The Unwanted Wife And Her Secret Empire
I opened my eyes to a tearing pain and an unfamiliar ceiling, lying next to the most powerful man in the capital.
Foreign memories crashed into my mind. I had transmigrated into the body of Irena Frost, a woman who had just drugged and trapped the cold, ruthless heir Evertt Barton into a scandalous marriage.
The original owner did it to escape being sold to a murderous old merchant by her own cruel father. But Evertt didn't know that. When he woke up, his eyes were full of absolute disgust. He threw a prenuptial agreement at my face, demanding a quiet divorce in two years and warning me not to use a pregnancy to blackmail his family. Everyone in the estate treated me like a greedy, pathetic joke, just waiting for the day I would be thrown out onto the streets.
The original Irena had died in despair, terrified and hated by the man she chose as her only shield. I felt a deep ache for the girl who had to ruin her own reputation just to survive. I absolutely refused to let this second chance be dictated by a man who despised me.
I looked right into Evertt's icy eyes and demanded an astronomical divorce settlement to play his perfect wife.
"Deal. I consider it a job."
With millions wired to my account and a magical spatial ring from my past life suddenly awakening on my finger, I stopped crying. I was going to use his money to build a massive commercial empire in secret, and when the two years were up, I would leave without looking back.
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Chapter 5
Evertt stood just inside the massive front doors. He pulled off his heavy wool coat and handed it to the butler without looking at him. His dark eyes scanned the entrance hall. He saw Irena standing tall and relaxed. He saw Jada looking panicked. He saw the little girl hiding behind her mother's legs.
Jada saw Evertt. It was like someone flipped a switch. Tears instantly flooded her eyes. She grabbed Peggy's hand and practically ran across the marble floor toward him.
"Evertt!" Jada cried out. Her voice shook with fake emotion. "Thank God you are home. Irena is out of control. She broke Peggy's favorite doll yesterday, and just now, she was threatening the poor child right in front of me!"
Evertt looked down at Peggy. The little girl's eyes were red. She looked genuinely scared. The hard lines around Evertt's mouth softened for a fraction of a second.
He lifted his head. His gaze locked onto Irena. The softness vanished. His eyes turned into sharp blades. He always assumed the worst about her. It was his default setting.
"Is your frustration with this marriage so deep that you need to take it out on a six-year-old?" Evertt's voice was low, but it carried across the silent hall. It was an accusation, not a question.
The servants standing near the walls exchanged quick, nervous glances. They all thought the young madam was finished.
Irena did not flinch. Her heart rate stayed perfectly steady. She did not cross her arms defensively. She just stood there, looking back at him.
"Yesterday afternoon," Irena said. Her voice was completely flat. It sounded like she was reading a weather report. "From two o'clock until five o'clock, I was unconscious in my bed with an acute fever."
She paused for one second. She let the words hang in the air.
"Dr. Hudson was in my room the entire time. He administered an IV drip. His medical log will confirm this." Irena shifted her gaze to Jada. A cold smile touched the corners of her mouth. "So, Jada, please explain to me how my unconscious body floated out to the garden to break a toy."
The silence in the hall was absolute.
Jada's fake crying stopped instantly. Her face turned chalk white. She took a step back, her high heels scraping against the floor. "I... I must have mixed up the days," Jada stammered. Her hands shook violently. "Or... or one of the maids saw the wrong person."
Evertt was not stupid. He heard the panic in Jada's voice. He saw the physical signs of a liar caught in a trap. The realization hit him like a cold splash of water.
He slowly turned his head to look at Jada. The pressure radiating from his body was terrifying. Jada shrank back, pulling Peggy tighter against her legs.
"This estate is not a stage for your pathetic dramas, Jada," Evertt said. His voice was dangerously quiet. "If you cannot teach your daughter to tell the truth, I have no problem cutting off your monthly family allowance."
Jada gasped. She started shaking from head to toe. "Evertt, please, I am sorry. I was just upset. I lost my mind for a second."
Irena watched the scene for another moment. She felt completely bored. She had no interest in watching Evertt discipline his cousin.
"Take your time," Irena said lightly. She turned her back on both of them. Her heels clicked against the marble as she walked toward the stairs. She did not look back once.
Evertt watched her walk away. The muscles in his jaw tightened. A hot, uncomfortable feeling flared in his chest. He expected her to gloat. He expected her to look at him and demand an apology. Instead, she threw the mess at his feet and walked away like he did not matter at all.
Irena disappeared around the corner of the second floor. The only sound left in the hall was Jada's quiet, terrified sniffling.
Evertt reached up and grabbed the knot of his tie. He yanked it down roughly. He turned to the head butler. "Have security escort Jada and her daughter back to the side wing. They are banned from the main house until I say otherwise."
The servants quickly lowered their heads. They suddenly realized the young madam was not someone to mess with.
Evertt stood alone in the center of the hall. He thought about the look in Irena's eyes. It was cold. It was clear. It was entirely indifferent.
The woman who had drugged him, the woman who had cried and begged to stay in this house, had vanished. This new version of her made him feel something he hated: out of control.
He walked toward his study with heavy, angry steps. He needed to understand what had changed. The woman he thought he knew was suddenly a stranger. Something was wrong.
