One Dollar For Pity: The Surgeon Returns
For three years, I played the role of a devoted, naive wife to billionaire Conrad Whitney. I hid my true identity and foolishly believed in our fairy tale.
Then he handed me a harsh divorce agreement, ordering me to sign and walk away with absolutely nothing. He was leaving me to marry Cindy, the fragile woman he claimed had saved him from a fire.
He expected me to cry and beg. Instead, he watched coldly as Cindy and her family illegally transferred my father's trust fund. When I confronted them at the hospital, Conrad shielded her, calling me a greedy, toxic viper. He mocked me, completely blind to the fact that Cindy was a fraud. He truly believed I was just a pathetic, useless housewife who would be utterly destroyed without his money and status.
I looked at the man I had actually dragged out of that burning debris with my own soot-covered hands. My trauma, my sacrifices, and my love had all been reduced to a joke by his sheer arrogance and a few fake tears from a manipulative liar.
I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly signed the papers, drugged his wine, and left a crumpled one-dollar bill on his unconscious chest with a sticky note mocking his terrible service.
Then, I picked up my encrypted phone. It was time for the world's top surgeon, Dr. Hades, to return, and for Conrad to finally see the god he had just thrown away.
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Chapter 5
Elisa walked out of the VIP ward. She pushed open the heavy fire door and stepped into the deserted stairwell.
She took a deep breath, letting the cold air fill her lungs, washing away the stench of Conrad and Cindy.
Deep inside her tote bag, a secondary, encrypted phone began to vibrate. It played a harsh, metallic ringtone.
She pulled it out and pressed the green button. The moment the phone touched her ear, the angry ex-wife vanished. Her spine straightened. Her eyes sharpened.
"Speak," she said.
On the other end, the frantic voice of a dark-web medical broker spilled through the speaker. "Hades. It's Hector Ruiz. Patriarch of the Ruiz cartel. His heart wall ruptured ten minutes ago. Every top surgeon in New York refused to touch him. They're offering fifty million dollars for you to operate."
Elisa's brain processed the information in milliseconds. The Ruiz family controlled a massive chunk of the global shipping industry. Their influence was terrifying.
Having them owe her a favor would give her the exact leverage she needed to crush Cindy's backers and completely bypass the Whitney Group's shadow.
"I accept," Elisa said flatly. "Prep the highest-level sterile theater. I'm in the building."
She hung up. She shoved the phone back into her bag. When she pushed the stairwell door open, her aura had completely changed. She radiated absolute, suffocating authority.
She walked across the glass skybridge connecting the standard hospital to the ultra-secure Penthouse Medical Tower.
She stopped in front of the private elevator bank and pressed the 'UP' button.
A soft chime rang out. The brushed steel doors slid open.
Elisa looked up. Her eyes locked directly into the dark, furious gaze of Conrad Whitney.
He was standing in the center of the elevator. He had left the ward to get some air.
The moment he saw her, the muscles in his face tightened. A cruel, mocking sneer twisted his lips.
"Still following me?" Conrad scoffed, his voice dripping with arrogance. "You talk a big game about leaving, but here you are, trailing me to another building like a cheap stalker."
Elisa rolled her eyes. The motion was so exaggerated, so full of genuine contempt, that it made Conrad's teeth grind together.
She didn't say a word. She stepped into the elevator, turned her back to him, and faced the doors.
Conrad's blood boiled at being ignored. He took a step forward, closing the distance until his chest was inches from her back.
"Stop playing these pathetic psychological games," he warned, his voice low and threatening.
Elisa calmly reached into her coat pocket. She pulled out a solid black, unmarked microchip card.
Conrad saw the card over her shoulder. He let out a harsh laugh. "You think you can just go up? The top floor is a restricted zone. Without a black card, the buttons don't even work."
He crossed his arms, waiting for the machine to reject her, waiting for her to humiliate herself.
