The Billionaire widowers Last Wife
They say marrying Cassian Blackmoor is a death sentence.
Seventeen wives. Seventeen funerals. One widower no one can explain.
They call him cursed. They call him dangerous. Some call him a murderer who hides behind wealth and silence. But no one can prove anything - and no one dares accuse a billionaire who buries his wives with the same calm devotion he once loved them with.
Eloise Laurent knows the rumors. She knows the whispers. She knows the stories about the widower whose brides never live long.
Instead, she falls for him.
For the quiet sadness in his eyes.
For the way his voice softens only for her.
For the way he loves like he's terrified of losing her.
And maybe he should be.
But when she discovers a hidden grave bearing her own name, Eloise realizes something far worse than rumors is waiting for her inside his house.
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Chapter 4
Her back hit the wall so hard it knocked the air right out of her. For a second, everything disappeared. Sound, breath, even thought. But her instincts stayed wide awake.
Adrenaline shot through her, quick as lightning. Before her mind caught up, her hands shoved at whoever had her wrist. Her pulse thundered in her ears, wild and frantic. The hedge scratched her arm, and cold stone pressed through her coat. Whoever had dragged her into the tight space between the chapel wall and the hedges wasn't letting go.
Just for a heartbeat, her body forgot where she was. Forgot the funeral. Forgot the people. Forgot pretty much everything but danger. Raw and close enough to taste.
She drove her palm into his chest. Hard.
He staggered back a step.
Eloise sucked in air, looked up, then stopped cold.
"Adam?"
Her roommate stared at her, just as shocked, and let go right away. "You're welcome."
She was still panting. "You nearly killed me."
"You're breathing," he said, deadpan. "Which is more than I can say for your self-preservation."
His eyes flicked over her shoulder, toward the chapel. "They were circling you."
"They were talking."
"They were dissecting you," he said, quieter now. "That's not the same."
She rubbed her wrist, annoyed at how her fingers still trembled. "You scared me."
Adam's face softened, but only for a moment. Then he was all sharp edges again, scanning her face like he was hunting for bruises. "Good."
She frowned. "Good?"
"Yeah. You should be scared."
"That's dramatic."
"That's true."
She rolled her eyes, but it got to her anyway. Adam didn't scare easily. He joked, exaggerated, and made everything into a scene, but this wasn't the same. His worry was quieter. Still. Like something wound tight and waiting.
"You looked at him," Adam said.
Eloise stiffened. "I gave my condolences."
"You looked at him," he said again, softer.
Her throat went tight. "Adam."
"I'm not blaming you," he said. "I'm warning you."
She let out a shaky breath. "You're reading too much into a look."
Adam cocked his head. "Am I?"
She didn't answer. Because honestly, she didn't know. And that bugged her more than anything he'd said.
Something shifted in the air.
Not a sound. Not a movement. Just presence. It ran down her spine, slow and sure, impossible to ignore.
Adam felt it too. He straightened, eyes flicking past her.
Eloise turned.
Cassian Blackmoor was walking toward them.
He didn't hurry. Didn't stalk. Just moved with that calm confidence, every step easy, shoulders loose, face composed but not blank. Somehow, space just opened for him, like even the air knew where he belonged.
He stopped a few feet away. His eyes went right to her wrist.
"Are you alright?"
His voice was steady. Not loud, not dramatic. Just real.
Cassian held her gaze for a moment, like he was weighing her answer. Then he looked at Adam. Not a challenge. Not a threat. Just recognition.
Adam nodded, quickly. "She's fine."
Cassian glanced back at her, and neither of them looked away.
The silence between them didn't feel empty. It felt like a held breath, waiting for something that hadn't decided to happen yet.
Adam cleared his throat. "We should go."
Cassian didn't move. Didn't react at all, really. But Eloise felt the moment shift. A thin, delicate thing, not broken, just quietly folded away.
She nodded. "We were just leaving."
Cassian dipped his head. "Of course."
They slipped out the gate in silence. Cold air brushed her cheeks. She told herself that's why her face felt hot.
