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 7
Camilla sat on the edge of the cheap mattress in her temporary apartment.
She scrolled through the endless sea of hateful comments on her phone. Her face was paper-white. Her fingers trembled so hard she almost dropped the device. But her eyes were turning colder by the second.
Her phone buzzed with an incoming call. It was her father, Donnie Mcneil.
"Camilla!" Donnie's voice was frantic. "What's going on? The news is saying... Is it true? Are you okay?"
Camilla took a deep breath. She forced her voice to stay steady.
"Dad, I'm fine. It's all lies. Carlisle is... manipulating the story. I need to handle this myself."
Donnie roared into the phone. "That bastard! I'll call him! I'll-"
"No, Dad. Please," Camilla interrupted firmly. "Let me deal with it. I'll explain everything later. I love you."
She hung up the phone. A fierce, burning resolve ignited in her chest.
She walked to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She applied a light layer of makeup to hide the dark circles under her eyes. She put on a sharp, tailored black blazer.
She walked out of the apartment and hailed a cab straight to the Stark Enterprises headquarters.
She walked through the revolving glass doors of Stark Tower. Her heels clicked loudly against the marble floor.
Tiffany Reed, the front desk receptionist, saw her coming. Tiffany's eyes darted nervously around the lobby. She stepped out from behind the desk to block Camilla's path.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Stark... I mean, Ms. Mcneil," Tiffany stammered. "Do you have an appointment?"
Camilla didn't even slow down. Her voice was sharp and commanding.
"No appointment. But Carlisle will see me. Now."
Tiffany reached for her radio to call security. Camilla ignored her. She walked straight to the private executive elevator. She didn't bother with her deactivated access card. Instead, she locked eyes with Tiffany. "Call the top floor," Camilla ordered, her tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. "Tell Carlisle I am here to sign the final asset transfer documents for the divorce. If he wants my signature on the remaining shares, he will let me up this second." Tiffany swallowed hard, her hands trembling as she picked up the phone. A moment later, the receptionist nodded nervously and pressed a button under the desk. The private elevator chimed, its doors sliding open.
The elevator shot up to the top floor. When the doors opened, Camilla stepped out. The entire floor went dead silent. Employees stared at her, whispering behind their hands.
Camilla ignored them. She walked straight to Carlisle's massive corner office.
The heavy wooden door was cracked open. A soft, whiny voice drifted out into the hallway.
"Carlisle, I'm so scared... What if she comes after me? She must hate me so much..."
Camilla's footsteps stopped. She recognized Celine's voice instantly. Her stomach violently contracted. A wave of pure, unadulterated rage washed over her.
She shoved the door open. It slammed against the wall with a loud bang.
Inside, Carlisle was sitting behind his massive mahogany desk. Celine was sitting in the chair right next to him. She was leaning forward, her delicate hand resting on Carlisle's forearm. She looked like a fragile, frightened bird.
The second Celine saw Camilla, she snatched her hand back. She gasped and pressed her hand to her chest, acting terrified.
Carlisle's face instantly darkened. He stood up abruptly.
"How did you get up here?" he demanded.
Camilla didn't even look at him. She locked her eyes onto Celine. Her voice was pure venom.
"So, this is the 'first love'? The homewrecker who couldn't wait to slither back?"
Celine's eyes instantly filled with tears. A single tear rolled down her perfectly powdered cheek. Her voice shook.
"Camilla, please... I never meant to hurt you. Carlisle and I... we just couldn't deny our feelings..."
Carlisle immediately stepped around the desk. He stood directly in front of Celine, shielding her with his body. He glared at Camilla.
"That's enough, Camilla! Don't you dare speak to Celine like that!"
Camilla let out a harsh, bitter laugh. Seeing him protect another woman right in front of her face felt like a knife twisting in her gut. But it also felt completely ridiculous.
"Protecting her? In my face?" Camilla sneered. "You really have no shame, Carlisle."
Carlisle's eyes were cold and hard. "You're the one with no shame, coming here after what you did. Security is on their way. Leave now, before I have you removed."
Camilla took a step closer to him. She refused to back down.
"I'm not leaving until I get the truth out! You lied to everyone! You emotionally cheated on me for years, and now you're painting me as the villain?"
Celine suddenly buried her face in her hands. She let out a loud, pathetic sob.
"It's all my fault... I should just disappear... Carlisle, maybe I should go..."
Carlisle immediately turned and placed a comforting hand on Celine's shoulder. Then he turned back to Camilla. He looked at her like she was a piece of trash on his shoe.
"You see what you're doing? You're upsetting her. Celine is innocent in all this. She doesn't deserve your harassment."
Camilla stared at Celine's fake tears. A sudden, overwhelming wave of exhaustion hit her. Her shoulders dropped slightly. She realized in that exact moment that fighting with these two was completely pointless. Carlisle was blind, and Celine was a master manipulator.
She took a step back. The burning anger in her eyes died out. It was replaced by a dead, hollow emptiness.
"Innocent," Camilla whispered flatly. "Right."
Two large security guards rushed into the office.
"Escort Ms. Mcneil out of the building," Carlisle ordered coldly. "She's not allowed on the premises again."
The guards stepped toward her. Camilla didn't fight them. She didn't scream. She just looked at Carlisle one last time. There was no anger left. No sadness. Just absolute, chilling disappointment.
She turned around and walked out of the office. The guards followed closely behind her. She kept her spine perfectly straight. She walked into the elevator and pressed the lobby button.
The second the metal doors slid shut, a single tear escaped her eye. She wiped it away viciously. Her eyes hardened into steel.
Up in the office, Carlisle stood by the floor-to-ceiling window. He watched Camilla's tiny figure walk out of the building and onto the busy street. A strange, hollow feeling opened up in his chest.
But Celine quickly walked up behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
"Carlisle, thank you for protecting me," she whispered softly. "But I'm worried... what if she tries to hurt you?"
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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.