Misdiagnosis in andrology, My Billionaire Husband
I was forty-eight hours into my shift, smelling of stale sweat and clutching a red-stamped bill for my mother's life support. As a scholarship intern, I was a ghost in the hospital, working myself to the bone just to keep her ventilator humming.
Then Dr. Thorne shoved a metal clipboard into my chest and ordered me to perform a surgical prep on a VIP patient for a circumcision. But the moment the cold betadine touched the man's skin, he lunged at me like a predator, his hand crushing my wrist until the bone nearly snapped.
"I'm here for a kidney stone. What kind of incompetent butcher shop is this?"
He wasn't a patient; he was Conrad Marks, a lethal billionaire, and Thorne had intentionally set me up to assault him. Within minutes, a five-million-dollar lawsuit was filed, and the Dean ordered security to shred my license and throw me out of the building.
My phone buzzed with a final notice: the facility was stopping my mother's meds at midnight because my payment had failed. I was a doctor who had just been framed and a daughter about to watch her mother die.
I didn't understand why Thorne would ruin me so casually, but with my mother's life on the line, I had nothing left to lose.
I slipped past the guards and back into the billionaire's suite with a set of silver needles and a desperate bargain. I stopped his agony in seconds, and when he looked at me with those cold, lethal eyes, I offered a trade: I would be the fake girlfriend his family demanded if he would save my mother and bury the lawsuit.
"Deal," he said, his grip on my waist tightening with dark possession.
I signed the contract, realizing I hadn't just saved my career-I had sold my soul to the most dangerous man in New York.
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Chapter 2
Three minutes. That was how long it took for the hospital hierarchy to crumble.
The door swung open, and Dean Miller rushed in, his forehead glistening with sweat. Behind him trailed a pale-faced nursing supervisor and, bringing up the rear, Dr. Thorne.
Thorne's arrogance had evaporated, replaced by a practiced look of confusion. He looked small.
"Mr. Marks," the Dean panted, rushing to the bedside. "Mr. Marks, I am so terribly sorry. There has been a grave misunderstanding."
Marks. Jeanine's mind reeled. Conrad Marks. She had seen the name on donation plaques in the lobby, usually associated with generic "Consulting Groups" or "Strategic Analysis." A rich donor. A very angry, very powerful rich donor.
Conrad sat on the edge of the bed, a black silk robe now draped over his shoulders. The robe gaped slightly, revealing a jagged, pale scar that ran across his pectoral muscle. He looked regal and terrifying.
"A misunderstanding?" Conrad's voice was dangerously quiet. "I wake up to a strange woman holding a razor to my genitals, and you call it a misunderstanding?"
"She's an intern!" Thorne blurted out, pointing an accusing finger at Jeanine. "Dr. McIntosh. She's... she's incompetent. I told her to check the vitals. I never ordered a prep!"
Jeanine gasped. "Y-you did! You t-told me specifically-"
"Silence!" The Dean turned on her, his eyes pleading with her to be the scapegoat. "Dr. McIntosh, leave this room immediately."
Conrad held up a hand. The room went silent.
A man in a sharp grey suit stepped out from the shadows of the corner. Jeanine hadn't even noticed him. He placed a leather folder on the bedside table.
"My client," the lawyer said, his voice smooth and devoid of emotion, "will be filing a formal complaint for medical malpractice, assault, and severe emotional distress. We will be seeking damages."
He looked at Jeanine. "We start at five million."
The number hung in the air like a guillotine blade.
Five million dollars.
Jeanine felt her knees give way. She grabbed the doorframe to stay upright. Her mother's care cost six thousand a month. She had twenty dollars in her bank account.
"Get her out of here," Conrad said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. "And Miller? If she is employed here by sunset, I'm pulling every cent of funding my firm provides to this hospital."
Security guards grabbed Jeanine by the arms. She didn't fight. She was numb. They marched her down the hall, past the staring nurses, past the whispering patients, and shoved her out of the VIP wing.
