The Heiress's choice
For three years, Elena endured a husband who barely acknowledged her, a mother-in-law who treated her like hired help, and a sister-in-law who sneered that she was nothing but a golddigger. All the while, her husband, Damien, pined after his "perfect" ex, like his own wife didn't exist.
Until the day Elena had enough.
She signed the divorce papers, packed a single bag, and vanished.
Damien was certain she'd come crawling back within a week. But the woman they all dismissed? Turns out Elena is a billionaire heiress, the CEO of the very empire Damien has been desperate to partner with and the one now signing his paychecks.
Oops.
Now Damien is spiraling, realizing too late what he lost. But Elena has choices she never had before. Like her childhood best friend, an NFL star who's been in love with her all along.
So who will it be?
The ex-husband who finally woke up?
The best friend who never left?
Or has Elena finally decided she's done with men who don't deserve her?
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Chapter 4
Damien's pov
"She's been gone for two weeks."
I paced around my office while Victoria watched with concern.
"You know she'll come back," Victoria said. "She's probably staying with a friend, trying to make you worry."
"She doesn't have friends."
That came out wrong, but it was true. In our three years of marriage, I'd never met any friends of Elena's. Not one. She was always just... there. At home and alone.
Have I ever asked why? Had I ever wondered where her family was, or what she did before we met?
No. I'd never asked because I never cared to know. I told myself she liked the quiet, that she preferred small circles and soft spaces. But maybe she'd simply learned that I didn't have room for her world in mine.
Victoria gave a little hum. "You sound guilty."
"I'm not," I said too quickly.
"Then stop worrying," she replied. "Where can she go? She'll eventually run out of money and come crawling back."
But something felt wrong. Elena had left with almost nothing. Just one bag, no credit cards taken, no money withdrawn from our joint account, not that there was much there anyway. And yet, she didn't call or text. Didn't even leave a note behind.
It was like she'd vanished into thin air. And it made me uneasy.
"Have you tried her phone?" Victoria asked.
"Disconnected."
"See? She's just being dramatic. Give her another week to cool off."
"Another week," I muttered. "You make it sound like she's on vacation or something."
Victoria smirked. "Well maybe she needed one from you."
Another week. I could do that.
Except at home, my mother just wouldn't shut up about it.
"I told you she was trash," Margaret said over dinner. Jessica nodded in agreement, mouth full of expensive steak. "Running away like a coward. At least now everyone will finally see her for what she really is."
"She asked for a divorce," I reminded them.
"Which proves she was a gold digger all along!" Margaret slammed her hand on the table. "She probably already found some other man with money. You're better off, Damien. Much better off."
Was I though?
The house felt empty without Elena. Even in silence, she used to fill up the space. Her footsteps and soft hums always filled the house. Now, there was no one asking about my day, no quiet presence in the background and no one making sure there was coffee in the morning or that my favorite shirts were cleaned.
I hadn't really realized how much she did until she was gone.
"Focus on work," Victoria advised. "That's what matters. In fact, I have news. Sterling Global is looking for new partners. If we could land a meeting with them..."
"Sterling Global?" I sat up straight. "They're massive. We're nowhere near big enough to even..."
"Let me worry about that," Victoria said with a mysterious smile. "I have connections. But you need to focus, Damien. This could make your career. This could make you a major player in the field."
Sterling Global. One of the biggest corporations in the world. If I could land a partnership with them... Elena would see. She'd see that leaving me was a mistake.
Except Elena was gone, and I had no idea where she was.
"Have you considered hiring a private investigator?" Victoria asked.
"To find my wife?"
"To protect yourself. What if she's planning something, Damien? What if she's gathering evidence for the divorce to take you for everything?"
"Take me for what?" I asked bitterly. "My mother's pearls?"
Victoria smirked. "You'd be surprised at what women go after."
Take me for what? I didn't have anything. All I had was a mid-level executive salary, a decent apartment that was mostly empty now, some savings.
But Victoria had a point. Women did that, didn't they? Disappeared and came back with lawyers.
"Maybe," I said.
"I know someone. He's very discreet and efficient." Victoria pulled out her phone. "Let me make a call."
---
Three weeks after Elena left, the private investigator came to my office.
"Mr. Blackwell, I have to be honest. I can't find her."
"What do you mean you can't find her?"
"I mean she's vanished completely. No credit card usage, no phone activity, no travel records. It's like she completely ceased to exist."
"That's not possible," I said. "She doesn't have the means."
The man's expression didn't change. "Then she's a lot smarter than you thought."
That didn't make sense. People couldn't just disappear not unless they had help and not unless they had resources.
But Elena had nothing. No family, no money, and no connections.
"Keep looking," I demanded.
"Sir, I've been doing this for twenty years. When someone disappears completely, they either had help from someone with serious resources, or..." He trailed off.
"Or what?"
"Or they didn't need help because they had resources of their own."
"That's impossible."
The investigator shrugged. "Then I don't know what to tell you. Your wife is a ghost."
After he left, I sat in my office, staring at my phone. At my empty message thread with Elena. None of this added up.
The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. Elena wasn't the type to pull stunts like this.
Where was she? Was she okay? Was she safe?
Why did I suddenly care so much?
"Damien?" Victoria leaned in. I forgot she was even here. "Good news. I got us a meeting with Sterling Global. Next month."
"Next month?"
"With the new CEO. No one knows who they are yet, just that they go by E. Sterling, very mysterious. But this is our chance."
"Our chance," I repeated. My voice didn't sound like mine. "Right."
Business. Career. The things that actually mattered. So why couldn't I stop thinking about Elena's face when she asked if I loved her?
Why couldn't I stop remembering the way she'd looked at those divorce papers like her heart was breaking?
