My Fake Bankrupt Husband Is A Tycoon
I was trapped in a greasy diner by my own mother.
She was forcing me to marry my abusive cousin because he had paid her twenty thousand dollars.
To escape, I used a contract marriage app and begged a complete stranger to marry me at City Hall that very day.
Ethan drove a cheap Ford and wore a plain suit. I thought he was just an ordinary guy needing a fake wife.
When my mother found out, she brought thugs to destroy my flower shop—my only home and livelihood.
To protect Ethan from her endless extortion, I shielded him and screamed that he was bankrupt and drowning in credit card debt.
My mother fled in disgust, and Ethan took me into his apartment for the night.
But out of trauma and habit, I locked my bedroom door, muttering that he must be old and desperate.
He stormed out into the freezing night, leaving me terrified that I had ruined my only lifeline.
I didn't understand why he was so furiously offended, completely unaware that my "broke" husband was actually the most ruthless billionaire in New York, and I had just trampled his massive ego.
The next morning, his face was a mask of ice as he dragged me back to City Hall to annul the marriage and get rid of me.
"Annulment. Now," he demanded.
But the clerk just popped her gum and slid a pink paper across the counter.
"State law changed. Mandatory thirty-day cooling-off period."
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Chapter 4
Two patrol cars screech to a halt outside the shattered storefront. Four officers, body cameras blinking red, pour out of the vehicles.
Lead Detective Gale Henderson draws his baton. "Philadelphia Police! Everyone freeze and put your hands where I can see them!"
The two Vaughan cousins drop the broken shelves and immediately drop to their knees, lacing their fingers behind their heads.
Doris lets go of my hair. Her face transforms instantly. She forces tears into her eyes and throws herself toward Gale.
"Officer! Thank god you're here!" Doris wails, grabbing Gale's uniform sleeve. "My daughter is out of control! She attacked me!"
Gale steps back, peeling her hands off his uniform with a look of utter disgust. His sharp eyes scan the devastation of the flower shop. He takes in the overturned tables, the crushed flowers, and the shattered glass.
Then, his eyes land on me.
I am huddled in the corner, clutching the succulents. Blood is streaming down the back of my hand, soaking into the sleeve of my cheap sweater.
Gale's expression softens. He gestures for his officers to secure Doris and the men. He walks over to me, crouching down to my level.
"Ma'am, do you need an ambulance?" Gale asks gently.
I shake my head. I grab a wad of paper towels from the counter and press it hard against my bleeding hand. The sting makes me wince.
"No," I say, my voice surprisingly steady. "I want to press charges. Destruction of property, trespassing, and assault."
Doris screams from across the room. "It's a family dispute! I'm her mother! I can do whatever I want to her property!"
"It's my property," I say coldly. "And she is not my family anymore. I am married."
My good hand reaches into my bag. I pull out the crumpled marriage license and hand it to the detective.
Gale takes the paper. He scans it, a routine procedure. His eyes drift to the 'Husband' section.
Gale stops breathing.
His pupils dilate. He stares at the name. Ethan Patterson. He stares at the signature. The aggressive, sharp strokes of the pen.
Gale's brain short-circuits. He knows that signature. He lived in the same dorm room as that signature for four years at Columbia University. That is the signature of the most ruthless billionaire in New York.
Gale slowly raises his head. He looks at me. He takes in my bloodstained sweater, my pale face, and the cheap plastic ring on my finger.
The richest man in America married this girl? Today?
Gale clears his throat, fighting to keep his face neutral. He hands the paper back to me with a newfound, profound respect. "Understood, Mrs. Patterson."
Gale turns on his heel. He walks out of the shop, stepping behind the patrol car, completely out of my line of sight.
He pulls out his personal cell phone and dials a number that only five people in the world have.
Ethan picks up on the second ring. "What."
"Are you out of your mind?" Gale hisses, keeping his voice low.
