Bound By Blood: His Unwanted Contract Bride
Four years ago, I was drugged on a luxury yacht and ended up pregnant with twins.
I raised them in secret, enduring my stepfamily's daily abuse, until the billionaire West family patriarch cornered us at the airport.
He instantly recognized my son's face—an exact replica of his ruthless grandson, Bernardo West.
My malicious stepmother and stepsister immediately leaked to the press that I was a delusional gold-digger using fake kids to trap a billionaire.
They wanted the West family to destroy me to save their own social standing.
Bernardo himself looked at me with pure disgust, demanding a DNA test.
"If you ever lie to me, I will take the children, and I will make you wish you were never born."
I didn't want his money. I was a victim of that night too, left with a crescent-shaped bite mark on my collarbone and zero memory of who set us up.
Why did someone drug us? And how could I protect my babies from a corporate predator who could crush me with a snap of his fingers?
But when the DNA test came back 99.9999% positive, I didn't cower.
I showed him the scar he left on me, looked the most dangerous man in the country right in the eye, and made my demand.
"If you want to claim your heirs, you have to marry me."
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Chapter 6
Bernardo walked toward them. His stride was long, purposeful, eating up the distance between them. He stopped a foot away from Darleen.
He was huge. She had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. The scent of his cologne-sandalwood and something darker-washed over her.
His eyes traveled down her face, cold and assessing. He looked at her like she was a bug on his shoe.
"So," Bernardo said, his voice a low, rough rumble. "You're the woman who thinks I owe her a wedding."
Darleen didn't step back. She met his stare head-on, her chin lifted.
"Your grandfather seemed to think so," she replied.
Bernardo let out a humorless laugh. His gaze shifted from her face to the children standing beside her.
He looked at Julian. The boy stared back, his expression blank. Bernardo's eyes narrowed. He saw the dark hair, the sharp jawline. It was like looking into a mirror from twenty years ago.
A muscle jumped in Bernardo's jaw. He looked away, breaking the connection.
"Inside," Thurston barked from the porch. "We didn't fly across the country to stand in the heat."
Bernardo turned and walked inside. Darleen followed, holding the kids' hands.
The living room was massive. White couches, white rugs, glass tables. A team of people in lab coats stood near the dining table, a metal case open on the surface. Two lawyers in dark suits stood behind them, their faces blank.
Bernardo sat on a white leather chair, crossing one ankle over his knee. He looked completely in control.
"Do it," he ordered, waving a hand at the doctors. "Get it over with."
A doctor in a white coat stepped forward, pulling out a small tray of needles and vials. He smiled at Julian and Aria.
"Hi there," the doctor said. "I just need to take a little bit of blood from your arm."
Aria saw the needle. Her eyes went wide. She let out a shriek and dove behind Darleen's legs, burying her face in the green velvet.
Darleen moved instantly. She stepped in front of the children, her body a shield between them and the doctors.
"You're scaring them," she said, her voice sharp.
Bernardo sighed, rolling his eyes. "It's a needle, not a guillotine. Stop coddling them."
"You don't get to tell me how to raise my children," Darleen shot back. "They are not lab rats. You want blood? You wait until I say it's okay."
Bernardo leaned forward, his eyes flashing with irritation. "I don't have time for your maternal theatrics."
"Then make time," Darleen said.
She turned around and knelt in front of Aria. She cupped her daughter's face, wiping away a tear with her thumb.
"It's just a tiny pinch, baby," Darleen murmured. "Like a mosquito bite. You have to be brave for Mommy, okay?"
Aria sniffled, nodding slowly.
Julian stepped up. He pulled up his sleeve without a word. He stuck his arm out toward the doctor, his face stoic.
"Make it quick," Julian said.
The doctor blinked, surprised by the boy's intensity. He swabbed Julian's arm and inserted the needle. Julian didn't even flinch. He just stared at Bernardo the whole time.
Aria was next. She squeezed her eyes shut and whimpered, but she held still. Darleen kissed the top of her head.
When it was over, Bernardo stood up. He walked over to the table, rolled up his own sleeve, and sat down.
