The Runaway Bride's Secret Billionaire Protector
I sat before the vanity in a lace dress that cost more than a mid-sized sedan, but to me, it felt like a burial shroud. I was the sacrifice being offered to the Ortega family, a human payment for my father’s debts and failing company.
When I tried to refuse, my stepmother forced a glass of drugged champagne into my hand and threatened to destroy me. She whispered that if I didn't marry the "monster" Cooper Ortega, she’d release psychiatric records proving I was a mental patient who hallucinated a child that never existed.
I escaped by jumping out of a speeding limo, tumbling into a ditch and losing everything but my life. A mysterious, scarred driver in a beat-up Ford saved me, but when I limped back home, my father threw me out like trash. My own sister stood in the foyer, wearing my engagement ring and clinging to Lance, the man who had promised to protect me.
"You're a sinking ship, Fran," my father sneered before locking the gates. Then I found the recording—my stepmother’s voice complaining that the doctor wanted more money because my baby had cried before they took him away. My son wasn't stillborn; he was stolen by the people I called family.
I was broken, homeless, and hunted, with only a "poor" driver named Cooper to help me. I didn't know he was actually the billionaire monster I had jumped out of a car to avoid, but I moved into his cramped studio anyway.
I’m starting a war with nothing but a cracked phone and a mother’s rage. They took my life and they took my son, so now I’m going to take everything they have left.
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Chapter 4
Sunlight sliced through the blinds, hitting Francesca directly in the eyes.
She groaned, shielding her face with her arm. Her body felt like one giant bruise. Her ankle throbbed in rhythm with her headache.
She blinked her eyes open.
A man was standing by the window. Back to her. Shirtless.
Francesca froze.
His back was a landscape of muscle and... scars.
Not just scratches. Deep, jagged lines that ran from his shoulder blade down to his ribs. Burn marks? Shrapnel?
She gasped.
The man turned around slowly. He was buttoning a flannel shirt.
It was the driver. Cooper.
He looked at her, his expression unreadable. "Morning, Sunshine."
Francesca pulled the sheet tighter. Her heart was hammering. The scars... the rumors about Cooper Ortega being burned...
No. Stop it. This guy drives a Ford and charges for gas. He's just a guy who's been in a few scraps. Maybe a veteran.
"Your back," she blurted out.
Cooper paused on a button. He glanced over his shoulder, unbothered. "Industrial accident. Oil rig fire, three years ago."
"Oh." Relief flooded her chest. It wasn't him. It was just a working man's tragedy.
He finished buttoning the shirt. He looked... rough. Handsome, in a dangerous, unpolished way. Dark stubble on his jaw. Eyes that were too intelligent for a simple driver.
"We..." Francesca hesitated. Her memory of the night before was spotty. She remembered the car. The heat. Being carried. "Did we...?"
Cooper leaned against the windowsill, crossing his arms. A smirk played on his lips. "Did we what?"
"You know." She felt her face burning. "Sleep together."
Cooper laughed. It was a dry, rasping sound. "You were unconscious and drooling blood on my passenger seat. Not exactly my type of romance."
Francesca let out a breath. "Okay. Good."
"Though you were pretty clingy when I carried you in," he added, enjoying the flush rising on her neck.
"I was drugged," she defended weakly.
"Sure." He walked over to the bedside table. "Here."
He tossed a cracked smartphone onto the mattress.
"It's an old Android I had in the glovebox. Screen is spiderwebbed, but it works."
She picked it up. "My SIM card?"
"Trash," Cooper said, his voice hardening slightly. "Using your old SIM is like sending up a flare. I put a new pre-paid card in there. Untraceable."
Francesca looked at him, surprised by his foresight. "Thank you."
"Add it to the bill," he said. "Phone cost me twenty bucks."
Francesca rolled her eyes. This man was obsessed with money. It was annoying, but strangely grounding.
"I need to go," she said. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. The room spun, but she gritted her teeth.
"You have a concussion," Cooper noted.
"I have a life to salvage." She stood up, swaying.
She was still in the hospital gown. "I can't go out in this."
Cooper sighed. He reached into a plastic bag on the floor and tossed her a pair of grey sweatpants and a white t-shirt. "Lost and found."
