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 6
The elevator chimed softly. The digital display flashed 77.
The metal doors slid open, revealing the highest-security medical zone in the country. The air smelled sharply of antiseptic.
Standing immediately outside the doors was Vera Thorne, the hospital's top anesthesiologist, wearing her white coat. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, her face pale with stress.
The second the doors parted, Vera lunged forward. She grabbed Elisa's wrist and yanked her out of the elevator.
Vera didn't even glance at the massive, imposing figure of Conrad standing inside the car.
Conrad stood frozen. He watched as a world-renowned doctor treated his ex-wife like a savior. His brow furrowed so deeply it hurt.
Before he could process what to do, the elevator doors slid shut, cutting off his view.
Vera dragged Elisa down the corridor, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking against the antibacterial flooring. They ducked into a secure breakroom.
Vera slammed the door and locked the deadbolt. She spun around and shoved a steaming paper cup of black coffee into Elisa's hands.
Under the harsh fluorescent lights, Vera studied Elisa's face. She saw the dark circles under her eyes, the pale, translucent quality of her skin.
Vera's face softened. "Did you finally sign the papers with that blind bastard?"
Elisa took a sip of the scalding coffee. It burned her throat, but she needed the caffeine. "Yes. NDA signed. Walked away with nothing."
Vera's eyes widened in fury. She gripped the heavy metal clipboard in her hand so hard her knuckles popped. "Nothing? I swear I'll kill him-"
"I drugged his wine," Elisa interrupted, her voice completely flat. "Left him unconscious on the floor with a one-dollar bill in his shirt and a sticky note calling his performance terrible."
Vera stared at her. One second passed. Two.
Then, Vera threw her head back and let out a loud, unhinged laugh. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms tightly around Elisa, crushing her in a fierce hug. "Welcome back to the land of the living."
The hug lasted three seconds. When they pulled apart, the warmth vanished from the room.
Vera handed over the heavy medical file.
Elisa set her coffee down. The moment her fingers touched the plastic binder, her eyes changed. The exhaustion bled away, replaced by the terrifying, laser-focused intensity of a predator.
She flipped through Hector Ruiz's charts. Her eyes scanned the numbers, her brain processing the data faster than a machine.
"Three-centimeter tear in the ventricular wall," Vera reported rapidly. "Standard suturing has a zero percent survival rate. He'll bleed out before you close."
Elisa tapped her finger against a dark smudge on the ultrasound printout. "They missed this. Secondary micro-tear behind the valve. If you open his chest normally, the pressure drop kills him in ten seconds."
Vera sucked in a sharp breath. Sweat beaded on her forehead.
Elisa grabbed a dry-erase marker from the table. She turned to the whiteboard and drew a viciously complex, unnatural surgical path.
"We use Deep Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest," Elisa commanded. "Drop his core temp, stop the blood flow entirely. I'll fix both tears blind."
Vera stared at the board. Her stomach dropped. "Elisa, that requires inhuman hand stability. One millimeter off, and you slice the aorta."
Elisa turned her head. Her eyes were chips of ice. "That is why I am here."
A red alarm light on the wall suddenly began to flash violently. The patient's blood pressure was crashing.
Elisa dropped the marker. She walked to the sterile changing area. She stripped off her coat and began pulling on the dark blue scrubs reserved for the chief surgeon.
Vera took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. She unlocked the door and ran toward the operating theater to prep the anesthesia.
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8.0
When gifted cellist Vivienne Aurel inherits her late father's catastrophic $4.2 million debt, she expects to lose everything. She doesn't expect the debt to be bought by Caspian Vane, the most feared private equity magnate in New York. Caspian doesn't want to ruin her; he wants her to work exclusively for him as the artistic director of his new cultural foundation for eighteen months. Forced into his world under a binding agreement, Vivienne prepares to fight against a cold, transactional cage. But as the intense, quiet proximity between them begins to blur the lines of their contract, she discovers a terrifying truth: the man who now owns her future has been watching her from the shadows long before she ever knew his name.
8.9
I was tossed into a dark alley like rotting garbage, bleeding and grieving the child I had just lost.
When I was finally brought back to my fiancé Angelo's penthouse, instead of comfort, I was met with absolute disgust.
His family declared me "unclean" after the kidnapping. Angelo coldly announced he was burying the scandal by marrying my sweet, innocent cousin, Carissa.
When we were alone, Carissa stood over my bed, her voice dripping with venomous delight.
"My father arranged the kidnapping. And now, Angelo and I can finally be together."
