Reborn Heiress: Marrying The Ruthless Billionaire
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.
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Chapter 8
Arthur stepped back, his face entirely blank. He had served the Knowles family for thirty years, and if the Missus wanted a ladder, the Missus got a ladder.
Alta stared at the polished wooden steps. The stool looked like it belonged in a private study, not in the middle of a glittering ballroom. It was a humiliation, plain and simple.
She tried one last time, her voice thin. "Anna, I really can't. I'll ruin the tower."
Annalise picked up a fresh glass of champagne from a passing tray. She took a slow, deliberate sip, her eyes never leaving Alta's face. "Climb."
Greggory, tired of the delay and the staring crowd, leaned in close to Alta. "Just do it, get it over with," he muttered through a clenched jaw. "Don't make a scene."
He didn't want to look bad. He didn't want people to think his girlfriend couldn't follow a simple order. He certainly didn't want Annalise to think he was weak.
Alta's head snapped toward him, her eyes wide with disbelief. He was supposed to be her partner. He was supposed to save her.
But Greggory was busy adjusting his cufflinks, refusing to meet her gaze. He was already distancing himself, leaving her to twist in the wind.
Alta bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted copper. She grabbed the sides of her short skirt, pulling them down as far as they would go, and placed a shaky foot on the first rung.
The ladder wobbled.
A low whistle came from somewhere in the crowd. It was followed by a ripple of laughter, mean and sharp.
Alta climbed another rung. The short hem of her white dress rode up her thighs, exposing more skin with every step. She tried to press her knees together, to keep some shred of modesty, but the action made her balance precarious.
She gripped the sides of the ladder, her knuckles white. "Almost there," she whispered to herself, a desperate mantra.
The crowd was no longer hiding their interest. Phones came out of pockets and clutches. The flashes were blinding, turning the scene into a grotesque photo shoot.
Annalise watched from the sidelines, her expression blank. She felt nothing. No guilt, no sympathy. Only a cold, satisfying sense of justice.
Alta reached the top rung. She stretched her arm out, her fingers brushing the neck of the antique bottle.
She shifted her weight to reach further. The movement was her undoing.
The skirt of her dress finally gave up the fight, sliding up to her waist. The bright flash of a camera illuminated her exposed skin for a split second, capturing the moment for the front page of every gossip blog in the city.
Alta gasped, her hand flying down to cover herself.
The sudden movement threw her center of gravity off. The ladder tilted violently to the left, the wooden legs screeching against the floor.
Greggory, who had moved closer to the base of the tower, saw her start to fall. His instinct took over, but it wasn't the instinct to catch her. It was the instinct to protect himself.
He stepped back, his hands coming up to shield his expensive suit from the falling liquid.
Annalise stood on the second-floor landing, leaning against the railing. When she had ascended the stairs moments ago, Eddy had silently peeled away from the main floor, using the service stairs to flank her position, melting into the shadows of the upper balcony like a phantom. She turned her head slightly, catching Eddy's eye. He was standing a few feet away, his phone already raised.
She nodded once.
Eddy's thumb hit the shutter button, the phone clicking rapidly in burst mode. He wasn't capturing the fall. He was capturing the look of sheer panic on Alta's face, the exposed skin, the humiliation.
Alta saw the lens. She saw the cold, hard lens pointed right at her.
"No! Don't shoot!" she shrieked, her voice cracking.
She let out a shriek, instinctively releasing one hand from the ladder to cover her exposed skin, but it was a fatal mistake. The sudden shift in weight made her lose her balance entirely, her body twisting as her feet left the rung.
The ladder gave way, crashing to the floor with a deafening clang.
Alta's hand flailed, her nails scraping against the edge of the champagne tower. The top tier wobbled.
A loud, sickening crack echoed through the room as the structure gave way.
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8.1
Terminally ill.
Betrayed by her husband.
Abandoned by the only family she had.
Ariel died with nothing... and no one.
But fate gives her a second chance.
Reborn three years before her death, she walks away from the man who ruined her life-and takes back everything they stole.
Her love.
Her identity.
Her power.
Now, the cold billionaire who once ignored her can't take his eyes off her.
The brother who abandoned her starts to regret.
Too late.
Because this time, Ariel isn't the woman who begs.
