The billionaire's beautiful marionette
"Be my wife."
Lucia looked at him, questioning his sanity.
"You're out of your mind.I don't even know you ".
Lucas Mariano's voice was icy, his gaze unreadable.
"You need help.Your sister requires care.I can help you both.You have quite the image so I'm sure you'll need it.
It's transactional-nothing more."He finished.
Once the rising star in the ballet world, Lucia Moretti's life is shaken after a brutal divorce and a terrible fire that leaves her and her sister homeless.
Now, with her dreams buried,her heart is guarded and her main focus is keeping both herself and her sister alive.
Enter Lucas-Merciless, cold and sinfully compelling.He offers a contract marriage which comes with everything Lucia needs but at a cost she doesn't understand...yet.
What started as a formality quickly grows into something far more twisted when her ex-husband,Matt-lucas's best friend-returns, determined to have her again.
"You got married to Lucas?" Matt snarled,fury dripping from his voice.
"Is this your revenge?" He continued icily.
No, Lucia said without emotion.
"This is survival."
As sparks fly and secrets come to light, Lucia Finds herself torn between a past that nearly broke her and a man who might shatter her in a brand new way.
In a world of socialites, betrayal and fake love, Lucia must ask herself: Is she the puppet or the one holding the strings?
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Chapter 3
Lucas's pov
Hospitals were always cold - sterile, serious and lacking emotion. I preferred them that way. They reminded me of boardrooms: full of calculated breaths, quiet strength and controlled chaos.
I sat in a private waiting lounge, grey suit crisp against the beige room, the cuff of my Rolex catching the harsh fluorescent light. The floor beneath my shoes shone.
Everything was clean. Neat. Perfect.
Just how I liked it.
"Mr. Marano?" A nurse poked her head through."Your mother's vitals are stable. She's resting comfortably and the doctor will attend to you briefly."
I gave a brief nod, barely lifting my gaze.
"Thank you."
When she left, I stood and walked over to the large window looking down at the hospital's courtyard. It was drizzling - soft, persistent and unyielding. The same kind of drizzle that poured the night I signed my first billion dollar acquisition.
There was poetry to this type of weather.
And yet...something else drew my attention to the hallway. A flicker of movement. No. Not movement - emotion.
Raw, unfiltered emotion.
I turned just in time to see a young woman arguing with the nurse at the front desk. Her voice wasn't loud but it vibrated with urgency, like a guitar string pulled to the extreme.
"I said I'll figure something out. I just need a bit more time."
I narrowed my eyes.
The woman - youthful, mid twenties maybe - stood in a pale pink hoodie and worn jeans. Hair in a messy bun, cheeks flushed and eyes rimmed bright red,no doubt from crying. And yet she stood firm. Unyielding.
Like the whole fucking world could collapse all around her and she'd still keep fighting.
She didn't belong in this place.
She belonged in a storm.
She turned away from the front desk, sighing like she was pulling herself together through sheer willpower. Then she saw me and our eyes locked for a mere second.
Just one.
And in that second, I saw it.
The fight.
The kind I'd seen in hopeful entrepreneurs pitching their dreams from crumbled homes. The kind that couldn't be bought or faked.
I watched her strut to a vending machine, digging through her pocket. She took out four crumpled bills. Inserted one. The machine rejected it.
Then another.
I didn't think much before I walked over to her,my footsteps silent on the tiles.
"Allow me..." I said, my voice smooth and detached but low enough to cut through her frustration.
She blinked up at me, startled.
"Oh,uh...."
I slipped my black card from my wallet and tapped it against the reader. The machine beeped, signaling the approval of the transaction.
"I wasn't -," she started.
"I know," I finished, not unkindly but a bit icily. " You were struggling. You still are."
She stared at me, her lips parted slightly.
Then she chuckled under her breath - dry, exhausted. "Guess you saw the whole show then huh?"
I shrugged. "I've seen much worse."
I then took her trembling fingers in mine before I continued. "But hardly anyone standing so tall in the middle of it."
Something flashed in her eyes - curiosity, maybe. Distrust as well. She gently removed her hands from mine before folding them across her chest.
