Pregnant With The Ruthless CEO's Heir
My ex-boyfriend of three years, Axel, married a perfect wealthy heiress.
I attended his wedding, not to mourn our relationship, but because he had spent the last three years bleeding me dry.
He left me with absolutely nothing but a final notice from the hospital for my dying brother's life support.
Instead of feeling guilty, Axel cornered me in the church hallway, crushing my wrist.
"I'll set you up with an apartment. You won't have to work another day in your life."
He thought he could buy my silence with spare change, while leaving my seventeen-year-old brother, Julian, to die when his treatments were cut off the very next day.
When I refused to be his dirty little secret, Axel used his power to utterly destroy my acting career.
He had my talent agency terminate my contract under a fake morals clause, publicly humiliated me on set, and blacklisted me across the entire industry.
I was shoved out into the freezing rain, left with a torn dress and absolutely no way to pay the five hundred thousand dollar medical bill.
He actually believed he could step on my brother's dying body to build his own fake empire.
He thought I was just a weak, pathetic victim who would eventually crawl back to him on my knees.
But he forgot about the one monster he was absolutely terrified of: his legitimate, ruthless billionaire half-brother, Jace Bauer.
Looking at the three positive pregnancy tests hidden in my drawer, I stepped right in front of Jace's armored Maybach.
"Marry me, and I'll give you the heir you need to secure your empire."
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Chapter 2
Cora pushed open the door to her cramped Brooklyn apartment. The hinges let out a loud, metallic whine. She peeled the damp trench coat off her shoulders and tossed it onto the frayed arm of the sofa. She rubbed her temples, trying to massage away the dull ache throbbing behind her eyes.
Her roommate, Mel, was sitting cross-legged on the faded rug, a slice of pepperoni pizza halfway to her mouth. Mel dropped the pizza back into the box and scrambled to her feet.
"Well?" Mel asked, her eyes wide. "How was the wedding of the century? Did you key his car?"
Before Cora could answer, her phone lit up on the kitchen counter. Three text messages back-to-back. The screen displayed Axel's name.
You're making a mistake.
Answer me, Cora.
I can ruin you.
Cora didn't even blink. She picked up the phone, tapped the screen twice, and blocked the number.
Mel gasped, staring at the screen. "Are you insane? He has connections with every casting director in Hollywood. He could blacklist you permanently."
"I don't care about the blacklist," Cora said. Her voice was hard, devoid of any warmth. She walked past Mel and pulled open the doors of her tiny closet. "I'm done playing by his rules."
She pushed aside the cheap cotton shirts and grabbed a hanger from the very back. She pulled out a dress. It was a vintage silk slip dress, the color of dark, bruised cherries. It had a plunging neckline and barely-there straps. It was a dress meant for sin.
Mel choked on her own saliva. "Where the hell are you going in that? Are you having a mental breakdown?"
Cora sat down at the chipped vanity mirror. She picked up a black eyeliner pencil and began to draw a sharp, aggressive wing at the corner of her eye. She stared at her reflection. Her eyes looked feral.
"I'm not breaking down," Cora said, her lips curving into a cold smile. "I'm going fishing. I need a shark. One big enough to swallow Axel whole."
Forty minutes later, Cora was stepping out of an Uber in front of SoHo House in Lower Manhattan. The November wind whipped around her bare legs, but she didn't shiver. She stood tall in her five-inch stilettos, the red silk clinging to her curves like a second skin. Mel stood beside her, shivering in a denim jacket, looking terrified.
The bouncer at the door was a mountain of a man in a black suit. He crossed his arms, blocking the entrance. "Members only. Card?"
Cora didn't flinch. She looked him dead in the eye and dropped the name of a sleazy producer she had met at a wrap party three months ago. "I'm a guest of Marcus Vance."
The bouncer pressed a finger to his earpiece. He muttered something, listened for a second, and then unhooked the velvet rope. He didn't look happy about it.
Cora stepped inside, pulling a hesitant Mel with her.
The air inside SoHo House was thick and warm. It smelled of expensive cigars, aged whiskey, and money. Low, pulsing jazz played from hidden speakers. The lighting was dim, casting long shadows across the velvet booths and mahogany tables.
Cora walked straight to the bar. She ordered a martini she couldn't afford and turned her back to the bartender. Her eyes scanned the room, moving with the precision of a sniper.
She found him.
Up on the second floor, in a semi-private VIP booth behind a frosted glass partition. Jace Bauer.
He was leaning back into the deep leather sofa. He held an unlit cigar between his fingers. Even sitting down, he radiated a suffocating dominance. His jaw was clenched, his eyes dark and bored as he listened to the man sitting across from him.
