The Billionaire Proposed
Penelope's wedding day should have been perfect-until she found her best friend in her fiancé's bed.
Running from the ruins of her future, she fell into one night with a stranger whose touch felt like safety. No names. No future. Just escape.
Until two pink lines changed everything.
Years later, Penelope returns with twins, a stronger heart, and no plans to fall in love again. But fate traps her in close quarters with a ruthless billionaire... who happens to be the man from that unforgettable night. He doesn't know she's the bride who disappeared. He doesn't know the children are his.
Old enemies want revenge. Old secrets refuse to stay buried.
And the man who swore he would never love... kneels.
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Chapter 4
Penelope woke up before the sun had fully risen, a thin line of dawn slipped through the heavy hotel curtains, washing the room in pale light.
For a moment, she lay still, her mind hazy-until the memories of the previous night came crashing back. Her chest tightened.
Carlton lay asleep beside her, his arms loosely draped across her waist, his breathing slow and steady. Carefully, she lifted his arm away and slid out of the bed.
Spotting a Louis Vuitton shopping bag resting on the dresser. Without hesitation, she pulled out a simple dress from it and slipped into it, then folded her wedding gown-the symbol of everything that had gone wrong-and gathered it into her arms.
The room felt unnaturally quiet, weighed down by reality.
Her heart pounded as she approached the door. She paused briefly when she noticed her car keys on the rack. Taking a deep breath, she glanced back at Carlton one last time. He remained asleep, peaceful in the dim light, unaware that this moment would be their only one.
She considered leaving him a note, but she stopped herself.
Some things are never meant to be explained. She grabbed the keys and slipped out quietly.
She hurried down the hallway, into the elevator, and out of the building.
The cool morning air hit her like a slap as she stepped out of the building. Relief washed over her as she saw her car parked in the valet stand. Looking slightly bruised but intact.
She climbed in and shut the door, exhaling shakily.
Her phone lay on the passenger seat, its screen glowing with missed calls and unread messages.
She picked it up and saw numerous missed calls and messages from her Dad, Hill, Geoffrey, and even Mrs. Oretha. Penelope's heart sank as she stared at the screen, but she didn't return any of the calls nor reply to the messages.
Each number represented a conversation she wasn't ready to have, a judgment she wasn't ready to face. With a clenched jaw, she tossed the phone back to the passenger seat, fired the engine, and drove off.
The city slowly woke around her, but Penelope felt detached from it all. A few streets away, she pulled over beside a public trash bin. Her hands trembled as she reached for the wedding dress.
For years, she had imagined walking down the aisle in it.
Now, without ceremony or tears, she shoved it into the bin and slammed the lid shut.
She didn't look back.
The drive home was blurry. By the time she arrived home, the house was already alive with noise.
Her father. Geoffrey. Hillary. Mrs. Oretha.
Everyone.
She parked and took a moment to steel herself. The moment she stepped inside, the tension thickened. Her father's face hardened when his eyes landed on her.
"What is this?" he demanded. "Are you out of your mind?" His face was burning with anger and fury.
The accusation hung in the air, Penelope stared at her father, and a cold emptiness settled in her stomach.
Before she could respond, Hillary rushed forward, arms outstretched. "Pen, please-"
Penelope stepped back, avoiding her touch. Geoffrey moved next, reaching for her hand, his voice strained with panic. "Penelope, thank goodness you're alright. Where were you? Talk to me.
She pulled away again, her face unreadable, her silence louder than any accusation. She walked past them into the house, Mrs Oretha waiting in the hallway.
"You could have taken your calls, you got us all worried," Mrs Oretha said, her tone gentle but firm.
"I will no longer be getting married to Geoffrey," Penelope announced, her voice steady and loud enough for everyone to hear.
A stunned silence fell over the room. Geoffrey's face turned pale, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly. "What do you mean babe?" he finally managed to ask.
"You heard me correctly," Penelope replied, her voice unwavering. "I am not marrying you Geoffrey."
Her father's anger erupted. "You embarrassed me. You made me look like a fool in front of my friends, my family, and everyone. Penelope, you disgraced me."