Elisa pressed the black card against the scanner below the buttons.
A sharp BEEP echoed in the small space. The scanner flashed green.
Elisa reached out and pressed the button for the 77th floor. The button lit up with a bright red halo. The elevator lurched slightly and began its high-speed ascent.
Conrad's arms dropped to his sides. His sneer vanished, replaced by a look of absolute, staggering shock. His pupils dilated as he stared at the glowing number 77.
Elisa leaned back against the metal wall of the elevator. She crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes, treating the billionaire standing next to her like a piece of invisible furniture.
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7.8
Alayna was working a grueling catering shift in worn-out heels to support her broke college boyfriend, Caiden, who claimed to be studying at the library.
But through the crack of a VIP suite door, she saw him wearing a bespoke suit and a Patek Philippe watch, sipping expensive liquor.
"It's a little poverty role-play. Keeps things interesting."
He was laughing with his rich friends, mocking her as his clueless "charity case."
To make matters worse, she was forced into a humiliating mascot costume just in time to watch him passionately kiss his wealthy ex-girlfriend.
That same night, Alayna's mother collapsed with gastric cancer, requiring a half-million-dollar surgery.
When a desperate Alayna begged Caiden for help, he refused.
"Why don't you just apply for Medicaid? That's the path for people like you."
For two years, she had starved herself to buy his textbooks, his tickets, and his shoes.
He had stolen her sweat and her sacrifices, all for a cruel game.
The sheer audacity of his betrayal made her blood run cold.
When a billionaire stranger stepped in to pay her mother's medical bills in exchange for a one-year fake marriage, Alayna didn't hesitate to sign the contract.
She slipped the flawless diamond ring onto her finger, opened a spreadsheet, and sent Caiden an invoice for every single cent.
This time, she was going to dismantle his entire life.
7.2
Blaire woke up in a Manhattan penthouse, her body covered in bruises and her innocence stolen.
Before she could process the terror, her adoptive sister Danita burst in, acting heartbroken and accusing Blaire of shamelessly seducing the powerful Kamryn Lane. Kamryn threw a one-million-dollar check at Blaire's bleeding face, calling her a calculating gold digger.
That night, Blaire overheard a conversation in the family study that shattered her entire reality.
"Once she gives birth to the Lane family's seed, we'll stage an accident, drain her blood, and transplant her healthy heart into your chest."
Her adoptive mother and Danita were celebrating the success of their trap. She wasn't an adopted daughter; she was a living organ bank and a disposable surrogate. Even her adoptive brother, Calhoun, knew everything, trapping her in the dark hallways with a sick, possessive obsession to ensure she never escaped.
The horrific truth suffocated her. The family that had taken her in had raised her like livestock for slaughter. How could they smile at her every day while planning to carve out her heart?
Terrified but burning with a desperate will to survive, Blaire swallowed a Plan B pill to ruin their surrogate plot and fled the estate. To get the money and power she needed to crush her adoptive family, she pulled out Kamryn Lane's business card. This time, she would make a deal with the devil.
7.2
Two years ago, Amaya Bennett witnessed a murder.
A powerful man was killed in cold blood, right in front of her. She should have died that night too.
Instead, she woke up in a hospital with no memory of what happened. No faces, no names and no clues. Just fragments, blurred images that slip through her fingers every time she tries to hold on.
Now, Amaya lives a quiet life, piecing herself back together. She works part-time, avoids trouble, and stays invisible. Until she lands a job at Twilight Global.
A company owned by Jake Anderson, the cold and untouchable CEO whose father was murdered the same night Aria lost her memory. Jake spent years searching for the only witness. But she vanished without any trace. Or so he thought.
But somehow, they cross path again, working under his roof, completely unaware of the truth she carries.
The killer is still out there.
And when Amaya starts getting flashes of blood, a voice, a ring glinting under the dim light, the hunt begins again.
