Signed The Papers: Watch Me Shine Now
For six years, I was the perfect, obedient wife to billionaire Hartwell Ware, enduring his coldness because I thought my love could eventually thaw his heart.
Then, my friend sent me a photo. Hartwell was at the airport, tenderly holding the waist of his first love, Eveline Craig.
He came home smelling of her synthetic rose perfume, accused me of stalking him, and coldly demanded a divorce.
His lawyer handed me a thick settlement agreement. It offered astronomical alimony and luxury properties, but it came with a humiliating ten-page non-disclosure agreement.
He wanted to buy my silence. He wanted to strip me of my rights to our son and gag me permanently, just so he could parade his new life with Eveline without any PR backlash.
Even now, he still thought I was a gold digger who had orchestrated a media scandal to trap him into marriage.
I stared at the man I had worshipped for two thousand days. My six years of desperate devotion had been nothing but a humiliating, one-sided delusion.
Hope was finally dead, and with it, my tears had completely dried up.
He expected me to cry, to beg, to negotiate for more millions.
Instead, I snatched the pen, crossed out the massive alimony, and signed my name on the dotted line.
"I am taking the basic child support, and not a single red cent more."
Leaving my five-carat diamond ring on the marble table, I walked out the door with nothing but my old suitcase.
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Chapter 7
The guest bedroom in Quinn's Brooklyn apartment smelled of lavender and expensive dry shampoo.
Faith stood in front of the full-length mirror. Gone were the conservative, high-necked blouses and shapeless slacks Hartwell had preferred her to wear.
Tonight, she wore a black silk slip dress she had borrowed from Quinn's closet. The fabric clung to the curves she had hidden for years, the thin spaghetti straps highlighting her delicate collarbones.
Quinn stepped behind her, wielding a tube of MAC Ruby Woo lipstick.
"Hold still," Quinn commanded, carefully applying the vivid red color to Faith's lips.
The bright crimson instantly washed away the exhaustion under Faith's eyes, making her pale skin look luminous and her dark eyes striking. She looked dangerous. She looked alive.
Thirty minutes later, an Uber dropped them off on the cobblestone streets of Soho.
The French Bistro was the hottest reservation in the city. A line of hopeful diners wrapped around the block, shivering in the cold.
Quinn, utilizing her status as a senior fashion editor, bypassed the velvet rope entirely. She gave the bouncer a sharp nod, grabbed Faith's hand, and pulled her into the chaotic, dimly lit restaurant.
The maître d' immediately escorted them to a plush, semi-circular leather booth by the window. It was a prime spot, offering a clear view of the entire dining room.
Faith sank into the red leather. She ordered a dry martini.
The jazz music pulsing through the speakers and the low hum of conversation slowly uncoiled the tight knot in her stomach.
When the drinks arrived, she clinked her glass against Quinn's. The icy gin burned pleasantly down her throat, washing away the lingering metallic taste of the morning's disaster.
Quinn suddenly cursed under her breath, her fingers aggressively tapping the screen of her phone. "Are you kidding me?" she muttered, her eyes darting up to Faith. "I just saw Eveline Craig's Instagram story. She tagged this exact restaurant three minutes ago. We need to leave."
But it was already too late. A ripple of hushed whispers swept through the front of the restaurant.
The maître d' practically sprinted to the entrance, bowing obsequiously as he guided two VIP guests through the crowded tables toward the center of the room.
Faith instinctively followed the movement of the crowd.
Her hand froze halfway to her mouth. The martini glass hovered in mid-air.
Striding through the restaurant was Hartwell. He wore a long, tailored black cashmere overcoat that made him look like a dark god among mortals.
Clinging tightly to his left arm was Eveline Craig, draped in a white silk gown that looked more suited for a bridal magazine than a dinner date.
Faith's eyes dropped to Hartwell's right hand.
Wrapped thickly around his palm was a stark white medical bandage. A physical manifestation of his violent loss of control.
Quinn saw them a second later. She slammed her drink down on the table. "You have got to be kidding me. What a nightmare."
As the waiter pulled out a chair for Eveline, Hartwell casually lifted his head. His predatory gaze swept over the restaurant, assessing the room out of pure habit.
His eyes locked directly onto the corner booth.
Hartwell stopped dead in his tracks.