"You were nowhere to be found at your wedding, guests left in disappointment, and you came home reeking of male cologne, and you said what?" her father's voice almost breaking through the hard walls.
Hillary stepped forward, her expression one of concern. "Penelope, what's wrong? Are you having cold feet?"
Penelope turned to her, a stranger hidden behind a mask of feigned sympathy. The betrayal echoed in her memory, clear as day. How could she have been so blind? She mused as she looked at Hill with a blank expression, feeling a surge of anger and betrayal.
'How did I never realize what a calculating bitch you are?' she thought, but didn't say anything.
Her father's voice broke through her thoughts. "If you are not marrying Geoffrey, then you are not setting foot in this house again."
The words landed hard.
Penelope's heart ached at her father's words. It hurt her that he cared more about the wedding than her well-being. She took a deep breath, standing tall. "I am not getting married. It was my choice to get married, and now I no longer want to get married. You can do whatever you want, Dad."
Her father's face twisted with rage. "Then you leave this house and never come back. I don't want to ever see your face again.
Penelope felt a pang of sadness but stood her ground. "Fine. I will leave," she declared, since she desperately needed time and space.
She needed space away from both Hillary and Geoffrey. She couldn't bear to look them in the face and she never wanted to let them see or know how they had hurt her.
The shock in the room was palpable as she turned and walked upstairs, and immediately, Mrs Oretha and Hillary hurried after her.
Before either of them could walk into her bedroom she slammed the door in their face and locked it.
She grabbed a suitcase and began to pack, her hands trembling slightly but her resolve firm. She picked up her passport and her essentials, tears streamed down hùer face, but she wiped them off immediately, and took one last look around her room, then headed back downstairs.
Downstairs, her father's voice continued to echo angrily, Mrs Oretha trying to calm him down, while Hillary and Geoffrey whispered to each other.
Penelope looked around the house, at the faces she once trusted, at the place she once called home-and felt nothing but resentment.
As she reached the bottom step, her father glared at her. "You really mean to leave?"
Penelope nodded without hesitation, her eyes meeting his. "Yes Sir"
Without another word, she walked past them all, out the front door, and into an unknown future that awaited her.
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8.9
I was tossed into a dark alley like rotting garbage, bleeding and grieving the child I had just lost.
When I was finally brought back to my fiancé Angelo's penthouse, instead of comfort, I was met with absolute disgust.
His family declared me "unclean" after the kidnapping. Angelo coldly announced he was burying the scandal by marrying my sweet, innocent cousin, Carissa.
When we were alone, Carissa stood over my bed, her voice dripping with venomous delight.
"My father arranged the kidnapping. And now, Angelo and I can finally be together."
Before I could react, she forced a silver letter opener into my hand, deliberately stabbed her own shoulder, and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Angelo stormed in, struck me across the face, and gathered a sobbing Carissa into his arms, looking at me with absolute revulsion.
The family matriarch appeared at the door, her cold eyes sweeping over the scene before she gave a chilling order to the maids.
"Clean this up."
They pinned me down and brutally drove the blade directly into my chest.
I choked on my own blood, staring at the man who had promised me the world as he turned his back, calling my murder a "mercy."
As my heart beat its final agonizing rhythm, I made a silent vow to the shadows that if there was a next life, I would have my vendetta.
When I opened my eyes again, there was no blood, only the soft silk of my nightgown.
I had returned to the day before my eighteenth birthday.
This time, I wouldn't play the desperate victim. I was going to ally with the Devil of Chicago and burn them all to the ground.
9.0
Colette stepped out of the federal prison, finally breathing the air of freedom after two agonizing years.
But instead of a bus home, a black armored SUV blocked her path. Ferris Vance's men kidnapped her right at the gates. He forced her to sign a marriage certificate, threatening to completely destroy her father's legacy if she refused.
The nightmare had only just begun. She soon learned her father had been driven to suicide anyway. Dragged into the Vance estate, Colette was beaten bloody by the family of Ellie, the girl she supposedly wronged. Ferris paraded her in a pure white gown for the cameras, playing the fiercely devoted husband. But the second the lenses turned away, he forced her into a coarse maid's uniform, making her scrub the freezing marble floors on her hands and knees.
