Reborn Heiress: Taming The Ruthless Tycoon
Gemma expected the tearing agony of the bullet wound that had just ended her life.
Instead, her trembling fingers met the cool, smooth friction of heavy silk.
She stared into the mirror. Her face was flawless, completely devoid of the jagged scar that had marred her cheek for the last five years.
It was exactly ten years ago. The day of her engagement party to the ruthless billionaire, Brion Hubbard.
In her past life, her "best friend" Katelyn convinced her to run away with a scheming scumbag.
Katelyn claimed Brion was a heartless tyrant who would ruin her. Gemma had foolishly believed those fake tears.
That choice led to her family's bankruptcy, her brutal disfigurement, and ultimately, a fatal bomb explosion.
The only person who tried to save her was Brion, his blood-soaked body shielding hers from the blast.
She even realized too late that the strawberry cream cakes she always made for him were full of dairy.
He wasn't leaving to cheat on her. He was locking himself in a medical bay, fighting fatal allergic shock, just to accept a tiny scrap of her affection.
Gemma had been so incredibly blind. Why did she trust the venomous snakes who destroyed her, while hating the man who died for her?
Hearing Katelyn frantically knocking on the dressing room door, urging her to run away again, a towering hatred surged through Gemma's veins.
This time, she wasn't going to run.
She was going to expose the traitors, take back her family's wealth, and claim the tyrant for herself.
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Chapter 3
Gemma pulled the door open and stepped out of the study.
Katelyn was pacing the carpeted hallway, chewing her lower lip raw.
She rushed forward the second she saw Gemma. “Did he yell at you? Are you okay?” Her eyes crawled over Gemma’s face, hunting for tears.
Gemma casually tapped the tablet in her hand. “I just got ten percent of the family trust.”
The mask of concern on Katelyn’s face cracked clean open. The muscles around her mouth twitched violently.
“How… how could you possibly get trust shares?” Katelyn’s voice pitched up, sharp and entirely out of bounds for a mere friend.
Gemma looked down at her, eyes flat and cold. “Since when is my family’s money any of your concern?”
Katelyn’s breath hitched. She dropped her gaze instantly, biting her lip harder, forcing a look of wounded innocence.
Gemma didn’t wait for an apology. She walked past her, heading straight for the powder room at the end of the hall.
Katelyn waited until the footsteps faded. Her hands balled into fists, nails digging into her palms until the skin nearly split.
She darted into a small utility closet across the hall and pulled the door shut.
She dug into the lining of her purse and yanked out a cheap, prepaid burner phone. Her fingers shook as she dialed.
“Mom.” Katelyn’s voice was a strangled hiss the second it connected. “She didn’t run. She just took ten percent of the company.”
Miles away, Donia Bruce sat up so fast she knocked a bottle of essential oil off her massage table. Glass shattered against the tile.
“Calm down.” Donia’s voice was tight as a wire. “It’s a fluke. She’s an idiot.”
“She looked at me like she wanted to kill me!” Katelyn’s chest heaved. “She’s not acting like herself.”
“Then we move to Plan B.” Donia’s voice went ice-cold. “Ruin her tonight. Make sure the Hubbard boy sees it.”
“How?”
“Use the artist. Tell her he’s going to kill himself. Get her down to the side entrance where the paparazzi are grouped.”
A dark, venomous light sparked in Katelyn’s eyes. “I will. She’s going to lose everything.”
Katelyn ended the call. She took a deep breath, staring at her warped reflection in the metal surface of a mop bucket. She forced the corners of her mouth up into a soft, supportive smile.
She pushed the closet door open and stepped out.
Gemma was walking back down the hall, adjusting the heavy diamond necklace.
Katelyn hurried over and gently linked her arm through Gemma’s.
Every muscle in Gemma’s body screamed to snap the girl’s neck. She forced herself still. She noticed the fine sheen of sweat on the bridge of Katelyn’s nose, the too-bright glint in her eyes.
“Gemma.” Katelyn’s voice trembled perfectly. “Jair is freezing out there. He’s waiting in the rain just to see you one last time.”
Gemma kept her face blank. She hadn’t gone far. She’d leaned against the wall just a few feet away and caught the muffled vibrations through the door—the suppressed, frantic pitch of Katelyn’s voice. “Plan B.” “The Hubbard boy.”
She stopped walking. She let her shoulders slump slightly, manufactured a look of deep, painful conflict.
Katelyn saw the hesitation and pounced. She shoved her own phone into Gemma’s hands. “Look. He sent a suicide note. He’s going to end it if you don’t come.”
Gemma stared at the screen. The pathetic, manipulative texts made her stomach churn.
“What do I do?” Gemma made her voice small and fragile.
Katelyn’s eyes gleamed with suppressed triumph. She pointed toward the grand staircase. “Go to the side door by the media pit. He’s hiding behind the hedges there.”
Gemma gave a slow, hesitant nod.
She lowered her lashes, hiding the absolute bloodlust burning in her pupils. The trap was set.
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9.7
For three years, I hid my identity as the sole heiress of a multi-billion dollar tech empire to live in a cramped apartment and support my boyfriend, Ben.
But the day before our engagement, I stood outside a meeting room and overheard him talking to his wealthy boss, Haylie.
"She's just a stepping stone," Ben laughed, his voice full of contempt. "A poor, ambitionless distraction while I work my way up to where I really belong."
He mocked the cheap silver ring he gave me, calling it a necessary prop to keep a naive fool happy.
