The Divorced Heiress Takes The Crown
On our fourth wedding anniversary, I prepared a perfect home-cooked dinner for my husband, Carlisle.
But the moment he walked in, he threw a marital settlement agreement right onto the table.
"Sign it. Celine is back. There's no place for you here anymore."
His mother and sister immediately marched in to supervise my packing, calling me a barren gold-digger and trying to smash my late mother's only keepsake.
I signed the papers and walked out into the freezing night, thinking the nightmare was finally over.
But the next day, a heavily edited video of a childhood friend helping me into his car went viral online.
Carlisle's PR team released a public statement branding me a cheating wife, completely destroying my reputation.
He let the world tear me apart, using my ruined name to play the victim and justify bringing his first love home.
I had sacrificed my own dreams and endured his family's endless abuse for four years, only to be discarded like trash and framed for the exact emotional cheating he had been doing all along.
Watching the vile comments flood my screen, my heartbreak hardened into pure, unbreakable ice.
I calmly picked up my phone and dialed my father's number.
"Dad, it's time. I want to come home and take over Mcneil Industries."
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Chapter 2
Camilla stood inside the massive walk-in closet. She mechanically pulled her clothes off the velvet hangers.
She folded them and placed them into her suitcase. Her movements were slow and careful. It felt like a funeral. She was burying the last four years of her life.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the living room. Then, a familiar, high-pitched laugh pierced the quiet air.
Camilla's hands stopped moving. Her stomach knotted. Her eyes turned instantly cold. She dropped the sweater she was holding and walked out of the bedroom.
Billie was sitting right in the middle of the living room sofa. Her legs were crossed. In her hands, she was tossing a small, delicate wooden music box.
It was the only thing Camilla had left from her dead mother.
Diane stood near the kitchen island. She held a glass of red wine she had poured for herself. She looked around the apartment with a smug, entertained smile. "Don't look at us like that," Diane said, taking a leisurely sip of her wine. "Carlisle sent us to supervise your packing. We are here to ensure you don't walk away with any Stark family heirlooms you have absolutely no right to."
Billie saw Camilla walk in. She held the music box up high in the air. Her smile was pure poison.
"Look what I found!" Billie laughed. "A cheap little toy. Fits you perfectly, doesn't it?"
Camilla's voice was low. Her chest vibrated with suppressed rage.
"Put that down, Billie. It's not yours."
Billie stood up. She walked closer to Camilla. She shook the music box right in front of Camilla's face.
"Or what?" Billie taunted. "You'll cry? You're nothing but a discarded, useless piece of-"
Before Billie even finished her sentence, she opened her fingers.
The music box dropped toward the hardwood floor.
Camilla's pupils dilated. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her body moved completely on instinct. She dove forward and shoved her hands out.
She caught the wooden box just inches from the floor.
The sharp metal hinge on the bottom sliced deep into the palm of her hand. Bright red blood instantly welled up and dripped onto the floor.
Camilla pulled the box tight against her chest. She looked up at Billie. The fire in her eyes was lethal.
Billie just laughed harder.
"Oops! My bad," Billie sneered. "But really, it's just trash, like you."
Diane took a sip of her wine and added fuel to the fire.
"Billie, don't waste time with her," Diane said. "Carlisle wants her gone. Why don't you help her pack... by throwing her things out the window?"
Billie's eyes lit up. She spun around and grabbed a heavy crystal vase off the coffee table. Camilla had picked that vase out herself in Italy. Billie raised it above her head, ready to smash it.
Camilla's patience snapped.
She lunged forward. She ripped the heavy vase right out of Billie's hands. She slammed it back down onto the glass table. The loud bang shook the room.
Billie jumped back, clearly startled by the aggression. Then, her face twisted into pure fury. She raised her hand, her sharp acrylic nails aiming straight for Camilla's face.
"You bitch! How dare you-"
Camilla didn't flinch. She didn't back away.
Before Billie's nails could even touch her skin, Camilla raised her own hand.
Smack.
Camilla slapped Billie across the face with everything she had.
The sharp, cracking sound echoed off the high ceilings. Billie stumbled back. She grabbed her red cheek. Her eyes were wide with absolute shock. The room went dead silent.
Diane screamed.
"You hit her? ! You low-class-"
Camilla ignored Diane completely. She pointed a bloody finger straight at the front door. Her voice was freezing.
"I said, get out. And if you ever touch my things again, I'll do more than slap you."
Billie finally snapped out of her shock. She lunged at Camilla, screaming at the top of her lungs.
"I'll kill you!"
Right at that exact second, the front door swung open.
