A Contract Marriage With My Nemesis
My fiancé always told me he loved me. But not long after our engagement, I woke up suffocating in the dark.
He was pressing a pillow over my face, his eyes cold and dead, while my half-sister stood by watching with fake pity.
They had orchestrated everything just to steal my trust fund.
It all started with a massive hotel scandal. They had drugged me, thrown a cheap escort into my bed, and brought a mob of paparazzi to ruin my reputation.
When my fiancé broke through the crowd, playing the heartbroken victim, he knelt down with a massive diamond ring.
"I know things have been hard, but I love you. If you come home with me, I will forgive all of this."
In my past life, I cried tears of gratitude and let him slide that ring onto my finger.
That ring sealed my death warrant. I lost my company, my dignity, and eventually, my life.
Until my lungs burned and my heart stopped, I didn't understand.
How could the people I trusted most plot my murder so ruthlessly?
Why did they have to tear my entire life apart?
Opening my eyes again, I was back on the morning of the hotel scandal, exactly one year ago.
But the man lying bare-backed in my bed wasn't a random escort.
It was Johnathan Chase, my family's biggest corporate rival and the most ruthless predator on Wall Street.
Listening to the paparazzi pounding on the door, I smiled coldly.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 4
Elena walked out of the elevator and straight into the hotel's underground parking garage. She pulled open the heavy door of a black Lincoln Navigator and climbed into the back seat.
She threw her head back against the cold leather headrest and let out a long, shaky breath. Her lungs finally felt like they were pulling in real oxygen.
Thea, her PR assistant, was sitting in the passenger seat. She immediately twisted around and handed Elena a paper cup of hot black coffee.
"Elena, Twitter is exploding," Thea said, her voice tight with panic. She tapped her tablet screen frantically. "The hashtag about the broken engagement is trending number one globally."
Elena took the cup. The heat burned her palms, but it grounded her. She took a sip of the bitter liquid.
"Draft a statement right now," Elena ordered, her voice completely devoid of emotion. "State that the engagement is terminated. Make sure you heavily imply that Darron's severe financial irregularities are the core reason for the split."
Thea's eyes went wide. She was shocked by how ruthlessly her boss was moving, but her fingers instantly flew across the tablet keyboard, typing out the draft.
Meanwhile, back in the penthouse suite, Johnathan stood by the floor-to-ceiling window. He watched the hotel security physically drag the last of the paparazzi out into the hallway.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed his executive assistant, Cameron, on a heavily encrypted line.
"Send the photo to the Wall Street Journal," Johnathan ordered, his voice flat and businesslike. "The specific one we discussed."
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. "Sir," Cameron hesitated. "Are you sure? That photo clearly implicates you in the scandal as well."
Johnathan let out a low, dark chuckle. "Do it. The only way to see what cards she's really holding is to flip the table."
Ten minutes later, inside the moving Lincoln, Thea sucked in a sharp, horrified breath.
Her hands shook as she shoved the tablet over the center console, pushing it into Elena's line of sight. "Look at this. Breaking news."
Elena stared at the screen.
The headline was massive. But it was the high-definition photo beneath it that made Elena's stomach drop.
It was a picture of her and Johnathan. Johnathan's large hand was resting firmly on the bare skin of her lower back, right where her dress was torn. The angle of the shot was incredibly intimate, completely cutting out the crowd of reporters and focusing only on the heat between the two of them.
Elena's eyes narrowed. She recognized the exact angle. It was taken from the back of the room, right before she turned around to face the cameras.
Only one person had the power and the foresight to arrange a hidden camera at that exact, impossible angle inside his own private suite. Johnathan. He had orchestrated the shot through a concealed lens embedded in the room's smart-mirror and leaked it.
The comments section under the article was a war zone. The public narrative had instantly flipped. People were calling her a hypocrite, accusing her of using Darron's finances as a smokescreen to hide her own affair with a billionaire rival.
The stock ticker widget on the corner of the screen flashed red. Conway Media's stock was taking a massive nosedive in pre-market trading.
Elena gripped the coffee cup so hard the cardboard buckled. Her knuckles turned stark white.
"That opportunistic bastard," she hissed through her teeth, her blood boiling.
"Do we issue a denial? Say it's photoshopped?" Thea asked, her voice trembling.
Elena closed her eyes and took a deep breath, forcing the red haze of anger to clear. She shook her head.
"No. If he leaked this, he has the raw files to prove it's real. Denying it will only make us look worse."
She leaned forward. "Tell the driver to turn around. Get me to headquarters. Now."
She turned her head to look out the tinted window. The Manhattan skyline blurred past them. Her eyes were as hard and cold as the glass.
She knew this war wasn't just about destroying Darron and Haylee anymore. Johnathan had just forced himself onto the chessboard, and he was playing for blood.
The heavy SUV swerved sharply, the tires squealing against the pavement as it pulled into the VIP underground entrance of the Conway Media headquarters.
You may also like
8.0
"IS IT TRUE?" Grayson's voice thundered through the room.
"Yes!" Tessa said softly. "Yes it is!"
"So you've been cheating on me, haven't you?" He spat.
Her hands trembled. "No, I swear, it's not like that."
He grabbed her arm, his grip bruising her wrist as she squealed in pain.
"Then whose baby are you carrying, huh?" His voice was ice cold.
Tessa shivered, tears blurring her vision.
"I don't know."
**********
Pregnant with the powerful Roman Blackwood's child, while engaged to his unstable stepbrother - Tessa Quinn becomes the key to a ruthless inheritance war where love has no place.