Francesca went into the tiny bathroom to change. The clothes smelled of detergent and stale tobacco. They swallowed her frame.
When she came out, Cooper was waiting by the door.
"I need to borrow twenty dollars," she said, staring at her bare feet.
Cooper raised an eyebrow. "You already owe me four-seventy."
"For a taxi," she said. "I can't walk home like this. I'll pay you back. Double. I swear."
He stared at her for a long moment. His eyes seemed to x-ray her soul. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty.
"Don't make me regret this," he said, handing it over with a reluctance that felt performative.
"I get it." She snatched the bill.
"I can drive you," he offered.
"No." She stepped back. "I don't want you involved. My family... they're complicated."
"Complicated," Cooper repeated flatly.
"Dangerous," she corrected.
She walked past him, limping slightly. At the door, she turned back. "I will pay you back, Cooper. Every cent."
"I'm counting on it."
She left.
Cooper waited until he heard the outer door close.
The side door of the room opened. Benjamen stepped out, holding a tablet.
"That was painful to watch," Benjamen said. "You? Worried about twenty bucks?"
Cooper sat on the edge of the bed, picking up the piece of paper where she had written her IOU. Francesca Leonard. Her handwriting was elegant, shaky.
"She needs to believe I'm nobody," Cooper said. "If she thinks I have power, she'll run. She's terrified of the name Ortega."
"She's going back to the lion's den," Benjamen noted.
"I know." Cooper's eyes darkened. "Trace that burner phone. I want to hear every word she says. And get eyes on the Leonard estate."
"What about the wedding?"
"The wedding is off," Cooper said. He crumpled the IOU in his fist. "But the war is just starting. Find out who gave her that champagne. And find out about this 'Lance' guy."
Francesca sat in the back of the taxi, watching the city roll by.
She turned on the cracked Android.
It buzzed instantly. Fifty-seven missed calls forwarded from her old number via cloud sync.
Forty from her father. Ten from Janeen. Seven from Dollie.
Zero from Lance.
She opened her texts.
Dollie: You selfish bitch. You ruined everything.
Dad: Get back here. Now. Or don't bother coming back at all.
Janeen: We know you didn't leave the city, Francesca. Don't test me.
She closed her eyes. The nausea was back.
The taxi slowed, turning into the opulent gates of the Leonard estate.
"Here," she told the driver, handing him Cooper's twenty. "Keep the change."
She got out. The gates were closed.
She pressed the intercom button.
"It's me," she said.
Static. Then, the housekeeper, Mrs. Higgins. Her voice sounded strained. "Miss Francesca... Mr. Leonard said... he said you have to wait."
"Wait? Wait for what?"
"For him to decide if you're allowed in."
Francesca stood in the driveway. The sun beat down on her concussion. She was wearing a stranger's sweatpants, standing outside the home she grew up in, begging for entry.
Across the street, parked under the shade of a large oak tree, a black Ford sedan sat silently.
Cooper watched her through the windshield. He saw her shoulders slump. He saw the humiliation radiating off her.
He tapped the steering wheel.
"Benjamen," he said into his headset. "Short the Leonard stock. Now. Crash it."
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8.2
In a kingdom ruled by shadow magic, elemental fire wielders were slaughtered decades ago after a devastating rebellion.
Christabel is the last surviving Flamebound.
Prince William is the heir to the throne that ordered her people's execution.
When an ancient magic awakens one older than both flame and shadow they are forced into an alliance that neither of them wants.
But their powers react when they touch.
And prophecy whispers that only together can they save the kingdom...
Or burn it down.
8.0
I sat at a table for two in the center of Le Coucou, clutching a gift box that had cost me two months of savings. It was our three-year anniversary, and I was waiting for Gavin to finally ask the big question.
But when the heavy oak doors opened, Gavin didn't walk toward me with a ring. He walked in with a polished blonde heiress tucked under his arm, her hand resting protectively over a small baby bump.
"This is Tiffany Stone. My fiancée," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. He didn't apologize for being late or for the three years we'd spent together. Instead, he pulled out a checkbook, scribbled a number, and slid a ten-thousand-dollar check across the white tablecloth.
