The Betrayed Heiress's Vengeful Flash Marriage
Ashley was tied to a rusted iron pillar in an abandoned warehouse, the noxious fumes of gasoline soaking her clothes.
Her fiancé Devon and her stepsister Brittany stood before her, revealing a horrifying truth. Devon never saved her from that fatal car crash three years ago; he merely stole the credit.
Worse, Brittany smirked and confessed that Ashley's own father had orchestrated her mother's murder. Before Ashley could process the betrayal, Devon callously tossed a lighter. A wall of blistering heat instantly consumed her. Even when Bennett Hawkins, the cold and untouchable billionaire, rushed into the inferno to shield her with his body, they were both swallowed by the explosion.
As the fire melted her skin, Ashley died with agonizing hatred. Why did her own flesh and blood want her dead? What dark secret were they hiding about her mother's tragic death?
Opening her eyes again, freezing saltwater violently flooded her lungs.
She was back at her twentieth birthday yacht party, right after Brittany had secretly pushed her into the freezing Hudson River.
Staring at the hypocritical faces of her family pretending it was an accident, Ashley didn't cry or beg. She calmly snatched a phone and dialed 911.
"Yes. I need to report an attempted murder."
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Chapter 6
The armored Rolls-Royce skidded to a violent halt in front of the Hawkins main estate. The tires smoked, leaving thick black streaks on the cobblestone driveway.
Bennett shoved his door open before the car even settled. He stepped out into the cold night.
Ashley scrambled out behind him. Her stiletto caught on the edge of the stone curb. Her ankle twisted.
Bennett didn't even look back. His left arm shot out backward, his large hand clamping around her waist with bruising force. He hauled her upright, stabilizing her instantly.
They sprinted through the long, vaulted corridors toward the private medical wing. The priceless oil paintings on the walls blurred into streaks of color. The heavy thud of their footsteps echoed off the marble.
Bennett pushed the heavy glass double doors of the medical wing open.
The sharp, chemical smell of bleach and antiseptic hit Ashley's nose. The hallway was packed. Dozens of Hawkins family members stood in tight clusters, their faces pulled into masks of fake grief.
The low hum of whispers died the second Bennett stepped into the light.
Harrell Hawkins, Bennett's uncle, pushed his way to the front of the crowd. His heavy jowls shook. He planted his feet directly in the center of the hallway, blocking Bennett's path.
"Where have you been?" Harrell shouted, his voice echoing off the sterile walls. "Your grandfather is dying, and you're out parading around with some woman?"
Harrell's eyes flicked to Ashley. He took in the oversized men's coat and her damp hair. He sneered. "You brought the Sawyer girl? That uneducated island trash? Have you lost your mind?"
Bennett stepped forward. He closed the distance between him and Harrell in one stride. He towered over the older man.
"Say one more word about my fiancée," Bennett said softly. The lethal promise in his voice made the air drop ten degrees. "And I will rip your tongue out of your mouth."
Harrell's face paled. He took a physical step backward, his chest heaving with fear. He clamped his mouth shut.
Ashley ignored Harrell completely. Her eyes locked onto the glass window of the ICU room.
Through the blinds, she watched the monitors. The ECG line wasn't flat, but it wasn't a normal sinus rhythm. The green line spiked in a jagged, erratic sawtooth pattern. The oxygen saturation number flashed a critical red: 62%.
Her jaw tightened.
The automatic doors of the ICU slid open with a soft hiss. Dr. Alistair Cromwell, a world-renowned European specialist, walked out. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He stripped off his bloody latex gloves and threw them in the biohazard bin.
"I'm sorry," Alistair said heavily. "His organs are in irreversible failure. There is nothing more modern medicine can do. I recommend pulling the plug."
A chorus of theatrical wails erupted from the family members. Harrell covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking in fake sobs. But Ashley saw the gleam of pure triumph in his eyes through his fingers.
Bennett swayed. His massive frame rocked back on his heels. His hands curled into fists so tight his knuckles turned bone-white. His eyes turned bloodshot.
Harrell lowered his hands. "Well, as the eldest present, I will sign the DNR order. We must let him go peacefully."
"Do not touch that plug," a sharp, clear female voice cut through the noise. "He is not dying."
Every head in the hallway snapped toward Ashley.
Alistair's face turned red with insult. He pointed a finger at Ashley. "Who is this lunatic? Security, remove her from my ward!"