His pupils dilated so fast his eyes appeared entirely black. He stared at Faith.
He had never seen her in a dress like that. The black silk exposed the smooth skin of her shoulders. The red lipstick made her look like a stranger-a breathtaking, untouchable stranger.
A violent jolt of electricity shot straight to his groin.
But then, the lust was instantly swallowed by a suffocating wave of fury.
She had seen him. He knew she had. But instead of looking away in tears, instead of staring at him with heartbreak, Faith simply blinked.
Her face remained completely blank. She turned her head away, looking back at Quinn, and took a slow sip of her martini.
She looked right through him. Like he was a piece of furniture.
Hartwell's jaw clamped shut so hard his teeth ground together. The muscles in his neck strained against his collar. A blinding, irrational rage ignited in his chest.
He marched to his seat and threw himself into the chair.
Eveline, highly attuned to his every mood, followed his line of sight. When she saw Faith sitting there looking like a masterpiece, her perfectly manicured smile faltered.
A toxic, ugly jealousy flared in Eveline's chest.
She immediately morphed her expression into one of fragile concern. She reached across the table, her fingers lightly brushing the white bandage on Hartwell's hand.
"Does your hand still hurt, darling?" Eveline cooed, her voice loud enough to carry.
Hartwell violently jerked his hand away from her touch.
He didn't even look at Eveline. His eyes were physically anchored to Faith's booth.
He watched Faith lean forward, her red lips parting as she said something to Quinn. Quinn threw her head back and laughed loudly.
Faith was smiling. She was actually smiling.
The realization that she was perfectly fine without him, that she was thriving while his chest felt like it was caving in, made Hartwell's breathing turn ragged and shallow.
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers at the sommelier.
"Bring me your most expensive Bordeaux. Now," Hartwell growled, desperate for alcohol to drown the manic buzzing in his brain.
Across the table, Eveline bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. Her fingernails dug into her palms. She would not let this pathetic ex-wife steal his attention.
Eveline picked up her water glass, taking a slow sip. Over the rim of the glass, she caught the eye of a paparazzi photographer she had paid to wait near the bar.
She gave him a subtle, sharp nod. It was time to put Faith back in her place.
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9.8
Four years ago, I was drugged on a luxury yacht and ended up pregnant with twins.
I raised them in secret, enduring my stepfamily's daily abuse, until the billionaire West family patriarch cornered us at the airport.
He instantly recognized my son's face—an exact replica of his ruthless grandson, Bernardo West.
My malicious stepmother and stepsister immediately leaked to the press that I was a delusional gold-digger using fake kids to trap a billionaire.
They wanted the West family to destroy me to save their own social standing.
Bernardo himself looked at me with pure disgust, demanding a DNA test.
"If you ever lie to me, I will take the children, and I will make you wish you were never born."
I didn't want his money. I was a victim of that night too, left with a crescent-shaped bite mark on my collarbone and zero memory of who set us up.
Why did someone drug us? And how could I protect my babies from a corporate predator who could crush me with a snap of his fingers?
But when the DNA test came back 99.9999% positive, I didn't cower.
I showed him the scar he left on me, looked the most dangerous man in the country right in the eye, and made my demand.
"If you want to claim your heirs, you have to marry me."
9.1
Alysia lay on the freezing operating table, moments away from donating her kidney to her brother's fiancée.
But as the anesthesia set in, a violent shock tore through her brain, awakening agonizing memories of a thousand brutal deaths across a thousand past lifetimes.
She suddenly realized her family's true plan. Her brother and his fiancée weren't just taking her organ; they were secretly plotting to declare her mentally unfit post-surgery to steal her entire trust fund.
When Alysia abruptly stopped the procedure and exposed the fiancée's kidney failure as the result of severe drug abuse, her family's reaction was chilling.
Her father didn't care about the truth or the law. He ordered his bodyguards to lock Alysia up until she agreed to the surgery, while her brother threatened to freeze her assets and seize her late mother's penthouse.
"You have no heart, Alysia. You don't deserve the Kent name," her aunt spat in disgust.
For lifetimes, she had kept her head down, taking the blame and sacrificing everything for a family that viewed her as nothing more than a disposable blood bag and a financial pawn.
The resignation that had clouded her eyes for so long vanished, replaced by the absolute, zero-degree cold of a glacier.
