The Unwanted Wife's Secret Comeback
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Audrey was trapped in a toxic marriage with billionaire Dozier Hodge. To him, she was nothing but a breeding vessel needed to secure his family's trust fund.
The nightmare escalated when Dozier abruptly moved his childhood sweetheart, Blake, into their penthouse.
Blake feigned a fragile illness, expertly manipulating Dozier while openly usurping Audrey's place.
Dozier blindly protected his true love, completely disregarding his wife's life.
He allowed the staff to serve Audrey lobster bisque despite her deadly seafood allergy.
During a sudden storm, he tenderly carried a pretending-to-sleep Blake across a flooded parking garage, coldly ordering Audrey to walk through the freezing, dirty water alone.
He even forced himself on Audrey in the dead of night, ignoring her tears, demanding she fulfill her obligation to produce an heir.
He had no idea that a year ago, it was Blake who had pushed Audrey down the stairs, murdering their unborn child.
Audrey's heart turned to ice. How could he pamper the murderer of their baby, yet brutally drag Audrey to an elite fertility clinic under the threat of ruining her career?
Did he really think she would ever bring another innocent life into this loveless prison?
As the nurse approached with a needle to test her hormones, Audrey stopped playing the submissive wife.
She reached into her bag, pulled out the secret bottle of birth control pills she had been taking every single day, and smashed it onto the doctor's glass desk.
"Cancel the blood test. I have been taking birth control."
She stared into Dozier's horrified eyes, finally ready to tear his empire down.
The Unwanted Wife's Secret Comeback Chapter 1
The glow of the MacBook screen illuminated Audrey's face in the dark Manhattan penthouse study. She dragged the digital stylus across the drawing tablet, her fingers cramping from three hours of uninterrupted work. The digital lines formed the latest heroine of her 'Cotton Candy' comic series.
Suddenly, the heavy oak double doors of the study clicked open.
Audrey's heart slammed against her ribs. She frantically hit a shortcut key, blanking the drawing tablet's screen, before snapping the MacBook shut. The sharp clack of the aluminum casing echoed in the quiet room. Her breath hitched, catching in her throat as she shoved the laptop and the darkened tablet under a stack of blank printer paper, cutting off the risk of her secret identity being exposed.
Dozier pushed the doors wide open. A draft of chilled air from the hallway swept into the room, raising goosebumps on Audrey's bare arms. Her shoulders locked into place.
He walked in, his expensive Tom Ford suit jacket dangling from his grip. He tossed it carelessly onto her pristine white leather sofa. It was a physical invasion of her only safe space in the penthouse. Audrey's stomach twisted with a familiar, sickening knot of resistance.
Audrey pushed her chair back and stood up. She smoothed the front of her silk skirt, trying to maintain the dignity of the lady of the house.
Dozier stopped in the center of the room. His cold, unblinking stare pinned her to the spot. A wave of humiliation washed over her skin, hot and uncomfortable.
He reached up and loosened his silk tie with a sharp tug. "Blake is moving in tomorrow."
The words dropped like a physical weight in the room. Audrey's pupils contracted. Her lungs forgot how to pull in air.
"Without discussing it with me first?" Audrey asked. Her voice shook, but she forced herself to meet his eyes, fighting for an equal footing in this marriage.
Dozier let out a low, humorless laugh.
"This penthouse belongs to the Hodge family," Dozier said. His voice was flat, devoid of any warmth.
The reminder of her lack of ownership stripped away her right to refuse. Audrey bit down hard on her lower lip, the metallic taste of blood blooming on her tongue.
"I am still recovering," Audrey said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "It has only been a year since the miscarriage. I need quiet."
She hoped the mention of their lost child would trigger some basic human sympathy.
Dozier rolled his eyes, cutting her off with a sharp wave of his hand. "Stop using an accident to play the victim, Audrey. It's exhausting."
His accusation twisted the knife in her gut. Her heart plummeted, hitting the floor of her stomach.
Audrey took a deep, jagged breath. She wanted to scream that it wasn't an accident. She wanted to tell him that Blake had pushed her down those stairs. Instead, she dug her fingernails into the soft flesh of her palms until crescent-shaped red marks appeared. She kept the secret locked behind her teeth.
