Scars Of Betrayal: The Billionaire's Sweet Revenge
Carli followed an anonymous text to a dark garage, only to find her fiancé of seven years tangled with another woman in his Porsche.
She smashed his window, threw her engagement ring at his face, and walked away.
But the betrayal didn't stop there. Her own family sided with the cheater. Her father slapped her across the face so hard she bled, demanding she hand over her late aunt's trust fund.
"If you don't do exactly as you're told tonight, I will freeze every credit card in your name," her father roared.
Forced to attend the exclusive Gutierrez family gala, Carli watched her ex-fiancé parade his cheap mistress to humiliate her, while her stepsister tried to publicly ruin her.
Suddenly, a violent screech echoed as the massive crystal chandelier above them snapped from the ceiling.
In a split second of pure instinct, Vaughn shoved his mistress to safety and threw himself to the ground, completely abandoning Carli to be crushed.
Staring up at the plummeting glass, Carli felt the crushing reality that her entire life had been surrounded by monsters.
But the fatal impact never came.
A massive force yanked her into a hard chest, shielding her body entirely from the explosive shrapnel.
Carli opened her eyes to find Fletcher Gutierrez—the ruthless billionaire king of Wall Street and the masked stranger from her reckless one-night stand—bleeding heavily over her.
Feeling his warm blood on her hands, Carli knew the game had just changed.
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Chapter 10
Fletcher's hand burned against Carli's lower back. He guided her through the crowd, but the surge of guests slowed their progress near the center.
Carli's heart hammered against her ribs. She stared at the side of his face. She looked at his sharp jawline, trying to map the black mask onto his features.
Fletcher felt her staring. He turned his head. He raised one thick eyebrow, looking at her with perfect, innocent confusion.
He grabbed a glass of sparkling water from a waiter and handed it to her.
Carli took the glass. As she did, her fingertips brushed against his palm. She felt the rough calluses on his skin. The exact same calluses that had gripped her hips last night.
She leaned closer to him. She lowered her voice. "Tell me, Mr. Gutierrez. Do you ever spend your evenings in the Meatpacking District?"
Fletcher took a sip of his drink. His face didn't change. "Too loud," he said smoothly. "Not my kind of crowd."
Carli frowned. Doubt crept into her mind. Maybe the alcohol and the stress had messed with her memory.
Suddenly, the massive antique grandfather clock in the center of the room chimed.
Vaughn was still near the center, stalling the security guards as he tried to pull Isla away to save face.
A loud, violent screech of tearing metal echoed from the ceiling.
The music stopped. Carli looked up.
Her pupils shrank to pinpricks. Her blood ran cold.
The massive, multi-tiered crystal chandelier, as large as a small car, hanging directly over the center of the room was pulling away from the ceiling. The thick iron bolts were snapping one by one.
Directly underneath it stood Vaughn and Isla.
People started screaming. The crowd panicked, shoving each other to get away from the center of the room.
The last bolt snapped. The chandelier plummeted.
The crowd's scream was his only warning. Vaughn's eyes shot up, and pure terror seized his features. He didn't think; he just reacted to save his own skin. In a split second of pure animal instinct, he shoved Isla violently to the side as he threw himself to the ground, a fraction of a second before the chandelier obliterated the spot where they had stood. He completely forgot about Carli, who was standing only a few feet away.
Carli was frozen. The massive shadow of the falling glass covered her. She didn't have time to run. She closed her eyes and braced for the crushing impact.
A massive force slammed into her.
Fletcher grabbed her waist with both hands. He yanked her violently into his chest. He spun them around, throwing Carli to the floor and covering her entirely with his massive body.
CRASH.
The chandelier hit the marble floor. The sound was deafening. Thousands of heavy, razor-sharp crystal shards exploded outward like shrapnel. Dust and debris filled the air.
Carli was pressed hard against the floor. Fletcher's arms were wrapped tight around her head. She smelled his cedar scent mixed with the smell of crushed stone. She didn't feel a single piece of glass hit her, though her palms stung from the impact with the marble floor.
Above her, Fletcher let out a sharp, guttural grunt. His body jerked hard.
The noise stopped. People were crying and screaming through the thick dust.
Carli opened her eyes. She looked past Fletcher's shoulder. She saw Vaughn cowering on the ground, leaving Isla trembling in the dust beside him. Any lingering feeling she had for Vaughn died right there.
She looked up at Fletcher. His eyes were squeezed shut. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
Carli reached around his back to hold him. Her hand touched something wet and warm.
She pulled her hand back. Her fingers were covered in thick, dark red blood. A massive piece of crystal had sliced straight through his suit jacket and deep into his back.
"Fletcher," Carli gasped, her hands shaking as she pressed them against his bleeding back.
Fletcher opened his eyes. He looked down at her. Through the pain, his dark eyes burned with an intensity that terrified her.
Their blood was mixed on her hands. The game had just changed.
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7.2
Betrayed by her sister. Killed by her husband.
Reborn, Sarah returns with one goal-revenge.
This time, she won't be the fool.
