The Billionaire's Price for My Salvation
I was a Parsons-trained designer, but with my family drowning in over half a million dollars of debt, I delivered coffee just to survive.
One clumsy mistake—spilling a latte in a corporate lobby—put me on the radar of the city's most ruthless billionaire, Christian Mercer.
A week later, I wasn't fired. I was summoned to his office on the 85th floor, where he laid out a contract.
He knew everything: my student loans, my mother's crippling medical bills, the foreclosure notices piling up on our kitchen table. He offered to wipe it all away, plus pay me five million dollars.
The price was one year of my life as his wife.
He called it a "mutually beneficial transaction," coldly stating my desperate circumstances made me the perfect, compliant candidate. I wasn't a person to him, just an asset to be acquired to solve a problem he refused to explain.
But when I found the eviction notice taped to our apartment door, my pride was a luxury I could no longer afford. I signed his contract. After a sterile City Hall ceremony, he left me alone in his cold, empty penthouse with a final, chilling instruction.
"The public part of our agreement begins now, Mrs. Mercer," he said, his voice void of any emotion. "Act accordingly."
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Chapter 7
Adelynn stumbled out of Mercer Tower and into the late afternoon sun, feeling as though she had just survived a plane crash. The city noise-the blare of horns, the chatter of pedestrians-was a dull roar in her ears. Her legs felt unsteady, her mind reeling from the sheer audacity of Christian Mercer's proposal.
She walked for blocks, aimlessly, the leather-bound contract still clutched in her hand. A mutually beneficial transaction. The words echoed in her head, cold and clinical. He had stripped away all pretense of romance or emotion, reducing the most intimate of human connections to a line item on a balance sheet.
Her phone rang, and this time she answered it without looking, desperate for a normal, human voice.
"Addy? Where have you been? I've been calling."
It was Jefferson. His voice, once a source of comfort, now felt like an intrusion from a life she no longer lived.
"I... I had a meeting," she said, her voice hollow.
"A meeting? With who? Is everything okay? You sound strange." The concern in his voice was genuine, but it only made her feel worse. How could she ever explain this to him? To anyone?
"I'm fine, Jeff. Just a long day."
"Listen, I was thinking," he said, his tone shifting, becoming more earnest. "About your mom's medical bills. My dad knows some people at St. Luke's. He thinks he can get the hospital to agree to a more manageable payment plan, maybe even get some of the charges reduced..."
Adelynn stopped walking, leaning against the cold glass of a storefront. A manageable payment plan. Reduced charges. It was a kind offer, a generous one. But it was like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a teaspoon. It was a temporary patch on a gaping wound.
Christian Mercer wasn't offering a patch. He was offering a new ship.
"Addy? Are you there?"
"Thank you, Jefferson," she said, the words feeling like dust in her mouth. "That's... really kind of you. But I don't think it will be necessary."
"What do you mean? Of course it's necessary! You can't handle this on your own!"
And there it was. The gentle, well-meaning condescension. The assumption that she was a problem to be solved, a project to be managed. It was the very thing that had driven them apart.
"I have to go," she said abruptly. "I'll call you later."
She hung up before he could reply, a fresh wave of despair washing over her. Jefferson's world was one of manageable problems and helpful connections. Her world was a catastrophic failure, a debt so large it had its own gravitational pull.
She looked down at the contract in her hand. It felt heavier now, its contents more real, more tangible. It was a monstrous, unthinkable choice. But was it any more monstrous than watching her mother lose her home? Than giving up on every dream she'd ever had?
Christian Mercer's words came back to her: I am offering you an exit.
For the first time since she'd walked out of his office, she didn't just hear the coldness in the offer. She heard the possibility.
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8.7
For three years, Blair Guzman poured her resources into turning a broke waiter into an Oscar-winning actor, letting the world believe they were a couple just to keep him under her control.
But the night he won his Oscar, he publicly betrayed her by kissing Kiana—Blair’s estranged, rival sister.
Kiana and her mother brought the scandal right to the Glover family dinner table, trying to humiliate Blair.
"You're just mad because he dumped you for me," Kiana sneered in front of the entire family.
Instead of crying, Blair ruthlessly dismantled them, exposing how their cheap tabloid stunt tanked the family's corporate value.
Impressed by her cold logic, the family matriarch handed Blair the ultimate voting power, but it was a trap.
The matriarch immediately used Blair's elevated status to force her into an arranged marriage with a notorious, debt-ridden playboy just to secure a European shipping lane.
To her family, she was never a daughter—she was just a premium asset to be traded to the highest bidder.
What her greedy family didn't know was that Blair had already made a terrifying deal.
She was secretly married to the ruthless billionaire Butler McIntyre—a man who demanded absolute possession of her body and soul.
Now, her family's arranged parasite and her secret devil of a husband were on a collision course, and the wreckage was going to be spectacular.
9.2
I realized my husband did not love me the moment he stepped over my broken heart to answer a text from his mistress.
Caleb was the "Architect," a feared Capo in New York, but he forgot that I was the one who funded his rise from the gutter with my inheritance.
He brought his assistant, Kimberly, into our private penthouse. She wore my silk robe, mocked my past trauma, and snapped my dead mother’s rosary right in front of my eyes.
When I lashed out in grief, Caleb didn't defend me.
He pinned me against the wall, comforting her while calling me "unstable" and "violent."
