Hunting Down My Mysterious Doctor Wife
I was the despised adopted daughter of the Sanders family, hiding behind heavy gothic makeup and enduring their daily disgust.
The day my adoptive father died in a severe car crash, my adoptive mother and stepsister didn't even bother to call me.
Instead, while his body was still warm, my mother filed a multi-million dollar life insurance claim.
"I am not feeding a useless freak for another day. Pack your trash and get out."
She kicked me out into the freezing rain, but that wasn't the worst of it.
My stepsister Cornelia stole my greatest secret. Five years ago, I saved the life of Fidel Vaughan, a ruthless billionaire heir, from a burning estate.
Cornelia claimed my identity, accepted a million-dollar reward, and secured a marriage proposal from him, burning my only proof to ashes.
They thought I was just a helpless, pathetic high schooler they could discard and replace.
But when I hacked the police files, I discovered my father's crash wasn't an accident. It was a targeted hit, and the Vaughan Group had hijacked the traffic cameras to cover it up.
I washed off the ugly black makeup, shedding the disguise of a pathetic outcast.
I am Spectre, the world's most elusive hacker and underground doctor.
I intercepted the billionaire heir's heavily armed convoy in the dead of night. They thought they could steal my life and murder my father, but now, I hold the needle that controls Fidel Vaughan's sanity, and I will make them all pay.
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Chapter 3
The air inside the boardroom at the top of the Vaughan Group headquarters was freezing.
Twenty senior executives sat around the massive circular mahogany table. No one dared to breathe too loudly.
At the head of the table sat Fidel Vaughan.
He rested his elbows on the table, his long, pale fingers pressing brutally hard into his temples. His knuckles were white.
A blinding, white-hot pain pulsed behind his eyes, a physical weight crushing his skull. The chronic nerve damage felt like shattered glass grinding against his brain with every heartbeat.
A middle-aged executive stood at the projector, his voice shaking as he read the quarterly earnings report.
Fidel's jaw ticked. The man's voice sounded like a drill against his eardrums.
Fidel grabbed the heavy crystal water glass in front of him. He slammed it down onto the mahogany wood.
The glass shattered. Water and sharp shards exploded across the table.
The executives flinched in unison, pulling their hands back into their laps.
"You're fired," Fidel said. His voice was a low, gravelly rasp, barely above a whisper, but it carried to every corner of the room. "Get out."
The executive went pale. He didn't argue. He gathered his folders with trembling hands and practically ran out of the boardroom.
Julian Chamberlain, Fidel's executive assistant, stepped forward from the shadows behind Fidel's chair.
Julian pulled a sanitized wet wipe from a foil packet and handed it down.
Fidel took it. He wiped the moisture from his fingers, his face twisted in deep disgust at the feeling of the contaminated water on his skin.
Inside his tailored suit jacket, a private encrypted phone began to vibrate against his ribs.
Fidel pulled it out. The caller ID read: Cornelius Vaughan.
Fidel's stomach churned with irritation. He stood up, towering over the table, and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Wall Street.
He swiped to answer. "Grandfather."
"Have you found her yet?" Cornelius's voice barked through the speaker, old but full of iron authority. "The girl from the estate. The one who saved my life five years ago."
Fidel squeezed his eyes shut as another wave of agony ripped through his head. "I have people looking."
"Look harder," Cornelius demanded. "You owe her your life. I want her found, and I want the engagement announced before the end of the year. That is an order, Fidel."
Fidel's teeth ground together. He hated the idea of a forced marriage. He hated being tied down. But his grandfather held the final keys to the family trust.
"Fine," Fidel gritted out. He ended the call and shoved the phone back into his pocket.
He turned to Julian. "Go to Long Island. The Sanders house. See if the girl is there."
Julian nodded, his face impassive. "Right away, sir."
An hour later, a black Maybach with tinted windows rolled to a stop in front of the Sanders residence.
Julian stepped out. He adjusted his custom-tailored suit jacket and walked up the driveway. He pressed the doorbell.
Inside, Cornelia was screaming at Aleta because her credit card had just been declined online for a designer mourning veil.
Hearing the bell, Cornelia stomped to the front door and yanked it open, ready to yell at whoever was interrupting her tantrum.
The words died in her throat.
She stared at Julian. She took in the impeccable suit, the expensive watch on his wrist, and the gleaming Maybach parked at the curb.
Her posture instantly changed. She straightened her spine, smoothed her hair, and forced a sweet, polite smile onto her face.
"Can I help you?" Cornelia asked, her voice dropping an octave.
