Mr. CEO's Darling Shame
A scarred wife. A hidden legacy. A love too costly to deny.
To the world, Adrian Voss is untouchable-cold, ruthless, and devastatingly powerful. The billionaire CEO of Voss Enterprises has everything... except the one thing he hides behind locked doors.
His wife.
Scarred and scorned, Ava Voss lives in the shadows of her marriage. To society, she doesn't exist. To Adrian's glamorous mistress, Selene Monroe, she's nothing but an obstacle waiting to be erased. And to Adrian's cruel family, she's a curse.
But Ava carries two secrets no one expects-
One that ties Adrian's fragile empire to her name.
And another growing inside her that will change everything.
When betrayal rips her from Adrian's house, Ava vanishes into silence-until the night she returns. Stronger. Radiant. Revealed as the hidden heiress of Sinclair Global, the very empire Adrian is desperate to claim.
Now the man who once denied her will have to fight for her. For her heart. For their child. And for the love he was too proud to show.
She was meant to be his shame.
Instead, she will be his reckoning.
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Chapter 2
AVA'S POV
The doors slammed behind me with a cruel finality, the echo rattling through my chest. I stumbled onto the cold stone steps outside Voss Tower, the guards releasing me like trash tossed to the curb.
My knees buckled, and I clutched my bag to me, the paper with its life-altering words crumpled somewhere inside. A child. Our child. Yet the only words ringing in my ears were Adrian's: I don't know this woman.
The world tilted. My stomach churned, and for a moment I thought I might collapse right there on the steps.
"Ava?"
The familiar voice froze me.
I turned, my eyes blurring, and saw him.
Ethan Sinclair-my older brother. His tall frame cut a sharp figure in his navy suit, his usually composed face shadowed by anger as he hurried toward me.
"What the hell just happened?" His hands gripped my arms, steadying me. His eyes darted from my trembling body to the massive building behind me. "I just saw you being dragged out by guards. What's going on Ava?" I couldn't get a word out.
"Did Adrian do this?" I avoided his gaze.
"Ava-why would your husband have you thrown out like that?"
My lips parted, but no sound came. I tried to smile, to brush it off, but tears burned my eyes. "It's-it's not what you think. Adrian was just... upset. T-today is a big day for him, so he's under a lot of pressure. He didn't mean it."
"Upset?" Ethan's voice thundered, his sharp blue eyes narrowing. "Ava, I've seen hostile takeovers handled with more respect than what I just witnessed. He humiliated you. In public."
I shook my head desperately. "No, Ethan, please-don't make this into something it isn't. He's under a lot of pressure with the Sinclair deal. I shouldn't have shown up without warning."
Ethan's grip tightened slightly. "Sinclair Global is only at the table because you begged Father to give him a chance. If Dad knew you were being treated like this-"
I jerked back, panic surging through me. "No!" The word tore from my throat. "Please, Ethan, don't tell him. You know Father. He'll pull the deal immediately, and Adrian-"
"I will never understand what you saw in him. Adrian doesn't deserve you, let alone Father's trust," Ethan snapped. His chest heaved as he glared toward the glass doors as if he could storm in and drag Adrian out himself. "Does he know who you are? Have you told him yet? Does he even know who he married?"
My heart stuttered. The question cut too close.
"No," I whispered. My throat tightened. "He doesn't. And I want to keep it that way. I didn't marry him as a Sinclair. I married him as me. Just... Ava."
Ethan's jaw clenched. "And look what 'just Ava' gets you." His voice softened then, and his expression shifted from fury to something worse: pity. He pulled me into his arms, his voice a low rumble above my head. "I can't stand seeing you hurt like this. You deserve better."
The dam broke. My body shook against him, silent sobs spilling free as I buried my face in his chest. My brother, my protector. The only one who had ever stood between me and Father's ruthless expectations.
Ethan stroked my hair, murmuring, "I won't stay silent about this, Ava. He can't treat you like dirt and walk away unscathed."
I shook my head against him, gripping his jacket like a lifeline. "Please, Ethan. For me. Don't tell Father. Promise me. It was just a misunderstanding. Adrian didn't mean it."
Ethan leaned back, searching my face with an intensity that made me tremble. "Ava-"
"Promise me!" My voice cracked.
His shoulders sagged, defeat etched into the lines of his face. Finally, he sighed heavily. "Fine. I won't tell him. But, Ava, I'm warning you-if he humiliates you like this again, I will step in. With or without your permission."
I nodded, swallowing hard, though dread curled in my stomach.
He kissed my forehead and hugged me once more, tighter this time, as if he could shield me from the truth of my own choices. His cologne was familiar, grounding. I clung to it, desperate to believe everything could still be fixed.
To anyone else, it looked like comfort. But in the right hands, with the right poison, it could look like something else entirely.
As Ethan led me toward his car, shielding me from curious stares, I never looked back at the building. I never saw the shadowed figure smiling behind the glass.
"Perfect," Selene whispered, lowering her phone, her eyes glittering with malice. "Absolutely perfect. This is gonna be interesting."
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7.9
I woke up in a sterile hospital room, my head split open from a horrific car crash.
But the pain in my skull was nothing compared to the memory burned into my retinas just before the impact: my billionaire husband, Dawson, walking into a luxury hotel with a woman who looked exactly like his dead first love.
