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 7
The crisp white paper lay stark against the dark marble bar. The word POSITIVE, printed in bold black ink, seemed to scream in the quiet room.
Jace's eyes dropped to the paper. He didn't move. He didn't breathe. The air in the cigar room turned to lead.
Slowly, he raised his eyes back to Cora's face. His gaze was a physical weight, scraping across her skin, searching for the lie, the tell, the crack in her facade.
Cora held her ground. She crossed her arms over her chest, shifting her weight to one hip. She forced her posture to radiate a bored, arrogant confidence she didn't feel.
Jace finally reached out. His long fingers picked up the paper. His eyes scanned the text, stopping on the official seal of Mount Sinai Hospital and the attending physician's signature.
A cold, terrifying smile touched the corners of his mouth. "You think a forged document is going to get you a payout?" His voice was a low, dangerous purr.
Cora let out a soft, mocking laugh. "Your private medical team can draw my blood right now. It takes ten minutes to verify. Call them."
Jace's fingers tightened. The edges of the paper crumpled under his grip. He knew. He looked at her eyes, saw the absolute lack of hesitation, and he knew it was real.
He crushed the paper into a tight ball and hurled it at her chest. It hit her collarbone and bounced onto the Persian rug.
Jace took a step forward, invading her space. The scent of whiskey and raw aggression rolled off him. "If you're pregnant, why didn't you scrape it out? Why come here and sign your own death warrant?"
Cora bent down, her movements deliberately slow. She picked up the crumpled ball of paper, smoothed it out against her thigh, and slipped it back into her purse. She looked up at him, her eyes shining with manufactured greed.
"Because an abortion only gets me a one-time hush-money check," Cora said, pronouncing every word with agonizing clarity. "But giving birth to your child? That makes me the queen mother of the Bauer empire."
The provocation worked. Jace snapped.
His hand shot out, his fingers wrapping around her jaw like a steel vise. He squeezed, the pressure instantly bruising her skin, forcing her head up.
"I have a hundred ways to make you disappear," Jace hissed, his face inches from hers. His eyes were black with fury. "You and that parasite in your stomach. They won't even find your teeth."
Tears of physical pain pricked the corners of Cora's eyes, but she stretched her lips into a grotesque, triumphant smile.
"Do it," she choked out against his grip. "Kill me. But the moment my heart stops, an automated email goes out to every major news outlet in New York. And to your grandfather."
Jace's grip froze.
"I did my homework, Jace," Cora whispered, her voice trembling slightly from the pain in her jaw. "I know the old man is holding the last twenty percent of the family trust hostage until you produce a legitimate heir. It's the only reason Axel thinks he still has a shot at your throne. If your grandfather finds out you murdered his only great-grandchild... you lose the empire."
She had hit the kill switch.
Jace's pupils contracted. The blind rage in his eyes fractured, replaced by the cold, calculating gears of a Wall Street predator assessing a catastrophic loss. He stared at her, seeing her not as a cheap whore anymore, but as a highly dangerous, highly volatile explosive device placed directly under his chair.
He opened his hand. He let her go.
Cora stumbled back a step, rubbing her throbbing jaw. She took a deep, shaky breath, tasting victory mixed with copper.
"Marry me," Cora repeated, her voice steadying. "You need a legitimate heir to force the board's hand and secure the trust. I need power and money. It's a transaction."
Jace turned his back to her. He walked to the bar, picked up the bottle of whiskey, and poured another glass. He didn't drink it. He just stared at the amber liquid.
When he finally spoke, his voice was completely devoid of emotion. It was the voice of a machine.
"You better pray to whatever god you believe in that this child is born healthy," Jace said, turning his head slightly to look at her over his shoulder. "Because the second it's out of your body, your usefulness ends. And you will suffer."
It was a yes. A terrifying, conditional yes.
Cora suppressed the violent shudder that threatened to tear through her body. She lifted her chin.
"I look forward to our wedding, Mr. Bauer."
She turned on her heel and walked toward the heavy wooden door. She grabbed the brass handle, turned it, and stepped out into the freezing hallway.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Cora leaned her back against the wall. Her legs gave out completely. She slid down the wall until she hit the floor. She wrapped her arms around her knees, burying her face in her arms, and gasped for air. She was covered in a cold sweat. She had just made a deal with the devil, and she knew he was going to make her pay in blood.
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9.5
Gina was locked in Blackwood Asylum for five years, framed as a violent lunatic by her own wealthy family.
Her brother suddenly dragged her out, but not to save her. He forced her into an arranged marriage with Kerr Brooks, the billionaire emperor of New York, just to save the Rollins family's failing company.
Back at the estate, her parents treated her like a biohazard. They showered her adopted sister, Hailie, with love and luxury, while forcing Gina into a freezing servant's room. They threw a brutal prenuptial agreement at her face and threatened to leak a deepfake scandal video to the press if she didn't play the perfect bride. To ensure Gina's absolute ruin, Hailie even ordered a maid to spike her dinner with a massive dose of LSD. They were ruthlessly sacrificing her to a man who was secretly in a deep, unresponsive coma.
