His Unwanted Trash, The Rival's Treasured Queen
Four years ago, I melted my skin into the asphalt to pull Julian Moretti from a burning wreckage. I spent years in the shadows, nursing him back to health, hiding my scars while he reclaimed his title as the Underboss of New York.
But on the way to our wedding, everything shattered.
Estelle Russo, the woman who caused the crash that ruined me, complained of a stomach ache in the limousine. Julian didn't hesitate.
He ordered the driver to stop on the shoulder of the highway.
"Get out," he barked at me, his eyes cold.
He forced me out of the car in my wedding gown, leaving me stranded in the dust and exhaust fumes just so Estelle could lie down on the seat.
"Take a cab to the church," he sneered before speeding away.
He didn't just leave me on the road; he abandoned me at the altar to hold the hand of the woman who had once tried to kill him. He called our relationship a "debt" he was tired of paying.
I stood there, the lace of my dress heavy with humiliation, realizing I was never his Queen—I was just his collateral damage.
I didn't call a taxi. Instead, I pulled a burner phone from my bodice and dialed the one number that would end his reign.
"The deal is live," I whispered. "He chose her."
I stripped off the wedding dress, climbed over the guardrail, and stepped into the black sedan waiting to take me to his greatest enemy.
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Chapter 2
Ember Vane POV
The penthouse was cold, possessing the kind of sterile chill that settles deep into the marrow and refuses to leave.
It was a glass cage suspended in the sky, overlooking a city that felt more like a prison than a home.
I walked through the living room, my eyes landing on the sleek Italian leather sofa where Julian used to lay his head on my lap, complaining about the headaches lingering from his concussion.
I picked up a crystal vase from the mantle.
It was a gift from his mother for our engagement, three years ago.
I opened my hand.
I let it drop.
It shattered against the marble floor, the sound sharp and violent, piercing the silence.
I didn't flinch.
I went to the bedroom and pulled a suitcase from the closet.
I wasn't packing clothes. I was packing the ghosts.
The framed photo of us at the hospital when he first stood up.
The watch he gave me for keeping his secrets.
The engagement ring I had taken off to wash my hands and never put back on.
I threw them all into a garbage bag.
I was purging him from the apartment, creating a vacuum where his suffocating presence used to be.
The front door beeped.
Julian walked in, smelling of expensive scotch and the cloying sweetness of another woman's vanilla perfume.
He stopped dead when he saw the shattered glass.
"What the hell happened?" he asked, stepping over the shards without sparing me a glance.
"Gravity," I said.
He looked up then, his brow furrowing.
"Are you drunk?"
"No," I said. "Just cleaning."
He sighed, loosening his tie with a sharp tug.
"I don't have time for your moods, Ember. The Resurrection Gala is tonight. The entire Commission will be there. I need you ready in an hour."
"I'm not going," I said.
Julian walked over to me, his presence looming like a storm front.
He was a massive man, built for violence, with hands that could crush a throat as easily as they could sign a check.
"You are going," he said, his voice low and laced with danger. "You are my fiancée. If you don't show up, it looks like weakness. It looks like I can't control my own house."
"Is that what I am?" I asked, meeting his gaze. "A prop to show you have control?"
"You are a Moretti," he said, his fingers digging into my chin. "Act like it."
I pulled away from his touch.
"Fine."
I wore a dress with a high back, a midnight blue silk that covered every inch of my ruined skin.
The Gala was held in the ballroom of the Plaza.
It was a sea of black tuxedos and diamond chokers, the air thick with the metallic scent of money and blood.
Julian gripped my elbow, steering me through the crowd like a prize heifer at auction.
He smiled at the Dons, shook hands with the Capos, and erased my existence entirely.
Estelle was there, of course.
She was wearing red, a plunging neckline that showed off her perfect, unblemished skin.
She was holding court near the balcony, flanked by Julian's sister, Jeanette.
Jeanette hated me.
She thought I was a gold digger, a nobody who clawed her way into the dynasty by being in the right place at the wrong time.
Julian left me to get a drink.
I drifted toward the balcony, needing air.
Jeanette and Estelle blocked my path.
"The nursemaid is out of her uniform," Jeanette sneered, swirling her champagne.
"She looks tired," Estelle said, her voice dripping with saccharine poison. "Maybe she should go home."
"I'm fine," I said, trying to step around them.
"Are you?" Jeanette asked. "Julian seems bored. He spent all morning with Estelle. Did you know that?"
"I know," I said.
"He needs a real woman," Jeanette said, stepping into my space. "Not a charity case."
I turned to leave, but Jeanette reached out.
Her fingers hooked into the back of my dress.
"Oops," she said.
She yanked.
The sound of silk tearing shrieked louder than the music.
The back of my dress ripped open from neck to waist.
The cold air hit my skin first, followed by the collective gasp that sucked the oxygen from the room.
