Neglected Wife: Hidden Heiress's Cold Revenge
I stood in the pouring rain at my father-in-law's funeral, the heels of my black pumps sinking into the mud. I was Mrs. Vargas, the wife of New York's most powerful billionaire, yet I was standing at the edge of the crowd like a forgotten statue.
Ten feet away, under the dry shelter of the family tent, my husband Hayes held another woman against his chest. It wasn't me he was whispering comfort to; it was Felicity, his late brother's widow and childhood sweetheart.
The humiliation didn't end at the cemetery. Hayes moved Felicity and her son into our home, relegating me to the guest wing while she took over the primary suites. He watched silently as her son smashed the only photograph of my deceased parents, then demanded I apologize for "scaring" the boy with my reaction. When Felicity's negligence ruined a twelve-million-dollar family heirloom, Hayes had the audacity to ask me to use my own savings to buy her a "consolation" engagement ring. He treated me like a parasite, never realizing I was a brilliant scientist with a hidden fortune and three patents to my name.
I realized then that our three-year marriage was a hollow farce. Hayes had never even touched me, claiming he wanted to "remain pure" for his memory of Felicity. I was nothing more than a business merger, a smudge on the lens of the perfect family portrait he was building with another man's widow.
The breaking point came during a lethal blizzard. Hayes promised to accompany me to my family's mandatory gala-a tradition where my absence meant a death sentence. But at the last second, he stood me up to stay home and tend to Felicity's stubbed toe. Left alone to face the wrath of the Santos Matriarch, I was forced to kneel in the freezing snow as punishment until my lungs began to fail and my vision blurred.
Just as the darkness started to take me, a black Maybach smashed through the iron gates. My exiled brother, the man the world calls "The Wolf," stepped out of the storm to reclaim what Hayes had discarded. Hayes thought I was a helpless doll who couldn't survive a day without his trust fund, but he's about to find out what happens when you let a Santos daughter freeze.
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Chapter 2
The next morning, the sky was a bruised purple, clearing after the storm. Eliana did not wake up in the Vargas estate. She hadn't slept there. She had slept in a small, sterile room at a private club in Manhattan, one that required a retinal scan to enter.
She wore a beige trench coat over a simple white blouse and trousers. She drove a nondescript Audi sedan, a car she had bought with cash two years ago and kept parked three blocks from the estate.
She pulled up to a brownstone on the Upper East Side. There was no sign on the door, just a brass number plate.
She buzzed. The door clicked open.
Inside, the office smelled of old books and expensive coffee. Talia Winters sat behind a mahogany desk that was cluttered with files. Talia was sharp-featured, with a bob cut that looked like it could slice paper. She was the best divorce attorney in the city, and she was Eliana's only friend.
Talia looked up and whistled.
"You look like a spy," Talia said.
Eliana took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were rimmed with red, not from crying, but from lack of sleep. She sat down and placed her leather bag on the floor.
"Draft it," Eliana said. "I'm done."
Talia didn't blink. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a thick folder.
"I've had this ready for six months, Eliana. You know that."
Talia opened the folder.
"We go for half," Talia said, uncapping a pen. "The pre-nup has a cheating clause. If we can prove emotional infidelity-which, given the photos from the funeral yesterday, is a slam dunk-we can pierce the trust."
"No," Eliana said.
Talia paused. "What?"
"I don't want his money," Eliana said. Her voice was quiet but hard. "I don't want the estate. I don't want the stocks. I want out. Clean break. Immediately."
Talia dropped the pen. "Eliana, you spent three years playing the dutiful wife to that man-child. You were his nurse, his PR manager, his emotional punching bag. You earned that payout."
Eliana reached into her bag and pulled out a sealed medical envelope. She slid it across the desk.
Talia frowned. "What is this?"
"Open it."
Talia ripped the seal. She scanned the document. It was a gynecological report from a top specialist, dated yesterday.
Talia's eyes widened. She looked up, her mouth slightly open.
"Intact?" Talia whispered. "You... after three years?"
Eliana leaned back in the chair. "He wanted to save himself for her. He told me on our wedding night. He said the marriage was just business, a merger between his father and the board. He said he wouldn't dishonor his memory of Nina-that's what he calls Felicity-by sleeping with me."
Talia slammed the file shut. "That son of a bitch. That is constructive abandonment. That is fraud. We can destroy him. We can make him pay until he bleeds."
"No," Eliana said. She leaned forward, her hands clasping together. "Listen to me, Talia. The Santos family is looking for me."
The air in the room changed. Talia went rigid.
"My grandmother's private investigators were spotted near the clinic last week," Eliana continued. "If I drag this out with a messy divorce trial, if my face is on the cover of the tabloids fighting for money, the Santos family will find me. They will drag me back. And you know what that means."
