The CEO Drove His Mute Wife Away, Now He Regrets
For three years, Adrian's heart belonged to another, and his wife Jessica-mute and unloved-endured his coldness.
Realizing she deserved better, she quietly left him, divorce papers on the table.
Adrian tore them up, accusing her of childish games, but Jessica had no interest in wasting more of her life.
After their split, her voice returned and she was suddenly surrounded by admirers.
Adrian, blinded by jealousy, begged her to come back.
Jessica only laughed, repeating his own words, saying, "Didn't you say love is the most worthless thing in the world?"
Now, she'd never look back.
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Chapter 6
"Let's go, Jessica."
With a quiet breath, Lexi slid an arm around Jessica's shoulders, steering her toward the car in a protective gesture.
Jessica turned slightly and lifted her hands toward Lexi, signing, "Thank you, Lexi."
After all these years, it was the first time anyone had stepped between her and Eleanor's cruelty, shielding her from the worst of it.
The realization settled in her chest, gratitude stirring as she felt lucky that she had Lexi by her side.
Lexi knew that Jessica was still not in a good mood and, for a moment, considered taking her straight home.
But the memory of the dog still curled in the back seat changed her mind, forcing a detour back to the pet shop so the animal could be treated.
Understanding her intentions, Jessica signed with steady hands, "I'm alright. The dog's well-being matters more."
Lexi brushed her fingers over Jessica's face and exhaled quietly. "You always put yourself last, Jessica."
Once the sheepdog with the stomach trouble had been settled at the pet shop, Jessica turned her thoughts toward going home.
She flagged down a taxi, and with the evening traffic choking the roads, it took an extra twenty minutes before she finally returned to the Iris Mansion.
When she and Adrian had just gotten married, they had lived at the Buckley Estate.
Later, Cheryl would always find faults with her during meals, and Adrian, fed up with it, moved to the Iris Mansion with her.
Shaking her thoughts away, Jessica pressed her lips together, pushed open the door, and stepped inside.
The living room was well-lit.
Adrian had already returned before she did.
He occupied the center of the living room, stretched back against a plush leather sofa, long legs crossed with lazy composure as the bright lights traced an elegant yet distant line along his profile.
As Jessica entered, he turned slightly, his low voice edged with coldness. "Why were you at Glamour today?"
Jessica halted, then lifted her hands and signed slowly, "I was out with a friend. We wandered around and ended up there."
This was the first time she had lied to Adrian, and the unease that followed settled deep in her stomach.
Adrian caught the way her eyes avoided his and let out a short, humorless sound. "Wandering, and you just happened to stop at Glamour's entrance? And you coincidentally ran into your sister as well?"
Jessica's anxiety tightened, her fingers moving as she signed, "It was really a coincidence."
Whether Adrian accepted her explanation or not was impossible to tell.
Noticing her just standing there, Adrian strode toward her, his gaze locking onto her with glacial intensity. "How dare you cause trouble for Eleanor? And you did it with some shameless woman!"
Faced with his looming presence, Jessica instinctively retreated a half-step, her shoulders curling inward as her fingers shook. "I didn't cause trouble for her. She insulted me first. And my friend... she is not shameless."
Adrian reached out and seized her wrist, yanking her back without warning.
Jessica's forehead collided with his solid chest, the impact sending a sharp ache through her.
She blinked rapidly as his frigid voice descended from above. "Then explain how Eleanor ended up with injuries on her face. Do not assume that being my wife gives you free rein. Listen carefully. If you ever lay a hand on Eleanor again, you can forget about holding onto that title."
Jessica's heart plunged as if dropped into freezing water, battered by a hammer again and again until nothing remained but a raw, hollow ache.
Whenever Eleanor was involved, Adrian never spared a thought for truth or fairness, choosing her side without the slightest hesitation.
And Jessica, his so-called wife, was never the one he believed.
Mistaking her silence for resistance, Adrian let his voice sharpen further. "From now on, stay away from that shameless friend of yours."
At that, Jessica lifted her head, her hands moving in quick motions. "Lexi is not shameless! She is a good friend!"
Emotion surged through her, color blooming faintly against her pallor as her reddened eyes shimmered with unshed tears.
