The CEO's Runaway Cinderella Returns
At the project kickoff party, Isabelle casually mocked the new capital representative, calling him a suit with a trust fund.
A low, magnetic voice spoke from the shadows right behind her.
It was Bennett Lloyd, the man holding the purse strings for the entire project.
But as Isabelle turned around, her blood ran cold.
He wasn't just her new boss. He was the stranger she had a desperate one-night stand with five years ago.
The man she had fled from before dawn, leaving only a fake name.
In her panic to escape him, Isabelle tripped on the marble stairs and left behind a single, custom-made diamond heel.
Bennett found it, but instead of exposing her, he began a terrifying game of cat and mouse.
He forced her to be his exclusive on-site consultant, vetoed her vacation time, and isolated her from her team.
He trapped her in his office, his touches lingering just enough to remind her of that night, slowly suffocating her professional life as payback.
Pushed to the brink of a breakdown by his relentless torment, Isabelle sat in a hotel bar, drowning her panic in vodka.
She pulled out her phone, intending to send a voice memo to her best friend to confess the suffocating guilt she had hidden for years.
"I can't do this anymore. I'm a sinner. I killed her... I killed my mother."
She hit send, only to realize her screen didn't show her friend's name.
The confession had gone straight to Bennett Lloyd.
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Chapter 5
Isabelle couldn't sit still. The phantom sensation of his fingers on her skin felt like a snake, slithering around her ankle, tightening with every breath she took.
She opened the HR portal on her computer. She had three weeks of accrued PTO just sitting there. A desperate idea formed in her mind. If she could just get away for a couple of weeks, maybe he would lose interest. Maybe he would find a new toy.
She printed out the form and walked down the hall to Eleanor's office. She knocked, her knuckles rapping a staccato beat.
"Eleanor, I need to ask a favor." Isabelle stepped inside, holding the paper like a shield. "I'd like to take two weeks of my vacation time. Starting Monday."
Eleanor took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She looked at Isabelle with a flat, unsympathetic stare. "Now? The project just kicked off. The client's representative just arrived."
Isabelle bit her lip. "I know. But I really need the rest."
Eleanor let out a dry, humorless laugh. "That's impossible. Mr. Lloyd specifically emphasized that you need to be on this full-time."
Isabelle's heart sank. "I can hand my work over to Clara. She's up to speed."
Before Eleanor could respond, the office door swung open. Bennett walked in as if he owned the place-which, technically, his company owned a significant portion of the firm. He leaned against the doorframe, a coffee cup in his hand, looking completely at ease.
"Talking about me?" he asked, his gaze sliding past Eleanor to land squarely on Isabelle.
Isabelle snapped to attention, her spine rigid.
Eleanor immediately pasted on a professional smile. "Mr. Lloyd. Isabelle was just requesting some time off."
Bennett's eyes didn't leave Isabelle's face. He noted the pallor, the tight set of her jaw. "Vacation? I don't approve it."
His tone was flat, bored even, but it carried the weight of absolute authority.
Isabelle clenched her fists at her sides. "It's my legal right."
Bennett pushed off the doorframe and walked toward her. He stopped inches away, close enough that she could see the faint stubble on his jaw. "As the on-site consultant, your time off requires my signature." He looked down at her, his gray-blue eyes hard. "And I don't sign."
Isabelle took a deep breath, trying to find a way out. "Then assign someone else. Let Clara take my place."
Bennett reached out. His long fingers plucked the vacation form from her trembling hands. As he pulled the paper away, his thumb and index finger deliberately rubbed against the back of her hand.
It was the same motion. The same slow, deliberate drag of skin against skin. It mirrored the way he had touched her scar yesterday. It felt slimy, possessive, like he was savoring the feel of her.
Isabelle yanked her hand back, her head snapping up to look at him.
Bennett was staring right at her. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. But his eyes were dead. There was no warmth, no humor. Just pure, predatory intent.
"Replace you? No need." He held the paper up between them. Then, slowly, he tore it in half. The ripping sound was loud in the quiet office. "I'm already familiar with your... working style."
The words "working style" were soft, almost a whisper. They dripped with an intimacy that made Isabelle's scalp prickle.
