While I Was Bleeding Out, He Lit Lanterns For Her

As I lay on the floor of our manor, bleeding out from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, I used my last ounce of strength to call my husband, Cole. I begged him for help, my vision blurring. But the only thing I heard was the clinking of champagne glasses and his mistress's giggle in the background. "Stop the drama, June," Cole snapped, his voice cold. "We're about to go on stage. Don't call again." He hung up, leaving me to die alone on the Persian rug while he accepted an award with another woman on his arm. I woke up in the hospital days later. My baby was gone. They had removed my fallopian tube. Cole finally arrived, smelling of expensive scotch and his mistress's perfume. He didn't hug me. He didn't cry. Instead, he leaned over my hospital bed, pressing his knee into the mattress until my fresh stitches tore open and bled. "You embarrassed me by calling an ambulance," he hissed. "My mistress, Alycia, says you're faking it. Clean yourself up." He left me bleeding again to go announce a $10 million donation to Alycia's "groundbreaking" medical research. I stared at the TV screen, numb. The research Alycia was taking credit for? It was mine. I wrote that patent years ago under a pseudonym. They thought I was just a poor, orphan housewife who needed Cole's money to survive. They had no idea I was actually a billionaire scientist hiding my identity. I pulled the IV needle out of my arm. A drop of blood fell onto the divorce papers I had been hiding. I didn't wipe it off. I signed my name right over it. Then I walked into the bank, reactivated my dormant account with $128 million, and bought the penthouse directly overlooking Cole's house. The mourning widow is dead. The avenger is born.

Chapters

Chapter 3

A cherry-red Porsche Cayenne slammed on its brakes, tires screeching against the asphalt right in front of the hospital entrance.

Vera Vance threw the driver's door open and sprinted around the hood.

When she saw June standing on the curb, swaying like a ghost in the wind, Vera let out a sharp gasp. June's face was completely devoid of color, and a fresh patch of dark red blood was seeping through her coat.

"Oh my god, June!" Vera screamed, catching June just as her knees gave out. "What happened? Where the hell is Cole?"

June leaned her head against Vera's shoulder. A weak, bitter smile touched her lips.

"Even hell is better than being in there," June whispered.

"You're bleeding through your coat!" Vera yelled, ignoring June's attempt to walk. She scooped her arm around June's waist and practically carried her to the passenger seat of the Porsche.

Vera didn't take her to the Compton estate. She didn't take her to her own apartment. She slammed the car into gear and sped toward Mount Sinai, a private hospital where she had connections.

Inside the car, the heater blasted. Vera gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white, tears of pure rage burning in her eyes.

"I'm going to kill him," Vera muttered, weaving dangerously through the Manhattan traffic. "I'm going to rip his heart out with my bare hands."

June laid her head against the cool leather seat. Her vision was swimming.

As the car hit a bump, a fresh wave of pain washed over her, and her mind slipped backward.

"I thought he was my savior," June mumbled into the silence of the car. "I was wrong. I was in love with a ghost."

Vera glanced at her, confused but too focused on driving to ask.

They arrived at the private hospital. Vera's connections bypassed the waiting room entirely. June was rushed into a VIP suite.

The attending physician examined the torn stitches. His face turned red with anger.

"This is severe secondary trauma," the doctor snapped, looking at Vera. "Who did this to her? This requires a police report."

Vera stood by the window, her arms crossed so tightly her nails dug into her own skin. "I'll handle the police. Just fix her."

They hung a blood transfusion bag and re-sutured the wound. The pain medication finally kicked in, pulling June into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When June woke up, the room was quiet. Vera was sitting in a chair beside the bed, her eyes red and swollen from crying.

Seeing June awake, Vera immediately poured a glass of warm water and held it to her lips.

"Did you sign the divorce papers?" Vera asked, her voice raspy.

June swallowed the water and nodded. "Signed. I'm walking away with nothing."

Vera jumped up from the chair, her eyes wide. "What? Are you insane? That's Compton money! You gave him four years of your life, and you're leaving empty-handed?"

June looked at her best friend. Her eyes were completely calm, devoid of the panic and sorrow that had haunted her for years.

"I don't need his money, Vera," June said quietly. "I just want to erase his name from my life."

Vera stared at her. She knew June was a genius-she had known her since college-but she had watched June play the role of a submissive housewife for so long that she had almost forgotten who June really was.

June reached out and grabbed Vera's wrist. "Do me a favor. Go to my old storage unit. Bring me my old laptop. The thick black one."