Julian studied her face for a second. He had only a heavily degraded security still from that night-a blurry profile of a girl covered in ash and soot. Cornelia matched the general height and build, but he needed to be certain.
"We have conflicting reports about the young woman's name at this residence," Julian probed smoothly, his eyes narrowing slightly as he observed her micro-expressions. "Could you clarify?"
Cornelia's heart slammed against her ribs.
She knew exactly what he was talking about. Eleanora had gone to that estate. Eleanora had come back with burn marks on her hands.
Cornelia's eyes darted to the gold pin on Julian's lapel-the Vaughan family crest.
Greed, hot and heavy, flooded her veins. Eleanora was gone. Kicked out. Nobody knew where she was.
Cornelia looked Julian right in the eye. "That would be me," she lied smoothly. "I'm the only daughter here. My name is Cornelia Sanders."
Julian analyzed her steady gaze and confident posture. The lie was seamless enough to pass his initial scrutiny. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a thick, gold-embossed envelope. He held it out to her.
"Miss Sanders," Julian said, his tone shifting to one of deep respect. "On behalf of the Vaughan family, I am here to formally invite you to meet with Mr. Fidel Vaughan. You are to be his future wife."
Cornelia's breath hitched. Her fingers shook as she reached out and took the envelope. The thick paper felt heavy in her hands.
"Thank you," she whispered, fighting to keep the manic grin off her face.
Julian bowed his head slightly, turned around, and walked back to the Maybach.
Cornelia stood in the doorway, clutching the envelope to her chest, watching the car drive away.
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9.5
Elsie was the Sutton family's perfect puppet, a sickly heiress locked away in a pristine manor and treated like fragile porcelain. Her only purpose was to be a pawn in her mother's corporate games.
Without warning, her mother ordered her to marry Duke Blake, a ruthless, cold-blooded billionaire known for destroying his rivals. Worse, her mother immediately handed over total control of Elsie's life to him, declaring she couldn't even step outside the gates without his explicit permission.
Desperate, Elsie met him and asked if she would be expected to perform wifely duties, praying for a marriage in name only.
"I have a very high sex drive."
He stated it bluntly, shattering her illusions. Yet, when he drove her into the city days later, a sudden swerve sent her tumbling directly into his lap. Instead of the desire he claimed to possess, his body went completely rigid. He violently shoved her away, slamming her hard against the passenger seat. His face was pale, his knuckles white, and he stared straight ahead with a look of absolute, terrifying revulsion.
Humiliation and sharp pain coiled in her chest. She couldn't understand. Why did he demand absolute control over her and boast about his desires, only to treat her accidental touch like a repulsive disease? Why did this all-powerful man secretly smell of hospital antiseptics? What exactly was the Sutton family forcing her to marry?
But she was no longer willing to be a lamb led to the slaughter. Thinking of the provocative black lace hidden behind her wardrobe's false wall, Elsie smiled coldly. She was going to find the fatal flaw in this ruthless billionaire's code, and use it to completely shatter her cage.
7.6
I was once the untouchable heiress to the Schroeder empire, until a corporate fraud conviction stripped away my life and threw me into federal prison for five brutal years.
On the day of my release, I stepped out into the freezing rain only to realize I had been utterly abandoned by everyone I loved.
My family sent no one. My former best friends blocked my number, and high-society women took photos of my shivering, pathetic state for laughs. To survive, I made a desperate deal to act as the fake fiancée of Kayden Washington, a ruthless, disgraced billionaire fighting his own blood. But the moment we joined forces, the nightmare escalated. Our safehouse was ransacked, we were hunted by tactical hitmen in the dark, and my adoptive brother stole my dead mother's diary just to bribe me into leaving New York forever. Worse, the digital trail of my framing traced back to a top-tier operative manipulating both our families from the shadows.
I didn't understand why my own family had sacrificed me like a worthless pawn to ignite a massive, invisible war. What dark secret was I actually taking the fall for?
Just as Kayden and I prepared to burn both empires to the ground, a mysterious courier dropped a package at my door. Inside rested the Schroeder Patriarch's solid gold ring—the ultimate symbol of absolute power—sent directly to me, the disgraced exile.
"They took your past, but I will give you the power to forge a new future."
The game hadn't just changed. The board had been flipped, and I was going back to take the throne.
8.9
Ava Kidd just wanted to escape her abusive stepmother when she got drunk at a high-end club and stumbled into the wrong hotel room.
She woke up the next morning in a luxury penthouse, lying naked next to a terrifyingly handsome man covered in her scratch marks.
Recalling rumors of the hotel's secret underground concierge, she immediately assumed she had accidentally slept with an elite male escort.
