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 4
The next morning, the library was a war zone of paperwork. Hayes sat behind his massive oak desk, surrounded by stacks of documents related to the transfer of a property deed for Felicity. He looked exhausted.
Eliana walked in. She held a tray with a single cup of black coffee. Her hand was bandaged, the white gauze stark against her black sleeve.
She placed the coffee on a coaster near his elbow.
"Morning," she said.
Hayes grunted. He didn't look at her hand. "Thanks."
Eliana pulled a thick stack of papers from under her arm.
"The quarterly reports for the family foundation," she said. "The accountants are chasing me. They need these signed by noon or we miss the tax filing window."
Hayes rubbed his temples. "Can't you just forge it? You usually do."
That was a joke. Or maybe it wasn't.
"Not for the IRS," Eliana said. "Just a few signatures. I tabbed them for you."
She placed the stack in front of him. She had arranged it masterfully. The top pages were boring, dense financial spreadsheets. She flipped through them quickly.
"Here," she pointed to a yellow sticky tab.
Hayes signed. Hayes A. Vargas.
"And here."
He signed again.
Eliana's heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her palms were sweating inside her bandages.
She flipped to the next tab.
This page was positioned so that the top half was covered by the previous document, folded over as if to keep the place. Only the signature line was visible.
It was the Waiver of Contest and Dissolution of Marriage.
"Here," Eliana said. Her voice was steady, practiced.
Hayes brought the pen down. The tip touched the paper.
From the hallway, a shriek pierced the air.
"Hayes! Hayes, help!"
It was Felicity.
Hayes jumped. His hand jerked, the pen skidding across the paper, creating a long, jagged line before he scribbled his name quickly.
"What happened?" Hayes yelled, dropping the pen.
He stood up so fast his chair tipped over. He shoved past Eliana. He didn't mean to shove her hard, but in his panic, he used his full weight.
Eliana stumbled back. Her hip slammed into the corner of the heavy bookshelf. A sharp pain shot down her leg. She gasped, grabbing the shelf for support.
Hayes didn't stop. He didn't even turn his head. He sprinted out of the room.
Eliana bit her lip to keep from crying out. She steadied herself.
She looked at the desk.
The paper.
She reached out with trembling fingers and pulled the document free from the stack.
There it was. Hayes A. Vargas. The signature was messy, trailed by a line of ink from his startle response, but it was there. It was legal.
Downstairs, she heard Felicity sobbing.
"I stubbed my toe! It hurts so bad! I think it's broken!"
Eliana closed her eyes for a second. A stubbed toe.
She heard Hayes's frantic voice. "I've got you. Let's get you to the car. We're going to the ER."
The front door slammed.
Silence returned to the house.
Eliana let out a breath she felt she had been holding for three years. She looked at the paper in her hand. It was more valuable than diamonds. It was her ticket out of hell.
She took her phone out and snapped a photo of the signature page. She sent it to Talia via an encrypted app.
Got it, she typed.
Talia replied instantly. You're free. Legally, you are a single woman. I'll file it with the clerk in an hour.
Eliana looked at the message. A strange smile touched her lips. It wasn't a happy smile. It was the smile of a prisoner who had just dug the last scoop of dirt from the tunnel.
She walked over to the desk. Hayes's phone was sitting there, forgotten in his rush to save Felicity's toe.
The screen lit up. A notification from Felicity.
Heart emoji. Thank you for being my hero.
Eliana stared at it.
She turned the phone face down.
"Not a hero," she whispered. "Just a fool."
She gathered the rest of the papers, the fake financial reports, and placed them neatly in the recycling bin. She folded the divorce agreement and slid it into the inside pocket of her blazer, right against her heart.
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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."