I felt the eyes.
Hundreds of them.
Staring at the thick, ropy keloids that coiled across my back like melted wax.
The red, angry ridges of scar tissue that I had hidden for four years.
"Oh my god," someone whispered. "Look at her back."
"It's hideous."
Shame, hot and viscous, flooded my veins.
I spun around, clutching the front of my dress to keep it from falling.
Jeanette was smirking.
"Now everyone can see what Julian has to wake up to," she whispered.
My hand moved before I could think.
I slapped her.
It was a solid, sickening crack that silenced the ballroom.
Jeanette stumbled back, her hand flying to her cheek.
Estelle screamed.
"She's crazy! She attacked her!"
Estelle threw herself on the floor, knocking over a table of drinks, acting like I had shoved her.
"Julian!" Estelle shrieked.
Julian appeared through the crowd, his face thunderous.
He saw Jeanette holding her cheek.
He saw Estelle on the floor.
He saw me, standing there with my dress ripped open, my scars exposed to the world.
He didn't take off his jacket to cover me.
He didn't ask if I was okay.
He shoved past me, his shoulder hitting mine hard enough to make me stumble.
He knelt beside Estelle.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice frantic.
"She pushed me," Estelle sobbed into his chest. "She's jealous, Julian. She's dangerous."
Julian looked up at me.
His eyes were voids, stripped of anything human.
"Get out," he snarled.
"Julian," I whispered. "She ripped my dress."
"I said get out!" he roared. "Before I have security drag you out."
He turned back to Estelle, stroking her hair, whispering soothing words that were meant for me.
I turned around, the torn silk flapping against my burns, and walked out of the ballroom alone.
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9.2
"Isabella this is the right time for you to choose between me or Hector, because any one you choose now will be your husband till the contract end."
"Think well Isabella don't make mistake."
She spilled coffee on the wrong man.
Isabella Ramirez is drowning in debt, exhaustion, and fear-working double shifts to keep her dying mother alive. One mistake in a crowded café brings her face-to-face with Alejandro De La Vega, a billionaire feared for his cold heart and ruthless power.
His punishment is cruel.
His offer is worse.
One year as his wife in exchange for her family's freedom.
But inside his mansion, Isabella learns that marriage without love is a cage. Betrayal hides behind charming smiles.
A former wife returns with secrets. A cousin watches from the shadows. And the contract that binds her may destroy her heart.
When lies explode and power turns brutal, Isabella must choose between survival and love-before she loses herself completely.
Tropes
Contract Marriage
Poor Girl × Billionaire CEO
Forced Proximity
Inheritance Deadline
Emotional Abuse & Redemption
Love vs Power
Public Scandal
Love Triangle
One True Love
8.0
I spent two years as the perfect, dutiful wife to Foster Baird. I was his unpaid PR consultant and his emotional punching bag, enduring his mother’s snide comments about my orphan background all for the sake of a "marriage" I thought was real.
But when I went to the City Clerk’s office to replace a damaged document, the clerk looked at me with genuine pity.
"There is no record of a marriage license for you and Foster Baird. Legally? You aren't married."
The betrayal went even deeper. I returned to our penthouse to find Foster’s mistress on our sofa, alongside a five-year-old boy who shared Foster’s exact features. Foster hadn't just cheated; he had a secret family that predated our entire relationship. He had even bribed a doctor to lie to me about being infertile just to keep me docile and focused on his business. When the mistress moved into my guest wing the next day, Foster demanded I act as their hostess and serve them dinner.
I watched them play happy family in the home I built, realizing I was never a wife—I was just "cheap labor" he intended to discard once his company stock stabilized. He thought I was a barren charity case with nowhere to go.
He was wrong. That same afternoon, I received a call from the executor of the Arthur Kensington estate. I wasn't a nobody; I was the long-lost biological daughter and sole heir to a five-billion-dollar fortune.
While Foster was busy planning my replacement, I was accessing the Kensington Trust. I didn't scream, and I didn't cry. I simply bought a fifty-million-dollar mansion and hired a team of forensic accountants to dismantle the Baird Group from the inside out. I crushed my old phone under my designer heel and looked at my new security detail.
"Let's get to work," I said.
7.0
My chest tightened with anticipation, five years of shared struggle culminating in this moment at the Manhattan penthouse banquet. But Chace, my partner, didn't look at me; he turned to Karyn, sliding his family's heirloom emerald ring onto her finger. Then, his voice echoed through the hall, dismissing me as "nothing but an asset under my name to provide entertainment."
My smile froze, the room erupted in laughter, and a cruel kick sent me sprawling, spraining my ankle on the cold marble floor. Karyn mocked me, but it was Chace’s icy gaze that truly shattered me. He dismissed our past, threatening my mother’s grave and my father’s life if I didn't "stay in your place and be an obedient dog."
