My Empire, My Love, And No Regrets
My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Damien Paul, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through.
That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Eve—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister.
But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Fellows talking in the library.
They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Damien.
Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Eve.
I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen.
This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Damien over.
"No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Hunter Beach."
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Chapter 4
I was discharged from the hospital a week later. Damien was there, waiting to drive me home. I ignored him completely and got into the car with Javier, who had also come along.
Javier, the strategist. The one who had "saved" me from a falling sculpture. The one who had just reprimanded Damien for almost killing me.
He tried to make small talk on the way home, telling jokes, trying to get me to smile.
I couldn't. My face felt like a frozen mask.
"Elena, are you okay?" he asked, his voice gentle. "You seem... different."
"I'm fine," I said, my voice flat.
"Look, I know things have been tense," he said. "Why don't we go to the Christie's auction tonight? Buy yourself something pretty. It always helps." He smiled. "My treat."
I looked at him, at his handsome, concerned face, and felt a surge of disgust. "With my father's money?"
He flinched, but recovered quickly. "I have my own money, Elena. I've made some very successful investments." He leaned in a little. "Seriously. Let me buy you anything you want."
A slow, cold smile spread across my face for the first time in weeks. "Alright, Javier. You're on."
If he wanted to play the generous fool, I would let him. I would take everything I could from these vipers.
The auction house was buzzing with the city's elite. The centerpiece of the evening was a stunning necklace known as the "Tears of the Ocean," a cascade of flawless blue diamonds.
The moment I saw it, I knew I had to have it.
Just as the bidding was about to start, the doors opened and two more people walked in. Damien and Eve.
My smile froze. I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I knew, with absolute certainty, that Eve would want that necklace.
The bidding started.
"One million dollars," came a soft voice from across the room. It was Eve.
She caught my eye and then looked down, a hesitant expression on her face. "Oh, Elena. Do you want it? I'm sorry, I'll stop." She made a show of lowering her bidding paddle, looking up at Damien with sad eyes. "I wouldn't want to take something you like."
She played the part of the magnanimous sister so well.
Damien's face hardened. He glared at me from across the room, his eyes full of contempt, as if I were a bully taking a toy from a small child.
He turned to Eve, his voice loud enough for the whole room to hear. "If you like it, you should have it. Don't let anyone stop you."
Then he raised his own paddle. "Five million dollars."
A hush fell over the room. Everyone knew who Damien was. He was the Barron heir apparent, my future husband. For him to publicly bid against me for another woman was a slap in the face. Whispers erupted.
"Is he trying to humiliate her?"
"Poor Elena. To be treated like that in public."
I felt the heat of a hundred pairs of eyes on me, some pitying, some mocking. My hand, holding my own paddle, trembled with rage.
I would not be humiliated. I would not back down.
I lifted my paddle, catching the auctioneer's eye, and made a sharp, decisive gesture.
"Ten million," the auctioneer announced, his voice booming.
I would not let them win.
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7.4
I single-handedly saved my family's corporate empire from a hostile takeover, securing our market share for the next decade.
But my grandfather didn't see me as a hero. He saw me as a flawed piece of inventory.
To calm the board and fix the reputation I supposedly ruined, he forced me into an arranged marriage, auctioning me off to the highest bidder.
Desperate, I turned to my childhood friend, Egnacio, the only person who ever promised to protect me.
But instead of saving me, he publicly humiliated me. He used my desperation as a networking opportunity, pitching my arranged marriage as a business deal to a ruthless private equity king named Dexter Mathews.
Later that night, I caught Egnacio holding my cruel cousin in his arms.
"What man wants to be with a woman who looks at you like she's planning a hostile takeover?"
Hearing him mock my pain shattered the last bit of hope I had.
I realized I was never family to them. I was just a sharp knife, used to cut down their enemies and then traded for cash before I got dull.
The heartbreak vanished, replaced by a cold, violent rage.
I didn't break, and I didn't run.
Instead, I got into the back of Dexter Mathews's car. He had watched my family tear me apart, but he didn't see a broken pawn. He saw a queen.
And together, we were going to burn their entire empire to the ground.
9.3
They say you can't have it all. I'm about to prove them wrong-or destroy myself trying.
When my struggling mother married billionaire Richard Stone, I thought I was gaining a family. Instead, I found three stepbrothers who became my obsession, my downfall, and my salvation.
Dominic, the eldest, cold and commanding, who kisses me like he's claiming his kingdom and looks at me like I'm the only thing he can't control.
Julian, the charming playboy who hides a vulnerable soul beneath his perfect smile, making me feel like I'm the only woman he's ever truly seen.
Asher, the brooding artist who paints me like I'm his muse and touches me like I'm his masterpiece, seeing parts of my soul I didn't know existed.
They're forbidden. They're dangerous. They're everything I shouldn't want.
But when I discover my father didn't die by suicide that he was murdered by the very man who now calls himself my stepfather, these three powerful men becomes my unlikely allies.
First it was a forbidden attraction, now it's an arrangement that defies every rule.
