Cato Sears turned his back, shielding his cousin Bianca from the smoke as he walked away, leaving my sister Blossom and me to drop into the abyss.
As the darkness slammed shut like an iron door, I realized my entire life had been a cruel script written by the people I called family.
In my first life, I was the sacrificial lamb of the Dawson manor, sold to a man who eventually watched me die without blinking. My sister Blossom had pushed me into Cato's arms to avoid his rumors, only to laugh when the fire finally consumed us both. My father had measured my value like a piece of livestock, and my step-grandmother didn't even acknowledge my existence while I was being led to the slaughter.
I died in that fire, feeling the heat scorch my skin and the weight of a hatred so potent it tasted like bile. I spent twenty years being the weak, manipulated shadow of a girl, only to end up as nothing more than a phantom scorch mark on a "hero's" estate.
I couldn't understand why my own blood treated my life like a game they could discard. The injustice of it all burned hotter than the flames that took my last breath.
Then, I sat up, sucking in air that tasted of lavender and air conditioning, not smoke. I was back in my bedroom, three days before the engagement ball that ruined my life. Blossom stood at the door, her "sweet" mask slipping as she tried to manipulate me into the Duke's path again.
She thought she was the only one who had come back, but she didn't realize that this time, I was going to let her have exactly what she wanted: the Duke, the bankruptcy, and the living hell that awaited her in that house.
9.4
I stood before the double doors of the master suite, my hand hovering inches from the polished brass. As a surgeon, I was trained to steady my heart before a cut, but the silence in the Alexander estate felt like the heavy, oppressive pause that always preceded a scream.
I pushed the mahogany door open to find my fiancé, Authur, tangled in Egyptian cotton sheets with a woman named Jasmine. The air was thick with the scent of expensive cigars and a floral perfume that wasn't mine—a brutal reality check just twenty-four hours before the merger meant to save my family from total ruin.
Authur didn't look guilty; he looked amused, coldly telling me to close the door because I was letting in a draft. When his parents unexpectedly arrived, I was forced to hide his mistress and pretend our "intensity" had ruined the room, donning his discarded shirt to look disheveled just to protect the Lawrence family stock price.
The humiliation only deepened on our wedding morning when Authur issued a sadistic ultimatum over the phone. "Wear your scrubs to the altar—the ones covered in blood—or I'll watch your father's company go belly up by lunch." He wanted to turn our wedding at St. Patrick’s Cathedral into a public execution of my dignity.
I walked down the aisle in shapeless navy cotton and crimson stains, enduring the horrified gasps of the elite who labeled me an "insane gold digger." Authur stood at the altar, reeking of whiskey and malice, certain he had finally broken me and turned my professional oath into a circus act.
But as the priest began the vows, I looked at the man who thought he owned me and realized I wasn't his victim—I was his surgeon. I had the footage of his debauchery ready to play for the world, and as we shared a punishing, hateful kiss for the cameras, I knew the real war had only just begun.