The Billionaire's Gemini Bride
After her twin vanishes, Gwendolyn is forced into a contract marriage with New York's most powerful billionaire, Thomas Ciccotelli, to protect her baby nephew and secure his future.
Thrown into wealth and glamour, the world knows her name, but behind closed doors, it's a battle to resist the man who was never meant to be hers while trying to figure out the mystery of her lost sister.
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"But you don't have to worry a damn thing, Red," he whispers. "Till death do us part."
***
Night after night, the temptation pulling Gwen into Thomas's embrace melts hate into passion.
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Chapter 4
GWEN
"Thomas, where did you get all of these?" I exclaim at the glass cases containing all kinds of jewelry made up of every gemstone in the world!
I even look out the window, wondering if we're being watched.
"I called a major supplier," Thomas replies.
As much as I'm too dazed to respond, I begin calculating the profits in my head until I reach one conclusion.
Millions.
"Absolutely not!" I blurt in disbelief.
Tom's mouth folds down; he looks disappointed and slightly confused.
"I beg your pardon?"
"What is your angle, Tom?" I demand, "No one in their right mind would offer this kind of asset for free. Tell me, are the gems conflict-free? Or are you trying to set me up?!"
Tom breaks into a slow, almost cruel smile. "I like you, Gwen, because you're smart enough to see through me," he admits. "Yes, there's a catch, nothing too serious. Nobody wants to hear that a Ciccotelli wife is just an ordinary sales assistant. She will be the sole owner of her business."
I take a deep breath. I've always dreamed about the day when I wouldn't rely on commissions, and now an opportunity is being presented on a platter.
"My mother was against giving this building to you." He steps closer to me; his cologne envelopes my senses. "But I insisted. So, a controlling share will go to the family's trust, but you can name the store whatever you want."
Like Eve reaching for the forbidden fruit, I agree to the offer.
The risk doesn't matter; I'll be getting more money after the divorce, and I'll use it to find Gennie before that bloody private investigator does.
Two weeks later, Gemini Jewelers officially opened to the public.
"That is a lot of zeroes," I whisper in excitement as I read the sales report on my tablet.
It feels strange being wealthy overnight. I wonder how Tom walks freely without looking over his shoulder.
Speaking of which, I notice a man glancing at me while checking the earrings section. All my assistants are too busy attending to customers, so I approach him.
"Is there a problem, sir?" I ask.
He eyes me curiously. "What's it like to be Tom Ciccotelli's wife?"
I wonder if Tom sent him to test me.
Ah, he'll never get the best of me.
I flash him my best customer service smile. "Absolutely wonderful."
Before I can walk away, the man utters. "Don't let him fool you."
My heart races. "What?"
"Tom's nothing but a crook." The man remarks lightly with a dark stare that sends a chill down my spine.
"Who are you, and how dare you talk about Tom in that way? Leave before I call security." I threaten, pointing at the door behind him.
"Adam Richardson," he introduces, while handing me a card. "How do you think Ciccotelli got so rich and famous?"
"I heard they come from a long line of Italian royalty."
Adam's eyes lift upward and back at me, this time with a sharp look. "He and his wretched mother stole all of my designs."
The atmosphere becomes still, and I place my hand over my chest to relieve my beating heart.
"Where's your proof?" I lift my head, but Adam is already moving out of the store. I sprint after him, but he's climbing into a black Camaro. "Mr. Richardson?"
He flashes a thumb and little finger to his ear. "Call me."
Then the car disappears down the road. I look at the card again, and there's a number on it.
"Terrific."
That evening, Tom and I sit at dinner alone, as Diana is currently out of the country.
When I look up from my meal, I discover Tom watching me.
"What?" I shrug.
"Nothing," he says. "I gave you a business start-up, yet you look miserable."
"It's not that," I reply. "The CEO of Aspen Designs dropped by the store today."
Tom, in the middle of chewing, begins to cough profusely, and his eyes grow wide.
Could Adam Richardson be telling the truth?
"What did Adam say?" Tom asks after recovering.
"Nothing," I lie. "He was just window-shopping."
Tom's instant look of relief doesn't restore comfort to my legs shaking under the table.
"Listen, if Adam comes back, don't sell him anything," Tom warns.
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"You can't earn your profit if I chase clients away."
Tom drops his fork with a clatter and gives me a serious look. "How do I explain this gently? He's psychotic. Adam's been on trial for attempted murder."
My heart drops into my stomach, and I sit straight with my mouth open. "Who-"
"Gwen, for God's sake, don't you watch the news?"
"No, Tom. I've been too busy raising your child."
A few moments later, we move to Tom's office, where, on his computer, he shows me news articles about Adam standing trial for the murder of his ex-wife, McKenna.
