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 8
Regina woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind—the heavy, pressing kind that sat on her chest and refused to move. Morning light filtered through her curtains, pale and unforgiving. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. Then reality rushed back in.
Her room.
Her bed.
Her life.
And the night she wasn’t supposed to remember.
She sat up abruptly, her heart pounding. The scent of unfamiliar cologne still lingered on her skin, faint but undeniable. Regina pressed her fingers to her lips, as if she could erase the memory that way.
*It was a mistake*, she told herself.
*A single night. Nothing more.*
Yet her body betrayed her calm. Her chest felt tight, her thoughts scattered. She moved through her morning routine on autopilot—shower, uniform, bag—each action precise, controlled. She needed control now more than ever.
At breakfast, Sasha was already there.
“You’re late,” she remarked lightly, sipping her tea.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Regina replied, keeping her eyes down.
Their mother glanced at her. “You look tired. Don’t let personal distractions interfere with your responsibilities.”
Personal distractions.
Regina nodded. “Yes, Mama.”
She didn’t trust her voice beyond that.
---
At medical school, the world felt slightly tilted. The corridors were louder. The lights too bright. Every laugh felt directed at her, every whisper a potential accusation.
She sat through lectures without absorbing a word.
*What if someone saw me?*
*What if he looks for me?*
*What if I ruined everything?*
Her stomach churned.
By midday, nausea hit her hard and fast. Regina barely made it to the restroom before gripping the sink, breathing shallowly as the wave passed.
“Pull yourself together,” she whispered to her reflection.
Her face looked pale. Different.
She dismissed it as nerves. Stress. Lack of sleep.
She had no idea how wrong she was.
---
Days passed.
The nausea returned.
Then the dizziness.
Then the exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix.
Regina stopped counting the days.
She stopped sleeping properly.
She stopped feeling like herself.
One evening, she stood in a pharmacy aisle, staring at a shelf she swore she would never look at. Her hands trembled as she picked up the box and shoved it into her bag like contraband.
Her heart pounded all the way home.
She locked her door.
She waited.
Two lines.
The room spun.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”
Her knees buckled, and she slid to the floor, clutching the test to her chest as if that might change the result. Tears came silently—hot, relentless.
Pregnant.
By a man she didn’t know.
By a mistake she wasn’t allowed to make.
By someone who could destroy what little life she had left—without even trying.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from her mother.
*The Harrisons are finalizing the announcement. Prepare yourself.*
Regina laughed then—soft, broken.
*Prepare yourself*, they said.
For what?
For ruin?
---
She told no one.
Not Sasha.
Not her parents.
Not Harris.
She moved through life like a ghost, hiding the truth inside her like a ticking bomb. She avoided mirrors. Avoided food. Avoided people.
Until she couldn’t anymore.
The Harrisons cancelled the contract.
It happened quietly at first.
Then violently.
Her father stormed into her room one evening, his face dark with fury. “What have you done?”
Regina stood frozen. “I don’t understand.”
“They withdrew,” he snapped. “Without explanation. Do you know what that means?”
Her mother followed, eyes cold. “It means you embarrassed us.”
“I didn’t—” Regina’s voice cracked. “I followed every rule.”
Her father laughed bitterly. “Rules don’t matter if trust is gone.”
Trust.
She felt sick.
---
The article broke the next morning.
**GRAY DAUGHTER INVOLVED IN SCANDAL — CONTRACT MARRIAGE TERMINATED**
There was no name.
But everyone knew.
Medical school summoned her by noon.
The board didn’t ask questions. They didn’t need to.
“Given the circumstances,” the dean said stiffly, “your enrollment is hereby suspended pending investigation.”
Suspended.
Regina walked out numb.
Outside, her phone exploded with messages. Unknown numbers. Accusations. Insults.
She went home to find her suitcase by the door.
“You’re no longer welcome here,” her mother said calmly. “You’ve disgraced us.”
Sasha stood behind her, arms crossed, eyes unreadable.
Regina turned to her, desperate. “You know this isn’t what it looks like.”
Sasha tilted her head. “Isn’t it?”
That was when Regina understood.
This wasn’t an accident.
This was orchestration.
And she had lost.
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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.