The Neglected Wife Is A Hidden Genius
I woke up in the ICU, my lungs still burning from the freezing river water.
Just outside the cracked door, I heard my adoptive family talking. That’s when the horrifying realization hit me: my drowning wasn't an accident. My adoptive mother had deliberately pried my fingers off the slippery rocks and pushed me in.
"When is she going to wake up? This Rust Belt trash always finds a way to ruin our important moments."
"If she's mentally unstable, we should just send her to that facility in the Hamptons and have her sign the inheritance waiver."
My father and brothers coldly plotted my removal, while my fiancé, Eric, laughed flirtatiously with my younger sister. He had his arm around her waist, completely unbothered by the fact that I was fighting for my life after he had just scammed me out of half a million dollars.
For ten years, I had smiled, obeyed, and shrunk myself to fit into their gilded cage, desperate for a sliver of their love. I couldn't understand how a decade of absolute devotion was met with calculated murder and such casual, cruel betrayal.
But the pathetic, desperate Iona died in that icy water.
As the suppressed memories of my true identity—"Silas", a master art restorer possessing centuries of dangerous, hidden knowledge—flooded my mind, my tears stopped. I picked up the phone, secured a marriage of convenience with the most powerful man in New York, and began my counterattack.
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Chapter 1
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound drilled into Iona Crane's skull, rhythmic and cold. She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt like they were weighed down with lead. There was only blinding white light filtering through the slits.
Then the memories hit her. The screech of tires. Miranda's scream. The freezing water closing over her head, filling her lungs with icy fire.
She tried to move her fingers, but her body wouldn't respond. She was trapped in the dark, listening to the mechanical heartbeat of the ICU monitor.
Voices drifted in from the hallway. The door was cracked open just an inch.
"What did the doctor say?" Preston Harmon's voice was sharp, impatient. "When is she going to wake up? The Vance dinner is tonight."
Iona's chest tightened. That was her father. The man who had demanded she be perfect. The man who had dragged her from the Rust Belt to New York, only to treat her like a stray dog that had tracked mud onto his Persian carpets.
"Who knows?" Miranda Harmon's voice dripped with venom. "This Rust Belt trash always finds a way to ruin our important moments."
Iona's heart skipped a beat. The physical pain in her chest wasn't from the water in her lungs anymore. It was a sharp, twisting sensation, like a hand squeezing her organ until it threatened to pop. Ten years. Ten years of smiling, obeying, shrinking herself to fit into their world, and this was what they really thought.
"Mom, don't be mad." Veronica Harmon's sugary voice chimed in. "Maybe sis just wanted some attention."
"Veronica is right, don't stress over it." Eric Espinoza's voice followed. His tone was light, flirtatious. "You look beautiful tonight, by the way."
Iona could picture it perfectly. Eric's arm around Veronica's waist, his eyes lingering on her younger sister the way they used to look at her. A wave of nausea rolled through her stomach. It wasn't sadness. It was revulsion.
"If she's mentally unstable, we should just send her to that facility in the Hamptons." That was Caleb Harmon, her third older brother. His voice was as cold as a slab of marble. "Tell the press she needs rest."
"Excellent idea." Preston agreed immediately. "We can't have her running her mouth and tarnishing the Harmon name."
The conversation moved on. Veronica and Eric's laughter echoed down the hall as they left for their date. Miranda gave final instructions to the housekeeper.
"Martha, watch her. When she wakes up, call the lawyer. I want her to sign the inheritance waiver."
Footsteps faded. The hallway went dead silent.
The monitor beeped.
Something inside Iona's brain clicked. It was like a lock turning in a dark room. A rush of cold clarity washed over her, drowning out the pain and the self-pity.
She saw it. The riverbank. The slippery rocks. Miranda's hand wrapped around her wrist. And then... the fingers uncurling. The push. The deliberate delay before the scream for help.
It wasn't an accident. It was a cleanup operation.
