The Billionaire's Doll: Her Secret Escape
I was just a placeholder, a warm body in silk sheets to keep the bed from getting cold while my billionaire "owner," Garrick Head, dreamt of another man’s wife. To the world, I was Ever Wells, the lucky girl he’d plucked from obscurity, but in reality, I was a doll on a 145-day contract, counting every second until I could disappear.
Everything shattered when a burner phone buzzed in my hand with a message that turned my blood to ice: "I know your secret, Everly."
My real name was the one thing I had buried to protect my four-year-old son, Leo, who was hidden in a cramped apartment in Queens. Just as the blackmailer closed in, Leo’s asthma flared into a life-threatening fever, and the medication he needed cost thousands I didn't have. When I tried to siphon money to save him, Garrick sensed my desperation and froze my credit cards, mocking my "poverty" and demanding I crawl back to his bed to earn his favor.
The nightmare intensified at a high-society gala when Clarence Frazier, a dangerous ghost from my past, cornered me. He mouthed my real name in front of the cameras, his eyes promising to tear my fake life apart. Garrick’s possessiveness turned violent as he broke a man’s jaw for insulting me, yet in the same breath, he reminded me I was nothing but a "rented whore" he’d bought off a shelf.
I had to smile while he kissed me and detach my mind while he touched me, all while siphoning pennies into a hidden account. He thought he could finalize my imprisonment with a twenty-million-dollar apartment on Central Park West, calling it a gift when it was really just a heavier lock on my golden cage.
"I don't want to save the world," I whispered to the empty, marble penthouse after he fell asleep. "I just want to save my son."
With a predator from my past watching my every move and a master who treated me like a pet, I realized I couldn't wait for my contract to end. I had to run tonight, or Leo and I would both die in this cage.
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Chapter 6
The atmosphere at Vanguard Design was toxic. Ever could taste it in the air the moment she stepped off the elevator.
She walked to her cubicle. Her desk was a disaster zone. Her sketches-weeks of work-were soaked in brown liquid. A puddle of coffee dripped steadily onto the carpet.
Zoe was leaning against the filing cabinet, buffing her nails.
"Oops," she said, her voice dripping with false sweetness. "I tripped. Clumsy me."
Ever's hands curled into fists at her sides. She wanted to scream. She wanted to grab Zoe by her perfect blonde hair and slam her face into the desk.
But she didn't. She couldn't afford to lose this job. It was her only connection to the outside world, her only source of income that wasn't directly monitored by Garrick (or so she thought).
"It's fine," Ever said, her voice dead. "I have backups."
She didn't have backups.
Her desk phone rang.
"Line 1," Miles called out from his office, his door open. He was watching her.
Ever picked up. "This is Ever."
"Quit."
Garrick's voice was abrupt.
"What?"
"Miles told me what that bitch did to your work. I won't have it. Pack your things. You're done."
"I am not quitting," Ever hissed, turning her back to Zoe. "This is my job, Garrick. It's the only thing that's mine."
"Everything you have is mine," Garrick corrected calmly. "Including the chair you're sitting in. I own the building, Ever. Quit, or I'll have Miles fire you."
"You are unbelievable."
Ever slammed the phone down. The plastic receiver rattled in its cradle.
Silence descended on the office. Everyone stared. No one hung up on Garrick Head.
Zoe laughed. "Trouble in paradise? Did Daddy cut off the allowance?"
"Go to hell, Zoe," Ever muttered, grabbing a roll of paper towels to sop up the coffee.
"Without him, you're nothing," Zoe sneered, stepping closer. "You're just a foster rat in a designer dress."
The insult stung because it was true.
At 5:00 PM, a roar echoed from the street below. A low, mechanical growl that vibrated the windows.
Ever looked down. A Bugatti Veyron, black and lethal, was parked in the loading zone.
Miles leaned against the hood, wearing sunglasses, looking like a movie star. A crowd had already gathered.
Zoe squealed. "Is that for me? I matched with him on Raya last week!"
She rushed to the window, preening.
Ever grabbed her purse and headed for the stairs, trying to sneak out the back. But Miles saw her through the glass lobby doors.
"Ever!" he shouted. His voice carried over the traffic.
