The Phantom Wife He Cannot Save
I handed my terminal brain cancer diagnosis to my billionaire husband, hoping for a shred of comfort.
Instead, he sneered, accused me of faking it for a better divorce settlement, and told me to die quickly.
Heartbroken, I turned to my sister, a top surgeon, who promised to save my life.
But on the operating table, my soul was ripped from my body as I watched her inject me with a lethal drug.
She didn't just murder me. She harvested my organs, forged my medical records to claim I was a hysterical liar who ran away, and went straight to my penthouse to take my place.
She looked at my blank organ donation consent form and smiled.
"Don't worry, he'll sign."
And he did. My husband welcomed her into our bed and announced their grand wedding, while my own mother celebrated my disappearance as a chance to secure his wealth.
I hovered in the air, screaming silently.
Why did my own flesh and blood slaughter me to steal my life? Why did the man I loved hate me so much that he'd happily marry my killer?
As my husband stood by the window, daring my runaway self to show up at their wedding, my spectral heart turned to stone.
I decided not to fade away. I would stay right here as a ghost, and watch their monstrous charade burn to the ground.
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Chapter 4
Morning sunlight streamed into the dining room, glinting off the polished silver. Cheyenne stood at the stove, wearing one of Aracely's aprons, humming softly as she fried an egg.
Keenan sat at the head of the table, his phone held up. He took a picture.
Aracely's soul, a knot of cold fury, drifted over his shoulder to see the screen. He had opened Instagram. His official, verified account with over a million followers.
He posted the photo. The caption was simple, brutal.
My beloved wife, still trying.
It was the first time in their entire marriage he had ever posted a picture of her. A public acknowledgment that was, in reality, a trap.
Cheyenne brought a plate to the table, saw the phone, and her face paled. She understood immediately. Keenan was announcing to the world that Aracely Ross was still here, alive and well in her home. It cut off any chance of Cheyenne simply disappearing.
The private elevator doors opened, and Genevieve, Keenan's mother, swept in, holding Leo's hand.
She saw Cheyenne and sneered. "Still playing the happy homemaker, are we? It's pathetic."
Cheyenne, trapped in her role, could only lower her head and murmur a quiet greeting, just as Aracely would have done.
Leo climbed into his chair, his eyes glued to his iPad, ignoring the woman who looked exactly like his mother. Aracely's soul ached. She reached out to touch his hair, but her hand passed right through the golden strands.
"That dress is cheap," Genevieve said, her eyes raking over Cheyenne. "It's not appropriate for a Ross."
Cheyenne gritted her teeth. "I'll keep that in mind, Mother."
"Don't call me that," Genevieve snapped. "Your bloodline doesn't afford you the privilege."
Keenan sipped his coffee, watching the exchange with a detached amusement. He was enjoying this.
"Leo," Cheyenne said, her voice overly sweet, "would you like to try some of mommy's eggs?"
Leo looked up, not at her, but at his grandmother. Genevieve gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head.
"I'm not hungry," Leo said, turning back to his screen.
The casual cruelty of it was a physical blow to Aracely.
Keenan placed his cup down with a soft click. "You're coming with me to the MoMA gala tonight."
Cheyenne looked up, surprised. It was an event Aracely had begged to attend for years, only to be refused every time.
Genevieve frowned. "Keenan, she'll only embarrass you."
"It's my decision," he said, his voice cutting off any further argument.
Cheyenne's face lit up with triumph. She thought she was winning.
Keenan stood, adjusting his tie. He leaned down and whispered in Cheyenne's ear, his voice too low for his mother to hear. "Wear the red dress. The one you know she hates. The one she said looked like blood."
Cheyenne froze. She remembered the dress. A stunning, scarlet gown Aracely had refused to wear, but one that Cheyenne had secretly coveted.
A jolt went through Aracely's soul. He wasn't rewarding her.
He was testing her.
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7.6
Isolde Mitchell knew her wealthy husband was cheating on her, but the true nightmare began when her mother-in-law summoned her.
The older woman coldly announced that the mistress was pregnant with a boy and would be moving into their estate.
Because Isolde's family had gone bankrupt and she had only given birth to a frail daughter, she was deemed completely worthless.
When Isolde packed her bags and demanded a divorce, her husband Clark just laughed.
He threatened to use their ironclad prenup to leave her penniless and take full custody of her daughter just to torture her.
To make matters worse, he forced Isolde to secure a failing business deal with the ruthless billionaire Jacques Valdez, essentially ordering her to sell her body to get the signature.
"If you fail, you will never see Bria again."