But warmth didn't usually settle deep in her chest like that.
Later that night, she went out. Not because she wanted anyone around but because she couldn't stand being alone with his voice echoing through her head. She didn't trust herself with how much she wanted to hear it again.
The place she picked was warm and dim, the kind of restaurant where nobody asked questions if you sat alone with a drink. Conversations blurred into a soft background hum.
For a while, it helped. She managed a few steady breaths.
Then something in the room shifted.
Not a word. Not a sound. Just a heaviness.
The air thickened, heavy the way it gets before rain. Full of something you can't see yet, but know is coming.
Her fingers tightened around her glass before she even looked up. Cassian stood a few steps away. He didn't say a word, didn't try to draw attention. He was just there like he'd always been, like she was only now noticing.
Her breath caught. She hated that he could still do that to her.
He looked at her, really looked, his gaze tracing her face, pausing just a split second on the faint red mark at her wrist. Something flashed in his eyes. Not anger, not softness. Just something sharper. It vanished before she could pin it down.
"You're out," he said. Not really a question.
She swallowed. "So are you."
He nodded, quiet. "Yes."
He didn't sit. Didn't ask. He just stood close, comfortable in the space, as if the place belonged to him and the room seemed to agree.
She forced her voice steady. "I didn't expect to see you again. At least not tonight."
His eyes drifted around the room. "This is one of mine.
He said it softly, no bragging, no explanation, just the truth.
Eloise blinked. "You own this place."
"Yes."
That's when she noticed the small things: a server slowed down near him, another straightened up without knowing why. No one made a scene, but they all knew. Power didn't need to shout.
Her pulse sped up.
"Do you always check on your businesses this late?" she asked.
"When I want out of my own head."
She tightened her grip on the glass. "Is it working tonight?"
He met her eyes, steady. "No."
The word sat between them, alive and heavy.
Silence grew, but not empty, not awkward, just thick with something she couldn't name.
"I don't think meeting you was an accident, Eloise," he finally said.
Her breath slowed, chest tightening, like someone was pulling a thread inside her.
"Be careful with me. Most people listen when they're warned."
He stepped back, turned, and walked away.
She didn't move, just stared at the space where he'd stood.
Fear curled low in her stomach. But that wasn't what made her heart race.
That was something else.
Anticipation.
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8.4
Kloe Guthrie dragged her crystal-encrusted wedding gown down the penthouse corridor, exhausted but ready to finally be alone with her new husband, Justen.
But as she passed the presidential suite, a familiar, cloying perfume stopped her. Through the cracked door, she saw Justen brutally thrusting into her cousin, Candyce.
"Like fucking a corpse with Kloe," Justen grunted, his voice thick with lust. "Worth it for the trust fund control, though."
Candyce giggled, mocking Kloe's pathetic gratitude.
Shattered, Kloe stumbled backward in the dark, only to be caught by Julian Larsen—Justen's billionaire best man.
Instead of offering sympathy, Julian trapped her against the wall. He forced her to listen to her husband's cruel mockery, then dragged her into the opposite suite, tearing off her wedding dress and dismantling her dignity piece by piece.
Everything she had believed for four years was a meticulously calculated lie.
She was nothing but a boring prop to the man she loved, a naive fool meant to be drained of her family's immense wealth and laughed at behind closed doors. The humiliation and betrayal burned through her veins like acid.
"You could cry," Julian whispered against her neck, his eyes predatory and dark. "Or you could make him regret he was ever born."
Instead of running from the man cornering her in the dark, Kloe looked at the destroyed remains of her life, grabbed Julian's collar, and pulled him in.
This time, she would make them all pay.
8.1
I was the "fallen princess" of New York, living in a charcoal silk cage while paying off my father’s millions in debt with my own body. My owner was Braxton Kensington, a man who looked at me with the same cold interest he gave a fluctuating stock graph.
One morning, a New York Times alert shattered the silence: Braxton was getting engaged to a billionaire socialite in the merger of the decade. When I demanded my freedom and the five-million-dollar severance promised in our contract, he just smirked and pointed to the fine print.
