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."
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Night after night, the temptation pulling Gwen into Thomas's embrace melts hate into passion.
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Chapter 5
GWEN
Let me make it clear, I've never been what anyone would call a 'bad girl'.
Gen had all the rebel genes, while I covered her ass from trouble every day since primary school.
Until now.
My armpits feel damp, and my entire body shivers. Oh, dear God, I hope it's the nanny who's secretly robbing Tom.
Someone clears their throat in a deep guttural way.
It's Tom.
That's much worse.
I hear him hum a hip-hop song, and grit my teeth as he settles into his chair, leaning back into the hardwood side of the desk while staring at his long legs. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and suppress the urge to exhale with frustration.
It's impossible to imagine how the movies make spying so easy. I could already imagine the worst-case scenarios, like Tom finding a legit reason to get me out of the picture.
"Hello?" Tom says. "No, this is your boss, Emily. Did you organize my meeting notes already? I don't want to miss any details for the upcoming one."
Silence.
I shut my eyes as I realize he wasn't talking to me.
"No, I'm not going to apologize to the Tanaka Group. What's wrong with saying I did jiu-jitsu as a kid? It was a fucking icebreaker. Everyone laughed. You need to learn to read a room."
A snort escapes from my lips before I can stop it. My hand covers my mouth too late.
Maybe he's too distracted to have heard that.
Tom's foot brushes against my thighs and ducks his head under the desk, with a phone pressed to his ear.
Our eyes meet.
I think about fainting, just dropping to the floor like last time, but Tom and I end up doing the worst staring contest in history.
"See you at work, Emily," he says and raises his head. "Are you going to keep sitting there all night, Mrs. Ciccotelli?"
My shoulders slump, but I crawl out, bumping my head on the table top.
"Ow," I murmur.
I push myself past his legs, grabbing his thigh for support.
This humiliation is worse than the time I covered for Gen and had to spend the day writing 'I must not call my teacher a shithead' in my notebook.
"Could you at least move?" I groan and let out a small breath as I come face-to-face with Tom.
He gives me a straight look. "Well, I'm not planning to make this comfortable for you, Mrs. Ciccotelli."
My belly twists into knots. "Please don't call me that. We're not in the fifties."
Sometimes the best way to avoid conflict is to run.
I start to jog for the door, only for Tom to grab my hand and drag me back. I collided with his broad chest. His gaze is hard and furious.
Anger bites into my chest.
"Use your words not your paws, you absolute jerk" I hiss.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" He asks. "Don't come in here unless I tell you to. Did you take anything?"
I pull myself free and grip my fists. How can he be so infuriating?
Something catches my eye, and I sweep past him to grab my phone off his desk. Tom's eyes flicker with confusion.
"I left this behind," I raise the smartphone. "I wanted to text my best friend in London. You should at least check for evidence before accusing me of stealing!"
Tom hesitates from speaking, and I nearly wheeze with relief.
Good, get him distracted.
"Why were you hiding?" He asks.
Damn it.
"Who's Emily?" I toss back.
Tom closes his eyes and rubs his forehead. "Hey, don't get jealous, and Emily's my executive assistant-"
I let out a sharp gasp. "I am not. Why would I be?"
"Because I saw the way your eyes flared up when you asked that question. Your voice is a dead giveaway." He answers. "You're jealous. "
My mouth hangs open, not because Tom is dead wrong, but because he could read my body language.
Tom's lips crook up and his eyes light up with humor that sends a warm ripple through my stomach.
Danger fills the air, along with desire.
He steps closer to me. Tall. Mediterranean. Our eyes lock.
"But you don't have to worry a damn thing, Red." He reaches for my hair and neatly tucks it behind my ear, goosebumps swell on my skin.
I don't like this at all. How he makes me feel as if I were a secondary school girl again.
"Till death do us part," he whispers.
I shake my head. "You are so-"
His mouth lowers over mine. Just a breath away. Mine parts open.
My heart vibrates in a hard rhythm.
Okay.
Just this once.
It feels like fire surging through my body; his tongue clashes with mine, seizing control. My arms wrap around his shoulders, and my fingers curiously grab his thick hair.
His hands glide down my back smoothly and guide me into his firm body.
Resisting this man is futile. Every inch of my mind begs to stop this madness, but my body wants more. Through the fabric of his pyjama bottoms, his rigid arousal grinds against my stomach.
"Tom." I pull away, my chest heaving up and down. I bite down on my lower lip. His eyes flutter, and I see desire through them.
"You're very good at this." He releases his hold on me, and somehow I feel the pull of a magnet wanting to reach again.
I raise a brow. "At what?"
"Kissing," he replies. "At the wedding. I swore it was formal, but you wanted more. Didn't you?"
I swallow deeply. "Oh, come on."
While turning around to get away from him, Tom moves faster, and circles me.
"Aren't you a bit curious?" Tom asks.
"That smooth talking isn't going to work on me," I reply.
But he is right. I pull my hand away and frantically hit the edge of the desk.
I can't believe how clumsy I am at this moment.
"Then let your body do the work, Gwen," he says.
He lunges forward and grabs my waist. I hold my breath as he pushes his mouth to my neck, and I let out a small moan.
Tom's fingers slip under my night shirt. My breath slows down as he draws lazy fingers up until they find my breast.
Then the world went crazy.
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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.