The rules are simple:
I'll give each of them a chance.
I'll take everything they offer.
And in the end, I'll have to make the hardest decision of my life:
Choose one of them. Choose all of them. Or choose myself.
9.6
To escape my sister-in-law selling me off to a local thug, I married a complete stranger I met at City Hall.
My new husband, Drake, claimed to be a broke Uber driver who could barely make rent.
He even made me sign a brutal ten-page prenup just to ensure I wouldn't take his rusted, beat-up Ford sedan if we ever divorced.
I thought I was just sharing a decaying Brooklyn apartment with a struggling man at the bottom of the ladder.
But things quickly stopped making sense.
When that local thug cornered me at a restaurant, my "weak" husband didn't cower.
Instead, he dismantled three massive mobsters in ten seconds with the terrifying, fluid speed of an apex predator.
"I used to be a human punching bag in an underground boxing gym to pay off debts."
I believed his excuse, until his supposedly homeless grandfather showed up at our door in a moth-eaten sweater, begging to sleep on our lumpy sofa.
Before going to sleep, the old man casually pressed a heavy, intricately engraved pocket watch into my hand as a wedding gift.
He claimed it was a cheap flea market find that didn't even keep time.
But the sheer weight of the solid rose gold and the flawless mechanical gears inside screamed otherwise.
Why did a destitute driver have the aura of a man who controlled empires?
And what kind of homeless old man casually hands over a priceless, museum-grade antique?
I had no idea the "broke driver" sleeping on my floor was actually a ruthless billionaire CEO, and I had just walked straight into his trap.
9.0
Eileen woke up in a trashed hotel room, her head pounding with the pathetic memories of a despised Hollywood actress.
Outside the window, paparazzi were already screaming about her manufactured cheating scandal, but the real nightmare was waiting at her door.
Her paralyzed, billionaire husband, Carlisle Vinson, looked at her with pure disgust while his butler shoved a divorce settlement at her chest.
"Mr. Vinson is offering a severance package of fifty million dollars, provided you sign immediately and vacate the premises."
The original owner had left her an absolute mess.
Her trusted assistant had sold her room number to the press to frame her, and a playboy had scammed her out of her entire two million dollar life savings.
If she signed those papers and lost the Vinson family's protection, the breach of contract fees and her enemies in the industry would swallow her alive in days.
Eileen felt a cold fury override the original owner's lingering panic.
Why should she take the fall and be thrown out on the streets while the parasites who set her up lived out their wealthy fantasies?
She had died once, and she wasn't about to waste her second chance playing the victim.
Eileen slammed the heavy divorce folder shut right against the butler's chest.
"I'm not signing," she said with a terrifying, absolute calm.
She stepped behind her husband's wheelchair, ready to shield him from the cameras, secretly cure his dead legs, and make everyone who betrayed her bleed.
8.2
She was the sacrifice-married off to the city's most ruthless billionaire to save a family that never loved her. But when she discovered his betrayal with her own sister, everything shattered.
Pregnant, penniless, and abandoned, Bella Hart disappeared into the night, vowing never to be powerless again.
Few years later, she returns as the CEO of an international empire, more powerful than anyone imagined possible. Her secret weapon? The little boy with piercing grey eyes who calls her "Mommy, he is the son of the man who destroyed her.
Caleb Black spent years drowning in regret, searching for the wife he threw away. Now she's back, untouchable and unforgiving. He'll do anything to reclaim what he lost his wife, his son, his chance at redemption.
But Bella didn't return to forgive, she returned to conquer.
With enemies circling, old wounds bleeding, and a passion that refuses to die, Bella must decide: Will she let the man who broke her back into her heart? Or will she destroy him the way he once destroyed her? In a world of billion-dollar deals and deadly secrets, love is the most dangerous gamble of all.
9.7
Eleonora held the positive pregnancy test, trembling with fragile hope as she told her husband they were having a baby.
Instead of embracing her, Butler slapped the plastic stick away, his eyes cold and dead.
"You cheating whore," he spat, throwing a stack of papers at her face.
He didn't listen to her desperate pleas. He ordered his bodyguards to drag her out of their penthouse and lock her in a private hospital room.
Trapped and terrified, Eleonora watched in horror as Butler's mistress walked in with a wicked smile.
The mistress shoved a medical consent form, signed with Butler's unmistakable handwriting, right in front of Eleonora's face.
"This isn't just an abortion," the mistress sneered. "It's a full hysterectomy. You'll never have a child again."
Eleonora's heart shattered into pieces. She couldn't understand how the man she loved could be so cruel, willing to kill their unborn baby and mutilate her body over a fabricated lie.
Driven by pure maternal terror, she smeared her blood on the forged papers, set the hospital room on fire, and let the world believe she had burned to ashes.
Five years later, Eleonora returned to New York with her young son.
She was no longer the weak, broken girl who begged for mercy.
Walking into the Holloway Group boardroom in a flawless Dior suit, she slammed a legal document onto Butler's desk.
She was still his legal wife, and she was here to dismantle his empire piece by piece.