Reborn To Love My Ruthless Billionaire
Jaclyn woke up in the sterile hospital room after falling down the stairs. The nurse delivered the devastating news: she had bled heavily and lost her baby.
But before she could even cry, her trusted cousins, Katelyn and Cherri, locked the door and revealed the horrifying truth.
"It wasn't an accident," Katelyn smirked, pinning Jaclyn's arm down. "The lubricant on the top step was a very deliberate choice."
They needed her broken and unstable. They had forged her signature, draining her massive trust fund to save their uncle's bankrupt business.
What shattered Jaclyn's world was the fresh hickey on Cherri's neck. Her lover, Bradford, had helped plan the entire murder.
When Jaclyn tried to scream, they smothered her with a pillow, framing her as a lunatic having a mental breakdown.
Two weeks later, when she confronted them, Bradford violently shoved her through a second-story glass window to silence her forever.
As she fell to her death, the husband she had spent her life hating—the ruthless billionaire Gaines—burst through the doors.
He threw himself forward, his face filled with pure terror, desperately trying to catch her.
When her body hit the stone patio, Gaines fell to his knees in her blood, weeping and begging her not to close her eyes.
Until her last breath, Jaclyn was consumed by suffocating regret. Why did she trust the monsters who killed her, and hate the only man who truly loved her?
Opening her eyes again, she was back in the penthouse, exactly one month into her marriage with Gaines.
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Chapter 10
Gaines turned his entire body around. His dark eyes locked onto Jaclyn like a sniper acquiring a target.
He was trying to detect a lie, a bluff, anything.
Jaclyn didn't flinch under his intense scrutiny. She calmly reached over, turned the knob on the stove, and killed the flame. She picked up a pair of tongs, plated the bacon and pancakes, and carried the plates to the long glass dining table.
She pulled out a chair and sat down. Her posture was relaxed, confident. She looked like a CEO preparing for a board meeting.
She gestured to the empty chair across from her.
Gaines walked slowly to the table and sat down. He rested his elbows on the glass, interlacing his fingers beneath his chin. The oppressive aura of a ruthless corporate predator radiated from him.
"Prove it," Gaines commanded, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "Don't play word games with me."
Jaclyn picked up her silver fork. She cut a small piece of pancake, placed it in her mouth, and chewed slowly.
She swallowed, then looked him dead in the eye.
"Alpha-Seven-Nine-Delta-Four-Two-Cayman," Jaclyn recited smoothly.
Gaines's pupils contracted sharply.
As a titan of the financial world, he instantly recognized the alphanumeric sequence. It was the exact formatting structure used by the most exclusive, secretive private bank in the Cayman Islands.
Jaclyn didn't stop there.
"Guy Lester uses a shell company registered in Belize to purchase forged contemporary art," she continued, her voice clinical and precise. "He inflates the appraisal value by three hundred percent, donates it to his own charity foundation, and washes the trust fund money clean through the tax write-offs."
Every detail she dropped hit Gaines like a physical punch to the gut.
This was highly classified, deeply buried financial crime data. It was the exact blind spot his own intelligence team had been trying to uncover for months. There was absolutely no way the spoiled, naive girl he married could know this.
Gaines narrowed his eyes. The muscle in his jaw ticked violently.
"If you knew all of this," Gaines demanded, his voice laced with heavy suspicion, "why have you spent the last six months screaming at me and defending them like a lunatic?"
Jaclyn lowered her eyelashes, masking the deep, ancient hatred burning in her pupils.
"When I fell down the stairs," Jaclyn lied smoothly, "I heard Cherri talking on the phone to Bradford. She slipped up. I put the pieces together."
She looked back up at him. Her eyes were wide and fiercely determined.
"I need your power, Gaines. I need your resources to take back what they stole from me."
Gaines let out a dark, mocking chuckle. He leaned back in his chair.
"And why would I help a woman who tries to escape my house every chance she gets?" he asked coldly.
Jaclyn placed her fork down on the plate. She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table.
"Because I am done running," Jaclyn stated firmly. "I will play the perfect, obedient Mrs. Acevedo for the cameras. And to prove I'm not lying..."