Two massive hospital security guards stepped forward. They reached for Ashley's arms.
Bennett moved faster than the eye could track. He stepped in front of Ashley. He grabbed the wrist of the first guard, twisted his hips, and snapped the man's arm backward.
A loud pop echoed in the hall. The guard screamed, dropping to his knees as his shoulder dislocated.
Bennett glared at the second guard. "Touch her, and I throw you out the window."
The second guard backed away slowly, his hands raised.
Ashley stepped out from behind Bennett. She walked right up to Alistair.
"His symptoms are completely wrong. This doesn't look like natural organ failure. It looks more like a severe, masked poisoning reaction," Ashley fired the words off like bullets. "His pupils and the specific pattern on that ECG monitor don't align with a standard systemic crash. Please believe me, I have a way to temporarily stabilize his condition. Just give me a chance."
Alistair's jaw dropped. His eyes widened. He mentally processed her words, his medical training fighting against his pride. The symptoms matched perfectly.
Harrell panicked. Sweat poured down his face. "She's lying! She's stalling! Get her out of here!"
Ashley took a step toward Harrell. Her eyes bored into his skull. "If you had ordered a comprehensive and untampered toxicology screen, you would have found the anomaly by now," Ashley said, her eyes boring into his skull. "Unless... someone deliberately omitted specific panels to hide the truth. Uncle Harrell, as the person overseeing his care, don't you find that strange?"
Harrell's mouth opened and closed like a dying fish. He couldn't speak. The family members around him began to step away, their eyes filled with suspicion.
Ashley turned to Bennett. She looked up into his red-rimmed eyes.
"Get me a sterilized surgical kit and a set of silver needles," Ashley said, her voice absolute. "I will pull him back from hell."
Bennett stared down at her. He saw the absolute certainty in her eyes. He didn't hesitate.
He turned to the head nurse. "Get her whatever she wants. Now."
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7.6
Isolde Mitchell knew her wealthy husband was cheating on her, but the true nightmare began when her mother-in-law summoned her.
The older woman coldly announced that the mistress was pregnant with a boy and would be moving into their estate.
Because Isolde's family had gone bankrupt and she had only given birth to a frail daughter, she was deemed completely worthless.
When Isolde packed her bags and demanded a divorce, her husband Clark just laughed.
He threatened to use their ironclad prenup to leave her penniless and take full custody of her daughter just to torture her.
To make matters worse, he forced Isolde to secure a failing business deal with the ruthless billionaire Jacques Valdez, essentially ordering her to sell her body to get the signature.
"If you fail, you will never see Bria again."
He even sent his goons to snatch the little girl from her preschool to prove his point.
Isolde was completely cornered, trembling with a mix of rage and absolute despair.
How could the man she married be such a monster? She would rather die than let them destroy her daughter, but how could a bankrupt mother fight a powerful dynasty with absolutely nothing?
Out of options, she looked at the private business card the terrifying billionaire Jacques had unexpectedly given her daughter.
Swallowing her pride, she decided to make a deal with the devil himself, ready to use his power to tear her husband's family apart.
7.8
Andrea was trapped in a suffocating marriage with billionaire Gregory Morse, forced to live as the pathetic substitute for his dead fiancée.
When armed intruders broke into their estate in the dead of night, she called her husband in pure terror.
"Stop playing these cheap, attention-seeking games," Gregory sneered with disgust, and hung up the phone.
She barely escaped with her life, but the cruelty only escalated. At the family mansion, his dead fiancée's sister deliberately scalded Andrea's hand with boiling tea. Instead of defending his wife, Gregory publicly humiliated her, ordering her to clean up the mess while calling her a stray dog.
That night, hiding in the dark wine cellar, Andrea overheard a chilling confession.
Gregory admitted to his brother that he knew Andrea was completely innocent of the car crash that killed his fiancée. He knew she had been framed.
Why did he marry her? Just to use her as a psychological punching bag to vent his twisted grief. He watched her suffer every single day, treating her like disposable trash, while violently threatening anyone who showed her an ounce of kindness.
He thought she was just a useless, helpless shadow who would quietly endure his torment forever.
He had no idea that behind her submissive facade, she was secretly Madame Lan, the apex predator of the global fashion world. And now, she was ready to burn his empire to the ground.
7.0
Eleanore thought her fiancé, Johan, was her only salvation after her family went bankrupt.