"She is just a tool, Hailie. Do not waste your pity on a broken thing."
Her mother's cold words echoed in the foyer. They looked at Gina's faded jumpsuit and vacant eyes, fully believing she was a heavily sedated pawn they could easily manipulate and discard.
But they didn't know Gina was a master hacker, a lethal underground surgeon, and the secret owner of the world's top luxury brand. She neutralized the poison in seconds and slipped into her comatose fiancé's heavily guarded ICU. Disabling the secret neuro-suppressants keeping him asleep, Gina smiled in the dark. If they wanted her to marry a corpse, she would use his empire to bury them all alive.
8.6
As the eldest daughter of the Sharp family, I was treated worse than a stray dog, while my younger sister Seraphina was their precious princess.
When the family needed someone to marry a dying billionaire heir, they naturally chose me to take her place.
To force my consent, my brothers held a peanut butter sandwich to my face—knowing it was a lethal allergy—while dangling my EpiPen just out of reach.
On speakerphone, my own mother sighed in annoyance.
"Let her die. It might be for the best."
I choked out an agreement just as my throat closed up. But the forced engagement broke my sacred mystical vow, causing me to violently cough up my own lifeblood.
Seeing the blood, Seraphina dramatically fainted. My brothers instantly carried her to the hospital, stepping over my dying body and leaving me to bleed out on the cold marble floor.
I had to use a forbidden blood rune, draining my last ounce of strength, just to survive the night.
Even the mystical Order I served offered no comfort, calling only to demand I secure ten billion dollars for them or forfeit my soul for eternity.
Abandoned by my blood family and my spiritual master, I was completely alone, left with nothing but a broken body and a ticking clock.
But they made one fatal mistake: they let me live.
I turned to the dying heir they forced me to marry, a man plagued by a dark curse only I could cure.
"I will be your wife, and I will save your life," I told him.
In exchange, I would use his unimaginable wealth and power to make everyone who threw me away pay the ultimate price.
7.9
Valerie Ashford, a girl who had just turned twenty-one, was introduced by her father to his business associates at a grand party, where she met a frightening, cold-blooded man.
That man was none other than her father's business partner, the CEO of a major corporation. He was taken with Valerie and had wanted her from the moment he first laid eyes on her.
For Rovano Morvane, whatever he desired was absolute and he had to have it, even by the worst means possible.
That night Valerie vanished without a trace and Rovano became the prime suspect, yet the Ashford family could not prove their allegations.
"P-please, I don't want to die, sir..." Valerie whispered so softly that Rovano had to bend down even lower.
"Didn't you just say you didn't care whether you were kidnapped or not? So shut your mouth." Rovano ordered.
Cold, Valerie felt the other side of the folding knife pressed against her cheek.
Rovano was going to mark Valerie.
It felt like something was missing if Rovano didn't take out his psychopathic urges on someone.
And this time, for the first time, he wanted a girl: Valerie Ashford.
Would Valerie's life end here?
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.
9.5
After her step sister ran away from her marriage to the billion dollar heir, they took Emerald Jane Campbell as a stand-in to fill in the position of her step sister. Forced by her evil mother, Emerald can't do anything but to follow. She was tied to the disabled billion dollar heir for three years and all she got was cold treatment from him. Years later, a kidnapper appears in their lives. The kidnapper threatens the life of Emerald until Jude Rafael Sanders- the billion-dollar decides to do what it takes to protect his wife, Emerald.
Secrets began to unravel one by one. But what if Jude finds out his beloved wife has something up beneath her sleeves? Find out how tension intensifies in their roller coaster marriage.
8.6
Eleanor Sinclair always knew her stepmother and stepsister were leeches, but she never expected their betrayal to reach into her private study.
In the dead of night, she caught the family's trusted nanny of twelve years photographing confidential trust documents. The mastermind paying her off was Lillian, Eleanor's stepmother, who had been secretly embezzling estate funds and bribing tutors to deliberately ruin the academic future of Eleanor's younger brother, the only legitimate heir.
Emboldened by their deceit, the parasites grew arrogant. Her stepsister, Isabelle, deliberately flaunted her secret affair with Eleanor’s billionaire fiancé, sobbing fake tears while waiting for Eleanor to suffer a humiliating nervous breakdown.
When the tension finally peaked, Lillian played the victim so perfectly that Eleanor's own father, a powerful U.S. Senator, stormed into the room with a raised hand, ready to strike his own daughter.
"You will apologize to your stepsister immediately! I will not have this family harmony destroyed by your petty jealousy!"
They actually expected her to be a weeping, heartbroken girl. They thought cheap hotel affairs and stolen pennies could outsmart the true Sinclair bloodline. Did they really believe a few fake tears and a weak-willed father could strip her of her empire?
Eleanor didn't feel anger; she felt the cold, detached fascination of a biologist observing doomed insects. She calmly pulled out the forensic audits, locked down the estate's exits, and prepared her stepmother's psychiatric commitment papers. The merciless purge of her family had officially begun.