His Trophy Wife Is A Predator
I married the CEO of the powerful Powers Corporation, and everyone saw me as the perfect trophy wife. They assumed my days were filled with nothing but shopping on Fifth Avenue.
But this prestigious family was a house of cards. My husband's siblings were spoiled, useless children threatening to bring the entire empire down with their stupidity.
His brother, Braden, was a parasite who mistook his trust fund for "freedom." His sister, Chelsea, was a brainless socialite being used as a pawn in a public scandal by a con artist.
Even the family's ruthless Chief of Staff, a man meant to be their shield, looked at me with utter contempt, viewing me as just another problem to be managed.
They all saw a fragile doll. They had no idea that their weakness was an insult to the family name, and I was not going to stand for it.
It was time to discipline the children. The first lesson began at 3,000 feet, when I kicked my brother-in-law out of a plane mid-flight. His rehabilitation—and my takeover of this family—had just begun.
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Chapter 3
The heavy, solid wood double doors of the Manhattan townhouse swung open.
Hazel stepped into the grand foyer. She unbuttoned her trench coat and handed it to Aine, the trembling maid waiting by the door.
Braden walked in right behind her. He watched the way she moved. The effortless, aristocratic grace made his skin crawl. It felt entirely wrong, yet undeniably natural.
He stopped at the end of the hallway. His hands balled into tight fists at his sides.
"Why the hell are you doing this?!" Braden shouted, his voice echoing off the high ceiling.
Hazel stopped walking.
She turned around slowly. Her eyes swept up and down his body, looking at him with the same disgust one might reserve for a cockroach on a dining table.
She didn't answer him. Instead, she walked over to the marble wet bar.
She picked up a crystal glass and poured herself a measure of sparkling water. Her movements were slow and deliberate.
The sharp clink of the glass hitting the marble countertop echoed in the quiet room. The sound made Braden's shoulders flinch.
Hazel took a sip. When she spoke, her tone carried the heavy, arrogant cadence of 19th-century European nobility.
"I do this," she said softly, "simply to earn the right to evaluate your profound stupidity."
Braden's face flushed a deep, angry red.
"I am fighting for my freedom!" he spat back. "I am rebelling against the hypocrisy of this damn family!"
Hazel let out a short, cold laugh.
The sound carried no humor. It was laced with raw, unfiltered pity.
She set the glass down and began walking toward him. The sharp click of her high heels against the hardwood floor sounded like a ticking metronome counting down to his execution.
"Freedom?" Hazel sneered. "Using your family's wealth to fund your little extreme sports hobbies is not freedom. It is the pathetic pastime of a parasite."
Braden opened his mouth to scream back, but the words caught in his throat.
Hazel didn't stop. She closed the distance, her presence suffocating him.
"You call this pain?" she whispered, her eyes boring into his skull. "You have never known a single day of real hunger. You have never seen a real war. Your suffering is nothing but the imaginary whining of a spoiled child."
She took another step forward.
"If I freeze your trust fund tomorrow, how many days do you think you would survive on the streets of Manhattan?"
Braden stumbled backward. His shoulder blades hit the cold, painted wall of the hallway. There was nowhere left to retreat.
Hazel's expression softened, but the pity in her eyes grew sharper.
"You are not even competent enough to be a proper failure," she said quietly.
That sentence was a physical blow. It shattered the very core of Braden's carefully constructed rebel identity.
His chest caved in. He grabbed his own hair, letting out a choked, miserable sob, and slid down the cold wall until he hit the floor.
Hazel stood over him. She looked down at his broken, weeping form like a queen observing a traitor at the gallows.
"Go to your room," she commanded. "And think very carefully about what exactly you are."
Braden didn't argue. He didn't even look up.
He pushed himself off the floor, his limbs heavy and useless. He dragged his feet across the floor, walking toward the spiral staircase like a beaten stray dog.
Halfway up the stairs, Braden stopped.
He turned his head and looked down at Hazel standing under the crystal chandelier.
For the first time in his life, he saw the exact same terrifying, iron-fisted aura that his late grandfather-the ruthless founder of the Powers family-used to possess.
Braden quickly looked away, a deep sense of self-doubt eating at his chest, and disappeared into his bedroom.
