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 6
Helena finally lifted her head, and her eyes locked onto the stranger standing before her.
His expression gave nothing away, yet the air around him felt heavy, his presence exuding an intimidating pressure.
Bryson called him Callum, and she knew that name. Callum Davies was Bryson's elder brother.
In Glurora's elite circle, Callum's name carried even more weight than Bryson's ever could.
People rarely spoke about him in detail, but everyone knew the same thing—he was powerful and ruthless, not one to cross.
Callum calmly raised a hand and nudged his gold-rimmed glasses higher, choosing not to respond to Bryson's question.
For a brief second, his eyes drifted to the red mark on Helena's shoulder.
After that, his attention turned toward Charlee beside Bryson, and his voice was cold as he said, "If my memory is correct, Helena is your wife, not this woman. Do not let your messy distractions embarrass the Davies family."
The man's voice was pleasant, and it made Helena's heart skip a beat.
This was their first encounter, but something about him felt strangely familiar.
Was she imagining it?
Helena shut her eyes for a moment, composing herself.
Beside Bryson, Charlee immediately let go of his arm, fear locking her throat completely.
The quiet threat woven into Callum's tone made Bryson stiffen.
Instinctively, he tried to defend Charlee, and his voice came out trembling a little. "Callum, you have it wrong. There is nothing between Charlee and me. I have always treated her like family."
Then, as though remembering the right thing to do, he shifted his stance and wrapped an arm around Helena's waist, pulling her closer.
His voice softened. "You know that Helena is the only one I love. I would never do anything that could hurt her."
Callum's gaze turned sharper the second he saw Bryson's hand on Helena's waist.
"Do not forget what you just said," he warned in a low voice.
After that, he stepped away and slid into his car. The black Bentley pulled away, and within moments, it vanished from sight.
A sick feeling surged in Helena's stomach, and she quickly knocked Bryson's hand away.
Straightening up, she faced the man she had once loved with everything she had.
Her voice came out cold enough to cut. "Bryson, you do not even remember what you promised me before."
Bryson blinked, clearly not understanding her.
Helena continued, "That emerald sculpture once belonged to my father. I will not give it to anyone else. I'm not feeling well. I will go back now."
With that, she turned and left.
Bryson stood there and didn't follow her.
No wonder Helena had acted so out of character today and even slapped him.
He hadn't paid attention to that detail at all. He would just smooth things over later, like always.
Still...
His mind drifted back to Callum appearing at the auction and the way his words had quietly defended Helena. A ridiculous suspicion crept in.
Was Callum the mysterious bidder?
"My birthday present... Helena took it," Charlee said suddenly, snapping Bryson out of his thoughts.
She clung to his arm, pouting as she pressed herself closer.
Bryson immediately softened his tone. "Forget that piece. I can get you something even better. Anything you want."
Charlee swallowed down her bitterness. This small failure didn't matter. Everything Helena had would belong to her eventually.
With that thought, she put on a sweet smile and nodded obediently.
***
As soon as Helena got home, she went to the study and quickly began reviewing all the assets she and Bryson had.
She pulled out her phone, found her lawyer's number, and called him.
"I have put together a full report of everything Bryson and I own together," Helena said evenly. "I just emailed it to you."
Wilbur Price had already opened the email. His response came without delay. "I already received it."
Helena stared at the space before her, her grip tightening until her knuckles turned pale.
At last, she asked the question that had been weighing on her.
"If Bryson is charged with bigamy, what happens to the assets we share?"
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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.