The Ghost Surgeon's Revenge: Rising From Ashes
I was the trophy wife of Wall Street’s golden boy, Spencer Elliott. For three years, I played the part of the perfect, silent spouse, enduring his coldness and his mother’s venom. I did it all because Spencer was the only person paying for the experimental medical care keeping my dying mother alive.
But during a high-society gala, the gilded cage finally broke. I overheard Spencer laughing with his mistress about the "custom cocktail" he was feeding my mother. He wasn't paying for her cure; he was paying a doctor to systematically poison her with sedatives to keep me dependent and compliant until his forty-million-dollar inheritance vested.
When I tried to confront him, the mask of the perfect husband shattered. He dragged me by my hair into our bedroom and slammed me against the wall, his eyes cold and murderous.
"If you ever try to leave, your mother gets an overdose. Accidentally, of course."
He told me I was nothing more than a pawn for his payout. I realized then that my entire marriage was a calculated swindle, and the man I thought was my savior was actually my mother's executioner.
The betrayal was so deep it turned my blood to ice. Every sacrifice I had made and every humiliation I had swallowed was built on a monstrous lie. I felt a cold, sharp rage replacing my despair, a surgeon’s focus shifting from healing to a much more dangerous kind of excision.
That’s when Julian Sterling, the most feared man in the city, stepped out of the shadows to burn my world down. He rescued me from Spencer’s violence and promised me a life of freedom, but as I finally exhaled in his arms, my secret burner phone buzzed with an encrypted message. The man who originally ruined my family was back, and the last time he was seen, he was standing right next to Julian. Is my new protector my greatest ally, or the target I've been hunting all along?
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Chapter 7
The call came at 4:00 PM.
"Mrs. Elliott? This is St. Jude's Hospital. Your mother... there's been an incident."
Ayla didn't hear the rest. She dropped the phone, grabbed her keys, and ran.
By the time she reached the hospital, the paparazzi were already there. Flashes blinded her as she stepped out of the taxi.
"Mrs. Elliott! Is it true she tried to overdose?"
"Is the Elliott family cutting off funding?"
Ayla pushed through them, panic clawing at her throat.
Spencer was already in the lobby. He saw Ayla and immediately rushed over, his face a mask of concern. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into his chest.
"Darling," he said loudly, for the benefit of the cameras. "I'm so glad you're here. It's a tragedy."
Ayla tried to pull away, but his grip tightened. "Smile," he hissed in her ear. "Don't make me look bad."
They walked into the room together. Ayla's mother, Jane, looked tiny in the hospital bed. She was pale, tubes running out of her arms.
"Mom," Ayla choked out, rushing to her side.
She opened her eyes. They were glassy. "Ayla..."
Then she saw Spencer. Her face lit up with a weak, grateful smile. "Spencer... thank you. The doctors said... you paid for the private room."
"Of course, Jane," Spencer said, stepping up beside Ayla and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Anything for family."
Ayla felt sick. He was the one poisoning her, and she was thanking him.
"You're such a good man," Jane whispered. She reached out and took Ayla's hand. Her grip was weak. "Ayla, you're so lucky. He takes such good care of us."
"Mom, please," Ayla whispered. "Just rest."
Jane's eyes drifted to Ayla's neck. Her brow furrowed, then relaxed into a smile. "Oh... I see."
"See what?" Spencer asked.
"The mark," Jane said, pointing a shaking finger at Ayla's collarbone. "A love bite. I was worried... you two seemed distant. But I see the passion is still there."
Ayla froze. Her hand flew to her neck. In her panic to leave the clinic, she'd just thrown on a coat, completely forgetting the mark Julian had left in the car. The concealer she'd applied this morning must have smudged off with her panicked sweat.
Spencer went rigid. He stared at the spot on Ayla's neck. His eyes turned black. He knew. He knew he hadn't touched her in months.
"Yes," Spencer said, his voice tight, strained. "We are very... passionate."
He squeezed Ayla's shoulder so hard she thought the bone would snap.
"I need to speak to the doctor," Spencer said abruptly. "Ayla, come with me."
"I want to stay with Mom."
"Now, Ayla."
He dragged her out of the room. He didn't stop at the nurse's station. He pulled her into the emergency stairwell and shoved her against the concrete wall.
"Who is he?" he snarled.
He jammed his thumb into the hickey on Ayla's neck, pressing hard.
She cried out, trying to push him away. "Stop! You're hurting me!"
"You think you can humiliate me?" he shouted, spit flying. "In front of your mother? In front of the press? Who is the guy? The driver? The gardener?"