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9.7
Eliana Rivera is the firstborn daughter of business tycoon Cassian Rivera. When her father's company falls into debt, he marries her off to the arrogant and ruthless billionaire, Alexander Grayson, as part of a business contract and under the threat of blackmail.
Alexander, the billionaire CEO, never planned to marry, but the pressure of blackmail forces him into a union with a woman he barely knows. Although Eliana doesn't see Alexander as her ideal partner, she agrees to the marriage out of a sense of duty.
Once engaged, however, he barely acknowledges her presence and harbours disdain for her because of her father's actions and their relationship. But as they navigate their newfound relationship, the unexpected desire for each other's touch ignites-a twist neither of them planned, leading them toward an unforeseen love.
9.3
He was supposed to be my brother. The cold CEO everyone feared. The man who controlled the entire country's business world.
But one night, he looked at me and calmly destroyed everything I thought I knew.
"We're getting married."
I laughed, but he didn't.
Now every door in my life is closing, every choice is disappearing, and the one man I'm not supposed to love refuses to let me go.
Because to Lucien Hale, this was never forbidden. It was inevitable.
And the most terrifying part? The closer I get to him, the harder it becomes to run.
8.9
I sold three years of my life to a billionaire to save my mother. I was his pretend fiancée, a stand-in for his ex, counting down the days until the contract ended and we could finally be free.
But just as we were about to escape, his real girlfriend returned and publicly accused me of faking a pregnancy to trap him.
My fiancé, Drake, didn't hesitate. He called me a disgusting gold-digger and threatened to pull my mother's medical funding to force me into an abortion.
The shock of his cruelty sent my mother into cardiac arrest. She died right there in the hospital.
They demanded I abort a child that could never exist, a lie built to destroy me.
But they didn't know my secret. After my mother' s death, I finally told him the truth that shattered his world: I was born without a uterus. And with her last letter in my hand, I walked away from him forever.
8.2
My son Leo had just died, and the silence in our cramped apartment felt like a physical weight crushing my chest.
Before I could even process the grief, my husband, Preston, kicked the door open and threw divorce papers onto the table.
Behind him stood Gloria, wearing a pristine cashmere coat and the diamond pendant Preston swore he had pawned to pay for Leo's hospital bills.
"Sign it," Preston said coldly. "You get nothing."
Gloria smirked, mocking me for failing to keep my sick child alive. When I tore up the papers in a blinding rage, Preston slapped me to the floor.
Then, my biological mother, Jerilyn, walked in. Instead of helping me, she pulled a serrated kitchen knife from her bag and plunged it deep into my stomach.
As I lay dying in a pool of my own blood, Jerilyn leaned in and whispered the devastating truth.
"I swapped you in the nursery. Gloria is my blood, and you belong in a Manhattan mansion. I can't let you ruin her life."
Until my lungs stopped working, I was consumed by a roaring, violent hatred. My own mother had traded my life of privilege for poverty, let my son die, and then murdered me to protect the fake.
Opening my eyes again, the dingy ceiling and the agonizing pain were gone.
I was sitting at a wooden desk, surrounded by the chatter of teenagers.
I was back in high school. And this time, I was going to make them pay.
9.0
For a whole year, April believed her billionaire husband, Bartholomew, abandoned her in Europe the day after their arranged wedding. She hated him so much she drunkenly prayed for his death at a club.
But he suddenly returned that very night, catching her red-handed. Instead of a divorce, he trapped her, threatening to bankrupt her bloodsucking family unless she moved into his penthouse to play the devoted wife.
Forced to comply, she attended a dinner with her toxic family. Her stepmother deliberately served her lobster—knowing April had a fatal allergy.
"Eat up, darling. I know hospital food is dreadful."
When April refused and exposed their massive gambling debts, her furious father raised his hand to strike her across the face.
But it was Bartholomew, the ruthless tyrant she despised, who caught her father's arm and snapped his wrist.
"If you ever try to touch my wife again, I will erase your family by sunrise."
April was completely stunned. Why was he defending her with such murderous rage? And why did he keep a cheap paper airplane she had made at age six preserved under a glass dome in his study?
The answer came that night. When Bartholomew stepped out of the shower, April saw the massive, jagged surgical scar sliced directly over his heart. He hadn't run away; he had been fighting for his life on an operating table. Staring at the man who had silently survived just to come back to her, April made her choice. She was going to uncover the truth behind his surgery and their past.
8.4
In her past life, Serena Vale was the perfect daughter and sister. She sacrificed everything, her dreams, her university admission, and even her inheritance, so her stepsister could live the life she deserved.
But kindness was repaid with betrayal.
At twenty-eight, just hours after her billionaire fiancé finally proposed, Serena was poisoned by the very sister she had spent her life protecting.
When she opens her eyes again, Serena is eighteen, back to the day before she is supposed to give up her university admission to her stepsister.
This time, she refuses.
She keeps her future.
She takes back her inheritance.
And the cold billionaire her sister desperately wanted?
Serena decides to claim him first.
Not because she loves him but because she knows that in ten years, Adrian Kingsley will become one of the richest men in the world.
But things start changing.
The supposedly distant and emotionless billionaire is watching her closely... protecting her... and looking at her as if she belongs to him.
And sometimes, when their eyes meet, Serena wonders
Does he remember their past life too?
This time, Serena isn't the naive girl who died with regrets.
This time, she's here for revenge