Hazel picked up her glass and drank the rest of the water. A flicker of deep disdain for the weakness of modern youth crossed her eyes.
In the shadows near the kitchen door, the head butler stood perfectly still. He slowly pulled his phone from his pocket and typed a quick message to Chandler.
Hazel's eyes darted to the shadows. She saw the glow of the phone screen.
She didn't stop him. A cold, calculating smile touched her lips. She wanted Chandler to know.
She turned on her heel and walked toward her study. It was time to discipline the next child.
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9.6
Brenda Vincent thought her biggest nightmare was catching her boyfriend cheating with her roommate on her own sofa.
But her life truly derailed after a drunken night led her into the bed of Bryon Reeves, the ruthless billionaire CEO and older brother of the student she tutored.
Trying to pay off the most dangerous man in New York with a crumpled twenty-dollar bill was her first mistake.
Fleeing the hotel, she accidentally rear-ended his custom Maybach. Bryon used the massive repair bill to blackmail her into being his fake date, parading her at a gala just to make his sister-in-law jealous.
When Brenda finally snapped and fled the humiliation, only to be rescued by his biggest corporate rival, Bryon's twisted possessiveness turned completely destructive.
"If you feel kidnapped, call the police. But your teaching license will be permanently revoked."
He didn't just threaten her. He systematically dismantled her life, using his influence to force the university to freeze her tenure and suspend her without pay.
Brenda couldn't understand why this terrifying man was going to such extreme lengths to ruin a simple tutor who just wanted to be left alone.
Now, stripped of her career, her income, and her independence, she was forced into the sprawling Reeves Manor.
Hearing the heavy mahogany door lock from the outside in her signal-jammed bedroom, Brenda's panic slowly morphed into a cold, clinical rage.
She was trapped, but she refused to be his helpless pawn.
9.3
They say you can't have it all. I'm about to prove them wrong-or destroy myself trying.
When my struggling mother married billionaire Richard Stone, I thought I was gaining a family. Instead, I found three stepbrothers who became my obsession, my downfall, and my salvation.
Dominic, the eldest, cold and commanding, who kisses me like he's claiming his kingdom and looks at me like I'm the only thing he can't control.
Julian, the charming playboy who hides a vulnerable soul beneath his perfect smile, making me feel like I'm the only woman he's ever truly seen.
Asher, the brooding artist who paints me like I'm his muse and touches me like I'm his masterpiece, seeing parts of my soul I didn't know existed.
They're forbidden. They're dangerous. They're everything I shouldn't want.
But when I discover my father didn't die by suicide that he was murdered by the very man who now calls himself my stepfather, these three powerful men becomes my unlikely allies.
First it was a forbidden attraction, now it's an arrangement that defies every rule.
The rules are simple:
I'll give each of them a chance.
I'll take everything they offer.
And in the end, I'll have to make the hardest decision of my life:
Choose one of them. Choose all of them. Or choose myself.
9.6
For five years, I was Barron Santana's elite bodyguard and loyal shadow. I stood between him and bullets, giving him my youth and my entire heart.
But last night, the CEO announced his engagement to a flawless socialite on national television.
Heartbroken, I got blackout drunk and ended up crashing on the couch of Cassidy Gross, a billionaire tech CEO who saved me from a bar creep.
When I showed up late to work, Barron locked me in his freezing office. He pinned me against the glass, smelling Cassidy's cologne on my clothes.
"Are you already looking for your next meal ticket?"
He snarled the words, treating me like a cheap whore. When I defended myself, he pulled out a silk handkerchief and wiped his fingers, acting as if my very touch contaminated him.
Then, he coldly ordered his assistant to draft my termination papers.
Five years of risking my life for him, thrown away like garbage just because of his twisted ego.
Devastated, I ran out and collapsed in the hallway, sobbing uncontrollably until a kind coworker gently pulled me into his arms to comfort me.
I didn't know Barron had followed me out.
Seeing me clinging to another man, his legendary control completely shattered, replaced by a dark, violent possessiveness.
But it was too late. I was done playing his obedient dog, and it was time to take Cassidy up on his offer.
8.4
I had just been brutally fired from my corporate firm, stripped of my career and dignity in a matter of minutes.
Before I could even process the loss, I was handed a brown envelope that shattered my reality. My billionaire sister, who had ruthlessly cut me out of her life fifteen years ago, had committed suicide.