"Forgive me, but you don't look like the type who hangs around ER vending machines."
"I don't," I admitted. "But you do."
She tilted her head "and what's that supposed to mean, sir?".
"It means,"I stated matter of factly, "you're too proud to ask for help, but too loyal to walk away.Your kind of person usually breaks alone."
Silence stretched between us like gum.
Then -
"I'm Lucia," she introduced quietly.
"And I don't break. Well not easily, anyway."
My mouth quirked upward at her cute little introduction,well just a little anyway.
"Lucas Marano." I introduced back.
Her eyes narrowed just for a moment, recognition reflecting in them.
"The Lucas Marano?"
I shrugged again. "Depends on who's asking."
She looked me over again - only this time much slower like she was analyzing me which I oddly didn't mind too much. Then she spoke. "Well,Mr. Marano, thank you. For the vending machine rescue."
I gave a curt nod. "It was the least a gentleman like me could do."
Before she could respond, a nurse called her name down the hall.She gave me one last look - wary, grateful and curious - then scurried away.
I stood there a Moment longer, my expression thoughtful.
Then I turned and stepped out for a bit, letting the rain hit me for a brief second before I took out my phone.
It buzzed just before I dialed.
Matt Richards.
I answered the call with a knowing smile on my face. "You sure take your sweet time to reach out matt."
Matt's familiar laughter broke through.
"You're one to talk,Mr ghost Marano. What? Running empires too big to call your best friend anymore?"
I smirked. "Something along those lines."
"Ass," he snorted before continuing...
"You still at hope general? Heard your mom's tests were today."
"She's stable for now."
"Glad to hear it. Hey - LA next weekend. Still up for it?"
"I'll be there but first I need to sort out things here," I said.
"Hey, you better be there because I need a break from Vegas. Too many pricks trying to buy me out and not enough models trying to marry me."
"Same old Matt, you never change do you?" I snorted.
"You know it." he retorted.
We talked for a few more minutes - about nothing in particular and not once did I mention Lucia. I was fine with keeping her a secret.
To me she was the fierce woman in the hallway who struggled with the vending machine but with strength hidden behind her eyes.
I would always remember her and I would make sure she remembered me as well.
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9.5
My boyfriend, Jefferson, convinced me to give up my Yale scholarship for him. He was my secret, my escape from the shame of my mother's past, and I threw away my future for our love.
Then, at a gala, he publicly announced his engagement to Aubrey Carroll-the girl who made my high school years a living hell.
He trapped me in his mansion, forcing me to become her personal servant. She tortured me daily, culminating in her brutally killing our dog, Charlie, with a garden trowel.
When her friends arrived, they joined in, stripping me half-naked and live-streaming my panic attack for the world to see.
The man who once promised to protect me watched as they destroyed me.
But as I lay bleeding out on the floor, it wasn't an ambulance that arrived. It was the private security of Alexzander Stevens-my estranged, billionaire grandfather.
He revealed I was his sole heiress, and now, we were going to make them pay for every last tear.
8.7
On her eighteenth birthday, Elinor thought she was finally an adult. But a single text message reminded her she was just property.
Boyd Walker, the ruthless billionaire who dictated her every breath, threw a contract onto her bed. He had bought her adoptive father's medical debt—one billion dollars. And she was the sole collateral.
The punishment for even a hint of rebellion was catastrophic.
When her disabled friend tried to check on her, Boyd had his good leg shattered in front of a live security feed just to teach her a lesson.
When she fought off an entitled frat boy at school and came back with a bleeding arm, Boyd didn't comfort her.
Driven by a twisted, suffocating jealousy, he held her under a freezing bath, then tied a red thread with a silver bell around her ankle.
"You are a pet that needs to learn its boundaries."
Every time she moved, the high-pitched ring was a humiliating reminder of her gilded cage. The billion-dollar debt was a chain she could never break, and the monster holding the leash would destroy anyone who dared to help her.
Stripped of her money, her friends, and her dignity, Elinor lay completely still in the dark room for three days, refusing all food and water.
If Boyd wouldn't give her freedom, she would take the only thing she had left to control—her own death.
