My CEO Brother Wants Me
He was supposed to be my brother. The cold CEO everyone feared. The man who controlled the entire country's business world.
But one night, he looked at me and calmly destroyed everything I thought I knew.
"We're getting married."
I laughed, but he didn't.
Now every door in my life is closing, every choice is disappearing, and the one man I'm not supposed to love refuses to let me go.
Because to Lucien Hale, this was never forbidden. It was inevitable.
And the most terrifying part? The closer I get to him, the harder it becomes to run.
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Chapter 3
AVA
I took a breath and walked down the stairs.
I didn't see him yet, but I heard his voice. It was deeper than I remembered. He didn't even need to be loud to be heard.
"I've been busy," he said.
Seraphina clicked her tongue. "Busy is not an excuse, Lucien. You disappear for months and think visiting now fixes it."
"I call," he replied.
"Once in a while," she shot back. "You didn't even visit when Ava was still abroad."
I slowed my steps without meaning to.
Alaric sighed softly. "You two have been having this same argument for years," he said. "Let him breathe."
I reached the bottom step just as Seraphina looked up and saw me.
Her face softened immediately. "There you are."
Lucien turned, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
He was taller, somehow impossibly taller than he was six years ago. I didn't even know how that was possible. I had seen him on screens, interviews and articles. The media loved him.
But none of it came close.
He was wearing black from head to toe, a fitted top tucked neatly into black trousers. I could see his muscles and abs popping out. His hair was slicked back, except for one strand that had fallen loose on his forehead.
He looked... unbelievably handsome. There was no other word for it.
Then our eyes met, and I froze
Seraphina cleared her throat quickly. "Lucien, Ava is back."
"I can see that," he said dryly. "Welcome back."
"Thank you," I said.
"Come," Seraphina said quickly. "Dinner is ready."
She guided us to the dining room.
I took my seat across from Lucien. Alaric sat at the head of the table with Seraphine beside him.
Dinner started quietly.
"So tell us, how was school?" Seraphina asked, glancing at me.
"It was good," I said. "Challenging, but good."
"And Stella?" she asked. "Is she coming back to Port Elam, or staying in London?"
"She'll be coming soon," I replied. "She's just waiting for her boyfriend to finish some projects so they can move together."
Seraphina smiled. "That's sweet."
Then she tilted her head at me, eyes bright with curiosity. "And what about you, Ava? Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No," I said. "I haven't really... explored dating."
Alaric looked at me, surprised. "Why not? A woman with a face like yours could have any man she wanted."
I laughed, a little embarrassed. "I don't know about that."
"Well," he said, "it's true."
I shrugged lightly. "I guess I'm just waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Seraphina asked, amused.
"My prince charming," I said jokingly. "Someone who would love me for me. Not because I look good or because I have money...well, your money. Just honest love."
Seraphina laughed. "You want a love story from a book."
I smiled. "Maybe I do."
Seraphina leaned forward a little, still smiling. "But surely there must be someone who has caught your attention."
I felt heat rush to my face before I could stop it.
I looked down at my plate, suddenly very aware of Lucien sitting beside me.
"There is... someone," I admitted.
Seraphina's smile widened instantly. "I knew it."
I laughed softly, nervous. "It's nothing serious."
"Why not?" she asked.
I hesitated, then said, "I don't think it would work."
"Why?" Alaric asked.
I shrugged. "I don't know. He's staying back in London, besides men don't really approach me much."
That part was true. People looked, admired me even but they rarely came closer. It had always been like that.
Seraphina looked surprised. "That's hard to believe."
I just smiled faintly and focused on my food.
Beside me, Lucien still hadn't spoken but when I glanced down, I noticed his grip on the cup had tightened. For a second, I wondered if the glass might actually crack. His face, though, gave nothing away.
Alaric cleared his throat.
"So," he said, setting his cutlery down, "what's next for you, Ava?"
I looked up. "Next?"
"Yes. Now that you've graduated."
"Oh," I said. "I'm hoping to start applying for jobs soon."
There was a pause, then I noticed the way both Seraphina and Alaric frowned, like they didn't quite understand what I'd just said.
Lucien, who had been mostly silent all evening, finally looked at me. It made me sit up without meaning to.
Alaric leaned back in his chair. "Apply for jobs?" he repeated.
"Yes," I said. "I want to work. You know...gain experience."
He exchanged a look with Seraphina. "Why would you apply for jobs when you're family?"
I blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"You could work at Hale Corporation," he continued. "There's no need for you to go elsewhere."
Seraphina nodded in agreement. "Your father is right. You don't have to start from the bottom elsewhere."
I opened my mouth to respond, but she kept going.
