Reborn Heiress: Claimed By The Ruthless Boss
Giana woke up drugged and burning with fever in a luxurious hotel suite. Standing before her was Cornel Stark, the most ruthless billionaire in New York.
Memories of her past life stabbed into her brain. In that life, her adoptive family and her fiancé Gary had stolen her inheritance and left her to die a brutal, agonizing death.
She also remembered how fighting Cornel only made him more violent. So this time, she didn't scream.
She endured his brutal punishment, escaped the moment he let his guard down, and swallowed a Plan B pill on the freezing streets.
Returning to her adoptive family's mansion, she faced the people who had destroyed her. Her fiancé and her stepsister put on masks of fake concern, secretly mocking her.
Instead of throwing a useless tantrum like before, Giana deliberately threw herself down the steep wooden stairs.
She smashed her head against the marble floor, using her own blood to shatter their plans and win back her mother's trust.
She thought she had finally taken control. She was ready to crush the people who had betrayed her and live for herself.
But she didn't understand why the billionaire she had just escaped was suddenly turning her life upside down.
When she woke up in the hospital, her room wasn't filled with her family's fake tears, but an ocean of blood-red roses.
The heavy door swung open, and Cornel Stark walked in, his gray eyes locking onto her with a dark, predatory hunger.
"Remember this feeling, Giana. Every breath you take belongs to me now."
Chapters
Share
Chapter 2
The morning sun sliced through the blinds, stabbing directly into Giana's eyes.
She groaned and tried to open them. A crushing ache radiated through every muscle in her body. It felt like her bones had been ground into powder.
She took a sharp breath, but the movement stretched her split lip. A sharp sting made her wince.
She turned her head.
Cornel sat in the single armchair in the corner of the room. His gray eyes were locked onto her.
Giana's heart skipped a beat. Her stomach dropped.
He wore dark gray dress pants. The first three buttons of his crisp white shirt were undone. He held a silver lighter in his hand. He flipped the metal lid open and closed.
Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
The sound echoed in the quiet room, heavy and threatening.
Giana remembered her past life. She remembered waking up, screaming, throwing things at him. She remembered how that had ended.
She swallowed the lump of panic in her throat. She forced herself to look him dead in the eye.
She didn't pull the comforter up to hide her chest. She pushed herself up into a sitting position. The blanket fell to her waist. The dark bruises on her collarbones were fully exposed to the cold air.
Cornel's thumb stopped on the lighter. His eyes narrowed.
Giana looked at the floor. Her evening gown was shredded into useless strips of fabric.
She threw the comforter off. She stepped onto the thick wool rug barefoot. She ignored the soreness between her thighs and walked straight to the foot of the bed. Cornel had left a spare white dress shirt draped over the bench.
Cornel didn't move. He watched the curve of her spine. He watched the way she walked. A dark, heavy possessiveness began to coil in his gut.
Giana pulled the oversized shirt over her shoulders. The cold silk sent a shiver down her spine. The hem fell just below her thighs.
She started buttoning the shirt, starting from the bottom. Her movements were slow and steady. She acted like she was completely alone in the room.
"You think you can walk out of here wearing my clothes?" Cornel's voice was a low rumble.
Giana's fingers paused on the third button. She took a slow breath, filling her lungs, and turned around. She forced the corners of her mouth up into a lazy smirk.
"Mr. Stark, we are both adults. It was just friends with benefits."
Cornel's face went completely hard.
He stood up. His massive frame blocked out the sunlight from the window. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
He closed the distance between them in three long strides.
Giana stepped back instinctively. Her shoulder blades hit the cold wall.
Cornel slammed his hand against the drywall right next to her ear. He leaned in. His chest almost brushed against hers.
"Friends with benefits?" He let out a harsh breath that hit her nose. "What exactly did you benefit from me? The right to wear my shirt and walk out of my life?"
Giana's pupils dilated. Her chest tightened. He was too close to the truth.
She forced a short laugh from her throat.
"I took one night from the most expensive man in New York. I'd say I made a profit." She tilted her chin up, refusing to break eye contact.
Cornel stared at her defiant eyes. His throat went dry. The memory of how she tasted last night hit him like a physical blow.
He dropped his hand from the wall and grabbed her waist. He yanked her forward. Her body crashed into his solid chest.
