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 5
The bass from the speakers vibrated through the floorboards of Club Xanadu.
Camilla sat in the dark corner of a VIP booth. She was wearing a tight, black slip dress that hugged her curves. It was a dress the "perfect Stark wife" would never wear. The glass table in front of her was littered with empty shot glasses.
Her eyes were hazy from the alcohol, but a wild, reckless sense of freedom burned in her chest.
She picked up a half-full glass of tequila. She raised it to the empty air in front of her.
"To divorce!" she slurred, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "To freedom! To being a 'useless, barren' ex-wife!"
She threw her head back and swallowed the burning liquid. It burned her throat, but she welcomed the pain.
A random man in a cheap suit slid into the booth next to her. He leaned in too close. He smelled like cheap cologne and desperation.
"Hey beautiful, alone tonight?" the man purred. "Let me buy you a-"
Camilla slowly turned her head. She gave him a look so cold it could freeze water.
"Not interested. Get lost," she spat.
The man scowled and quickly slid out of the booth, disappearing into the crowd.
A few seconds later, the velvet curtain to the VIP booth was pushed aside. A tall, incredibly handsome man walked in. It was Cristobal West.
He took one look at the empty glasses and Camilla's flushed face. His jaw tightened. He walked straight over to her.
Cristobal reached out and gently pulled the empty glass from her fingers. His voice was soft, but firm.
"Camilla, that's enough. You're drunk."
Camilla blinked heavily. She looked up at him. It took her brain a second to recognize the face of her childhood friend and her father's business partner. A sad smile touched her lips.
"Cristobal? What are you doing here?"
Cristobal sat down right next to her. He naturally wrapped a warm, supportive arm around her shaking shoulders.
"Your father called me," Cristobal said, his voice laced with quiet concern. "He said Carlisle was acting erratically and that you weren't answering your phone. I came looking for you. You shouldn't be alone like this."
The warmth of his body broke the last of her defenses. The alcohol made her weak. She leaned her head against his shoulder. A thick lump formed in her throat.
"He divorced me, Cristobal," she whispered, her voice cracking. "For his first love. Said I was useless..."
Cristobal's hand rubbed gentle circles on her back. His eyes darkened with pure anger.
"He's a fool, Camilla," Cristobal said fiercely. "A blind, arrogant fool."
Camilla suddenly lifted her head. Her eyes flashed with stubborn pride despite the tears.
"I'm not useless. I'm not. I can be more than his wife..."
Cristobal looked down at her. His heart ached. He reached up and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"I know you can. I've always known. You're talented, smart, beautiful..."
Camilla stared at him. The alcohol blurred the lines of reality. She reached up and let her fingertips brush against his jawline.
Cristobal... you always..." she mumbled, her eyelids drooping.
Cristobal caught her uninjured hand. He held it against his chest. He leaned down and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead.
"I'm here for you. Always."
Right at that exact moment, the velvet curtain was pulled back again.
Gregorio Cooley stood in the entrance. He was Carlisle's best friend. His eyes went wide as saucers as he stared at Camilla and Cristobal huddled together.
Gregorio quickly stepped back into the shadows before they could see him.
Inside the booth, Cristobal stood up. He gently pulled Camilla to her feet.
"Come on, let me take you home. You need to rest."
Camilla leaned heavily against his side. They walked out of the booth together. As they walked down the dark, neon-lit hallway, Camilla's purse slipped from her shoulder. Cristobal quickly bent down to catch it. His arm wrapped tightly around her waist to keep her from falling. In the dim light, they looked incredibly intimate.
Gregorio stood behind a pillar. His hands shook as he held up his phone and recorded the entire thing.
He immediately dialed Carlisle's number.
"Carlisle, you need to get to Club Xanadu now," Gregorio said, his voice rushing. "It's about your wife... I mean, ex-wife. She's here with some guy, and they're..."
There was two seconds of dead silence on the other end of the line.
"I'll be there," Carlisle's voice was pure ice.
Outside the club, Cristobal helped Camilla into the passenger seat of his sports car. He leaned over her to buckle her seatbelt. Camilla was already half-asleep.
"Never again..." she mumbled into the leather seat.
Cristobal looked at her sleeping face. His eyes were heavy with years of hidden love.
"I'll take care of you, Camilla," he whispered. "Starting tonight."
He shut the door and drove away into the night.
Ten minutes later, Carlisle's Maybach screeched to a halt in front of the club. He stormed through the front doors, his face dark with fury.
He found the empty VIP booth. He saw the empty shot glasses. He demanded the club manager show him the security footage.
Carlisle watched the screen. He saw Cristobal wrapping his arm around Camilla's waist. He saw them leaving together.
A violent, sickening wave of jealousy crashed into his chest. His veins popped against his skin.
He pulled out his phone and dialed Cristobal's number.
"Cristobal West," Carlisle growled, sounding like a demon. "Where are you taking my wife?"
Cristobal's voice came through the speaker, calm and mocking.
"Your 'wife'? I thought you divorced her tonight, Carlisle. She's not your property anymore."
Carlisle grabbed an empty glass off the table and hurled it against the brick wall. It shattered into a hundred pieces.
"I'm asking you one last time. Where. Is. She?"
Cristobal laughed coldly. "Somewhere you'll never find her. Don't bother."
The line went dead.
Carlisle stood in the middle of the ruined booth. His chest heaved. He stared at the broken glass on the floor. He had wanted this divorce. He had demanded it. So why did the thought of her with another man make him want to burn the entire city to the ground?
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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.