In the back of the Maybach, Ethan frowns. "What are you talking about, Henderson?"
Gale lets out a breathless laugh. "I'm standing in a destroyed flower shop in Old City. Your new little wife is bleeding from the hand, and her mother just tried to extort her. Did you really get married?"
Silence. Dead, heavy silence on the other end of the line.
Then, the sound of a leather portfolio being slammed shut.
"Address," Ethan says. His voice is a weapon.
Gale gives him the address and hangs up. He walks back into the shop. "Cuff the mother," he orders his officers.
Doris realizes he is serious. She throws herself onto the floor, kicking and screaming like a toddler. "You can't arrest me! I know my rights!"
As the officers struggle to lift her, the sound of tires grinding against the curb echoes through the open door.
The sleek, black Maybach screeches to a halt.
The rear door flies open. Ethan steps out. The air around him seems to drop ten degrees. His face is a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
I look up. When I see his tall, broad frame stride past the police tape, the wall I've built around my emotions cracks. My throat tightens.
Ethan ignores the police. He ignores Doris. He walks straight to me.
His dark eyes lock onto the blood soaking through the paper towels on my hand. The muscle in his jaw flexes so hard it looks like it might snap.
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9.0
Adaline Poole thought she had escaped her family's toxic corporate grip by moving to London and adopting a stray cat named Monty.
But when she returns to her empty apartment, her father delivers a chilling ultimatum: he has kidnapped the cat and will euthanize it by morning unless she accepts an arranged marriage with Barron Cooke, a notoriously elusive billionaire.
Her entire family becomes complicit in her sale. Her mother demands she secure their elite status, and her brother secretly spies on her social media to feed Barron her every move. Horrified to discover Barron is a thirty-three-year-old "fossil" twelve years her senior, Adaline resorts to sabotage. She goes to a Soho club, takes a scandalous photo with a frat boy, and sends it to the old billionaire to disgust him into canceling their upcoming dinner.
But her rebellion backfires horribly when the frat boy spikes her drink with a powerful narcotic. As her body burns with a terrifying, feverish heat, she collapses in a dark corridor. Stripped of her phone and betrayed by her bloodline, she is left utterly defenseless as a predator approaches to drag her away.
Suddenly, the heavy fire door is kicked open by a towering, terrifyingly handsome stranger who effortlessly neutralizes her attacker.
"Please... help me," Adaline begs, deliriously throwing her burning body into his arms.
She has absolutely no idea that the handsome savior she is clinging to is Barron Cooke himself.
8.4
Everly spent four years playing the perfect, accommodating wife to Carson Moss, swallowing every grievance just to secure medical treatments for their sick daughter.
But at a high-society banquet she exhausted herself organizing, Carson's pregnant mistress crashed the party.
The woman shoved an ultrasound of Carson's "real heir" directly into Everly's frail grandfather's face.
The shock triggered a massive heart attack.
Carson refused to use his private helicopter to save the dying old man, choosing to protect his mistress and his company's IPO instead. Her grandfather died on the hospital table.
Instead of remorse, her mother-in-law demanded Everly publicly cover up the murder.
"You will do exactly as I say, or I will freeze every single cent of the medical trust fund paying for your crippled daughter's treatments."
When a battered Everly returned to the estate, she discovered her three-year-old daughter covered in dark bruises and pinch marks. Her in-laws were deliberately torturing her disabled child.
Everly couldn't comprehend how a family could be so utterly heartless. Her only family was murdered, her child was abused, and her husband threw a five-million-dollar check at her face as hush money.
They thought she would just break and quietly disappear.
But when a terrifyingly powerful billionaire unexpectedly blocked Carson's security team from locking her up, Everly finally saw her window.
She grabbed her sleeping daughter and ran out into the freezing storm, making a blood-bound vow to make the entire Moss family bleed.
8.1
Desperate for a way out of rejection and poverty, Pearl Augustine accepts a nanny job with an outrageous salary-working for billionaire Ace Warren. What she doesn't expect is his daughter.