Vera frowned, confused. "Your college laptop? Why?"

"Just bring it."

Two hours later, Vera returned with a heavy, outdated black laptop.

June placed it on her lap. She pressed the power button. The screen flickered to life.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard, typing a complex string of code into a black terminal window. A highly encrypted login screen popped up.

Vera leaned over, squinting at the screen. She couldn't understand a single line of the code, but the sheer speed at which June was typing sent a shiver down her spine.

Just then, the TV mounted on the wall of the VIP room switched to the evening news.

A reporter was thrusting a microphone into Cole's face as he exited a corporate building.

"Mr. Compton! Your wife was notably absent from the gala last night. Is everything alright with your marriage?"

On the screen, Cole stopped. He adjusted his suit jacket, his face a mask of perfect, polite concern.

"My wife is feeling a bit under the weather," Cole lied smoothly to the camera. "She is resting at home. Thank you for your concern."

Vera grabbed the TV remote and hurled it at the screen. The plastic shattered against the glass, leaving a spiderweb crack across Cole's smiling face.

"Hypocritical bastard!" Vera screamed.

June didn't flinch at the noise. She looked at the cracked screen, her fingers resting on the enter key of her laptop.

"Let him smile," June said, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "He won't be smiling for much longer."

Continue to next part

Kaylee's family was drowning in debt, and her stepmother locked her inside a freezing bedroom. To save their bankrupt company, they decided to sell her off to a sixty-five-year-old man with a disgusting reputation. They cut off her allowance and confiscated the only precious keepsake her dead mother had ever left her. "Put on the engagement dress, or I will smash your mother's crystal box into a million pieces." Terrified of the old man, Kaylee risked her life by jumping out of the second-story window into a violent storm. She hit the muddy ground hard, twisting her ankle and tearing her skin on rusted iron gates as she escaped into the pitch-black night. Dragging her bleeding bare feet across the cold sand, her lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass. She didn't understand why she had to be the sacrifice for their endless greed, or how they could be so cruel as to hold her dead mother's memory hostage. She had absolutely nowhere to go, and the old man's cars were already pulling into the estate to claim her. Cornered by the blinding headlights of a motorcade on the beach, she threw herself at the feet of Ernest Blackwell, the most ruthless billionaire in New York. "Marry me! You need a wife, and I need a husband right now!" To buy her freedom and crush the family that sold her, she chose to sign a twenty-million-dollar fake marriage contract with the devil himself.

Billionaire Modern Romance

9.2

Deal With The Devilish Wall Street Tycoon

9.2

Ami Cleveland's family empire was destroyed overnight by a malicious short-selling attack, leaving her mother facing federal prison and hunted by ruthless loan sharks. To secure a hundred-million-dollar lifeline, Ami risked her life as a blindfolded co-pilot in a deadly cliffside street race, all just to get five minutes alone with Jerad Kidd, the elusive Wall Street titan she had accidentally slept with the night before. But instead of saving her, Jerad completely crushed her dignity. "What makes you think you are worth a hundred million dollars?" He mocked her desperate pitch, calling her family's equity garbage, and coldly walked away. Two days later, he forced her onto his Miami superyacht as a political decoy, making her wear a backless silk gown that offered zero protection and throwing her into a sea of wealthy predators. When a drunk tech billionaire pinned her against a sofa and tried to rip the thin straps of her dress, Ami screamed for help. She looked up at the VIP balcony in absolute despair, only to see Jerad looking away, treating her like she didn't even exist. She didn't understand why he was torturing her. Why did he let her risk her life in his car, only to humiliate her and feed her to the wolves? With no one to save her, Ami grabbed a whiskey glass and violently smashed it into her attacker's face. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the man's brutal retaliation slap. But the hit never came. A large hand, wearing a heavy Patek Philippe watch, shot out of nowhere and clamped down on the man's raised arm like a steel vice.

