Trading A Fake Marriage For A Real Vow
Bryson once gave Helena his whole heart, yet betrayal followed when he wed another.
He claimed her absence forced his hand, insisting the other woman was only a substitute.
Helena refused to accept this false marriage or any more of his excuses.
She gathered evidence, secured much of his fortune through court, then stunned everyone by marrying Bryson's own brother.
Rumors whispered that Callum longed for someone out of reach, until one day, he posted a picture of intertwined hands, bands matching.
On a trip, he introduced Helena as his beloved wife.
When Helena wasn't around, one of his friends asked, "What about the girl you've loved for so many years?"
Callum's gaze fell upon Helena's silhouette. "She stands right beside me."
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Chapter 1
The insurance agent spoke plainly over the phone. "Ms. Jones, our records show you are not Mr. Davies' wife. I'm afraid we can't handle the claim since you are not listed as his spouse."
Helena Jones had gotten into a car accident on her drive to Bryson Davies' company that day.
A Mercedes slammed into her from behind. The other driver, knowing the stretch of road had no surveillance cameras, flipped the story and boldly demanded one hundred thousand dollars to settle privately.
Bryson's line remained unreachable no matter how many times she tried. Helena pressed her mouth tight, then dialed the insurance company as her only option.
She and Bryson got married two years ago. And the car belonged to him. Filing a claim should have been easy.
For a second, Helena wondered if she had misheard the person from the other end of the line.
"Could there be a mistake in your records?" she asked, her voice unsteady.
"The system is accurate. It lists Mr. Davies' legal wife as a woman named Charlee Jones. Not you," the agent replied, a trace of impatience creeping into his tone.
Helena's grip went slack at that. The phone slipped from her fingers and hit the ground.
The line cut off on its own.
An icy sensation climbed from her feet. Her face drained of color, as if someone had struck her.
Charlee.
That name was too familiar to her.
Helena's and Bryson's families had arranged their engagement back when they were just kids. When she boarded her flight for overseas studies, Bryson had slipped past security, dashed along the runway beside the accelerating plane, and called out loudly that he would wait until she came back, no matter how long it took.
Over those three years away, he had made the long trip to see her every time his schedule opened up.
Right after getting her degree, she hurried home full of excitement to give him a surprise.
She turned the handle of his office door to open it, only to see a woman with a gentle, innocent face resting on his lap, her cheeks warm with shyness, while she let him kiss her deeply without pulling away.
Once the kiss ended, Bryson's look hardened into something distant and closed off. "Only because you carry a slight resemblance to her that I allowed you near me."
That woman turned out to be Charlee.
She had grown up as the adopted daughter in the Jones family, making her Helena's adopted younger sister.
When the affair was exposed, Bryson flipped to frantic apologies, begging Helena to forgive him with the kind of desperation that looked ready to bring him to his knees.
He kept repeating that Charlee meant nothing more than a temporary substitute for her, insisting he never crossed the line with Charlee.
Everything she had seen that day, he chalked up completely to being far too drunk.
Back then, Helena refused to accept even the smallest hint of dishonesty, so she brushed aside his explanations and pushed hard to cancel the engagement for good.
Bryson, who usually carried himself with cold arrogance, planted himself day and night at her door, saying soft, earnest pleas in a humbled voice. But she still didn't forgive him.
Then, everything changed one night when a business rival kidnapped her and locked her inside a rundown warehouse far outside the city. Bryson charged straight to the place, diving into the burning building without hesitation. He covered her body with his own to stop a heavy falling steel beam from crushing her and took terrible injuries that left him fighting for life in the hospital for almost six full months.
That single act tore down the walls around her heart.
When Bryson was finally discharged from the hospital, she gave in and said yes to marrying him.
The wedding became the talk of Glurora, with everyone gossiping about how Bryson had finally chosen to settle.
In all the two years since, no rumor of another woman ever surfaced. Bryson came home before ten every night without exception, and even on work trips, he never skipped the evening video call, always treating her like she sat at the center of his world.
The memories of all that kept replaying in Helena's head.
She felt her legs fold under her. She dropped straight down to the ground and pressed both hands against her face while cold sweat coated her shaking fingers.
At that moment, Bryson seemed like someone she had never truly known.
The big, rough driver who caused the crash had already lost every bit of patience. He spat on the ground and said, "This is something else! Thirty years of my life, and I finally see a mistress bold enough to try taking the wife's spot! Cut the delay. Pay the money right now!"
Ice flashed through Helena's eyes even as a bitter, silent laugh rose inside her.
The whole thing felt ridiculous beyond words.
She had worn the title of Bryson's wife for two complete years, and only in this moment did she realize that their marriage was fake.
She rubbed her face roughly. Wet hair already stuck to her forehead from the chill sweat.
When her voice came again, it sounded steady and clear.
"Call the police."
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7.4
My five-year-old daughter was dying in the ICU, her heartbeat replaced by the continuous, electronic scream of a flatline. I gripped her cold hand, my throat sealed shut by a terror so absolute I couldn't even cry out.
I dialed my husband Grayson's private number, the one reserved only for me and his assistants. He declined the call instantly. A second later, a text buzzed against my palm:
"In a meeting. Do not disturb. Stop calling."
Five miles away, Grayson was at a luxury gala, adjusting his silk tie and laughing with Belle Escobar. He told her I was just being "dramatic" and using our daughter's "fever" as an excuse to avoid the event. He had no idea Effie's heart had already stopped.
When I finally reached our penthouse, soaked from the rain and carrying Effie's small socks in a plastic bag, Grayson didn't even look at me. He snapped at me for ruining the hardwood floors and asked if I'd left Effie with the nanny just to "feel sorry for myself."