She's the one who makes them kneel.
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.
8.4
Elia was an orphan from the rust belt, taken in by the wealthy Chapman family in New York.
To them, she was just a shameful charity case.
The parents shoved her into a dusty storage closet, treating their other daughter Geri like a delicate princess, and mocked Elia as uneducated trash.
When Elia secured her own admission to Manhattan Elite Prep, Geri's jealousy turned vicious.
Geri orchestrated a massive smear campaign, posting anonymously on the school forum that Elia was a violent dropout who sold her body to a sugar daddy to pay tuition.
In the cafeteria, the school's elite dumped dirty milk on Elia's food.
They called her a whore and told her to go back to the streets, while Geri watched from afar with a victorious, innocent smile.
They thought she was just a helpless stray dog who would easily break under their high-society cruelty.
They had no idea she was actually "L", the dark web's most feared hacker, and "The Surgeon", a genius medical anomaly.
They also didn't know she was currently tracking a dying Wall Street billionaire who had stolen her only necklace in a dark alley.
What made these arrogant rich kids think they could destroy a girl who played with international firewalls for fun?
Instead of crying, Elia calmly pulled out her phone.
Within seconds, she breached the school's server, locking every screen in the building onto a blood-red skull.
As Geri's own recorded voice plotting the fake rumors blasted through the PA system, Elia grabbed her bag, stepping back into the shadows to reclaim what was hers.
7.2
Elmore Thomas rushed into the emergency room, clutching his feverish seven-year-old son, Buddy, tightly to his chest.
When the privacy curtain was pulled back, the air in Elmore's lungs vanished. The attending physician standing under the harsh lights was his wife, Kendal—the woman everyone believed had burned to death eight years ago.
But there was no tearful reunion. Kendal looked at him, and her eyes froze into impenetrable ice. She treated him like a biohazard, strictly referring to him as the family member.
Worse, she didn't recognize Buddy. She comforted their crying son with the same gentle warmth she used to reserve for Elmore, completely unaware she was soothing the baby she thought had died.
Days later, Elmore watched from the shadows as she picked up another boy outside a prep school, her left hand flashing a massive diamond engagement ring.
When his butler accidentally recognized her, Kendal shielded her new stepson with pure disgust in her eyes.
"Tell that psychopath to sign the divorce papers immediately. I have a new family now."
The words 'new family' echoed in Elmore's skull, tearing him apart. For eight years, he had lived in a hell of guilt and madness, raising their son in the shadow of her ghost. How could she just erase their past? How could she give her tender smiles to a stranger and look at him with absolute revulsion?
Standing in a luxury ballroom, Elmore squeezed his hand until his crystal champagne flute shattered, thick blood dripping onto the rug. The murderous obsession in his dark eyes returned as he called his lawyer.
"Freeze her divorce application. Use every dirty trick in the book. She isn't leaving."
9.5
I woke up gasping from a nightmare of flames devouring Chandler Finch's estate, my body wrapped in burning curtains as I died alone.
But my eyes opened to silk sheets in his penthouse master bedroom. He was alive beside me, his cedarwood scent real. This was my second chance—I'd been reborn.
His phone buzzed: Eugenia Stewart's "emergency." Her security detail reported her refusing meals, unstable. Chandler bolted without a glance, rushing to her side.
I signed the brutal cohabitation contract binding me to him, but Temperance had planted birth control pills in the trash—a trap to frame me. Chandler found them, exploded in jealous rage, crushing the pills to dust. "No child unless it's mine," he growled, possessive fire in his eyes.
Brett, Eugenia's lapdog, stormed in later, accusing me of manipulation. I fired back: Chandler demanded my womb for his heir. Brett paled, fled to tattle.
Then the storm hit—power outage, locked on the terrace in pouring rain, freezing as Eugenia faked an asthma attack on Chandler's line, stealing his focus again. I hung up, huddled with a stray puppy, nearly dying from hypothermia.
He'd never believed me before—Eugenia's lies always won, dooming me to isolation and fire. Why did her every whimper trump my screams? How could he be so blind?
This time, reborn weeks before the inferno, I wouldn't beg. I'd play his game, shatter Eugenia's web, and make Chandler mine—before the flames returned.