"Your life isn't even worth the dirt on my shoes."
Ferris whispered those words as he threw his muddy boots at her bruised face. She was nothing but a piece of bleeding bait, a prop meant to lure his missing lover out of hiding. She was tortured and humiliated for a crime she had absolutely nothing to do with. The sheer injustice of paying the price for another woman's disappearance tore her soul apart.
When he cornered her in the bathroom, the last thread of Colette's sanity snapped. She hurled a bucket of filthy water right into his face, broke out of his grip, and threw herself out a window into a freezing storm. This time, she chose to escape, even if it meant death.
7.2
Five years ago, I, Claire Parker, ran away for love with Daniel Carter, the broke boy everyone looked down on. But on the very day we were supposed to leave together, he abandoned me.
Overnight, I became the laughingstock of the entire city and was forced into a marriage alliance with a terminally ill man, Ryan Cooper.
Five years later, my husband died, the marriage arrangement fell apart, and the Cooper family threw me out without a shred of mercy.
Meanwhile, Daniel, the man everyone once sneered at, returned home in glory and became the hottest rising name in the business world.
And somehow, he ended up becoming my boss.
I wanted nothing to do with him, yet he kept closing in on me, cornering me with sarcasm sharp enough to draw blood.
Then one day, Daniel caught me on a date with another man.
His eyes reddened instantly as he pinned me against the wall. "Claire... are you abandoning me again?"
9.0
To save her dying mother, Adaline walked into the Waldorf Astoria to deliver a shirt to her fiancé.
She didn't know her stepsister, June, had swapped her keycard. Adaline stumbled into a pitch-black suite and was brutally assaulted by a stranger in the dark.
The nightmare didn't end there. June paid off the only bone marrow donor for Adaline's mother to flee the city, and stole Adaline's fiancé. Bankrupt and desperate, Adaline was forced to sell herself into a loveless marriage with the ruthless billionaire Ferris Finch just to secure a medical team.
But when Ferris saw the dark, violent bruises covering her body, his eyes filled with absolute disgust.
"You make me sick. Pack up your cheap tricks."
He mocked her, calling her a filthy woman who couldn't even wash her lover's marks off before crawling into his house.
Adaline swallowed her pride and endured his cruel humiliation. When June publicly taunted her about the hotel assault, Adaline finally snapped, ending up handcuffed in a freezing police cell.
She thought she was completely out of moves, waiting to rot in prison while her new husband despised her.
But back at the estate, Ferris had just pulled the hotel's security footage.
Staring at the screen, the arrogant billionaire's face turned completely ashen.
He finally realized that the innocent woman he had destroyed in the dark that night, and the wife he was currently torturing, were the exact same person.
9.1
I was supposed to be celebrating my twenty-first birthday and my engagement to the man I loved.
Instead, I was bleeding out in a crushed car, listening to my fiancé Greggory and my stepsister Alta laughing over the car's Bluetooth.
They had cut my brakes.
As the steering wheel crushed my shattered ribs, they cheerfully clinked their champagne glasses, celebrating their hostile takeover of my family's media empire.
I tried to scream for help, but my lungs wouldn't work.
Then, Alta's sweet voice delivered the final, fatal blow over the speaker.
"Your mother? I took care of her too."
I died in the freezing rain, my heart frozen with absolute hatred as I realized every touch and whispered promise was just a calculated step toward my murder.
I gave them everything, treating them like my closest family.
Why did they have to kill my innocent mother? Why did I blindly trust two vipers who only wanted to drain my blood?
Opening my eyes again, the smell of gasoline was gone.
I was back in my bedroom, safe and unharmed, on the exact day of my twenty-first birthday party.
The day the tragedy began.
Downstairs, my murderers were waiting to spring their trap, expecting me to blindly accept Greggory's proposal.
But this time, I put on a blood-red dress, grabbed the photo of their secret affair, and walked down the stairs to choose a new fiancé—the most ruthless billionaire in the room.
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.