Tipping The Billionaire: His Runaway Lover
Alida caught her boyfriend in bed with another woman, only to discover a frat house contract on his nightstand.
Her love and submission had been nothing but a fifty-thousand-dollar bet.
She extorted the check from him to pay for her dying father's surgery, then went to a club to drink away the brutal betrayal.
But her malicious stepsister secretly drugged her drink, planning to sell her to an underground thug to pay off a debt.
Burning from the chemical mix and running on pure terror, Alida escaped into a VIP hallway and crashed straight into a wall of solid muscle.
Desperate and out of her mind, she slapped the fifty-thousand-dollar check against the handsome stranger's chest.
"I'm buying you for the night."
She had no idea the man she just bought was Jax Vaughn, the ruthless, untouchable billionaire tyrant of Wall Street.
The next morning, Alida fled the penthouse, leaving behind a single crumpled hundred-dollar bill and a humiliating note.
"Service fee. Average skills. Like an uncivilized beast."
Seven years later, Alida returned to New York, holding the hand of her genius seven-year-old son who possessed the exact same pitch-black eyes as the billionaire.
She thought her past was buried forever, safely hidden away from the monster she had insulted.
But her father's mounting medical bills forced her to accept a high-paying executive interview at Vaughn Enterprises.
In the middle of the grand lobby, she stepped right into a familiar, terrifying chest.
Jax Vaughn's iron grip locked onto her wrist, recognizing her scent instantly, his eyes burning with seven years of obsessive, murderous rage.
"You."
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Chapter 5
Jax threw on a fresh shirt, not bothering to button it all the way, and stormed out of the hotel lobby. A fleet of black Maybachs was already idling at the curb.
His assistant ran alongside him, holding an iPad, sweat dripping down his face. "Sir, the blind spots in the service elevator... she slipped out. We tracked a yellow cab she got into ten minutes ago."
Jax snatched the iPad. He stared at the grainy footage of a slender woman running barefoot into a taxi. His eyes burned with a dark, obsessive fire.
"Give me the keys," Jax demanded, holding his hand out to his lead driver.
The driver hesitated, then dropped the keys into Jax's palm. Jax slid into the driver's seat of the lead Maybach. He slammed the door, the engine roaring to life like a caged beast.
Across the city, Alida was shaking as she unlocked the door to her tiny Brooklyn apartment.
She ran straight to the bathroom, turned the shower on scalding hot, and scrubbed her skin until it was raw and red. She needed to wash away the scent of his cologne, the memory of his hands.
Suddenly, a violent pounding echoed from the front door.
"Alida! Open this door you little bitch!" Belva's shrill voice pierced the thin walls. "Mortimer wants his money!"
Heavy thuds followed-the sound of men kicking the wood.
Alida wrapped a towel tightly around herself, her heart dropping into her stomach. She grabbed her phone with wet, trembling hands and dialed the only person she trusted.
"Aunt Martha," Alida choked out. "They're at my door."
"Fire escape. Now," Martha's voice was sharp and commanding. "I'm two blocks away. Meet me at the diner alley."
Alida dropped the phone. She threw on jeans and a sweater, grabbed her purse—the check Jax had contemptuously shoved back at her was still inside—and ran to the window.
The front door splintered with a loud crack.
Alida threw her leg over the windowsill and scrambled onto the rusted iron fire escape. She climbed down as fast as she could, her hands scraping against the rough metal.
She hit the alley floor just as Belva burst into the apartment above. Alida sprinted toward the diner.
A beat-up Ford sedan screeched to a halt. The passenger door flew open. Alida dove inside.
Martha slammed on the gas.
"Call your father," Martha ordered, keeping her eyes on the rearview mirror.
Alida dialed the hospital room. When Arthur answered, she forced a bright tone, swallowing the tears that threatened to choke her. "Dad? I got the exchange program. I'm leaving for London today. I'm so sorry I can't say goodbye in person."
"Oh, my brave girl," Arthur coughed. "I'm so proud of you. Go. Don't worry about me."
Alida hung up and buried her face in her hands, weeping silently.
