
Bound To The Billionaire's Cruel Contract
Carissa's son was dying in the ICU, and the bone marrow match had just failed.
The billionaire father, Guilford Gates, cornered her with a cruel ultimatum: naturally conceive a "savior sibling" to save their son. But what shocked Carissa more was his family's sudden accusation that she had heartlessly sold her baby to them three years ago.
"You sold your own flesh and blood to us for five million dollars, so your body belongs to the Gates family."
She was dragged into their gilded estate, treated like a filthy, rented womb. Guilford's new fiancée mocked her, the matriarch humiliated her, and Guilford looked at her with pure disgust. When she desperately tried to feed her sick son and accidentally made him vomit, Guilford violently shoved her away and banned her from the room.
Carissa was devastated and entirely confused. She had never seen a single cent of that five million. Driven by a desperate need for the truth, she investigated and uncovered a horrifying reality: her own father and stepmother had secretly trafficked her baby to the billionaire behind her back, leaving her to bear the ultimate blame.
Looking at the bank transfer record bought with her son's life, the last shred of Carissa's vulnerability died.
She signed the conception contract without asking for a single penny. She was going to use the Gates family's immense power to destroy the blood relatives who sold her, and she would survive this hell to take back her son.
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Chapter 3
Carissa descended the sweeping staircase, her hand trailing on the wool-carpeted banister. Before her foot hit the bottom step, a stern-faced maid blocked her path. Maeve was a stocky woman in her fifties, with iron-gray hair scraped back into a severe bun and small, suspicious eyes.
"Madam Essie is waiting for you in the parlor," Maeve ordered. She turned on her heel, expecting Carissa to follow.
Carissa walked through the dim corridors. The parlor smelled of heavy incense and old mahogany. The air was so thick it stuck in her throat.
Essie Gates sat in a high-backed velvet chair. She was a handsome woman in her seventies, silver hair perfectly coiffed, her face a map of hard lines and harder judgments. A string of antique rosary beads moved through her thin, age-spotted fingers. Her eyes stayed fixed on the fireplace.
Carissa stopped three feet away. "Mrs. Gates."
Essie let out a sharp scoff. She stopped moving the beads and snapped her hawkish gaze onto Carissa. "You are a stain on this family."
Carissa's fingers dug into the fabric of her coat. "I was a victim four years ago—"
Essie slammed her palm against the armrest. The loud crack made Carissa flinch. "Shut your mouth! You sold your own flesh and blood to us three years ago for five million dollars. You have no right to play the victim in my house."
The words hit Carissa like a physical blow. Her mouth fell open. The blood drained from her face, leaving her dizzy. Sold? Five million dollars?
Essie mistook her shock for guilt. She sneered, picking up a bone-china teacup and taking a slow sip.
When she set the cup down, her voice was eerily calm. "Since you took our money, your body belongs to the Gates family. Saving my grandson is your contractual obligation."
The sheer ugliness of the words made Carissa's stomach heave. A hot, burning anger ignited in her chest. She snapped her head up, her eyes blazing.
Maeve stepped forward, her body coiling tight, ready.
Essie closed her eyes, looking exhausted by Carissa's mere presence. "Move into the estate. Prepare your body for the pregnancy."
Carissa's chest heaved. She saw Isadore's pale face in her mind. She swallowed the scream building in her throat. If she fought back now, she would be thrown out. And she would never find out who took that five million dollars.
She forced her facial muscles to relax. She manufactured a look of greedy hesitation. "I need time to consider the... compensation for this new arrangement."
Essie's eyes snapped open, gleaming with validated disgust. "There it is. The rat shows its tail." She waved her hand dismissively. "Get this filthy woman out of my sight."
Carissa turned and walked out. She dug her fingernails so hard into her palms that the skin broke. The pain kept her steady.
By the time she reached the front gates, a freezing drizzle had started to fall.
The security guard stared straight ahead, refusing to offer her an umbrella. Carissa pulled her thin coat tighter and walked out into the rain.
She stood on the empty, winding road, pulling out her phone. No Uber driver would accept a ride from this zip code.
A black Maybach glided out of the estate gates. The rear window was rolled halfway down. She caught Guilford's sharp profile in the shadows.
The car sped past her without slowing. The tires hit a puddle, splashing freezing, muddy water all over her jeans.
Carissa stared at the red taillights disappearing into the mist. She wiped the dirty rain from her face. The last shred of vulnerability inside her died, replaced by something cold and hard.
She walked for nearly an hour in the freezing rain, her worn boots slipping on the slick pavement, until she finally reached the main highway. Pulling out her phone with numb fingers, she managed to hail a premium rideshare. When the sleek black SUV pulled up, she slid onto the pristine leather seat. The driver, a middle-aged man with kind eyes, glanced at her dripping clothes through the rearview mirror but said nothing. The heater blasted over her shivering frame. She gave him an address in Queens.
Staring out at the blurred neon lights of the city, Carissa made a silent vow. She was going to find out exactly where that money went.
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9.4
Six years ago, Breanna was shoved into a pitch-black hotel suite by her own uncle.
She was forced to endure a brutal night with a drugged stranger just to keep her grandmother's ventilator running.
Nine months later, she gave birth in a cold underground clinic.
But her uncle immediately snatched the crying newborn from her trembling hands, coldly announcing the baby had died.
For six years, Breanna lived in agonizing grief, working as a lowly hotel cleaner just to survive.
But a cruel setup threw her directly into the path of Elliot Finch, the arrogant billionaire from that dark night.
He did not recognize the woman whose life he had completely ruined.
Instead, he looked at her like she was rotting garbage, had his guards drag her into a wet alley, and mercilessly got her fired.
"If I ever see your face again, I will make sure you cannot get a job cleaning toilets."
Breanna was suffocating from the injustice, stripped of her dignity and her family's only lifeline.
Yet, when she instinctively protected a traumatized little boy from bullies, she discovered he was Elliot's son.
The boy clung to her neck, crying and desperately begging his father to let her stay.
But Elliot just threw a massive check at her chest, violently accusing her of brainwashing a sick child for a meal ticket.
Looking at the toxic disgust in his eyes, something inside Breanna finally broke.
She picked up the check, ripped the millions into tiny shreds, and let them rain down on his expensive shoes.
"Keep your dirty money."
She turned her back on the crying boy and the stunned billionaire, deciding she would no longer be their victim.

