Wrong Date, Right Man: Lock Me Into His World
On the day she was meant to marry, Madison uncovered her boyfriend's betrayal-five years of love reduced to a mere placeholder for another woman.
She walked away without hesitation, determined to start over.
But with a looming condition to marry before twenty-five or lose her inheritance completely, she had no choice but to accept a blind date.
Fate played a cruel joke when she approached the wrong man, ending up married to her ex's greatest rival, the most formidable figure in town.
Madison thought it was just a convenient arrangement. He thought otherwise-because from the start, he never planned to let her go.
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Chapter 2
Once the call ended, Madison lowered her gaze to her phone again.
The livestream was already over, but the Internet had exploded with the hashtag #KieranProposesToKristina, climbing straight to the top of the trending list.
Almost mechanically, Madison tapped into the topic. The first thing that appeared was Kristina's official engagement post.
From her verified account, Kristina wrote, "No matter how much time passed or how far life pulled us apart, you still came back to me."
Several photos were attached beneath the caption. The most eye-catching one sat in the center, showing Kieran's and Kristina's fingers intertwined while the diamond ring on her hand gleamed brightly beneath the light.
Madison kept staring at the image until her eyes began to ache from the dryness.
Slowly, she lifted her head and looked up at the sky. A mocking smile gradually formed on her lips.
...
Elin handled things far faster than Madison expected and arranged the blind date within only a few hours. At exactly eight that night, Madison arrived at a high-end restaurant according to the address Elin sent her.
The moment she stepped inside, her eyes swept across the room before eventually stopping near the window.
A man dressed in a black trench coat sat alone at the table there. His features were striking and cold, while the calm way he crossed his legs gave off a distant pressure that naturally kept people away.
Everything about him matched Elin's description perfectly.
However...
The second Madison recognized his face, her footsteps halted.
Out of everyone Elin could have introduced her to, she never imagined the blind date would turn out to be him.
Jeremy Yates.
Kieran's longtime rival.
For one brief second, Madison almost turned around and walked straight back out.
Still, the thought disappeared as quickly as it came. Another one took hold of her. Since she had already decided to move on, leaving now would only make things meaningless.
To Madison, this marriage was nothing more than a transaction anyway. She wasn't searching for love anymore, so who she married hardly mattered.
At the very least, Jeremy was attractive, and his reputation sounded far more respectable than Kieran's. Compared to that scumbag, Jeremy was infinitely better.
After quietly steadying herself, Madison walked toward the table.
Once she reached him, she pulled back the chair and sat across from him without hesitation.
"Good evening, Mr. Yates." Madison skipped all unnecessary small talk. "I'm here for the blind date. If you don't find me unsuitable, then let's get married."
Jeremy had been lazily spinning a lighter between his fingers. The moment he heard her words, the movement stopped.
Raising his eyes toward her, he looked genuinely caught off guard for the first time. A faint trace of amusement surfaced in his sharp, striking eyes. "Miss Wallace, that's quite an unconventional introduction."
Madison paid no attention to the humor in his tone. Instead, she frowned slightly and replied, "Elin should've already explained everything. I don't think there's any point wasting time with formalities."
A quiet sound of acknowledgment escaped Jeremy as realization settled in. Clearly, she had mistaken him for someone else.
Leaning back comfortably in his seat, he observed her with calm interest while maintaining a detached expression.
The silence between them lingered briefly.
Finally, Jeremy spoke again in a relaxed voice. "Miss Wallace, I assume you already know about the situation between Kieran and me?"
Naturally, Madison knew exactly what he meant.
The Yates family and the Stanley family had been enemies for years. Three years earlier, Jeremy seized a media corporation the Stanleys had nearly secured, and ever since then, both sides had openly clashed against each other.
Every time Kieran talked about Jeremy, hatred would creep into his voice. He always described Jeremy as someone dangerous, a man who looked refined and courteous outwardly while hiding a ruthless side underneath.
Although Madison had never met Jeremy face-to-face before tonight, she had seen plenty of his interviews and already knew the kind of man he appeared to be.
"I already know about it," Madison answered calmly.
