The Tycoon's Awakening: Losing My Wife
Camelia Drake had only four months left on her prenuptial agreement with billionaire Duke Morrow, living as a glorified maid for his wealthy family.
The nightmare escalated when Duke's mistress, Christabel, intentionally threw herself down the marble stairs and later slashed her own arm with a fruit knife, screaming in fake terror that Camelia was trying to kill her.
Duke didn't even glance at Camelia's bleeding knee or her bruised spine.
He rammed into his wife, cradled the sobbing mistress against his chest, and pointed a furious finger at Camelia's face.
"Apologize right now, or I will ruin your career and make sure you leave this marriage with absolutely nothing."
The entire family mocked her. When Duke's grandmother secretly drugged his wine to force them together, Duke pinned Camelia to the wall, violently accusing her of being a desperate gold-digger.
The second the mistress called with a fake ache, Duke shoved Camelia to the floor and sprinted out into the night.
Sitting alone on the freezing floor, Camelia's heart finally shattered and turned to ice.
She couldn't understand how a man could be so ruthlessly blind, treating his legal wife worse than a stray dog while worshipping a manipulative liar.
The next morning, the mistress texted a victorious selfie from Duke's bed.
Camelia didn't shed a single tear. She calmly called back, telling the mistress to make sure Duke got a full STD test.
Then, she pulled out her suitcase, looked at her furious, hickey-covered husband with dead eyes, and prepared to walk away from this toxic prison forever.
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Chapter 4
Camelia's phone buzzed on the counter. It was a text from Sloane Bishop, Duke's executive assistant.
The car is waiting downstairs.
Camelia knew fighting Duke's logistics was useless. She slid her swollen right foot into a soft, flat loafer. She limped heavily out of the apartment and into the elevator.
The elevator dropped to the lobby. Camelia walked out the glass doors and climbed into the back of the black Morrow family SUV.
The ride was a blur of city traffic. The heavy vehicle finally pulled up to the VIP entrance of Mount Sinai Hospital.
Camelia pushed the heavy car door open. She gritted her teeth against the sharp pain in her ankle and walked into the sterile, quiet VIP corridor.
As she approached the central nursing station, she heard two nurses whispering.
"VIP Room 1 is driving me crazy," Nurse Brenda muttered, organizing a stack of charts. "Her vitals are perfectly normal, but she keeps hitting the call button demanding Dilaudid."
Camelia slowed her steps. She filed that piece of information away in her mind.
Brenda looked up and saw Camelia. The nurse's eyes widened. She quickly turned her back and pretended to read a clipboard.
Camelia kept walking. She reached the heavy, soundproof door of VIP Room 1 and pushed it open.
Christabel was propped up against a mountain of fluffy pillows. She was casually popping imported Shine Muscat grapes into her mouth.
The moment Christabel saw Camelia enter alone, the frail, sickly act vanished. A wicked, triumphant smile spread across her face.
Christabel reached down and yanked up the hem of her hospital gown. She exposed a thick, ugly surgical scar on her lower back.
"Take a good look," Christabel gloated. "As long as this scar exists, Duke will do whatever I say. Forever."
Camelia stared at her with dead eyes. "You are a pathetic, D-list actress who only survives by playing the victim."
The smile fell off Christabel's face. Her eyes turned dark and venomous.
Out in the hallway, the deep, unmistakable rumble of Duke's voice echoed. He was talking to the attending physician, and the footsteps were getting closer.
Christabel's eyes darted toward the door. She reached over to the bedside table and grabbed a sharp silver fruit knife from the fruit platter.
Without a second of hesitation, Christabel dragged the sharp blade across her own left forearm.
A thick line of bright red blood instantly welled up and dripped down her pale skin onto the pristine white bedsheets.
Christabel opened her mouth and let out a high-pitched, terrified scream.
She tossed the bloody fruit knife onto the linoleum floor. It clattered to a stop right next to Camelia's shoes.
The heavy hospital door burst open. Duke rushed into the room, his chest heaving.
His eyes locked onto the blood soaking the sheets. Then, his gaze dropped to the bloody knife at Camelia's feet.
The last shred of Duke's sanity snapped. He charged toward the hospital bed like a rabid animal protecting its young.
As he rushed past Camelia, he roughly shoved her aside to clear his path to the bed. It wasn't a calculated strike, but the sheer, reckless momentum of his large frame was enough. Camelia's bad ankle buckled under the sudden, jarring force. She stumbled backward, unable to catch her balance.
