Trapped By The Ruthless Billionaire Brother
I agreed to be Joshua Stanley's fake fiancée for fifty thousand dollars a day.
My only job was to act rebellious and piss off his elite family so he could avoid an arranged marriage.
But the moment we arrived at his family estate, my blood ran cold.
His volatile older brother, Brodie, stepped out of a sports car.
He was the exact nightmare I had been desperately hiding from for the past six months.
To hide my face, I recklessly threw my arms around Joshua and kissed him in front of everyone.
But that only ignited Brodie's violent, terrifying rage.
He tore up the pristine lawn with his car, and later that night, he picked the lock to my en-suite bathroom.
He cornered me naked against the shower glass, his cold fingers wrapping around my throat.
"You think you can run from me?"
He whispered, forcing a brutal, punishing kiss on my lips.
I was shaking with pure terror.
I only took this job to make enough money to disappear forever.
How did I end up walking right back into the cage of the devil who humiliated me?
Why wouldn't he just let me go?
But as he tried to break me again, my fear turned into burning rage.
I bit down hard on his lip until I tasted blood, shoved him back, and slapped him fiercely across the face.
"Have you forgotten who I am now?"
I stared right into his dark, predatory eyes.
"I am your brother's fiancée."
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Chapter 8
Joshua's question hung in the air between them, sharp and heavy. "What are you so afraid of?"
Avery forced herself to meet his gaze, to inject a believable dose of scorn into her voice. "What am I afraid of? I'm afraid of whatever insane game you rich people are playing. I'm clearly out of my league."
It was the perfect excuse. Vague enough, plausible enough.
"The way your brother looked at me... it was like he wanted to kill me," she added, letting a shiver run through her for effect. It wasn't hard to fake. "I signed up to make some money, not to get myself murdered."
Joshua's expression softened almost imperceptibly. He had seen his brother's face. Her fear was, for once, logical.
But he still couldn't let her go.
"This game, as you call it, ends when I say it ends." He released her arm but moved to block the door, a human wall between her and freedom.
"I'll pay the penalty for breach of contract," Avery insisted, her voice rising. "Double, if you want."
He actually laughed at that, a short, contemptuous sound. "Penalty? You think I care about your money?"
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I need you, Ms. Hopkins. You are now my fiancée. And you will play your part."
"I refuse," she bit out.
His eyes went cold. "You don't have the right to refuse."
He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a checkbook and a sleek Montblanc pen.
With a few quick, angry strokes, he wrote, then tore the check from the book with a sharp rip. He held it out to her.
"What's this?" she asked, her eyes narrowed.
"A bonus," Joshua said. "Five hundred thousand dollars. It's yours when you see this through to the end."
Avery's breath caught. Her gaze dropped to the number written on the check. $500,000.
The number echoed in her mind. It was a lifeline. It was the key that could unlock every cage she was in. It was a solution to problems he could never imagine.
On one side of the scale was Brodie, a known and terrifying danger. On the other was half a million dollars. Freedom.
Joshua saw the flicker in her eyes. The hesitation. The internal war.
He had found her price.
He pressed the check into her hand. Her fingers were ice-cold against his.
"Take it," he commanded. "And do your job."
The flimsy piece of paper felt like a lead weight in her palm. It was the price of her safety, her sanity.
She looked from the check up to his cold, determined face.
She was trapped.
"Fine," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "I'll stay."
A flicker of satisfaction crossed his face. He had won. He had her.
But the memory of her kiss, the violation of his rules, still stung. The smile vanished from his face, replaced by the familiar icy mask.
"But you will remember the rules," he said, his voice sharp. "You do not touch me. Not a single finger. Not without my permission."
He didn't wait for a reply. He turned on his heel and walked toward the living room, leaving her standing alone in the grand foyer, clutching her golden shackles.
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7.6
Johana walked half a mile through a brutal blizzard just to secure a tutoring job with the elite Black family.
But the very night she was hired, she received a terrifying call from the ER—her quiet roommate, Hazelle, had been drugged and severely traumatized at a Hamptons party.
When Johana rushed to the hospital, she didn't find the police. Instead, she found a team of ruthless billionaires erasing the crime.
Leading them was Dalton Black, the cold, arrogant older brother of her new student.
Within minutes, Dalton's fixers wiped the hospital's security footage, deleted all digital evidence, and forcefully transferred Hazelle to a locked private psychiatric facility.
"We are ensuring her privacy."
Dalton's voice was devoid of emotion, treating the horrific assault like a minor PR glitch.
His friends mocked Johana's powerlessness, while Dalton authorized a blank check to pay for the private ward, effectively burying the scandal and buying their silence.
Johana stood in the sterile hallway, trembling with a mix of despair and absolute rage.
How could they destroy an innocent girl's life and simply pay to make it disappear? Why was the truth so easily erased by money?
She had no wealth, no connections, and no proof, but she refused to be a victim of their cover-up.
Staring directly into Dalton's intimidating, icy blue eyes, Johana made a vow.
"I don't want your money. I will find out what you monsters did to her."
She thought the billionaire heir would crush her on the spot, but instead, he watched her walk away and quietly ordered his assistant: "Find out everything about Johana Neal."
7.6
I am the illegitimate, mute daughter of the wealthy Owen family, kept hidden in the attic like a shameful secret.
To save his failing company, my father decided to sell me off to a repulsive, predatory investor named Grossman.
At the family dinner, Grossman's sweaty hands roamed my bare legs while my half-sister Kaleigh intentionally spilled red wine on my dress, laughing as she watched me suffer.
When I grabbed a steak knife to defend myself, my father slammed his fist on the table.
"Sit down, or I will cut off the maintenance payments for your mother's grave."