She paused, letting the tension build.
"I want you to assign someone to watch me. Twenty-four hours a day. I want your Chief Assistant, Devin Newman, to be my personal bodyguard."
Gaines stopped breathing for a second.
Devin Newman was his most loyal, ruthless operative. Asking for Devin was like asking to wear a tracking collar. It completely destroyed the logic of a woman planning to escape.
Gaines stared at her face, searching for the trap. He found nothing but cold, hard resolve.
He slowly tapped his index finger against the glass table. Tap. Tap. Tap. It was his signature tell when calculating a massive risk.
The tapping stopped.
"Fine," Gaines said. His voice was devoid of emotion.
Jaclyn's shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. A massive wave of relief washed over her. She had her foot in the door.
Gaines stood up. He towered over the table, casting a dark shadow over her.
"If I find out this is another trick," Gaines warned, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper, "the consequences will be worse than death."
Jaclyn smiled. It was a genuine, terrifying smile. "I know."
Gaines pulled his phone from his pocket, dialed a number, and barked an order for Devin to get to the penthouse immediately.
Thirty minutes later, the elevator doors opened. Devin Newman stepped out. He was a tall, sharp-featured man in a black suit. He looked deeply confused by the order to babysit the boss's erratic wife.
Jaclyn walked out of the bedroom. She was dressed in a sharp, black Chanel tweed suit. Her hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail.
She walked right up to Devin and extended her hand.
"Good morning, Devin," she said politely.
Devin cautiously shook her hand, a shiver of unease running down his spine at her sudden, eerie calmness.
Jaclyn turned to Gaines. A dangerous spark ignited in her eyes.
"Have the driver bring the car around," Jaclyn said smoothly. "My first stop is the Lester estate. I need to pick up some... personal items."
Gaines watched her walk toward the door. His eyes darkened with a mixture of intense curiosity and a predatory thrill. The game had changed, and he was ready to watch her play.
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7.9
I woke up in a sterile hospital room, my head split open from a horrific car crash.
But the pain in my skull was nothing compared to the memory burned into my retinas just before the impact: my billionaire husband, Dawson, walking into a luxury hotel with a woman who looked exactly like his dead first love.
When Dawson finally arrived at the ward, there was no panic or relief in his eyes. He just coldly looked at my bloody bandages.
"Your reckless driving just forced me to postpone the quarterly board meeting."
Even our seven-year-old son, who I almost died giving birth to, didn't spare me a single glance. He kicked my hospital bed in annoyance.
"The Wi-Fi here is garbage. You're a bad mom! Dad said Aunt Angelita should be the one living with us!"
My blood turned to ice. For five years, I had bent over backward, wearing the hideous pale dresses he picked, starving myself to maintain a fragile figure, all to be a perfect, obedient substitute for a ghost.
And this was what I got. An unfaithful husband who would rather bury me in debt than grant me a divorce, and a son who wished I was dead.
The weak, subservient Charlene died on that wet asphalt.
When the doctor pointed to Dawson and asked for his name, I looked at my husband with a hollow, defensive stare.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
Using retrograde amnesia as my shield, I was going to tear their perfect world apart.
9.2
Jacqueline Blackburn, a desperate Ivy League tutor, walked into the sleazy Veridian VIP club just to save her job.
But her billionaire client, the ruthless Christian Montgomery, mistook her for a cheap escort, blowing cigar smoke in her face and treating her like trash.
When she furiously turned to leave, a drunk former client attacked her in the hallway, tearing her white dress open and pinning her by the throat.
She fought back, stabbing the man's hand with a pen, only for Christian to emerge from the shadows and brutally crush the attacker's bleeding hand under his heel.
Instead of letting her go, Christian draped his heavy suit jacket over her exposed skin, trapped her in his dark suite, and forced her to sign a suffocating contract.
"You have exactly ninety days, or I will personally ensure you cease to exist in my city."
She thought she could just keep her head down, teach his nephew, and survive.
But she didn't understand why this terrifying underground tyrant was suddenly so fixated on her.
Why did he use his immense power to isolate her, publicly claim her at a billionaire gala, and track her every move?