"Take mine," he told the doctor.
The doctor quickly drew a vial of dark red blood from Bernardo's arm. Bernardo didn't watch. His eyes were fixed on Darleen.
She was holding Aria, kissing her cheek. The light from the window caught the side of her face.
Bernardo's breath caught. A flash of memory-soft skin under his mouth, the taste of salt and tears. He blinked, and the image was gone.
Thurston cleared his throat. "The results will take twenty-four hours. Darleen and the children will stay in the guest wing."
"Like hell they will," Bernardo said, standing up. "This is my house. They can wait in a hotel."
"Then I'm leaving," Darleen said, her voice flat. "And you can wait for the results by yourself."
She turned and headed for the door.
"Wait," Bernardo said.
The word was sharp, commanding. Darleen stopped. She didn't turn around. She waited, her back straight, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
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9.5
The disgraced daughter of the Patton family is back from the countryside.At the news, everyone spurned her with contempt!
A good-for-nothing young lady, a crude village wench, a vicious devil...
Until one day--The world-famous life-saving medical sovereign is her.The enigmatic top forensic specialist is her.The grandmaster hacker hunted across the globe is also her.
One hidden identity of the young miss came to light after another.Shocked and dumbfounded, the crowd fell to their knees to beg for forgiveness.
In an instant, Evie was cornered by the mysterious powerhouse.Hartwell's voice lured and mesmerized:"Darling, you have countless secret identities. Would you mind taking on one more, being my wife!"
9.7
Clarissa rushed into a crowded nightclub for one simple reason: to save her wildly drunk best friend.
But her ruthless billionaire husband, Giovanny, was watching from the VIP room. After effortlessly ruining a man just for grabbing her wrist, Giovanny punished Clarissa for breaching their public image contract with an impossible curfew.
When she inevitably arrived back at his penthouse late, he didn't just yell. He forced her to her knees by his bathtub to wash his back, making her watch an explicit, humiliating video as punishment.
A sudden family medical emergency dragged them to his parents' estate. Still in her soaked, transparent dress and his misbuttoned shirt, Giovanny's mother caught them. She joyfully assumed they had been passionately intimate.
Instead of clearing her name, Giovanny pulled Clarissa close and lied to his mother's face.
"We are working very hard on the family's future, Mother."
He locked her in the guest suite, tossed a sheer silk nightgown on the bed, and literally shattered the tablet holding their "no-contact" prenuptial agreement. He then slapped a file against the window—he had secretly bought all her father's toxic debt.
Clarissa was terrified. They were supposed to be business allies bound by a strict contract. Why was he suddenly acting like a predator determined to own her body and soul?
"Give me an heir, or your father goes to federal prison," he whispered.
Stripped of all choices, Clarissa picked up the white silk. She would surrender tonight to save her family, but as his shadow swallowed her, she made a silent vow to survive this monster, and one day, tear his empire to the ground.
8.7
Brought back from a humble life in Montana, Nora found out she was the true biological heiress of the ultra-wealthy Beaumont family.
But her biological parents didn't love her; they loved the fake daughter, Olivia, much more.
The moment she arrived, her father pushed an engagement termination agreement across his massive desk, forcing her to give up her wealthy fiancé so Olivia could have him.
Her mother looked at her with pure disdain.
"You should know your place. Don't reach for things that were never meant for you."
To break her spirit, they moved her into a cramped, dusty servant's room. They even ordered the butler to feed her cold kitchen scraps and gristle.
They wanted to humiliate her, to make her feel like a piece of trash rather than a daughter.
They expected her to cry, to beg, and to be absolutely crushed by the realization that her own flesh and blood saw her only as a liability to their reputation.
They thought the country girl would easily fold under their united front of cruelty.
But Nora felt no sting of betrayal, only the calculating clarity of a chess player.
She calmly signed the paper, pulled out the Beaumont family trust rules, and looked them dead in the eye.
"Since I am the legal heir, I demand what belongs to me. I'm taking the master bedroom."