Carlisle stood in the doorway. The cold air from the hallway rushed in with him. His dark eyes swept over the chaotic living room.
Billie's entire demeanor changed instantly. She burst into fake, heavy tears. She ran to Carlisle and grabbed his arm.
"Carlisle! She hit me! That crazy woman hit me!"
Diane rushed over, pointing an accusing finger at Camilla.
"Carlisle, you see? She's violent! Unhinged! You need to call the police!"
Carlisle's gaze moved past his mother and sister. He looked at Camilla. He saw her clutching the music box to her chest. He saw the fresh blood dripping from her hand onto the floor.
A tiny, almost invisible flicker of emotion crossed his eyes. But he blinked, and it was gone. Replaced by the same empty coldness.
He walked slowly toward Camilla. His gaze flicked to her bleeding hand, then back to her face, completely indifferent to her injury. He didn't ask what happened. He didn't care. "I don't care who started this," his voice held zero warmth. "There will be no physical violence in my property. Apologize to her and end this farce."
Camilla tilted her head up. She stared straight into his dark eyes. A bitter, sarcastic smile pulled at her lips.
"Apologize? For defending myself and my property?"
Carlisle's jaw clenched tight. His voice dropped an octave.
"I won't repeat myself. Apologize, now. De-escalate this."
A wave of sickening anger washed over Camilla. Her chest heaved. She refused to look down. She took one step closer to him.
"She tried to smash my mother's music box," Camilla said, her voice shaking with rage. "She attacked me first. I will not apologize."
Billie hid behind Carlisle's broad back. She sobbed loudly.
"She's lying! I just touched it!"
Diane pressed harder. "Carlisle, this is unacceptable. Your sister is the victim here."
Before Carlisle could speak, his cell phone buzzed loudly in his pocket.
He pulled it out. He looked at the screen. His jaw tightened even more. He answered it.
"Celine," he said simply.
He turned his back on the room and walked out onto the balcony, leaving the heavy, suffocating tension hanging in the air.
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7.4
I single-handedly saved my family's corporate empire from a hostile takeover, securing our market share for the next decade.
But my grandfather didn't see me as a hero. He saw me as a flawed piece of inventory.
To calm the board and fix the reputation I supposedly ruined, he forced me into an arranged marriage, auctioning me off to the highest bidder.
Desperate, I turned to my childhood friend, Egnacio, the only person who ever promised to protect me.
But instead of saving me, he publicly humiliated me. He used my desperation as a networking opportunity, pitching my arranged marriage as a business deal to a ruthless private equity king named Dexter Mathews.
Later that night, I caught Egnacio holding my cruel cousin in his arms.
"What man wants to be with a woman who looks at you like she's planning a hostile takeover?"
Hearing him mock my pain shattered the last bit of hope I had.
I realized I was never family to them. I was just a sharp knife, used to cut down their enemies and then traded for cash before I got dull.
The heartbreak vanished, replaced by a cold, violent rage.
I didn't break, and I didn't run.
Instead, I got into the back of Dexter Mathews's car. He had watched my family tear me apart, but he didn't see a broken pawn. He saw a queen.
And together, we were going to burn their entire empire to the ground.
7.6
After an exhausting fourteen-hour flight, Katia returned to her Upper East Side penthouse, expecting the quiet comfort of the life she had built.
Instead, she found a pair of familiar red stilettos in the foyer and her fiancé, Caleb, tangled in their bedsheets with his twenty-two-year-old assistant.
She didn't scream or cry. She simply took off her three-carat engagement ring, threw it at his bare chest, and demanded he buy out her half of the penthouse by Friday.
Seeking to numb the sickening disgust, she got blackout drunk and crashed at a luxury hotel, accidentally stumbling into the wrong suite.
Thinking the imposing man inside was a high-end escort hired by her friend, she threw him over her shoulder and spent a wild night with him.
The next morning, she left five thousand dollars on his nightstand with a lipstick-stained note.
"Good Job."
For six years, she had funded Caleb's dreams and built his startup from the ground up, only to be treated like a lifeless ATM.
With ruthless precision, she spent the next two months systematically bankrupting his company, cutting off his venture capital, and erasing his life's work.
She felt no heartbreak, only a cold, calculating need to cleanse herself of his betrayal.
But when Katia finally returned to corporate headquarters to co-lead a massive merger, she literally crashed into the new Vice President.
Strong arms caught her waist, and the sharp scent of cedarwood and whiskey hit her like a freight train.
"You came back," Jackson whispered, his eyes burning as he stared at the woman who had treated him like a cheap gigolo.