Action Billionaire Modern

8.3

From Blood Bag To Billionaire Queen

8.3

For three years, I was the perfect, invisible wife to Bart Brown. On our third anniversary, I stood in the kitchen for four hours, preparing his favorite meal with imported truffles, only to receive a cold text command. "Crysta fainted again. Get to the hospital. Now." My rare Rh-negative blood was the only thing the Brown family valued. Bart didn't want a wife; he wanted a walking blood bank for his "sick" best friend, Crysta. While I was fainting from chronic anemia, Crysta was smirking in her hospital bed, clutching Bart's hand and mocking my "peasant" lifestyle. Even his mother treated me like a servant, demanding I vacuum the floors after I'd already offered my veins for the hundredth time. When I finally reached my breaking point and signed the divorce papers, they didn't let me go quietly. They filed a false police report, accusing me of stealing a multi-million dollar diamond necklace just to watch me crawl. I didn't understand how a family could be so heartless. I had cooked their meals, cleaned their house, and literally bled for them, yet they were determined to ruin my life the moment I stopped being useful. Did they really think I was a nobody with nowhere to go? Standing outside the hospital with a bruised wrist and nothing to my name, I didn't cry. I simply took off my cheap wedding ring and dialed a secure line I hadn't touched since the day I married him. "It's me, Dad," I whispered as a fleet of black Maybachs rounded the corner. "The extraction is a go. I'm coming home."

Billionaire Modern Romance

7.2

Midas Protocol: Seducing My Rival's Wife

7.2

I sat in the freezing conference room, my knuckles white as I strangled a cheap plastic pen. Outside, Manhattan was weeping in the gray rain, but inside, the air was sterile and dead. I stared at the polished mahogany table, seeing the distorted reflection of a man who hadn't slept in forty-eight hours—a man about to sign his own divorce papers. Across from me, my wife Linda wouldn't even look at me. She was too busy drumming her fingers near a diamond ring that cost more than I had made in the last five years combined. Then the door swung open, and Simon Thorne walked in. The billionaire heir didn't say a word; he just walked behind Linda and placed a heavy, possessive hand on her shoulder, marking her as his. "Let's wrap this up," Simon said, checking his Patek Philippe with the bored tone of a man ordering a coffee he didn't want. Linda finally looked through me like I was a ghost and told me to stop dragging this out. She whispered that I couldn't even afford myself anymore, a physical punch to the gut given I’d lost my job three weeks ago. After I signed, Simon flicked a business card at me, mockingly offering me a job as a doorman for minimum wage. I walked out into the downpour, shivering in a suit I couldn't afford to dry clean. My phone vibrated with a text from my landlord: "Pack your things. Keys by tonight or I’m calling the cops." I stood on the corner of 5th Avenue with exactly $42.18 to my name, watching Simon kiss my wife through the glass wall of the penthouse. I was thirty, homeless, and drowning in a city of lions. I wanted to roar until my throat bled, but I just stood there, a drowned rat in a world of predators. How could I have lost everything so fast? Why was the woman who promised to stay through "for poorer" now leaning into the arms of the man who just humiliated me? Suddenly, my phone screen exploded with a blinding golden light. An app called the Midas Protocol installed itself, declaring poverty a disease and itself the cure. With one tap, a million dollars bypassed a federal hold and hit my account, and a "Nemesis Card" appeared in my digital inventory. I didn't hesitate. I typed Simon Thorne’s name into the vengeance algorithm and hit execute. The game had officially changed.

Billionaire Modern Romance

9.3

My CEO Brother Wants Me

9.3

He was supposed to be my brother. The cold CEO everyone feared. The man who controlled the entire country's business world. But one night, he looked at me and calmly destroyed everything I thought I knew. "We're getting married." I laughed, but he didn't. Now every door in my life is closing, every choice is disappearing, and the one man I'm not supposed to love refuses to let me go. Because to Lucien Hale, this was never forbidden. It was inevitable. And the most terrifying part? The closer I get to him, the harder it becomes to run.

Billionaire Modern Romance

9.0

No More Submission: The Heiress Strikes Back

9.0

I spent five years acting as the perfect, invisible caretaker for my wealthy family, meticulously managing their health and social standing while they treated me like a ghost. Then, my nightmare became reality when my brother Alon shoved me out of bed, forcing me to apologize to our adopted sister, Fallon, for a jealousy I never felt. My parents and brother stood over me, their eyes filled with unfiltered disgust, demanding I play the servant to a girl who was actively plotting my social destruction. They froze my accounts, stripped me of my dignity, and mocked my existence, fully expecting me to crawl back to them in tears like I did in my other, broken life. I stared at their entitled faces, feeling a cold, sharp clarity wash over me; they were so obsessed with status that they didn't realize they had just handed the keys to their own ruin to a complete amateur. Why was I still playing the martyr for people who would watch me burn without blinking? I stood up, walked away from their chaos, and cut the final tie, leaving them to face the ruthless social elite with a liability they couldn't control.

Billionaire Horror Modern

While I Was Bleeding Out, He Lit Lanterns For Her

Chapter 3

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