The panic evaporated. In its place was a terrifying, absolute stillness. She wasn't Iona Crane, the pathetic girl desperate for love. She was the inheritor of Silas. Decades of knowledge, restoration techniques, and the dark histories of a thousand artifacts flooded her mind.
She felt her right index finger twitch against the rough hospital sheet. A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye, tracking down her temple and soaking into her hair. It wasn't a tear of grief. It was a farewell to the fool she used to be.
She thought of Eleanor Vance. The only person in this city's gilded cage who had ever looked at her like she was worth something.
A plan formed. Sharp. Dangerous. Final.
The monitor's beeping didn't spike; instead, its rhythm subtly shifted, the space between each beep becoming infinitesimally longer, steadier. It was a new pulse, slow and deliberate. The rhythm of a predator waiting in the dark.
Iona forced her eyes open. The white light of the room stung, but she didn't blink. The hope that had always lived in her gaze was gone, burned away by the icy water. All that was left was a flat, burning calm.
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8.0
BLURB
She had fought so hard to be able to bear her husband a child for years but all her efforts proved abortive and just when she thought that all her problems were finally over.
She was faced with a brutal betrayal from her husband, taking away her family company, cheating on her and most especially tied her in the marriage.
But everything takes a drastic turn when she realizes the baby she is carrying doesn't belong to her husband, rather a cursed werewolf who could never have a child.
Thrown into the world of the werewolves, Daisy realizes she is more than she thinks, but will she be able to navigate the challenges that awaits her?
9.0
I am the undisputed ice queen of the ER, a doctor whose life is built on absolute control. A month ago, I impulsively married a stranger to create a legal shield against my ex-mentor's betrayal.
Our prenup had one strict rule: a fake marriage with zero interference in each other's lives. But tonight, my "husband on paper" was wheeled into my ER, unconscious, reeking of cheap whiskey, and suffering from a bleeding ulcer.
To authorize his emergency surgery, I had to sign the consent form as his wife, detonating a gossip bomb among my colleagues. Worse, his overbearing family found out he was hospitalized. To stop his terrifying mother from flying in and exposing our sham marriage, I had to lean over his hospital bed and take a fake, loving couple's selfie.
I didn't understand why this disciplined math professor was suddenly drinking himself to death, nor why my chest tightened when he looked at me with exhausted eyes and begged for homemade soup. My perfectly ordered, untouchable life was crumbling into a chaotic mess, and I was losing my grip on the narrative.
"We should probably spend some time together beforehand. We could be roommates."
To prepare for an unavoidable family dinner and a wedding, my stranger husband just asked me to move into his apartment. The ultimate uncontrolled variable has just crossed the line, and our fake marriage is about to become dangerously real.
7.2
Elmore Thomas rushed into the emergency room, clutching his feverish seven-year-old son, Buddy, tightly to his chest.
When the privacy curtain was pulled back, the air in Elmore's lungs vanished. The attending physician standing under the harsh lights was his wife, Kendal—the woman everyone believed had burned to death eight years ago.
But there was no tearful reunion. Kendal looked at him, and her eyes froze into impenetrable ice. She treated him like a biohazard, strictly referring to him as the family member.
Worse, she didn't recognize Buddy. She comforted their crying son with the same gentle warmth she used to reserve for Elmore, completely unaware she was soothing the baby she thought had died.
Days later, Elmore watched from the shadows as she picked up another boy outside a prep school, her left hand flashing a massive diamond engagement ring.
When his butler accidentally recognized her, Kendal shielded her new stepson with pure disgust in her eyes.
"Tell that psychopath to sign the divorce papers immediately. I have a new family now."
The words 'new family' echoed in Elmore's skull, tearing him apart. For eight years, he had lived in a hell of guilt and madness, raising their son in the shadow of her ghost. How could she just erase their past? How could she give her tender smiles to a stranger and look at him with absolute revulsion?
