The Jilted Ex-Wife's Undercover Billionaire Assistant
Carlee signed the divorce papers without a second of hesitation, ending a three-year marriage to a billionaire husband she had never even met.
She walked away with nothing, publicly cutting ties with both the Vaughan empire and her toxic family to launch her own jewelry design studio.
Her family immediately retaliated. They mocked her as a useless, abandoned trophy wife and ruthlessly blacklisted her new company from every major supplier in the city, intent on forcing her to crawl back.
Exhausted but defiant, she hired a handsome, seemingly broke valet she bumped into outside a hotel to be her personal assistant.
She even bought him a tailored suit, pitying his maxed-out credit cards and his desperate need for a paycheck.
But things quickly stopped making sense.
Why did this humble assistant possess such lethal combat skills, effortlessly snapping a two-hundred-pound bodyguard's wrist to protect her?
And why did top-tier luxury store managers bow to him in absolute, trembling terror?
"Whatever is happening, I will handle it."
Carlee found a foolish comfort in her poor assistant's reassuring voice.
She had absolutely no idea that the man sitting at the wobbly desk in her cramped office was Braden Vaughan—her legally divorced ex-husband. And the ruthless billionaire was currently orchestrating a global financial massacre from the shadows, entirely obsessed with clearing her path to the top.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 2
Carlee felt a sudden flush of heat burn the tips of her ears.
She took a half-step back, putting distance between her chest and his solid frame. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
She tilted her chin up, forcing her face into a mask of cold authority.
"Just get a wet towel," she commanded, pointing a trembling finger at the muddy hem of her coat.
Braden lowered his gaze to the stain. The corner of his mouth twitched upward in a ghost of a smile. He turned and walked toward the adjacent private restroom.
Carlee watched his back disappear through the door. She swallowed hard. Her mind raced, unable to comprehend how a man parking cars possessed such dominant bone structure and an aura that screamed power.
A moment later, Braden walked back out. He held a steaming white towel in his right hand.
He didn't hand it to her.
Instead, he stepped directly into her personal space and dropped down onto one knee.
Carlee's eyes went wide. Her muscles locked up. The sudden proximity of his broad shoulders hovering right at her waist sent a jolt of electricity down her spine.
Braden pressed his long fingers against the fabric of her coat, the damp heat of the towel seeping through to her skin. His movements were gentle, but there was a heavy, undeniable dominance in the way he held her in place. He began to wipe away the mud.
He tilted his head up. He looked at her from his kneeling position. His dark eyes dragged over her face, studying her like a predator memorizing the pulse of its prey.
Carlee's mouth went completely dry.
Desperate to break the suffocating tension, she cleared her throat.
"The cleaning efficiency at this hotel is severely lacking," she said, her voice sounding thinner than she wanted.
Braden let out a low chuckle. The vibration of his laugh traveled through the air and settled in her bones.
"My apologies," Braden said, his thumb pressing firmly against the hem of her coat. "I'm a bit inexperienced."
He finished wiping the stain. He stood up in one fluid motion.
The sudden return of his towering height forced Carlee to look up again. He tossed the soiled towel into a nearby brass bin.
Carlee slipped her arms out of the trench coat and draped it over her forearm. The movement revealed the deep V-neck of her tailored evening gown.
Braden's eyes dropped to her chest. His gaze darkened, the pupils blowing wide for a fraction of a second before he masked it.
Carlee caught the look. A rush of satisfaction flooded her veins.
She opened her clutch and pulled out a thick, gold-foiled business card. She pinched it between her index and middle fingers and held it up to his chest.
Braden looked down at the card. It read: C.B. Designs - Founder. He didn't move his hands.
Carlee assumed he was intimidated. She flashed him a confident, brilliant smile.
"A face like yours is entirely wasted parking cars," Carlee said smoothly.
She took a step closer. "I just launched my own studio. I need a personal assistant. Someone who looks presentable and knows how to read a room. Are you interested?"
Braden stared at her. A flash of absolute, staggering disbelief hit his eyes. His legal wife was standing in a hotel hallway, offering to pay him to be her assistant.
He shifted his weight, feigning hesitation.
"Would the salary be enough to survive in New York?" Braden asked, keeping his face perfectly blank.
Carlee named a figure that was double the standard market rate. "And if you perform well, the bonuses are substantial."
Braden bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
He reached up. His long fingers slid over hers as he pulled the card from her grip. He made sure the rough pad of his thumb dragged slowly across her knuckles.
