Substitute Bride For The Fake Cripple
Grace's engagement to Dillan Hayes was nothing but a cold business transaction to secure funding for her family's company.
But when Dillan violently shoved her into a marble bar over his ex-girlfriend, leaving her bleeding, Grace didn't hesitate.
She called 911, had her fiancé arrested on the spot, and broke off the engagement.
Returning to the Albert estate, she expected chaos, but not absolute betrayal.
Her family didn't care that she had just been physically assaulted.
They were in a sheer panic because her cousin Ashly had just fled the country, abandoning a terrifying arranged marriage.
The groom was Hudson Turner, a man known across Manhattan as a disgraced, violent psychopath, paralyzed from the waist down in a severe crash.
To save themselves from the Turner family's wrath and financial ruin, Grace's aunt and father ordered her to take Ashly's place.
"You eat from this family, you live in this house! It is time you paid us back!"
Her father even threatened to freeze her bank accounts and faked a heart attack to force her compliance.
For three years, Grace had single-handedly kept the family business afloat while they squandered the profits.
Now, they were throwing her to a monster without a second thought, expecting her to rot as a crippled man's miserable nursemaid.
But they picked the wrong sacrifice.
Grace ruthlessly extorted a legal severance from her family, taking her shares and cutting all ties forever.
She walked straight into Hudson Turner's private gallery to propose a mutually beneficial, cutthroat business marriage.
However, when the prenuptial was signed, the "paralyzed" billionaire placed his hands on his wheelchair.
Slowly, deliberately, Hudson stood up to his full, imposing height of six-foot-three.
"The wheelchair is a necessary illusion for my enemies," Hudson stated calmly. "But it will never be an illusion between you and me."
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Chapter 5
The piercing wail of the ambulance siren shattered the quiet night of the estate. Two paramedics rushed through the front doors, pushing a collapsible stretcher over the marble floors.
They reached the living room and immediately dropped to their knees beside Conrad. One paramedic strapped a clear oxygen mask over his pale, sweating face, while the other quickly secured him to the backboard. They lifted him onto the stretcher in one fluid motion.
Eleanor grabbed the paramedic's sleeve, tears streaming down her face. "I'm coming with him. I have to go with him."
Beatrice stood near the fireplace, her arms crossed tight over her chest. She glared at Grace, her eyes burning with pure hatred.
"You did this," Beatrice hissed, her voice trembling with venom. "If he dies, you murdered your own father."
Grace didn't look at Beatrice. She walked slowly toward the stretcher. She stood over her father.
Conrad's eyes fluttered open. Through the plastic of the oxygen mask, he looked up at her. His eyes were wide, filled with a pathetic, desperate pleading. His frail, trembling hand reached out, his fingers weakly brushing against the fabric of Grace's coat.
Grace looked down at that hand. A heavy, suffocating weight pressed against her chest. She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, forcing the last drop of daughterly guilt deep down into a locked box inside her mind.
When she opened her eyes, they were clear, sharp, and entirely devoid of emotion. She stepped back, out of his reach.
"I will go to the Turners tomorrow," Grace announced. Her voice cut through the noise of the room like a blade.
Beatrice gasped. A sick, triumphant smile broke across her face. She thought she had won. She thought the guilt had broken Grace.
"But," Grace continued, her voice rising slightly, "I have a condition."
The smile fell off Beatrice's face.
Grace looked directly at the family lawyer, who was cowering near the doorway.
"I want an irrevocable severance agreement drafted immediately," Grace demanded. "It will state that I am officially cutting all legal and financial ties with the Albert family. I renounce any future inheritance. In exchange, I take my fifteen percent of the company shares with me, and I am permanently absolved of any family debts or obligations."
"That is robbery!" Beatrice shrieked, stepping forward. "You can't just take the shares and leave! We will never agree to that!"
Grace slowly turned her head to look at her aunt.
"If the paperwork isn't signed and in my hands by morning," Grace said, her tone deadpan, "then you can go to the Turners and explain why there is no bride."
On the stretcher, Conrad let out a violent, rattling cough. He weakly raised his hand and nodded his head toward the lawyer. It was a desperate surrender.
The paramedics pushed the stretcher out the door, the flashing red lights of the ambulance painting the walls of the foyer.
Grace didn't watch them leave. She turned on her heel and walked up the grand staircase.
"Have the documents brought to my room," she told the butler without looking back.
She reached her bedroom and pushed the door shut. She reached out and twisted the deadbolt. The loud click echoed in the quiet room.
The adrenaline finally crashed. Grace leaned her back against the solid wood of the door and slowly slid down until she was sitting on the thick carpet. She pulled her knees to her chest, her breathing shallow and fast.
