The Billionaire's Reluctant Nanny
When Alessia Romano's ex-husband destroys her family's company to drag her back to him, she refuses to beg. But refusing comes at a cost she never expected.
Billionaire Adrian Virelli pays off every debt and saves Romano Industries from ruin. The price is simple. Three years of her life, living under his roof as his daughter's nanny.
Adrian is cold, controlled, and completely off limits. Alessia tells herself she feels nothing.
But when she discovers a hidden room filled with portraits of a woman wearing her face, the truth hits harder than any betrayal she has ever known
She was never the woman he wanted. She was only a replacement.
She walks away. Then his ex-wife returns, and the danger that follows is nothing like Alessia expected. Someone wants her dead, Adrian nearly dies saving her life, and when he finally opens his eyes again, he remembers nothing.
His ex-wife is standing at his bedside, ready to rewrite every memory he has left.
And Alessia is running out of time to make the man she loves remember that he loved her too.
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Chapter 3
Alessia's POV
His eyes bore into mine gauging my reaction.
I shrunk under his gaze, feeling like I had been stripped to my very being. Laid bare for him to see.
What did he see when he looked at me like that? A desperate woman whose family had nearly lost everything tonight? A charity case? Something else entirely?
"Mr Virelli I appreciate your help, I truly do." I gulped, "I don't know what impression you have of me but my body is not for sale."
He gave me a once over and chuckled. My cheeks tinged red I looked away not wanting him to see.
"Ms. Romano I'm afraid you've misunderstood my intentions." Amusement in his tone.
"Then... What do you want out." I managed to get out before my voice betrayed me.
"I want you to work for me." He said casually as he tucked his hands into the pocket of his slacks.
I blinked. Then blinked again.
Of all the things I'd expected him to say; a proposition, a demand, even a clarification that I'd misunderstood his intentions entirely,this was not on the list.
Work for him.
Adrian Virelli. The man whose face appeared on the covers of business magazines. The man who could buy those magazines if he wanted to. The man who had just spent nearly a billion dollars on a woman he'd never met.
My eyebrows drew together so tightly I could feel the tension ache between them. This made no sense. None.
I knew who Adrian Virelli was. Everyone did. He didn't need anything from someone like me. He had entire floors of assistants. He had people who probably fought each other for the chance to work for him. He had-
I stopped myself mid-thought and really looked at him. At the way he stood there so casually, hands in his pockets, as if he'd just offered me a cup of coffee instead of a completely inexplicable job.
"What," I started, then had to pause and steady my voice. "What could I possibly have to offer someone like you?"
"Mr Virelli I don't think I have any special qualifications that would make you help me out."
"You'll work for me for three years." He said completely ignoring my previous statement. "You will work as a nanny taking care of my daughter, Ava."
Before I could respond, a sharp laugh interrupted our conversation. Marissa stepped out of the shadows
I turned to face her and the embarrassment that had me shrinking moments ago evaporated completely. In its place white-hot rage that made my vision sharpen. Every detail of her mocking smile burned itself into my brain. The way her perfectly tinted lips curled. The smug tilt of her chin. The dismissive flick of her wrist as she gestured toward me like I was something unpleasant she'd scraped off her shoe.
"Mr Virelli you can afford to hire the best team of nannies in the country, in the world even." She cast a mocking glance at me. "Why would you want a woman that couldn't even give her husband a child."
Adrian's eyes darkened as he looked at Marissa.
"And you are?"
"Marissa Gonzalez." She answered as she stretched out her hand for a handshake, fluttering her eyelashes flirtatiously.
Adrian looked at her outstretched hand with disdain.Marissa's hand hung in the air between them. One second passed. Two. I watched the confidence drain from her face in slow motion, watched her perfectly manicured fingers begin to curl back toward her palm.
"Miss Gonzalez what makes you think you can just walk into a conversation and give your unsolicited advice."
"I, I just thought you should know what type of woman you're dealing with." she sputtered surprised at his hostility.
"You should really do less thinking, it doesn't suit you." He threw the insult so casually I almost missed it. I choked back a laugh
Marissa's hand dropped. She actually fumbled, reaching for something; a comeback, a flirtatious remark, some way to salvage this but coming up empty. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. Like a fish out of water.
"I-I just thought-" She laughed, but it came out too high pitched. Her embarrassment evident. "I thought you should know what type of woman you're dealing with. She's not-I mean, everyone knows that she-"
"We're not friends, what gives you the right to advise me?" He continued not letting up.