7.8
Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire.
I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper.
I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he’d dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family’s land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock.
I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim.
"If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned.
So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell—the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months.
Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I’ve suspended Hugh’s executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I’m just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout.
But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.
7.6
I am the illegitimate, mute daughter of the wealthy Owen family, kept hidden in the attic like a shameful secret.
To save his failing company, my father decided to sell me off to a repulsive, predatory investor named Grossman.
At the family dinner, Grossman's sweaty hands roamed my bare legs while my half-sister Kaleigh intentionally spilled red wine on my dress, laughing as she watched me suffer.
When I grabbed a steak knife to defend myself, my father slammed his fist on the table.
"Sit down, or I will cut off the maintenance payments for your mother's grave."
My stepmother and sister sneered, treating me like a piece of meat meant to be sacrificed for their luxury. I was starved, locked away, and treated worse than a stray dog, all while my family paraded their high-society status to the world.
I couldn't understand why they hated me so deeply, or who really ordered the hit that killed my mother twenty years ago. The police reports were buried, and I was entirely powerless, trapped in a house of monsters.
But they didn't know that the night before, I had accidentally stumbled into the secret life of Burleigh Livingston—the ruthless, supposedly paralyzed billionaire who was faking his madness.
When Burleigh suddenly crashed our family dinner and threw a limitless Black Card on the table to outbid Grossman and buy me for the night, I didn't hesitate.
I grabbed the handles of his wheelchair, accepted his twisted deal, and prepared to use the devil himself to tear my family apart.
8.0
They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, mine didn't.
I came back with a marriage certificate bearing a stranger's name, a ring worth more than my parents' love ever was, and a son whose father I've never seen, never known, never remembered.
I went to Vegas for a racing competition. I won. I celebrated. And somewhere between the victory and the sunrise, my life changed forever.
For six years, I've lived with the consequences of one reckless night. I built an empire. I raised my son. And I searched for the man who changed my life without even knowing it.
Then fate laughed in my face.
My sister married my ex-fiancé-the man I was promised to since childhood. The man I was supposed to become Mrs. Windsor for. The man who now wears my family name... and looks far too much like my child.
Every time I'm near him, the past presses closer. Every glance feels like a question I'm terrified to ask. I shouldn't notice him. I shouldn't feel anything. He is my sister's husband.
But some secrets refuse to stay buried.
Because the truth about Vegas isn't just in the ring on my finger or the child in my arms.
It's standing right in front of me.
And when it finally comes out, it won't just destroy a marriage, it will burn an empire to the ground.
7.1
I lay paralyzed on stiff white sheets, a prisoner in my own skin, listening to the rain lash against the window like nails on a coffin. My father, Elmore Franco, didn't even look at my face as he checked his clipboard. He just listened to the steady, monotonous beep of the heart monitor-the only thing proving I was still alive.
Without a hint of remorse, he pulled a pen from his pocket and signed the Do Not Resuscitate order. My stepmother, Ophelia, stepped out from behind him, wearing my favorite pearl necklace and smelling of cloying perfume. She leaned close to my ear to whisper the truth that turned my blood to ice.
"It was the tea, darling. Just like your mother. A slow, tasteless poison."
She chuckled as she revealed that my fiancé, Bryce, had a two-year-old son with my sister, Daniela. My inheritance had been funding their secret life for years, and now that the money was secure, I was an inconvenience they were finally scrubbing away. As my father yanked the power cord from the wall, the beeping died, and the darkness swallowed me whole.
I was being murdered by my own flesh and blood, used as a bank account until I was no longer needed. I died in that sterile room, drowning in the realization that every person I ever loved was a monster who had been waiting for me to take my last breath.
Then, I gasped. I woke up in a luxury hotel suite surrounded by silk sheets, five years in the past-the very morning of my wedding. Next to me lay Basile Delgado, the "Wolf of Wall Street" and my family's most dangerous enemy. In my first life, I ran from this room in a panic and lost everything. This time, I looked at the man who would eventually destroy my father's empire and decided to join him.
"I'm not leaving, Basile. Marry me. Right now. Today."