"Lucien would be glad to find you a suitable position," she added, glancing toward him.
I could feel Lucien's attention on me again. I smiled politely, but I shook my head.
"I appreciate that," I said, "but I'd like to work on my own. Build something myself."
I continued before anyone could interrupt.
"I was thinking of applying to Greenfield," I added. "They're expanding their strategy department."
"There's no need for that." Lucien finally said.
Everyone looked at him.
I frowned, confused by the certainty in his tone.
Seraphina, however, didn't look confused. She looked... anxious.
Lucien set his cutlery down neatly and wiped his hands with his napkin before speaking again.
"You won't be applying anywhere."
My brows pulled together. "I'm sorry?"
He faced me directly. "There's no reason for you to work outside,"
"I want to." I countered.
"That's unnecessary." The arrogance in his voice made my chest tighten.
"With all due respect," I said, trying to stay calm, "it's not unnecessary to me."
Lucien didn't look offended. If anything, he looked more serious.
"We're getting married." He declared.
For a second, I didn't quite understand the words.
"Sorry... what?"
Seraphina inhaled sharply. Alaric didn't look surprised. He just rubbed his temple like this conversation had been waiting to happen.
"You and I," Lucien said without breaking eye contact with me. "We're getting married."
My chair scraped against the floor as I leaned back.
I laughed, "That's not funny."
"I'm not laughing." He replied.
My heart started pounding. "Lucien," I said slowly, "I'm your sister."
He didn't even blink. "You live in my house," he replied. "That doesn't make you my sister."
The room went completely quiet.
I stared at Lucien, trying to figure out if he had lost his mind but his face was calm, and that scared me more than anything else he could have said.
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8.7
For three years, I played the perfect, submissive housewife to billionaire Julian Harrison.
But right after an intimate night together, he coldly threw a divorce agreement onto the bed.
"Scarlett landed an hour ago. I need my single status restored to welcome her back."
That same night, I ended up in the emergency room and discovered I was pregnant with twins.
When Julian found out, he didn't show a shred of joy. Instead, he stormed into my hospital room, threw a blank check directly at my face, and ordered me to get rid of them.
He accused me of using the babies as a sick game to trap his assets.
Then, his ruthless lawyer kicked me out of our penthouse, confiscating the jewelry he gifted me and tossing my worn-out notebook onto the floor like garbage.
Standing in the freezing rain, my heart completely died.
I had swallowed my pride, managed his life, and cooked his meals to his exact standards for three years, only to be thrown away the second his first love returned.
But he didn't know that the notebook his lawyer discarded contained the secret formulas of Aura Beauty, a billion-dollar empire I built in the shadows.
I tore his check into pieces, blocked his number, and left in a Maybach sent by my associate.
Logging into my global CEO database, I looked at his company's fragile stock chart with a predatory smile.
The docile Mrs. Harrison died in the rain. It was time to crush his empire.
7.0
Eleanore thought her fiancé, Johan, was her only salvation after her family went bankrupt.
But at a high-society gala, he handed her a drugged glass of water. As the unnatural heat burned through her veins, the horrific truth hit her. Johan had isolated her and controlled her finances, all while secretly getting engaged to a wealthy heiress. He drugged Eleanore to ruin her completely, planning to lock her away as his helpless, secret mistress.
Desperate and losing her mind to the drug, Eleanore fled down the hallway. With Johan and his bodyguards hunting her, she stumbled into the dark presidential suite.
But she wasn't alone. Sitting on the leather sofa was Alexander Briggs—the most feared corporate raider on Wall Street, and Johan's exiled brother.
Outside the door, Johan was screaming, ready to drag her back to hell.
"I can be your antidote. But it's going to cost you."
The ruthless billionaire looked at her trembling body with cold calculation. He offered her a staggering deal: a three-month fake marriage to destroy Johan's empire, and in return, absolute protection and her father's massive debts paid in full.
She couldn't understand why the most powerful predator in New York would use a ruined girl as his weapon, but she knew she would rather die than let Johan touch her again.
When Johan finally broke down the door to claim his prey, Alexander calmly pulled Eleanore into his arms.
"Watch your mouth. You are speaking to my future wife."
8.4
Kenzie, the former leader of the Aegis Alliance, opened her eyes to find herself reincarnated as a freezing, abandoned infant in a wet cardboard box.
She was rescued from the rain by Devin Ayers, a ruthless billionaire, and rushed to a private hospital, but a deadly threat was already waiting for her.
The ER doctor, Desiree Dillon, approached her with a syringe. Through a sudden burst of telepathy, Kenzie read the doctor's dark thoughts. Desiree wasn't trying to cure her fever. She deliberately ignored the safe dosage, drawing a lethal amount of Diazepam to permanently silence the crying baby and disguise it as sudden infant death.
