The Unwanted Wife's Ultimate Vengeful Return
Carlota was secretly carrying the child of Donavan Raymond, the most powerful man in New York. To escape his dangerous obsession and save her comatose brother, she entered a fake marriage with a disabled heir.
But on her wedding day, her stepsister Harper discovered the secret ultrasound.
Realizing the baby belonged to her fiancé Donavan, Harper brutally shoved Carlota into a marble table, murdering the seven-month-old unborn child.
Harper and her mother bribed the doctor to lie to Donavan, claiming the dead baby was only five months old. Believing Carlota had cheated, Donavan mocked her broken, bleeding state and abandoned her in the hospital.
Her stepmother then forced her to sign divorce papers by threatening to pull the plug on her brother's ventilator. They locked Carlota away, planning to sell her to human traffickers and finally murder her brother.
Escaping into the freezing rain, Carlota followed them to a hidden graveyard and uncovered a terrifying, decades-old secret.
Her stepmother and stepsister weren't just greedy gold-diggers. They were the family of a disgraced enemy, infiltrating her home for years to systematically poison her real mother and destroy her bloodline out of pure revenge.
Kneeling in the mud, Carlota's fear vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating emptiness. She picked up her phone and faked a desperate, terrified sob.
"Mom? Please, come get me. I'll do whatever you want."
She hung up the phone, a chilling smile spreading across her face as she prepared to crawl back to Donavan and use his absolute power to slaughter them all.
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Chapter 1
Carlota Hall gripped the heavy satin fabric of her bridesmaid dress, her knuckles turning white. She walked fast down the dimly lit corridor of the Manhattan Plaza Hotel. The heavy bass from the engagement party in the main ballroom thumped against the walls, vibrating through the soles of her heels.
She needed to get away from the crowd. She needed air.
Suddenly, a violent wave of nausea hit her stomach. Carlota stopped dead in her tracks. She slapped her hand over her mouth, her chest heaving. She leaned her shoulder against the expensive silk wallpaper, bending forward as her stomach cramped painfully. She dry-heaved, her throat burning with stomach acid.
In the shadows of a marble Roman pillar at the end of the hall, Donavan Raymond stood perfectly still.
The glowing cherry of his cigar illuminated the sharp, cold lines of his jaw. He watched her shaking back, his eyes narrowing.
Carlota dug frantically into her small designer clutch. Her fingers trembled as she pulled out a mint and shoved it into her mouth. The sharp peppermint flavor coated her tongue, barely suppressing the sickness rising in her throat. She closed her eyes, taking a deep, ragged breath.
A heavy thud echoed on the thick wool carpet.
Donavan's custom leather shoes made a muffled, deliberate sound. Step by step, he was closing the distance.
Carlota's eyes snapped open. The sound of his footsteps sent a jolt of pure panic straight to her heart. She straightened up instantly. She turned her body, her eyes darting toward the green exit sign over the stairwell.
She took one step.
Donavan lunged forward. His large, hot hand clamped down hard around her thin wrist.
The force of his grip jerked her backward. Carlota lost her balance. Her back slammed hard against the wall. The impact knocked the breath out of her lungs.
Before she could slide away, Donavan raised his arm and planted his hand flat against the wall right next to her ear. His massive frame boxed her in completely. There was nowhere to run.
The heavy scent of expensive tobacco mixed with his dark, masculine cologne filled the narrow space. It suffocated her. Carlota stopped breathing. Her chest froze.
Donavan's gaze dropped. His eyes, sharp as a scalpel, dragged over the waistline of her dress. She had paid a tailor extra to let out the seams just enough to hide the slight, undeniable bump of her stomach.
"What were you gagging over out here?" Donavan asked.
His voice was a low, dangerous rumble that vibrated against her skin.
Carlota forced her chin up. She looked away from his piercing stare, fixing her eyes on his silk tie.
"I drank too much champagne," she lied, her voice shaking. "My stomach is upset."
Donavan let out a harsh, humorless laugh. He reached out and grabbed her chin, his fingers digging into her soft skin. He forced her head turn, making her look directly into his dark eyes.
"You haven't touched a single drop of alcohol all night," he stated flatly.