As secrets unravel and danger closes in, Tessa must protect her unborn child while trapped between love, vengeance, and men who want to own her fate.
9.7
Sienna woke up in a hospital room, her body screaming from a severe car accident. Through the glass, a man paced with violent rage, a dark shadow she felt absolutely nothing for.
Her friend Julia burst in, eyes bloodshot, dropping a bomb: "He didn't even try to help you." Dante, Sienna's fiancé, had protected another woman, Valeria, in the crash, leaving Sienna to burn alive.
Her past life unspooled – seven years sacrificed, an architecture degree abandoned, all to serve Dante. Her phone was a shrine to him: his photos, his "taboos," and even "Valeria's preferences," with no trace of Sienna herself.
But amnesia brought no heartbreak, only a cold, calculating fury. She felt disgust for the "idiot" she'd been, stripped of dignity. The memory loss was a release, a blank slate.
With chilling resolve, Sienna deleted every trace of Dante. Ripping out her IV, she declared, "The wedding proceeds." Not for love, but as a weapon: "I need to take back everything that belongs to me before I disappear."
9.0
My ex-husband returned after a three-year bet, ready to reclaim me and the son he thought was his. He had no idea that I'd secretly aborted his child, divorced him, and remarried the day he left. His world was about to come crashing down.
His delusion turned deadly when he and his manipulative best friend, Haylee, kidnapped my son, Leo.
I found them at his family's mansion, with Leo suffocating from a severe allergic reaction to a dog they were forcing him to play with. Elliot physically restrained me, scolding me for overreacting while Haylee giggled as my son turned blue.
At the hospital, as Leo fought for his life, Elliot grabbed my arm, demanding to know who the man standing beside me was. He was convinced this was all a game to make him jealous.
That's when my real husband, billionaire Gregory Morton, stepped forward.
"Since when is this child yours, Elliot?"
8.1
On my wedding day, the wedding planner looked at me with pity in her eyes.
She told me the groom had called with a last-minute request. He wanted the name on the floral arch changed from "Elena" to "Sofia."
Five years of loyalty to Dante Romero, and I found out he was planning a "secret" ceremony with his mistress an hour before ours.
He claimed she was dying of cancer. He said it was her final wish to be a bride, and that as a good mafia wife, I should understand. He swore it was just charity.
But I had seen the texts where he called me "furniture."
I had watched him step over my body when I fell down the stairs at a club, just so he could leave with her.
And this morning, I watched Sofia walk into the hotel lobby wearing *my* custom French lace wedding dress, smirking as she clung to his arm.
Dante thinks I'm crying in the bridal suite.
He thinks I will sit in the front row of his "fake" wedding and wait for my turn like a dutiful puppet.
He is wrong.
I wiped my tears and picked up my phone. I didn't cancel the wedding date. I just changed the location to the ballroom next door.
And I changed the groom.
As Dante says his vows to his mistress, I am walking down the aisle to meet the only man the Romero family fears.
The Reaper.
8.9
My family's company went bankrupt, and my biological father was lying in the ICU, kept alive by machines that cost tens of thousands a day.
I thought it was just a tragic business failure, until I caught my mother in bed with my stepfather.
They had secretly transferred all our assets months ago, deliberately bankrupting the company and leaving my father to die.
To pay the hospital bills, my stepfather forced me to a private club, trying to sell me to a sleazy investor.
When I refused, he slapped me across the face, and my mother just looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"Be realistic, Jaelynn. A woman's body is a tool. Use it to get what you need."
Later, right before my father's emergency surgery, my stepfather signed a Do Not Resuscitate order and froze the medical accounts.
"If you don't get on your knees and spread your legs for him, I will tell the hospital to pull your father's plug."
Standing in the freezing rain, covered in mud and blood, I stared at the astronomical hospital bill in my hand.
My own family had plotted to murder my father and sell me to the highest bidder. The betrayal shattered every ounce of sanity I had left.
I didn't cry or beg them anymore.
Instead, I pulled out a water-stained, gold-embossed business card.
It belonged to Dolph Valentine, the most ruthless billionaire in New York and my ex-fiancé's uncle.
If they wanted to destroy my life, I was going to sell my soul to the biggest monster of them all and drag them straight to hell.
9.8
Three women, three brothers, a single, crumpled dollar bill.
Alina's world shatters the moment she's auctioned off-and claimed by the powerful Hawthorne brothers.
Thrown into Adrian Hawthorne's cold, dangerous world, she becomes his to control... his to protect... and, terrifyingly, his to desire. He's ruthless, possessive, and hiding secrets that could destroy them both. But the deeper she falls into his world, the harder it becomes to tell if she's his prisoner-or something far more dangerous.
Because the Hawthorne brothers don't just take.
They keep.
Viviane has spent her life surviving, so when Julian Hawthorne "buys" her freedom, she knows better than to trust it. Men like him don't save people-they collect them. But Julian isn't as simple as he pretends to be, and the deeper she's pulled into his world, the more dangerous it becomes to walk away.
Especially when she realizes she might be the only thing he's ever been willing to fight for.
Lena doesn't belong to anyone-and she intends to keep it that way. Brilliant, guarded, and hiding more than anyone suspects, she enters Lucien Hawthorne's world on her own terms. But Lucien doesn't play fair, and he doesn't let go.
When her past comes crashing back, Lena is forced to face the one thing she's been running from: trusting someone who could destroy her... or save her.
Three women. Three choices.Stay. Fight.
Or burn it all down.
Because being sold was only the beginning.