"Stay in the break room until we process your suspension," one guard muttered.
Jeanine stood in the cold corridor. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out with trembling fingers.
Jennings: Facility called. Payment declined. They're stopping the meds at midnight unless you pay up. Don't be useless, Jeanine.
A sob ripped through her throat, but she clamped a hand over her mouth. She couldn't break down. Not now. Tears wouldn't pay the bills. Tears wouldn't save her mother.
She looked at the heavy double doors of the VIP wing.
She had nothing left to lose.
Jeanine wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She waited until the nurse at the station turned to answer a phone, then she slipped through the fire exit door. She climbed the stairs, her heart hammering against her ribs, and emerged back onto the VIP floor near the back entrance.
She crept toward Suite One. The bodyguards were gone-likely sweeping the perimeter or getting coffee.
The door was slightly ajar.
"Mother, stop," Conrad's voice floated out. He sounded exhausted.
Jeanine froze, pressing her back against the wall.
"I don't care who she is. I don't care if her father is a Senator. I am not going to the gala with a date you picked out."
A pause.
"No. I'm not lonely. I'm busy. And I'm in pain... Yes, the stone... No, I am not impotent, for God's sake... Listen to me. I have no intention of marrying. Ever. Stop sending women to my house."
He groaned, a sound of genuine agony that had nothing to do with the phone call.
"I have to go."
The phone clattered down. Then came a sound of struggle-sheets rustling, a sharp intake of breath.
Jeanine peeked around the frame. Conrad was doubled over, gripping his side, his knuckles white. The kidney stone was moving. He wasn't the invincible tyrant now; he was a human being in excruciating pain.
She stepped inside.
Conrad's head snapped up. His face was pale, sweat beading on his forehead, but his eyes were still lethal.
"You," he hissed. He grabbed a heavy glass water pitcher from the table and hurled it.
"Get out!"
The pitcher smashed against the doorframe inches from her head. Glass exploded outward. Shards sliced across Jeanine's ankle, stinging sharply. Warm blood trickled into her sock.
She didn't flinch. She stepped over the glass.
"I can stop the pain," she said. Her voice shook, but she forced herself to walk toward him. "I can stop it right now."
Conrad laughed, a harsh, dry sound. "With what? A razor?"
"With this." Jeanine reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, leather-bound case. She unrolled it on the table. Inside were thin, silver needles.
"Acupuncture?" Conrad looked at her like she was insane. "Get out before I kill you."
"Morphine takes twenty minutes to kick in," Jeanine said, her eyes locking onto his. "And it makes you groggy. This works in seconds. And you keep a clear head."
She stepped closer. He was cornered by his own pain, unable to stand.
"One needle," she bargained. "If it doesn't work, I'll sign a confession saying I assaulted you. If it works... you drop the lawsuit."
Conrad glared at her. A spasm of pain hit him, and he squeezed his eyes shut, his breath hissing through his teeth.
"Do it," he gritted out. "But if you miss, I break your arm."
Jeanine didn't hesitate. She took a needle. She didn't aim for his back or his side. She grabbed his hand.
She pressed her thumb into the fleshy web between his thumb and index finger-Li4, Hegu. She found the point of maximum resistance and tapped the needle in.
Conrad's eyes flew open. He gasped, not in pain, but in shock.
His shoulders dropped. The white-knuckled grip on the bedsheet loosened. The agonizing cramp in his flank didn't vanish, but the sharp, stabbing edge dulled instantly, fading into a manageable throb.
He stared at his hand, then at her. The silence in the room was deafening.
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9.1
Kaitlyn thought she was living a happy life with her husband Martin, until that night when she overheard his conversation with his mistress on the phone. Her world changed in an instant, especially when she learned that the woman was carrying Martin's child, while she had struggled to have a child in the four years she spent with him.