Three days later, while I buried our daughter in a small, lonely ceremony, Grayson was at the Hamptons. Belle posted a photo of him golfing with the caption: "A mental health day with the boys." He didn't even attend the funeral, but he returned home demanding I clear out Effie's room to make a study for Belle's son.
The injustice burned through me until there was nothing left. I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, desperate to join my daughter. But instead of the darkness, I woke up to blinding lights and the scent of Grayson's expensive cologne.
I was standing in a ballroom, wearing a blue silk dress I had already burned. Above me, a banner read: "Happy 5th Birthday Kaiden & Effie."
I was back, exactly one year before the tragedy. This time, I wasn't going to be the grieving wife. I was going to be their worst nightmare.
9.6
In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my private photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times.
Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my private photos all over the internet.
I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars.
That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me.
After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.
"Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you."
Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again.
In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch.
But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby.
Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice.
"Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child."
Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago.
When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing. "She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time."
At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago.
I looked at him and nodded. "Don't worry, this will never happen again."
7.0
On her wedding night, Liora Vale expected passion from her wealthy husband. Instead, she got rejection and humiliation.
When his dangerously seductive best friend, Kael Draven, corners her on the balcony and claims her virgin body with raw, unprotected fury, Liora discovers a pleasure she never knew existed.
Now addicted to Kael's brutal touch and filthy promises, the once-innocent bride becomes his secret slut, sneaking creampies in limos, riding him at galas, and begging to be bred while her husband sleeps nearby.
Kael won't stop until he destroys Silas and fills Liora's womb with his child.
She was supposed to be the perfect wife... now she's the shameless breeding whore who belongs only to him.
9.4
My husband, the ruthless Underboss of the Ewing crime family, was terrified of one thing: his dead fiancée’s memory.
Or rather, her living sister, Ivana, who used that memory to turn my life into a living hell.
To "apologize" for humiliating me at a gala, Corbett brought me a peace offering: a green macaron.
"Pistachio," he promised. "Your favorite."
I took one bite, and my throat instantly seized. It felt like barbed wire tightening around my windpipe.
It wasn't pistachio. It was almond paste.
Corbett knew I was deadly allergic. He used to carry my EpiPen on our first dates.
As I collapsed to the floor, wheezing and clawing at my neck, a scream ripped from the guest wing.
"Corbett! Help! They're posting mean comments about me again!"
Ivana.
Corbett looked down at me, his dying wife, and then looked toward the hallway where Ivana was crying over Instagram.
He hesitated for only a second.
Then he pulled his leg away from my grasping hand.
"I'll be right back," he said, turning his back on me. "Just... use your pen."
He ran to comfort a healthy woman while I crawled across the carpet, vision tunneling, forcing the needle into my own thigh to restart my heart.
As I lay there shaking, listening to him soothe her, the last thread of love snapped.
I didn't call an ambulance.
I pulled a burner phone from behind the vanity mirror and texted the one man Corbett feared more than death—his rival, Don Kain Solomon.
"I accept. Get me out."
8.5
After four years of marriage, my wealthy husband Brad handed me a $50,000 severance check outside the Manhattan Family Court.
He linked arms with his mistress, Jenna, who flaunted the diamond ring that used to be mine.
"Just take it, Hayley. Take the money and get out of our lives," he sneered, looking at me with absolute disgust.
I tore the check into pieces, but my nightmare was just beginning.
To access my grandfather's trust fund, I had exactly seventy-two hours to get legally married, so I desperately proposed a one-year contract marriage to a poor insurance salesman I met in a dive bar.
When Brad found out, he and his arrogant family cornered me at their estate.
Brad mocked my new husband for being a penniless, money-grubbing parasite, while my former mother-in-law slapped me hard across the face, knocking me to the ground.
"You are trash, just like your mother," she spat, watching my knee bleed onto the sharp gravel.
Jenna gleefully kicked my phone away, shattering the screen and cutting off my only lifeline.
Lying there in the dirt, I stared at the broken glass in absolute despair.
I didn't understand why four years of quiet devotion had earned me nothing but cruel betrayal and endless humiliation from the people I once called family.
Just as I thought I had completely lost, a black Lincoln Navigator slammed to a halt at the gates.
My "penniless" new husband stepped out, radiating a terrifying, righteous fury that made the entire Patton family freeze in horror.
8.4
I was drugged and sent to a hotel room to be compromised, but I ended up in the presidential suite with a stranger.
I didn't know the man I clung to in my hallucinogenic haze was my own husband, Devaughn Winters, a man I hadn't spoken to in a year.
When I woke up the next morning, the terror of what I’d done hit me like a physical blow. I fled, leaving behind nothing but a shredded dress and a lingering sense of dread.
I thought I’d finally escaped the cold, suffocating contract of our marriage when I signed the divorce papers, but I was wrong.
My mother-in-law arrived at my apartment, freezing my sick mother’s medical funds and threatening to ruin me for the "infidelity" she claimed I’d committed.
She dragged my secrets into the light, leaving me with no choice but to fight back with a knife in my hand and a 911 call on speaker.
But just as I thought I was free, the man I’d spent the night with—the man who was supposed to be my stranger—tore up our divorce papers and declared that I was his to keep.
I was a pawn in a game I didn't understand, trapped between a ruthless father who wanted to sell me for corporate secrets and a husband who demanded I belong to him in life and in death.
How did he not know who I was that night, and why is he suddenly claiming me as his own?
I’m done being a victim, and if he thinks he can own me, he’s about to find out exactly what happens when a cornered woman decides to burn it all down.