"Consider it severance for your time," he added, as Tiffany mocked my cheap drugstore dress. "Don't contact me again. Tiffany doesn't need the stress." I was the entertainment for the entire restaurant—the pathetic girl dumped for a better model. By the time I walked out into the rain, I had lost my boyfriend, my home, and the funding for my secret medical research project.
I was an orphan with no safety net, facing an eviction notice and a ruined career. I had given Gavin everything, and he had discarded me like a broken tool. The injustice burned in my chest, a hot, sharp rage that replaced my tears.
Desperate and freezing, I ducked into a coffee shop where I met Colton Bentley, a reclusive billionaire in a wheelchair. After I defended him from a cruel date, he offered me a contract: a marriage of convenience and a seven-figure payment to act as his shield. I signed the papers that night, ready to use his wealth to rebuild my life. But as I watched my new husband navigate his penthouse, I noticed his "paralyzed" legs tense with a strength that shouldn't exist.
9.3
For three years, Evelyn Harper was the perfect invisible wife, brilliant architect who anonymously poured revolutionary designs into her cold CEO husband Alexander Knight's company, building his billion-dollar empire while being dismissed as useless by him and his family.
When he hands her divorce papers expecting tears, she signs with a calm smile and walks away taking back her genius.
What Alexander never knew: every award-winning project, every stock surge, every headline praising his vision was hers.
Now, as Elara Voss, Evelyn returns stronger than ever surrounded by powerful men who truly see her, winning landmark contracts, and watching rivals tremble at her name.
Alexander wakes to regret too late: his crumbling empire, the secret twins he never knew existed, the woman he lost.
He begs for forgiveness, offers everything to start over, even kneels publicly in humiliation.
But Evelyn demands justice: full credit, billions in royalties, and control.
As old enemies scheme violently out of jealousy and his world falls, Alexander fights to prove change, while Evelyn builds an untouchable new empire on her terms.
Co-parenting begins. Old sparks flicker. Forgiveness debates rage in her heart.
Will she allow slow reconciliation for their brilliant twins?
Or close the door forever on the man who once owned her world?
7.3
Sign the papers and disappear. You were never one of us."
Those were the last words Seraphina Cole heard before the Ashford dynasty erased her existence.
They took her marriage.
They stole her unborn child with lies and cruelty.
They branded her unstable, unworthy, disposable, then dumped her into the shadows with nothing but grief and shame.
The Ashfords thought she broke.
They never bothered to check if she survived.
Three years later, Seraphina returns under a new name Rina Vale, silent partner of the Vale Consortium, a trillion-naira global empire that controls shipping lanes, tech patents, and political favors. Cold. Calculated. Untouchable.
This time, she isn't asking for love.
She's collecting debts.
Her ex-husband wants forgiveness when he realizes who she is? She'll bankrupt his legacy.
Her former mother-in-law prays for mercy? Rina will expose the secrets buried beneath her charity foundations.
The family that murdered her child with negligence and lies? She'll tear them apart boardroom by boardroom.
And standing beside her is Lucien Drake, a dangerous, brilliant billionaire with his own vendetta against the elite. He doesn't want to save her.
He wants to help her burn them all.
She didn't come back to heal.
She came back to conquer.
7.7
Kiara Watson had lived an unhappy life with her family, always overshadowed by her sister, Cloe, who stole all the attention with her beauty.
However, Kiara's fate took an unexpected turn when, by mistake and out of obligation, she found herself linked to Archie Villarreal, the man who caused a sensation in the most powerful family, the Villarreals.
A dirty trick by Cloe awakened the fury of billionaire Archie. For Kiara, being Cloe's twin became her greatest sin.
She received cruel punishment from Archie, who would do everything in his power to keep her from escaping, creating a stormy and passionate game of love and vehemence.
9.8
To secure a drama-free marriage, cold billionaire Lucas Lancaster demands a wife who wants convenience, not love. Heartbroken Sophia Bennett fits his criteria perfectly. After their wedding, Lucas flies to Europe, keeping their relationship strictly professional. But distance changes everything. When a tipsy Sophia accidentally mutters her ex’s name during a rare, passionate embrace, the ice prince completely loses his cool. Consumed by jealousy, Lucas begs her to forget the past and love him. In this captivating billionaire romance novel, he is the first to fall—and he falls hard.