Too Late CEO: The Runaway Wife Returns
Corrie lay restrained on the sterile hospital bed, her wrists bleeding against the thick leather straps.
Her husband, Damon, walked in with eyes entirely black with disgust and ordered the nurse to drain her rare blood.
He believed Corrie had pushed Kara, the woman he claimed as his savior, and he was willing to drain Corrie dry to save her.
"As long as she doesn't die, keep drawing. Kara's life is worth a hundred of hers."
He ignored the frantic beeping of her heart monitor and walked out, leaving her slipping into hypovolemic shock.
Using her last ounce of strength, Corrie escaped the clinic and hailed a taxi in the freezing rain, just wanting to survive.
But the driver locked the doors and deliberately drove the speeding car straight off the bridge into the raging Hudson River.
As the icy water swallowed her and she tried to swim out of the shattered windshield, a black-gloved hand grabbed her ankle.
The inhuman grip dragged her down into the crushing, dark depths, filling her lungs with liquid fire.
As her vision faded to black, Corrie's heart shattered into a million pieces.
Why did the man she loved believe a lying stranger over his own wife?
And who was the assassin in the dark water making sure she died?
Five years later, Corrie walked out of the airport with a new, untouchable identity and a pair of genius twins.
The freezing river had permanently ruined her heart and lungs, but it had also forged her into a ruthless survivor.
She swore to never let the Holloway family touch her again, until her son's identical icy blue eyes caught the attention of the billionaire CEO she thought she had escaped.
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Chapter 8
The phone connected.
For three seconds, the line was completely dead. Leo didn't immediately yell "Mom." The boy was too smart. He was listening to the background noise, sensing the trap.
Damon held Corrie tight against his chest. He lifted the phone to his ear.
"Hello, Leo," Damon said, his deep, magnetic voice vibrating through his chest and into Corrie's back.
Corrie thrashed wildly. She tried to scream, to tell Leo to run.
Damon shifted his weight, pressing her forward until her stomach was pinned hard against the edge of the workbench. He moved his large hand from her wrists and clamped it firmly over her mouth, silencing her screams.
Through the phone speaker, the rapid clicking of a mechanical keyboard echoed.
"Mr. Holloway," Leo's high, childish voice came through, completely devoid of emotion. "Intercepting another person's phone call is a direct violation of the Federal Communications Commission regulations."
Damon's eyebrows shot up. A flash of genuine, shocked admiration crossed his face.
"You know my last name," Damon said, a dark smile playing on his lips. "You've done your homework over the last five years."
"It doesn't take much time to research a scumbag who abandons his wife," Leo shot back, his voice dripping with venom.
Being called a scumbag by his own flesh and blood wiped the smile off Damon's face. His jaw locked. His muscles tensed, and his hand pressing Corrie against the table accidentally pushed harder.
The wooden edge dug into Corrie's ribs. She let out a muffled groan of pain against his palm.
The keyboard clicking on the phone instantly stopped.
"Let her go," Leo demanded, his voice suddenly frantic and vicious. "Take your hands off my mother right now, or I will crash the Holloway Group's stock price by twenty percent in the next ten minutes."
Damon rolled his eyes, assuming it was a child's empty threat. "You can try, kid. But right now, you are going to tell me exactly where you are."
Leo let out a cold, sharp laugh.
Suddenly, a loud burst of electronic static blasted through the phone speaker.
At the exact same moment, the tablet in Brad's hand began to blare a loud, red siren alarm. Brad rushed into the room, his face pale.
"Boss!" Brad yelled. "The main servers at HQ are under a massive DDoS attack. The trading algorithms are freezing up!"
Damon stared at the phone in his hand, utterly stunned. A four-and-a-half-year-old boy was taking down a billion-dollar corporate server.
In that split second of Damon's distraction, Corrie turned her head. She opened her mouth and sank her teeth deep into the fleshy part of Damon's palm.
