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 4
Kieran's face stiffened instantly.
"Hold on, what did you just say?"
Madison met his gaze calmly. "I said we're ending this. We've hidden this relationship for five years already. That's more than enough."
A deep crease formed between Kieran's brows. "You're seriously doing this because of the livestream today?"
Madison looked at him coldly. "Isn't that enough of a reason already?"
"I explained everything to you!" Irritation quickly surfaced in Kieran's voice. "Kristina's health has always been terrible. She was born with a heart condition and can't handle stress well. I've always treated her like family, so what's wrong with looking after her? Why are you making such a huge issue out of this?"
A cold laugh slipped from Madison's lips. "I'm not the unreasonable one here." She paused briefly before adding, "Besides, I'm already married."
For a second, Kieran simply stared at her. Then he suddenly laughed.
"Maddie, I get that you're upset, but you don't need to make up ridiculous stories just to get back at me. Married? Really? Then who did you marry? If it's true, show me the proof." His tone sounded indulgent, almost as if he were humoring someone childish.
Madison remained silent.
The legal document was still with Jeremy, so she couldn't take it out even if she wanted to.
The moment Kieran noticed her silence, confidence immediately returned to his expression. Clearly, he assumed she had been bluffing.
His voice softened again. "Alright, stop being angry. I know I messed up today. Didn't you like that designer bag you saw last time? I'll buy it for you tomorrow, okay?"
Madison acted as though she hadn't heard a single word.
Without responding, she turned back toward her suitcase. After pulling the zipper shut, she lifted it from the bed and dragged it straight toward the door.
"Madison!" Kieran stepped in front of her and blocked the doorway, his expression turning gloomy. "What exactly are you trying to pull here?"
"It means this relationship is finished," Madison said as she looked directly at him with steady eyes. "Now, move aside."
Kieran remained planted in front of her without moving an inch.
For several long seconds, he simply stared at her before letting out a mocking laugh. "Alright then. Leave if you want. But don't forget who's been supporting you all these years. Do you seriously believe you can manage without me?"
Madison paused and slowly turned back toward him.
Confidence filled Kieran's face completely, as though he had already decided she would eventually regret leaving and come begging to return.
The moment Kieran claimed she had been living off him, Madison almost found it laughable.
Yes, Kieran had given her money before. But every single time, he acted as though he were generously feeding a helpless little pet trapped inside a luxurious cage that he paid for as well.
What Kieran never knew was that Madison had never once touched the money he gave her.
No matter how distant her father became after building a new family, Madison was still his daughter, and Rodger had never neglected her financially.
The only reason she kept that truth hidden from Kieran all this time was because she didn't want to wound his pride.
And yet he genuinely believed she couldn't survive without him. The thought almost amused her.
A cold smile appeared on Madison's lips before she grabbed her suitcase and walked past him without hesitation.
Kieran clearly hadn't expected her to leave for real. Humiliation quickly twisted into anger, and he shouted after her, "Madison, you're going to regret this!"
Madison never slowed her steps.
Regret?
The only thing Madison regretted was failing to realize what kind of man Kieran truly was sooner.
That same night, Madison moved into the seaside villa Jeremy had prepared for her. The area was peaceful, and every detail inside the house matched her taste perfectly.
Once she finished organizing her belongings, exhaustion completely took over.
Without wasting another moment, she headed straight to bed.
Her body and mind were both drained, so it didn't take long before she fell into a deep sleep.
Sometime during the night, the bedroom door quietly opened.
A tall figure stepped inside and stopped beside the bed. Silver moonlight slipped through the small gap between the curtains, casting a faint glow across Jeremy's handsome face and Madison's sleeping figure beneath the blanket.
Slowly, Jeremy lowered himself onto the edge of the bed while his eyes lingered on her face without restraint.
After watching her quietly for a while, he reached over and gently adjusted the blanket around her.
In truth, Jeremy had fallen for Madison the very first time he saw her.
Unfortunately, back then, her entire heart belonged to Kieran.
So Jeremy chose to step back instead.
At the time, he convinced himself that her happiness mattered more than anything else.
What he never expected was for that fool Kieran to throw her away over a woman like Kristina.
The thought almost made him laugh.
A faint smirk crossed Jeremy's lips just as he prepared to leave the room. Suddenly, the phone resting on the nightstand vibrated, and its screen lit up in the darkness.
A message notification appeared shortly afterward. "Maddie, I contacted Nicholas Gordon already. He said you never showed up tonight. So who exactly did you meet and marry?"
The warmth vanished instantly from Jeremy's eyes. Without hesitation, he picked up Madison's hand, pressed her finger against the screen to unlock the phone, and then deleted the message.
...
Early the next morning, Madison headed to Vanguard Entertainment, the company owned by her father.
As the biggest entertainment corporation in all of Agoshire, the building remained busy from the moment the workday began.
After parking the car, Madison entered the lobby and rode the elevator upstairs.
The Human Resources Department was located on the eighteenth floor.
The moment she walked in and introduced herself, a middle-aged man wearing glasses approached her while checking through a folder in his hands.
"Madison Wallace?" he asked while scanning the documents. "You've been assigned to the Project Department on the seventeenth floor."
Madison gave a brief nod before leaving the office.
The elevator doors opened shortly after she arrived downstairs. However, the second Madison stepped out onto the seventeenth floor, she unexpectedly came face-to-face with a group of people approaching from the opposite direction.
The woman leading them immediately caught her attention. That face was impossible not to recognize.
Kristina.
She wore luxury couture fresh off the newest designer release, while her assistant and manager followed closely beside her as they headed toward the elevator.
Madison stopped walking altogether. Out of all the possible places they could meet, it happened here.
At the same moment, Kristina noticed Madison as well. Her eyes stayed on Madison's face briefly before she slowly removed her sunglasses, revealing soft and strikingly beautiful features underneath.
Kristina already knew Kieran had kept another woman by his side while she was overseas.
After returning home, some of Kieran's friends even showed her photos of that woman before.
Still, she never expected the two of them to meet in person like this.
Kristina's gaze gradually lowered until it landed on the employee badge hanging around Madison's neck. The moment she realized what it was, faint contempt appeared in her eyes.
"So it really is you," Kristina said slowly.
Madison had no interest in creating a scene, so she tried to walk past Kristina without engaging further.
Before she could get around her, Kristina shifted sideways and blocked her path again.
"You really do resemble me quite a bit," Kristina remarked while studying Madison carefully from head to toe. A meaningful smile tugged at her lips. "Now I understand why."
The last bit of Madison's patience nearly snapped.
"Miss Todd," Madison replied with a cold smile, "you make it sound like resembling you is some kind of achievement. Isn't your ego getting a little excessive?"
Kristina's face darkened immediately.
Before she could fire back another remark, Madison had already brushed past her and continued toward the office area.
Kristina stood there with an unpleasant expression while watching her leave. Her manager Flora Murphy quickly moved closer and lowered her voice. "Kristina, someone like her isn't worth getting upset over. She's nothing more than a small employee from the Project Department. If you want to deal with her, there'll be plenty of opportunities later."
That reminder instantly improved Kristina's mood.
She crooked a finger slightly, signaling Flora to come closer. The manager leaned in at once.
"Send word to the Project Department," Kristina instructed calmly. "They'll understand what to do."
A malicious smile slowly spread across Kristina's face as she stared at Madison's disappearing figure. "Within one week, I want her thrown out of this company."
Who did Madison think she was to work under the same roof as her?
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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.