Carlota's breath hitched.
"And," Donavan continued, his voice dropping an octave, "I saw you walking out of the private OBGYN clinic on Park Avenue last week."
Carlota's pupils dilated in sheer terror. The federal HIPAA privacy laws in the United States strictly prevented doctors from releasing patient information to anyone. He couldn't have seen her medical records. He was guessing. He had to be guessing.
She brought both her hands up, grabbing his thick wrist. She dug her nails into his skin, trying to pry his iron grip off her face.
Donavan didn't flinch. He didn't move an inch. His eyes darkened with a violent storm of anger.
"Look at me and tell me the truth," Donavan demanded, his jaw ticking. "Is the bastard in your stomach mine?"
The memory of that chaotic night seven months ago crashed into her brain. The heat, the ripping of clothes, the desperate gasps in the dark. Carlota's eyes instantly filled with hot tears.
She bit down on her lower lip so hard she tasted copper blood.
"No," Carlota said, her voice cracking but resolute. "It was an accident. It has absolutely nothing to do with you."
Donavan's fingers tightened on her jaw until it bruised. The veins in his neck bulged. The sheer rage of being lied to, the intense, possessive jealousy, radiated off him like heat from an oven.
The sharp clicking of high heels echoed from the other end of the corridor.
"Donavan?"
Harper Cantu's sweet, high-pitched voice rang out. She turned the corner, wearing a custom-made, diamond-encrusted engagement gown.
Carlota felt Donavan's grip loosen for a fraction of a second. She used every ounce of strength in her body and shoved both her hands hard against his solid chest.
Donavan didn't step back. Instead, his arm shot out. He wrapped his hand around the small of her back and yanked her flush against his hard body.
Harper stopped walking. The fake, sweet smile on her face completely froze. Her eyes locked onto their intimately close bodies. Pure, venomous hatred flashed in her eyes.
Harper quickly recovered. She walked toward them, forcing her lips to curve upward.
"What are you two doing out here?" Harper asked, her voice tight.
Carlota pushed against Donavan's chest again, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"I almost slipped on the carpet," Carlota lied quickly, her voice breathless. "My future brother-in-law was just catching me."
Donavan didn't even look at Carlota. He turned his head slowly and stared blankly at Harper.
"The engagement ceremony is postponed," Donavan announced coldly.
Harper's eyes widened in horror. Her perfectly manicured nails dug so deeply into her palms that the skin broke.
"Donavan, wait, what are you saying-"
Donavan ignored her completely. He grabbed Carlota by the upper arm. His grip was brutal. He dragged her away from the wall, pulling her toward the heavy mahogany doors of the VIP lounge a few feet away.
"Let me go!" Carlota gasped, stumbling over her heels as he pulled her.
Donavan kicked the VIP lounge door open, dragging her inside into the dimly lit gloom. The faint amber light from the hallway barely pierced the shadows of the room.
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7.2
After a one night stand with the woman whose house Jason broke into, his life has never been the same. Like a siren's call, he can't get the nymphomaniac woman off his mind. Weeks later, while getting intel for the crew's next heist, Jason lays eyes upon the woman and follows her into a secret strip club. She appears to lead a double life. One where she's the CEO of a multimillion company and her father's golden child. The other side of her life is that she owns a strip club and is extremely erotic. Can Jason learn to live with her as she is? Will he put his pride aside to be with the woman? ... especially when his crew is hired to kidnap a woman who turns out to be the love of his life.
7.4
Deadly contract
7.4
"So we have a deal, do we? We do things my way, no argument, no buts."
"Yes," she bit out.
"Good,"he said, smiling wryly to himself at the thought that yes wasn't a word Joy was used to saying to men. But she was going to say it a lot during their time together. He would make her say it. No, he would make her want to say it.
34-year-old Joy Mike, who, after a failed engagement and struggling with infertility, seeks to conceive a baby alone. Childhood acquaintance and now successful, attractive John Davis intervenes with a tempting proposal: he will help her conceive in the "traditional way". The contract leads to intense passion and emotional risk for Joy as she risks losing her heart to the man who promised her a baby, but not a marriage.