Desperate to settle the bill, she offered him her only debit card with a pathetic $1,800.
But the man, who was actually Garrison Terry, the ruthless billionaire CEO, was deeply insulted by the cheap plastic.
He trapped her against the bed, coldly demanding a half-million-dollar service fee.
When Ava frantically offered her dead mother's tarnished locket as collateral, he cruelly dismissed it as worthless junk.
Ava was humiliated, her heart pounding with absolute terror.
She didn't understand why this arrogant gigolo was acting like a deranged extortionist, demanding a fortune from a broke girl who had clearly made a mistake.
Furious and refusing to cower, she sneaked out, put on his oversized designer shirt, and aggressively ate his $800 truffle breakfast.
Having no money left, she grabbed her cheap red lipstick, wrote a defiant IOU on his expensive linen napkin, and fled the hotel.
She thought she had escaped a criminal, but upstairs, the billionaire traced her lipstick-stained name with a predatory smile.
"Ava Kidd, I will absolutely find you."
9.3
Grace finally decided to end her toxic, one-sided relationship with Adelbert, the arrogant heir to a global empire, by texting him to terminate their family trust.
His response was a single, freezing word: "Done."
When they accidentally bumped into each other in a law firm elevator, Adelbert looked right through her.
"I don't know her," he stated coldly to his frat brothers, treating her like invisible trash.
Humiliated and completely exhausted, Grace sought an escape in a brutal shooter game called PUBG.
But by a sick twist of fate, the random matchmaking threw her into a squad with Adelbert's frat brothers and a god-tier, toxic player named 'Ø'.
'Ø' relentlessly mocked her terrible skills, humiliating her and calling her a "pig" over the voice chat.
Yet, during the final shootout, this ruthless player suddenly threw his character in front of hers, taking a fatal barrage of bullets just to keep her alive.
Grace soon uncovered the terrifying truth: the top-ranked 'Ø' was actually Adelbert himself.
She was utterly confused and furious.
Why would the untouchable billionaire who ignored her legal texts and publicly humiliated her suddenly sacrifice himself for her in a cheap video game?
Refusing to swallow her pride in both the real and digital worlds, Grace sent a direct challenge to his gaming profile.
"I'll prove I'm not a pig."
Across the city, Adelbert stared at the notification, a dark smirk curling his lips, and clicked accept.
9.5
For nine years, I poured my soul into proving I was worthy of my wealthy boyfriend, Clayton Wright. I endured his endless, humiliating "tests," sacrificing everything for a place in his world.
But at our engagement party, the final test was revealed. He stood by as his ex-girlfriend, Anjelica, framed me for shattering a priceless family heirloom.
"You manipulative bitch!" he snarled, slapping me across the face. He then ordered his bodyguard to force me to my knees, grinding them into the sharp, broken fragments of the watch.
As I bled on the floor, he pulled out his phone and gave a single command: demolish my childhood home, the last piece I had of my deceased father.
He destroyed my past and my dignity, yet minutes later, my phone buzzed with a message from him.
"The engagement is just for show. I'll still marry you. You're my destiny."
That night, clutching the last of my father's life insurance, I booked a one-way ticket and vanished. He thought he had finally broken his little project, but he had just unleashed a woman with nothing left to lose.
7.7
Jaclyn woke up in the sterile hospital room after falling down the stairs. The nurse delivered the devastating news: she had bled heavily and lost her baby.
But before she could even cry, her trusted cousins, Katelyn and Cherri, locked the door and revealed the horrifying truth.
"It wasn't an accident," Katelyn smirked, pinning Jaclyn's arm down. "The lubricant on the top step was a very deliberate choice."
They needed her broken and unstable. They had forged her signature, draining her massive trust fund to save their uncle's bankrupt business.
What shattered Jaclyn's world was the fresh hickey on Cherri's neck. Her lover, Bradford, had helped plan the entire murder.
When Jaclyn tried to scream, they smothered her with a pillow, framing her as a lunatic having a mental breakdown.
Two weeks later, when she confronted them, Bradford violently shoved her through a second-story glass window to silence her forever.
As she fell to her death, the husband she had spent her life hating—the ruthless billionaire Gaines—burst through the doors.
He threw himself forward, his face filled with pure terror, desperately trying to catch her.
When her body hit the stone patio, Gaines fell to his knees in her blood, weeping and begging her not to close her eyes.
Until her last breath, Jaclyn was consumed by suffocating regret. Why did she trust the monsters who killed her, and hate the only man who truly loved her?
Opening her eyes again, she was back in the penthouse, exactly one month into her marriage with Gaines.