The Billionaire's Bride Has A Secret
I took a blade for my husband, Marco, five years ago. It saved his life, but the wound to my stomach cost me the ability to give him an heir. He swore it didn't matter. "I only need you," he had whispered.
Today, he brought home my replacement. He called her a "surrogate," a university student named Bianca who was meant to secure his family's bloodline. But that night, I found them tangled in our guest bed.
I stood in the doorway, a ghost in my own home, and listened to him praise her.
"You're so pure," he whispered. "Lia... she's so frigid."
The betrayal was a second blade twisting in my old scar. His affair became blatant. He showered her with gifts and forgot my birthday. When she coveted the heirloom pendant my dying mother gave me, he ripped it from my neck and gave it to her.
"It's a worthless trinket," he scoffed.
That night, she tried to run me over with his Aston Martin. He arrived to find me bleeding in the driveway, and he didn't even ask if I was okay. He just looked at me with disgust, believing her lies instantly.
"What the hell have you done now?" he bellowed. "You're not dead, are you?"
I laughed then, a hollow, chilling sound. I picked up my suitcase, turned my back on the ruins of my marriage, and made a single phone call.
"Dante," I said to my brother, the Don of the Romano family. "It's done. Cut them off."
Chapters
Share
Chapter 2
Alessia's POV:
I didn't leave the estate that night. My call to Dante had set the wheels in motion, but I needed to sever the final ties in person.
I walked away from Marco's disgusting demand and went back to the master bedroom, the one place that was still supposed to be mine.
He didn't come back to our room. I felt nothing but a cold, hollowing relief.
At dawn, I called the head maid, Maria, into the room.
"Pack everything," I instructed, my voice flat. "All the clothes, the shoes, the bags."
I gestured to the velvet-lined boxes on my dresser. "The jewelry, too. The gifts from him. Donate it all."
They were symbols of a dead love, and I wanted them gone.
Maria's eyes widened, but she nodded silently. She knew better than to question me.
As the staff quietly began to empty the closets, my fingers brushed against a diamond bracelet. Marco had it engraved with our initials inside the clasp.
I'd worn it on our wedding day. For a single, stupid moment, I hesitated. A memory of his smile, of a promise whispered in the dark, flickered through my mind.
"Oh, that's pretty."
Bianca's voice shattered the memory. She snatched the bracelet from my hand before I could react.
Marco appeared in the doorway behind her, his eyes shadowed with annoyance. He took the bracelet from Bianca's fingers and fastened it around her delicate wrist.
"It's just a bracelet, Lia," he said dismissively, his gaze flicking over me. "I'll buy you a new one."
"Why are you packing?" he asked, finally noticing the flurry of activity.
"Donations," I lied coldly, my heart a stone in my chest.
My hand went to my neck, to the cool, smooth jade pendant that always rested there. It was my mother's.
She had placed it around my neck on her deathbed, a Romano heirloom passed down through generations of women. A symbol of our strength.
Bianca's eyes fixed on it, her expression greedy.
"That's beautiful. They say jade protects the unborn." She smiled sweetly at Marco. "Can I have it, Marco? For the baby."
"No," I said, my voice low and final.
Impatient, Marco lunged forward. He didn't ask again. He simply ripped the pendant from my neck. The delicate gold chain snapped.
The jade hit the marble floor with a sickening crack, shattering into a dozen green shards.
The sound of it breaking was the sound of my heart breaking for the very last time.
I sank to my knees, the world narrowing to the broken pieces of my mother's legacy.
I didn't feel the sharp edges bite into my fingertips as I tried to gather the fragments. A sob tore from my throat, a raw, wounded sound.
"Oh, Lia, I'm so sorry," Bianca cooed, reaching for me in a theatrical display of sympathy.
"Don't touch me!" I shoved her hand away.
She stumbled backward, her hand flying to her stomach as if in pain. "Aah!"
"Lia!" Enraged, Marco grabbed my arm and shoved me hard against the wall.
The back of my head hit the plaster with a dull thud. "What the hell is wrong with you? Are you trying to hurt her? She's pregnant!"
He scoffed, his face a mask of contempt. "It's a worthless trinket. I can buy a hundred of them to replace the one your dead mother gave you."
Something inside me snapped. The quiet, dutiful wife was gone, burned away by the cold fury of a Romano daughter.
I seized the heavy crystal vase from the nightstand and hurled it at him.
"Get out!" I screamed, my voice raw with a pain so deep it felt like it was ripping me apart. "Both of you, get out of my sight!"
Bianca, ever the actress, threw herself in front of Marco. The vase struck her shoulder, and she cried out, collapsing against him.
Marco scooped her into his arms, his face murderous as he looked at me. He rushed her from the room, his threat echoing in the sudden silence.
"If anything happens to my son, I'll kill you."
I slid down the wall to the floor, the shards of jade digging into my palm. I sobbed, not for my broken marriage, but for the girl I used to be.
My only regret was the day I ever agreed to become a Bellini.
You may also like
8.8
I woke up in a penthouse suite at the Pierre with a hangover from hell and a naked man who looked like he'd been carved from marble. Thinking he was a high-end escort I couldn't afford, I left my last hundred dollars and a petty note on the nightstand.
