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 4
Gaines didn't say a word.
He stared at her for three more seconds, his jaw locked tight. Then, he turned on his heel and walked out of the guest room, his strides long and rigid.
He looked like a man fleeing a burning building.
Jaclyn watched his broad back disappear into the hallway. She took a deep breath, ignoring the throbbing pain in her ankle, and limped after him.
She stepped out of the hallway and into the massive, open-concept living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows showcased the glittering Manhattan skyline.
Right in the center of the room sat a pile of splintered black wood and tangled wire.
It was a Fazioli grand piano. A rare, discontinued model.
Jaclyn's breath hitched in her throat.
It was his wedding gift to her. He had spent months tracking it down in Europe. And she had taken a titanium golf club to it the night before she tried to run away.
Gaines was standing next to the ruined instrument. His back was to her. He reached out, his long fingers lightly brushing against a snapped piano wire.
The slump of his shoulders betrayed a profound, hidden exhaustion.
Jaclyn's chest tightened. She forced her bare feet to move across the cold marble floor, closing the distance between them.
Gaines heard her approaching.
He instantly straightened his spine. The vulnerability vanished. When he turned to face her, the ruthless billionaire mask was firmly back in place.
He pointed a long finger at the destroyed piano.
"If smashing things helps you process your anger," Gaines sneered, his voice dripping with ice, "I can have ten more delivered by tomorrow."
It was a test. He was trying to provoke her back into her normal, hateful state.
Jaclyn didn't take the bait.
She walked right up to him, stopping less than two feet away. She tilted her head up and looked directly into his dark, guarded eyes.
She didn't flinch. She didn't look away.
Gaines shifted his weight. He reached up and violently jerked at his silk tie, loosening it. The proximity was making him claustrophobic.
"What game are you playing, Jaclyn?" he demanded, his voice rising in volume. "Did the Lester family hire a new PR team? Is this the new strategy to get me to sign the divorce papers?"
At the mention of the Lester family, a flash of pure, arctic hatred sparked in Jaclyn's eyes.
She quickly blinked it away.
She shook her head slowly. "I broke something beautiful," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I was acting like a lunatic."
Gaines's eyes widened slightly. He looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language. He had no defense mechanism for a compliant Jaclyn.
"It's just wood and wire," Gaines snapped, his voice harsh. "The Acevedo group can absorb the loss."
He was trying to bury his feelings under money.
Jaclyn raised her right hand.
She reached out, her fingers trembling slightly. She lightly pinched the edge of his suit jacket lapel.
The moment her fingers made contact with the fabric, every muscle in Gaines's body turned to stone. He stopped breathing. He wanted to step back, but his feet refused to move.
"Did you go to Italy to find it yourself?" Jaclyn asked. Her voice cracked. A single tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek.
Gaines's eyes locked onto that tear. His jaw tightened so hard his teeth ground together. He didn't confirm or deny it.
The tear dropped off her chin. It landed directly on the dark wool of his suit jacket, leaving a small, dark stain.
"I'm sorry," Jaclyn whispered again. "I am so, so sorry."
The sound of her crying snapped something inside him. The violent clash of his anger and his overwhelming need to protect her erupted.
Gaines's hand shot up. He grabbed her wrist-the one holding his lapel.
His grip was bruising. Jaclyn winced, but she didn't try to pull away. She let him hold her.
He leaned down, his face inches from hers. She could feel the heat radiating off his skin.
"Do not use tears to manipulate me," Gaines hissed through his teeth. "It won't work."
Instead of shrinking back, Jaclyn pushed up onto her tiptoes.
She closed the final few inches between them.
"I'm not acting," she breathed against his jaw.
Then, she let go of his lapel and wrapped both of her arms entirely around his waist.
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8.9
I was tossed into a dark alley like rotting garbage, bleeding and grieving the child I had just lost.
When I was finally brought back to my fiancé Angelo's penthouse, instead of comfort, I was met with absolute disgust.
His family declared me "unclean" after the kidnapping. Angelo coldly announced he was burying the scandal by marrying my sweet, innocent cousin, Carissa.
When we were alone, Carissa stood over my bed, her voice dripping with venomous delight.
"My father arranged the kidnapping. And now, Angelo and I can finally be together."
Before I could react, she forced a silver letter opener into my hand, deliberately stabbed her own shoulder, and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Angelo stormed in, struck me across the face, and gathered a sobbing Carissa into his arms, looking at me with absolute revulsion.
The family matriarch appeared at the door, her cold eyes sweeping over the scene before she gave a chilling order to the maids.
"Clean this up."
They pinned me down and brutally drove the blade directly into my chest.
I choked on my own blood, staring at the man who had promised me the world as he turned his back, calling my murder a "mercy."
As my heart beat its final agonizing rhythm, I made a silent vow to the shadows that if there was a next life, I would have my vendetta.
When I opened my eyes again, there was no blood, only the soft silk of my nightgown.
I had returned to the day before my eighteenth birthday.
This time, I wouldn't play the desperate victim. I was going to ally with the Devil of Chicago and burn them all to the ground.
7.2
I am a resident surgeon, secretly married to Dr. Barrett Walters, the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. It was a transactional marriage; he paid my mother's mounting medical bills, and I was his secret, obedient wife in the dark.
But at the hospital, he was a cold-blooded tyrant who deliberately made my life a living hell. During a major medical conference, he viciously tore apart my successful surgical repair, looking me dead in the eye as he called me incompetent in front of all my colleagues.
The humiliation didn't stop there. With his tacit approval, the senior residents bullied me, assigning me every brutal night shift. When his beautiful, wealthy heiress "girlfriend" visited the ward, he publicly mocked my background to make her smile.