The man I bled for, starved for, fought for, was a complete stranger, a monster veiled in cold disdain. My heartbreak bled out, replaced by a reckless, destructive madness. This wasn't just humiliation; it was an execution.
Retreating to the lavish restroom, my mind sharpened. I unblocked a forbidden number, a name whispered with terror in the New York underground: Keith Mosley. My text was brief: "I am ready to pay my debt." His reply flashed, stark and dominant: "The price is marriage." This wasn't a price; it was my knife.
9.5
I returned to New York with a broken suitcase and exactly three hundred and forty-two dollars in my bank account. My mother was dying in a public hospital, and the only treatment that could save her required a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit I didn't have.
While I was pleading with the billing department, I ran into my billionaire ex, Gannon Sharpe, and his cruel fiancée, Aleta. Without a second thought, Aleta slapped me so hard my lip split, kicking my belongings across the floor and calling me a gold-digging thief in front of the entire staff.
I looked at Gannon, the man I once loved more than my own life, hoping for a shred of mercy. Instead, he looked at me with pure revulsion and told me I belonged in the gutter. He believed the lies his grandfather told him—that I had abandoned him after his car crash and vanished with millions.
He had no idea I was the one who actually pulled him from that burning wreckage, or that I was currently skipping meals in a moldy motel just so our secret son could have formula. He called me "disgusting" and walked away, leaving me to rot.
I wanted to scream that I was the genius scientist who wrote his company’s core algorithms, and that the child he didn’t know existed was shivering with a fever only blocks away. But the ironclad NDA I signed to save my family kept me silent, even as Gannon looked at me like I was something he’d stepped in.
Desperate for health insurance to save my mother and son, I took a bottom-tier data entry job in the basement of Gannon’s own tower, intending to stay invisible. But when a billion-dollar error threatened to bankrupt his empire, I couldn't stop myself from hacking the system to fix the code.
Now, the man who hates me is standing in my cubicle, demanding to know how a "dropout" knows his most guarded secrets. Gannon is finally digging into my past, and he’s about to find out exactly what—and who—I’ve been hiding for the last four years.
9.7
For three years, I played the role of a devoted, naive wife to billionaire Conrad Whitney. I hid my true identity and foolishly believed in our fairy tale.
Then he handed me a harsh divorce agreement, ordering me to sign and walk away with absolutely nothing. He was leaving me to marry Cindy, the fragile woman he claimed had saved him from a fire.
He expected me to cry and beg. Instead, he watched coldly as Cindy and her family illegally transferred my father's trust fund. When I confronted them at the hospital, Conrad shielded her, calling me a greedy, toxic viper. He mocked me, completely blind to the fact that Cindy was a fraud. He truly believed I was just a pathetic, useless housewife who would be utterly destroyed without his money and status.
I looked at the man I had actually dragged out of that burning debris with my own soot-covered hands. My trauma, my sacrifices, and my love had all been reduced to a joke by his sheer arrogance and a few fake tears from a manipulative liar.
I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly signed the papers, drugged his wine, and left a crumpled one-dollar bill on his unconscious chest with a sticky note mocking his terrible service.
Then, I picked up my encrypted phone. It was time for the world's top surgeon, Dr. Hades, to return, and for Conrad to finally see the god he had just thrown away.
9.3
For seventeen years, I was the crown jewel of the Kensington empire, the perfect daughter groomed for a royal future. Then, a cream-colored envelope landed in my lap, bearing a gold crest and a truth that turned my world into ice.
The DNA test result was a cold, hard zero percent-I wasn't a Kensington. Before the ink could even dry, my parents invited my replacement, a girl named Alleen, into the drawing room and treated me like a trespasser in my own home.
My mother, who once hosted galas in my honor, wouldn't even look me in the eye as she stroked Alleen's arm, whispering that she was finally "safe." My father handed me a one-million-dollar check-a mere tip for a billionaire-and told me to leave immediately to avoid tanking the company's stock price.
"You're a thief! You lived my life, you spent my money, and you don't get to keep the loot!" Alleen shrieked, trying to claw the designer jacket off my shoulders while my "parents" watched with clinical detachment.
I was dumped on a gritty sidewalk in Queens with nothing but three trunks and the address of a struggling laborer I was now supposed to call "Dad." I traded a marble mansion for a crumbling walk-up where the air smelled of exhaust and my new bedroom was a literal storage closet.
My biological family thought I was a broken princess, and the Kensingtons thought they had successfully erased me with a payoff and a non-disclosure agreement. They had no idea that while I was hauling trunks up four flights of stairs, my secret media empire was already preparing to move against them.
As I sat on a thin mattress in the dark, I opened my encrypted laptop and sent a single command that would cost my former father ten million dollars by breakfast. They thought they were throwing me to the wolves, but they forgot one thing: I'm the one who leads the pack.