Mia Warren is spoiled, sharp-tongued, and feared by everyone in the mansion. Behind her cruelty is a lonely child longing for a mother. As Pearl becomes the only one who can reach her, walls begin to fall-especially those around Ace, a grieving man hiding behind wealth and control.
What started as "just a job" quickly turns into something dangerous: attachment.
Sometimes, healing begins where you least expect it.
7.1
For seven years, I hid my identity as a wealthy heiress to be with my boyfriend, Ewing. I followed him across the country and made myself small so he could feel big.
On Thanksgiving, he ditched our celebration for his first love, Bree, who supposedly had a "burst pipe."
Later, she posted an intimate selfie with him, calling him her "hero."
Then she sent me a video of him at a bar, laughing with his friends.
"She's just being dramatic," he slurred, smirking at the camera. "A new necklace and she'll forget all about it. She's easy."
Easy. Seven years of my life, my love, my sacrifice-all reduced to that one word. I realized I was never his partner. I was just a placeholder.
I didn't cry. I packed my bags, booked a one-way flight to New York, and sent him one final text before blocking his number.
"Don't bother coming home. I'm getting married."
9.3
Ginny was chained to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, bleeding and betrayed by the two people she trusted most.
Her fiancé, Brant, and her adopted sister, Coretta, had just slashed her face open. Brant coldly admitted she was nothing but a disposable key to a vault, right before he tossed a lighter onto the gasoline-soaked floor.
As Ginny burned alive in the roaring inferno, the heavy iron doors were violently smashed open. Bedford Parks—the notoriously ruthless, germaphobic "monster" of Silicon Valley whom Ginny had always feared—charged straight into the flames. Ignoring the blistering heat, he shielded her charred body with his own. A massive steel beam collapsed, snapping his spine.
"I love you."
He coughed up blood, whispering his final words against her blackened skin before dying to protect her.
Hovering as a ghost, Ginny's soul screamed in agonizing realization. She had spent her life terrified of Bedford, yet he was the only one who truly loved her, while her supposed family laughed at her gruesome murder.
Suddenly, a blinding white light swallowed the warehouse.
Ginny gasped for air, opening her eyes to find herself sitting in the back of a luxury Maybach. She was eighteen again, wearing the humiliating clown makeup Coretta had tricked her into wearing on the day she was brought back to the wealthy Steele estate.
Ginny stared at her reflection, her dark eyes turning cold and sharp.
This time, she would tear her betrayers apart piece by piece, and she would protect her "monster."
7.1
To survive a forced one-year marriage contract with the ultra-wealthy Chavez family, Averi Marsh disguised herself as a pathetic, ugly duckling.
She caked her flawless skin in muddy yellow foundation, wore thick glasses, and played the part of a trembling, uneducated orphan.
The entire family treated her like literal garbage.
The youngest brother publicly swore he would rather cut off his own hand than marry a piece of trailer park trash.
Her nominal fiancé, Clarke, looked at her with cold disdain, allowing his glamorous companion to humiliate Averi by forcing her into a neon pink clown dress.
At a high-society party, a socialite shoved her into an infinity pool, laughing as the heavy fabric dragged her to the bottom.
They all wanted to see the poor girl broken, humiliated, and driven out of their pristine world.
What they didn't know was that beneath the hideous sweaters was a breathtaking, lethal predator.
They had no idea she was 'Spectre', the undefeated underground racing god who had just humiliated the arrogant Clarke on the track.
They didn't know she could shatter a bully's wrist in seconds or bankrupt their wealthy friends with a single text message.
But when the chlorinated pool water washed away her ugly makeup, the family's ambitious second son caught a glimpse of her true, flawless face.
The game of hide-and-seek was officially over.
The Chavez family thought they were torturing a helpless sheep, but they were about to realize they had locked themselves in a cage with a wolf.