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 3
Ember Vane POV
The night air was oppressive and humid, clinging to my skin like a second layer of sweat.
I didn't bother waiting for the valet.
I sprinted down the side streets, clutching the ruin of my torn dress to my chest, my heels clicking an uneven, frantic rhythm against the pavement.
I needed to put distance between myself and the Plaza-away from the prying eyes, away from the suffocating humiliation.
Desperate for a taxi, I turned into a narrow alleyway that cut through to the next avenue.
Two shadows detached themselves from the dark brick wall, blocking my path.
They were imposing figures clad in generic streetwear, yet they moved with the disciplined, predatory silence of soldiers.
I stopped.
"Mrs. Vane," one of them acknowledged. His tone held zero warmth.
"I don't have any money," I stammered, instinctively stepping back.
"We don't want your money," the other one replied, cracking his knuckles. "We have a message from the Russo family."
Estelle.
"Stay away from the Underboss," the first man warned. "He's not for you. You're just clutter."
I turned to run, but in these heels, I was far too slow.
The first man seized a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back with brutal force.
A scream rose in my throat, but his hand clamped instantly over my mouth, stifling it.
"Quiet," he hissed.
The second man drove his fist into my stomach.
The pain was blinding, stealing my breath entirely.
I tried to double over, retching, but the iron grip in my hair held me upright.
They didn't touch my face.
They were professionals; they knew exactly how to inflict agony without leaving visible marks that would ruin a photo op.
They kicked my ribs with calculated precision.
Then, they twisted my arm back until the shoulder joint gave way with a sickening pop.
"Estelle sends her regards," the man whispered into my ear before shoving me violently into the stack of metal garbage cans.
I lay crumpled on the wet, filthy asphalt, gasping for air that wouldn't come.
My phone lay where it had fallen from my clutch.
It was recording.
I had managed to hit the voice memo button the split second I saw them step from the shadows.
"Tell the bitch she won," one of them laughed as their footsteps retreated. "The scar-face is done."
I waited until silence returned to the alley before I dragged myself toward my phone.
Trembling, I stopped the recording.
I forced myself up and limped to the main road to hail a cab.
The driver took one look at me-my torn dress, the grime on my face, the way I cradled my ribs-and drove straight to the private ER the Family used.
I sat on the paper-lined exam table, shivering uncontrollably.
My ribs were severely bruised, though not broken.
My shoulder, however, was dislocated.
When the doctor popped it back into the socket, I bit through my lip to keep from screaming.
The door swung open.
Julian walked in.
His expression was one of annoyance, not worry.
"What is this?" he demanded, gesturing vaguely at my condition. "I have a room full of donors asking where my fiancée went, and I get a call that you're in the ER?"
"I was attacked," I rasped.
"Attacked?" He frowned, his impatience visible. "Where?"
"Just outside the hotel. Two men."
"Did they take your jewelry?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"They had a message," I said, lifting my phone with a shaking hand. "From Estelle."
Julian's face went rigid.
"Don't start this, Ember."
"Just listen to it," I insisted, pressing play.
The tinny recording of the men's voices filled the sterile silence of the room.
Estelle sends her regards... Tell the bitch she won...
Julian listened.
His jaw tightened.
He reached out and took the phone from my hand.
"She did this," I said, the reality of it choking me. "She sent her father's soldiers to beat me in an alley."
Julian looked at the phone, then back at me.
"Estelle is traumatized from the crash," he said quietly, calculating. "She's erratic. If I bring this to her father, it starts a war. The Russo family is our biggest ally right now."
"She had me beaten," I whispered, tears finally spilling over. "Julian, they kicked me."
"It was a warning," Julian stated coldly. "Just stay out of her way."
His thumb hovered over the screen.
"What are you doing?" I asked, panic rising.
"Protecting the alliance," he said.
He hit delete.
He deleted the recording.
Then, deliberately, he deleted the backup from the cloud.
He handed the phone back to me.
"It was a mugging," he said firmly. "You resisted. That's the story."
He checked his watch.
"I have to go back. Estelle is still shaking. She needs me."
"I need you," I whispered.
"You're strong, Ember," he said, turning to the door. "You always have been. That's why I picked you. You can take a hit."
He walked out.
He left me in a hospital room with bruised ribs and a dislocated shoulder to go hold the hand of the woman who had ordered the hit.
The throbbing pain in my body faded, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity.
He didn't just choose her.
He sacrificed me to keep her.
I wasn't his partner.
I was his punching bag.
I slid off the table, my legs shaking beneath me.
I wasn't crying anymore.
I walked to the window and looked out at the sprawling city lights.
My flight to Africa was scheduled for three weeks from now.
I decided I wouldn't wait that long.
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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.