Isabelle froze. In that instant, the last thread of her denial snapped. He knew. He knew it was her. From the very first moment on the terrace, he had known exactly who she was.
Everything-the shoe, the appointment, the touch-had been an act. A performance designed to back her into a corner, to force her to be the one to break first.
Bennett tossed the torn pieces of paper into the wastebasket. He turned and walked out of the office without another word.
Isabelle stood there, shaking. She was trapped. The walls were closing in, and there was nowhere left to run.
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7.6
When the Pollard family kicked Alyssa out into the freezing rain, Walter threw a ten-thousand-dollar check into a dirty puddle.
"Take it and get out. Don't ever come back," he sneered.
Her adoptive mother and stepsister stood on the mansion's porch, mocking her as a worthless country girl who tarnished their wealthy name. They laughed, claiming she wouldn't even be able to afford community college and would be begging on the streets in a week.
They looked at her cheap clothes and worn backpack with absolute disgust.
They were completely unaware that for the past five years, Alyssa was the secret mastermind who had built their failing gallery into a multi-million-dollar investment empire.
Every key investment, every fortune they made, came from the anonymous notes she had slipped into their unread books. They genuinely believed they were business geniuses, while treating the true architect of their wealth like a stray dog.
Looking at their smug, arrogant faces, Alyssa didn't feel a shred of sadness, only a cold, sharp irony.
They actually believed they had raised her.
She stepped close, whispered the master code to Walter's most secret offshore account, and watched the blood completely drain from his face.
"I raised you," she said, turning her back on the mansion without hesitation.
Walking into the storm, she pulled out a heavily encrypted phone and gave a single, cold order.
"Initiate a full hostile takeover of the Pollard Group."
It was time to end this little game and step into her true life—as the world's most elusive medical genius, and the long-lost billionaire heiress of the Summers dynasty.
8.0
I sat at a table for two in the center of Le Coucou, clutching a gift box that had cost me two months of savings. It was our three-year anniversary, and I was waiting for Gavin to finally ask the big question.
But when the heavy oak doors opened, Gavin didn't walk toward me with a ring. He walked in with a polished blonde heiress tucked under his arm, her hand resting protectively over a small baby bump.
"This is Tiffany Stone. My fiancée," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. He didn't apologize for being late or for the three years we'd spent together. Instead, he pulled out a checkbook, scribbled a number, and slid a ten-thousand-dollar check across the white tablecloth.
"Consider it severance for your time," he added, as Tiffany mocked my cheap drugstore dress. "Don't contact me again. Tiffany doesn't need the stress." I was the entertainment for the entire restaurant—the pathetic girl dumped for a better model. By the time I walked out into the rain, I had lost my boyfriend, my home, and the funding for my secret medical research project.
I was an orphan with no safety net, facing an eviction notice and a ruined career. I had given Gavin everything, and he had discarded me like a broken tool. The injustice burned in my chest, a hot, sharp rage that replaced my tears.
Desperate and freezing, I ducked into a coffee shop where I met Colton Bentley, a reclusive billionaire in a wheelchair. After I defended him from a cruel date, he offered me a contract: a marriage of convenience and a seven-figure payment to act as his shield. I signed the papers that night, ready to use his wealth to rebuild my life. But as I watched my new husband navigate his penthouse, I noticed his "paralyzed" legs tense with a strength that shouldn't exist.
7.1
I waited a year for my mate, Alpha Justin, to return from the border war. While he was gone, I used my ten-million-dollar dowry to keep his crumbling pack afloat and buy life-saving elixirs for his mother.
But when he finally walked through the door, he reeked of another female's scent.
He brought back Gamma Brenna and a Royal Decree, coldly announcing she would be his "Co-Luna."
His family, who survived entirely on my wealth, immediately turned on me. They mocked me for being a wolfless orphan since my father and brothers were slaughtered defending the kingdom.
"You're just a fragile woman who belongs hidden away," Justin told me.
They demanded I accept this humiliation, step aside for his new warrior mate, and continue funding their luxurious lifestyle. Justin even arrogantly offered to sleep with me just once to give me a pup as a "consolation prize," declaring his heart and body belonged entirely to Brenna.
