The CEO Fell for His Dead Wife
Regina, a talented medical student from a prominent family, is forced into a contract marriage with Damian Harrison, a ruthless billionaire CEO. But when a chance encounter with a stranger leads to unexpected consequences, Regina's world is turned upside down.
As she rebuilds her life and confronts her past, Regina must navigate a complex web of family secrets, hidden identities, and deceit. Meanwhile, Damian's icy demeanor hides a vulnerable side, and he will stop at nothing to claim the two children she's been raising alone.
With secrets and lies lurking around every corner, Regina must decide whether to trust her heart or her head. Will she find redemption and love, or will the secrets and lies tear them apart?
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Chapter 6
The document was heavier than it looked.
Regina stared at the folder resting on the polished mahogany table, its dark blue cover embossed with a silver crest she didn’t recognize—but somehow already hated. The room smelled faintly of leather and expensive cologne. Everything about this place screamed power, control, and finality.
Across from her sat two lawyers. Beside her sat her parents.
Sasha was not there.
“You may review the terms,” the older lawyer said smoothly, sliding the folder closer to Regina. “Though the agreement has already been approved by both families.”
Approved.
Not *discussed*. Not *negotiated*.
Approved.
Regina’s fingers trembled as she opened the folder. Page after page of legal language stared back at her—clauses, conditions, obligations. She scanned them slowly, her chest tightening with every line.
**No public refusal.**
**No scandal.**
**No pregnancy prior to official announcement.**
**Obedience to public appearances as required.**
Her vision blurred.
“This is… a contract,” she said quietly. “Not a marriage.”
The younger lawyer smiled politely. “In families like yours, Miss Gray, there is no difference.”
Her mother placed a manicured hand over Regina’s wrist. The touch was light, almost affectionate—and completely restraining.
“This is an honor,” she said softly. “Do not embarrass us.”
Regina looked up at her father. “Have I ever?” she asked, unable to stop herself.
He didn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
---
The Harrison estate loomed larger than Regina expected.
She stood at the gates later that afternoon, her breath shallow as she took in the towering iron bars, the perfectly trimmed hedges, the guards stationed like silent sentinels. This was where Damian Harrison lived.
Where her future had already begun—without her.
She wasn’t there to meet him.
Not yet.
This visit was symbolic, her mother had said. A reminder. A warning.
“The Harrisons value order,” her mother whispered as they walked the stone path. “You would do well to remember that.”
Inside, the house was quiet. Too quiet.
A staff member led them through corridors that felt cold despite the warm lighting. Regina’s footsteps echoed, each one sounding like a countdown.
She wondered what kind of man lived in a place like this.
Someone cruel?
Someone distant?
Someone who wouldn’t care that she had been forced into his life?
She almost hoped so. Indifference would hurt less than contempt.
“He is not here,” the staff member said finally. “Mr. Harrison is… occupied.”
Regina exhaled without realizing she’d been holding her breath.
Occupied.
The word lingered.
---
That night, Regina couldn’t sleep.
She lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, the contract’s words replaying endlessly in her mind. Marriage. Duty. Silence.
She felt like she was slowly disappearing.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Sasha.
**Sasha:**
*I heard everything went smoothly today. I knew you’d handle it well.*
Regina stared at the screen, her fingers numb.
**Regina:**
*Did you ever consider saying no?*
The reply came almost instantly.
**Sasha:**
*Why would I? This is your strength, Regina. You endure. I shine.*
Regina closed her eyes.
That was it.
The final confirmation that she was alone.
---
By the third day, the walls felt like they were closing in.
Her lectures blurred together. Her notes made no sense. Even the library—once her refuge—felt suffocating.
That was when Harris approached her again.
“You don’t look well,” he said gently, sitting across from her.
“I’m fine,” Regina replied automatically.
He studied her for a moment. “You always say that. But you don’t mean it.”
She almost laughed. Almost cried.
“I just need… air,” she said suddenly, standing.
“Then take it,” Harris said. “Come out tonight. Just for a drink. No expectations.”
Regina hesitated.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind.
*No scandal. No mistakes.*
But something inside her snapped.
“One drink,” she said.
---
The bar was dimly lit, pulsing softly with music and life. It was nothing like the places her family frequented. No judgment. No expectations. Just strangers existing freely.
Regina felt out of place—and strangely alive.
She ordered a drink she’d never had before and sat alone, watching the crowd. For the first time in days, her chest loosened.
Then she felt it.
A presence.
She looked up.
He stood at the bar a few feet away, jacket discarded, sleeves rolled up, his posture relaxed in a way that felt dangerous. His face was half-shadowed, but his eyes—
They were watching her.
Not dismissively.
Not possessively.
Intently.
Regina’s breath caught.
There was something familiar about him. Not his face—she would have remembered that—but the weight of his gaze. Like he could see the fracture lines beneath her skin.
Their eyes met.
And the world seemed to tilt.
She didn’t know his name.
She didn’t know who he was.
She only knew one thing with terrifying certainty—
This man was about to change everything.
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7.1
After five years in a federal prison, framed by my stepmother and fiancé, I was finally released.
Instead of a welcome home, my stepmother tossed me a one-way ticket to Geneva and a threat: renounce the family name and disappear, or end up in the Hudson River.
When our limo was suddenly ambushed by military-grade SUVs on the highway, their cowardice almost got us killed.
I took the wheel, crashed the attackers, and saved their lives.
But the moment the danger passed, my stepmother tried to slap me, called me a psycho, and abandoned me on the desolate roadside.
My ex-fiancé later cornered me in public, trying to assert his dominance by grabbing my arm.
They still thought I was the broken girl they sent to a cage just so they could steal my dead mother's biochemical research.