When she received a chilling midnight text demanding she pack her bags and move into his sprawling estate by 8:00 AM, the terrifying reality set in.
She hadn't escaped the wolf. She had just walked directly into his cage.
8.7
Ada was eight months pregnant, sitting peacefully in her husband's Manhattan estate, looking at a baby nursery catalog.
Suddenly, her husband's mistress, Jacklyn, walked in, threw an ultrasound photo on the table, and locked the door.
Before Ada could process the betrayal, Jacklyn dragged her to the top of the marble staircase and threw herself backward just as Desmond walked through the front doors.
"She pushed me, Desmond! She tried to kill our baby!"
Desmond looked at Ada with absolute hatred.
He ignored Ada's breaking water and her agonizing screams for help, leaving her to miscarry on the freezing floor while he rushed Jacklyn to the hospital.
He sent Ada to a brutal federal prison for three years, where she was tortured and left with a body covered in horrific scars, mourning the baby she was told died at birth.
When Ada was finally released, Desmond destroyed her cousin's company to force her back to his estate as a lowly maid.
But when Ada saw Jacklyn's three-year-old son, her world stopped.
Right in the center of the little boy's palm was a faint crescent moon birthmark.
It was the exact same mark Ada had kissed on her own lifeless baby's tiny hand before the doctors took his body away.
How did her dead child become Jacklyn's little prince?
Looking at the woman who stole her life and the husband who threw her in hell, Ada clenched her scarred hands and swore she would tear their world apart to get her son back.
9.2
Lainey spent her last life destroying herself for Larry, only to become the woman he discarded most cruelly. He never loved her, never wanted her, and made no secret that his first love still owned his heart.
On their wedding day, he abandoned Lainey at the altar for that woman, then later used Lainey as nothing more than a stepping stone for his company's rise. In the end, he even had her kidney ripped from her.
Reborn at the very moment everything began, Lainey called off the wedding without hesitation. But after losing her, Larry begged desperately.
Lainey shot him a cold look, then turned and walked straight into the arms of a powerful, aloof man, who stared down at Larry with pure contempt. "She's my wife now."
9.5
Eda Roman clutched her father's diagnostic report, its sharp edge cutting her finger. His cancer had mutated, standard treatment failed, and a fifty thousand dollar deposit for experimental therapy was due by midnight. Fail to pay, and his hospital bed would be cleared.
Wife to Axel Foley, a multi-billion dollar CEO, Eda faced an impossible chasm. Her family trust, controlled by Keri Lane, offered a meager three hundred dollars.
An emergency fund request met a forty-eight-hour review—a death sentence. Keri's assistant denied expedite and blocked calls. Desperate, Eda called Axel, but his assistant dismissed her with lies, Axel's laughter echoing.
Humiliation and betrayal ignited cold fury. Wife to Seattle's wealthiest, yet begging on a hospital floor? Axel's indifference and Keri's games showed her: her father's life couldn't be left in their hands.
Wiping tears, the pleading girl vanished; her survival instinct roared. Red lipstick her war paint, Eda Roman marched to Foley Group Headquarters, ready to reclaim what was hers.
9.1
On our fourth wedding anniversary, I prepared a perfect home-cooked dinner for my husband, Carlisle.
But the moment he walked in, he threw a marital settlement agreement right onto the table.
"Sign it. Celine is back. There's no place for you here anymore."
His mother and sister immediately marched in to supervise my packing, calling me a barren gold-digger and trying to smash my late mother's only keepsake.
I signed the papers and walked out into the freezing night, thinking the nightmare was finally over.
But the next day, a heavily edited video of a childhood friend helping me into his car went viral online.
Carlisle's PR team released a public statement branding me a cheating wife, completely destroying my reputation.
He let the world tear me apart, using my ruined name to play the victim and justify bringing his first love home.
I had sacrificed my own dreams and endured his family's endless abuse for four years, only to be discarded like trash and framed for the exact emotional cheating he had been doing all along.
Watching the vile comments flood my screen, my heartbreak hardened into pure, unbreakable ice.
I calmly picked up my phone and dialed my father's number.
"Dad, it's time. I want to come home and take over Mcneil Industries."