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 3
For a second, a shadow seemed to pass over Bryon's face.
Almost without thinking, he pulled his arm away from the woman clinging to it.
"Helena, you didn't reply to my messages. Did you come here to surprise me?" he asked.
Helena blinked. Surprise?
How cheeky of him to just assume she'd still be surprising him with anything.
Helena lifted her gaze to him and watched him put on an act. She could have torn the mask away with a single sentence, but she did not. "I was busy this afternoon. I didn't check my messages."
Hearing that, Bryson seemed to let out a sigh of relief, as though he believed the danger had passed.
He knelt on one knee so he could meet her at eye level and said in a seemingly concerned tone, "It's cold today. You went out dressed so lightly. I am worried that you will catch a cold."
As he spoke, he lifted a hand and gestured to a nearby attendant. A blanket was brought over at once. He took it carefully and wrapped it around her shoulders. To anyone watching, the gesture looked caring.
Helena remained still. She watched his actions quietly, her expression unreadable, then slowly let her gaze drift past him to Charlee.
For a brief second, Charlee looked caught off guard. Then, just as quickly, a bright smile spread across her features as she greeted Helena, saying, "Helena, what a coincidence."
Without waiting for Helena's reply, she then sat down in the seat one over from Helena, settling herself as though she belonged there.
Bryson tucked a strand of hair behind Helena's ear and leaned in to say, "Charlee has secured several major projects for the company recently. I promised her a gift as a reward, and it is her birthday soon."
He let the words hang for a moment, as if they were supposed to explain everything. "Helena, you're not upset about this, are you?"
Before Helena could answer, Charlee interjected, "Helena, if you don't want me here, I can leave."
Helena's face showed nothing at all. Not even a flicker of anger or hurt. Instead, she replied indifferently, "Why would I not want you to be here? Bryson's your brother-in-law. Consider it a birthday gift from both of us as a couple."
Even though their marriage was fake, she was still Bryson's wife in the eyes of the public.
Charlee remained the mistress.
When the auction began, Bryson quickly placed the first bids. One after another, he won several jewelry sets, each one for Helena.
Charlee, however, seemed unable to contain herself any longer. She slipped her hand closer and hooked her pinky finger around Bryson's in secret.
Bryson's expression remained unchanged, but beneath the chair, his finger tightened around hers.
Helena saw it all, and something about it struck her as almost laughable.
Before the Jones family's decline, she and Charlee had been known in Daxwell's elite circles as the accomplished and beautiful siblings. People spoke their names with admiration. Wherever they appeared, heads turned. Even after their family's downfall, that attention never really disappeared.
So, how could Bryson sit there, so self-assured, thinking he could keep one as his wife and the other as his mistress? He really thought he could have everything, didn't he?
Helena had no obsession with Bryson. He was not the center of her world, and he never had been. So, when this relationship finally began to threaten her emotions and her interests, she knew what should come next. It was time to sever her ties.
Just then, the auctioneer's voice rang out across the hall. "Next is the final lot of the evening—an emerald sculpture. The texture is exquisite, and the inclusions are lively. The opening bid is two million."
Helena snapped back to attention at once. Everything else faded into the background. At last, her target for the evening had finally appeared.
"Bidder number 20 offers 2.6 million. Any higher bids?"
Helena's gaze sharpened, and her fingers curled slightly. This was the moment she had been waiting for. Seeing that the bidding was about to conclude, she raised her paddle and said, "3.5 million!"
A piece like this was rare, but the people willing to spend freely on it were rarer. And Helena's offer stood far above the opening bid, high enough to make the room pause. Everyone could see she had come here for this sculpture. And in circles like these, there was an unspoken rule. When someone revealed such clear intent, others rarely interfered. No one wished to challenge Helena now. Just as expected, no other paddle rose.
"The lady with paddle number 7 bids 3.5 million. Any bids above that price?"
"3.5 million, going once! 3.5 million, going twice..."
The room held its breath. Just as Leo, the auctioneer, raised his gavel to finalize the sale, a gentle voice echoed in the air.
"3.51 million!"
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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.