My stepmother and sister sneered, treating me like a piece of meat meant to be sacrificed for their luxury. I was starved, locked away, and treated worse than a stray dog, all while my family paraded their high-society status to the world.
I couldn't understand why they hated me so deeply, or who really ordered the hit that killed my mother twenty years ago. The police reports were buried, and I was entirely powerless, trapped in a house of monsters.
But they didn't know that the night before, I had accidentally stumbled into the secret life of Burleigh Livingston—the ruthless, supposedly paralyzed billionaire who was faking his madness.
When Burleigh suddenly crashed our family dinner and threw a limitless Black Card on the table to outbid Grossman and buy me for the night, I didn't hesitate.
I grabbed the handles of his wheelchair, accepted his twisted deal, and prepared to use the devil himself to tear my family apart.
7.0
Erika was a disgraced ex-wife, struggling to survive in a freezing Brooklyn slum to raise her five-year-old son.
But her billionaire ex-husband, Doyle Morgan, wasn't done destroying her. He orchestrated a cruel trap, forcing her to deliver a custom sapphire brooch to his new mistress, just to watch her get humiliated and severely burned by scalding coffee.
When Erika fought back and refused to beg, Doyle's punishment was swift. He demoted her to scrubbing executive toilets with raw, bleeding hands. Starved, exhausted, and pushed to the absolute brink of organ failure, she finally collapsed lifelessly in front of him in Central Park.
For five years, she had endured his relentless torment and the world's mockery just to keep her child safe. Doyle despised her, convinced her son was the filthy proof of her cheating with another man.
He didn't know the boy was actually the child of his deceased older brother, conceived in a dark, drugged hotel room. Why couldn't he just leave them alone to suffer in peace?
But when Erika woke up in the VIP hospital ward, the nightmare took a terrifying turn. Doyle pinned her weak wrists to the mattress, his eyes burning with a dark, possessive obsession. He had figured out the truth about the boy's bloodline.
"He's a Morgan. He has my family's blood in his veins, and I will not allow my nephew to be raised in a slum. If you can't care for him, I will. From this moment on, you and that boy belong to me. And you are never leaving my sight again."
8.0
My wedding was tomorrow. I was a crisis counselor who had finally found peace with my loving fiancé, Dexter, and my best friend, Barbara.
A late-night call about a forced marriage led me to a hotel penthouse, where I found them naked in bed together.
It was all a cruel, three-year "savior game." They were bored heirs, and I was their project. They destroyed my career, caused me to lose our baby, and put my mother in the hospital.
They forced me to be a bridesmaid at their wedding-the one that should have been mine.
In front of hundreds of guests, they exposed my traumatic past and then tried to marry me off to a drunken stranger as a joke.
As I stood there, broken, a text from Barbara arrived.
"Your mother saw the livestream. She had a heart attack. She's not going to make it."
With nothing left, I ran to the 20th-floor window and jumped. They thought they had erased me. But my death was just the beginning.
9.1
Isabella thought she had the perfect life as the wealthy Conrad family heiress, complete with a loving childhood sweetheart.
Until she woke up drugged in a hotel bed, blinded by paparazzi flashes, as her fiancé pointed a shaking finger at her, screaming that she had drugged and seduced him.
"She threatened to ruin Kaylie if I didn't sleep with her!" he yelled to the cameras.
Kaylie, the newly discovered biological daughter, stood in the doorway weeping perfectly.
Within hours, Isabella's adoptive father publicly severed all ties, froze her assets, and kicked her out into a violent thunderstorm.
Fleeing the city, her car's brakes suddenly failed.
As Isabella lay dying in the crushed metal of her Porsche, Kaylie strolled up with a pristine umbrella and a genuine smile.
"The mechanic was quite expensive, but cutting the brake lines was worth every penny," Kaylie laughed.
Isabella coughed up blood, her heart turning to ice. Her twenty years of family, love, and loyalty had been nothing but a cruel joke, destroyed by a calculated frame-up.
She died suffocating on absolute betrayal and unadulterated hatred.
Then, she gasped for air.
She wasn't dead. She was sitting in the driver's seat of her car, staring at her flawless reflection in the rearview mirror.
It was exactly four years ago—the day the real heiress first arrived.
A chilling smirk curled the corner of Isabella's mouth. This time, she was going to rip their lives apart from the inside out.
9.2
The tip of my fountain pen hovered over the divorce agreement. Across the mahogany desk, my billionaire husband, Chandler, looked at me with cold, dead eyes, waiting for me to sign my life away.
What he didn't know was that a phantom pain was still tearing through my chest—the memory of cold steel sliding between my ribs.
In my previous life, I foolishly signed these papers, burning down my marriage for my lover, Chace, and my sweet stepsister, Annalise.
Only to be left to bleed to death in a dark alley while they laughed, planning to steal my son and Chandler's fortune.
Reborn at the exact moment of my ruin, I tore the divorce agreement to shreds.
I desperately tried to make amends, even joining a reality show with my traumatized six-year-old son to prove I had changed.
But Chace and Annalise wouldn't let me go. Seeing my public redemption, they panicked and released a hyper-realistic deepfake sex tape of me and Chace.
They demanded $300 million from Chandler, framing my newfound love for my family as an elaborate, sickening long con.
Chandler burst into the house, throwing the blackmail papers at my feet.
His eyes were filled with broken agony and absolute disgust, fully believing that my tears, my apologies to our son, and my desperate kisses were all just a performance for money.
He thought I was the exact same monster who had destroyed him once before.
The old me would have screamed, cried, and played right into their hands.
Instead, I calmly stepped forward, gently smoothed the collar of his suit jacket, and looked into his tortured eyes.
"I'm not going to explain the video, or the money."
"I'm not going to ask for your forgiveness."
"I am asking you for one thing, Chandler."
"You have to trust me."