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 8
Grant Sutton POV:
My thumb hovered over Avery' s contact, the screen cool beneath my touch. The last message, my frantic apology about the wedding "mishap," remained stubbornly unread. Three days. Three agonizing, silent days.
She' s probably still angry, I told myself, a weak attempt to rationalize her silence. She has every right to be. I deserved her anger. The way I handled Ivory, the way I let my family, and then Ivory herself, humiliate Avery. It had been a monumental failure on my part. A colossal mistake.
"Is the gift ready?石头" I asked my assistant, Leo, who stood patiently by my desk. "The one for Avery's family. Something truly generous."
"Yes, Mr. Sutton," Leo confirmed. "A custom-made diamond necklace for Mrs. Trevino, a vintage Rolex for Mr. Trevino, and a trust fund for Miss Clara. All delivered discreetly to their estate this morning."
I nodded, a muscle in my jaw ticking. "Good. And what about Avery? Has she responded to my messages? My calls?"
Leo hesitated, his gaze briefly meeting mine before darting away. "No, sir. Still no response."
A knot tightened in my chest. "Keep trying. And send another message to her, apologizing again. Tell her I understand she needs space, but I want to talk. Face to face."
"Yes, Mr. Sutton."
I signed the last of the contracts, my mind miles away. This Phoenix Development deal, it was supposed to be my legacy, my clean slate, solidifying Sutton Holdings' legitimate future. But it felt hollow without her.
I picked up my phone again. The chat window remained blank. The silence screamed at me. A flicker of irritation, then a cold wave of fear washed over me. This wasn't like Avery. She was disciplined. Even when angry, she usually responded eventually.
"Cancel my afternoon meetings," I told Leo, rising from my chair. "I'm going to Avery's apartment. I need to see her." I needed to see her. Needed to explain. Needed to fix this.
I arrived at her building, my heart thumping against my ribs. I pressed the doorbell, a polite, insistent chime. No answer. I tried again. Still nothing.
A nosy neighbor, a woman I vaguely recognized, poked her head out of the adjacent apartment. "Oh, Mr. Sutton! Looking for Avery? She left a few days ago. With a suitcase." The neighbor smiled, oblivious. "Probably on one of her big reporter trips, huh? She always goes on those."
My throat tightened. A suitcase? She hadn't said anything about a trip. Was she... running from me? The thought sent a jolt of icy fear through me.
My phone rang, startling me. It was Ivory. Her voice, sharp and demanding, cut through my thoughts. "Grant, where are you? We have that meeting with the city council in an hour. You need to be here. Now."
"I'm on my way," I said, forcing a calm into my voice. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
I sent a quick text to Avery. Heard you're on a trip. Be safe. Call me when you get back. It felt hollow, inadequate.
The meeting with the city council was a brutal, drawn-out affair. Ivory, sharp as a whip, argued our case with a cold, clear logic, dissecting their points with surgical precision. I admired her tenacity, her brilliance. She was a force of nature. But even as she spoke, my mind kept drifting to Avery.
It was late, well past midnight, when we finally wrapped up. Ivory walked to the panoramic window of the conference room, gazing out at the glittering cityscape. "Just like old times, isn't it, Grant?" she murmured, her voice soft, wistful. "Working late, side by side."
I didn't answer. My gaze drifted to my phone, lying on the table. Still no reply from Avery. The silence was a persistent, nagging ache.
Ivory turned, her eyes narrowed, a faint, knowing smile playing on her lips. "Still worrying about her, aren't you? That reporter."
"She's on a business trip," I said, my voice flat, trying to sound dismissive. "She hasn't checked in."
Ivory turned fully, her expression unreadable. "Tell me, Grant. Are you still going to go through with the wedding?" Her question hung in the air, heavy with unspoken meaning.
I hesitated. "I have my considerations." The words felt forced, hollow. My head was a battlefield of warring thoughts. My duty. My past. And the gaping, undeniable void Avery had left.
Ivory didn't press further. A fleeting shadow crossed her eyes, a complex mix of disappointment and something else I couldn't quite decipher.
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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.