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 8
Duke's chest heaved against Camelia's. His breath was scorching hot, panting heavily against the sensitive skin of her neck.
He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder. He opened his mouth and bit down gently on her collarbone, his teeth scraping against her skin.
The chemical fire in Camelia's blood destroyed her defenses. A soft, involuntary gasp escaped her lips.
Duke's large hand slid down her waist. He grabbed her hip bone and forcefully pulled her pelvis flush against his.
There was no space left between them. Camelia could feel the hard, undeniable evidence of his physical arousal pressing into her stomach.
The drug was melting her brain. Her struggles turned into a weak, trembling grip on his shirt fabric.
Camelia squeezed her eyes shut. In the darkness of her mind, she forced herself to imagine the man holding her was Joseph. She needed it to be Joseph.
Duke lifted his head. He crashed his mouth down onto hers. It was a brutal, invasive, and deeply hungry kiss.
Driven by pure physiological instinct and the drug pumping through her heart, Camelia's lips parted. She kissed him back.
They were seconds away from crossing the point of no return.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Violent pounding on the bedroom door shattered the heavy, lust-filled air in the room.
"Duke!" Karly Morrow's shrill voice screamed through the thick wood. "Duke, open up!"
Karly kept banging. "Christabel just called! She's crying! She says her kidney is in agonizing pain!"
Duke's massive body froze instantly. It was as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.
He ripped his mouth away from Camelia's. He took a sharp step back, gasping for air.
The lust and drug-induced haze vanished from his eyes. It was replaced instantly by pure panic and crushing guilt.
Duke looked down at Camelia. Her face was flushed red, her lips swollen, her silk shirt wrinkled and pulled off her shoulder.
In the span of one second, the look in Duke's eyes shifted from burning desire to absolute, stomach-churning disgust.
He reached out and shoved her chest. It was a rough, dismissive push.
Camelia stumbled backward, her shoulder blades hitting the closet door again.
Duke turned his back to her. He roared at the door, "Karly! Go find the butler and get the master key right now!"
Ten seconds later, the metallic click of a key turning sounded in the lock. The door swung open.
Duke rapidly buttoned his shirt collar. His hands didn't shake at all.
He didn't look back. He didn't spare a single glance at the woman shivering in the corner of the room.
Duke sprinted out the door, his heavy footsteps chasing after Karly down the hallway until the sound completely disappeared.
Camelia's legs gave out. She slid slowly down the smooth wood of the closet door until she hit the floor.
She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.
The drug was still burning in her veins, making her skin hot and sweaty. But inside her chest, a massive block of ice was forming.
She stared at the empty, open doorway. The physical ache in her heart stopped. It just went completely numb.
Camelia rested her chin on her knees. She closed her eyes, trying once again to summon Joseph's gentle smile to soothe the raw edges of her panic. But the image fractured. The lingering scent of Duke's cologne and the phantom pressure of his grip were too suffocating. The fantasy was failing her. In that cold, empty room, a crushing exhaustion washed over her. The painful illusion of using memories to survive the present was no longer working. The toll of enduring this toxic charade was finally outweighing the safety of her quiet compliance.
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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.