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 5
Elodie walked into her bedroom.
It was the smallest room in the estate, tucked away at the end of the hall. It looked more like a servant's quarters than a daughter's bedroom.
She opened the closet. A few cheap dresses hung on the rack. She ignored them.
She dropped to her knees and pulled a faded canvas duffel bag from under the bed. It contained everything she actually cared about.
She unzipped it and carefully placed a framed photograph inside. It was a picture of her and Gus, standing in front of his rusted tractor in Pennsylvania. They were both covered in grease and smiling.
She pulled out her phone. She opened a secure banking app and transferred a lump sum to the Pennsylvania medical facility. She prepaid Gus's treatments, private nursing, and housing for the next five years.
She hit confirm. The money vanished from her hidden account.
A massive, suffocating weight lifted off her chest. They couldn't touch Gus anymore. They had no leverage left.
Elodie zipped the bag shut and slung it over her shoulder.
She took one last look at the room. She felt absolutely nothing.
She walked downstairs.
The entire Evans family was waiting in the grand foyer. They stood in a semi-circle, arms crossed, wearing matching expressions of arrogant amusement.
Preston stared at the duffel bag. "What is this? A temper tantrum?"
Cynthia let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Running away? You won't last twenty-four hours out there. You have no money, no connections, and that face. You'll be begging to come back by tomorrow."
Liam smirked. "Don't forget, we pay your college tuition. Think about your future, Elodie."
Elodie walked to the center of the foyer. She dropped her bag onto the marble floor.
"I'm not throwing a tantrum," Elodie said, her voice echoing in the large space. "I am notifying you that as of this exact second, I, Elodie Bell, am severing all ties with the Evans family."
She unzipped the front pocket of her bag, pulled out a thick stack of legal documents, and tossed them onto the glass coffee table.
"These are severance papers," Elodie said. "I've already signed them. Sign them, and we file them quietly. Refuse, and I file a unilateral petition with the state court tomorrow morning."
Sterling snatched the papers off the table. His eyes scanned the first page. His arrogant smirk vanished, replaced by genuine shock. The legal jargon was flawless, drafted by a top-tier firm.
Preston's face flushed red. "You're insane! You are destroying your own life!"
Elodie ignored him. She looked directly at Bristol, who was hiding behind Cynthia's arm.
"Congratulations, Bristol," Elodie said, her voice dripping with ice. "The Lyons marriage contract is officially yours again. I hope you survive the wedding night."
Bristol gasped. All the color drained from her face. She looked like she was going to vomit.
"Elodie! You are not leaving this house!" Cynthia shrieked.
Martha, the head housekeeper, stepped forward, reaching out to grab Elodie's arm.
Elodie slowly turned her head. She locked eyes with Martha.
Elodie didn't raise her voice. She didn't make a sudden movement. She just stared at the older woman with a look so cold, so utterly devoid of humanity. Elodie's voice was soft, yet it pierced Martha's ears like an ice pick. "Take your hand off me," she whispered. Her eyes held absolutely zero emotion, a hollow, freezing void that made Martha feel as though she were staring directly into an abyss. The older woman instinctively recoiled her hand, stumbling backward.
The sheer force of her presence paralyzed the room. No one moved.
Preston swallowed hard. He grabbed Cynthia's arm, pulling her back.
"Let her go," Preston sneered, trying to regain his dignity. "She'll hit rock bottom. When she runs out of cash, she'll come crawling back to us. And when she does, she'll do exactly what she's told."
Liam and Chad chuckled, nodding in agreement. They were entirely convinced she was a helpless child throwing a fit.
Elodie picked up her bag. She walked to the heavy oak front doors.
She heard their mocking laughter behind her. She didn't turn around.
A cold, sharp smile touched her lips.
She pushed the doors open and stepped out into the blinding morning sun. She was finally free.
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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.