Then she discovered she was pregnant too, but a cruel plot was set against her. Kaitlyn was thrown in prison, and her husband sent her divorce papers without giving her a single chance. She lost one of her twins during childbirth, suffered, and lost everything.
Until that moment when Douglas, her husband's former rival, offered her a marriage contract. A way to take revenge and reclaim what was stolen from her by those who put her in prison, destroyed her life, and killed one of her twin children.
What will Kaitlyn do when the truth comes out? When she learns that Martin Thompson's mistress is none other than her closest friend Ashley? When she uncovers the full conspiracy against her and realizes that the death she witnessed was faked, the very reason she ended up in prison?
7.4
I was the bankrupt socialite everyone pitied, standing in the mud at my mother's grave with nothing left but a pair of old Louboutins and a single white rose. My bank account was overdrawn by three hundred dollars, but I still believed Julian, my fiancé, was the one person who hadn't abandoned the toxic Compton name.
Then I saw his Maybach shaking in the cemetery parking lot. Through a crack in the window, I heard the man I loved whispering to my stepsister, Tiffany.
"Don't worry about the broke princess. Once I secure her voting proxy for the trust, I'm dumping her."
Tiffany laughed, clutching the scarlet coat she'd charged to my own maxed-out credit card.
"She's so pathetic, Julian. She actually thinks you love her."
I didn't scream; I recorded them. But when I tried to use that leverage, my family turned into vipers. To protect Julian's status, they framed me for causing Tiffany to miscarry a fake pregnancy and planted stolen documents in my bag. My own father stood by as they locked me in a room, planning to sell me to a predatory creditor named Hightower to settle his gambling debts. I ended up in a freezing police cell, my ankle shattered and my reputation destroyed.
I sat on that metal bench, shivering as I realized my own blood had traded my life for a check. I called the only man powerful enough to burn them all-Julian's uncle, the "Butcher of Wall Street," Alden Stark. The phone just kept ringing. He wasn't coming. To the world, I was just a walking bankruptcy filing, a girl who had finally run out of luck.
I didn't wait for a savior. I escaped custody and ran barefoot through the rain, leaving a trail of blood on the marble floor of Stark Tower. When I collapsed at Alden's feet, he didn't look at me with pity; he looked at me like a rare, damaged artifact he finally owned.
"Inform the board that this is my fiancée," he announced, lifting me into his arms.
I signed the marriage contract that night, trading my freedom for the power to ensure my family's liabilities exceeded their assets for the rest of their natural lives.
7.7
My bank account was four hundred dollars in the red when my brother called me screaming from the most exclusive club in Manhattan. He said he was going to be killed or arrested, and I was the only one who could save him from the mess he’d made.
When I arrived at The Onyx, I found my brother on his knees, accused of assaulting a high-profile socialite. But instead of begging for my help, he pointed a shaking finger at me and screamed, "It was her! My sister set the whole thing up because she wanted money!"
The man watching the chaos from the shadows was Adrian Clemons—the billionaire CEO of the company where I worked as a lowly assistant. He didn't look at me with pity; he looked at me with a profound, exhausted disgust, as if I were a stain on his expensive rug.
To save his own skin, my brother didn't just lie; he offered me up like a piece of tradeable property. "She'll do anything," he pleaded with the billionaire. "She’s clean, she’s obedient. Just don't send me to jail!"
Adrian didn't call the police. Instead, he made a cold, terrifying business proposal: "Lend her to me for one year. I wipe your debt, and the cops stay away." My brother didn't even blink before he snapped, "Done. Take her."
I was whisked away to City Hall in a silent Rolls Royce, signing a marriage license before I could even process the betrayal. I wasn't a bride; I was a "human asset" bought to help a cold-blooded monster secure his inheritance.
The moment my hand accidentally brushed his during the signing, he recoiled as if I were contagious, his face turning a ghostly, panicked white. He made it clear that I was nothing more than a prop, a girl from the slums meant to spite his elitist mother.
