The Tycoon's Contract With A Vicious Beauty
My husband Hubert threw a stack of faked, compromising photos at my bleeding face.
He crushed my hand under his leather shoe and threatened our five-year-old son's life, forcing me to sign away my company shares and full custody.
Then, my younger sister Ara walked into the room, stepping carefully to avoid my blood, and kissed my husband deeply.
"You really are a stupid stepping stone, Amelie. I paid a lot of money to have those photos photoshopped."
She sneered at me, admitting she had orchestrated everything just to steal my fashion brand and my life.
Before I could fight back, Ara injected a paralytic directly into my neck.
They stuffed me into a duffel bag and dumped me in the freezing mud of a secluded hunting estate.
Ara waved a forged suicide note in my face, claiming I had drowned myself out of shame, before giving her bodyguard a sharp nod.
Three massive, starving mastiffs were released from their cages.
As the dogs tore through my flesh and crushed my bones, Hubert watched my bloody massacre live on a video call.
In my final seconds of agonizing pain, a blinding hatred locked into my dying brain.
I didn't understand why the two people I loved most would torture me so ruthlessly, but I made a venomous vow.
If I ever come back, I will make you both drown in your own blood.
Opening my eyes again, I wasn't dead in the mud.
I had awakened in the young body of a girl named Gena, and fate had just dropped the perfect weapon for my revenge right into my lap: Hubert's ruthless billionaire uncle.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 2
The bodyguard threw the heavy duffel bag into the trunk of the black Cadillac SUV. The canvas hit the metal floorboard with a loud, sickening thud.
Ara slid into the passenger seat. She pulled a slim More cigarette from her purse, lit it, and blew a stream of smoke against the windshield.
"Drive to the Hamptons estate," Ara ordered the driver. "Don't stop."
The SUV sped down Interstate 495 in the dead of night. Inside the trunk, the constant bouncing and swerving jolted a tiny fraction of consciousness back into Amelie's brain.
The air inside the bag was thick and suffocating. Amelie tried to thrash her legs, but the sedative kept her muscles paralyzed. The only sound she could make was a wet, ragged wheeze pushing through her teeth.
Two hours later, the tires crunched over gravel. The SUV pulled through the hidden back gates of the Pierce family's Hamptons estate, stopping far away from the main house, right next to the hunting dog kennels.
The trunk popped open. The bodyguard grabbed the handles of the duffel bag and dragged it out. The heavy canvas scraped violently against the sharp gravel driveway.
Ara stepped out of the car. The cold ocean wind whipped her hair across her face. She pinched her nose, disgusted by the foul, metallic stench of wet fur and raw meat coming from the kennels.
The bodyguard grabbed the zipper of the bag and yanked it open. The freezing night air hit Amelie's face. She gasped, her lungs expanding painfully as she fully woke up to the agony in her broken ribs.
The bodyguard reached in, grabbed her by the collar of her silk nightgown, and threw her onto the freezing mud in front of the cages. The filthy water soaked instantly into her clothes.
Inside the chain-link enclosures, three massive Presa Canario mastiffs began to bark. The sound was deafening. They threw their heavy bodies against the metal gates, making the steel rattle wildly.
Amelie blinked through the dim light of the wall sconce. She saw the dogs. Their eyes were wild, their jaws snapping at the air. Pure, primal terror shot through her nervous system, making her teeth chatter uncontrollably.
Ara walked up and stood over her, a cruel smile stretching across her face.
She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket and waved it in front of Amelie's face. "Your suicide note," Ara said. "You couldn't live with the shame of your affairs, so you threw yourself into the ocean. Tragic."
Amelie spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto Ara's designer shoe. "You are a fake," Amelie croaked, her voice raw. "You steal everything because you are nothing."
The words hit a nerve. Ara's face twisted in fury. She reeled back and slapped Amelie across the face so hard it snapped Amelie's head to the side.
"Starting tomorrow, every single design sketch you ever drew belongs to me," Ara hissed, her face inches from Amelie's. "The entire 'Aura' brand will have my name on it."
Amelie closed her eyes. Hot tears mixed with the cold mud on her face. A hatred so deep and violent it felt like a physical weight settled into her chest.
Ara stepped backward, moving safely behind the secondary iron fence. She gave the bodyguard a sharp nod.
The bodyguard walked over to a plastic bucket. He pulled out a massive chunk of raw, bloody meat and threw it directly onto Amelie's chest.