She left behind a fifteen-year-old son I never knew existed, a $300 million trust, and a $3 million stipend for me to act as his guardian. But her suicide note contained a terrifying, desperate warning scrawled in tearing ink.
"DO NOT INVESTIGATE MY DEATH. Accept what I've given you. Protect my son. Forget I existed."
I met the boy, Elon. He crashed his bike into me on the street, bleeding and crying, begging me not to abandon him. Pity and fifteen years of guilt overwhelmed me. I sat in the sprawling office of her elite estate lawyer and signed my life away to protect this innocent, grieving child.
Why did my sister suddenly reach out after a decade and a half of cold silence? What kind of monster was she running from that drove her to such a desperate end? I thought I was honoring her final wish by taking the boy in.
But as the elevator doors were closing, I caught their reflection in the polished steel.
My terrified, weeping nephew stopped crying instantly. He turned and exchanged a chilling, imperceptible nod with the lawyer.
That silent look said everything. The first move was complete.
I hadn't just inherited a child. I had walked straight into a meticulously planned trap.
7.9
On my eighteenth birthday, the celestial pact hiding my aura finally expired. I stood on the rotting steps of the trailer, watching my foster family celebrate my eviction like they’d won the lottery. Brenda threw a liability waiver at me to sign, ensuring I’d never ask for a dime of their welfare checks again. Worse, her daughter Regina stood there smirking, flaunting the heirloom emerald bracelet she’d stolen from my secret stash—unaware it was a spiritual artifact soaked in fifty years of blood magic. "Consider it payment for room and board, freak," Regina sneered, forcing the silver band over her wrist. They thought they were discarding a burden. They didn't realize I was the only dam holding back a tidal wave of their own bad karma. As I signed the papers, voluntarily severing our ties, the air pressure plummeted. The bracelet began to constrict like a snake, turning Regina’s flesh a necrotic purple as the protection I offered vanished. Before they could scream, a matte black helicopter bearing the Sterling Industries crest descended onto the muddy lawn, blowing their plastic lawn chairs into the neighbor's yard. A man in a bespoke charcoal suit stepped out, ignoring the filth to bow before me. He looked at my terrified foster family and announced, "We are here to retrieve the Sterling heiress." I smiled at Regina, whose arm was already beginning to rot, and whispered, "Keep the bracelet. You'll need it to pay for the amputation."
7.2
I was dying in a rusted warehouse, paralyzed in a wheelchair while the man I loved and my own stepsister watched with smiles on their faces. The air smelled of old oil and damp concrete, and my vision was fading into a milky haze.
Dillon, the man I’d sacrificed everything for, smoothed his custom suit and pulled out a syringe filled with a clear, lethal neurotoxin. Beside him, my stepsister Bianca toyed with my mother’s sapphire ring—the one they’d just pried off my hand while I was too weak to even make a fist.
She leaned in and whispered that my father’s trust fund was already offshore and that they’d sent my husband, Kade, to the wrong coordinates to ensure he’d only find my corpse. Dillon slid the needle into my vein with the chilling efficiency of a man who had done this before.
"This will stop your heart in thirty seconds," he said, sounding as bored as if he were explaining a tax form. Ice flooded my chest, and my lungs seized, fighting for oxygen that wasn't there. As the warehouse lights blurred into white streaks, an explosion echoed in the distance. Kade had come for me, but he was too late.
I died staring at the ceiling, my heart giving one last violent kick of pure, unadulterated hatred. I had been such a fool, believing Dillon’s lies and running away from the only man who actually cared for me. I died with a single thought: if I ever get another chance, I will drag you both to hell with me.
Then, there was nothing. And then, there was air.
I sat up gasping, my silk pajamas drenched in cold sweat. The rusted beams were gone, replaced by a vaulted ceiling and the glittering Manhattan skyline. I grabbed the digital clock on the nightstand—it was five years ago, the exact night I first tried to run away with Dillon.
The bedroom door slammed against the wall, and Kade Mullen stood in the doorway, looking dangerous, furious, and very much alive. I looked at my shaking hands, then at the man I had once hated. This time, I wasn't going to run. I was going to make sure Dillon and Bianca lost everything.