"It's none of your business!" Ayla yelled back, adrenaline overriding fear. "You have Chloe! You sleep with her in my bed! I don't owe you anything!"
He raised his hand.
Ayla flinched, closing her eyes.
The door to the stairwell banged open.
"Mr. Elliott."
Spencer froze, his hand in mid-air.
Dr. Thorne stood there, holding a clipboard. He looked calm, but his eyes were sharp.
"This is a hospital," Thorne said coolly. "Not a boxing ring. If you want to assault your wife, I suggest you do it somewhere without security cameras. Or better yet, don't do it at all."
Spencer lowered his hand slowly. He adjusted his tie, regaining his composure.
"We were just having a disagreement," Spencer said. He turned to Ayla, his eyes promising murder. "We'll finish this at home."
He stormed out.
Ayla slid down the wall, shaking.
Her phone buzzed.
Creditor: I'm in the parking lot. Thorne told me. Get in the car, Ayla. Now.
Ayla looked at the phone. Then at the door where Spencer had left. This was it. He was furious. He was cornered. He would confess everything tonight, if only to gloat. This was her one chance to get the evidence she needed.
"I can't," she typed back. "If I leave, he hurts Mom."
Creditor: If you go home with him tonight, he kills you.
Ayla stood up. She wiped her face. She wasn't a victim walking to her doom. She was a surgeon, walking into a contaminated O.R. to perform a necessary, dangerous excision.
She walked out to the parking lot. But she didn't get in Julian's car. She got in Spencer's limo.
Because she needed the recording. She needed him to admit what he was doing to her mother. She needed to destroy him completely.
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7.9
Hannah came home under a false identity, ready to keep her head down and avoid trouble. Then a near-drowning opened her eyes, and the family she had wanted gave her nothing but disappointment.
She severed every tie, shed the disguise, and rose in revenge as a miracle doctor, brilliant hacker, and feared underworld ruler. Shock followed her family at every turn.
Her parents regretted everything. Her eldest brother clung desperately to the bond of their shared blood, while her second brother gave up his entire fortune just to earn her forgiveness. Her third brother offered up his own body for a surgery-all to save her.
But Hannah stayed cold and built her empire alone. Only one deadly rival refused to be ignored.
"I was hired to kill you, mister."
"Then take my heart, too."
9.0
I had been a wife for exactly six hours when I woke up to the sound of my husband’s heavy breathing. In the dim moonlight of our bridal suite, I watched Hardin, the man I had adored for years, intertwined with my sister Carissa on the chaise lounge.
The betrayal didn't come with an apology. Hardin stood up, unashamed, and sneered at me. "You're awake? Get out, you frumpy mute." Carissa huddled under a throw, her fake tears already welling up as she played the victim. They didn't just want me gone; they wanted me erased to protect their reputations.
When I refused to move, my world collapsed. My father didn't offer a shoulder to cry on; he threatened to have me committed to a mental asylum to save his business merger. "You're a disgrace," he bellowed, while the guards stood ready to drag me away. They had spent my life treating me like a stuttering, submissive pawn, and now they were done with me.
I felt a blinding pain in my skull, a fracture that should have broken me. But instead of tears, something dormant and lethal flickered to life. The terrified girl who walked down the aisle earlier that day simply ceased to exist. In her place, a clinical system—the Valkyrie Protocol—booted up.
My racing heart plummeted to a steady sixty beats per minute. I didn't scream. I stood up, my spine straightening for the first time in twenty years, and looked at Hardin with the detachment of a surgeon looking at a tumor.
"Correction," I said, my voice stripped of its stutter. "You're in my light."
By dawn, I had drained my father's accounts, vanished into a storm, and found a bleeding Crown Prince in a hidden safehouse. They thought they had broken a mute girl. They didn't realize they had just activated their own destruction.
7.8
I had exactly forty-five minutes to get married, or I would lose the voting shares needed to stop my father from laundering millions through our family foundation. Everything was riding on this one legal signature at the City Clerk’s office.
But just as I reached the front of the line, my phone buzzed with a high-definition photo of my fiancé, Preston, tangled in sheets with a junior associate at a SoHo hotel. The man I was about to tie my life to was a fraud, and my deadline was ticking toward zero.
When I shoved the evidence in his face, he didn't even flinch. Instead, he gripped my wrist until the bone ground together, whispering that I was just a "junkie" fresh out of a Swiss clinic and that no one else would ever marry a liability with a personality disorder. My father was already standing by with a fraudulent medical affidavit, ready to force me into a conservatorship and strip me of my freedom the moment the clock hit 5 PM.