But this time, she's not alone. Because even before he realizes who she is... Jake has already started protecting her. In the most relentless and dangerous way.
7.6
I am the illegitimate, mute daughter of the wealthy Owen family, kept hidden in the attic like a shameful secret.
To save his failing company, my father decided to sell me off to a repulsive, predatory investor named Grossman.
At the family dinner, Grossman's sweaty hands roamed my bare legs while my half-sister Kaleigh intentionally spilled red wine on my dress, laughing as she watched me suffer.
When I grabbed a steak knife to defend myself, my father slammed his fist on the table.
"Sit down, or I will cut off the maintenance payments for your mother's grave."
My stepmother and sister sneered, treating me like a piece of meat meant to be sacrificed for their luxury. I was starved, locked away, and treated worse than a stray dog, all while my family paraded their high-society status to the world.
I couldn't understand why they hated me so deeply, or who really ordered the hit that killed my mother twenty years ago. The police reports were buried, and I was entirely powerless, trapped in a house of monsters.
But they didn't know that the night before, I had accidentally stumbled into the secret life of Burleigh Livingston—the ruthless, supposedly paralyzed billionaire who was faking his madness.
When Burleigh suddenly crashed our family dinner and threw a limitless Black Card on the table to outbid Grossman and buy me for the night, I didn't hesitate.
I grabbed the handles of his wheelchair, accepted his twisted deal, and prepared to use the devil himself to tear my family apart.
9.3
To escape my abusive adoptive mother selling me to a loan shark for $50,000, I rushed to City Hall to marry a blind date.
In a blind panic, I grabbed the wrong man.
He was Julian Cardenas IV, a billionaire CEO who desperately needed a fake wife to dodge a corporate arranged marriage. We signed the papers on the spot.
He became my legal shield. He moved me into his pristine penthouse and secretly protected me from my family's violent threats. When I broke down crying in the freezing cold, he quietly left me hot cocoa. For the first time in my life, I felt safe.
But then, Julian overheard me complaining to my sister about my constantly breaking-down car, groaning that I had to "get rid of this baby four times."
He thought I meant abortions.
The man who was slowly melting my frozen heart instantly turned to ice. He threw away the dinner he had specially bought for me, his eyes filled with absolute disgust and blinding rage.
I was left entirely confused and terrified. Why did my savior suddenly look at me like I was the most repulsive thing in the world? What had I done to deserve this sudden cruelty?
I thought this fake marriage was my ticket out of hell. I didn't realize I had just locked myself in a cage with a furious, ruthless CEO who now wanted to destroy me.
7.7
Jaclyn woke up in the sterile hospital room after falling down the stairs. The nurse delivered the devastating news: she had bled heavily and lost her baby.
But before she could even cry, her trusted cousins, Katelyn and Cherri, locked the door and revealed the horrifying truth.
"It wasn't an accident," Katelyn smirked, pinning Jaclyn's arm down. "The lubricant on the top step was a very deliberate choice."
They needed her broken and unstable. They had forged her signature, draining her massive trust fund to save their uncle's bankrupt business.
What shattered Jaclyn's world was the fresh hickey on Cherri's neck. Her lover, Bradford, had helped plan the entire murder.
When Jaclyn tried to scream, they smothered her with a pillow, framing her as a lunatic having a mental breakdown.
Two weeks later, when she confronted them, Bradford violently shoved her through a second-story glass window to silence her forever.
As she fell to her death, the husband she had spent her life hating—the ruthless billionaire Gaines—burst through the doors.
He threw himself forward, his face filled with pure terror, desperately trying to catch her.
When her body hit the stone patio, Gaines fell to his knees in her blood, weeping and begging her not to close her eyes.
Until her last breath, Jaclyn was consumed by suffocating regret. Why did she trust the monsters who killed her, and hate the only man who truly loved her?
Opening her eyes again, she was back in the penthouse, exactly one month into her marriage with Gaines.