The smell of fresh blood hit the dogs. Their barking turned into a frenzied, high-pitched shrieking.
Amelie dug her fingers into the mud, trying to drag her broken body away, but the sedative made her arms useless.
The bodyguard walked to the control panel on the wall. He grabbed the heavy metal lever and pulled it down.
The metal gates shrieked as they slid open. Three black blurs of muscle and teeth shot out of the cages.
Amelie's eyes widened in absolute horror as the massive jaws filled her vision.
The first dog slammed into her chest, the physical impact crushing the remaining air from her lungs.
Thick, razor-sharp teeth sank deep into the flesh of her arm, tearing through muscle and scraping against the bone. A pain so absolute it felt like a lightning strike exploded in her brain.
Amelie let out a blood-curdling scream, but the sound was instantly drowned out by the vicious snarling and tearing of the pack.
Ara stood safely behind the fence. She pulled out her phone, initiated a secure, untraceable live video call to Hubert, and turned the screen so he could watch the bloody massacre in real-time without leaving a recorded file.
Amelie's vision went completely red. As the physical agony peaked, her consciousness began to rip apart. In her final second of life, a dark, venomous vow locked into her dying brain: If I ever come back, I will make you drown in your own blood.
Her heart stopped. The darkness swallowed her whole, leaving only the sound of the dogs tearing through the night.
You may also like
8.4
For twenty years, I lived as the adopted daughter of the wealthy Hill family.
But today, they forced me to sign a severance agreement and kicked me out so their precious biological daughter, Malia, could marry my fiancé.
To ruin me completely, they framed me for stealing Malia's engagement bracelet, threatening me with prison.
I calmly exposed the "sapphire" as cheap glass, then rolled up my sleeves to show the reporters my scarred, punctured arms.
For two decades, I wasn't a daughter. I was Malia's living blood and bone marrow bank.
They drained my health to keep her alive, even ordering doctors to ignore my failing organs just so she could attend a gala.
"Take this million dollars and shut your mouth," my adoptive father sneered, throwing a check at my feet.
My ex-fiancé looked at me with disgust, and Malia screamed that I was a crazy, vindictive liar.
They had stolen my life and my health, yet they still looked down on me like I was garbage.
I ripped the check into pieces and threw it in their faces.
Just as they ordered the butler to drag me out, a group of men in black suits shattered the chaos.
The heir of the untouchable Montgomery dynasty stepped through the door, ignoring the Hills' fawning, and handed me a DNA report.
I wasn't a disposable blood bag. I was the long-lost true heiress of old New York money.
And now, I was going to take back everything they stole from me.
9.3
Chandler was the secret wife of Avery Osborn, a powerful media heir who kept their marriage hidden to avoid the scandal of her illegitimate birth.
After catching him openly flirting with a rival at a gala, Avery mocked her low status and told her she was nothing without his money.
Instead of crying, Chandler immediately signed a zero-payout divorce agreement, left her wedding ring on his glass table, and walked out.
To numb the pain of her shattered life, she went to a notorious underground club.
Drugged by a bartender, she lost her mind and ended up having a wild night with a handsome stranger she mistook for a high-end male escort.
Panicking the next morning, Chandler transferred her entire life savings of $50,000 to the man to buy his silence, then fled to her corporate job.
But at the afternoon executive meeting, her blood ran cold.
The man she had paid off was standing at the head of the boardroom table. He wasn't a gigolo. He was Brennan George, the ruthless new COO of her company.
Cornering her in the women's restroom, Brennan held up a printed copy of her $50,000 wire transfer.
"Wiring a massive sum of cash to your direct superior after a night together is classified as commercial bribery and solicitation," he whispered dangerously.
Chandler was terrified, realizing she had handed him the exact evidence needed to destroy her career and sue her into bankruptcy.
"Marry me," Brennan demanded coldly. "It's the only way to make this HR problem disappear."
7.5
I was tied to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, the heavy stench of gasoline suffocating me.
Ten steps away, a masked kidnapper slammed a loaded Glock onto a metal barrel and forced my husband, Alvie, to make a sick choice.
"The wife or the mistress. You only get to walk out of here with one."
Alvie didn't even blink.
He walked straight toward the dark corner where his mistress, Gail, was crying. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, shielding her, and guided her toward the exit.
He never looked back. He didn't cast a single glance over his shoulder. To him, I was already a corpse, just trash left on the pavement.
The kidnapper laughed and tossed a lighter onto the soaked concrete floor.