Ever froze on the sidewalk.
"Get in!" Miles yelled, opening the passenger door. "Garrick says we're going ring shopping!"
The street went silent. Her coworkers, pressed against the glass, gasped. Zoe's face turned a mottled shade of purple.
"Ring shopping?" someone whispered. "He's proposing?"
Ever marched over to the car, her face burning. "You are enjoying this way too much," she hissed at Miles.
"Garrick said you were having a bad day," Miles grinned, revving the engine. "He told me to come make a scene. Did it work?"
"I hate you both."
Ever got in. As they pulled away, she saw a familiar Porsche parked across the street. Spencer Cole was behind the wheel. He wasn't smiling. He was typing furiously on his phone.
Ding.
Garrick's phone, miles away in a boardroom, lit up.
Spencer: Your bird is hopping into Miles's car. Looks cozy.
Miles drove them to a private members' club on the Upper East Side. "Garrick is meeting us here. Drinks first, then the jeweler."
They got out. Spencer Cole was already there, leaning against the entrance pillars, smoking a cigar. He must have followed them.
"Well, well," Spencer drawled, blowing smoke in Ever's direction. "If it isn't the community chest."
Ever stopped. "Excuse me?"
Spencer smirked, stepping into her personal space. He smelled of brandy and entitlement. "Garrick's done with you, right? That's why you're with Miles? How much for a night, sweetheart? I've always wondered if the goods were worth the price."
He reached out, his hand moving toward her face.
Her blood turned to ice.
"Spencer, back off," Miles warned, stepping forward.
"Relax, Miles. I just want to sample the merchandise."
Spencer's fingers were an inch from Ever's cheek.
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8.4
For three years, Aletha sold her soul to her adoptive family, enduring a toxic, loveless marriage to Wall Street tyrant Kristopher.
But the illusion shattered when Kristopher brought his crying mistress into Aletha's ER.
He violently shoved Aletha into a metal cart just because she applied standard medical pressure to the mistress's minor scratch.
"If you ever handle her like that again, I will have your medical license revoked."
The nightmare quickly escalated. Kristopher froze Aletha's bank cards, publicly humiliated her, and forced her to hand over a priceless gown to his mistress.
When he was injured in a car crash protecting the mistress, Aletha flawlessly stitched his hand back together.
In return, he dragged her to a freezing warehouse at 3 AM to illegally save the mistress's criminal brother, only to abandon Aletha alone in the dangerous streets of Brooklyn.
Her adoptive parents didn't care if she lived or died. They only called to scream at her, demanding she get on her knees and beg Kristopher to restore their company's funding.
Staring at her bruised reflection, Aletha felt entirely hollowed out. She couldn't understand why her absolute submission only bought her betrayal and abuse from everyone she called family.
But as the tears dried, the fear that had controlled her evaporated, replaced by cold steel.
She opened her hidden wall safe and pulled out the documents proving she was "Lan," the world's most sought-after millionaire designer.
Aletha shredded her family's contract, put on a sharp black power suit, and headed to her husband's company.
This time, she wasn't going to beg.
8.3
Alena landed at JFK, eager to call her fiancé of three years.
But a sudden message from her best friend shattered her world: a high-resolution photo of Darrin passionately kissing another woman. The woman was Katrina, her older sister.
Alena rushed to the grand ballroom and confronted them in front of New York's elite. Instead of an apology, her own mother slapped her across the face.
"You jealous, spiteful girl. Trying to ruin your sister's happiness because you can't handle your own failures."
Darrin coldly wrapped a protective arm around Katrina. The nightmare worsened when they ambushed Alena at her apartment, demanding she sign an NDA to cover up the affair and save their family's failing business. If she refused, her father threatened to tell her frail grandfather the truth, knowing the shock would trigger a fatal heart attack.
Alena was suffocated by the sheer magnitude of the betrayal. Her family was weaponizing the only person who truly loved her, treating her like a disposable pawn to protect the sister who stole her life. How could her own flesh and blood be so sickeningly cruel?
Cornered and entirely out of options, Alena pulled a matte-black business card from her pocket.
