Shattered Rings And Her Priceless Hidden Identity
I was rushed to the emergency room with a bleeding head after a horrific car crash.
But while the doctor was stitching my forehead, I heard the nurses whispering.
"The CEO of the Finley Group is upstairs right now, playing nurse to that pregnant actress."
My heart stopped. I ripped out my IV and dragged my battered body to the VIP suite, only to watch my billionaire husband tenderly wipe away his mistress's tears.
I filed for divorce that night and left his penthouse with nothing but a basic suitcase.
Carter was furious. He tracked me down, completely ignoring my injuries, and mocked me relentlessly.
"You're nothing but a breeding tool. You won't survive a week without my money."
When I later collapsed from severe stomach cramps, he abandoned me on the floor because his mistress faked a panic attack over the phone. He even nearly ran me over in the freezing rain as he sped back to her side.
I had loved him in secret for ten agonizing years, pouring my bleeding heart into a novel about my unrequited love. I couldn't understand how a man could be so incredibly cold-blooded to his own wife.
But Carter didn't know I was the anonymous author of that global bestselling book.
So when he tried to use his massive wealth to buy the film rights and give his mistress the lead role, I walked straight into his boardroom, slammed my contractual veto on the table, and finally fought back.
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Chapter 4
The harsh morning sunlight pierced through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the suite, burning Evelyn's tired eyes.
She sat up slowly. The vulnerability from the night before was completely gone, replaced by a freezing, hollow calm.
The doorbell rang. A waiter wheeled a silver room service cart into the room, leaving the breakfast spread by the window.
Evelyn had just picked up a cup of black coffee when the suite door was shoved open again.
Carter walked in. He was wearing a brand new, perfectly tailored Tom Ford suit, his face set in hard, unforgiving lines.
He tossed a thick folder onto the dining table. It hit the wood with a heavy thud.
He used his authoritative, boardroom voice, ordering her to end this childish tantrum and move back to the estate immediately.
Evelyn took a slow sip of her coffee. She didn't even blink, completely ignoring his presence.
Her total indifference instantly poured gasoline on the anger Carter had been swallowing all morning.
He stepped up to the table and slammed both of his hands down flat on the surface. The coffee cups rattled violently in their saucers.
A few drops of scalding coffee splashed over the rim, staining the pristine white tablecloth brown.
Carter looked down at her, his voice dripping with cruel mockery as he told her she wouldn't survive a week on the streets without the Finley name.
He viciously reminded her that she was nothing but a decorative vase, kept around solely to appease the board of directors.
He stated, with brutal clarity, that her only real value was to produce an heir for the Finley trust fund.
At the words "breeding tool," Evelyn's knuckles turned stark white around the handle of her mug.
She set the coffee down with deliberate slowness. She stood up, her spine perfectly straight, and stared directly into Carter's icy blue eyes.
She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She simply reached out and picked up the tall glass of ice water from the tray.
With a quick flick of her wrist, she threw the freezing water directly into Carter's face.
The ice water dripped down the bridge of his nose, running off his sharp jawline and soaking into his expensive silk tie.
Carter stood completely paralyzed in shock, his eyes wide, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
Evelyn pulled a linen napkin from the table and elegantly dabbed the moisture from her fingers.
Her voice was absolute ice as she told him that was exactly what she thought of his valuation of her.
She grabbed her handbag off the sofa and turned her back on him, walking straight toward the door.
Carter snapped out of his daze. He lunged forward, his large hand clamping down hard on her upper arm.
Evelyn spun around and delivered a sharp, stinging slap directly to the back of his hand, forcing him to let go. Her bruised arm ached from the sudden exertion, but she didn't show a sliver of weakness.
She pulled the door open and walked out into the carpeted hallway.
Carter stood frozen in the room, staring at the red handprint forming on his skin, his face dark with a terrifying rage.
The elevator doors opened. Evelyn stepped inside, keeping her chin high.
The metal doors slid shut, cutting off Carter's furious, complicated stare.
As the elevator dropped, her stomach left behind in the sudden weightlessness, she pulled out her phone to call her best friend.
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9.3
Marissa was the perfect wife. She traded her high powered corporate ladder for home cooked meals and a designer sanctuary, all to support her husband, Ethan.
But when Ethan confesses to a four month affair not out of guilt, but because his mistress is extorting him for $300 million...Marissa's world turns to ash.Ethan's solution is as twisted as his heart.
"Cheat back. Get even. Stay married."Driven by a cocktail of rage and Revenge, Marissa decides to take him up on his offer. She heads into the night looking for a single moment of rebellion to wash away the scent of Ethan's lies.
She finds it in the arms of a cold, devastatingly masked handsome stranger who makes her forget everything.Broken and fueled by the betrayal, Marissa decides to take the ultimate risk. She slips into an exclusive, members only masquerade club...a place where names don't exist and only desires matter.
