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 4
Alessia's POV
The car ride to Adrian Virelli's mansion was quiet.
I sat in the back seat of the sleek black sedan, hands folded tightly in my lap. The driver hadn't said a word since picking me up from the small hotel Adrian had arranged for me to stay in the night after the auction. The city lights had slowly disappeared behind us, replaced by long stretches of road and towering trees.
Eventually the car turned onto a private road.
Tall iron gates appeared ahead, flanked by stone pillars and security cameras. The driver rolled down the window slightly and spoke into a small intercom. The gates opened with a slow mechanical hum.
Beyond them was a long driveway.
The mansion sat at the end of it like a fortress.
The car stopped in front of the entrance. The driver stepped out and opened my door.
"We're here, Miss Romano."
I nodded and stepped out, adjusting the strap of the small bag slung over my shoulder. Everything I owned now fit inside it. The rest of my belongings were still back at my parents' temporary apartment, but Adrian had insisted I move in immediately.
The front doors opened before I could knock.
A woman in a crisp black uniform stood there. She looked to be in her fifties, with silver streaks running through her dark hair and sharp eyes that missed nothing.
"You must be Miss Romano," she said.
"Yes."
"I'm Mrs. Davenport. I manage the household."
She stepped aside, allowing me inside.
The interior of the mansion was even more intimidating than the exterior. The foyer alone was larger than my parents' living room.
The house was spotless and quiet.
Too quiet for a house where a child lived.
"Mr. Virelli isn't home yet," Mrs. Davenport said as she led me farther inside. "But he instructed us to show you to your room and introduce you to Miss Ava."
"How old is she?" I asked, Adrian hadn't given me the opportunity to ask much about Ava, and he hadn't offered any information either.
"Eight."
Mrs. Davenport led me down a long hallway lined with framed paintings and closed doors. The house seemed endless.
"This will be your room."
She opened a door.
The room inside was simple but elegant. A large bed sat against the wall, covered in crisp white sheets. There was a desk near the window and a wardrobe already stocked with neatly folded clothes.
"Mr. Virelli had clothing delivered earlier today," she said, noticing my glance.
Of course he had.
Before I could ask anything else, a small voice spoke from behind us.
"So you're the new nanny."
I turned.
A girl stood at the end of the hallway.
She had long dark hair tied loosely behind her head and sharp eyes that reminded me immediately of her father. She wore a simple sweater and jeans, but the way she stood made it clear she already owned the entire house.
This had to be Ava.
"Yes," I said gently. "I'm Alessia."
She walked closer, studying me openly.
"You look boring."
I blinked.
"Miss Ava what are you doing outside you're ballet class?" Mrs davenport chided.
"She quit." She shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly, the action reminding me very much of her father, their resemblance uncanny.
"That's the fifth one this month." Mrs davenport whispered to herself.
"The last nanny cried on the second day."
"Why....Did you make her cry?"
Ava tilted her head, considering the question.
"Maybe."
Mrs. Davenport cleared her throat. "Miss Ava, Mr. Virelli expects you to behave."
"I am behaving."
She didn't sound convincing.
"Come on," she said suddenly. "I'll show you the house."
Before I could respond, she turned and walked down the hallway.
Mrs. Davenport sighed softly.
"She always does this," she said under her breath. "Good luck, you're going to need it." She looked at me with pity as she patted my shoulders and left.
I hurried after Ava.
She moved quickly, weaving through corridors and up a set of stairs. I had the growing suspicion she was deliberately walking fast to see if I could keep up.
"So," she said as we reached the second floor, "how long are you staying?"
"Three years."
She stopped walking, seconds passed before she turned slowly.
"You're lying, no one ever stays that long." she said like she was stating a fact.
"I'm not lying, I do really need this job."
She eyed me suspiciously.
"Why would my dad pay almost a billion dollars for you."
"I- I, he didn't" I sputtered
"Lying to me won't get you anywhere,I overheard it from one of the staff members." She crossed her arms
"It's not what you think ava."
"It's miss Ava to you." She turned and went further down the corridor leaving me to chase after her.
"I left one of my dolls in there," she said casually, pointing toward the door. "Get it for me."
"Why can't you get it yourself?" I may not have grown up with wealth like hers but I certainly not poor either, I wasn't used to being pushed around by a kid.
"Did my dad hire you to ask questions?" she said coolly.
She was nothing like an eight year old.
Three years I reminded myself as I clenched my fists.
"No, Miss Ava." I said, forcing a smile
The moment I turned the doorknob, a hand clamped around my wrist.
Hard.
I gasped.
"Who allowed you in this wing?" Adrian Virelli's voice was cold with anger.
"Sir, Ava sent me to get one of her dolls." I said wincing, I looked behind me.
Ava was gone.
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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."