Cora's breath hitched. Her stomach tightened. He was exactly as terrifying as the photos.
The man across from Jace-Gus Bullock, a known playboy and Jace's closest friend-suddenly turned his head. His gaze swept over the railing, looking down at the main floor.
Cora reacted instantly. She lowered her head, lifting the martini glass to her lips. She let her long, dark hair fall forward, completely shielding her face from Gus's line of sight. She forced a laugh, pretending to chat with the bartender.
Gus's eyes moved past her. He turned back to Jace, complaining about something and gesturing wildly. Jace didn't even blink. He just sat there, a statue of cold indifference.
Mel followed Cora's gaze. When Mel saw the men on the balcony, all the color drained from her face. She grabbed Cora's arm, her fingers digging into the silk.
"Cora, no," Mel whispered, her voice trembling. "That's Jace Bauer. He's a monster. He's a machine. Pissing off Axel is one thing, but if you cross Jace Bauer, you won't just lose your career. You'll disappear."
Cora gripped the stem of her martini glass. Her knuckles turned white. "I know exactly what he is," she murmured. "And right now, a monster is exactly what I need."
Out of the corner of her eye, Cora caught a flash of movement.
A woman in a tight, sequined dress was walking toward the stairs that led to the VIP section. She was carrying a small silver tray with two glasses of amber liquid.
The woman paused in the shadows at the base of the stairs. She looked around nervously. Then, her thumb slipped over the rim of the glass on the right. A tiny, almost imperceptible flick. A white powder dissolved instantly into the alcohol.
Cora's dynamic vision caught every detail. Her pupils dilated.
It was a setup. A cheap, desperate trap meant for the king of the Bauer empire.
Cora set her martini down on the bar. The glass hit the wood with a sharp clink.
"Stay here," she ordered Mel.
Before Mel could protest, Cora was moving. She didn't run. She glided. She moved through the crowded room like a predator locking onto its prey, her eyes fixed on the woman ascending the stairs. This was her way in. This was her only shot.
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9.3
Alyssa Gregory slept with Benton Steele, a recently disgraced and bankrupt heir, just to humiliate him.
She threw a massive check at his bare chest, treating the former prince of Wall Street like a cheap escort.
But Benton didn't take the charity.
Instead, he manipulated her anger, tricking her into signing an ironclad contract that surrendered absolute control of her entire trust fund to him.
When her abusive mother found out she had funded a penniless outcast, she slapped Alyssa across the face.
Her mother froze all her bank accounts, locked her inside her bedroom, and arranged to sell her off to a degenerate politician.
Desperate to escape, Alyssa climbed down her balcony, falling fifteen feet and shattering her ankle on the stones below.
Stripped of her money and freedom, she dragged her broken body to a VIP club just to publicly declare that Benton belonged to her.
She thought she was the boss, playing a rebellious game with a broken man.
But when Benton effortlessly carried her away from the club and locked her inside his rundown apartment, the terrifying calculation in his dark eyes shattered her illusion.
How could a man stripped of his entire empire still radiate such suffocating, violent power?
"You bought me," Benton whispered, his massive frame trapping her against the sofa. "That means I have to take care of you."
Physically trapped and completely broke, Alyssa stared into his consuming eyes, her mind racing to find a way to turn the tables.
9.2
Averie spent hours preparing a perfect third-anniversary dinner for her billionaire husband, Jarett Sharp.
Instead of celebrating, she received an anonymous photo of him intimately holding another woman.
When Jarett finally arrived, he didn't even look guilty.
"Candida. It's okay. Don't be scared. I'm on my way."
He simply took a call from his mistress, shoved Averie aside, and walked right back out the door.
That same night, Averie's father suffered a massive heart attack.
The hospital demanded a half-million-dollar deposit before they would operate.
But when Averie frantically tried to use the emergency medical trust card Jarett had given her, it was declined.
Jarett had deliberately frozen her access to the funds just hours earlier.
While she begged his assistant on the phone, Jarett refused to be disturbed, busy wrapping his expensive coat around his mistress in the hospital garden.
Averie collapsed in the hallway, realizing the man she loved was deliberately letting her father die.
In the end, a childhood friend stepped in to pay the bill and save her father's life, while her billionaire husband later pinned her to their bed, throwing a check at her and reminding her he had bought her for three million dollars.
Averie didn't shed a single tear.
She slowly ripped his check into pieces, left her massive diamond ring on the dresser, and walked out into the cold New York night with nothing but her old suitcase.
She pulled out her phone and dialed her old ballet professor.
She wasn't just going to leave Jarett Sharp. She was going to destroy him.
7.3
Eloise was the untouchable Brandt family heiress, just one audition away from landing a lead movie role and escaping her golden cage.