Martha pulled up to a dimly lit industrial loading zone two miles from the main passenger terminals of JFK Airport. She shoved a thick envelope into Alida's lap. "I’ve kept this emergency kit ready since Mortimer first threatened you. I just had to call in a life-debt to activate the flight. Inside is a passport belonging to a girl who passed away three years ago-you look exactly like her photo. There's also a boarding pass for a commercial cargo flight leaving for Heathrow in twenty minutes. They won't ask questions. Go."
Alida hugged her aunt fiercely. She pulled the fifty-thousand-dollar check from her purse and shoved it into Martha's pocket. "Pay for his surgery. Please."
"Go!" Martha yelled.
Alida grabbed her bag and ran through the sliding glass doors, not looking back.
On the highway leading to the airport, Jax's Maybach was weaving through traffic at a hundred miles an hour.
His phone buzzed on the dashboard. "Sir," the assistant's voice came through the speaker. "She ditched the cab in Brooklyn and switched to an unmarked sedan. We just tracked it to the JFK cargo perimeter."
Jax's jaw locked. He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white. He swerved hard to the right, cutting across three lanes to catch the airport exit ramp.
He was entirely focused on the road ahead, his mind consumed by the image of that humiliating note.
He didn't see the massive eighteen-wheeler in the oncoming lane until it was too late.
The truck's front left tire exploded with a sound like a bomb. The massive vehicle violently swerved, crashing through the concrete median barrier.
The truck cab loomed over Jax's windshield like a mountain of steel.
Jax's pupils dilated. He yanked the steering wheel violently to the right.
The Maybach avoided a head-on collision, but the truck's trailer whipped around, slamming into the rear quarter panel of the car.
The impact was catastrophic. The Maybach spun out of control, flipping end over end. Metal shrieked as it tore apart. The car slammed into the retaining wall, the airbags deploying in a cloud of white powder.
Jax's head struck the side window. Blood poured down his face, blinding him. The world spun, then faded into absolute, crushing darkness.
High above the burning wreckage on the highway, a Boeing 777 pierced the clouds, carrying Alida far away from the nightmare.
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9.7
I ran through the freezing rain, desperate to escape the Pennington estate. My adoptive family had raised me for one purpose: to be sold off as a bargaining chip in a wealthy arranged marriage.
But before I could reach the highway, I was cornered. Not just by my family's cruel guards, but by Hollis Wall—a terrifying, ruthless billionaire who snapped my tormentor's wrist and dragged me into his car. He didn't want a ransom. He threw a prenuptial agreement in my lap.
I thought he was insane until he took a scalpel to his own arm, and a burning agony ripped across my flawless skin. Because of a near-drowning accident three years ago, our nervous systems were linked. Every time I bled, he felt the agony. He locked me in his fortress to keep me safe, but when I finally escaped back to my adoptive parents, they didn't protect me. Instead, my adoptive father smiled and showed me a live video of my biological father on life support, a guard's hand hovering over the plug.
"You will marry Douglas Cherry tomorrow, or your father dies," he sneered.
My own family was willing to murder my only real flesh and blood just to secure their wealth. I collapsed onto the cold marble floor, my heart crushed in a vice of absolute, suffocating despair.
"I'll marry him," I sobbed, surrendering to the darkness.
But miles away, in his dark study, the ruthless Hollis Wall violently collapsed to the floor, gasping for air as my severe panic attack bled directly into his chest. Our twisted bond was killing him, and I knew he would tear the city apart to find me.
8.4
Cari Butler woke up in a damp, smelly dorm room, realizing she had transmigrated into the body of a disgraced fake daughter who had just been kicked out of a wealthy family.
Before she could even process her reality, the real daughter's friends kicked her door open to mock her, flaunting a custom Tiffany necklace that supposedly cost a mere eighty cents.
Cari thought they were crazy, until she saw the news: a top Manhattan mansion had just sold for a record-breaking $3,500.
The entire world's currency value had shrunk by ten thousand times!
This meant the original owner's bank balance of $854,000 gave Cari the purchasing power of eight and a half billion dollars.