He slipped the gold-foiled card into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, pressing it flat against his chest, right over his heart. The movement was slow, deliberate, and dripping with unspoken heat.
"I will give your generous offer some serious thought," Braden murmured.
The heavy chime of the grandfather clock at the end of the hall echoed through the corridor, signaling the start of the gala. The sound shattered the thick bubble of tension between them.
Carlee pulled her hand back, her skin still burning from his touch.
"Don't miss a good opportunity," she warned him.
She turned around and walked away, her hips swaying with deliberate confidence as she headed toward the ballroom doors.
Braden stood perfectly still, watching the sway of her dress until she disappeared around the corner.
He reached up and pulled the fake, clear-lensed glasses from his face. His eyes instantly turned cold, sharp, and incredibly dangerous.
Denzel, his executive assistant, stepped out from the shadows of a nearby alcove. Sweat beaded on Denzel's forehead.
"Sir," Denzel whispered. "Should I have security wipe the cameras in this hallway?"
"No," Braden said, his voice like cracking ice. "Pull every piece of registration data and financial history on a company called C.B. Designs. I want it in ten minutes."
Denzel stared in horror as his billionaire boss pulled the business card back out of his pocket, rubbing his thumb over the embossed letters. Denzel swallowed his questions and nodded.
Braden tucked the card away. A dark, predatory smile curved his lips. His wife wanted to play a game. He was going to give her exactly what she asked for.
He turned and walked toward his private elevator, ready to watch from the shadows as his proud little swan walked into the ballroom.
You may also like
9.5
My boyfriend, Jefferson, convinced me to give up my Yale scholarship for him. He was my secret, my escape from the shame of my mother's past, and I threw away my future for our love.
Then, at a gala, he publicly announced his engagement to Aubrey Carroll-the girl who made my high school years a living hell.
He trapped me in his mansion, forcing me to become her personal servant. She tortured me daily, culminating in her brutally killing our dog, Charlie, with a garden trowel.
When her friends arrived, they joined in, stripping me half-naked and live-streaming my panic attack for the world to see.
The man who once promised to protect me watched as they destroyed me.
But as I lay bleeding out on the floor, it wasn't an ambulance that arrived. It was the private security of Alexzander Stevens-my estranged, billionaire grandfather.
He revealed I was his sole heiress, and now, we were going to make them pay for every last tear.
9.2
Averie spent hours preparing a perfect third-anniversary dinner for her billionaire husband, Jarett Sharp.
Instead of celebrating, she received an anonymous photo of him intimately holding another woman.
When Jarett finally arrived, he didn't even look guilty.
"Candida. It's okay. Don't be scared. I'm on my way."
He simply took a call from his mistress, shoved Averie aside, and walked right back out the door.
That same night, Averie's father suffered a massive heart attack.
The hospital demanded a half-million-dollar deposit before they would operate.
But when Averie frantically tried to use the emergency medical trust card Jarett had given her, it was declined.
Jarett had deliberately frozen her access to the funds just hours earlier.
While she begged his assistant on the phone, Jarett refused to be disturbed, busy wrapping his expensive coat around his mistress in the hospital garden.
Averie collapsed in the hallway, realizing the man she loved was deliberately letting her father die.
In the end, a childhood friend stepped in to pay the bill and save her father's life, while her billionaire husband later pinned her to their bed, throwing a check at her and reminding her he had bought her for three million dollars.
Averie didn't shed a single tear.
She slowly ripped his check into pieces, left her massive diamond ring on the dresser, and walked out into the cold New York night with nothing but her old suitcase.
She pulled out her phone and dialed her old ballet professor.
She wasn't just going to leave Jarett Sharp. She was going to destroy him.
8.2
My ex-boyfriend of three years, Axel, married a perfect wealthy heiress.
I attended his wedding, not to mourn our relationship, but because he had spent the last three years bleeding me dry.
He left me with absolutely nothing but a final notice from the hospital for my dying brother's life support.
Instead of feeling guilty, Axel cornered me in the church hallway, crushing my wrist.
"I'll set you up with an apartment. You won't have to work another day in your life."
He thought he could buy my silence with spare change, while leaving my seventeen-year-old brother, Julian, to die when his treatments were cut off the very next day.
When I refused to be his dirty little secret, Axel used his power to utterly destroy my acting career.
He had my talent agency terminate my contract under a fake morals clause, publicly humiliated me on set, and blacklisted me across the entire industry.