Giana gasped. She shoved her hands against his chest, trying to push him away. She could feel his heart hammering against her palms.
"If you made a profit, why don't we make another deal?" His voice was thick and raspy. His eyes dropped to her bruised lips.
Giana knew she was losing control of the situation. She jerked her head to the side, dodging his mouth. His lips brushed against her cheek instead.
"Sorry, Mr. Stark. I don't eat the same dish twice." She pushed hard against his shoulders.
Cornel's jaw clenched. The rejection hit his ego like a sledgehammer.
He grabbed her wrist. His fingers dug into her skin, cutting off her circulation.
He turned and dragged her toward the bathroom.
Giana stumbled over her own feet trying to keep up. The oversized shirt slipped off one shoulder.
Cornel kicked the bathroom door open with his heavy boot. The wood slammed against the wall with a deafening crack. He pulled her inside and shoved her backward. Her lower back hit the edge of the marble sink.
You may also like
7.6
Jocelyn Yang lived in the grand Turner Mansion, not as a guest, but as a prisoner. Ever since her father's death, the ruthless billionaire Elam Turner forced her to atone for sins her father never committed.
On her nineteenth birthday, a male classmate secretly sent her a diamond necklace. Elam, who had flown back from London overnight, flew into a psychotic, jealous rage at the sight of another man's gift.
He mercilessly crushed the delicate necklace into the marble floor with his custom leather shoe.
"Did you forget what you are?" Elam hissed, dragging her into a pitch-black storage room. "You take gifts from other men behind my back?"
He pinned her to the dusty floorboards and violently assaulted her. The next morning, a wire transfer of $500,000 hit her bank account. He had humiliated her, broken her spirit, and was now casually trying to buy her silence. Later, when a broken bike left her walking miles through a freezing rainstorm, he just shoved scalding tea into her bleeding hands.
"Look at you," he sneered. "You look like a stray dog ruining my floors."
Jocelyn curled up in the cold, her lips bleeding and her heart shattered. She couldn't understand his terrifying obsession. If he hated her so much, why did he refuse to let her go? Why did he look at her with such manic hunger while systematically destroying her life?
Staring at the massive sum of hush money on her phone, a desperate spark of vengeance flared in her chest. Jocelyn wired every single cent back to Elam's account. She picked up her charcoal pencil, vowing to win the upcoming art competition and buy her escape from this monster forever.
9.0
The biopsy report slid across the cold metal desk, stamped with a brutal death sentence: advanced gastric cancer. Aretha had exactly ninety days left to live.
It was her twenty-sixth birthday, but her phone only rang with a furious call from her husband, Anders.
"Do you have any idea how much of a joke you made this family look like today? Post a public apology to Kelli right now."
He had completely forgotten her birthday, only caring that she skipped her adopted sister's yacht party.
When Aretha dragged her failing body back to the family estate, her biological mother slapped her across the face just for looking pale and embarrassing them in front of guests.
Seeing Aretha wasn't submitting to the usual abuse, Kelli deliberately threw herself down the stairs, playing the innocent, depressed victim.
Anders rushed in and shoved Aretha brutally against the wall to protect Kelli, while her biological father delivered his ultimate threat.
"I am freezing your trust fund. Get on your knees and apologize to Kelli right now, or you won't see another dime."
A massive, suffocating sense of absurdity washed over Aretha. She had spent six years lowering her head and begging for their approval, only to be treated like a disposable placeholder. Why should she spend her final days enduring this agonizing torture for people who didn't even care if she breathed?
Aretha wiped the blood from her chin and laughed. She publicly severed all ties with her family, whipped the signed divorce papers directly at Anders's face, and walked out into the freezing storm—ready to fight for her own life.
9.5
One night, I was a girl seeking vengeance in a velvet mask. He was the stranger who took me against a cold stone wall, his touch a silent, lethal promise.
Now, he is Caspian Blackwood-the most feared architecture professor at Aethelgard. When my "perfect" boyfriend, Dominic Calloway, cheats on me and sabotages my degree, Caspian offers a lifeline with a razor-thin edge: Be his silent, nude model for thirty days.
