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 3
Dinner was a nightmare of noise.
The dining room table was set for four, but only three people were eating. Leo was not eating. Leo was drumming.
He held a silver fork in one fist and a spoon in the other, banging them rhythmically against the rim of a crystal goblet. Clink. Clink. Smash. Clink.
Eliana sat at her usual spot. She tried to cut her chicken, but the noise was drilling into her temples.
"Hayes," she said softly.
Hayes looked up from his phone. He was scrolling through emails. "Hmm?"
"The noise," Eliana said. "It's crystal."
Felicity laughed lightly. She was feeding Leo a piece of bread. "Oh, Eliana, let him express himself. He's a musical genius in the making. He's just a spirited boy."
Leo, emboldened by his mother's praise, hit the glass harder.
Eliana put her knife down. "It's not about spirit. It's about manners."
Leo stopped drumming. He slid off his chair. He ran around the table, his heavy shoes thudding on the Persian rug. He headed for the fireplace in the adjoining sitting area.
On the mantle, pushed to the far side by Felicity's invasion of photos, sat a single, small silver frame. It was an old, black-and-white photograph of a couple standing in front of a vineyard.
It was the only photo Eliana had of her parents. The only thing she had managed to smuggle out of the Santos estate when she fled at eighteen.
Leo grabbed the frame.
"Ugly!" Leo shouted. "Old people are ugly!"
Eliana's blood went cold.
"Put that down," she said. Her voice was not loud, but it carried a vibration that made the candles on the table flicker.
Leo stuck out his tongue. "No! Uncle Hayes said this is his house! That means it's my house!"
He raised the frame high above his head.
"Leo, no!" Eliana stood up, her chair scraping violently against the floor.
Leo threw it.
He didn't just drop it. He hurled it downward with all the force his five-year-old body could muster.
The sound of the glass shattering on the marble hearth was like a gunshot.
The room went silent.
Eliana stood frozen. She stared at the shards. The photo lay face down amidst the glittering debris.
Leo looked at her, then at the mess. His face crumpled. He opened his mouth and let out a wail that sounded like a siren.
Felicity was out of her chair in a second. She rushed to Leo, falling to her knees to embrace him.
"You scared him!" Felicity screamed at Eliana. "You yelled at him and scared him!"
Hayes rushed over. He looked at the crying boy, then at the broken glass. He recognized the photo. A flash of guilt crossed his face, but it was quickly drowned out by Leo's screams.
"Eliana," Hayes said, his voice stern. "He's a child. You didn't have to lunge at him like that."
Eliana walked toward them. She didn't look at Hayes. She didn't look at Felicity. Her eyes were locked on the photo.
She knelt down.
"Don't touch it," Hayes said. "You'll cut yourself. We'll get the maid to-"
Eliana reached into the jagged pile. Her fingers closed around the photo paper. A shard of glass, sharp as a scalpel, sliced into the pad of her thumb. Another cut her palm.
She didn't flinch. She didn't pull back.
Blood welled up, bright red and fast. It dripped onto the white marble. It smeared onto the corner of the black-and-white photo.
She picked it up. She brushed the glass dust off her mother's face with a bloody thumb.
"It's just a photo," Hayes said, exasperated now. "We can get it restored. I'll pay for it. Stop being dramatic."
Eliana stood up. She clutched the photo to her chest, staining her silk blouse with blood.
"There is no negative," she whispered. "This was the only one."
Hayes ran a hand through his hair. "Well, I didn't know that. Look, I'm sorry, okay? But look at Leo. He's terrified. You need to apologize for screaming."
Eliana slowly raised her eyes to meet his.
Her eyes were dry. They were terrifyingly empty. It was the look of a building that had been controlled-demolished, collapsing inward into dust.
"Apologize?" she asked.
"Yes," Hayes said. "Be the adult here."
Eliana looked at Leo, who was peeking out from Felicity's shoulder, a smirk playing on his tear-stained lips.
She looked at Hayes, the man she had tried to love for three years. The man she had protected from the board, from the press, from his own incompetence.
"I will not," Eliana said.
She turned and walked toward the stairs. Blood dripped from her hand, leaving a trail of small red dots on the floor.
"Where are you going?" Hayes called after her.
To pack, she didn't say. To call Talia, she didn't say.
She just kept walking.
Upstairs, in her room, she locked the door. She went to the bathroom and ran her hand under cold water. The sting was sharp, grounding.
She wrapped her hand in gauze. Then she picked up her phone.
She dialed Talia.
"Do it," Eliana said. "Tomorrow. I don't care how we do it. I want his signature on that paper."
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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."