They thought my ruined pack meant I had no backing. They thought I was a pathetic victim who would cling to their scraps and accept a polluted mate-bond just to avoid being cast out into the woods as a Rogue.
They had no idea I had already visited the Alpha King.
I wasn't going to cry, and I certainly wasn't going to share my mate. I packed up every last cent of my ten million dollars, secured a Royal Severance Decree, and prepared to watch their arrogant pack starve to death.
9.4
Aria Mcgee was the unwanted second daughter of a decaying Long Island family.
To save their bankrupt corporation, her father and older sister drugged her. They shoved her into a town car and delivered her to a ruthless Wall Street billionaire's bed like a piece of meat.
They expected her to be the perfect sacrifice. The original Aria had no access to her own trust fund and was forced to live in a windowless broom closet. Even worse, a cold, synthetic System voice echoed in her skull, demanding she play the tragic, helpless female lead. It ordered her to endure her family's abuse and suffer the billionaire's humiliation to force a pathetic romance plotline.
"Host must follow the tragic trajectory and achieve the ultimate painful romance."
But the soul that woke up in that bed wasn't a weak, frightened girl. She was a dead Hollywood Oscar-winning actress. Why would a top-tier professional ever agree to play the weeping victim in such a garbage, B-list script?
Instead of trembling in fear as the System commanded, Aria looked at the billionaire and smiled. Using her flawless acting skills, she shattered his ego, extracted a hundred thousand dollars, and walked right out the door. Now, she was heading back to the Mcgee estate, ready to rip her money from her father's greedy hands and burn her sister's life to the ground.
9.6
I was only three and a half years old, living in a damp basement and beaten daily by Enoch Pruitt with a heavy leather whip.
"Get up, you useless waste of space!"
He always told me I was a stray he had picked out of the garbage.
But during one brutal beating that nearly stopped my heart, time froze, and a glowing figure called The Chronicler appeared.
"You are not an abandoned orphan, Clare. You carry the blood of the highest gods."
He revealed that I was the stolen daughter of the ultra-wealthy Barrett family.
Then, he showed me the horrific ending of my previous life.
I had died right here on this bloody dirt floor.
My real parents and three brothers went completely insane with grief, turning into ruthless monsters who destroyed themselves and the entire world to avenge me.
Meanwhile, the Pruitt family kept torturing me, locking me in a woodshed and feeding me moldy bread.
The memory of my bones breaking and my real mother's agonizing screams crushed my chest.
Why did I have to suffer like an animal while my true family tore the world apart looking for me?
This time, I refused to die in the mud.
I accepted my divine blood, my eyes glowing gold as I summoned a bolt of purple lightning to strike my abuser.
I just needed to survive the night.
Because my real father's heavily armed convoy was already tearing up the mountain, ready to burn this hell to the ground.
7.4
Ardella caught her fiancé Braden cheating with an actress in a downtown VIP room.
It was supposed to be a simple business marriage to save her family's bankrupt company.
But instead of supporting her, her uncle and aunt demanded she get on her knees and apologize to the cheating fiancé.
They didn't care about her dignity; they only cared about the merger capital.
Her cousin publicly mocked her, and her uncle threatened to permanently hide the police file revealing who murdered her father if she ruined the deal.
To make matters worse, Ethelbert Stone, the terrifying billionaire who raised her—and the man she was desperately trying to escape—publicly claimed he didn't know her.
Yet, moments later, he trapped her in his car, his eyes filled with a sick, possessive rage, reminding her that every inch of her belonged to him.
She was completely cornered by a cheating fiancé, a parasitic family, and an obsessed former guardian.
They had drained her father's trust fund dry and now wanted to sell her off to cover their debts.
They really thought she was just a helpless pawn they could manipulate and discard at will.
But they were dead wrong.
Ardella calmly wiped her hands after throwing scalding tea at her aunt's feet, staring down at her greedy family.
"The headline tomorrow will read: Price Group Bankrupt, Fails to Sell Niece to Cover Debts."
She backed up the video of her fiancé's betrayal to ten different servers and sent a text to her private investigator.
Tonight, at the elite society dinner, she was going to blow the scandal wide open and drag them all down with her.