Jeremy's smile widened slightly. "And despite that, you still decided to meet me?"
His gaze stayed fixed on her as he continued, "Kieran and Kristina's engagement is dominating every headline right now. So when you suddenly show up looking for a blind date, Miss Wallace, it's hard not to wonder whether this is your way of getting back at him."
Truthfully, revenge had never crossed Madison's mind before.
Still, she understood how suspicious it looked for Kieran's ex-girlfriend to suddenly seek out his biggest rival right after the engagement announcement.
Jeremy lightly tapped the metal lighter against the table in a slow rhythm.
"Don't take this personally," Madison said evenly. "Your family wants you to settle down, and I need someone to marry. That's the only reason."
One of Jeremy's brows lifted slightly. "You're making it sound very straightforward."
"Because it is."
A faint smile remained on Jeremy's face. "Then explain something to me, Miss Wallace. Where exactly is the mutual benefit in all this?"
Before coming here, Madison had already prepared her answer.
"We'll enter a six-month marriage arrangement," she said without hesitation. "During that time, we'll cooperate when necessary and help each other fulfill our individual needs. Once the six months are over, we'll divorce and move on with our lives."
Jeremy listened quietly while the smile at the corner of his lips gradually deepened.
"There'll also need to be a prenuptial agreement," Madison continued. "I have no interest in your money, and I expect the same respect regarding mine."
That finally seemed to catch Jeremy's attention. "Your money?" His eyes narrowed with amusement. "Miss Wallace, do you actually possess assets worth protecting from me?"
Madison didn't bother explaining herself. Instead, she met his gaze directly. "Are you agreeing or not? I only want a clear answer."
Jeremy watched her silently for several long seconds before suddenly smiling.
The moment he did, the sharpness around him softened slightly. His eyes curved naturally, making him appear approachable at first glance. Even so, Madison could still sense something dangerous hidden beneath that charm.
"Alright," Jeremy replied easily. "You've got yourself a deal."
Madison gave a small nod. "Then, when do we take care of the marriage registration?"
"Right now."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Jeremy rose from his seat and casually tucked the lighter back into his pocket.
Madison looked at him in surprise. "Now?"
"Yes, now. We're heading to register the marriage immediately."
Jeremy lowered his gaze toward her while a faint grin appeared on his lips. "You're clearly in a rush to get married, Miss Wallace. Since that's the case, we might as well do it tonight."
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7.6
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.
8.7
For three years, Blair Guzman poured her resources into turning a broke waiter into an Oscar-winning actor, letting the world believe they were a couple just to keep him under her control.
But the night he won his Oscar, he publicly betrayed her by kissing Kiana—Blair’s estranged, rival sister.
Kiana and her mother brought the scandal right to the Glover family dinner table, trying to humiliate Blair.
"You're just mad because he dumped you for me," Kiana sneered in front of the entire family.
Instead of crying, Blair ruthlessly dismantled them, exposing how their cheap tabloid stunt tanked the family's corporate value.
Impressed by her cold logic, the family matriarch handed Blair the ultimate voting power, but it was a trap.
The matriarch immediately used Blair's elevated status to force her into an arranged marriage with a notorious, debt-ridden playboy just to secure a European shipping lane.
To her family, she was never a daughter—she was just a premium asset to be traded to the highest bidder.
What her greedy family didn't know was that Blair had already made a terrifying deal.
She was secretly married to the ruthless billionaire Butler McIntyre—a man who demanded absolute possession of her body and soul.
Now, her family's arranged parasite and her secret devil of a husband were on a collision course, and the wreckage was going to be spectacular.
8.0
Abigayle was the proud heir to the Pena Group, living a perfect life and engaged to Jeffery Sullivan.
But the morning after a charity gala, she woke up drugged in a hotel room, blinded by paparazzi cameras. Her fiancé and her best friend stood at the foot of the bed, throwing a forged pregnancy report at her face to publicly frame her for cheating.