Only then did Adrian register just how much that friend mattered to her.
The realization soured his expression even more, his features hardening as anger gathered in his eyes.
He caught Jessica's chin between his fingers, forcing her face up. "If I say she is, then she is. You will not see her again."
Defiance flared across Jessica's face, and for the first time, she met his gaze head-on. She signed, "I won't do as you say."
She was actually going against him for an outsider.
Fury roared up Adrian's chest, his words forced out through tightly clenched teeth. "Jessica, do I need to spell it out for you? You are my wife, and that means you must obey me!"
Jessica's breathing hitched as tears spilled without warning, streaking down her cheeks.
It felt as though a hole had been torn open in her chest, each breath scraping painfully through it.
When she stopped signing, Adrian assumed her silence meant surrender. He released her and turned away, ready to leave.
But after wiping her tears, Jessica hurried after him and raised her hands again.
"Adrian, let's get a divorce."
She signed each word slowly, like she was afraid that he might not understand her.
For a moment, Adrian thought he had read her hands wrong.
When Jessica repeated the signs with unwavering seriousness, the truth finally landed on him heavily. Jessica was really asking for a divorce.
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8.6
It was my birthday, but instead of celebrating, I was bleeding on the floor of my own bedroom. My sister Serena had just smashed a champagne bottle over my legs, her eyes filled with a dark madness because our father allowed me to wear the family diamonds.
To escape her, I bolted into a pitch-black guest suite, only to be grabbed by a man who felt like a wall of solid muscle. He was drugged, unstable, and pinned me against the wall, his teeth sinking into my neck in a primal claim that left a permanent mark.
I managed to flee, but the nightmare was just beginning. My father didn't care about my injuries; he only cared that I had "insulted" the man in that room—Delos French, the most powerful CEO in New York. He threatened to stop paying for my mother’s critical care facility unless I went to Delos and begged for his forgiveness.
My brother Julian was even worse, intentionally pouring scalding coffee over my bandaged wounds just to see me flinch. They forced me into a revealing gold dress, treating me like a high-priced commodity to be sold to the highest bidder to save their failing company.
I didn't understand how the people who were supposed to love me could be more predatory than the monster in the dark. I had spent my life fixing their scandals, yet they were ready to throw me to the wolves the moment I became useful as a pawn.
But when I stood before Delos French at his gala, he didn't see a trophy. He recognized my scent, my touch, and the fire in my eyes. He trapped me in his private lounge, kneeling to clean the blood from my injured feet.
"Marry me," he whispered, his voice a low, terrifying growl. "And I will give you the power to burn your family to the ground."
I looked into the eyes of the man who had hunted me and realized he was the only one offering me a weapon to destroy the people who had broken me.
"Okay," I whispered.
7.4
For six years, I worked myself to the bone to support my "struggling artist" boyfriend, Kasen. I paid the rent on our leaky Brooklyn apartment and believed in his dream, thinking our love was real.
That all ended one rainy night when I delivered documents to an exclusive club and overheard him with his wealthy friends. Our life, he said, was just a "sociological experiment."
He wasn't poor at all. He was a trust fund heir with a fiancée in the Hamptons, waiting to close a corporate merger.
"Kaia is just a naive pet who voluntarily pays my rent," he laughed over a three-thousand-dollar glass of scotch.
He told them girls like me were so desperate we'd come crawling back for a scrap of affection. My entire world shattered.
I packed my bags and walked out that night with eighty-four dollars to my name, ready to start over. But escaping one monster only threw me to another. The next day, a predatory client tried to drug me during a business meeting.
My boss, the terrifyingly powerful CEO Camden William, intervened. But after a night of drug-induced chaos, I woke up in his bed.
He didn't offer an apology. He offered a contract. "Marry me for three years," he commanded, "and I'll give you five million dollars and make sure Kasen can never touch you again."
9.8
I sat in the VIP waiting room of the fertility clinic, clutching the report that confirmed my implantation was a success. After years of struggling, I finally had a reason to make my marriage with Garnett work.
But when I went to find him in the lounge, I heard a woman’s laughter coming from behind the door. It was his mistress, Alison. I froze as I heard Garnett’s cold, dismissive voice.