A wall of ghostly blue fire erupted instantly, swallowing me whole. The absolute agony of my skin blistering and melting shattered my sanity.
In my last moments, consumed by the inferno, I couldn't understand how the man I had loved and served so submissively could leave me to burn alive. My heartbreak quickly morphed into a hatred far deeper than the flames.
Then, I violently jerked awake.
I shot up from the bed, gasping for cold air, my hands frantically checking my perfectly smooth, unburned skin.
I looked at the desk clock. I had returned to exactly four years ago, the morning of the annual Gallagher family gathering.
The fragile, naive wife died in that warehouse. This time, I am going to destroy them both.
8.9
For fifteen years, I thought my mother had died in a tragic fire.
Then the wealthy Ross family's butler knocked on my door, revealing she was alive—locked away in the psychiatric annex of their massive estate.
I rushed into the lion's den to save her, only to run straight into Graydon Ross, the ruthless billionaire CEO.
He looked at my cheap clothes with pure disgust, convinced I was a bottom-feeding scammer trying to extort his family.
"Throw this bitch out into the snow."
He ordered his armed guards to drag me away, completely cutting off my only chance to see my mentally broken mother.
But as he violently grabbed my collar to throw me out, I saw a custom eagle-head cufflink hanging from his coat pocket.
My blood turned to ice, and a wave of paralyzing terror crashed over me.
Eight months ago, I accidentally slept with a masked stranger in a pitch-black hotel room and fled before dawn.
That cufflink belonged to him.
The man who took my virginity—the Wall Street tyrant I had been hiding from—was Graydon Ross.
If he ever found out I was that woman, he would literally destroy my life.
But to save my mother, I couldn't be thrown out.
When his grandmother suddenly appeared, I dropped to the floor, exposed the dark bruises Graydon had just left on my wrists, and sobbed.
I framed the billionaire for assault to secure my place in the mansion, forcing myself to live right next door to the monster whose bed I had fled.
8.7
"Sign the papers and leave. My true love is coming home, and this house no longer has room for a placeholder like you."
For three years, Lia Leighton was the perfect, invisible wife to Julian Cohen-the cold-blooded titan of the Port Harcourt business world. She was the one who nursed his wounds, managed his scandals, and endured his family's cruelty, all while he treated her like a piece of furniture he'd forgotten he bought.
But on their third anniversary, instead of a celebration, Julian hands her a cold ultimatum. His "White Moonlight"-the woman who broke his heart years ago-has returned, and Lia is being discarded like yesterday's news.
Julian expects Lia to beg. He expects her to cry for the meager settlement he's tossed at her feet. After all, she's just a penniless orphan he rescued from the gutter... right?
He couldn't be more wrong.
Without a single tear, Lia signs the papers, leaves her wedding ring in the dust, and vanishes.
When she resurfaces, she isn't the quiet wallflower Julian threw away. She is the glamorous, untouchable CEO of the Leighton Global Empire-the very woman who now holds Julian's entire financial future in her hands.
As Julian's world begins to crumble, he realizes too late that he didn't just lose a wife; he lost the most powerful woman in the city. But when he finally falls to his knees to beg for mercy, Lia only offers a cold, devastating smile.
"Mr. Cohen, I don't negotiate with exes. Stay in your lane."
9.4
For three years, I was nothing but a ghost in my marriage, a pathetic stand-in forced to dress exactly like my billionaire husband's dead fiancée.
On our third anniversary, he left me to face armed intruders in our remote estate alone.
When I called him begging for help, he mocked me for faking a home invasion for attention and hung up to comfort his mistress.
The nightmare only got worse. The next night, my stepmother and half-sister drugged me at a family gala, trying to ruin me by handing me over to a sleazy producer.
I escaped into a pitch-black hotel suite, only to be overpowered by a drugged stranger in the dark.
Traumatized and covered in bruises, I secretly took an emergency contraceptive pill.
When my husband found the crumpled receipt on the floor, he didn't ask if I was hurt or where the violent marks on my neck came from.
"You cheap whore. You broke the loyalty contract."
He drafted the divorce papers immediately, stripping me of every penny, and ordered me thrown onto the street.
He thought without his wealth, I wouldn't survive a day in New York and would come crawling back to him like a dog.
I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly signed the papers, dropped my diamond ring on his glass table, and walked out.
What my arrogant ex-husband didn't know was that before I became his obedient shadow, I was "Lan"—the legendary, anonymous fashion designer the entire world was desperately looking for.
Now, I was taking back my empire.