"In a court of law, an engagement is just an intention," he whispered, gripping my chin until it bruised. "Until I sign that marriage license, you belong to me."
He flicked a black AmEx at my feet like I was a tragic charity case, ordering me to buy a dress for his engagement gala. To save my dying mother from eviction, I took a secret translation job, only to realize my client was his new fiancée, Caroline. She dragged me to Braxton’s office to humiliate me, and after he hid me in a secret room to avoid a scandal, he branded me a "security risk" and froze every cent I had.
I stood in a CVS with my last sixty dollars, swallowing a Plan B pill dry while watching a news report about Braxton demolishing my family’s last legacy. He didn't just want my body; he wanted to erase my entire existence and leave me with nothing.
The cruelty was breathtaking, but Braxton forgot that a woman with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous player in the game. I reached out to the only man he truly feared—his billionaire half-brother and the boy whose heart I broke years ago, Ansel Neal.
"Coffee isn't enough," Ansel replied to my message in seconds. "Dinner. Our old spot. 8 PM."
As I walked into the club to meet Braxton's greatest rival, I knew the game wasn't over. I was just changing the rules.
8.7
I spent three years building my husband, Axel Farrell, into Silicon Valley's ultimate "family man." As his lead PR strategist, I carefully managed his public image, making sure the world saw him as a perfect, devoted husband while I worked in the shadows of our estate.
The illusion shattered when he came home one night smelling of sandalwood and roses, with three deep fingernail scratches carved into his back. When I tried to check his phone, the passcode we had used for years-our wedding anniversary-had been changed.
The betrayal got worse the next morning when his mother called me a "defective product" and tried to force me into a fertility clinic. Axel didn't defend me; instead, he shoved me against a marble bar at a public gala to protect his mistress in front of the world's elite. By the time I tried to leave, Axel had frozen my bank accounts and filed a forged legal petition to have me declared mentally incompetent.
He planned to have me legally kidnapped and locked in a private psychiatric ward just to stop me from filing for divorce. He even blocked every major law firm in the city from taking my case, leaving me with no money, no identity, and no one to turn to.
I couldn't understand how the man who "saved" me from the mud years ago could be the same monster now trying to legally erase my existence. Was our entire marriage just a grooming process to exploit my genius for his billion-dollar empire?
As the deadline for my forced commitment approached, I stopped crying and opened my laptop. I leaked the video of his affair to every tech journalist in the country, watching his stock price crash in real-time.
"Axel thinks starving me out will make me crawl back to him," I whispered as I walked into the headquarters of his biggest rival.
"But he forgot that the most valuable part of his company is in my head."
I was no longer the abandoned wife; I was the one who was going to take his throne and burn it to the ground.
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."
9.7
Eliana Rivera is the firstborn daughter of business tycoon Cassian Rivera. When her father's company falls into debt, he marries her off to the arrogant and ruthless billionaire, Alexander Grayson, as part of a business contract and under the threat of blackmail.
Alexander, the billionaire CEO, never planned to marry, but the pressure of blackmail forces him into a union with a woman he barely knows. Although Eliana doesn't see Alexander as her ideal partner, she agrees to the marriage out of a sense of duty.
Once engaged, however, he barely acknowledges her presence and harbours disdain for her because of her father's actions and their relationship. But as they navigate their newfound relationship, the unexpected desire for each other's touch ignites-a twist neither of them planned, leading them toward an unforeseen love.
7.8
On the day she married, Alina unknowingly took the place of the Hayes family's daughter and became Kellan's wife, the richest man in town who was rumored to be disfigured.
Everyone mocked their doomed marriage, expecting misery and disgrace.
Instead, Alina revealed brilliance no one expected-a renowned jewelry master, financial genius, and medical prodigy.
The woman the Hayes family ignored was actually the heiress they should have treasured.
As regret consumed them and her ex begged for another chance, Kellan stood beside her, now devastatingly handsome.
"Alina and I are perfect together. Stay away from my wife."