It belonged to Andrew Spencer, the ruthless billionaire who had rescued her from the freezing rain, and the apex predator Darrin feared most. He had offered her a transactional marriage. If her family wanted to destroy her, she would become their worst nightmare. She picked up her phone and dialed his number.
9.0
Framed for corporate spying, Liana Bennett was arrested and murdered in a prison cell.
Now she wakes in her old life, exactly one month before the set up.
She has one month to identify the traitor inside her company who orchestrated her death before they do it again. The enemy is already watching, already moving.
Every change she makes to rewrite comes at a price: a core memory erased. One wrong step, and she loses the very truth she needs to survive.
Then there's Raphael Blackthorne, The ruthless CEO of her rival company, the man she spent a reckless night with, and now the person offering her flowers, dinners, and sincerity.
Liana has a plan.
She can't afford the distraction.
But as her memories unravel and the enemy closes in, she faces the truth she can't outrun: to survive, she may have to become someone who no longer remembers why she fought at all.
7.5
A single reckless action is all it takes to destroy and ruin literally everything in a person's my life. Anna's Life.
She gave herself to a stranger... and the next morning he disappeared without a trace.
She later out I was pregnant with his child.
Her family and friends completely condemned,abonded and left her all alone.
And that was the beginning of her misery and the start of something she never for once saw coming.
7.1
To survive a forced one-year marriage contract with the ultra-wealthy Chavez family, Averi Marsh disguised herself as a pathetic, ugly duckling.
She caked her flawless skin in muddy yellow foundation, wore thick glasses, and played the part of a trembling, uneducated orphan.
The entire family treated her like literal garbage.
The youngest brother publicly swore he would rather cut off his own hand than marry a piece of trailer park trash.
Her nominal fiancé, Clarke, looked at her with cold disdain, allowing his glamorous companion to humiliate Averi by forcing her into a neon pink clown dress.
At a high-society party, a socialite shoved her into an infinity pool, laughing as the heavy fabric dragged her to the bottom.
They all wanted to see the poor girl broken, humiliated, and driven out of their pristine world.
What they didn't know was that beneath the hideous sweaters was a breathtaking, lethal predator.
They had no idea she was 'Spectre', the undefeated underground racing god who had just humiliated the arrogant Clarke on the track.
They didn't know she could shatter a bully's wrist in seconds or bankrupt their wealthy friends with a single text message.
But when the chlorinated pool water washed away her ugly makeup, the family's ambitious second son caught a glimpse of her true, flawless face.
The game of hide-and-seek was officially over.
The Chavez family thought they were torturing a helpless sheep, but they were about to realize they had locked themselves in a cage with a wolf.
7.9
I had just survived a private jet crash, my body a map of violet bruises and my lungs still burning from the smoke. I woke up in a sterile hospital room, gasping for my husband's name, only to realize I was completely alone.
While I was bleeding in a ditch, my husband, Adam, was on the news smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. When I tracked him down at the hospital's VIP wing, I didn't find a grieving husband. I found him tenderly cradling his ex-girlfriend, Casie, in his arms, his face lit with a protective warmth he had never shown me as he carried her into the maternity ward.
The betrayal went deeper than I could have imagined. Adam admitted the affair started on our third anniversary-the night he claimed he was stuck in London for a merger. Back at the manor, his mother had already filled our planned nursery with pink boutique bags for Casie's "little princess." When I demanded a divorce, Adam didn't flinch. He sneered that I was "gutter trash" from a foster home and that I'd be begging on the streets within a week. To trap me, he froze my bank accounts, cancelled my flight, and even called the police to report me for "theft" of company property.
I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a charity case he had plucked from obscurity to manage his life. To the Hortons, I was just a servant who happened to sleep in the master bedroom, a "resilient" woman meant to endure his abuse in silence while the whole world laughed at the joke that was my marriage.
Adam thought stripping me of his money would make me crawl back to him. He was wrong. I walked into his executive suite during his biggest deal of the year and poured a mug of sludge over his original ten-million-dollar contracts. Then, right in front of his board and his mistress, I stripped off every designer thread he had ever paid for until I was standing in nothing but my own silk camisole.
"You can keep the clothes, Adam. They're as hollow as you are."
I grabbed my passport, turned my back on his billions, and walked out of that glass tower barefoot, bleeding, and finally free.