8.1
Arnetta had been married to a wealthy man for three years, but she had never even seen his face.
After a wild night of drinking, she woke up in a hotel room next to a handsome, ruthless stranger.
He coldly kicked her out, mocking her as just another desperate woman trying to sleep her way to the top.
To her shock, she soon discovered the stranger was Brennan Kirkland—her firm's top-tier client and a legendary Wall Street billionaire.
Hiding her true identity as a corporate spy, she manipulated her way into becoming his executive assistant to steal his data.
During a business dinner, Arnetta received a humiliating text from her absent husband, demanding a divorce and calling her a greedy parasite.
"He is a deadbeat coward who thinks money solves everything," Arnetta spat in anger.
"A man who hides behind lawyers is weak," Brennan agreed coldly.
He had absolutely no idea he was insulting his own actions, nor did he realize the wild, gold-digging wife he despised was sitting right across from him.
The next day, her husband's legal team sent a brutal twenty-million-dollar settlement offer, threatening to ruin her if she didn't take the payoff and disappear.
Staring at the degrading ultimatum, Arnetta's hands shook with blinding rage.
She looked at Brennan, who was busy plotting to destroy his own wife, and a terrifyingly calm smile touched her lips.
She wasn't just going to take the money; she was going to completely destroy him.
9.7
I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him.
Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister.
Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair.
I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people.
But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse.
I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges.
The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill.
When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell.
But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone.
His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life.
I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me.
Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference.
"I'll do it, but I control the venue."
I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.
9.7
I was a top cardiac surgeon, trapped in a dead marriage with a ruthless billionaire.
One afternoon, he brought his mistress to my hospital, ordering me to perform her high-risk heart surgery.
When I refused and handed him our divorce papers, he violently tore them up and threatened to erase my name from the medical community.
Worse, I discovered they had a five-year-old surrogate son—bought and born the exact same year I bled out on an operating table, losing our baby.
The mistress mocked my trauma, calling me a barren piece of trash who couldn't give him an heir.
I slapped her across the face.
The next morning, the NYPD publicly handcuffed me in my own hospital.
She had framed me for attempted murder, claiming I injected her IV with a lethal dose of potassium.
My husband cornered me in the interrogation room.
"Just confess to me. I will throw enough money at the DA to make this entirely disappear."
I looked into his dark eyes and saw nothing but raw, unfiltered suspicion.
He actually believed I was a jealous murderer.
I swore I would rather rot in a concrete cell for the rest of my life than bow down to them.
Just as my childhood savior miraculously appeared to bail me out, my phone rang.
The mistress had gone into full cardiac arrest.
Only I had the surgical skill to save her.
I turned around, deciding whether to let the woman who ruined my life die, or pick up my scalpel.
8.6
Eleanor Sinclair always knew her stepmother and stepsister were leeches, but she never expected their betrayal to reach into her private study.
In the dead of night, she caught the family's trusted nanny of twelve years photographing confidential trust documents. The mastermind paying her off was Lillian, Eleanor's stepmother, who had been secretly embezzling estate funds and bribing tutors to deliberately ruin the academic future of Eleanor's younger brother, the only legitimate heir.
Emboldened by their deceit, the parasites grew arrogant. Her stepsister, Isabelle, deliberately flaunted her secret affair with Eleanor’s billionaire fiancé, sobbing fake tears while waiting for Eleanor to suffer a humiliating nervous breakdown.
When the tension finally peaked, Lillian played the victim so perfectly that Eleanor's own father, a powerful U.S. Senator, stormed into the room with a raised hand, ready to strike his own daughter.
"You will apologize to your stepsister immediately! I will not have this family harmony destroyed by your petty jealousy!"
They actually expected her to be a weeping, heartbroken girl. They thought cheap hotel affairs and stolen pennies could outsmart the true Sinclair bloodline. Did they really believe a few fake tears and a weak-willed father could strip her of her empire?
Eleanor didn't feel anger; she felt the cold, detached fascination of a biologist observing doomed insects. She calmly pulled out the forensic audits, locked down the estate's exits, and prepared her stepmother's psychiatric commitment papers. The merciless purge of her family had officially begun.