Behind a lace mask, she meets him....a man who smells of expensive bourbon and cold command.He is the first person in years to see the fire in her, not just the wife she became.They share a night of scorched....earth passion that leaves Marissa breathless and "even." She leaves before the sun rises, intending for the stranger to remain a ghost of her revenge.
But some ghosts have a name.When the masks come off and the corporate world demands her return, Marissa comes face to face with the man from the club. He isn't just anyone. He is Xavier Sterling....the ruthless billionaire CEO she once worked for, and the man Ethan calls his "best friend."Xavier knows her scent. He knows her touch. And most dangerously, he knows exactly what Ethan did to her.
Now, Marissa has to navigate a world where her husband wants her to stay, the mistress wants her dead, and the CEO wants to own the one woman he was never supposed to touch.
Now, Marissa is caught in a lethal triangle. Xavier wants to own her, Ethan wants to keep her to save his reputation, and the $300 million debt is threatening to drown them all. In a world of billionaire power plays, Marissa is about to learn that revenge is a dish best served... in the CEO's bed.
9.7
I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him.
Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister.
Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair.
I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people.
But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse.
I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges.
The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill.
When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell.
But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone.
His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life.
I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me.
Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference.
"I'll do it, but I control the venue."
I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.
8.2
Trapped in a deadly fire at my own engagement party, my lungs burned as I reached a shaking hand out to my fiancé for help.
He stopped and looked right at me through the thick smoke. But instead of saving me, he wrapped his jacket tightly around my stepsister and ran, leaving me to burn.
I barely survived. But when I woke up in the hospital, my father and stepmother didn't even ask about my injuries.
They threw a stack of legal documents right onto my bed.
"Sign the papers, Avah. Step aside. Jaclyn is far better suited to be Kain's wife."
My fiancé then stormed into the room, publicly humiliating me with false rumors of an illegitimate child and threatening to bankrupt my company.
Four years of swallowing my pride to be the perfect, obedient pawn for our family business, all for nothing.
They threw me to the wolves without a single second of hesitation, expecting me to just lower my head and cry like I always did.
But the fire had burned that pathetic version of me away.
I ripped out my IV, letting the blood drip onto the sheets, and tore their contracts straight down the middle.
"The engagement is over."
I threw my million-dollar ring right at my ex's chest, then picked up the phone to call my trust lawyer. They wanted to take everything from me, so I was going to make them bleed.
8.0
My wedding was tomorrow. I was a crisis counselor who had finally found peace with my loving fiancé, Dexter, and my best friend, Barbara.
A late-night call about a forced marriage led me to a hotel penthouse, where I found them naked in bed together.
It was all a cruel, three-year "savior game." They were bored heirs, and I was their project. They destroyed my career, caused me to lose our baby, and put my mother in the hospital.
They forced me to be a bridesmaid at their wedding-the one that should have been mine.
In front of hundreds of guests, they exposed my traumatic past and then tried to marry me off to a drunken stranger as a joke.
As I stood there, broken, a text from Barbara arrived.
"Your mother saw the livestream. She had a heart attack. She's not going to make it."
With nothing left, I ran to the 20th-floor window and jumped. They thought they had erased me. But my death was just the beginning.
7.6
My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Damien Paul, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through.
That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Eve—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister.
But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Fellows talking in the library.
They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Damien.
Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Eve.
I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen.
This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Damien over.
"No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Hunter Beach."
9.2
Arla was supposed to marry Clinton Freeman, the perfect fiancé who had promised to love her and protect her five-year-old son.
But instead, the cold steel of a dagger pierced her chest.
As she collapsed onto the freezing basement floor, she watched her adoptive sister Blair laugh.
"Look at her," Blair sneered, kicking her son's small, blue, lifeless body.
Clinton stood there, calmly wiping the bloody blade on a pristine handkerchief.
In her dying moments, the horrifying truth became clear. Her fiancé and her adoptive family had been plotting all along to steal her massive trust fund.
To break her, they had secretly tortured her child. Clinton had watched Blair pierce the little boy's arms with sewing needles, rewarding him with candy to keep him silent.
Arla's lungs burned with the taste of copper and ash.
She couldn't understand why the family she trusted could be so monstrous, or why they had to brutally murder an innocent child just for money.
The darkness swallowed her whole, drowning her in suffocating hatred and absolute despair.
Then, she gasped for air.
The concrete floor was gone, replaced by the silk sheets of a hotel penthouse suite.
Arla had been reborn to the exact night six years ago—the very day Blair first dragged her son into the dark attic.
This time, she picked up a solid silver letter opener, ready to burn them all to the ground.