He even sent his goons to snatch the little girl from her preschool to prove his point.
Isolde was completely cornered, trembling with a mix of rage and absolute despair.
How could the man she married be such a monster? She would rather die than let them destroy her daughter, but how could a bankrupt mother fight a powerful dynasty with absolutely nothing?
Out of options, she looked at the private business card the terrifying billionaire Jacques had unexpectedly given her daughter.
Swallowing her pride, she decided to make a deal with the devil himself, ready to use his power to tear her husband's family apart.
9.7
I ran through the freezing rain, desperate to escape the Pennington estate. My adoptive family had raised me for one purpose: to be sold off as a bargaining chip in a wealthy arranged marriage.
But before I could reach the highway, I was cornered. Not just by my family's cruel guards, but by Hollis Wall—a terrifying, ruthless billionaire who snapped my tormentor's wrist and dragged me into his car. He didn't want a ransom. He threw a prenuptial agreement in my lap.
I thought he was insane until he took a scalpel to his own arm, and a burning agony ripped across my flawless skin. Because of a near-drowning accident three years ago, our nervous systems were linked. Every time I bled, he felt the agony. He locked me in his fortress to keep me safe, but when I finally escaped back to my adoptive parents, they didn't protect me. Instead, my adoptive father smiled and showed me a live video of my biological father on life support, a guard's hand hovering over the plug.
"You will marry Douglas Cherry tomorrow, or your father dies," he sneered.
My own family was willing to murder my only real flesh and blood just to secure their wealth. I collapsed onto the cold marble floor, my heart crushed in a vice of absolute, suffocating despair.
"I'll marry him," I sobbed, surrendering to the darkness.
But miles away, in his dark study, the ruthless Hollis Wall violently collapsed to the floor, gasping for air as my severe panic attack bled directly into his chest. Our twisted bond was killing him, and I knew he would tear the city apart to find me.
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
9.7
Emaline Finley was drowning in massive debt to keep her dying father alive, even enduring a humiliating blind date with an arrogant man just to find a financial lifeline.
But the fatal blow came from her former best friend, Kitty. Kitty, who was already engaged to Emaline's ex-boyfriend, deliberately told Emaline's father that his expensive treatments were bleeding his daughter dry.
Out of extreme guilt, her father threw away his life-saving medication and checked himself out of the hospital to die at home. When Emaline found him, he was coughing up pools of bright red blood, his lungs rapidly collapsing. As the paramedics rushed him away, Kitty called to gloat, mocking Emaline's poverty and telling her to go watch her father die.
Emaline was completely shattered, suffocating under the sheer injustice of it all. She had been betrayed, stripped of her dignity, and was now forced to watch her only parent slip away because of a cruel, spiteful lie.
Just as her world went dark, a wildly wealthy stranger stepped in. Cullen Preston, the mysterious man who had witnessed her humiliating date, paid the astronomical medical bills and brought in the city's top surgeon to pull her father back from death. But his salvation wasn't charity.
"Consider it a dowry."
He bought her father's life, and in exchange, he demanded Emaline as his wife.
9.7
I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him.
Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister.
Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair.
I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people.
But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse.
I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges.
The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill.
When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell.
But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone.
His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life.
I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me.
Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference.
"I'll do it, but I control the venue."
I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.
7.4
Alaya woke up in the sterile hospital room to a devastating reality: her six-month-old baby was gone, lost in a horrific car crash.
But as the memories crashed into her, she realized she had been reborn. She was back three years before her ultimate death, back to the moment she remembered lying bleeding on the asphalt while her husband, Hardy, shielded his mistress from the freezing rain.
When Hardy finally showed up at the ward, he coldly dismissed the crash as a mere accident and immediately left to comfort his young lover. To make matters worse, Alaya secretly checked her medical files and found a terrifying detail: someone had intentionally slipped beta-blockers into her system, a lethal drug for her transplanted heart. And Hardy didn't care about her dead baby or her irreversible infertility. He only coldly confirmed with the doctor that her heart was still viable.
A horrifying suspicion made Alaya's blood run cold. Why was her husband so obsessed with protecting her transplanted heart while treating her like garbage? And why was his perfectly healthy mistress secretly racking up massive bills at an advanced cardiac hospital?
Realizing she was nothing but a vessel in a twisted, deadly game, Alaya didn't shed another tear.
She packed her belongings, left her flawless diamond wedding ring on the cold marble table, and vanished from their penthouse.
When Hardy finally tracked her down, she threw a thick stack of documents onto the table.
"Sign the divorce papers," she said, her eyes completely dead.