The rules are absolute. I must wear a silk mask and a weighted collar. I must never speak. I must hold the poses he demands until my muscles scream for mercy. In the lecture hall, he ignores me with arctic indifference. In the studio, his gaze is a physical weight, stripping me faster than his hands ever could. But as the charcoal scratches against the paper, I realize the "deal" isn't just for art. It's for the soul I accidentally gave him in the dark. Will the deal destroy his career, or consume me first?
9.8
Three women, three brothers, a single, crumpled dollar bill.
Alina's world shatters the moment she's auctioned off-and claimed by the powerful Hawthorne brothers.
Thrown into Adrian Hawthorne's cold, dangerous world, she becomes his to control... his to protect... and, terrifyingly, his to desire. He's ruthless, possessive, and hiding secrets that could destroy them both. But the deeper she falls into his world, the harder it becomes to tell if she's his prisoner-or something far more dangerous.
Because the Hawthorne brothers don't just take.
They keep.
Viviane has spent her life surviving, so when Julian Hawthorne "buys" her freedom, she knows better than to trust it. Men like him don't save people-they collect them. But Julian isn't as simple as he pretends to be, and the deeper she's pulled into his world, the more dangerous it becomes to walk away.
Especially when she realizes she might be the only thing he's ever been willing to fight for.
Lena doesn't belong to anyone-and she intends to keep it that way. Brilliant, guarded, and hiding more than anyone suspects, she enters Lucien Hawthorne's world on her own terms. But Lucien doesn't play fair, and he doesn't let go.
When her past comes crashing back, Lena is forced to face the one thing she's been running from: trusting someone who could destroy her... or save her.
Three women. Three choices.Stay. Fight.
Or burn it all down.
Because being sold was only the beginning.
9.2
Chelsi was down to her last fourteen dollars. After a humiliating job rejection for being "too low-class," the threat of eviction forced her to try live-streaming. Terrified of her exhausted, tear-stained face, she cranked the AR beauty filter to the max, morphing into a bizarre plastic alien.
She was immediately dragged into a forced streaming battle with Kamron, the platform's most arrogant top streamer. Seeing her distorted filter, Kamron sneered, unleashing fifty thousand fans to flood her chat with toxic insults.
Kamron set a ruthless penalty for her inevitable loss.
"You're going to take a bar of soap, scrub your face completely clean, and shove your bare face right into the camera."
Desperate to keep the fifty dollars she had just earned for rent, Chelsi begged for a different punishment, but Kamron coldly refused. With her heart pounding, she walked to the freezing bathroom, her hands shaking as she scrubbed her skin raw, bracing for the cyberbullying.
She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling utterly humiliated by the cruelty of the internet. Why did she have to be stripped of her dignity just to survive? She clicked off the filter, waiting for the tidal wave of disgust to destroy her.
But the insults never came. The high-definition camera revealed a breathtakingly delicate, flawless face that no algorithm could ever replicate. The chat went dead silent, Kamron was so stunned he dropped a ten-thousand-dollar virtual yacht, and a silent war between two mysterious billionaires was about to begin.
8.2
For five years, I poured my soul into ruling the Black Moon Pack alongside my fated mate, Alpha Ryker.
But at our most sacred gathering, he publicly pulled his rogue ex-girlfriend, Faye, into his arms.
"Faye is under my protection," he declared to the entire pack, using his crushing Alpha Command to force me, his Luna, to my knees.
He didn't care that I had taken a silver blade for him, or that Faye was a traitor whose past defection had permanently crippled three of our warriors.
He stripped me of my dignity, ordered me to accept his new partner, and left me alone in our marital suite.
That night, my Mating Mark erupted into a searing, white-hot agony that made me vomit blood and pass out.
I thought I was simply dying of a broken heart, until I remembered the forbidden lore of the "Fidelity Curse."
The curse ensured that if one mate was unfaithful, every moment of their physical pleasure would be transmitted through the bond as pure, agonizing torture to the betrayed mate.
I wasn't just heartbroken. My body was being forced to physiologically experience my husband's affair.
The final, near-fatal wave of pain at dawn wasn't random—it was the exact moment they conceived a child.
When Ryker walked in the next morning, smelling of her perfume, and proudly announced Faye was pregnant, he expected me to finally break and submit.
Instead, I looked at the father of another woman's child and gave him a chilling smile.
"I, Selene Thorne of the Winter Pack, have heard your declaration. Now get out of my sight. The war has begun."