7.9
Justice was dragged back from the slums by her biological father, only to be sold off to the billionaire Aguirre family. Her purpose was simple: marry their comatose heir to secure a three-hundred-million-dollar lifeline for his company.
Her stepmother and stepsister sneered at her cheap canvas shoes, treating her like a contagious disease.
"A high school dropout from the slums marrying a billionaire? It's a miracle your trashy bloodline is getting anywhere near the estate," her stepsister Emery mocked.
At the sprawling estate, the "comatose" heir, Auguste, was secretly conscious. Disgusted by his new bride, he orchestrated her enrollment at an elite prep school, hoping the ruthless rich kids would break her. On her very first day, Emery ambushed her, loudly broadcasting Justice's "dropout" status to the entire classroom and turning her into an instant social pariah. The teachers tried to humiliate her with impossible calculus, and the students treated her like garbage.
They all thought she was just a pathetic, uneducated pawn they could easily crush and discard. They had no idea that her "dropout" file was a manufactured ghost, or that the Aguirre family's top intelligence network had just hit a military-grade firewall trying to look into her past.
Justice didn't panic. She flawlessly solved the university-level equation on the board, then walked into the cafeteria and looked right at Emery.
"She has no Barnes blood. She is a squatter living in my father's house."
With three casual sentences, Justice completely incinerated her stepsister's elite life. The billionaire heir wanted to play games? She was about to show them all what a real monster looked like.
8.7
I woke up from a coma in the hospital, universally condemned as the vicious daughter who pushed the beloved fake heiress, Georgina, down the stairs.
My ruthless billionaire brother, Angelo, stood over my bed with cold eyes, ready to destroy me for hurting his precious sister.
But as I looked at him, a terrifying prophecy from my coma flooded my brain. Our entire family was doomed.
In the original timeline, Georgina would team up with corporate rivals to bankrupt the company, frame Angelo, and send him to federal prison, while our parents would abandon me to die miserably.
Lying there, I didn't dare speak. I just desperately cursed my idiot brother in my head.
"This stupid brother is still yelling at me for that fake heiress. He doesn't even know he's going to be framed and sent to prison next month!"
I just wanted to stay quiet, let them ruin themselves, and run away from this toxic family.
But strangely, Angelo didn't strangle me. Instead, his attitude took a shocking turn.
He abruptly fired the driver plotting to kill him, destroyed the abusive fiancé of a family ally, and publicly humiliated Georgina at a high-society gala.
He even shielded me from our abusive parents, declaring to the world that I was the only sister he would ever protect.
I was completely terrified and confused. Why was the tyrant brother suddenly acting like a protective beast?
It wasn't until he flawlessly crushed a massive corporate attack using the exact financial secrets I had just complained about in my mind that a horrifying realization hit me.
He could hear my inner thoughts!
9.3
Ginny was chained to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, bleeding and betrayed by the two people she trusted most.
Her fiancé, Brant, and her adopted sister, Coretta, had just slashed her face open. Brant coldly admitted she was nothing but a disposable key to a vault, right before he tossed a lighter onto the gasoline-soaked floor.
As Ginny burned alive in the roaring inferno, the heavy iron doors were violently smashed open. Bedford Parks—the notoriously ruthless, germaphobic "monster" of Silicon Valley whom Ginny had always feared—charged straight into the flames. Ignoring the blistering heat, he shielded her charred body with his own. A massive steel beam collapsed, snapping his spine.
"I love you."
He coughed up blood, whispering his final words against her blackened skin before dying to protect her.
Hovering as a ghost, Ginny's soul screamed in agonizing realization. She had spent her life terrified of Bedford, yet he was the only one who truly loved her, while her supposed family laughed at her gruesome murder.
Suddenly, a blinding white light swallowed the warehouse.
Ginny gasped for air, opening her eyes to find herself sitting in the back of a luxury Maybach. She was eighteen again, wearing the humiliating clown makeup Coretta had tricked her into wearing on the day she was brought back to the wealthy Steele estate.
Ginny stared at her reflection, her dark eyes turning cold and sharp.
This time, she would tear her betrayers apart piece by piece, and she would protect her "monster."