Her spine slammed violently into the sharp wooden corner of the bedside table. A sickening thud echoed in the room. A choked gasp tore from her throat as the wind was knocked out of her.
Duke grabbed a white towel and pressed it hard against Christabel's bleeding arm. He whipped his head around and glared at Camelia.
"Are you out of your fucking mind? !" Duke roared, his voice shaking the walls.
Camelia clutched her throbbing back. She looked up at his murderous eyes, and a cold certainty settled deeper into her heart. It wasn't a new revelation, just a harsh reminder of her current reality. To him, she wasn't a wife to be protected, but a convenient enemy to be crushed whenever Christabel needed a victim.
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8.9
I was tossed into a dark alley like rotting garbage, bleeding and grieving the child I had just lost.
When I was finally brought back to my fiancé Angelo's penthouse, instead of comfort, I was met with absolute disgust.
His family declared me "unclean" after the kidnapping. Angelo coldly announced he was burying the scandal by marrying my sweet, innocent cousin, Carissa.
When we were alone, Carissa stood over my bed, her voice dripping with venomous delight.
"My father arranged the kidnapping. And now, Angelo and I can finally be together."
Before I could react, she forced a silver letter opener into my hand, deliberately stabbed her own shoulder, and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Angelo stormed in, struck me across the face, and gathered a sobbing Carissa into his arms, looking at me with absolute revulsion.
The family matriarch appeared at the door, her cold eyes sweeping over the scene before she gave a chilling order to the maids.
"Clean this up."
They pinned me down and brutally drove the blade directly into my chest.
I choked on my own blood, staring at the man who had promised me the world as he turned his back, calling my murder a "mercy."
As my heart beat its final agonizing rhythm, I made a silent vow to the shadows that if there was a next life, I would have my vendetta.
When I opened my eyes again, there was no blood, only the soft silk of my nightgown.
I had returned to the day before my eighteenth birthday.
This time, I wouldn't play the desperate victim. I was going to ally with the Devil of Chicago and burn them all to the ground.
9.8
Four years ago, I was drugged on a luxury yacht and ended up pregnant with twins.
I raised them in secret, enduring my stepfamily's daily abuse, until the billionaire West family patriarch cornered us at the airport.
He instantly recognized my son's face—an exact replica of his ruthless grandson, Bernardo West.
My malicious stepmother and stepsister immediately leaked to the press that I was a delusional gold-digger using fake kids to trap a billionaire.
They wanted the West family to destroy me to save their own social standing.
Bernardo himself looked at me with pure disgust, demanding a DNA test.
"If you ever lie to me, I will take the children, and I will make you wish you were never born."
I didn't want his money. I was a victim of that night too, left with a crescent-shaped bite mark on my collarbone and zero memory of who set us up.
Why did someone drug us? And how could I protect my babies from a corporate predator who could crush me with a snap of his fingers?
But when the DNA test came back 99.9999% positive, I didn't cower.
I showed him the scar he left on me, looked the most dangerous man in the country right in the eye, and made my demand.
"If you want to claim your heirs, you have to marry me."
9.5
Janet woke up gasping, the phantom fire of a deadly explosion still scorching her lungs. She had been reborn three years in the past, on the exact day her mother forced her into a marriage contract with Gaylord Bradford, a paralyzed and severely disfigured billionaire.
Before she could even process her second chance, her cousin Kandy kicked the bedroom door open, flaunting a massive diamond ring. Kandy, who had also been reborn, smugly announced she had stolen Janet's Wall Street golden boy fiancé, Jax Adler.
"You're going to marry that paralyzed monster," Kandy spat, gloating that she would build a billionaire dynasty with Jax while Janet wiped drool off a rotting corpse. Kandy expected Janet to have a complete mental collapse, completely unaware that Gaylord's own medical team was secretly injecting him with lethal neurotoxins to finish him off.
But Janet only felt a cold, clinical pity. Kandy's "prophetic" memories were a polluted lie. Jax was actually sterile and dying of irreversible kidney failure, while Gaylord wasn't a dying freak—he was a dormant god whose body was merely in a high-dimensional hibernation. Why would Janet mourn losing a doomed fraud?