Ripping the IV from her hand and leaving her family in stunned silence, Alysia walked straight out of the hospital.
She had exactly forty-six hours to find a husband to secure her inheritance, and she knew exactly which ruthless billionaire CEO to target to help her burn the Kent family to the ground.
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.
7.6
Elliana Lewis lay dying on the freezing concrete of a federal penitentiary, her ribs shattered by a guard's heavy boot.
She had been flawlessly framed for murder by the one person she trusted with her life: her sweet, innocent stepsister, Jovita.
During her final prison visit, Jovita wore their mother's diamonds and smiled cruelly behind the glass. She revealed she had liquidated the family company, caused their father's stroke, and paid the guards to ensure Elliana suffered a grueling, agonizing death.
"Your marriage was a joke from day one, Ellie. You have nothing left."
As her lungs stopped, the tragic truth finally dawned on Elliana. She had spent months screaming for a divorce and publicly humiliating her billionaire husband, Damon Stirling, believing his silence was weakness. She didn't realize until it was too late that his endless tolerance was the deepest form of protection. She had pushed away the only man who would have burned the world down to keep her safe.
Why had she been so incredibly stupid? Why did she blindly trust a monster and destroy the only person who truly loved her?
Then, a blinding light pierced her retinas. Elliana bolted upright, gasping for air on a massive, king-sized bed.
There was no pain. No broken bones. The digital clock on the nightstand flashed a date from exactly ten years ago.
It was the morning after her disastrous wedding night.
This time, she would tear Jovita's life apart piece by piece. And she would hold onto Damon so tightly that nothing could ever pry them apart.
8.1
Chantal Lewis's family legacy was twenty-four hours away from a fifty-million-dollar foreclosure.
Desperate to save her parents, she sold her soul, offering herself as a paper wife to Dell Valdez, a ruthless Wall Street billionaire needing a quick PR fix.
But Dell didn't just buy her; he trapped her in a living nightmare.
He forced her into a brutal three-year repayment plan she could never afford, treated her like a disposable prop, and deliberately leaked a scandalous paparazzi photo to destroy her hard-earned professional credibility.
Worst of all, the first time his calloused hand touched hers, a violent, terrifying flashback assaulted her brain.
The scorching heat of his palms and the distinct, dark scent of his cedarwood cologne perfectly matched the repressed memory of a pitch-black room where she was pinned to a mattress against her will.
Chantal didn't understand why her cold-blooded fake husband felt exactly like the monster from her unspoken trauma.
She understood even less why, after months of ignoring her, he was suddenly acting violently jealous and possessive when she merely smiled at another man!
Why did his scent match her attacker, and what was he truly planning?
Furious, she called him to threaten a divorce, only for his voice to drop into a lethal whisper.
"Try it. See what happens."
Before she could process his deadly threat, her office phone rang.
"Ms. Lewis," her receptionist trembled. "Your brother is in the lobby. He owes money to some very bad people, and they are coming here right now."
7.1
Five years ago, Grace was left to die in the suffocating darkness of a collapsed building.
She survived with severe amnesia, clawing her way through Los Angeles as a broke, struggling actress.
But her fragile peace shattered when she was cornered by Bryce Delaney, a ruthless billionaire who looked at her with agonizing, terrifying obsession.
He slammed a multi-million dollar prenuptial agreement onto his mahogany desk, demanding she become a bought-and-paid-for mother to his three identical sons.
Worse, she accidentally ran into her biological mother, a wealthy socialite, on the street.
Instead of joy, her mother looked at Grace in absolute horror.
"You should have stayed dead! To us, you are dead!"
At her most important audition, her sister Ashleigh publicly humiliated her, mocking her torn clothes and ordering security to throw her out like trash.
Meanwhile, Bryce threatened to destroy her entirely if she tried to escape his grasp.
Grace was suffocating in confusion and rage.
Why did her own family leave her to bleed out in the rubble?
Why were they so terrified to see her alive?
And why did this powerful tyrant call her "Gracie" with such broken grief, yet try to trap her in a fake, transactional cage?
She refused to be a victim again.
She threw the contract directly at Bryce's chest and violently slapped her sister's hand away.
Just as the industry tried to blacklist her, an elite European consortium suddenly descended, pouring fifteen million dollars into the production solely to crown Grace.
The war for the truth had just begun.