Before I could react, she forced a silver letter opener into my hand, deliberately stabbed her own shoulder, and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Angelo stormed in, struck me across the face, and gathered a sobbing Carissa into his arms, looking at me with absolute revulsion.
The family matriarch appeared at the door, her cold eyes sweeping over the scene before she gave a chilling order to the maids.
"Clean this up."
They pinned me down and brutally drove the blade directly into my chest.
I choked on my own blood, staring at the man who had promised me the world as he turned his back, calling my murder a "mercy."
As my heart beat its final agonizing rhythm, I made a silent vow to the shadows that if there was a next life, I would have my vendetta.
When I opened my eyes again, there was no blood, only the soft silk of my nightgown.
I had returned to the day before my eighteenth birthday.
This time, I wouldn't play the desperate victim. I was going to ally with the Devil of Chicago and burn them all to the ground.
9.6
To escape my sister-in-law selling me off to a local thug, I married a complete stranger I met at City Hall.
My new husband, Drake, claimed to be a broke Uber driver who could barely make rent.
He even made me sign a brutal ten-page prenup just to ensure I wouldn't take his rusted, beat-up Ford sedan if we ever divorced.
I thought I was just sharing a decaying Brooklyn apartment with a struggling man at the bottom of the ladder.
But things quickly stopped making sense.
When that local thug cornered me at a restaurant, my "weak" husband didn't cower.
Instead, he dismantled three massive mobsters in ten seconds with the terrifying, fluid speed of an apex predator.
"I used to be a human punching bag in an underground boxing gym to pay off debts."
I believed his excuse, until his supposedly homeless grandfather showed up at our door in a moth-eaten sweater, begging to sleep on our lumpy sofa.
Before going to sleep, the old man casually pressed a heavy, intricately engraved pocket watch into my hand as a wedding gift.
He claimed it was a cheap flea market find that didn't even keep time.
But the sheer weight of the solid rose gold and the flawless mechanical gears inside screamed otherwise.
Why did a destitute driver have the aura of a man who controlled empires?
And what kind of homeless old man casually hands over a priceless, museum-grade antique?
I had no idea the "broke driver" sleeping on my floor was actually a ruthless billionaire CEO, and I had just walked straight into his trap.
9.3
He was supposed to be my brother. The cold CEO everyone feared. The man who controlled the entire country's business world.
But one night, he looked at me and calmly destroyed everything I thought I knew.
"We're getting married."
I laughed, but he didn't.
Now every door in my life is closing, every choice is disappearing, and the one man I'm not supposed to love refuses to let me go.
Because to Lucien Hale, this was never forbidden. It was inevitable.
And the most terrifying part? The closer I get to him, the harder it becomes to run.
9.2
Lainey spent her last life destroying herself for Larry, only to become the woman he discarded most cruelly. He never loved her, never wanted her, and made no secret that his first love still owned his heart.
On their wedding day, he abandoned Lainey at the altar for that woman, then later used Lainey as nothing more than a stepping stone for his company's rise. In the end, he even had her kidney ripped from her.
Reborn at the very moment everything began, Lainey called off the wedding without hesitation. But after losing her, Larry begged desperately.
Lainey shot him a cold look, then turned and walked straight into the arms of a powerful, aloof man, who stared down at Larry with pure contempt. "She's my wife now."
9.5
For twenty years, Krista lived as the perfect daughter of the wealthy Cain family.
But a single DNA report shattered her entire world. Her adoptive parents coldly declared she was just a mistake and immediately replaced her with the true bloodline.
Desperate, she ran through the freezing rain to find her fiancé, only to hear him laughing with his friends.
"Marry a fake? I don't collect the Cain family's second-hand trash."
She slapped him, threw her diamond ring at his chest, and stumbled into a jazz lounge to drown her pain.
Drunk and heartbroken, she accidentally crashed into a stranger, clinging to him like a lifeline, which ended in a wild night in a luxury penthouse.
When she woke up, she realized the man she had ravaged was Jasper Stone, the most ruthless, cold-blooded billionaire on Wall Street.
At the same time, her phone lit up with notifications. Her bank accounts were frozen, and the Cain family had just released a brutal public statement permanently cutting her off.
She was completely abandoned, stripped of her home, her family, and her dignity in a single night. Why was twenty years of loyalty erased so easily?
But instead of kicking her out, Jasper tossed a prenuptial agreement onto the bed.
"Pay off your debt with marriage. Stay, and you are the untouchable Mrs. Stone."
Looking at the contract, Krista wiped her tears, put on bold red lipstick, and signed her name.