"This is what you wanted," I muttered to myself.
But was it? Was it really?
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8.4
Ayleen Avery was just a struggling hotel worker trying to survive her shift. But during a sudden blackout, she accidentally stumbled into the pitch-black VIP suite of a ruthless billionaire driven mad by chronic insomnia.
Calmed only by her unique natural scent of roses and rain, the terrifying man attacked her from the shadows and forced himself on her. Terrified and broken, Ayleen fled at dawn, unknowingly leaving behind her late mother's antique rose necklace in his bed.
Her greedy coworker found the necklace, claimed to be the woman from that night, and was instantly swept into a life of luxury. Meanwhile, Ayleen was blackmailed into a forced marriage with her attacker—Cassius Doyle—to save her adoptive father from prison. Deceived by the stolen necklace, Cassius believed Ayleen was a manipulative spy. He brought the coworker into their home and paraded her around the master bedroom.
"In this house, you are lower than the dirt on my shoes."
He choked Ayleen, forced her to sleep in a damp storage room, and treated her with violent disgust while pampering the thief.
Ayleen was suffocating in absolute despair. She had lost her innocence, her freedom, and her mother's only relic to a vicious liar. She couldn't understand how this all-powerful man could be so completely blind. Why couldn't he recognize the very scent that had cured his agonizing madness?
Staring at the dark bruises he had just left on her neck, Ayleen wiped the blood from her lip. She would endure this three-month marriage to secure her family's safety, but once the contract ended, she would expose the truth and tear down the fake savior he cherished so much.
7.2
Blaire woke up in a Manhattan penthouse, her body covered in bruises and her innocence stolen.
Before she could process the terror, her adoptive sister Danita burst in, acting heartbroken and accusing Blaire of shamelessly seducing the powerful Kamryn Lane. Kamryn threw a one-million-dollar check at Blaire's bleeding face, calling her a calculating gold digger.
That night, Blaire overheard a conversation in the family study that shattered her entire reality.
"Once she gives birth to the Lane family's seed, we'll stage an accident, drain her blood, and transplant her healthy heart into your chest."
Her adoptive mother and Danita were celebrating the success of their trap. She wasn't an adopted daughter; she was a living organ bank and a disposable surrogate. Even her adoptive brother, Calhoun, knew everything, trapping her in the dark hallways with a sick, possessive obsession to ensure she never escaped.
The horrific truth suffocated her. The family that had taken her in had raised her like livestock for slaughter. How could they smile at her every day while planning to carve out her heart?
Terrified but burning with a desperate will to survive, Blaire swallowed a Plan B pill to ruin their surrogate plot and fled the estate. To get the money and power she needed to crush her adoptive family, she pulled out Kamryn Lane's business card. This time, she would make a deal with the devil.
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."
9.1
For three years, June played the perfect, submissive wife to billionaire Augustus Pruitt, hoping a child would finally warm his cold heart and secure their marriage.
But when she cautiously suggested they have a baby, he looked at her with pure, unfiltered disgust.
"A woman who schemes her way into a marriage doesn't get to carry my blood."
He sneered, leaving immediately to lavish his mistress with diamonds. The nightmare only escalated from there. Augustus bought the one painting June desperately wanted—a piece she had secretly created herself—just to gift it to his mistress. He publicly outbid June at the gallery, mocking her lack of wealth, and left her to collapse in the freezing rain. When the storm gave her a severe 104-degree fever and she nearly died on their staircase, he didn't even stay by her hospital bed. Instead, he sent an assistant with a box of jewelry to buy her silence, then forced her to attend a family dinner where his mother and sister viciously mocked her barren womb and background.
Looking at Augustus, who sat there casually cutting his steak while his family tore her apart, the last flicker of hope in June's chest sputtered and died.
She finally understood that her three years of bleeding devotion were nothing but a pathetic joke to them.
She dropped her silverware, the sharp clatter silencing the entire room. She wasn't going to be their punching bag anymore. It was time to finalize the divorce papers, reclaim her hidden identity as the world-renowned artist 'mr.sun', and make them all regret it.
8.7
I was trapped in a greasy diner by my own mother.
She was forcing me to marry my abusive cousin because he had paid her twenty thousand dollars.
To escape, I used a contract marriage app and begged a complete stranger to marry me at City Hall that very day.
Ethan drove a cheap Ford and wore a plain suit. I thought he was just an ordinary guy needing a fake wife.
When my mother found out, she brought thugs to destroy my flower shop—my only home and livelihood.
To protect Ethan from her endless extortion, I shielded him and screamed that he was bankrupt and drowning in credit card debt.
My mother fled in disgust, and Ethan took me into his apartment for the night.
But out of trauma and habit, I locked my bedroom door, muttering that he must be old and desperate.
He stormed out into the freezing night, leaving me terrified that I had ruined my only lifeline.
I didn't understand why he was so furiously offended, completely unaware that my "broke" husband was actually the most ruthless billionaire in New York, and I had just trampled his massive ego.
The next morning, his face was a mask of ice as he dragged me back to City Hall to annul the marriage and get rid of me.
"Annulment. Now," he demanded.
But the clerk just popped her gum and slid a pink paper across the counter.
"State law changed. Mandatory thirty-day cooling-off period."
9.5
Jennifer, a fiercely independent entrepreneur, never imagined that running her company would put her in the orbit of Joseph, a reclusive billionaire with a dangerous agenda. Their professional clashes ignite a forbidden attraction, drawing them into a passionate affair that threatens to unravel everything Jennifer has built. As corporate sabotage, hidden heirs, and dark secrets from Joseph's past begin to surface, Jennifer's world spirals into a web of betrayal, desire, and moral peril. In a story where power and love collide, nothing is as it seems and every choice could be lethal.