"Service was acceptable. Keep the change."
But when I rushed home to check on my dying father, I found the locks changed and my boyfriend, Chad, draped over my stepsister on the landing. My stepmother, Meredith, didn't even look up from her coffee as she handed me a legal folder.
She told me to sign away my inheritance or she'd stop paying for my father's life support. The hospital called seconds later, demanding fifty thousand dollars by the end of the day, or they'd pull the plug.
Meredith had already arranged my "payment": a dinner with Boris Gorsky, a predator who collected young women like trophies. I was being sold to a monster to keep my father alive, standing in a thrift-store dress while my family laughed at my ruin.
I didn't understand how my life had collapsed in twelve hours, or how my own blood could put a price tag on a man's life. I sat at that restaurant trembling, waiting for the man who would buy my soul.
Then the man from the hotel walked in. It wasn't Gorsky; it was August Sanders, the billionaire CEO of a media empire, and he was holding my hundred-dollar bill.
He didn't want an apology; he wanted a contract wife for a year. He slid a confirmation for a five-hundred-thousand-dollar hospital deposit across the table and handed me a fountain pen.
"Welcome to the firm, Mrs. Sanders."
I signed the paper with a shaking hand, knowing I was trading my freedom for my father's life. But as August handed me his black card, I realized I finally had the weapon I needed to destroy the people who thought I was nothing.
8.1
Lila Hart never meant to fall for her boss. Especially not Aiden Blackwood-the cold, untouchable billionaire who trusts no one. But long nights, stolen glances, and a connection neither can ignore pull them into a dangerous, forbidden romance.
When Lila discovers her estranged father was the man accused of betraying Aiden's company years ago, everything shatters. Aiden feels lied to. Lila feels broken. And the truth feels impossible.
Until a darker secret comes out-her father was innocent, and the real traitor is the woman determined to destroy them both.
Now Lila and Aiden must fight for love in a world built on lies... before it's too late.
7.2
After a one night stand with the woman whose house Jason broke into, his life has never been the same. Like a siren's call, he can't get the nymphomaniac woman off his mind. Weeks later, while getting intel for the crew's next heist, Jason lays eyes upon the woman and follows her into a secret strip club. She appears to lead a double life. One where she's the CEO of a multimillion company and her father's golden child. The other side of her life is that she owns a strip club and is extremely erotic. Can Jason learn to live with her as she is? Will he put his pride aside to be with the woman? ... especially when his crew is hired to kidnap a woman who turns out to be the love of his life.
8.2
My wedding to Ethan Reed was just weeks away.
After seven years, I was certain of our perfect future.
Then, Ethan claimed "selective amnesia" from a head injury, forgetting only me.
I tried to make him remember, until I overheard his video call.
"Total genius move," he boasted to friends.
His amnesia was a fake "hall pass" to pursue influencer Chloe Vance before our wedding.
Heartbroken, I feigned belief.
I endured his open flirting with Chloe and their taunting selfies.
He mocked my distress, prioritizing Chloe's fake emergency.
After an accident he caused, he abandoned me, injured, choosing to send Chloe to the hospital first.
He even tried to cut me off financially.
How could my fiancé be this cruel, calculating monster?
His betrayal poisoned every memory.
I felt like a fool for trusting such boundless cruelty.
His audacity left me reeling.
But I wouldn’t be his victim.
Instead of breaking, a cold plan formed.
I would shed my identity, become Olivia Carter.
I would disappear, leaving him, my past, and his engagement ring behind forever, claiming my freedom.
7.1
My husband, tech billionaire Amir Carter, was a god in Chicago. For five years, he was the perfect husband, and I, a pediatric doctor, believed I had finally tamed the infamous playboy.
But when my brother Keon needed an urgent heart transplant, everything fell apart. The donor Amir found was a young singer-exactly his type.
On the day of the surgery, as my brother was dying, I found my husband comforting her.
"Don't pressure her, Blake," he said. "She's delicate."
Then the call came. My brother was dead. Amir didn't even notice, annoyed that I was stressing out his new project.
He pushed me down a flight of stairs, crashed his car into my taxi to protect her, and gave her the last gift my brother ever made for me.
He saw me bleeding on the floor and walked right past, his only concern for the woman who let my brother die. My fairy tale was a lie. I was just another one of his seasonal projects, now completed and discarded.
He took everything from me. So I signed the divorce papers, refused his millions, and vanished. Now, he's left alone with the truth: he killed my brother, and he didn't even know it.
7.2
"Be my contracted boyfriend for two years, and I'll grant you three wishes."
What happens when Aurora Everly the billionaire heiress and co-CEO of Everly Elite Enterprise, who is used to getting what she wants until her father demands she marry a man twice her age for the sake of their company's future, desperate for an escape, she finds herself in a roadside convenience store, drunk and reckless she makes an outrageous proposal to a total stranger.
Theo Winslow a struggling graduate looking for a means to pay off his family's debt but never expected a night shift at his parent's store to change his life. After three failed job interviews, he is out of options until Aurora stumbles in and offers him a deal that seems too good to be true.
But with Theo's heart set on another and Aurora's strict and scary father standing in their way, will the reckless contract still stand? And even worse...can the world accept her BOYFRIEND FROM THE STORE.