As the heavy iron gates of the Clemons estate slammed shut behind me that night, I realized I hadn't just saved my brother. I had entered a golden cage owned by a man who hated my touch, but owned my life for the next three hundred and sixty-five days.
8.0
My father gave me an ultimatum: marry a man I despise or lose my entire inheritance. I chose to run, boarding a private jet with no intention of looking back.
But his reach is absolute. The phone buzzed before we even left New York airspace.
"Send me a picture with Sterling now," his voice barked, "or I'm calling your pilot to turn that jet around."
I faked the photo and fled to Las Vegas, my last resort. My mission was simple: find my father's illegitimate son, the one secret that could break his hold over me.
My only lead was a grainy picture of a ruthless fixer, a man who cleaned up my father's messes. I found him in a desolate diner, a giant of a man surrounded by a wall of guards.
I gambled everything on a single coin toss for the information I needed. He saw right through my desperate bluff.
He leaned in close, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
"In my city, the house always wins."
I was left standing there, humiliated and defeated. But as he turned to leave, he glanced over his shoulder.
"But you're lucky. Today, I'm just curious what Howard Bright's daughter is doing so far from home."
He had seen me not as a threat, but as a curiosity. I had lost the battle, but I wasn't done yet. I was no longer running. I was hunting.
9.1
Alysia lay on the freezing operating table, moments away from donating her kidney to her brother's fiancée.
But as the anesthesia set in, a violent shock tore through her brain, awakening agonizing memories of a thousand brutal deaths across a thousand past lifetimes.
She suddenly realized her family's true plan. Her brother and his fiancée weren't just taking her organ; they were secretly plotting to declare her mentally unfit post-surgery to steal her entire trust fund.
When Alysia abruptly stopped the procedure and exposed the fiancée's kidney failure as the result of severe drug abuse, her family's reaction was chilling.
Her father didn't care about the truth or the law. He ordered his bodyguards to lock Alysia up until she agreed to the surgery, while her brother threatened to freeze her assets and seize her late mother's penthouse.
"You have no heart, Alysia. You don't deserve the Kent name," her aunt spat in disgust.
For lifetimes, she had kept her head down, taking the blame and sacrificing everything for a family that viewed her as nothing more than a disposable blood bag and a financial pawn.
The resignation that had clouded her eyes for so long vanished, replaced by the absolute, zero-degree cold of a glacier.
Ripping the IV from her hand and leaving her family in stunned silence, Alysia walked straight out of the hospital.
She had exactly forty-six hours to find a husband to secure her inheritance, and she knew exactly which ruthless billionaire CEO to target to help her burn the Kent family to the ground.
8.4
For twenty years, I lived as the adopted daughter of the wealthy Hill family.
But today, they forced me to sign a severance agreement and kicked me out so their precious biological daughter, Malia, could marry my fiancé.
To ruin me completely, they framed me for stealing Malia's engagement bracelet, threatening me with prison.
I calmly exposed the "sapphire" as cheap glass, then rolled up my sleeves to show the reporters my scarred, punctured arms.
For two decades, I wasn't a daughter. I was Malia's living blood and bone marrow bank.
They drained my health to keep her alive, even ordering doctors to ignore my failing organs just so she could attend a gala.
"Take this million dollars and shut your mouth," my adoptive father sneered, throwing a check at my feet.
My ex-fiancé looked at me with disgust, and Malia screamed that I was a crazy, vindictive liar.
They had stolen my life and my health, yet they still looked down on me like I was garbage.
I ripped the check into pieces and threw it in their faces.
Just as they ordered the butler to drag me out, a group of men in black suits shattered the chaos.
The heir of the untouchable Montgomery dynasty stepped through the door, ignoring the Hills' fawning, and handed me a DNA report.
I wasn't a disposable blood bag. I was the long-lost true heiress of old New York money.
And now, I was going to take back everything they stole from me.