But at a high-society gala, he handed her a drugged glass of water. As the unnatural heat burned through her veins, the horrific truth hit her. Johan had isolated her and controlled her finances, all while secretly getting engaged to a wealthy heiress. He drugged Eleanore to ruin her completely, planning to lock her away as his helpless, secret mistress.
Desperate and losing her mind to the drug, Eleanore fled down the hallway. With Johan and his bodyguards hunting her, she stumbled into the dark presidential suite.
But she wasn't alone. Sitting on the leather sofa was Alexander Briggs—the most feared corporate raider on Wall Street, and Johan's exiled brother.
Outside the door, Johan was screaming, ready to drag her back to hell.
"I can be your antidote. But it's going to cost you."
The ruthless billionaire looked at her trembling body with cold calculation. He offered her a staggering deal: a three-month fake marriage to destroy Johan's empire, and in return, absolute protection and her father's massive debts paid in full.
She couldn't understand why the most powerful predator in New York would use a ruined girl as his weapon, but she knew she would rather die than let Johan touch her again.
When Johan finally broke down the door to claim his prey, Alexander calmly pulled Eleanore into his arms.
"Watch your mouth. You are speaking to my future wife."
7.7
Jaclyn woke up in the sterile hospital room after falling down the stairs. The nurse delivered the devastating news: she had bled heavily and lost her baby.
But before she could even cry, her trusted cousins, Katelyn and Cherri, locked the door and revealed the horrifying truth.
"It wasn't an accident," Katelyn smirked, pinning Jaclyn's arm down. "The lubricant on the top step was a very deliberate choice."
They needed her broken and unstable. They had forged her signature, draining her massive trust fund to save their uncle's bankrupt business.
What shattered Jaclyn's world was the fresh hickey on Cherri's neck. Her lover, Bradford, had helped plan the entire murder.
When Jaclyn tried to scream, they smothered her with a pillow, framing her as a lunatic having a mental breakdown.
Two weeks later, when she confronted them, Bradford violently shoved her through a second-story glass window to silence her forever.
As she fell to her death, the husband she had spent her life hating—the ruthless billionaire Gaines—burst through the doors.
He threw himself forward, his face filled with pure terror, desperately trying to catch her.
When her body hit the stone patio, Gaines fell to his knees in her blood, weeping and begging her not to close her eyes.
Until her last breath, Jaclyn was consumed by suffocating regret. Why did she trust the monsters who killed her, and hate the only man who truly loved her?
Opening her eyes again, she was back in the penthouse, exactly one month into her marriage with Gaines.
8.7
I was pregnant with the future heir of the Blackwood Pack, but my fated mate, Alpha Gavin, was nowhere to be found when sharp, tearing agony ripped through my swollen belly.
Instead of rushing to my side, he was in a luxury penthouse with his mistress, Piper.
When I desperately called his human number for help, it was Piper who answered the phone.
"I'm Piper. His future Luna."
Minutes later, I received a leaked audio file of Gavin promising to formally reject me the moment our pup was born.
Before the heartbreak could even set in, my armored SUV was violently rammed off the road by a massive truck.
It wasn't an accident. It was a targeted hit paid for by Piper's pack.
I woke up in the clinic with an empty womb. My pup was dead.
Gavin didn't even show up. He just mind-linked the butler to say he was "too busy" to deal with my loss.
He let his mistress murder our child and treated me like disposable trash, assuming my grief would make me a weak, compliant victim.
He thought he could just bury my trauma and move on with his perfect new life.
He was wrong.
I faked my own death in a fiery crash, leaving him with nothing but my signed rejection papers and the bloody receipt proving his mistress hired the killers.
Now, armed with a new identity and untraceable wealth, I am stepping out of the shadows.
I am going to bankrupt their packs from the inside out and make my former Alpha watch his empire burn.
9.5
After her step sister ran away from her marriage to the billion dollar heir, they took Emerald Jane Campbell as a stand-in to fill in the position of her step sister. Forced by her evil mother, Emerald can't do anything but to follow. She was tied to the disabled billion dollar heir for three years and all she got was cold treatment from him. Years later, a kidnapper appears in their lives. The kidnapper threatens the life of Emerald until Jude Rafael Sanders- the billion-dollar decides to do what it takes to protect his wife, Emerald.
Secrets began to unravel one by one. But what if Jude finds out his beloved wife has something up beneath her sleeves? Find out how tension intensifies in their roller coaster marriage.