When Dawson finally arrived at the ward, there was no panic or relief in his eyes. He just coldly looked at my bloody bandages.
"Your reckless driving just forced me to postpone the quarterly board meeting."
Even our seven-year-old son, who I almost died giving birth to, didn't spare me a single glance. He kicked my hospital bed in annoyance.
"The Wi-Fi here is garbage. You're a bad mom! Dad said Aunt Angelita should be the one living with us!"
My blood turned to ice. For five years, I had bent over backward, wearing the hideous pale dresses he picked, starving myself to maintain a fragile figure, all to be a perfect, obedient substitute for a ghost.
And this was what I got. An unfaithful husband who would rather bury me in debt than grant me a divorce, and a son who wished I was dead.
The weak, subservient Charlene died on that wet asphalt.
When the doctor pointed to Dawson and asked for his name, I looked at my husband with a hollow, defensive stare.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
Using retrograde amnesia as my shield, I was going to tear their perfect world apart.
7.8
Amara Daniels doesn't believe in destiny or happy endings; having survived from the dark shadows of her past, her life no longer has room for mistakes or attractive billionaires like Ethan Cole.
Ethan enters her life with his charming persistence, and she becomes worried after he meets her four-year-old son, her past that she has carefully buried.
He is her dangerous distraction.
But their chemistry conceals shocking secrets and connecting fates - that might either bring them together or set them apart forever. In a game where hearts and careers collide, can she have it all or will passion cost her everything?
9.5
Bridget left the office early on her anniversary, her pocket heavy with a custom velvet ring box meant for her fiancé.
But when she pushed open the bedroom door, she found him tangled in their bed with her best friend, Chloe.
"Bridget! Wait, it's not what it looks like!" Jacob stammered, his eyes wide with panic.
"Evidence," Bridget stated coldly, snapping a photo of their naked bodies before fleeing into the freezing New York night.
Desperate to numb the betrayal, she got blackout drunk at an underground lounge and threw herself at a dark, terrifyingly handsome stranger.
She woke up in a penthouse suite alone, finding only a limitless black credit card left on the nightstand.
Humiliated and feeling like a cheap escort, she ran away, swearing to forget the nightmare.
But the nightmare had just begun. When she rushed into the office, she discovered the stranger was Jevon Rocha—the ruthless billionaire CEO of her company.
He didn't fire her. Instead, he trapped her in a twisted, obsessive power game, forcing her into his private life and demanding she report to his penthouse.
Bridget couldn't understand why a ruthless billionaire was so dangerously fixated on a low-level employee.
Until she stumbled upon his secret social media account and saw a crayon drawing of a little kid, captioned with a single word: "Finally."
A wave of absolute horror washed over her. He wasn't just playing games; he was hiding a secret child and a messy, high-stakes family drama.
She refused to be the naive collateral damage in a billionaire's twisted life.
Trembling, Bridget hit "Block" on his profile, determined to escape his dangerous web.
8.0
Elena Ramirez has spent years cleaning up other people's messes-balancing a demanding analyst job by day and side hustles at night to pay off a mountain of family debt. Love was never on her agenda.
Then Adrian Harrington, the city's most feared billionaire, makes an offer she can't ignore: pose as his girlfriend to steady his company during a vicious boardroom power struggle. Six months. One contract. No feelings.
It should be easy.
But each public appearance, each staged kiss, pulls them closer than either planned. The arrangement ignites a firestorm-Adrian's jealous ex fakes a pregnancy, a hacker leaks private photos, a friend betrays them, and even his own family schemes against them. The gossip columns call her a gold digger; rivals call for Adrian's head.
Somewhere between whispered confessions and desperate damage control, the line between pretend and real disappears. Now Adrian must choose between the empire he built and the woman he never meant to love, while Elena risks everything-career, reputation, and heart-for a man who was supposed to be temporary.
Falling in Pretend delivers a high-stakes contemporary romance bursting with slow-burn chemistry, ruthless betrayals, and twists that will leave readers breathless.
7.2
Ade had sacrificed the life she loved, the things she liked doing to please James. But it was never enough for him. Somehow, the one woman he just couldn't get, was the price, she was the gem.
And so once the opportunity presented itself, Ade became a past chapter of his life. A reject.
Betrayed and scorned, Ade is on a quest to reclaim her life back and face off adversaries.
But now what is she to do with the two men in front of her. One of them her ex James who can't seem to forget her and keeps stepping in her way, and the other, a billionaire who wants her at all costs.
8.7
Introduction
Emily is the adopted daughter of a billionaire family. They adopted her after the loss of their own daughter in a bid to comfort themselves.
However, when she was twenty one, the original daughter of her adopted parents came back and after the DNA tests proved that she was their child, their joy knew no bounds as they began to celebrate her.
Emily's fiance, Louis acted as a source of comfort to her around this time because her parents neglected her, providing their attention to their daughter instead.
They were set to get married in two months but that was until she saw a post on a blog, stating that her sister and her fiance Louis, were getting married.
She had an accident and nearly died but none of her family members showed up, leading her to believe that indeed they had lost all touch of love for her.
She gets home to find a piece of condom in the trashcan, suggesting that her fiance has been busy while she was in the hospital. She confronted him, telling him if what she saw on the blogs were true and he finally admitted to it, saying he loved her sister more than her and he would be getting married to her.