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 3
Madison never imagined the entire situation would progress this easily, much less this quickly.
Not long after they walked out of the restaurant, Jeremy drove her directly to register their marriage.
During the ride, Madison sent Elin a short message. "It's done. Thanks."
Elin replied almost instantly, "Already? You married him after meeting him one time?"
Madison answered with a laughing emoji instead of explaining further.
After that, she leaned back against the seat and stared quietly out the car window, still struggling to process everything happening around her.
Only three hours earlier, she had been waiting for a man who never came.
Now she was riding beside a completely different man on the way to become his wife.
The entire situation felt absurdly ironic.
By the time they arrived, Jeremy casually made a phone call. Even though working hours had already ended, several staff members hurried over to handle their registration personally.
Every single employee wore bright smiles despite staying late. Judging from their enthusiasm, Jeremy must have compensated them generously.
The paperwork moved astonishingly fast. Forms were filled and signed, documents were stamped, and before Madison fully processed it, everything had already been finalized.
When the document finally landed in her hands, Madison lowered her eyes and stared at it for a long moment, unable to believe it was real.
"Still not done looking at it?"
Jeremy's voice sounded above her head.
Madison looked up instinctively, but the second she did, Jeremy smoothly took the document from her fingers.
Madison looked at him blankly. "What are you doing with that?"
Without answering immediately, Jeremy slipped it neatly into the inside pocket of his coat.
"It's safer with me," he replied casually. "Who knows? Maybe you'll wake up in the middle of the night regretting this and decide to rip it apart."
Madison frowned helplessly. "I'm not going to do something like that."
A quiet chuckle escaped him. "People say a lot of things before regret kicks in." Jeremy lowered his eyes toward her, and amusement flickered through them. "I'll hold onto it for now. If you ever decide you want out, you'll have no choice but to come find me personally."
Madison didn't feel like wasting energy arguing with him.
In her eyes, this marriage had always been an arrangement built on convenience anyway. Whether she kept the legal document or Jeremy did made little difference.
"Come on," Jeremy said while walking toward the exit. "I'll drive you home."
After they got into the car, Jeremy opened his wallet and pulled out a black bank card before handing it toward Madison.
"Here."
Madison glanced at the card but made no move to accept it.
Jeremy noticed immediately and explained with a relaxed smile, "Use it for whatever you need. Since you're my wife now, it wouldn't look good if you were short on money."
"You don't need to do that. I already have enough money myself..."
"Our prenup and daily expenses are two separate matters," Jeremy interrupted calmly. "Appearances matter, Mrs. Yates. Just take it."
Madison paused briefly before finally accepting the card from him.
A second later, Jeremy reached into the back seat, grabbed a document folder, and handed it over as well. "The keys are inside," he explained. "Your car has already been delivered downstairs to your apartment building. You'll also find the address to our place in there. Whenever you're ready to move in, let me know ahead of time so I can have everything prepared."
Madison lowered her gaze to the folder in her hands, unable to describe the strange emotions rising inside her.
Jeremy had arranged everything so thoroughly that she hadn't needed to think about anything herself.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
Jeremy only gave a low acknowledgment before starting the engine.
Not long afterward, the car stopped outside Madison's apartment complex. As she stepped out, Jeremy lowered the car window halfway. "If anything comes up, call me."
Madison nodded lightly in response.
Soon, the black car disappeared into the night and vanished around the corner.
Madison remained standing there for several seconds, still unable to shake the feeling that the entire night had been unreal.
After taking a slow breath, she pulled out her phone and made another call.
The line rang for quite a while before her father, Rodger Wallace, finally answered.
"Hello?" Rodger sounded exhausted. "Why are you calling me this late? Did something happen?"
"Dad, I got married."
The other end instantly fell silent.
Then, several seconds later, Rodger finally spoke again. "What did you say?"
"I got married today," Madison repeated calmly. "We just finished registering the marriage a little while ago."
Another heavy silence followed.
After a while, Rodger asked, "Who exactly did you marry?"
"I doubt you'd know him." Madison deliberately avoided giving further details. "Dad, does your previous promise still count? You said that if I got married before turning twenty-five, you'd transfer thirty percent of the company's shares to me."
"Yes, you'll get the shares," Rodger replied in a firm tone. "But before that happens, you need to start working at the company."
Madison's fingers tightened around her phone. "What exactly are you implying?"
Rodger sighed lightly before answering, "Giving you the shares isn't the issue. The problem is that the company doesn't revolve entirely around my decisions. There are other shareholders involved, and your brother has already established himself there. If I suddenly hand over thirty percent of the shares to you, do you honestly think the others will accept it quietly?"
A crease formed between Madison's brows. "I hope this isn't your way of backing out."
"I can arrange the transfer agreement immediately if you want," Rodger answered, his tone becoming more serious. "However, before we make your position public, you need to spend some time working in the project department and gain experience there. Once you've proven yourself and secured your footing within the company, announcing your shareholder status will face far less resistance. At that point, nobody will have grounds to question it."
Madison considered his words carefully and eventually realized his reasoning made sense. "Fine."
"Report to HR tomorrow morning." Right then, Rodger ended the call.
Madison lowered her phone slowly and stared at the dark screen for a moment before making her way upstairs.
The apartment felt unusually quiet tonight.
After turning on the lights, she began packing her belongings immediately.
The moment Kieran walked in and noticed the suitcase beside her, surprise flashed briefly across his normally indifferent eyes.
"Maddie?" Kieran had completely forgotten that they were supposed to meet that afternoon. The moment he noticed her packing, unease crept across his face. "What are you doing?"
Without pausing her movements, Madison calmly folded another piece of clothing. "I'm staying at my parents' place for a while."
The tension in Kieran's expression eased almost immediately after hearing that. Casually, he tossed his coat onto the couch before walking over and wrapping his arms around her from behind.
"Maddie." He rested his chin against her shoulder while lowering his voice gently. "Things were chaotic for me today, and I honestly couldn't leave. I wasn't trying to ditch you on purpose."
"I already saw the news." Madison's cold reply instantly shattered his excuse.
Kieran stiffened almost immediately. A trace of panic appeared on his face as he hurried to explain himself. "Kristina's health has always been fragile. She was born with a heart condition, okay? After coming back this time, she begged me to cooperate with this publicity stunt because it would help her career. None of it means anything. It's all for show, so don't overthink it."
Madison almost laughed from disbelief. He was actually using Kristina's alleged "heart condition" as justification, and he said it so naturally that it didn't seem to bother him at all.
Still, Madison understood his intentions perfectly. He wanted to keep both women at the same time. Disgust rose violently inside her.
Meanwhile, Kieran continued trying to smooth things over. "You have to believe me. Kristina and I are just close because we grew up together. She's basically family to me. Maddie, the person I truly care about, has always been you..."
"Kieran." Madison stopped him before he could continue. She turned around slowly to face him directly, and then looked straight into his eyes. "We're done."
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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.