9.3
Jessie's biological parents brought her back from a Rust Belt wasteland just to force her into marrying a paralyzed heir to save their bankrupt empire.
Three years later, when the global doomsday apocalypse hit, her own family shoved her into a swarm of infected corpses.
As she was being torn apart by mutated hounds, she was stunned by what she saw.
Her fake sister, Harley, was clutching the antique silver necklace she had stolen from Jessie—an heirloom that secretly contained a magical spatial dimension.
When the infected swarmed them, her biological mother didn't even look back.
"Jessie is just white trash, she is perfectly suited to buy us time to run!"
Harley used Jessie's stolen necklace to live in absolute safety and luxury, while Jessie's windpipe was ripped out in the rotting wasteland.
Until she died, Jessie didn't understand. She was their true flesh and blood.
Why did her parents hate her so much? Why was she sacrificed so easily while the fake daughter got everything?
Opening her eyes again, the blinding glare of a crystal chandelier stabbed into her retinas.
She was back in the Manhattan penthouse on the exact day they sold her off.
This time, Jessie calmly signed the marriage contract, demanded a one hundred million dollar buyout, and walked out to prepare for the apocalypse.
8.3
For three years, I hid my identity as a billionaire heiress to build a life with the man I loved. I gave up everything to support Ben's career, believing we were creating a future together from the ground up.
The day before our engagement, I overheard him with his boss, Haylie. He called me a "stepping stone," a poor, simple girl he was using to climb the corporate ladder and get closer to her.
He laughed about our "humble" life and mocked the silver ring on my finger, calling it a necessary prop. He was sleeping with her, taking credit for the multi-million dollar deal I secretly engineered, and saw my love as a naive distraction.
The man I sacrificed my entire world for saw me as less than nothing. My love didn't just die; it turned into ice-cold rage.
So I walked out of his life and straight into the arms of my family's biggest rival.
He offered me a deal I couldn't refuse.
"Marry me," Jaxson Banks said with a smirk. "And together, we'll burn their world to the ground."
7.2
Azura Briggs was just a broke college student working freezing valet shifts to pay her adoptive mother's crushing medical debt.
Her desperate life shattered the night a bulletproof Maybach violently cornered her in an alley, and a ruthless billionaire kidnapped her by mistake.
After a harrowing escape, Azura was forced to take a humiliating "plus-one" gig at a high-end gala just to survive. But her date turned out to be the billionaire's arrogant nephew, who promptly abandoned her to the wolves. Cornered by a sleazy executive and his psychotic wife, Azura was publicly slapped, her dress torn, and left bleeding on the floor while hundreds of elites watched in disgust.
Just as she prepared to fight to the death, the crowd violently parted. Hunter Mcintosh, the terrifying man who had kidnapped her days ago, dropped to his knees in the broken glass and wrapped his bespoke jacket around her trembling shoulders.
Azura was completely paralyzed. Why was the monster who threatened her life now destroying billionaires just to protect her?
But the illusion of safety didn't last. Trapped in his Maybach hours later, Hunter threw a draconian employment contract at her feet.
"Sign it, and her care is covered. Forever."
He knew exactly how to break her. He was offering to pay off her mother's debt, but only if she signed her life away to become his personal assistant. With no other way out, Azura picked up the heavy pen.
7.6
Elliana Lewis lay dying on the freezing concrete of a federal penitentiary, her ribs shattered by a guard's heavy boot.
She had been flawlessly framed for murder by the one person she trusted with her life: her sweet, innocent stepsister, Jovita.
During her final prison visit, Jovita wore their mother's diamonds and smiled cruelly behind the glass. She revealed she had liquidated the family company, caused their father's stroke, and paid the guards to ensure Elliana suffered a grueling, agonizing death.
"Your marriage was a joke from day one, Ellie. You have nothing left."
As her lungs stopped, the tragic truth finally dawned on Elliana. She had spent months screaming for a divorce and publicly humiliating her billionaire husband, Damon Stirling, believing his silence was weakness. She didn't realize until it was too late that his endless tolerance was the deepest form of protection. She had pushed away the only man who would have burned the world down to keep her safe.
Why had she been so incredibly stupid? Why did she blindly trust a monster and destroy the only person who truly loved her?
Then, a blinding light pierced her retinas. Elliana bolted upright, gasping for air on a massive, king-sized bed.
There was no pain. No broken bones. The digital clock on the nightstand flashed a date from exactly ten years ago.
It was the morning after her disastrous wedding night.
This time, she would tear Jovita's life apart piece by piece. And she would hold onto Damon so tightly that nothing could ever pry them apart.