Dozier turned his back to her and walked over to the crystal liquor cabinet. He poured amber whiskey into a heavy glass. The clinking of the ice cubes was a clear refusal to continue the conversation. He was the absolute authority in this room.
Audrey walked up behind him. "We have a contract. There are boundaries to this marriage."
Her attempt to use their legal agreement as a shield sounded pathetic even to her own ears.
Dozier spun around. He closed the distance between them in two long strides and slammed the heavy whiskey glass down on the mahogany desk. The liquid sloshed over the rim. His towering height cast a dark shadow over her, suffocating her. Audrey took a half-step backward, her calves hitting the edge of her chair.
He leaned down, his face inches from hers. "Learn your place, Mrs. Hodge. Do not overstep."
His low whisper shattered her pride into jagged pieces. A sharp sting hit the back of her eyes.
Audrey turned her face away. She stared at the floorboards, hiding the moisture welling in her eyes, throwing up a desperate mental wall to protect what was left of her sanity.
A sharp knock on the open door frame broke the suffocating tension. Doris, the head housekeeper, stood there with her hands folded over her apron.
"Excuse me, sir. How should I prepare the guest room for tomorrow?" Doris asked.
The question cemented the reality. Blake was coming.
Dozier didn't even look at Audrey. He kept his eyes on Doris. "Prepare the room right next to the master suite."
The blatant favoritism felt like a bucket of ice water poured over Audrey's head. Her fingers went numb.
Doris nodded. As she turned to leave, her eyes flicked to Audrey. The housekeeper's lips curled into a faint, mocking smirk. The silent reminder of Audrey's lower-class origins scraped against her raw nerves.
"Put her in the downstairs guest room," Audrey said, her voice tight. It was her last, desperate attempt to hold her ground.
Dozier shot her a look of pure disgust. "Absolutely not."
"She doesn't need to be right next to us," Audrey argued.
"Blake is weak. She needs constant care," Dozier said.
The moral guilt-trip slammed the door on any further argument. Audrey's throat closed up. She had no words left.
Dozier picked up his glass, downed the rest of the burning liquid in one swallow, and walked straight toward the door. The unilateral notification was over. The air in the room felt heavy and stale.
Audrey stared at his broad back. "Do you even remember that tomorrow is our wedding anniversary?"
It was a pathetic, final test of his heart.
Dozier's footsteps paused for a fraction of a second. He didn't turn around. He didn't speak. His silence was a physical blow, heavy with contempt. He crushed her last remaining fantasy into dust.
He walked out. The heavy double doors slammed shut behind him. The glass panes in the windows rattled from the force.
The sound severed the invisible string holding Audrey up. Her knees gave out. She collapsed back into her desk chair, all the strength draining from her muscles.
Her hands shook violently as she reached out and opened the MacBook again. She stared at the digital canvas, desperate to escape into the world she created. But the bright colors blurred together as hot tears finally spilled over her eyelashes.
The screen of her phone, sitting next to the keyboard, lit up. The name 'Genevieve' flashed across the glass. Her biological mother.
A fresh wave of exhaustion settled deep in her bones.
Audrey reached out and hit the red decline button. She cut off the incoming harassment from her toxic family. The small act of defiance sent a rush of cold adrenaline through her veins. Her tear-filled eyes hardened into ice.
She pulled open the bottom drawer of her desk. Her fingers bypassed the expensive stationery and grabbed a plain white plastic bottle labeled 'Vitamin C'.
She popped the cap off. Inside were tiny, round birth control pills. She tipped the bottle and shook two pills into her palm. She tossed them into her mouth and swallowed them dry.
The chalky, bitter taste coated the back of her throat. It was a harsh physical reminder. She would never bring a child into this toxic, loveless prison.
Audrey turned her chair and looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The glittering lights of the Manhattan skyline stretched out before her. She gripped the armrests of her chair. She swore to herself that she would build her comic empire, take her money, and walk out of this penthouse forever.