She bit down as hard as she could, tasting hot blood.
Damon hissed in pain and jerked his hand back.
Corrie spun around and snatched the phone from his other hand.
"Leo, cut the connection!" Corrie screamed into the mic. "Don't let him trace your IP!"
The line went dead instantly.
Damon looked down at his right hand. Deep teeth marks punctured his skin, blood welling up and dripping onto the floor. He slowly raised his eyes to Corrie. They were pitch black and incredibly dangerous.
"A genius hacker?" Damon took a slow step toward her. "It seems he inherited my high IQ."
Corrie backed into the corner of the room, her face completely drained of color. She stubbornly held her ground. "He is an Alvarez. He inherited my genes!"
Damon lost the last shred of his patience. He lunged forward, grabbing her by the shoulders and yanking her hard against his chest.
Before she could react, his fingers tangled in her hair. He pulled hard, plucking a single strand from her scalp.
He shoved the hair into Brad's hand. "Take this to the private lab. Run a rush DNA comparison with my profile. Keep the technicians working all night if you have to. I want the results on my desk by tomorrow morning."
Corrie watched Brad run out the door. The absolute certainty of the DNA test shattered her last hope. Her lies were useless now.
Damon looked down at her pale, defeated face. He decided to crush her final illusion.
"You think you can hide them?" Damon whispered, his face inches from hers. "Look at the boy's eyes. Look at the girl's eyes. That exact shade of icy blue... it is identical to mine. I have never seen it outside the Holloway family. They are my children."
The words were the final blow.
Corrie's mental defenses violently collapsed. The terror she had suppressed for five long years erupted inside her.
The air in the room suddenly felt thick, like water. She couldn't breathe. The phantom sensation of the freezing Hudson River flooded her lungs.
Corrie grabbed the front of her canvas apron, her knuckles white. She opened her mouth, gasping like a fish out of water, but no sound came out. Cold sweat poured down her face.
Damon frowned. He thought she was acting, trying to manipulate him.
"Stop faking it, Corrie," he said coldly.
Before the words fully left his mouth, Corrie's chest convulsed.
She bent forward and coughed violently. A mouthful of dark red blood sprayed from her lips, splattering directly across the crisp white fabric of Damon's expensive dress shirt.
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9.3
On her wedding night at The Plaza Hotel, Clara went looking for her husband.
Instead, she found him in the dimly lit parking garage, passionately pinning down her bridesmaid.
She couldn't even scream or expose them. Just hours before the ceremony, Julian had tricked her into signing away her twenty percent shares of their co-founded company, leaving her completely penniless and unable to pay her grandmother's life-saving medical bills.
Fleeing in absolute despair, a sudden hotel blackout plunged her into a second nightmare. She was dragged into a pitch-black room and brutally violated by a heavily drugged stranger.
When a shattered Clara returned to the office to audit the books and reclaim her power, Julian demoted her to a dusty desk by the trash cans.
He flaunted his mistress in the executive suite and deliberately sent Clara into a horrifying trap. He arranged for vicious clients to drug and assault her, demanding high-definition blackmail photos so he could divorce her with absolutely nothing.
"Since you want to play rough, you can service Mr. Petrocelli tonight," the thug sneered, locking the VIP room door.
Clara was pushed to the brink of hell. Why was the man she devoted three years of her life to trying to destroy her so completely? And why did the freezing cedarwood scent of the stranger who ruined her in the dark perfectly match Conrad Vance, the ruthless CEO and Julian's untouchable uncle?
Rather than let Julian win, Clara smashed a glass bottle, held the jagged edge to her own throat to force the men back, and threw herself off the second-floor balcony into the freezing night.
But the bone-crushing impact never came. A massive figure shot out from the shadows and caught her, and her brutal counterattack finally began.
8.1
Desperate for a way out of rejection and poverty, Pearl Augustine accepts a nanny job with an outrageous salary-working for billionaire Ace Warren. What she doesn't expect is his daughter.
