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."
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Chapter 5
Giana pushed open the heavy oak door of the Caldwell mansion in Long Island. The hinges groaned, echoing through the massive foyer.
She stepped inside. Delilah was sitting on the Victorian sofa, holding a bone china teacup.
Delilah's eyes darted to Giana's messy hair and the oversized men's coat. A spark of malicious joy flashed in Delilah's eyes.
"Oh my god, Giana!" Delilah slammed the teacup down on the saucer. She jumped up and ran forward, her voice pitched loud enough to wake the dead. "Where have you been all night?"
The noise worked. Angele Caldwell hurried out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. Her face was tight with worry.
Delilah reached out, trying to grab Giana's arm to pull her into the light, wanting Angele to see the state she was in.
Giana's eyes went cold. She shifted her weight and stepped back. Delilah's hands grabbed empty air, and she stumbled forward awkwardly.
"Why are you screaming, Delilah?" Giana asked. Her voice was flat and steady. "Are you trying to make sure the neighbors know I wasn't home?"
Delilah froze. Her face flushed. She quickly put her hand over her chest and widened her eyes.
"I... I was just so worried! You drank so much at the party last night and then you vanished..." Delilah looked at Angele, making sure the word 'drank' landed.
Angele's expression hardened. "Giana, where exactly were you?"
In her past life, Giana would have screamed and thrown a tantrum. But screaming had gotten her absolutely nothing. She clenched her fists at her sides, digging her nails so deeply into her palms that the skin nearly broke. The sharp, grounding pain cleared the lingering fog in her head. It was time to play an entirely different game. She thought of every betrayal she had suffered, letting the genuine agony morph into a mask of vulnerability. She took a deep, shuddering breath, forced tears to well up in her eyes, and walked straight to Angele.
She threw her arms around her mother's neck and buried her face in her shoulder.
"Mom, I'm so sorry. I was so scared," Giana whispered. Her voice shook perfectly.
Angele stiffened. She wasn't used to Giana hugging her. The anger melted out of her posture. She awkwardly patted Giana's back.
"I went outside to get some air," Giana lied, her voice muffled against Angele's sweater. "Some drunk guys started following me. They cornered me."
"What? !" Angele gasped, pulling Giana back to inspect her face. "Did they hurt you?"
"No. A nice man saw what was happening and chased them off. He let me sleep in his guest room because I was too shaken up to drive. He lent me his coat." Giana pulled the oversized lapels tighter around her neck.
Delilah stared at Giana, her mouth slightly open. She had personally spiked Giana's drink. She had paid the waiter to take her to that old man's room. Hero? Guest room?
"Are you sure he was just being nice?" Delilah stepped closer, her eyes narrowing. "That coat..."
Giana snapped her head toward Delilah. Her eyes were like daggers. "You sound disappointed that I didn't get hurt, Delilah."
Delilah physically recoiled. Her face went pale. "No! I just..."
Angele frowned at Delilah. "That's enough, Delilah. Giana is safe. Stop asking questions."
Delilah bit her lip. Her fingernails dug into her palms. "Yes, Aunt Angele."
Giana leaned her head against Angele's shoulder. "Mom, I'm so tired. Can I just take a hot shower?"
"Of course, sweetie. Go upstairs. I'll have the kitchen make you some soup." Angele kissed her forehead.
Giana turned and walked toward the grand staircase. As she passed Delilah, she let a slow, mocking smirk spread across her face.
Delilah's stomach twisted with rage. She watched Giana walk up the stairs. She needed to know what actually happened last night.
She waited until Angele went back into the kitchen. Then, she slipped off her heels and crept silently up the stairs, following Giana's shadow.
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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."