But overnight, her family's empire completely collapsed.
With her father dying of heart failure, her mother forced her to beg the only man who could save them: Christian Clarke.
Christian was the ruthless billionaire who had publicly humiliated Eloise in college, ripping up her love letter in front of a laughing crowd.
Now, he tossed a fifty-million-dollar acquisition contract on the table.
"What exactly is the Brandt heiress putting up for sale today?"
To secure her father's medical care, Eloise was forced to sign a suffocating marriage contract, selling herself as a corporate tax shield.
He moved her into his freezing penthouse and treated her like a purchased asset. He mocked her attempts to cook him dinner, yet pinned her against the wall with punishing, possessive kisses whenever she tried to pull away.
Eloise's pride was entirely shattered.
She didn't understand why he was doing this. If he hated her so much and only wanted revenge, why did his touch carry such an agonizing, desperate heat?
Determined to survive, she went to her final audition and miraculously won the lead role, crying tears of joy because she had finally earned something on her own.
She had no idea that the cold-blooded monster sleeping beside her had just secretly threatened to destroy all of Hollywood to give it to her.
9.5
My husband, Colton, the Wall Street mogul, slid annulment papers across the table, coldly discarding me and our unborn child. He thought he was getting rid of a useless wife, but he was actually throwing away the secret architect of his entire empire. Now, I'm ready to make him pay for every insult, every lie, and every single secret I've kept.
For three years, eight months pregnant, I secretly saved Colton's ten-billion-dollar company from collapse, enduring a cold, transactional marriage.
One night, he shattered that illusion, serving annulment papers and callously discarding me and our unborn child.
I signed, leaving luxury behind. Exposing his butler's fraud, I escaped. Colton later found his wedding ring gone and, on his desk, my SEC compliance fixes—proof I was his hidden genius.
Blindsided, he realized he’d destroyed his own empire. His mother then called, gloating. The injustice ignited a fierce resolve within me.
The next morning, I launched Kidd Legal Consulting. I'd use forty-seven folders of Farmer Capital's un-patched loopholes to force a fair settlement, securing my daughter's future.
9.8
Adeline's stepmother had secretly drugged her for years, turning a child genius into a drooling, mentally disabled laughingstock just so her stepsister could steal her life.
But when her greedy father sold her off to Griffin Herring—a violent, untouchable billionaire psychopath—to save his company, things took a deadly turn.
Before the wedding, Griffin attacked her in a dark alley, nearly snapping her neck before stealing her grandfather's silver necklace.
That necklace held a micro-drive with her family's deepest secrets, and without it, she had nothing.
Back at the estate, her situation only worsened. Her stepsister Damaris paraded around in the Herring family's diamond engagement gifts, trying to force-feed Adeline wet dog food on an Instagram live stream.
When Adeline's calculated "clumsiness" ruined the video, her furious father locked her in a damp, rusted basement.
"Give her to the psycho," her stepmother hissed through the door. "Let him lock her away forever."
Listening from the shadows, Adeline's fists clenched until her palms bled.
Her supposed mental fog wasn't a tragedy—it was a calculated assassination of her mind. They had destroyed her childhood and were now throwing her to a monster just to keep the billions.
The dull, empty look in Adeline's eyes vanished instantly, replaced by a razor-sharp, chilling clarity.
She pulled a thin surgical needle from her messy bun and picked the heavy iron padlock in ten seconds. It was time to break into the billionaire's penthouse, take back her necklace, and tear them all apart.
9.1
I was supposed to be celebrating my twenty-first birthday and my engagement to the man I loved.
Instead, I was bleeding out in a crushed car, listening to my fiancé Greggory and my stepsister Alta laughing over the car's Bluetooth.
They had cut my brakes.
As the steering wheel crushed my shattered ribs, they cheerfully clinked their champagne glasses, celebrating their hostile takeover of my family's media empire.
I tried to scream for help, but my lungs wouldn't work.
Then, Alta's sweet voice delivered the final, fatal blow over the speaker.
"Your mother? I took care of her too."
I died in the freezing rain, my heart frozen with absolute hatred as I realized every touch and whispered promise was just a calculated step toward my murder.
I gave them everything, treating them like my closest family.
Why did they have to kill my innocent mother? Why did I blindly trust two vipers who only wanted to drain my blood?
Opening my eyes again, the smell of gasoline was gone.
I was back in my bedroom, safe and unharmed, on the exact day of my twenty-first birthday party.
The day the tragedy began.
Downstairs, my murderers were waiting to spring their trap, expecting me to blindly accept Greggory's proposal.
But this time, I put on a blood-red dress, grabbed the photo of their secret affair, and walked down the stairs to choose a new fiancé—the most ruthless billionaire in the room.