"I'm sorry." She squeaked.
"Leave." He ordered, voice low.
She cast me one more hateful glance and scurried off.
"Thank you." I said quietly.
I stood there, frozen, waiting for the inevitable. In my experience, when a woman like Marissa turned her venom on someone, people found somewhere else to look. They studied their shoes. They checked their phones. They suddenly remembered urgent business elsewhere.
That's what had happened with my husband's family. When Marissa first started whispering her poison, when she first began planting seeds of doubt about my ability to give them an heir, no one corrected her. Not his mother, who wanted grandchildren. Not his sisters, who'd always viewed me as an outsider. And eventually, not even my husband.
But Adrian Virelli didn't look away. He didn't shift uncomfortably. He didn't pretend not to hear.
He defended me.
I felt the walls I had built so high over the years begin to crack. I looked away, afraid he might be able to see my undoing in my eyes.
"You don't need to thank me, I just dislike people who don't know their place."
"But she's right, I've never had a child of my own. I don't think I'm the right fit to take care of your daughter." I sighed.
"If I say you are then you are."
I opened my mouth ready to argue again but he lifted his hand, cutting me off.
"That's the only way for you to pay me back or you give me the money in full this night."
Three years.
The words echoed in my head. Three years of my life, handed over to a stranger. Three years of living under his roof, caring for his child, existing at his convenience.
I should have asked questions. What would the arrangement look like? Would I live with them? Would I have days off? What about my parents,would I still be able to visit them? What if his daughter hated me? What if I was terrible at this?
But even as the questions surfaced, I already knew the answers didn't matter.
I didn't have almost a billion dollars. Heck, I didn't have almost a million dollars. I had a savings account with maybe four thousand dollars in it with no job. My parents had nothing, tonight had proven that. They'd been one bad auction away from losing everything.
Adrian Virelli had saved them. He'd saved me from watching my family crumble.
This was the price.
I looked at him. Really looked, past the tailored suit, the impossible confidence and the face that belonged on magazine covers. I looked at the man who had just completely destroyed Marissa without even raising his voice. The man who had spent a fortune on a stranger and then offered her a way out that didn't involve his bed.
Three years was a small price to pay, I told myself.
"I accept your terms, Mr. Virelli."
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7.8
Alayna was working a grueling catering shift in worn-out heels to support her broke college boyfriend, Caiden, who claimed to be studying at the library.
But through the crack of a VIP suite door, she saw him wearing a bespoke suit and a Patek Philippe watch, sipping expensive liquor.
"It's a little poverty role-play. Keeps things interesting."
He was laughing with his rich friends, mocking her as his clueless "charity case."
To make matters worse, she was forced into a humiliating mascot costume just in time to watch him passionately kiss his wealthy ex-girlfriend.
That same night, Alayna's mother collapsed with gastric cancer, requiring a half-million-dollar surgery.
When a desperate Alayna begged Caiden for help, he refused.
"Why don't you just apply for Medicaid? That's the path for people like you."
For two years, she had starved herself to buy his textbooks, his tickets, and his shoes.
He had stolen her sweat and her sacrifices, all for a cruel game.
The sheer audacity of his betrayal made her blood run cold.
When a billionaire stranger stepped in to pay her mother's medical bills in exchange for a one-year fake marriage, Alayna didn't hesitate to sign the contract.
She slipped the flawless diamond ring onto her finger, opened a spreadsheet, and sent Caiden an invoice for every single cent.
This time, she was going to dismantle his entire life.
9.7
I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him.
Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister.
Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair.
I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people.
But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse.
I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges.
The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill.
When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell.
But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone.
His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life.
I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me.
Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference.
"I'll do it, but I control the venue."
I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.
7.9
On my wedding day, my fiancé Connor received an urgent phone call.
He told me a D-list actress had broken her leg on set, then abandoned me right at the altar.
In my past life, I cried until my throat bled, begging him not to leave.
But my tears only brought endless humiliation. My mother and adopted sister mocked me, framed me, and forged my signature to steal my multi-million dollar trust fund.
They kicked me out of the family estate without a single dime.
I ended up freezing to death in the minus-twenty-degree New York blizzard, listening to my mother's voicemail telling me to die in the street as long as I didn't bleed on her carpets.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why my own blood relatives hated me so much, yet treated an adopted daughter like a precious princess.