"Some people get in through the back door. They're not fit for the front lines."
Even when I was forced to work as a secret banquet waitress to cover the medical copays he ignored, he found me, ruined the job out of pure possessive jealousy, and then fined my meager resident salary the very next morning just to show his absolute control.
I endured his punishing kisses and cruel rebukes, sacrificing my dignity just to keep my mother alive. But I couldn't understand why he had to destroy every shred of my peace. If he wanted the perfect heiress, why did he refuse to let me go?
Staring at his cold, controlling eyes in the stairwell, my exhaustion finally overpowered my fear. I was done being his victim, and it was time to tear up this contract.
9.7
Emaline Finley was drowning in massive debt to keep her dying father alive, even enduring a humiliating blind date with an arrogant man just to find a financial lifeline.
But the fatal blow came from her former best friend, Kitty. Kitty, who was already engaged to Emaline's ex-boyfriend, deliberately told Emaline's father that his expensive treatments were bleeding his daughter dry.
Out of extreme guilt, her father threw away his life-saving medication and checked himself out of the hospital to die at home. When Emaline found him, he was coughing up pools of bright red blood, his lungs rapidly collapsing. As the paramedics rushed him away, Kitty called to gloat, mocking Emaline's poverty and telling her to go watch her father die.
Emaline was completely shattered, suffocating under the sheer injustice of it all. She had been betrayed, stripped of her dignity, and was now forced to watch her only parent slip away because of a cruel, spiteful lie.
Just as her world went dark, a wildly wealthy stranger stepped in. Cullen Preston, the mysterious man who had witnessed her humiliating date, paid the astronomical medical bills and brought in the city's top surgeon to pull her father back from death. But his salvation wasn't charity.
"Consider it a dowry."
He bought her father's life, and in exchange, he demanded Emaline as his wife.
8.3
Hovering as a translucent soul in the freezing cemetery, I watched Corbin Mendez—the ruthless billionaire I had spent my entire life despising—violently smash open my tomb.
I thought he had come to desecrate my corpse. Instead, he collapsed to his knees, reverently kissed my dead lips, and swallowed a lethal bottle of pills without a drop of water.
In my past life, I was betrayed by my ex-fiancé, framed by my vicious step-family, and trapped in a suffocating marriage with Corbin. I thought he was a paranoid, abusive monster who only wanted to control me. I fought his madness every single day until I died sick, exhausted, and utterly defeated.
But watching him climb into my casket, wrapping his massive arms around my cold body to die beside me, my non-existent heart shattered.
Why hadn't I seen the truth? He wasn't a monster; he was a deeply traumatized man suffering from severe PTSD, and his obsessive love for me was his only tether to sanity.
The regret and agony tore my soul to pieces.
"My love, I'm too late."
Those were his last words before his heart stopped.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't floating in a dark tomb. I was lying in Corbin's bed, exactly two years in the past.
This time, I wouldn't run away. I would heal the broken beast who died for me, and I would personally put a bullet in everyone who ruined us.
9.5
Frances survived a horrific car crash, only to return to a suffocating life. Her wealthy husband, Baron, and his domineering mother were now relentlessly pressuring her to adopt a "poor, distant relative" named Jagger as the heir to their billionaire empire.
But on her way to sign the adoption papers, a violent vision flashed in her mind. The crash wasn't an accident. She saw her car in flames, while Baron watched with cold, calculating eyes. Beside him stood an older Jagger, who calmly muttered the chilling truth.
"The problem is solved."
A private investigator soon confirmed her worst nightmares. Jagger wasn't a charity case; he was Baron's illegitimate son. The family had been illegally funneling offshore money to fund his elite lifestyle. Worse, Baron's ultimate plan was to label Frances mentally unstable, lock her away in a Swiss sanatorium for life, and bring in Jagger's biological mother to take her place.
For years, Frances had played the perfect, obedient wife in their corporate marriage contract. How could they be so ruthlessly evil, plotting her agonizing death just to legitimize their dirty bloodline and steal her trust fund?
But she was no longer the fragile puppet they thought she was. At the high-stakes board meeting, with all eyes expecting her to submit, she put the expensive pen down.
"I refuse."
Instead of adopting their bastard son, she slammed down an SEC whistleblower threat, forced a new will, and introduced her own handpicked heir. The war had just begun.
7.9
Cora Foster was a brilliant archaeologist, but a jagged burn scar across her face made the world treat her like a contagious monster.
During an elite excavation of a Gilded Age crypt, touching an ancient artifact triggered a terrifying memory. She remembered being Seraphina Beaumont, a socialite brutally buried alive by her vain, cruel sister, Isolde.
When the team pried open the crypt's pristine mahogany casket, they cheered, believing the mummified corpse inside was Seraphina. But Cora recognized the onyx hairpin and the angular jawline. It was Isolde. The sister who had stolen her life, mocked her agony, and left her to suffocate in the dark. Her colleagues scoffed at her forensic proof, dismissing her as a scarred, delusional liability.
Worse, the ruthless billionaire funding the expedition, Julian Montgomery, was the spitting image of Alistair—the man Seraphina had deeply loved. Why was Julian staring at her ruined face with such intense, inexplicable recognition? And why did Isolde take Seraphina's most precious silver ring to the grave?
Driven by a century of agonizing grief, Cora secretly pried the tarnished ring from the mummy's stiff, dead fingers and dropped it into her pocket.
"What are you looking at, Foster?"
Julian's deep voice vibrated inches from her ear, his cold, predatory eyes locked directly onto her half-open pocket.