"This will make it all go away," Desiree smiled gently, the needle glinting as it moved inches from Kenzie's arm.
Trapped in a weak, paralyzed three-month-old body, Kenzie couldn't run, fight, or even speak. She could only watch the poison inch closer.
How could she survive death only to be assassinated in a hospital bed by a corrupt doctor? She used to command armies. The sheer injustice and terror of dying completely helpless in this tiny body ignited a blinding rage inside her.
Refusing to be a victim again, Kenzie pushed her newborn brain to its absolute limit and unleashed a desperate telepathic scream directly into the billionaire's mind.
"Poison! She's trying to kill me!"
Devin, who had been looking away, suddenly froze, his icy gray eyes locking onto the doctor's wrist.
8.9
Aubree Hamilton was the top-tier executive assistant to Wall Street's most ruthless titan, Beck Franco. A month ago, she made a catastrophic mistake and spent the night in his bed.
Thinking she had erased the mistake with a morning-after pill, she panicked upon his return and lied about being engaged to push him away.
But Beck, a man who despised disloyalty above all else, immediately suspended her and ordered her escorted out of the building. Her nightmare only escalated when her toxic ex-boyfriend attacked her on the street, tearing her purse open and exposing the empty morning-after pill box to the public—and to Beck, who was watching from his penthouse. After having his security rescue her, Beck trapped her in his car, ruthlessly tearing apart her fake engagement. Later in her apartment, the suffocating tension between them almost ignited into a kiss, but a violent wave of nausea suddenly hit Aubree.
She shoved him away with all her strength and violently threw up in the bathroom.
Beck took it as the ultimate physical disgust. He walked out, deeply humiliated and dangerously obsessed, unleashing his resources to investigate her every move.
Left alone and trembling, Aubree finally checked the crushed white box. The pill she took had expired a month ago.
Staring at the two bright pink lines on the pregnancy test, she made a desperate vow: Beck Franco could never know she was carrying his child, and she had to disappear before he found out.
8.9
For fifteen years, I thought my mother had died in a tragic fire.
Then the wealthy Ross family's butler knocked on my door, revealing she was alive—locked away in the psychiatric annex of their massive estate.
I rushed into the lion's den to save her, only to run straight into Graydon Ross, the ruthless billionaire CEO.
He looked at my cheap clothes with pure disgust, convinced I was a bottom-feeding scammer trying to extort his family.
"Throw this bitch out into the snow."
He ordered his armed guards to drag me away, completely cutting off my only chance to see my mentally broken mother.
But as he violently grabbed my collar to throw me out, I saw a custom eagle-head cufflink hanging from his coat pocket.
My blood turned to ice, and a wave of paralyzing terror crashed over me.
Eight months ago, I accidentally slept with a masked stranger in a pitch-black hotel room and fled before dawn.
That cufflink belonged to him.
The man who took my virginity—the Wall Street tyrant I had been hiding from—was Graydon Ross.
If he ever found out I was that woman, he would literally destroy my life.
But to save my mother, I couldn't be thrown out.
When his grandmother suddenly appeared, I dropped to the floor, exposed the dark bruises Graydon had just left on my wrists, and sobbed.
I framed the billionaire for assault to secure my place in the mansion, forcing myself to live right next door to the monster whose bed I had fled.
7.7
Dasia's twin brother, Gerald, was an e-sports prodigy, the rising star of the Glory team.
But during a crucial moment, he was framed by his own teammates. They orchestrated a trap that completely destroyed his reputation and left his right hand brutally crushed.
Instead of getting him medical help, the club threw him out into the freezing rain, bleeding and disgraced. The manager labeled him useless trash and slapped him with a five-million-dollar termination fee to bleed him dry. Stripped of his pro status, the wealthy bullies at his prep school relentlessly targeted him, mocking his crippled hand and beating him down.
Dasia watched her twin brother cry in his room, his life and dreams shattered by the people he trusted. A violent, suffocating rage boiled in her chest. How could they smile while crushing his hand? Why should the victim be treated like a rotting piece of garbage while the perpetrators get rich and celebrated?
She didn't shed a single tear. She stood in front of the mirror, took a pair of scissors, and ruthlessly hacked off her waist-length hair. She wrapped her chest in coarse medical bandages until her ribs screamed, and pulled on his oversized black hoodie.
"Everything you took from him, I am going to take back with interest."
The girl in the mirror was gone. She was Gerald now. She secretly passed the brutal online tryouts for Glory's biggest rival, the elite Blackflame team, and signed their official contract. The revenge had officially begun.