I didn't feel heartbreak, only a cold, absolute certainty.
They threw me to the wolves, not realizing the federal penitentiary had burned away my capacity for mercy.
I hacked into the dark web and found out Dante Meltoni, the most dangerous Mafia Don in New York, was tearing the city apart to find a legendary underground doctor.
I am that doctor.
I walked straight into his heavily guarded fortress, pulled out a syringe, and saved his dying grandfather.
Then I looked the terrifying Don right in the eye.
"Marry me. And let me use your empire to wipe my family off the map."
9.5
I returned to New York with a broken suitcase and exactly three hundred and forty-two dollars in my bank account. My mother was dying in a public hospital, and the only treatment that could save her required a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit I didn't have.
While I was pleading with the billing department, I ran into my billionaire ex, Gannon Sharpe, and his cruel fiancée, Aleta. Without a second thought, Aleta slapped me so hard my lip split, kicking my belongings across the floor and calling me a gold-digging thief in front of the entire staff.
I looked at Gannon, the man I once loved more than my own life, hoping for a shred of mercy. Instead, he looked at me with pure revulsion and told me I belonged in the gutter. He believed the lies his grandfather told him—that I had abandoned him after his car crash and vanished with millions.
He had no idea I was the one who actually pulled him from that burning wreckage, or that I was currently skipping meals in a moldy motel just so our secret son could have formula. He called me "disgusting" and walked away, leaving me to rot.
I wanted to scream that I was the genius scientist who wrote his company’s core algorithms, and that the child he didn’t know existed was shivering with a fever only blocks away. But the ironclad NDA I signed to save my family kept me silent, even as Gannon looked at me like I was something he’d stepped in.
Desperate for health insurance to save my mother and son, I took a bottom-tier data entry job in the basement of Gannon’s own tower, intending to stay invisible. But when a billion-dollar error threatened to bankrupt his empire, I couldn't stop myself from hacking the system to fix the code.
Now, the man who hates me is standing in my cubicle, demanding to know how a "dropout" knows his most guarded secrets. Gannon is finally digging into my past, and he’s about to find out exactly what—and who—I’ve been hiding for the last four years.
9.2
Nica caught her boyfriend, Chris, and her best friend, Ella, in a shocking betrayal. Chris was kissing Ella while caressing her close, and Ella only smirked at Nica as if she had won. Nica got pissed off and swore she would not let their betrayal go unpunished. What happens next? Read the story and find out for yourself.
8.7
I woke up from a coma in the hospital, universally condemned as the vicious daughter who pushed the beloved fake heiress, Georgina, down the stairs.
My ruthless billionaire brother, Angelo, stood over my bed with cold eyes, ready to destroy me for hurting his precious sister.
But as I looked at him, a terrifying prophecy from my coma flooded my brain. Our entire family was doomed.
In the original timeline, Georgina would team up with corporate rivals to bankrupt the company, frame Angelo, and send him to federal prison, while our parents would abandon me to die miserably.
Lying there, I didn't dare speak. I just desperately cursed my idiot brother in my head.
"This stupid brother is still yelling at me for that fake heiress. He doesn't even know he's going to be framed and sent to prison next month!"
I just wanted to stay quiet, let them ruin themselves, and run away from this toxic family.
But strangely, Angelo didn't strangle me. Instead, his attitude took a shocking turn.
He abruptly fired the driver plotting to kill him, destroyed the abusive fiancé of a family ally, and publicly humiliated Georgina at a high-society gala.
He even shielded me from our abusive parents, declaring to the world that I was the only sister he would ever protect.
I was completely terrified and confused. Why was the tyrant brother suddenly acting like a protective beast?
It wasn't until he flawlessly crushed a massive corporate attack using the exact financial secrets I had just complained about in my mind that a horrifying realization hit me.
He could hear my inner thoughts!
8.7
I was pregnant with the future heir of the Blackwood Pack, but my fated mate, Alpha Gavin, was nowhere to be found when sharp, tearing agony ripped through my swollen belly.
Instead of rushing to my side, he was in a luxury penthouse with his mistress, Piper.
When I desperately called his human number for help, it was Piper who answered the phone.
"I'm Piper. His future Luna."
Minutes later, I received a leaked audio file of Gavin promising to formally reject me the moment our pup was born.
Before the heartbreak could even set in, my armored SUV was violently rammed off the road by a massive truck.
It wasn't an accident. It was a targeted hit paid for by Piper's pack.
I woke up in the clinic with an empty womb. My pup was dead.
Gavin didn't even show up. He just mind-linked the butler to say he was "too busy" to deal with my loss.
He let his mistress murder our child and treated me like disposable trash, assuming my grief would make me a weak, compliant victim.
He thought he could just bury my trauma and move on with his perfect new life.
He was wrong.
I faked my own death in a fiery crash, leaving him with nothing but my signed rejection papers and the bloody receipt proving his mistress hired the killers.
Now, armed with a new identity and untraceable wealth, I am stepping out of the shadows.
I am going to bankrupt their packs from the inside out and make my former Alpha watch his empire burn.
8.5
Betrayed and divorced by her cheating Alpha mate, Elara flees into the human world, carrying the secret triplets he never knew existed. Years later, fate binds her to Damian Blackwood, the ruthless billionaire Alpha of the Eclipse Pack, whose mafia empire rules shadows and fortunes alike. As old wounds reopen and Ryder hunts his hidden heirs, Elara must navigate a dangerous bond, protect her moon-touched daughter from an ancient threat tearing at the Lunar Veil, and decide if she can trust a new mate... or burn everything down to keep her family safe. A steamy fusion of werewolf destiny, billionaire power, mafia intrigue, secret babies, betrayal, revenge, and fated mates, where love rises from ashes and the moon demands its due.