Blackmailed Into The Ruthless Tycoon's Bed
Adaline Poole thought she had escaped her family's toxic corporate grip by moving to London and adopting a stray cat named Monty.
But when she returns to her empty apartment, her father delivers a chilling ultimatum: he has kidnapped the cat and will euthanize it by morning unless she accepts an arranged marriage with Barron Cooke, a notoriously elusive billionaire.
Her entire family becomes complicit in her sale. Her mother demands she secure their elite status, and her brother secretly spies on her social media to feed Barron her every move. Horrified to discover Barron is a thirty-three-year-old "fossil" twelve years her senior, Adaline resorts to sabotage. She goes to a Soho club, takes a scandalous photo with a frat boy, and sends it to the old billionaire to disgust him into canceling their upcoming dinner.
But her rebellion backfires horribly when the frat boy spikes her drink with a powerful narcotic. As her body burns with a terrifying, feverish heat, she collapses in a dark corridor. Stripped of her phone and betrayed by her bloodline, she is left utterly defenseless as a predator approaches to drag her away.
Suddenly, the heavy fire door is kicked open by a towering, terrifyingly handsome stranger who effortlessly neutralizes her attacker.
"Please... help me," Adaline begs, deliriously throwing her burning body into his arms.
She has absolutely no idea that the handsome savior she is clinging to is Barron Cooke himself.
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Chapter 10
Marco freezes. He looks up at the man walking toward him.
Barron Cooke does not walk; he stalks. His black trench coat flares around his legs. Behind him, two massive men in dark suits step into the corridor, blocking the exit.
Marco releases Adaline's arm and takes a step back, his hands raised in surrender. "Hey, man, I was just trying to move her..."
Barron does not even look at the bartender. He doesn't need to. He gives a microscopic nod to his security detail.
In less than a second, one of the bodyguards lunges forward, executing a flawless, professional submission hold. He twists Marco's arm sharply behind his back and forcefully pins him face-first against the rough brick wall. Marco gasps in pain, completely immobilized.
Barron drops to one knee beside Adaline.
The lethal anger in his eyes vanishes the moment he sees her face.
Adaline is gasping for breath, her chest rising and falling erratically. Her face is flushed with an unnatural heat, her skin burning to the touch. She is trembling violently from the narcotic.
Barron's heart contracts painfully in his chest.
He immediately shrugs off his heavy black trench coat. He wraps the thick, warm wool tightly around Adaline's shivering body, completely covering her revealing silk dress.
He slides one arm under her knees and the other behind her back. With effortless strength, he lifts her off the floor, cradling her against his chest.
He stands up. He looks at Evelyn, who has just entered the corridor.
"Shut this place down," Barron orders. His voice is ice. "Buy the building if you have to. No one leaves until we find out what she drank."
He turns and carries Adaline out of the pub.
The cold London rain hits them immediately. Adaline whimpers at the shock of the cold. Instinctively, she turns her face inward, burying her nose into the lapel of Barron's suit jacket, seeking his body heat.
Barron's breath catches. He tightens his grip on her and strides to the waiting Rolls-Royce.
The driver holds the rear door open. Barron slides into the spacious back seat, keeping Adaline securely in his lap.
"The nearest private hospital," Barron commands the driver. "Now."
The heavy door shuts, sealing them inside the soundproof, dimly lit cabin.
Adaline's brain is completely misfiring. The potent designer narcotic mixed into the cocktail is flooding her system, heavily distorting her senses. Combined with the alcohol, she is entirely delirious.
Her panicked mind is losing the battle against the chemical. The extreme heat, the racing heart, and the hypersensitivity of her skin are undeniable effects of the powerful aphrodisiac-laced drug Chet had intended for her.
She squirms in Barron's lap. The thick wool coat feels too hot.
"So hot..." Adaline whimpers. She tries to push the coat off her shoulders.
Barron immediately catches her wrists in one large hand. His grip is firm but incredibly gentle.
"Stop moving, Adaline," Barron says, his deep voice rumbling in his chest. "We are almost at the hospital."
Adaline blinks. Her vision is blurry, but through the dim streetlights passing by the window, she focuses on the sharp, masculine line of his jaw.
She does not recognize him. In her mind, Barron Cooke is a thirty-three-year-old fossil. The man holding her has a chest as hard as marble and a jawline that could cut glass.
Her drug-addled brain decides this handsome stranger is her only salvation from the burning heat inside her.
Adaline twists her hands, breaking his gentle grip. She reaches up and presses her hot palms flat against Barron's chest.