She looked down at her ankle. The blood had dried, crusting around the bandage the police had hastily applied. She dragged herself up, walked to her en-suite bathroom, and pulled out the first aid kit. She sat on the edge of the tub, pouring stinging antiseptic over the cut, wrapping it tightly with fresh gauze. She did it herself, the physical pain a grounding mechanism.
Once bandaged, she walked to her desk and opened her laptop. She pulled out her phone and dialed a secure number.
"I need a complete dossier on Hudson Turner," Grace told her private investigator the second he answered. "Everything you can find in the next ten minutes."
Five minutes later, an encrypted file dropped into her inbox.
Grace clicked it open. The screen illuminated her tired eyes. The file confirmed the public rumors: Hudson Turner had been in a severe car accident two years ago. He was paralyzed from the waist down. He had been stripped of his CEO title by his family and lived in relative isolation.
But as Grace scrolled down to the financial summaries, her eyes narrowed. She leaned closer to the screen.
There were massive, unexplained movements of capital in subsidiary shell companies linked to his name. The numbers didn't make sense for a disgraced, exiled son. Her business instincts flared. The man on paper did not match the financial footprint he was leaving behind.
She grabbed a notepad and a pen. She began writing down her leverage points, her boundaries, and her absolute bottom line for the negotiation tomorrow.
At 2:00 AM, a soft knock came at her door.
Grace opened it to find the butler holding a thick stack of legal documents, freshly printed and stamped by the family lawyer.
She took the papers, locked the door again, and sat at her desk. She read every single line, every clause, every piece of fine print. When she was absolutely certain there were no traps, she picked up her pen and signed her name on the dotted line.
She locked the agreement in her personal safe.
As the sun began to rise, painting the sky in bruised shades of purple and gray, Grace walked to her closet. She pulled out a sharp, tailored black suit. It was the armor of a woman going to war.
She grabbed her car keys, walked out of the silent house, and drove her SUV toward the address Hudson had provided: The Timeless Gallery.
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9.7
For three years, I hid my identity as the sole heiress of a multi-billion dollar tech empire to live in a cramped apartment and support my boyfriend, Ben.
But the day before our engagement, I stood outside a meeting room and overheard him talking to his wealthy boss, Haylie.
"She's just a stepping stone," Ben laughed, his voice full of contempt. "A poor, ambitionless distraction while I work my way up to where I really belong."
He mocked the cheap silver ring he gave me, calling it a necessary prop to keep a naive fool happy.
He bragged about the multi-million dollar merger proposal he was presenting, planning to use it to secure his promotion and build a future with her.
He had no idea that I had secretly negotiated that entire deal using my real connections just to give him his big break.
I had sacrificed my family's comfort, my true identity, and my own career just to watch him rise.
I poured my heart and soul into our humble beginnings, only to realize he saw my love as a pathetic joke and me as disposable trash.
I calmly picked up a pen and voided the merger agreement, tearing my hard work into tiny pieces.
I went home, slid the cheap ring off my finger, and dropped it into his mug of cold coffee.
"Soon, you'll find out exactly who is nothing."
Walking out the door, I pulled out my phone and texted my billionaire father.
"I'm in. Announce the merger."
9.2
Jacqueline Blackburn, a desperate Ivy League tutor, walked into the sleazy Veridian VIP club just to save her job.
But her billionaire client, the ruthless Christian Montgomery, mistook her for a cheap escort, blowing cigar smoke in her face and treating her like trash.
When she furiously turned to leave, a drunk former client attacked her in the hallway, tearing her white dress open and pinning her by the throat.
She fought back, stabbing the man's hand with a pen, only for Christian to emerge from the shadows and brutally crush the attacker's bleeding hand under his heel.
Instead of letting her go, Christian draped his heavy suit jacket over her exposed skin, trapped her in his dark suite, and forced her to sign a suffocating contract.
"You have exactly ninety days, or I will personally ensure you cease to exist in my city."
She thought she could just keep her head down, teach his nephew, and survive.
But she didn't understand why this terrifying underground tyrant was suddenly so fixated on her.
Why did he use his immense power to isolate her, publicly claim her at a billionaire gala, and track her every move?
When she received a chilling midnight text demanding she pack her bags and move into his sprawling estate by 8:00 AM, the terrifying reality set in.
She hadn't escaped the wolf. She had just walked directly into his cage.
8.4
Ayleen Avery was just a struggling hotel worker trying to survive her shift. But during a sudden blackout, she accidentally stumbled into the pitch-black VIP suite of a ruthless billionaire driven mad by chronic insomnia.
Calmed only by her unique natural scent of roses and rain, the terrifying man attacked her from the shadows and forced himself on her. Terrified and broken, Ayleen fled at dawn, unknowingly leaving behind her late mother's antique rose necklace in his bed.
