The Phantom Heiress And Her Fake Lover
Elodie was the Evans family's adopted daughter, living in a cold, isolated room while her sister Bristol enjoyed a life of luxury. Secretly, she was a top-tier freelance operative.
Her adoptive family finally found a use for her. To secure a massive corporate merger, they decided to marry her off to Elwyn Lyons, a billionaire heir rumored to be a violent, dying psychopath.
They did this just to spare their precious Bristol from the exact same arrangement.
When Elodie hesitated, her adoptive father showed his true colors. He threatened to cut off the life-saving medical care for Gus, the poor man who had actually raised her.
Her older brother even laughed about it with his friends in the dark.
"If Lyons dies, she gets nothing. If he beats her, well... she's tough to break. Either way, she's a pawn."
Hearing her brother casually discuss her potential death as a business strategy was the final blow. They didn't see her as a daughter, just a disposable shield.
All those years of staying quiet to keep the peace turned to ash. She realized the people she called family were monsters who would eagerly trade her life for a few patents.
Elodie threw an ironclad legal separation agreement on their coffee table and walked out forever.
To secure Gus's medical funds, she accepted an eight-figure commission from a mysterious client. Her mission was to play a toxic lover and publicly destroy the Lyons engagement.
Little did the Evans family know, the "sickly" heir was actually in peak physical condition, and he had just hired Elodie to ruin them all.
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Chapter 4
The dining room of the Evans estate felt like a morgue.
Elodie walked in the next morning. She hadn't slept a single minute, but her mind was razor-sharp.
The entire family was already seated around the long mahogany table. The silence was heavy, suffocating.
Sterling Evans, the oldest brother, sat at the right hand of Preston. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and glared at Elodie.
"Sit down, Elodie," Sterling ordered, his voice flat. "We have family business to discuss."
Elodie walked to the empty chair at the far end of the table. She pulled it out and sat down. She didn't look at her plate. She looked directly at Preston.
Preston cleared his throat, puffing out his chest to project authority. "Regarding the marriage arrangement with the Lyons family-"
"You mean Bristol's marriage arrangement," Elodie cut in. Her voice was quiet, but it sliced through the room like a scalpel.
The air in the room instantly turned toxic.
Cynthia slammed her coffee cup onto its saucer. "Elodie! Watch your tone!"
Liam, the middle brother, leaned back in his chair and sneered. "Drop the act, sister. Bristol is the jewel of this family. She has actual value. You bring absolutely nothing to the table."
Sterling folded his hands over his plate. "This isn't just a wedding. It's a corporate merger. The Lyons capital will save Evans Medical from bankruptcy. This is the only contribution you will ever make to this family. It is your duty."
Contribution. The same word Chad used last night.
Elodie felt a dark, twisted laugh bubble up in her throat, but she swallowed it down.
Bristol, sitting next to Cynthia, suddenly dropped her head. Her shoulders shook. She forced two fake tears down her perfectly powdered cheeks.
"Elodie, I know it's unfair," Bristol whimpered, her voice trembling. "But I'm terrified. I heard Mr. Elwyn has... violent tendencies. He hurts people."
Bristol had smoothly changed the narrative from "sickly" to "violent" to make herself look like a victim avoiding a monster.
Cynthia wrapped an arm around Bristol, glaring daggers at Elodie. "Do you hear that? Would you really force your sister into the arms of an abuser? Do you have no heart?"
Elodie stared at the mother-daughter performance. It was nauseating.
She thought about the scan data from last night. Elwyn was perfectly healthy. The violence rumor was just another piece of society gossip.
Elodie calmly reached for a piece of toast. She picked up a silver knife and slowly spread butter across the bread. She didn't say a word.
Her absolute indifference made Preston snap.
"Elodie Bell Evans!" Preston roared, slamming his fist on the table. The silverware rattled. "This is a family mandate! You do not have a choice!"
Elodie stopped buttering her toast.
She looked up. Her eyes locked onto Preston's. For the first time in ten years, she didn't hide the sharp, dangerous intelligence behind her gaze.
"Bell," Elodie said softly. "My last name is Bell. My mother's name."
Preston's face turned purple.
Sterling sensed the loss of control. He tried a different tactic. "Listen, if you agree to this, the family will consider investing in that failing tech blog of yours."
Elodie almost smiled. Her anonymous tech blog, 'Cassandra,' had ten million paid subscribers. It was the primary source of traffic for Sterling's own media conglomerate. He was offering to fund her with her own generated revenue.
They were cruel, but they were also incredibly stupid.
Elodie set the knife down. She picked up her linen napkin and dabbed the corners of her mouth.
She stood up.
"Are you all finished?" Elodie asked.
The room went dead silent. They stared at her, completely thrown off by her lack of tears or screaming.
Elodie looked at Sterling. "Worry about your plummeting stock, Sterling." She shifted her gaze to Liam. "Pay off your gambling debts, Liam." She looked at Chad. "I hope the hangover kills you, Chad."
She finally looked at Preston and Cynthia.
"As for my contribution to this family," Elodie said, a cold, dead smile curving her lips. "I think I've done enough."
She turned around and walked toward the dining room doors.