Barron's entire body goes rigid. His muscles lock like steel.
"Don't take me to the hospital," Adaline begs, her voice a breathless, raspy whisper. She arches her back, pressing her body closer to his. "Please. Help me."
Barron frowns deeply. He thinks she is terrified of needles or doctors. "You have been given a high-grade narcotic. We need to get you an IV to flush it out of your system."
"I don't need a doctor!" Adaline cries out, frustrated by the burning heat inside her. She slides her hands up his chest and wraps her arms around his neck. She pulls herself up so her face is inches from his. "I was drugged. Please... just help me."
Barron's breath hitches. The scent of her-sweet vanilla mixed with tequila and rain-floods his senses. She is practically straddling him in the back of the car.
"Adaline," Barron growls. The sound is dark, laced with heavy, suppressed desire. He grabs her waist with both hands, trying to push her back against the leather seat.
But he is terrified of hurting her fragile, hive-covered skin. His hesitation gives her an opening.
Adaline drops her head. Her hot, feverish cheek rubs against the sensitive skin of his neck. Her fingers fumble with the knot of his silk tie.
Barron's Adam's apple bobs sharply. The air in the car becomes dangerously thin. He grabs her wandering hands and pins them gently against his chest.
"Look at me," Barron commands, his voice harsh with the effort of holding himself back. He forces her to meet his eyes. "Do you know who I am?"
Adaline blinks slowly. A loopy, delirious smile spreads across her swollen lips.
"I don't care," she giggles softly. "You're so handsome... way hotter than that thirty-three-year-old fossil Barron Cooke..."
Barron freezes.
The words hit him like a bucket of ice water.
Old fossil.
For a split second, pure shock registers in his dark eyes. Then, the pieces fall into place. Her bizarre texts. Her aggressive rejection. Her constant references to his 'health'.
She thinks he is an old man.
A dark, dangerous amusement flares in Barron's chest.
Before he can process the revelation, Adaline leans forward. Her soft, burning lips brush clumsily against the corner of his mouth.
The fragile string of Barron's self-control snaps.
He lets out a harsh breath. His arms wrap around her waist like iron bands, pulling her flush against his body, trapping her completely so she cannot move another inch.
He buries his face in her hair, his chest heaving as he fights the primal urge to take what she is offering.
"Adaline," he whispers against her ear, his voice ragged and lethal. "When you wake up, you are going to pay for this."
The Rolls-Royce slams on the brakes, throwing them slightly forward. They have arrived at the emergency bay.
The sudden stop jolts Adaline. Her eyes roll back in her head, and she goes completely limp, passing out cold against Barron's chest.
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7.2
Four years ago, Madelynn accepted money from Caiden's family and vanished. She thought it was for the best-he would remain the untouchable heir while she faced her tough life alone.
When they met again, Caiden humiliated her in public, yet appeared when she was cornered by a difficult client, pulling her back into his life.
He forced her to stay as his lover, using her mother's medical bills as leverage, whispering, "What you owe me... you'll repay the same way."
Madelynn believed he despised her. Only after the accident, when he ran toward her before the explosion, did she understand-he never let go.
8.4
Kathern was forced out of her sister's home by her abusive brother-in-law, who violently demanded she pay half the rent or get out.
To protect her sister from his rage, Kathern agreed to a six-month paper marriage with a stranger—an old woman's grandson, Bronson—in exchange for a simple apartment.
But her new husband treated her like a scheming gold digger from the very first second.
He showed up to City Hall in a cheap suit, shoved a brutal prenup in her face, and dumped her in a completely empty, dust-filled apartment.
"Just don't cause any trouble," he warned coldly, before leaving her alone.
When Kathern politely texted him to ask if he was coming home for dinner, he immediately blocked her number.
Kathern was furious and baffled. She didn't want a dime of his money, nor did she care about his boring middle-management job.
She had only agreed to this marriage for a place to sleep, yet this arrogant man treated her like absolute garbage.
Refusing to swallow the insult, Kathern immediately dialed his grandmother to expose his behavior.
She was going to build her own independent life, completely unaware that her "cheap corporate loser" of a husband was actually the ruthless billionaire CEO of the Vaughan empire.
9.7
For three years, I played the role of a devoted, naive wife to billionaire Conrad Whitney. I hid my true identity and foolishly believed in our fairy tale.
Then he handed me a harsh divorce agreement, ordering me to sign and walk away with absolutely nothing. He was leaving me to marry Cindy, the fragile woman he claimed had saved him from a fire.