I was shoved out into the freezing rain, left with a torn dress and absolutely no way to pay the five hundred thousand dollar medical bill.
He actually believed he could step on my brother's dying body to build his own fake empire.
He thought I was just a weak, pathetic victim who would eventually crawl back to him on my knees.
But he forgot about the one monster he was absolutely terrified of: his legitimate, ruthless billionaire half-brother, Jace Bauer.
Looking at the three positive pregnancy tests hidden in my drawer, I stepped right in front of Jace's armored Maybach.
"Marry me, and I'll give you the heir you need to secure your empire."
9.5
Frances survived a horrific car crash, only to return to a suffocating life. Her wealthy husband, Baron, and his domineering mother were now relentlessly pressuring her to adopt a "poor, distant relative" named Jagger as the heir to their billionaire empire.
But on her way to sign the adoption papers, a violent vision flashed in her mind. The crash wasn't an accident. She saw her car in flames, while Baron watched with cold, calculating eyes. Beside him stood an older Jagger, who calmly muttered the chilling truth.
"The problem is solved."
A private investigator soon confirmed her worst nightmares. Jagger wasn't a charity case; he was Baron's illegitimate son. The family had been illegally funneling offshore money to fund his elite lifestyle. Worse, Baron's ultimate plan was to label Frances mentally unstable, lock her away in a Swiss sanatorium for life, and bring in Jagger's biological mother to take her place.
For years, Frances had played the perfect, obedient wife in their corporate marriage contract. How could they be so ruthlessly evil, plotting her agonizing death just to legitimize their dirty bloodline and steal her trust fund?
But she was no longer the fragile puppet they thought she was. At the high-stakes board meeting, with all eyes expecting her to submit, she put the expensive pen down.
"I refuse."
Instead of adopting their bastard son, she slammed down an SEC whistleblower threat, forced a new will, and introduced her own handpicked heir. The war had just begun.
7.6
Cassie was sold to a terrifying billionaire as a substitute bride.
To protect herself, she glued a grotesque, fake burn scar to her face.
Her adoptive family and her ex-fiancé had stolen her massive trust fund, locked her in an asylum for years, and finally threw her to the wolves. They expected the ruthless Dane Frederick to torture and kill her the moment he saw her ruined face.
At her ex's grand engagement party, her family publicly humiliated her. They mocked her cheap clothes, laughed at her scarred cheek, and even raised their hands to beat her, fully believing she was a helpless freak with no one to rely on.
"Get on your knees and apologize, and I'll write you a check so you don't starve on the streets."
But they didn't expect the billionaire to kick down the doors, wrap his coat around her, and bankrupt their entire bloodline overnight.
Yet, as Cassie stood in the dark and peeled off her fake silicone scar to reveal her flawless face, a deeper terror gripped her.
Tracing her stolen funds, she uncovered a name that made her blood run cold: The Syndicate.
It was the exact nightmare organization that had locked her in the asylum. Why were they controlling her family? And why did the billionaire look at her with such desperate, hidden nostalgia?
Cassie opened her encrypted laptop and dropped into the Dark Web.
She wasn't just a discarded bride. She was the legendary hacker "Nyx," and she was going to burn them all to the ground.
7.5
Julianna was drowning in a corporate warzone, fighting a massive department deficit while fending off her mother’s relentless matchmaking.
Then, a ghost from her past returned to shatter her reality.
Eight years ago, Aidan Caldwell walked out of her life without a word. Now, he was back in New York as a ruthless billionaire, and a pitch-black Maybach started stalking her in the dim underground garage.
She had no idea the driver hiding behind the obsidian-tinted glass was Aidan.
She didn't know he had just choked a confession out of an executive, discovering that her "betrayal" eight years ago was a complete lie.
"Stay away from her. The rules are mine now."
Aidan had warned his rivals, his sanity tearing at the seams as he watched from the shadows while a creepy coworker put an arm around her shoulder.
He shattered glasses and crushed her favorite white flowers in his penthouse, driven by a lethal, obsessive jealousy seeing other men touch what belonged to him.
Julianna was completely in the dark, feeling only a heavy, predatory stare pinning her to the cold concrete.
When a sudden, heartbreaking scent of cedarwood rolled out of the cracked car window, her brain short-circuited.
Why was this terrifying stranger stalking her in the shadows?
Desperate to save her career, Julianna recklessly agreed to fake an engagement with a wealthy heir this weekend.
But she had no idea Aidan had already rigged her company's crisis, and the predator was about to tear her world apart to claim her back.