Married To My Mysterious Ex-Con Husband
My father bailed a violent ex-con out of prison just to force me into a marriage with him. I stood in a filthy Bronx hallway, my Vera Wang gown dragging through the grime, knowing this was the price for my mother’s life. If I didn't marry the man behind the steel door, the wire transfer for her hospital ventilator wouldn't go through the next morning.
The man, a scarred giant named Dock, treated me with cold contempt, telling me he didn't touch things he didn't want—and he didn't want a "Jacobson." I thought I had hit rock bottom, tied to a criminal while my family lived in luxury. But the nightmare was just beginning.
When I tried to return my wedding dress to pay for rent, my sister Janie and stepmother found me. They laughed as security dragged me out of the boutique, calling me a "charity case." When I finally crawled back to our family manor to beg for the money my father had promised, Janie revealed the horrific truth. She had liquidated my mother’s medical trust to fund a waterfront real estate project.
"Get out and let your mother rot," she screamed, throwing a glass of ice water in my face before having guards dump me in the dirt. I knelt on the gravel, wet and bleeding, realizing my own flesh and blood had signed my mother's death warrant for a profit. I had nothing left—no money, no home, and a husband who was supposed to be a monster.
I didn't understand why they hated me so much, or how I would survive the night. But then, a black car screeched to a halt in front of me. Dock pulled me inside, his eyes burning with a lethal coldness I’d never seen in a common thug.
As he wiped the blood from my hands, he picked up a encrypted phone and gave a single command.
"Initiate Project Titan. I want the Jacobson Group insolvent by Friday."
I looked at the man I thought was a broke felon, realizing I hadn't just married a stranger—I had married the most dangerous man in the city, and he was about to burn my family's world to the ground.
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Chapter 3
The subway ride was a nightmare.
The garment bag was too big. It took up two seats.
People glared at Keira. A man in a dirty windbreaker actually spit on the floor near her shoe.
By the time she got to 5th Avenue, she was sweating.
She stepped out of the subway station and into the heat of Manhattan.
The city was different here. The sidewalks were clean. The people smelled like expensive perfume and old money.
Keira felt like an imposter.
She dragged the bag down the street to Lumière Bridal.
The window display was breathtaking. Mannequins with no heads modeled dresses that looked like clouds.
She looked down at her sneakers. They were scuffed.
Chin up, Keira.
She pushed through the heavy glass revolving door.
The air conditioning hit her instantly. It was freezing inside. And it smelled of lilies.
Three clerks were standing behind the marble counter, gossiping.
They looked up as Keira approached. Their eyes did a collective sweep of her jeans, her t-shirt, her messy ponytail.
They dismissed her instantly.
"Can I help you?" one of them asked. Her nametag said Brenda. She was chewing gum.
"I'm here to return this," Keira said, heaving the bag onto the counter. "It was a rental."
Brenda sighed, like Keira had asked her to donate a kidney.
She unzipped the bag. She grabbed the silk with rough, manicured fingers, pulling it out.
"Careful," Keira said automatically. "It's silk."
Brenda snorted. "If you can't afford to rent it, don't rent it."
She inspected the hem.
"Stain," she announced loudly.
"What?" Keira leaned over. "Where?"
She pointed to a microscopic gray smudge near the bottom. "Dirt. Dust. Whatever."
"That's just from the bag," Keira said, panic rising. "It wipes off. Look."
She reached out to brush it away.
Brenda slapped her hand away.
"Don't touch the merchandise."
"It's my deposit," Keira said, her voice trembling. "I need that deposit back. It was two thousand dollars."
"No refund on damaged goods," Brenda said, zipping the bag back up. "Read the contract."
"That's not damage! You're stealing from me!"
"Lower your voice," she snapped. "Or I'll call security."
"Oh, look who it is."
The voice came from the entrance. High-pitched. Mocking.
Keira's blood ran cold.
She turned around.
Janie was standing there. And her stepmother, Geraldine.
They looked perfect. Blow-dried hair. Chanel suits.
Janie walked over, her heels clicking on the marble.
"I thought I smelled something cheap," Janie said, wrinkling her nose. "How's the honeymoon, Keira? Did your convict husband beat you yet?"
The shop went silent. The other customers-women in pearls and silk-turned to stare.
Brenda's eyes widened. She looked from Janie to Keira.
"You know her, Miss Jacobson?"
"Unfortunately," Janie laughed. "She's the family charity case. And apparently, she's causing a scene."