He bragged about the multi-million dollar merger proposal he was presenting, planning to use it to secure his promotion and build a future with her.
He had no idea that I had secretly negotiated that entire deal using my real connections just to give him his big break.
I had sacrificed my family's comfort, my true identity, and my own career just to watch him rise.
I poured my heart and soul into our humble beginnings, only to realize he saw my love as a pathetic joke and me as disposable trash.
I calmly picked up a pen and voided the merger agreement, tearing my hard work into tiny pieces.
I went home, slid the cheap ring off my finger, and dropped it into his mug of cold coffee.
"Soon, you'll find out exactly who is nothing."
Walking out the door, I pulled out my phone and texted my billionaire father.
"I'm in. Announce the merger."
8.2
For three years, nineteen-year-old Ella Campbell rotted in a freezing psychiatric isolation room.
Her billionaire family didn't visit her once, only pulling her out today to force her to publicly apologize to Ashlyn, the perfect sister who had framed her.
At Ashlyn's glamorous engagement gala, Ella was treated worse than a stray dog and forced to watch her childhood sweetheart propose to her sister.
When Ella showed no jealousy, her brother Ivan dragged her onto a dark balcony and nearly choked her to death.
Her mother didn't even check if Ella was breathing, merely ordering a makeup artist to paint thick concealer over the dark purple handprints on Ella's neck so the family's stock price wouldn't drop.
Standing under the blinding stage lights in a shapeless gray dress, facing three hundred mocking Wall Street executives, Ella was supposed to be the broken, obedient psycho the Campbells needed.
"I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused."
She was supposed to end the apology there and bow to her abusers, but Ella didn't shed a single tear.
"My only regret is that I didn't insist on waiting for the police to arrive that night. I deeply regret that I didn't demand a full, legal toxicology report to prove to everyone exactly what happened."
As the ballroom erupted into suspicious whispers and her paralyzed twin brother finally saw the violent bruises hidden beneath her makeup, Ella's counterattack against the Campbell family officially began.
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.
7.9
June was an ordinary architect struggling to pay rent, completely estranged from her high-society mother.
But one night, she was kidnapped and beaten in an abandoned warehouse by Gage Becker, the city's most ruthless billionaire, who demanded payback for her mother's sins.
Gage pointed a high-definition camera at June's battered face and video-called her mother, threatening to release the footage and ruin her upcoming billion-dollar wedding.
"I will never throw away a billion-dollar marriage for a useless daughter."
Her mother's cold voice echoed through the warehouse before the line went dead.
From that moment, Gage systematically destroyed June's life. She was publicly humiliated and forced to hack off her own hair with a cigar cutter. She was blacklisted from every firm in the city, evicted by her landlord, and violently mugged in a freezing New York blizzard.
Curled up in an icy tunnel waiting to die, June felt a suffocating despair. She hadn't spoken to her mother in months. Why did she have to endure this hell for a woman who didn't even care if she lived or died? Why was a monster like Gage so obsessed with driving her to the grave?
When Gage's armored Maybach pulled up, he stepped into the snow to mock her, waiting for her to finally surrender and beg for his mercy.
But the absolute humiliation snapped the last thread of June's sanity.
Instead of crying, she lunged forward with feral energy and sank her teeth directly into the devil's flesh.
7.6
Dumped by her fiancé just days before their wedding, only to watch him marry someone else-what would you do? Cry yourself to sleep, or dress to kill for revenge?
That was Elaina's reality. She's no Cinderella, yet she lost a shoe while recklessly crashing her ex's wedding. Her revenge plan went up in flames, but fate had other ideas, throwing her into the path of Alister-a man who is handsome, charismatic, and dangerous... and ironically, the person closest to her ex-fiancé.
Amidst heartbreak and vendettas, Alister paints her world in new colors, turning Elaina into a modern-day Cinderella. But will this story end in "happily ever after," or is Alister merely leading her into a much more dangerous game?
7.4
"You can't escape me, Aurora. You are mine!"
The Alpha King's roar echoed through the palace walls.
But Aurora just tightened her grip on the blade hidden beneath her cloak.
She would never-never-give herself to the monster who murdered her father.
Even if the Moon Goddess cursed her to be his mate.
***
Aurora Regalia once had everything-a loving father, a prosperous pack, and a future that glittered with promise. Her father, the king, even chose her a mate: Logan Charming. Powerful. Charismatic. Cursed.
She thought he was her destiny.
Then she watched him tear her father's head from his shoulders.
One night. One betrayal. Her entire family, slaughtered. Her pack, reduced to ashes.
Aurora jumped off a cliff that night-not to die, but to survive. To become something her enemies would never see coming.
An assassin. A ghost. A blade wrapped in silk.
For years, she trained in the shadows, fueled by one single purpose: revenge. Blood for blood. She would make Logan Charming suffer the way she had suffered. She would carve his heart out and feel nothing.
But fate had a cruel sense of humor.
The Moon Goddess looked down at her shattered daughter and laughed.
Because the man who destroyed her life?
The monster who wore her father's blood on his hands?
He was her fated mate.
Now Aurora stands at a crossroads she never asked for. Every instinct screams for vengeance. Every fiber of her being recoils at the bond pulling her toward him.
But Logan? He doesn't care about her hatred. He doesn't care about her blade.
"You can run, little mate," he whispers, crimson eyes gleaming in the dark. "But I will always find you."
And when he does?
He won't just cage her body.
He'll claim her soul.