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The Unwanted Wife's Secret Comeback of Contents
Chapter 1 Ch. 1Chapter 2 Ch. 2Chapter 3 Ch. 3Chapter 4 Ch. 4Chapter 5 Ch. 5
Chapter 6 Ch. 6
Chapter 7 Ch. 7
Chapter 8 Ch. 8
Chapter 9 Ch. 9
Chapter 10 Ch. 10
Chapter 11 Ch. 11
All Chapters all
New Release Novels
8.6
In my past life, the Cerberus strain leaked, turning the world into a blood-soaked hell of rotting flesh and mutated monsters.
I thought my boyfriend Declan and my best friend Hailee would have my back as we fled the quarantine zone.
Instead, when the surging crowd of the infected cornered us, they didn't hesitate.
They shoved me backward into the horde just to buy themselves three seconds to run.
As I fell into the mud, I saw them fleeing without a single backward glance.
"She's dead weight anyway!" Hailee screamed.
"Just keep running, she'll distract them!" Declan yelled back.
I was torn apart, feeling the agonizing tear of rotting teeth sinking into my neck and the hot spray of my own blood.
Before the apocalypse, my greedy uncle had locked away my ten-million-dollar trust fund, leaving me with nothing but a fake boyfriend who only wanted me for my money.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand how the people I loved most could trade my life for a head start.
Why did I blindly trust them? Why didn't I see through their perfectly choreographed lies?
Opening my eyes again, the stench of decaying flesh vanished, replaced by the sterile smell of my college dorm room.
Hailee and Declan were standing over my bed, faking tears of concern over my meningitis fever.
I was back exactly seven days before the world ended, and my spatial vault ability had come back with me.
This time, I'm extorting my uncle for every cent, hoarding the city's supplies, and leaving them all to rot.
8.4
I worked three double shifts at the garage just to buy a velvet-boxed cake for my wealthy girlfriend, Arleen.
But when I pushed open the VIP room door, I saw her lover kissing her bare leg.
She didn't push him away. Instead, she laughed and swirled her martini.
"I only forgot Finn because I knew he would stay. He is a poor boy from Queens who follows me around like a loyal dog."
Later that night, her lover intentionally crashed a Porsche to scare me, sending a piece of jagged metal into my skull.
Lying in a growing pool of my own blood, I watched Arleen crawl out of the wreckage.
She didn't even look at me. She threw herself at her uninjured lover, screaming for a medic.
"He just got scraped by a piece of plastic. He is faking it. Deal with Jaquez first!"
When I woke up, I wasn't free. Arleen had locked me in a private hospital wing with 24-hour security, planning to isolate me and keep me as her broken, captive toy forever.
My blind, pathetic devotion finally froze into absolute disgust.
I looked at the heart monitor next to my bed and grabbed an IV needle.
I severed the sensor wire to trigger a flatline, slipped out the fire stairs while the nurses panicked, and burned my identity to ashes.
This time, I was going to disappear to London, build my own empire, and watch hers burn.
7.6
To pay for her father's life support, Haleigh sold herself into a marriage with Fabian Blackburn, a ruthless billionaire in a deep coma.
But on her wedding day, she caught her boyfriend cheating with her stepsister, laughing about how they would steal the inheritance the second Fabian stopped breathing. Cornered and desperate, Haleigh secretly underwent IVF using her comatose husband's frozen sperm to secure the family trust.
Weeks later, a miracle happened. Fabian woke up.
But instead of gratitude, he treated her like trash. He threw annulment papers at her face, completely disgusted by the arranged marriage.
"If you try any dirty tricks to get pregnant, I will personally drag you to a clinic and have that bastard scraped out of you."
Terrified, Haleigh hid her positive pregnancy test and desperately tried to hack her way to enough cash to escape. But while using his computer, she accidentally opened a highly classified folder.
Inside was a medical file and a photo of a severely disabled girl who looked exactly like Fabian.
Before she could process it, Fabian walked in. Seeing the screen, his cold mask shattered into pure, unhinged madness. He lunged across the room, lifting her off the floor by her throat, completely ignoring her desperate gasps for air.
"Lock her in the basement," he roared to his guards. "No food. No water."