The only person who showed me any mercy—draping his wool coat over my frozen corpse and giving me a proper burial—was Connor's ruthless, untouchable uncle, Harding Snow.
Opening my eyes again, I was back in the bridal suite, right as Connor was rushing out the door.
This time, I didn't shed a single tear.
I let him run to his actress, then walked straight into the VIP room to face the most feared billionaire on Wall Street.
"The wedding proceeds as planned, but the groom's name changes to yours."
9.7
For three years, I played the role of a devoted, naive wife to billionaire Conrad Whitney. I hid my true identity and foolishly believed in our fairy tale.
Then he handed me a harsh divorce agreement, ordering me to sign and walk away with absolutely nothing. He was leaving me to marry Cindy, the fragile woman he claimed had saved him from a fire.
He expected me to cry and beg. Instead, he watched coldly as Cindy and her family illegally transferred my father's trust fund. When I confronted them at the hospital, Conrad shielded her, calling me a greedy, toxic viper. He mocked me, completely blind to the fact that Cindy was a fraud. He truly believed I was just a pathetic, useless housewife who would be utterly destroyed without his money and status.
I looked at the man I had actually dragged out of that burning debris with my own soot-covered hands. My trauma, my sacrifices, and my love had all been reduced to a joke by his sheer arrogance and a few fake tears from a manipulative liar.
I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly signed the papers, drugged his wine, and left a crumpled one-dollar bill on his unconscious chest with a sticky note mocking his terrible service.
Then, I picked up my encrypted phone. It was time for the world's top surgeon, Dr. Hades, to return, and for Conrad to finally see the god he had just thrown away.
9.2
Celestia woke up heavily sedated, her wrists bound tightly to the legs of a grand piano in a cold, opulent room.
Before she could even process the panic, a towering billionaire named Sterling Sinclair IV stepped in, looking at her like a possessed piece of art.
The head maid then handed Celestia a thick surrogacy contract with her perfectly forged signature.
"You are here to bear an heir for Mr. Sinclair," the maid stated flatly.
Celestia screamed that they had the wrong person, but her desperate cries bounced uselessly off the soundproof walls.
Stripped of her clothes, phone, and identity, she was trapped on an isolated island surrounded by high-voltage electric fences and armed guards.
When she furiously fought back, Sterling physically overpowered her, punishing her resistance with brutal, terrifying dominance until she lost consciousness on the marble floor.
She didn't understand who had kidnapped her from her normal life.
Why was her biometric data perfectly faked in a classified dossier?
Who had framed her as a willing, ten-million-dollar premium product for a ruthless billionaire?
Driven by pure survival, Celestia began aggressively consuming raw garlic and bathing in harsh white vinegar to destroy her fertility and repel his touch.
And when Sterling finally reviewed her bizarre, self-sabotaging dietary logs, the terrifying truth hit his calculating mind like a physical blow.
The broken, innocent woman he had been brutally tormenting all week was never his hired surrogate.
8.4
Harlene was locked out of her own family's estate in a freezing blizzard, still trembling from a severe panic attack.
Her mother delivered a cold ultimatum through a security screen: attend her golden-child sister Estella's award gala, or lose her medical funds.
To make it worse, her ex-fiancé, Dennis, had chimed in to call her embarrassing and pathetic.
At the gala, Harlene was treated like a diseased outcast.
Dennis fiercely protected his new lover, Jailyn—the very woman who had stolen Harlene's designs.
But the ultimate betrayal came when Estella flaunted a silver-embroidered antique dress.
It was Harlene's grandmother's dress, her only pure memory of love, handed over to the enemy as a trophy.
When Harlene demanded answers, her own father slapped her across the face in front of the press, just to protect their pristine image.
They had stolen her career, her fiancé, and her inheritance, all while branding her the crazy, unstable daughter.
The sheer hypocrisy and cruelty finally severed the last thread of her sanity.
Why should she play the silent victim while they played the perfect family?
Instead of crying, Harlene smiled.
She drew a hidden dagger, slashed the antique dress to ribbons, and dragged Estella and Jailyn to the center stage.
Standing under the blinding spotlight with a bloody blade, she looked out at the terrified crowd.
"The Beaumont family is done hiding," she declared into the microphone. "Tonight, the curtain falls."