Standing in a luxury ballroom, Elmore squeezed his hand until his crystal champagne flute shattered, thick blood dripping onto the rug. The murderous obsession in his dark eyes returned as he called his lawyer.
"Freeze her divorce application. Use every dirty trick in the book. She isn't leaving."
9.6
Nelson Smith has been struggling for survival due to kidney failure. Without a transplant, he has less than four months to live.
No one in his family matched after tests were done. Not even his siblings, parents or cousins, except for one person, Janice Capuno, his wife.
Janice used to be the darling of a wealthy Dynasty, until she hid her identity and married the man she loves, Nelson Smith, against her parent's wishes.
Instead of getting love, she was treated like a servant by her mother-in-law, mocked as a gold-digger by her sister in-law, but for her husband, his love towards her remained unshakable. He'd never ceased defending and protecting her from his family, that's why when the doctors confirmed her to be a match, she didn't hesitate to get herself cut open to save Nelson's life.
****
There was barely thirty minutes to the surgery, and Janice was already in her hospital gown, waiting to get cut and her kidney given out to save her husband's life, when the reality of everything she had believed in came changing in her eyes.
"Babe....my phone...switch it off...battery." Nelson pointed to his bag weakly before the sedative took full action on him. Just before she'll put the phone off, a WhatsApp notification suddenly popped up. It was from Tricia, his University ex-girlfriend.
"Baby, has the fool gone into the theatre yet? I can't wait for this to be over. Once you get the kidney, we're done with her." The message read.
9.1
Isabella thought she had the perfect life as the wealthy Conrad family heiress, complete with a loving childhood sweetheart.
Until she woke up drugged in a hotel bed, blinded by paparazzi flashes, as her fiancé pointed a shaking finger at her, screaming that she had drugged and seduced him.
"She threatened to ruin Kaylie if I didn't sleep with her!" he yelled to the cameras.
Kaylie, the newly discovered biological daughter, stood in the doorway weeping perfectly.
Within hours, Isabella's adoptive father publicly severed all ties, froze her assets, and kicked her out into a violent thunderstorm.
Fleeing the city, her car's brakes suddenly failed.
As Isabella lay dying in the crushed metal of her Porsche, Kaylie strolled up with a pristine umbrella and a genuine smile.
"The mechanic was quite expensive, but cutting the brake lines was worth every penny," Kaylie laughed.
Isabella coughed up blood, her heart turning to ice. Her twenty years of family, love, and loyalty had been nothing but a cruel joke, destroyed by a calculated frame-up.
She died suffocating on absolute betrayal and unadulterated hatred.
Then, she gasped for air.
She wasn't dead. She was sitting in the driver's seat of her car, staring at her flawless reflection in the rearview mirror.
It was exactly four years ago—the day the real heiress first arrived.
A chilling smirk curled the corner of Isabella's mouth. This time, she was going to rip their lives apart from the inside out.
7.0
My marriage ended at a charity gala I organized. One moment, I was the pregnant, happy wife of tech mogul Gabe Sullivan; the next, a reporter' s phone screen announced to the world that he and his childhood sweetheart, Harper, were expecting a child.
Across the room, I saw them together, his hand resting on her stomach. This wasn't just an affair; it was a public declaration that erased me and our unborn baby.
To protect his company's billion-dollar IPO, Gabe, his mother, and even my own adoptive parents conspired against me. They moved Harper into our home, into my bed, treating her like royalty while I became a prisoner.
They painted me as unstable, a threat to the family's image. They accused me of cheating and claimed my child wasn't his.
The final command was unthinkable: terminate my pregnancy. They locked me in a room and scheduled the procedure, promising to drag me there if I refused.
But they made a mistake. They gave me back my phone to keep me quiet. Feigning surrender, I made one last, desperate call to a number I had kept hidden for years-a number belonging to my biological father, Antony Dean, the head of a family so powerful, they could make my husband's world burn.