Leaving her delusional cousin behind, Janet packed her bags and headed straight to Gaylord's maximum-security military cell. She physically tackled his corrupt doctor, drove three bio-electric silver needles into the crippled king's spine to awaken his deadened nerves, and looked him dead in his glacial blue eye.
"Sign the marriage contract," Janet whispered. "I will make you walk again, and we will take back everything."
9.2
The tip of my fountain pen hovered over the divorce agreement. Across the mahogany desk, my billionaire husband, Chandler, looked at me with cold, dead eyes, waiting for me to sign my life away.
What he didn't know was that a phantom pain was still tearing through my chest—the memory of cold steel sliding between my ribs.
In my previous life, I foolishly signed these papers, burning down my marriage for my lover, Chace, and my sweet stepsister, Annalise.
Only to be left to bleed to death in a dark alley while they laughed, planning to steal my son and Chandler's fortune.
Reborn at the exact moment of my ruin, I tore the divorce agreement to shreds.
I desperately tried to make amends, even joining a reality show with my traumatized six-year-old son to prove I had changed.
But Chace and Annalise wouldn't let me go. Seeing my public redemption, they panicked and released a hyper-realistic deepfake sex tape of me and Chace.
They demanded $300 million from Chandler, framing my newfound love for my family as an elaborate, sickening long con.
Chandler burst into the house, throwing the blackmail papers at my feet.
His eyes were filled with broken agony and absolute disgust, fully believing that my tears, my apologies to our son, and my desperate kisses were all just a performance for money.
He thought I was the exact same monster who had destroyed him once before.
The old me would have screamed, cried, and played right into their hands.
Instead, I calmly stepped forward, gently smoothed the collar of his suit jacket, and looked into his tortured eyes.
"I'm not going to explain the video, or the money."
"I'm not going to ask for your forgiveness."
"I am asking you for one thing, Chandler."
"You have to trust me."
8.7
I was pregnant with the future heir of the Blackwood Pack, but my fated mate, Alpha Gavin, was nowhere to be found when sharp, tearing agony ripped through my swollen belly.
Instead of rushing to my side, he was in a luxury penthouse with his mistress, Piper.
When I desperately called his human number for help, it was Piper who answered the phone.
"I'm Piper. His future Luna."
Minutes later, I received a leaked audio file of Gavin promising to formally reject me the moment our pup was born.
Before the heartbreak could even set in, my armored SUV was violently rammed off the road by a massive truck.
It wasn't an accident. It was a targeted hit paid for by Piper's pack.
I woke up in the clinic with an empty womb. My pup was dead.
Gavin didn't even show up. He just mind-linked the butler to say he was "too busy" to deal with my loss.
He let his mistress murder our child and treated me like disposable trash, assuming my grief would make me a weak, compliant victim.
He thought he could just bury my trauma and move on with his perfect new life.
He was wrong.
I faked my own death in a fiery crash, leaving him with nothing but my signed rejection papers and the bloody receipt proving his mistress hired the killers.
Now, armed with a new identity and untraceable wealth, I am stepping out of the shadows.
I am going to bankrupt their packs from the inside out and make my former Alpha watch his empire burn.
9.2
Chelsi was down to her last fourteen dollars. After a humiliating job rejection for being "too low-class," the threat of eviction forced her to try live-streaming. Terrified of her exhausted, tear-stained face, she cranked the AR beauty filter to the max, morphing into a bizarre plastic alien.
She was immediately dragged into a forced streaming battle with Kamron, the platform's most arrogant top streamer. Seeing her distorted filter, Kamron sneered, unleashing fifty thousand fans to flood her chat with toxic insults.
Kamron set a ruthless penalty for her inevitable loss.
"You're going to take a bar of soap, scrub your face completely clean, and shove your bare face right into the camera."
Desperate to keep the fifty dollars she had just earned for rent, Chelsi begged for a different punishment, but Kamron coldly refused. With her heart pounding, she walked to the freezing bathroom, her hands shaking as she scrubbed her skin raw, bracing for the cyberbullying.
She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling utterly humiliated by the cruelty of the internet. Why did she have to be stripped of her dignity just to survive? She clicked off the filter, waiting for the tidal wave of disgust to destroy her.
But the insults never came. The high-definition camera revealed a breathtakingly delicate, flawless face that no algorithm could ever replicate. The chat went dead silent, Kamron was so stunned he dropped a ten-thousand-dollar virtual yacht, and a silent war between two mysterious billionaires was about to begin.