And with the Knox, the most dangerous man by her side...
she'll ruin them all, and take back everything that belongs to her.
Promotional line: They killed me once. This time, I'll destroy them first.
9.2
She loved him until she lost herself.
Now, behind locked doors and shattered glass, she must learn to breathe again.
When she first met Lloyd, he was magnetic and intoxicating. The kind of man who turned every head when he entered a room, who spoke in promises sweet enough to taste. With him, she felt chosen, cherished, and safe.
But safety was an illusion, and love became a weapon.
And slowly, piece by piece, he dismantled her until nothing of the woman she once was remained.
Now institutionalized after a breakdown, she begins to piece together the brutal truth of what really happened in the shadows of their love story. Memories sting like open wounds: the manipulation disguised as tenderness, the apologies that blurred into threats, the desperate hope that tomorrow he'd be the man she fell for again.
Yet beneath the grief and the shame, a quiet rebellion stirs, a vow to reclaim her voice, her freedom, and her life. Because this is not just a story of how she fell apart. It is a story of how she rises.
Haunting, raw, and achingly intimate, Boys like him peels back the glittering mask of a toxic love affair to reveal the kind of darkness that hides in plain sight, and the unbreakable strength it takes to escape it.
9.3
Alyssa Gregory slept with Benton Steele, a recently disgraced and bankrupt heir, just to humiliate him.
She threw a massive check at his bare chest, treating the former prince of Wall Street like a cheap escort.
But Benton didn't take the charity.
Instead, he manipulated her anger, tricking her into signing an ironclad contract that surrendered absolute control of her entire trust fund to him.
When her abusive mother found out she had funded a penniless outcast, she slapped Alyssa across the face.
Her mother froze all her bank accounts, locked her inside her bedroom, and arranged to sell her off to a degenerate politician.
Desperate to escape, Alyssa climbed down her balcony, falling fifteen feet and shattering her ankle on the stones below.
Stripped of her money and freedom, she dragged her broken body to a VIP club just to publicly declare that Benton belonged to her.
She thought she was the boss, playing a rebellious game with a broken man.
But when Benton effortlessly carried her away from the club and locked her inside his rundown apartment, the terrifying calculation in his dark eyes shattered her illusion.
How could a man stripped of his entire empire still radiate such suffocating, violent power?
"You bought me," Benton whispered, his massive frame trapping her against the sofa. "That means I have to take care of you."
Physically trapped and completely broke, Alyssa stared into his consuming eyes, her mind racing to find a way to turn the tables.
7.2
Azura Briggs was just a broke college student working freezing valet shifts to pay her adoptive mother's crushing medical debt.
Her desperate life shattered the night a bulletproof Maybach violently cornered her in an alley, and a ruthless billionaire kidnapped her by mistake.
After a harrowing escape, Azura was forced to take a humiliating "plus-one" gig at a high-end gala just to survive. But her date turned out to be the billionaire's arrogant nephew, who promptly abandoned her to the wolves. Cornered by a sleazy executive and his psychotic wife, Azura was publicly slapped, her dress torn, and left bleeding on the floor while hundreds of elites watched in disgust.
Just as she prepared to fight to the death, the crowd violently parted. Hunter Mcintosh, the terrifying man who had kidnapped her days ago, dropped to his knees in the broken glass and wrapped his bespoke jacket around her trembling shoulders.
Azura was completely paralyzed. Why was the monster who threatened her life now destroying billionaires just to protect her?
But the illusion of safety didn't last. Trapped in his Maybach hours later, Hunter threw a draconian employment contract at her feet.
"Sign it, and her care is covered. Forever."
He knew exactly how to break her. He was offering to pay off her mother's debt, but only if she signed her life away to become his personal assistant. With no other way out, Azura picked up the heavy pen.
8.7
I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape-the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.
8.9
My family's company went bankrupt, and my biological father was lying in the ICU, kept alive by machines that cost tens of thousands a day.
I thought it was just a tragic business failure, until I caught my mother in bed with my stepfather.
They had secretly transferred all our assets months ago, deliberately bankrupting the company and leaving my father to die.
To pay the hospital bills, my stepfather forced me to a private club, trying to sell me to a sleazy investor.
When I refused, he slapped me across the face, and my mother just looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"Be realistic, Jaelynn. A woman's body is a tool. Use it to get what you need."
Later, right before my father's emergency surgery, my stepfather signed a Do Not Resuscitate order and froze the medical accounts.
"If you don't get on your knees and spread your legs for him, I will tell the hospital to pull your father's plug."
Standing in the freezing rain, covered in mud and blood, I stared at the astronomical hospital bill in my hand.
My own family had plotted to murder my father and sell me to the highest bidder. The betrayal shattered every ounce of sanity I had left.
I didn't cry or beg them anymore.
Instead, I pulled out a water-stained, gold-embossed business card.
It belonged to Dolph Valentine, the most ruthless billionaire in New York and my ex-fiancé's uncle.
If they wanted to destroy my life, I was going to sell my soul to the biggest monster of them all and drag them straight to hell.