They had spent years using my fake "instability" as a leash, treating me like a broken doll while they bled the company dry. I was the only one with the evidence to take them down, yet I was being discarded like a sunk cost by the very men who were supposed to protect me.
I looked at Preston’s smug face and realized I didn't need a husband; I needed a predator. I scanned the room and spotted Dominik Mack, the "Vulture of Wall Street," a man who specialized in hostile takeovers and stripping men like my father of everything they owned.
I walked straight up to the most dangerous man in New York and offered him a business transaction.
"Do you want to get married?" I asked.
He looked at my trembling hands, then at the man chasing me, and adjusted his collar with clinical detachment.
"Deal," he said.
I didn't just find a groom; I found an accomplice. This wasn't a wedding anymore—it was a declaration of war.
8.8
She hides behind ugly suits and fake names. He's done trusting women. When they meet in a masked sex club, neither realizes they've been fighting each other across boardroom tables for eighteen months. At Taylor Industries, she's Joy Smith-the frumpy CFO who drowns her curves in shapeless polyester and wearing a wig. At home, she's the forgotten wife of a cheating lawyer who hasn't touched her in so long she's starting to wonder if she's broken. When she finds hot pink lace panties stuffed in her couch cushions...definitely not hers, it's not heartbreak she feels. It's freedom. Grayson Taylor doesn't do relationships anymore. Not after walking in on his actress fiancée with another woman. Now he channels everything into hostile takeovers and board meetings, especially the ones where his overcautious CFO fights him on every goddamn acquisition. Joy Smith is brilliant, infuriating, and funny when he pushes all her buttons. But Honey is tired of being invisible. Tired of never having felt real pleasure. So, when her best friend gives her the details of The Velvet Room-Manhattan's most exclusive masked club-she promises herself just one night. One night to find out if her husband's right, if she really is frigid, or if she's just never been touched by the right hands. She doesn't expect the masked stranger who claims her the second she walks in. Doesn't expect the chemistry that ignites between them, the way he makes her body sing, or the orgasms that leave her shaking. Doesn't expect him to hand her an email address with one command: "Only me. No one else touches you."
9.4
My Alpha mate abandoned me three years ago, leaving me as a disgraced Omega to raise our two children in a freezing, ruined hovel.
To keep them from starving, I was forced into a humiliating deal with a rogue wolf named Jax, who stole our pack rations and demanded my young son as payment.
The entire pack shunned me, my mother-in-law treated me like dirt, and my children lived in constant fear.
When I finally awakened my ancient Luna bloodline to fight off Jax and feed my kids, Ryker suddenly returned.
But he didn't come to save us. He blasted our door off its hinges, his eyes burning with a murderous rage.
He ignored our starving reality and accused me of selling our bloodline to the rogue.
"Where is the rogue? Who did you trade my bloodline to?!"
I had endured beatings, starvation, and utter humiliation just to keep his children breathing.
I had bled to protect our family. Yet, the moment he returned, he believed the lies of our tormentor and looked at me with the intent to kill.
Why was I the villain in the story of my own survival?
As his powerful inner wolf suddenly whined in submission for the magical food I had cooked, his Alpha command faltered into deep confusion.
He ordered me not to leave his sight until I explained everything.
But looking at the mate who had abandoned us, my mind was crystal clear.
The real question wasn't whether I would leave, but whether he was still worthy of letting me stay.
8.7
I finally stepped onto American soil after four years of exile, clutching my suitcase with white-knuckled desperation. My plan was simple: get to Manhattan, start my job, and stay as far away from the Newton family as possible.
But the moment I turned on my phone, Sterling Newton’s voice cut through the air like a blade. He had already sent a car; he didn't care about my plans, my apartment, or my freedom. He wanted me back in that suffocating mansion, and he expected me to obey.
When I arrived, the house felt like a mausoleum. My adoptive mother smothered me in a desperate, suffocating embrace, while my father and sister acted as if my departure had never happened. Then, the heavy front door thudded shut. Barron Newton had arrived.
He didn't greet me with warmth; he looked at me like a piece of furniture that had been moved out of place. He spent the entire dinner dismantling my resolve, using my deepest guilt as a weapon to force me to stay, making it clear that I was merely a prisoner in his gilded cage.
I felt like I was suffocating. How could he have so much power over my life? Why was he so determined to keep me trapped in this house, and what was he truly waiting for in the shadows of the night?
I retreated to my room, feeling the invisible chains tightening around my throat. Just as I thought I had found a way to fight back, a message from Fernando flashed on my screen, warning me that our original plan was in ruins. I realized then that I wasn't just fighting the Newtons—I was fighting a war on two fronts, and the countdown to my destruction had already begun.