Mia Warren is spoiled, sharp-tongued, and feared by everyone in the mansion. Behind her cruelty is a lonely child longing for a mother. As Pearl becomes the only one who can reach her, walls begin to fall-especially those around Ace, a grieving man hiding behind wealth and control.
What started as "just a job" quickly turns into something dangerous: attachment.
Sometimes, healing begins where you least expect it.
8.2
My wedding to Ethan Reed was just weeks away.
After seven years, I was certain of our perfect future.
Then, Ethan claimed "selective amnesia" from a head injury, forgetting only me.
I tried to make him remember, until I overheard his video call.
"Total genius move," he boasted to friends.
His amnesia was a fake "hall pass" to pursue influencer Chloe Vance before our wedding.
Heartbroken, I feigned belief.
I endured his open flirting with Chloe and their taunting selfies.
He mocked my distress, prioritizing Chloe's fake emergency.
After an accident he caused, he abandoned me, injured, choosing to send Chloe to the hospital first.
He even tried to cut me off financially.
How could my fiancé be this cruel, calculating monster?
His betrayal poisoned every memory.
I felt like a fool for trusting such boundless cruelty.
His audacity left me reeling.
But I wouldn’t be his victim.
Instead of breaking, a cold plan formed.
I would shed my identity, become Olivia Carter.
I would disappear, leaving him, my past, and his engagement ring behind forever, claiming my freedom.
7.5
To survive a lethal genetic breakdown, Holden, a legendary mercenary known as "Ghost," was forced into an arranged marriage with the wealthy heiress Julia Ramsey.
But the moment he stepped into the lavish estate wearing an oil-stained jacket, he was treated like absolute garbage.
Julia accused him of being a perverted stalker, pulling a gun on him and demanding he be thrown out. Even after Holden used a forbidden kinetic strike to save her grandfather from a fatal heart attack, the family still looked at him with pure disgust. Julia confined him to a cramped guest room, warning him to stay out of her life. To make matters worse, his other estranged fiancée, an elite military commander, barged into the penthouse just to throw an annulment in his face.
"You are a pathetic, bottom-feeding parasite! You have no ambition. You hide in this woman's apartment like a stray dog. You are entirely beneath me."
She mocked him in front of Julia, completely blind to the fact that Holden had just effortlessly incapacitated her Tier-1 operative with a single strike. They all thought he was just a greedy, low-class thug clinging to their wealth. They had no idea they were mocking an apex predator who commanded the city's underground and hunted mutant monsters for sport.
When Julia forced him to attend a high-society yacht party as part of a trap to publicly humiliate him, Holden just smirked and took a sip of his cheap beer.
He was more than happy to play along, already calculating exactly how he was going to tear their arrogant little world apart.
9.5
Jennifer, a fiercely independent entrepreneur, never imagined that running her company would put her in the orbit of Joseph, a reclusive billionaire with a dangerous agenda. Their professional clashes ignite a forbidden attraction, drawing them into a passionate affair that threatens to unravel everything Jennifer has built. As corporate sabotage, hidden heirs, and dark secrets from Joseph's past begin to surface, Jennifer's world spirals into a web of betrayal, desire, and moral peril. In a story where power and love collide, nothing is as it seems and every choice could be lethal.
9.5
After her step sister ran away from her marriage to the billion dollar heir, they took Emerald Jane Campbell as a stand-in to fill in the position of her step sister. Forced by her evil mother, Emerald can't do anything but to follow. She was tied to the disabled billion dollar heir for three years and all she got was cold treatment from him. Years later, a kidnapper appears in their lives. The kidnapper threatens the life of Emerald until Jude Rafael Sanders- the billion-dollar decides to do what it takes to protect his wife, Emerald.
Secrets began to unravel one by one. But what if Jude finds out his beloved wife has something up beneath her sleeves? Find out how tension intensifies in their roller coaster marriage.