He expected me to cry and beg. Instead, he watched coldly as Cindy and her family illegally transferred my father's trust fund. When I confronted them at the hospital, Conrad shielded her, calling me a greedy, toxic viper. He mocked me, completely blind to the fact that Cindy was a fraud. He truly believed I was just a pathetic, useless housewife who would be utterly destroyed without his money and status.
I looked at the man I had actually dragged out of that burning debris with my own soot-covered hands. My trauma, my sacrifices, and my love had all been reduced to a joke by his sheer arrogance and a few fake tears from a manipulative liar.
I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly signed the papers, drugged his wine, and left a crumpled one-dollar bill on his unconscious chest with a sticky note mocking his terrible service.
Then, I picked up my encrypted phone. It was time for the world's top surgeon, Dr. Hades, to return, and for Conrad to finally see the god he had just thrown away.
9.0
Carli followed an anonymous text to a dark garage, only to find her fiancé of seven years tangled with another woman in his Porsche.
She smashed his window, threw her engagement ring at his face, and walked away.
But the betrayal didn't stop there. Her own family sided with the cheater. Her father slapped her across the face so hard she bled, demanding she hand over her late aunt's trust fund.
"If you don't do exactly as you're told tonight, I will freeze every credit card in your name," her father roared.
Forced to attend the exclusive Gutierrez family gala, Carli watched her ex-fiancé parade his cheap mistress to humiliate her, while her stepsister tried to publicly ruin her.
Suddenly, a violent screech echoed as the massive crystal chandelier above them snapped from the ceiling.
In a split second of pure instinct, Vaughn shoved his mistress to safety and threw himself to the ground, completely abandoning Carli to be crushed.
Staring up at the plummeting glass, Carli felt the crushing reality that her entire life had been surrounded by monsters.
But the fatal impact never came.
A massive force yanked her into a hard chest, shielding her body entirely from the explosive shrapnel.
Carli opened her eyes to find Fletcher Gutierrez—the ruthless billionaire king of Wall Street and the masked stranger from her reckless one-night stand—bleeding heavily over her.
Feeling his warm blood on her hands, Carli knew the game had just changed.
9.0
Seventeen years after going missing, Brooklyn was finally brought back to her ultra-wealthy biological family.
But instead of a tearful reunion, her parents and sisters treated her like infectious garbage, mocking her cheap clothes and calling her a country bumpkin.
They dumped her into a remedial class to hide her away, cut off her allowance, and threatened to lock down her trust fund to force her into absolute submission.
One night, Brooklyn stood in the shadows of the estate and overheard a conversation that shattered everything.
She hadn't wandered off as a child.
Her parents had deliberately thrown her away because a fake fortune teller claimed her birth chart was a jinx to the family's wealth.
They felt zero remorse, only plotting to banish her again the moment she turned eighteen.
Her biological father thought he was putting a leash on a helpless, uneducated girl by cutting off her pocket change.
He had no idea that Brooklyn was the anonymous VIP who casually dropped sixty million dollars on an emerald at the city's most exclusive auction.
He didn't know she was the elusive medical genius that the world's most powerful billionaires were currently tearing the city apart to find.
The last microscopic shred of hope for a family withered into cold ash in her chest.
"Lock down my trust fund?"
She pulled out her encrypted phone and activated her shadow networks, severing herself entirely from their pathetic surveillance.
Since they believed she was a jinx, she was going to show them exactly what a real curse looked like.
8.2
Grace hid her identity as the heir to a multi-billion-dollar empire just to experience ordinary love, acting as a free, devoted assistant to her actor fiancé, Hayden.
But while delivering his coffee, she caught him cheating with a new actress in his dressing room.
Through the crack in the door, she heard the actress whine about Grace being a feelingless robot.
Hayden just laughed, not stopping his frantic movements.
"She is a shield. She is a boring, free assistant. That is all she is."
He bragged that their upcoming engagement was just a PR stunt to build his perfect boyfriend image, and he would dump her the second he didn't need her.
He thought he held all the power, completely unaware that every massive movie contract and endorsement he had was secretly funded by Grace.
The betrayal poured over Grace like ice water, freezing her heart completely.
She had fought her aristocratic family and lowered herself to serve a man who treated her like disposable trash.
The girl who believed in simple love died in that hallway.
Grace didn't cry or burst into the room. She calmly hit record on her phone, securing the evidence to trigger his morality clause.
Then, she dialed her billionaire mother.
"I made a bad investment. Now I am liquidating the asset."
She was going to artificially inflate his fame to the absolute peak, and when he finally thought he was untouchable, she would strip him of everything.