He gaslighted me, claiming I would be eaten alive without his protection. He thought I was just a fragile princess who would crumble without him.
He truly believed he was the king, forgetting that I was the one who built the castle.
I didn't cry. I simply wiped the blood from my arm and walked out the door.
He didn't know that I owned thirty percent of his laundering front and the land beneath his precious casino.
I picked up the phone and dialed the number of his deadliest rival, the Irish mob.
"The bank is closed, Caleb. I’m selling my shares to the enemy."
8.4
"You don't belong in my world," he growled, his hand tightening around my waist.
"Then why do you keep pulling me deeper into it?" I whispered.
Ten years ago, I lost everything, my parents, my innocence, my trust in fate.
I only remember his shaking hands... and the birthmark on his arm.
Now, the most feared man in the city wants me.
A billionaire who commands blood and silence.
A mafia king who kneels only in the dark, only for me.
But what happens when I discover that the man I love...
...is the same man who destroyed my life?
9.3
Grace finally decided to end her toxic, one-sided relationship with Adelbert, the arrogant heir to a global empire, by texting him to terminate their family trust.
His response was a single, freezing word: "Done."
When they accidentally bumped into each other in a law firm elevator, Adelbert looked right through her.
"I don't know her," he stated coldly to his frat brothers, treating her like invisible trash.
Humiliated and completely exhausted, Grace sought an escape in a brutal shooter game called PUBG.
But by a sick twist of fate, the random matchmaking threw her into a squad with Adelbert's frat brothers and a god-tier, toxic player named 'Ø'.
'Ø' relentlessly mocked her terrible skills, humiliating her and calling her a "pig" over the voice chat.
Yet, during the final shootout, this ruthless player suddenly threw his character in front of hers, taking a fatal barrage of bullets just to keep her alive.
Grace soon uncovered the terrifying truth: the top-ranked 'Ø' was actually Adelbert himself.
She was utterly confused and furious.
Why would the untouchable billionaire who ignored her legal texts and publicly humiliated her suddenly sacrifice himself for her in a cheap video game?
Refusing to swallow her pride in both the real and digital worlds, Grace sent a direct challenge to his gaming profile.
"I'll prove I'm not a pig."
Across the city, Adelbert stared at the notification, a dark smirk curling his lips, and clicked accept.
7.6
I was the ultimate trophy wife, a polished ornament in Francisco Zimmerman’s billionaire empire. For three years, I perfected the "Zimmerman Wife Smile," playing the role of the devoted partner while smoothing the Egyptian cotton of his shirts.
The illusion shattered when I stood outside his study and heard him laughing with his mistress, Annalise.
"She’s just a vase that only knows how to smile," Francisco’s voice was cold, devoid of any warmth. "As long as I pay the maintenance fees on time, she stays obedient."
I walked out that night with nothing but a canvas bag and the clothes on my back. But Francisco wasn't finished with his "asset." He froze my bank accounts and used his massive influence to blacklist me from every interior design firm in New York. He tracked my phone, watching me struggle from the shadows, waiting for me to starve so I would crawl back to his mansion.
He even showed up at the dive bar where I was playing piano for rent money, mocking my desperation.
"You have technique, but no heart," he sneered, tossing a silver coin into my tip jar as if I were a beggar. "You're hollow, Iris. Just like your pride."
I couldn't believe this was the same man whose life I had saved during a bloody night in Macau. To him, I wasn't a wife; I was a stock price that needed stabilizing. The more I fought for my independence, the tighter he pulled the net, determined to break my spirit until I had no choice but to return to his gilded cage.
Then, the morning sickness hit. I realized I wasn't just carrying my own life anymore—I was carrying his heir. If Francisco found out, he would never let us go; he would turn my child into another "performance bonus" for his brand.
Looking at the sonogram, I knew a divorce would never be enough to escape a man who thought he owned the world.
"I'm not going back," I whispered, staring at his yacht moored in the harbor. "To save this baby, Iris Potter has to die."
9.3
Ginny was chained to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, bleeding and betrayed by the two people she trusted most.
Her fiancé, Brant, and her adopted sister, Coretta, had just slashed her face open. Brant coldly admitted she was nothing but a disposable key to a vault, right before he tossed a lighter onto the gasoline-soaked floor.
As Ginny burned alive in the roaring inferno, the heavy iron doors were violently smashed open. Bedford Parks—the notoriously ruthless, germaphobic "monster" of Silicon Valley whom Ginny had always feared—charged straight into the flames. Ignoring the blistering heat, he shielded her charred body with his own. A massive steel beam collapsed, snapping his spine.
"I love you."
He coughed up blood, whispering his final words against her blackened skin before dying to protect her.
Hovering as a ghost, Ginny's soul screamed in agonizing realization. She had spent her life terrified of Bedford, yet he was the only one who truly loved her, while her supposed family laughed at her gruesome murder.
Suddenly, a blinding white light swallowed the warehouse.
Ginny gasped for air, opening her eyes to find herself sitting in the back of a luxury Maybach. She was eighteen again, wearing the humiliating clown makeup Coretta had tricked her into wearing on the day she was brought back to the wealthy Steele estate.
Ginny stared at her reflection, her dark eyes turning cold and sharp.
This time, she would tear her betrayers apart piece by piece, and she would protect her "monster."