"Somehow, the court ruled the case a suicide, and Adam suddenly became a hero. He even wrote a New York Times bestseller on it." Tom tells me. "I doubt he's innocent."
"Why?"
Before Tom can answer, a loud wail echoes from the baby monitor in my pocket.
We hurry into the nursery, and I pick Mikey up in my arms.
"Shh, it's okay, little bugger," I whisper.
Tom frowns. "Where's the nanny?"
"Probably in the bathroom or something," I guess. I pull back Mikey's nappy. "He's dry. Can you hold him while I get his bottle?"
"No, wait-"
Before Tom could finish speaking, I gently pushed Mikey into his arms.
"I don't like holding crying children," Tom hisses, looking terrified.
"He's your son. You need to carry him one of these days."
After I get Mikey a bottle, he drinks up a little water, and his cries finally simmer down as Tom rocks him.
From the way Tom stares at Mikey fondly, I feel a slight happiness as I imagine a moment where he and Genevieve had talked to Tom about the baby, and it would be the two of them, married and fussing over Mikey.
Until my mouth slowly curls down as a sting claws inside of me. Then, I would just be on the sideline.
Shit, how could I be jealous of Genevieve?
"Hurry, before he cries again," Tom pleads.
Two hours later, I twist and turn in bed, unable to find rest. I can't stop thinking about what Adam said.
It's funny how Tom and Adam don't trust each other, but stealing ideas isn't uncommon in the corporate world. Tom doubting Adam's innocence was a little strange.
Maybe he wanted Adam out of the way back then.
"Bollocks," I whisper.
I climb out of bed and tiptoe out of my room. The empty and quiet hallway makes me feel uneasy.
Thankfully, I'd noticed Tom didn't lock the office after we left. While inside, I begin to check every drawer for anything that leads to Adam's claims.
Click.
I turn to see the doorknob jiggle; I slam a palm over my mouth and quickly crawl under the desk as my heart speeds up. The door creaks open.
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9.1
He was a ruthless CEO who always got what he wanted until he noticed her, a homeless girl surviving outside his office building. Quietly proud, clever, and impossible to read, she became the one woman who refused to fall at his feet, forcing him to chase for the first time in his life.
As she steps into his workplace, she faces ridicule, betrayal, and a wealthy woman determined to erase her from his world. While his family pushes him toward an arranged marriage with an entitled heiress, his heart is already bound to the girl everyone underestimates.
In a world ruled by power and status, she must prove her worth through strength and integrity, while he learns that love cannot be bought, controlled, or inherited.
7.7
On the third anniversary of our marriage, Adrian Griffin had a new face in his passenger seat.
This time, I, Audrey Lawson, didn't storm over to tear them apart. I didn't scream or demand explanations.
I simply went home and poured the dinner I had spent the entire afternoon preparing into the trash.
The housekeeper tried to stop me. "Mrs. Griffin, you worked all afternoon on those dishes..."
I wiped my hands, my voice flat. "It's cold. I don't want it anymore."
Not the food. Not the man I had once given up my career to marry.
I took out the divorce papers I had prepared long ago. Without hesitation, I signed my name-slowly, carefully, stroke by stroke.
Then I began packing my things. Clothes. Jewelry.
And the honors that were rightfully mine.
Adrian had no idea that every award-winning design Griffin Group had received in the past five years had come from my hand.
He had built his reputation in the industry on my work.
I dialed a number that had lain dormant for three years.
"Professor, I'm back."
From this day forward, I would reclaim everything that belonged to me.
8.2
My son Leo had just died, and the silence in our cramped apartment felt like a physical weight crushing my chest.
Before I could even process the grief, my husband, Preston, kicked the door open and threw divorce papers onto the table.
Behind him stood Gloria, wearing a pristine cashmere coat and the diamond pendant Preston swore he had pawned to pay for Leo's hospital bills.
"Sign it," Preston said coldly. "You get nothing."
Gloria smirked, mocking me for failing to keep my sick child alive. When I tore up the papers in a blinding rage, Preston slapped me to the floor.
Then, my biological mother, Jerilyn, walked in. Instead of helping me, she pulled a serrated kitchen knife from her bag and plunged it deep into my stomach.
As I lay dying in a pool of my own blood, Jerilyn leaned in and whispered the devastating truth.
"I swapped you in the nursery. Gloria is my blood, and you belong in a Manhattan mansion. I can't let you ruin her life."
Until my lungs stopped working, I was consumed by a roaring, violent hatred. My own mother had traded my life of privilege for poverty, let my son die, and then murdered me to protect the fake.
Opening my eyes again, the dingy ceiling and the agonizing pain were gone.
I was sitting at a wooden desk, surrounded by the chatter of teenagers.
