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 5
The penthouse was a mausoleum of glass and steel. Minimalist furniture, sharp edges, and absolutely no warmth. It looked exactly like Kevan Sanders.
The housekeeper, a stern woman in a crisp uniform, showed Iona to her room on the second floor. "Mr. Sanders's bedroom is on the first floor. He prefers not to be disturbed."
"Understood," Iona said.
The room was enormous, but the only things waiting for her were two cheap suitcases. Harmon House had sent her belongings. No jewelry, no designer clothes. Just the rags of her old life.
She unzipped the largest bag and pulled out a battered cardboard tube. Inside was a 17th-century Dutch landscape painting she had bought at a flea market for fifty dollars. The canvas was cracked, the paint peeling. But she knew what was underneath.
Her phone buzzed. It was Brenda Hollis. Her adoptive mother.
"Iona!" Brenda's voice was a lifeline. "Are you okay? I'm going to kill those Harmon bastards! Where are you?"
"I'm safe, Mom. I moved out."
"Come home! Your room is ready. Nathan and Sean are furious. Kyle wants to go over there and punch Eric in the face."
Iona smiled, a real smile that hurt her cheeks. "I'll visit soon. I promise."
After hanging up, she opened her laptop. She logged into an encrypted email server. One new message.
It was from an anonymous address, a contact known only as 'Mr. Collier,' her liaison to the hidden world of high-stakes art restoration.
"Silas," the email read. "Heard you got into trouble. Need me to bury someone? I have favors owed all over Europe."
Iona typed back: "I can handle it. But I need to work. Keep an ear out for jobs in New York."
She needed money. Real money. The kind that couldn't be frozen by Preston Harmon.
She called the housekeeper. "Is there an empty room I can use as a studio? Somewhere with good light."
Ten minutes later, her phone buzzed. A text from Kevan.
Approved.
Iona set up her workspace in a spare room overlooking the park. She laid out her tools-the scalpels, the solvents, the magnifying glasses. She carefully unrolled the Dutch landscape.
She was going to strip away the lies, layer by layer. Starting with this painting.
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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.