Talia swallowed. She knew. She was the only one who knew.
Eliana took a breath. "I need speed. I need Hayes to sign a waiver of contest. I need him to think he's winning. If I ask for nothing, if I leave with just my clothes, his ego will let me go. He thinks I'm helpless. He thinks I'll come crawling back."
Talia looked at the medical report, then at Eliana's determined face. She sighed, a long, defeated sound.
"Fine," Talia said. "I'll draft the 'Decoy' agreement. Mutual separation, no alimony, no asset division. It's the worst deal in history."
"It's the price of freedom," Eliana said.
Her phone buzzed on the desk. A text from Hayes.
Family dinner tonight. Don't be late.
Eliana stared at the screen. She typed: Received. Then she deleted the message.
She stood up. "Have it ready by tomorrow."
Eliana drove back to the estate. She parked the Audi three blocks away, walked to the service entrance, and slipped into the house.
She changed into one of the pastel dresses Hayes liked-something soft, unthreatening. She walked down the grand staircase.
She stopped on the landing.
The main living room, a space Eliana had curated with minimalist, elegant art, was in chaos.
Movers were hauling out the abstract sculptures she had commissioned. In their place, they were hanging large, garish photographs in cheap, colorful plastic frames.
The photos were everywhere. Felicity and Leo at the beach. Felicity and Leo at Disney World. Felicity and Leo baking cookies.
It looked like a shrine.
Felicity was standing in the center of the room, pointing at the mantle.
"No, move that vase," she instructed a worker. "It blocks the picture of Leo's first tooth."
Eliana walked down the remaining steps. Her heels clicked on the marble.
Felicity turned. Her face lit up with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Oh! Eliana!" Felicity clapped her hands. "I hope you don't mind. I just felt this place was so... cold. It needed some life. Some family energy."
Eliana looked at the wall where her favorite painting, a moody seascape, used to hang. It was now occupied by a blown-up photo of Leo eating spaghetti.
"Taste is subjective, I suppose," Eliana said. "Though some things are objectively loud."
Felicity's smile faltered. She bit her lip, her eyes instantly filling with tears.
"I just wanted to make it nice..."
Hayes walked in from the library. He saw Felicity's face and immediately stepped between the two women.
"Eliana," Hayes warned. "Felicity is a guest. Can you try, for once, to be gracious?"
Eliana looked at him. He was wearing a casual sweater, looking every bit the suburban dad he pretended to be with Felicity.
"A guest?" Eliana asked. "Then why is she redecorating the host's home?"
Hayes's jaw tightened. "This is my house, Eliana. And Felicity is trying to make it comfortable for Leo. The boy has been through enough."
Eliana looked around the room. It didn't look like a home anymore. It looked like territory that had been marked.
"You're right," Eliana said.
Hayes blinked, surprised by her capitulation.
"It is your house," she continued. "Soon, it will be entirely yours."
She turned and walked toward the stairs.
Hayes watched her go. He felt a prickle of annoyance, a strange itch at the back of his neck. Usually, she would argue. Usually, she would fight for her aesthetic.
Why did she give up so easily?
Hayes turned back to Felicity, who was sniffing bravely.
"Don't worry, honey," Hayes said, wrapping an arm around her. "She's just jealous. It looks great."
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7.1
I woke up gasping for air, expecting the cold concrete of a prison cell, but my fingers sank into the plush leather of a luxury Lincoln. I was twenty-four again, wearing the silver silk dress from the night my life was systematically destroyed.
Beside me sat my cousin Catrina, the woman whose carefully crafted lies had orchestrated my ruin and sent me to a penitentiary for five years.
In my first life, this was the night the dominoes fell. Catrina stole my jewelry to paint me as mentally unstable, and by morning, I was stripped of my medical license and labeled a criminal. My mother’s family, the Montgomerys, stood by and watched as my father’s company was devoured by wolves, treating my existence like a "liability" that needed to be managed. I still felt the phantom tremors in my hands from prison fights and the stinging betrayal of being discarded by the people I called family.
I had lived through five years of absolute hell, a former surgeon rotting in a cell while the people who framed me toasted to their success at galas I was no longer invited to.
"Don't be selfish, Dawn," Catrina whispered, reaching for the necklace that would later be used as evidence against me. "Let the jewelry shine on someone who actually matters."
She thought I was still the fragile victim she could manipulate, but she didn't realize I had returned from the grave with the cold, clinical calculation of a fixer.
Instead of walking into her trap at the gala, I forced the car onto a dark service road and dragged a dying billionaire, Jennings Stafford, from the wreckage of a burning SUV.