"She’s just an incubator."
"Once the heir is born, we kick her out. The trust fund only requires a legitimate heir born to my wife. It doesn't require the wife to stick around afterwards."
The betrayal went deeper than I could have imagined. I soon discovered the clinic had botched the procedure—the baby I was carrying wasn't even Garnett’s. It was donor sperm from Sterling Sharp, the most powerful tech mogul in the world.
When my in-laws forced me to move into their estate for "monitoring," I realized I was entering a cage. Garnett and his mistress were paying the family doctor to inject me with hallucinogens to mimic a mental breakdown. They planned to declare me legally incompetent and commit me to an asylum the second I gave birth.
I stood in the shadows of the East Wing, realizing my husband wasn't just stealing my child—he was trying to delete my mind. The people I called family were poisoning me daily, waiting for me to break so they could claim a legacy that wasn't even theirs.
They wanted a madwoman, so I decided to give them one. I turned the doctor into my double agent, faked every symptom of a breakdown, and began building a secret empire from the shadows. Garnett thinks he’s trapped an incubator, but he’s actually locked himself in with a nuclear weapon.
8.5
Hadley married into the Jacobson family, a ruthless Wall Street empire. Her prenuptial agreement was absolute: she wouldn't touch a penny of the family wealth until she produced an heir.
But one rainy night, she used a copied keycard to enter a secret Tribeca penthouse, only to find her husband tangled in bed with a famous actress.
When she slapped the divorce papers in front of him, Cleveland didn't apologize.
"The party who files walks away with nothing. You will die in this position."
He tore the documents to pieces. To protect his flawless public image, he forced Hadley to attend family galas, smirking coldly while his grandfather publicly humiliated her for her "barren" stomach. When Hadley finally fought back and confronted his mistress, Cleveland snapped. With a single phone call, he froze her bank accounts, revoked her access to their home, and left her stranded in a cold parking garage.
She had given up her independence for a man who treated her like a useless breeding machine. He thought he could erase three years of her life in an instant, confident that his money made him invincible.
But Cleveland didn't know she was holding the ultimate weapon to destroy his precious legacy. As he received a frantic call about his mistress and rushed to his SUV, Hadley finally screamed the agonizing secret she had hidden for years.
"I can't give you an heir! It's over!"
Watching his taillights disappear into the dark, Hadley prepared to burn his empire to the ground.
8.0
She's working tirelessly to support her family, unaware that the man she's serving as an assistant is the CEO she once saved from a minor accident. Professional boundaries blur, tension ignites, and forbidden attraction threatens everything. Can love survive when secrets are revealed, or will ambition and pride destroy them both?
8.0
I spent six years as a "shadow asset" for the Holmes family, a brilliant scholar living in a cramped Queens apartment on a secret scholarship. I was their silent investment, a ghost in their machine, until the day a fluorescent orange eviction notice appeared on my door.
The legal documents from Holmes Holdings were brutal. They were terminating my sponsorship and demanding immediate repayment of every cent of my tuition. The reason was buried in the fine print: a moral turpitude clause. I was pregnant with a Holmes heir, and in their world, that made me a liability that needed to be erased.
Ingram Holmes, the family’s cold-blooded CEO, didn't see a woman; he saw a line item on a balance sheet. He offered me a million dollars to disappear, abort the child, and sign away my existence. He had me escorted to a private clinic like a criminal, ready to finalize my erasure. But the plan shattered when his grandmother, the matriarch of the family, collapsed in a sudden cardiac arrest.
As the doctors failed, I stepped out of the shadows. I diagnosed the toxicity they couldn't see and brought her back from the brink of death. I wasn't the helpless charity case they expected. I was a genius who knew their medical secrets better than their own surgeons.
"Who are you?" Ingram growled, pinning me against a desk in his frozen office.
I didn't blink. I had just secured the family's ancient signet ring and a seat at their table. Now, I’m living in his manor, sharing his bed, and holding the keys to the vault that contains their darkest sins.
"I'm the problem you can't afford to solve," I whispered.
The game has changed. I’m no longer the asset—I’m the hunter.