Her greedy coworker found the necklace, claimed to be the woman from that night, and was instantly swept into a life of luxury. Meanwhile, Ayleen was blackmailed into a forced marriage with her attacker—Cassius Doyle—to save her adoptive father from prison. Deceived by the stolen necklace, Cassius believed Ayleen was a manipulative spy. He brought the coworker into their home and paraded her around the master bedroom.
"In this house, you are lower than the dirt on my shoes."
He choked Ayleen, forced her to sleep in a damp storage room, and treated her with violent disgust while pampering the thief.
Ayleen was suffocating in absolute despair. She had lost her innocence, her freedom, and her mother's only relic to a vicious liar. She couldn't understand how this all-powerful man could be so completely blind. Why couldn't he recognize the very scent that had cured his agonizing madness?
Staring at the dark bruises he had just left on her neck, Ayleen wiped the blood from her lip. She would endure this three-month marriage to secure her family's safety, but once the contract ended, she would expose the truth and tear down the fake savior he cherished so much.
7.6
When the Pollard family kicked Alyssa out into the freezing rain, Walter threw a ten-thousand-dollar check into a dirty puddle.
"Take it and get out. Don't ever come back," he sneered.
Her adoptive mother and stepsister stood on the mansion's porch, mocking her as a worthless country girl who tarnished their wealthy name. They laughed, claiming she wouldn't even be able to afford community college and would be begging on the streets in a week.
They looked at her cheap clothes and worn backpack with absolute disgust.
They were completely unaware that for the past five years, Alyssa was the secret mastermind who had built their failing gallery into a multi-million-dollar investment empire.
Every key investment, every fortune they made, came from the anonymous notes she had slipped into their unread books. They genuinely believed they were business geniuses, while treating the true architect of their wealth like a stray dog.
Looking at their smug, arrogant faces, Alyssa didn't feel a shred of sadness, only a cold, sharp irony.
They actually believed they had raised her.
She stepped close, whispered the master code to Walter's most secret offshore account, and watched the blood completely drain from his face.
"I raised you," she said, turning her back on the mansion without hesitation.
Walking into the storm, she pulled out a heavily encrypted phone and gave a single, cold order.
"Initiate a full hostile takeover of the Pollard Group."
It was time to end this little game and step into her true life—as the world's most elusive medical genius, and the long-lost billionaire heiress of the Summers dynasty.
9.3
Chandler was the secret wife of Avery Osborn, a powerful media heir who kept their marriage hidden to avoid the scandal of her illegitimate birth.
After catching him openly flirting with a rival at a gala, Avery mocked her low status and told her she was nothing without his money.
Instead of crying, Chandler immediately signed a zero-payout divorce agreement, left her wedding ring on his glass table, and walked out.
To numb the pain of her shattered life, she went to a notorious underground club.
Drugged by a bartender, she lost her mind and ended up having a wild night with a handsome stranger she mistook for a high-end male escort.
Panicking the next morning, Chandler transferred her entire life savings of $50,000 to the man to buy his silence, then fled to her corporate job.
But at the afternoon executive meeting, her blood ran cold.
The man she had paid off was standing at the head of the boardroom table. He wasn't a gigolo. He was Brennan George, the ruthless new COO of her company.
Cornering her in the women's restroom, Brennan held up a printed copy of her $50,000 wire transfer.
"Wiring a massive sum of cash to your direct superior after a night together is classified as commercial bribery and solicitation," he whispered dangerously.
Chandler was terrified, realizing she had handed him the exact evidence needed to destroy her career and sue her into bankruptcy.
"Marry me," Brennan demanded coldly. "It's the only way to make this HR problem disappear."
7.6
For three years, I played the perfect, docile wife to Brendon Jimenez, desperate for the real family I never had as an orphan.
But during a high-society gala, I peeked through a cracked door and caught him sleeping with my best friend.
When I packed my cheap canvas bag to leave the penthouse, my mother-in-law blocked the door.
She dumped my clothes on the marble floor, called me a stray dog, and slapped me so hard my mouth bled.
Brendon just stood there, watching his mother humiliate me.
To keep me trapped as his perfect public prop, he even faked his mother's heart attack in a VIP hospital suite.
"Get on your knees. Kneel down right now and beg my mother for forgiveness until she decides to accept it."
I gave them my youth and unconditional loyalty, only to realize this prestigious old-money family was nothing but a rotting corpse built on dirty secrets.
I didn't cry, and I certainly didn't drop to my knees.
Instead, I pulled out my phone right in front of him and called my lawyer.
"File for an at-fault divorce. I have proof of his infidelity with Kaelynn Hudson. I want him ruined."
Then, I touched the matte black card hidden deep in my clutch.
It belonged to Kile Barrett, the ruthless billionaire shark my husband feared most, and I was going to use him to tear the Jimenez family apart.