"I just want my money," Keira whispered. She felt tears pricking her eyes. She hated herself for it.
"Get her out of here," Geraldine said. She sounded bored. "She's disturbing the atmosphere."
Brenda nodded. She pressed a button under the counter.
Two seconds later, a security guard appeared. He was big. Beefy.
"Miss, you need to leave," he said, grabbing Keira's arm.
"My dress!" Keira cried, reaching for the bag.
"We'll keep it as collateral for the cleaning fee," Brenda sneered.
The guard pulled her. Hard.
She stumbled. Her sneaker sque squeaked on the polished floor.
"Get your hands off me!"
He didn't listen. He dragged her toward the revolving door.
Janie was laughing.
Keira was being thrown out like trash.
The guard shoved her toward the glass.
"And don't come back," he grunted.
She braced herself for the impact of the door.
But the door didn't move.
It stopped dead.
A hand-a large, tanned hand with scarred knuckles-was pressed against the glass from the outside.
The guard frowned and pushed harder.
The door didn't budge. It was like pushing against a mountain.
Through the glass, Keira saw him.
Dock.
He was wearing a black canvas jacket and a baseball cap pulled low.
But she saw his eyes.
They were terrifying.
He pushed the door. The mechanism groaned in protest.
The guard stumbled back, surprised by the force.
Dock stepped inside.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
He didn't look at the dresses. He didn't look at Janie.
He looked at the guard's hand on Keira's arm.
"Let. Her. Go."
His voice was quiet. But it carried across the room like a crack of thunder.
The guard released her instantly. He looked at Dock, sensing the violence radiating off him.
Keira stood there, trembling, tears finally spilling over.
Dock looked at her. His jaw was clenched so tight a muscle feathered in his cheek.
He reached out and pulled her behind him.
His body was a wall. A shield.
He looked at the room full of wealthy women and sneering clerks.
"Which one of you made her cry?"
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9.0
For seven years, I was the perfect wife to Denny Sanford and the brilliant CTO who built the core technology of his billion-dollar empire.
But at my brother-in-law's memorial service, I hid behind a velvet curtain in the study and caught my husband passionately kissing the grieving widow, Brittany.
They weren't just having an affair. Brittany was pregnant with Denny's child.
"Once the paternity test confirms the baby is a Sanford heir, we control everything," she whispered.
"Christa is brilliant with data, but clueless with people. She's completely harmless," Denny sneered, dismissing me as a convenient tool.
My world shattered. Under his protection, Brittany had already stolen the credit and millions of dollars in consulting fees for my patents. To maintain his perfect facade, Denny even abandoned our six-year-old daughter's championship to hold his mistress's hand through a fake hospital visit.
I had sacrificed my days and nights to build his company, only to realize my entire marriage was a calculated lie designed to fund his second family. He thought my scientific detachment made me blind, stupid, and weak.
Harmless? I smiled coldly in the dark, backed up every server log proving my intellectual property, and messaged the most ruthless divorce attorney in New York. If he wanted to build his future on stolen data, I would show him exactly how a scientist dismantles a flawed experiment.
8.1
I was eight years old when my father, Alpha Derek, raided the rogue bunker to save my mother.
I thought I was finally safe.
But because I reeked of the wolfsbane chemicals used to hide my scent, my mother looked at me with pure disgust.
"Get that thing away from me! It smells like him!" she shrieked.
To protect his traumatized mate, my father didn't check my DNA. He threw me into the garage to sleep on oily rags.
For months, I was the true Alpha's daughter, yet I was forced to eat dog food while they pampered a fake orphan named Kylie in my place.
When Kylie ordered the guard dog to tear my arm open, my mother stood at the window.
Instead of saving me, she let the maid close the curtains so she wouldn't have to see the blood.
I only became useful when my father got into a critical car crash.
They drained my rare "Moon Blood" to save his life, then immediately signed papers to ship me off to a labor camp to get rid of the "stain" on their family.
They thought I was a dirty rogue.
They didn't know the chemical smell was masking the rarest bloodline in a century.
I am not a rogue.
I am a White Wolf.
And just as my grandfather discovers the DNA results and falls to his knees in regret, the most powerful pack in the North has already arrived to claim me as their queen.
7.4
My husband, Rodger Hayes, was a renowned chief negotiator, famous for his integrity and firmness within the circle.
When my son and I were kidnapped, with three hostages at the scene, the kidnappers agreed to release only one.