He was the only man powerful enough to destroy my enemies, and as I stitched his wounds with stolen supplies, I didn't ask for a thank you.
I looked him dead in the eye and proposed a contract that would set the world on fire.
"I want a strategic marriage. You get a harmless wife with a legacy name to calm your board, and I get immunity from everyone who ever touched me."
The bill for my five years in prison had finally come due, and I was here to collect.
7.4
When I called my husband while trapped in a kidnapper's warehouse, he laughed. "Stop faking," he said, "my delicate mistress needs her sleep." He hung up. I signed the divorce papers drenched in my own blood, giving up everything just to escape the monster I married.
His mother threw a broken umbrella at me in the rain. I had nothing—no money, no identity, no hope.
But the moment I turned away, eight black Escalades encircled the street. A man in a tailored suit stepped out of a Rolls-Royce, shielding me with an umbrella. In his hand was a DNA test—and twenty-three years of relentless search.
"Your last name isn't Smith," he said, wiping blood from my wrist with his handkerchief. "It's Wilder. The Wilder family. And the man who left you to die?" He smiled, icy. "He owes us nine billion dollars."
9.2
I brought the original drafts of the Lloyd Center to my stepsister’s high-society pool party, hoping the gift would finally earn my family's respect. I stood on the edge of the limestone patio, clutching the leather portfolio as fifty pairs of judgmental eyes watched my every move.
But the moment I handed the sketches to Corina, she retracted her hand, letting the portfolio sink into the chlorine before throwing herself into the pool with a theatrical scream.
My fiancé, Julian, didn't hesitate; he shoved me aside with enough force to twist my ankle and dove in to rescue her. He surfaced with Corina in his arms, looking at me with a mask of pure disgust while the crowd whispered that I was an unstable, illegitimate intruder. My stepmother Eugenia didn't even ask for an explanation before she stepped forward and slapped me across the face, ordering me to get out before she called the police.
"Sister, if you're still mad about the inheritance, just say it. Why did you push me?"
"Enough! God, Aria. Your jealousy is actually sickening."
I stood on shaking legs, looking at the man who had promised to know my heart for two years, only to realize he was just another wolf in the pack. The humiliation burned hotter than the sting on my face, and I realized that in their eyes, I would always be the trash they needed to take out.
I yanked the diamond ring off my finger, slammed it onto a table, and walked away from my old life forever. To claim my trust fund and survive, I walked into a dive bar and offered a marriage contract to a broke, mysterious artist named Harland. I thought I was just buying a temporary shield, but I didn't realize that my "poor" new husband was actually a billionaire predator who was already planning to burn my family's empire to the ground.
7.2
Talia Morgan is a broke final-year medical student with one nightmare she cannot escape - her mother is dying, and the hospital bills are impossible to pay.
Just when all hope is lost, she receives an unbelievable offer: a one-year contract marriage to billionaire tech CEO Adrian Blackwood... in exchange for $50,000.
No love.
No intimacy.
No emotions.
Just rules and signatures.
Adrian needs a wife to secure his inheritance. Talia needs money to save her mother. The deal is simple.
Until it isn't.
Living under the same roof with a cold, dangerously attractive billionaire brings unexpected complications:
• His jealous ex refuses to disappear
• His family starts to love her
• And every touch, every glance, begins to feel less like a contract and more like a promise
When Talia discovers she may be carrying the one man she was never supposed to love, the contract threatens to destroy everything.
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."
9.2
Emmett was a loyal footman at the wealthy Patterson estate, desperate to scrub the slum out of his blood.
He abandoned his family and gave his absolute devotion to the beautiful young miss, Clara.
But when the estate faced bankruptcy, Clara ruthlessly framed him for embezzlement to protect her family's wealth.
He was shoved into a police carriage in the freezing rain. Through the window, he saw Clara watching him with fake pity, looking at him like a stray dog being put down.
The judge slammed his gavel, sentencing him to a slow, agonizing death.
Because he had spent all his wages on tailored uniforms to fit in, his mother died in a cheap coffin from an untreated illness, leaving his siblings to starve.
As the thick, coarse rope crushed his windpipe, Emmett was filled with agonizing regret.
He didn't understand how the woman who smiled so sweetly could send him to the gallows without a single ounce of hesitation.
Opening his eyes again, Emmett found himself back in the servant's quarters, exactly three days before the Patterson family's downfall.
This time, he wouldn't be their loyal dog. He was going to be their executioner.
He planned to watch Clara sell herself to the savage new heir, Kearney Bernard, just to keep her luxury.
But at the welcome dinner, the terrifying new master ignored Clara completely, locked his dark, obsessive eyes on Emmett, and whispered.
"You are mine. Nobody touches you."