Curled on the freezing concrete, clutching her newly pregnant belly, Haleigh didn't understand what she had just seen that turned him into a murderous monster.
But she knew one thing: if she didn't escape this terrifying estate, both she and his unborn heir would die in the dark.
8.5
Alexandrea woke up with a splitting headache in a strange hotel bed, terrified to find a brutally handsome, half-naked stranger beside her.
Before she could even scream, the door burst open. Her adoptive mother, Ivette, stormed in with a swarm of reporters and flashing cameras.
"How could you disgrace our family name like this?"
Ivette sobbed, putting on a theatrical performance of a heartbroken mother. It was a setup to completely ruin Alexandrea's reputation in front of New York's elite.
For ten years, Alexandrea had lived in a house of horrors. Her back and arms were covered in silvery scars and puckered cigarette burns left by Ivette's vicious abuse.
Yet to the public, Ivette had carefully crafted Alexandrea's image as a wild, ungrateful, and manipulative liar.
Trapped under the duvet, Alexandrea was drowning in shame, her voice lost in the storm of accusations.
She didn't understand why her adoptive family hated her so much, treating her worse than a stray dog while using her brother's future to keep her chained.
But what she understood even less was the stranger beside her.
Instead of panicking, the man slowly sat up, his presence alone silencing the frantic room. He was Ace Griffith, the billionaire heir who owned half of Manhattan.
He wrapped his suit jacket around her trembling shoulders, looked Ivette dead in the eye, and dropped a bomb.
"I will be marrying her."
Then, he carried Alexandrea away from her ten-year prison, ordering his men to dig up the Terry family's darkest secrets and her true identity.
8.6
Today was my father's grand second wedding, but for me, it was the anniversary of my mother's death.
My new stepmother, Marley, who was only four years older than me, cornered me. To establish her dominance as the new Luna, she ordered her servants to force me to my knees and violently ripped my late mother's necklace from my neck.
It was the only memento my mother had left me. Marley sneered, threw it to the ground, and shattered the gems. When I scrambled to pick up the broken pieces, she dug her high-heeled shoe into the back of my hand, mocking me as dirty trash. No one stepped in to help. My father was too busy celebrating his new marriage under the dazzling lights, completely erasing my mother's memory and leaving me to be abused in my own pack.
My heart was full of grievance and despair. Why did my mother's lifelong devotion end with her grave desolate and her daughter humiliated? I swore I would never become a weak, discarded she-wolf whose life depended on a man.
Desperate to escape the suffocating wedding, I ran outside and stumbled right into the chest of a terrifying stranger.
"No one should ever touch what is precious to you."
His golden eyes blazed with fury as sparks instantly shot through my veins. He was Kade Blackwood, the ruthless Alpha of the feared Blood Moon Pack—and my fated mate.
8.9
Ava Kidd just wanted to escape her abusive stepmother when she got drunk at a high-end club and stumbled into the wrong hotel room.
She woke up the next morning in a luxury penthouse, lying naked next to a terrifyingly handsome man covered in her scratch marks.
Recalling rumors of the hotel's secret underground concierge, she immediately assumed she had accidentally slept with an elite male escort.
Desperate to settle the bill, she offered him her only debit card with a pathetic $1,800.
But the man, who was actually Garrison Terry, the ruthless billionaire CEO, was deeply insulted by the cheap plastic.
He trapped her against the bed, coldly demanding a half-million-dollar service fee.
When Ava frantically offered her dead mother's tarnished locket as collateral, he cruelly dismissed it as worthless junk.
Ava was humiliated, her heart pounding with absolute terror.
She didn't understand why this arrogant gigolo was acting like a deranged extortionist, demanding a fortune from a broke girl who had clearly made a mistake.
Furious and refusing to cower, she sneaked out, put on his oversized designer shirt, and aggressively ate his $800 truffle breakfast.
Having no money left, she grabbed her cheap red lipstick, wrote a defiant IOU on his expensive linen napkin, and fled the hotel.
She thought she had escaped a criminal, but upstairs, the billionaire traced her lipstick-stained name with a predatory smile.
"Ava Kidd, I will absolutely find you."
