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 2
Morning sunlight stabbed through the gap in the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Carli groaned. She rubbed her pounding temples. Her head felt like it was splitting open. She opened her eyes and looked at the unfamiliar ceiling.
The silk sheets felt cold against her bare legs. Her muscles ached. A sharp pain shot through her lower back. The memories of last night crashed into her brain.
She turned her head.
A man was sleeping next to her. He was lying on his stomach, his face buried in the dark gray pillow. His broad, muscular back was exposed. Three long, red scratch marks trailed down his shoulder blades. She had put them there.
The black Venetian mask sat on the nightstand.
Carli sat up. Panic tightened her chest. She didn't know his name. She didn't know his face. She only knew the smell of cedar and the heavy weight of his body.
She threw off the covers and stepped onto the thick carpet. She grabbed her clothes from the floor. She dressed quickly, her hands shaking slightly as she buttoned her blouse.
She needed to leave. She needed to cut this off before it became real.
Carli opened her wallet. She pulled out five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. She walked over to the nightstand and slammed the money down under the mask.
She grabbed a hotel notepad and a red lipstick from her bag.
She wrote quickly. A fair price for a forgettable night.
She stuck the note to the money. She grabbed her bag, walked to the heavy mahogany door, and pulled it open. She stepped out and let the door click shut behind her.
The second the lock clicked, the man on the bed opened his eyes.
Fletcher Gutierrez sat up. The sheets fell to his waist. His dark eyes were wide awake. There was no trace of sleep in them.
He reached out with a thick, muscular arm and picked up the note. He looked at the red lipstick and the five hundred dollars.
A low, dark laugh rumbled in his chest. His eyes turned dangerous.
He picked up the room phone and pressed a button.
"Security," a voice answered.
"Track the woman who just left the penthouse," Fletcher ordered. His voice was cold and sharp. "Make sure she gets out of the building safely."
Carli took the elevator straight to the underground garage. She got into a waiting cab and gave the driver her address in Chelsea.
She leaned her head against the window. She forced herself to push the masked man out of her mind. It was a mistake. A one-time escape.
She unlocked the door to her small apartment. The air inside was stale and cold. She dropped her bag on the floor and walked straight into the bathroom.
She turned the shower on as hot as it would go. She stepped under the water. She scrubbed her skin until it turned red. She wanted to wash off Vaughn. She wanted to wash off the cedar scent of the stranger.
She stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her body.
Her phone was buzzing on the bed. The screen flashed with her mother's name. Keri.
Carli's jaw tightened. She picked up the phone and pressed answer.
"You need to come back to the house today," Keri's sharp voice barked through the speaker. There was no greeting.
"I'm busy," Carli said flatly.
"You will bring your sister Lilah to the Gutierrez family gala tonight," Keri commanded. "You will introduce her to the right people."
Carli let out a bitter laugh. "I'm not babysitting your daughter so she can gold-dig."
She went to press end.
"If you do this," Keri said quickly, "we can talk about Edna's trust fund."
Carli froze. Her thumb hovered over the screen. Aunt Edna. The only person in the family who had ever loved her. The woman who died in a suspicious avalanche in Switzerland.
Carli walked over to her desk. She pulled open the bottom drawer. She took out a copy of the trust documents.
"Fine," Carli said. Her voice was ice cold. "I'll bring her. But you sign the papers transferring full control of Edna's trust to me today. Or Lilah stays home."
"You ungrateful little bitch-" Keri started screaming.
"Sign it, or she doesn't go," Carli interrupted. "I'll be there at three."
She hung up the phone. She walked over to the full-length mirror. Her face was pale, but her eyes were hard. She opened her closet. She reached past her everyday clothes and pulled out a heavy garment bag. Inside was the emerald velvet gown Edna had designed for her.
Carli sat down at her laptop. She opened her email and started typing a message to her lawyer in Los Angeles. It was time to take her money back.
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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.