The betrayal was only the beginning of the slaughter. Before she could even clear her name, the Sullivan family ruthlessly bankrupted her family's company overnight. Her father was rushed to the ICU with a heart attack, her brother was run off the road into a coma, and violent repo men raided her penthouse. Just as she was thrown out into the freezing rain, Jeffery's terrifying uncle, Donovan Sullivan—the very mastermind who engineered her family's ruin—stepped in. He offered to cover the life-saving medical bills, but only if she agreed to become his personal plaything.
Abigayle's blood turned to ice. She couldn't understand how the people she trusted most could plot such a vicious, coordinated destruction just to break an engagement. How dared the man who destroyed her entire family stand there playing the savior, trying to buy her body with her own stolen wealth?
Facing a $100,000 hospital deadline and abandoned by everyone she knew, she didn't shed another tear.
"I will never beg him."
Clutching her last diamond bracelet, she hailed a cab straight to the biggest pawnshop in the Diamond District. The Sullivans thought they had buried her, but her counterattack was just beginning.
7.2
Five years ago, I, Claire Parker, ran away for love with Daniel Carter, the broke boy everyone looked down on. But on the very day we were supposed to leave together, he abandoned me.
Overnight, I became the laughingstock of the entire city and was forced into a marriage alliance with a terminally ill man, Ryan Cooper.
Five years later, my husband died, the marriage arrangement fell apart, and the Cooper family threw me out without a shred of mercy.
Meanwhile, Daniel, the man everyone once sneered at, returned home in glory and became the hottest rising name in the business world.
And somehow, he ended up becoming my boss.
I wanted nothing to do with him, yet he kept closing in on me, cornering me with sarcasm sharp enough to draw blood.
Then one day, Daniel caught me on a date with another man.
His eyes reddened instantly as he pinned me against the wall. "Claire... are you abandoning me again?"
7.5
I was tied to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, the heavy stench of gasoline suffocating me.
Ten steps away, a masked kidnapper slammed a loaded Glock onto a metal barrel and forced my husband, Alvie, to make a sick choice.
"The wife or the mistress. You only get to walk out of here with one."
Alvie didn't even blink.
He walked straight toward the dark corner where his mistress, Gail, was crying. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, shielding her, and guided her toward the exit.
He never looked back. He didn't cast a single glance over his shoulder. To him, I was already a corpse, just trash left on the pavement.
The kidnapper laughed and tossed a lighter onto the soaked concrete floor.
A wall of ghostly blue fire erupted instantly, swallowing me whole. The absolute agony of my skin blistering and melting shattered my sanity.
In my last moments, consumed by the inferno, I couldn't understand how the man I had loved and served so submissively could leave me to burn alive. My heartbreak quickly morphed into a hatred far deeper than the flames.
Then, I violently jerked awake.
I shot up from the bed, gasping for cold air, my hands frantically checking my perfectly smooth, unburned skin.
I looked at the desk clock. I had returned to exactly four years ago, the morning of the annual Gallagher family gathering.
The fragile, naive wife died in that warehouse. This time, I am going to destroy them both.
7.9
In my past life, I was the naive surrogate who fell desperately in love with Karson King, an untouchable Wall Street billionaire.
I thought my blind devotion would earn me a place in his family. Instead, his cruel mother forced me to sign away my parental rights to my three-year-old daughter.
I was locked in a dark, freezing basement. I watched helplessly as his arrogant relatives tormented my child, pushing her down a flight of marble stairs and shattering her tiny arm.
When we finally died in a horrific car crash, my face covered in blood amidst the shattered glass, Karson didn't shed a single tear. To him, my death was just the convenient erasure of a cheap mistake.
I sacrificed my dignity for his approval, but they treated us worse than stray dogs. Why did my innocent daughter have to pay the ultimate price for their ruthless arrogance?
Opening my eyes again, the harsh glare of a massive crystal chandelier pierced my vision. I was back in the grand foyer of the King estate, exactly five years ago.
"Sign it. You are nothing but a gold digger."
My soon-to-be mother-in-law slammed the thick legal contract onto the marble table, demanding I give up my daughter.
This time, the paralyzing fear evaporated, replaced by absolute, icy clarity.
I didn't cower. I picked up the pen, looked right at the billionaire who despised me, and prepared to manipulate his entire empire.