"If you walk out that door, you are cut off!" Preston screamed, his voice cracking with rage. "You hear me? !"
Elodie didn't stop walking. She pushed the doors open and headed for the stairs.
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7.2
I am a resident surgeon, secretly married to Dr. Barrett Walters, the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery. It was a transactional marriage; he paid my mother's mounting medical bills, and I was his secret, obedient wife in the dark.
But at the hospital, he was a cold-blooded tyrant who deliberately made my life a living hell. During a major medical conference, he viciously tore apart my successful surgical repair, looking me dead in the eye as he called me incompetent in front of all my colleagues.
The humiliation didn't stop there. With his tacit approval, the senior residents bullied me, assigning me every brutal night shift. When his beautiful, wealthy heiress "girlfriend" visited the ward, he publicly mocked my background to make her smile.
"Some people get in through the back door. They're not fit for the front lines."
Even when I was forced to work as a secret banquet waitress to cover the medical copays he ignored, he found me, ruined the job out of pure possessive jealousy, and then fined my meager resident salary the very next morning just to show his absolute control.
I endured his punishing kisses and cruel rebukes, sacrificing my dignity just to keep my mother alive. But I couldn't understand why he had to destroy every shred of my peace. If he wanted the perfect heiress, why did he refuse to let me go?
Staring at his cold, controlling eyes in the stairwell, my exhaustion finally overpowered my fear. I was done being his victim, and it was time to tear up this contract.
7.8
Andrea was trapped in a suffocating marriage with billionaire Gregory Morse, forced to live as the pathetic substitute for his dead fiancée.
When armed intruders broke into their estate in the dead of night, she called her husband in pure terror.
"Stop playing these cheap, attention-seeking games," Gregory sneered with disgust, and hung up the phone.
She barely escaped with her life, but the cruelty only escalated. At the family mansion, his dead fiancée's sister deliberately scalded Andrea's hand with boiling tea. Instead of defending his wife, Gregory publicly humiliated her, ordering her to clean up the mess while calling her a stray dog.
That night, hiding in the dark wine cellar, Andrea overheard a chilling confession.
Gregory admitted to his brother that he knew Andrea was completely innocent of the car crash that killed his fiancée. He knew she had been framed.
Why did he marry her? Just to use her as a psychological punching bag to vent his twisted grief. He watched her suffer every single day, treating her like disposable trash, while violently threatening anyone who showed her an ounce of kindness.
He thought she was just a useless, helpless shadow who would quietly endure his torment forever.
He had no idea that behind her submissive facade, she was secretly Madame Lan, the apex predator of the global fashion world. And now, she was ready to burn his empire to the ground.
7.6
My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Damien Paul, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through.
That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Eve—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister.
But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Fellows talking in the library.
They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Damien.
Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Eve.
I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen.
This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Damien over.
"No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Hunter Beach."
7.0
I was the Stanton family heiress, engaged to the President's son to secure a vital military alliance.
But he cornered me in the White House sitting room, slamming a thick manila folder onto the marble table.
"I said, sign the annulment agreement, Hester."
He looked at me like I was dirt, demanding I step aside so he could be with a manipulative intern named Tricia.
In my past life, I was a naive lamb. I cried and begged him not to end it. My devotion was rewarded with absolute cruelty. He ordered my bones broken and my reputation completely shredded. My trusted assistant forced poison down my throat, and I was left to die with a rope burning my neck.
Until my last breath, I didn't understand. I had done everything perfectly for the family. Why did my unwavering loyalty only bring me a gruesome death? Why did the monsters who tortured me get to live happily in the highest seats of power?
Opening my eyes again, the suffocating terror of the noose suddenly washed away. I was sixteen again, staring at the exact same annulment papers.
"Hester, please. Just let us be happy," Tricia whimpered, reaching out her trembling hand.
This time, I didn't cry. I picked up the solid gold fountain pen, stabbed it violently through the center of the contract, and prepared to drag the entire First Family straight to hell.
8.4
To save my toxic family's bankrupt company, I was sold for fifty million dollars to marry Arch Rush III, a notoriously ruthless and paralyzed billionaire.
Because of my severe face blindness, I couldn't even recognize my new husband. I was just a cheap, replaceable pawn. Yet, while my own parents physically abused me and treated me like livestock, my terrifying new husband actually protected me.
But entering the Rush family estate was like stepping into a snake pit. His aristocratic relatives mocked my cheap clothes and even tried to disfigure me with boiling tea.
To further humiliate me in front of a world-renowned neurologist, his grandmother pointed a bony finger at me.
"Go massage his muscles, this is your daily duty now."
Arch glared at me with a lethal warning, but I had no choice. Trembling, I pressed my hands into his thigh.
My heart instantly dropped. Beneath his expensive suit, there was no soft, withered flesh. The muscle contours were tight, dense, and incredibly firm.
How could a man completely paralyzed from the waist down have the legs of an athlete?
Before I could process the terrifying truth, my strong fingers dug into a nerve cluster. Under my touch, his "dead" muscle violently twitched.
The doctor dropped his pen in absolute shock, and I realized I had just accidentally exposed the ruthless billionaire's deadliest secret.
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.