Among the women and the boy, Rodger should have chosen to save the boy first.
Yet, I heard him saying in Spanish fluently, "Release the woman in white."
His first love, Jolene Chapman, was freed, while my son, Jacob Hayes, died from a gunfire.
Later, Rodger explained the situation flatly. "The kidnappers chose to release Jolene."
I cradled Jacob's ashes and smiled sadly.
Rodger didn't know that I was fluent in Spanish, as I had been a special forces member.
His lies crumbled before me.
My phone vibrated, and I confirmed the encrypted message.
"Falcon returns to base."
9.1
The heavy oak doors of the Crane estate splintered under the battering ram. Annetta was just putting her five-year-old daughter to sleep when the SWAT team stormed the nursery.
They told her that her husband, Major Alek Crane, was killed in action overseas. But instead of a hero's funeral, he was branded a national traitor, and the feds were seizing every penny of their wealth.
Lead investigator Issac Rocha dragged Alek's charred remains into the grand hall just to mock him. He stripped Annetta of her wedding band, confiscated her winter coat, and officially exiled her, her daughter, and her hostile mother-in-law to a freezing Appalachian death zone. In the federal holding cell, the extended family turned on Annetta, calling her a cheap commoner and leaving her to shiver on the concrete floor. They were dumped in an abandoned mining town with nothing but canvas jumpsuits to die in the snow.
Annetta knew Alek was framed in a ruthless political hit. Issac Rocha wanted them to rot in the mud and freeze to death, completely forgotten by the world.
"We are going to live, and we are going to burn Issac Rocha to the ground."
But Issac made one fatal mistake. He didn't know the quiet, submissive daughter-in-law had spent the last three years secretly building a military-grade doomsday bunker right in the heart of that very mountain. Stepping past the freezing mud, Annetta initiated the biometric scan, and the massive steel blast doors slowly swung open.
8.9
My family's company went bankrupt, and my biological father was lying in the ICU, kept alive by machines that cost tens of thousands a day.
I thought it was just a tragic business failure, until I caught my mother in bed with my stepfather.
They had secretly transferred all our assets months ago, deliberately bankrupting the company and leaving my father to die.
To pay the hospital bills, my stepfather forced me to a private club, trying to sell me to a sleazy investor.
When I refused, he slapped me across the face, and my mother just looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"Be realistic, Jaelynn. A woman's body is a tool. Use it to get what you need."
Later, right before my father's emergency surgery, my stepfather signed a Do Not Resuscitate order and froze the medical accounts.
"If you don't get on your knees and spread your legs for him, I will tell the hospital to pull your father's plug."
Standing in the freezing rain, covered in mud and blood, I stared at the astronomical hospital bill in my hand.
My own family had plotted to murder my father and sell me to the highest bidder. The betrayal shattered every ounce of sanity I had left.
I didn't cry or beg them anymore.
Instead, I pulled out a water-stained, gold-embossed business card.
It belonged to Dolph Valentine, the most ruthless billionaire in New York and my ex-fiancé's uncle.
If they wanted to destroy my life, I was going to sell my soul to the biggest monster of them all and drag them straight to hell.
9.5
As the fetal monitor screamed in the delivery room, Danae begged the nurses to call her billionaire husband to save their dying baby.
Instead of Adrian, his chief lawyer arrived with a chilling directive: all emergency interventions were explicitly denied.
While security guards pinned her arms to the mattress, Danae was forced to listen to her baby's heartbeat flatline. The lawyer simply dropped divorce papers on her bed and walked out. A sympathetic doctor helped Danae fake her own death to escape the family. Stripped of her assets and kicked out into the freezing rain, she tried to drown herself with her child's ashes, only to be saved by a mysterious benefactor.
Three years later, Danae returned as a top medical researcher. But at a high-profile symposium, she crossed paths with Adrian and his new fiancée—a cheap lookalike of Danae. The woman maliciously staged a bloody miscarriage using a restricted chemical, perfectly framing Danae's lab for the crime.
Adrian pinned Danae against the wall, his eyes black with rage, vowing to make her beg for death. Three years ago, he let their real child die without even answering the phone. Now, he was ready to destroy her over a fake pregnancy.
Just as Adrian's private guards dragged her away to be locked up, the hospital doors were violently kicked open. A rival billionaire stepped in with a team of ruthless lawyers, shielding Danae behind his back and declaring war.