I was back in high school. And this time, I was going to make them pay.
8.2
Ashley was tied to a rusted iron pillar in an abandoned warehouse, the noxious fumes of gasoline soaking her clothes.
Her fiancé Devon and her stepsister Brittany stood before her, revealing a horrifying truth. Devon never saved her from that fatal car crash three years ago; he merely stole the credit.
Worse, Brittany smirked and confessed that Ashley's own father had orchestrated her mother's murder. Before Ashley could process the betrayal, Devon callously tossed a lighter. A wall of blistering heat instantly consumed her. Even when Bennett Hawkins, the cold and untouchable billionaire, rushed into the inferno to shield her with his body, they were both swallowed by the explosion.
As the fire melted her skin, Ashley died with agonizing hatred. Why did her own flesh and blood want her dead? What dark secret were they hiding about her mother's tragic death?
Opening her eyes again, freezing saltwater violently flooded her lungs.
She was back at her twentieth birthday yacht party, right after Brittany had secretly pushed her into the freezing Hudson River.
Staring at the hypocritical faces of her family pretending it was an accident, Ashley didn't cry or beg. She calmly snatched a phone and dialed 911.
"Yes. I need to report an attempted murder."
9.7
Ellyn woke to a news alert of her husband, billionaire Hardy Burnett, picking up his "mystery blonde" ex at a private terminal. Just hours earlier, he had been raw and consuming in their shared bed, but by morning, he was a cold stranger tossing a birth control pill at her. He reminded her with mechanical indifference that their marriage was a mere contract, and the Burnett family tolerated no accidental risks.
The mystery woman was Izabella Macdonald, the one who got away. While Ellyn spent her mornings dabbing heavy concealer over the purple bruises Hardy left on her neck, the rest of the world was celebrating the return of the "rightful" Mrs. Burnett. To Hardy, Ellyn was a liability; to his family, she was a placeholder with a bankrupt bloodline.
The humiliation peaked at a high-society gala when Hardy walked in with Izabella on his arm, leaving Ellyn to navigate the vultures alone. His mother mocked her as "cheap polyester," and socialites whispered about the penthouse Hardy was secretly buying for his mistress. Even as Hardy's jealousy flared when he saw Ellyn with his brother, his loyalty remained divided, his heart seemingly anchored to the woman in the white silk dress.
The breaking point came in the pouring rain outside the venue. Hardy ordered Ellyn into the backseat of the car like common cargo so that Izabella could take the passenger seat-the seat of the partner. He expected Ellyn to sit in the shadows and watch his ex-girlfriend play wife in the front, treating her presence as a domestic inconvenience he could simply command.
I stared at the man who owned my nights but despised my existence. The heavy thud of the pill I swallowed every morning felt like a lead weight, a bitter reminder that I was nothing more than a paid commodity in his eyes. He thought he knew everything about his destitute, dependent wife, from the temperature I needed the room to the way I took my tea.
But Hardy didn't know about the encrypted ledgers or the offshore accounts. He didn't know that the "destitute" woman he relegated to the backseat was the secret mastermind behind Skim, the global fashion empire currently worth more than his latest merger.
"I'm not getting in," I said, my voice eerily calm against the thunder. I slammed the door, turned my back on his roar of fury, and walked into the dark. It was time to stop being a ghost in his house and start being the woman who could buy his entire world.
8.6
I was on my knees in the Ohio dirt, frantically scooping wet coffee grounds back into a torn trash bag while my foster mother screamed that I was a useless waste of space.
Then, ten black Escalades rolled into our rotting trailer park like a funeral procession, and a woman in silk fell to the mud, sobbing that she had finally found her "Elara."
I was whisked away to a mansion that looked like a castle, but the nightmare didn't end with a warm bed and sterilized air.
My brother Harlen looked at me with pure disgust, and when he slapped a chicken leg out of my hand at our first dinner, I instinctively dove under the table to eat it off the rug, begging for mercy through my tears.
My billionaire father, Arthur, watched in silent agony as I tried to wash my own rags in a gold-plated sink at dawn, terrified that I would be starved if I didn't "earn my keep."
He promised me a thousand silk dresses and ordered the trailer park bulldozed to the ground, but I still felt like a prey animal caught by very large, very sad predators.
The trauma wasn't a smudge I could wash off; it was a map of cigarette burns and bruises that I was desperate to hide from the family that had spent millions searching for me.
Just as I thought I might be safe, a black helicopter banked over the lawn, carrying a medical team and a cold order from my oldest brother, the "Shark" of New York.
"No one is ever taking you away," my father growled, shielding me from the men in white coats.
But as the rotors shook the windows, I realized that being found was only the beginning of a different kind of war within the Bridges empire.