But a mysterious system froze her funds, forcing her to work demeaning gig jobs to unlock the money bit by bit.
While working as a hotel server for twenty cents a day, she caught her ex-boyfriend kissing up to the real daughter, mocking Cari for being a desperate beggar.
Even her snobby roommates laughed at her, claiming she couldn't afford a ten-cent iPhone.
What truly angered Cari wasn't the humiliation, but receiving a five-cent transfer from her poor biological brother, who was starving himself just to keep her fed.
Yet, the system strictly forbade her from giving her unlocked billions directly to her family.
Looking at the restrictive system and the arrogant elites who thought they owned the city, Cari's eyes turned icy cold.
"If I can't just hand them the cash,"
Cari sneered, pulling out her phone to outright buy the luxury hotel and fire everyone who wronged her.
"Then I will just buy the entire world and place it at their feet."
9.0
Once a pampered princess, Alaina now clutched a deactivated American Express card, staring out at Central Park. Her family’s fortune was gone, her life, over.
Her family's Hamptons estate, a four-generation legacy, was seized by Dyer Capital. The name hit her: Hardin Dyer, the poor boy she’d once scorned, had returned.
Hardin marched in, serving a divorce agreement. He'd orchestrated her family's downfall for revenge, giving her 24 hours to vacate his property. Penniless, her father faced prison, needing $50 million. Her mother forced her to beg Hardin, who sneered, offering the money for her body. Alaina ripped up the contract.
Hours later, her father had a heart attack. Desperate, she became "Lexi," a club girl enduring humiliation. In the Viper Room, Hardin's lackeys demanded she lick whiskey off his shoe for $10,000. Hardin watched. Outside, her brother Ashton's hand was threatened for a $3 million debt. Spirit shattered, Alaina returned, knelt on broken glass, offering to sign. But Hardin declared her family "dead," offering $10 million for her body, commanding her to use her mouth.
In a furious act of defiance, Alaina threw whiskey in his face, snatched the check, and fled. Yet, when he finally took her, a searing, foreign pain and blood on the sheets revealed a shocking truth: he had never touched her three years ago. Why had he let her believe such a monstrous lie?
8.8
On the eve of my glamorous Waldorf Astoria wedding, I went to the penthouse to surprise my fiancé, Hugh, wearing my late mother's heirloom pearls.
Instead, I heard my stepsister's familiar laugh and caught them tangled together on the sofa.
Through the cracked door, I heard Hugh slur that he was only marrying me for my family's financial backing.
"As soon as I secure my inheritance, she's the first thing I'm getting rid of," he promised her.
Floy giggled and asked for my mother's pearl necklace, my only legacy. Hugh agreed without hesitation, mocking my dead mother's naivety and my desperate dreams of building a family.
Every sweet word he had ever said was a lie, a knife he had been patiently sliding between my ribs for years. They planned to strip me of everything the moment I signed the prenup.
I didn't cry or scream. The crushing weight of their betrayal hollowed me out, leaving behind a terrifying, absolute calm.
Why should I be the one to lose everything while they stole my future and insulted my mother's memory?
I calmly walked down the hall, set the prenuptial agreement on fire, and vanished into the rainy night.
If Hugh wanted to play dirty for the Maxwell empire, I would play for keeps.
Using a forgotten, century-old family covenant, I was going to marry Hugh's uncle-the comatose, paralyzed war hero, Fleet Maxwell.
I would return not as a naive bride, but as their worst nightmare: his aunt, and the new lady of the house.
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.
9.5
Banished for seven years.
Aubree returns to the Hopkins family, only to be despised and cast aside like trash.
Her twin brother bribes her to leave. Her stepsister frames her as a monster.
Her arrogant fiancé wants her ruined, caged, and erased forever.
They think she's a helpless country outcast.
They don't know she's the dark web's most ruthless hacker and strategist.
She doesn't beg. She doesn't cry.
She strikes a deal with Wall Street's deadliest tycoon.
Crush the Prescotts. Ruin her enemies.
She's back to take everything they stole.