8.9
For seven years, I hid my MIT Ph.D. and my identity as a top haute couture designer to be the perfect, obedient wife to billionaire Cornelius Lambert.
But on our anniversary, while I waited at home with a cold dinner, I found him at a Michelin restaurant with his childhood sweetheart, Halle.
My seven-year-old son sat between them, laughing loudly.
"Mom is too boring. I wish Aunt Halle was my real mom."
Cornelius didn't defend me. He just smiled and affectionately ruffled the boy's hair.
When I finally packed my bags and left, I accidentally triggered an old AI robot prototype Cornelius had given me years ago.
A hidden recording played his voice from the very night he proposed.
"Why marry her? Because she's easy to control. Halle doesn't want to settle down yet, so Cassidy is just a perfect, temporary shield."
Later, when I caught them being intimate in a dark parking garage and snapped a photo, Cornelius watched with cold, dead eyes as his massive bodyguard shoved me against a concrete pillar.
My arm was torn open, blood dripping onto the floor, as they forced me to delete the evidence of his affair.
For seven years, I filed down every sharp edge of my brilliance for a man who saw me as nothing but a pathetic, disposable placeholder.
My heart turned to absolute ice. He thought I was just a weak, powerless housewife.
But he forgot who he was dealing with.
As his luxury car drove away, I pulled up the hidden command terminal on my phone and recovered the encrypted cloud backup of the photos.
I looked at my lawyer with a bleeding arm and a cold smile.
"Let's go. Now, we have a weapon."

9.0
Once a pampered princess, Alaina now clutched a deactivated American Express card, staring out at Central Park. Her family’s fortune was gone, her life, over.
Her family's Hamptons estate, a four-generation legacy, was seized by Dyer Capital. The name hit her: Hardin Dyer, the poor boy she’d once scorned, had returned.
Hardin marched in, serving a divorce agreement. He'd orchestrated her family's downfall for revenge, giving her 24 hours to vacate his property. Penniless, her father faced prison, needing $50 million. Her mother forced her to beg Hardin, who sneered, offering the money for her body. Alaina ripped up the contract.
Hours later, her father had a heart attack. Desperate, she became "Lexi," a club girl enduring humiliation. In the Viper Room, Hardin's lackeys demanded she lick whiskey off his shoe for $10,000. Hardin watched. Outside, her brother Ashton's hand was threatened for a $3 million debt. Spirit shattered, Alaina returned, knelt on broken glass, offering to sign. But Hardin declared her family "dead," offering $10 million for her body, commanding her to use her mouth.
In a furious act of defiance, Alaina threw whiskey in his face, snatched the check, and fled. Yet, when he finally took her, a searing, foreign pain and blood on the sheets revealed a shocking truth: he had never touched her three years ago. Why had he let her believe such a monstrous lie?

8.8
My fiancé, Knox, was the man I’d spent ten years building a life with, the one I’d poured my family’s fortune into. But then I found the lockbox. Inside, a photo of him smiling, his arm around a heavily pregnant woman, marked: *To my only wife Deana.*
I’d been looking for a charger in our Boston penthouse closet when I stumbled upon it. The faded Polaroid showed Knox, younger, beaming, with a heavily pregnant stranger. Its timestamp: "Ten years ago"—the exact year I funded his Ivy League PhD.
Flipping the photo, I saw Knox’s familiar handwriting: *To my only wife Deana and our upcoming miracle.* My world crumbled. The man I’d loved had a wife, making me the unwitting mistress. My opulent life was built on his lies.
His text, "Baby, I'm coming home to *our house*," twisted into a cruel joke. My tears froze. A decade of sacrifices, of family alienation—all for a man who used my money and trust—shredded in my mind. The fragile woman in me vanished; my eyes turned cold and clear. I relocked the box, smoothed the rug, and applied crimson lipstick. Practicing a flawless smile, I whispered, "Welcome home, my sweet liar."

8.5
Aileen transmigrated into a dark, unfinished novel as the villainous, abusive wife of a powerful billionaire.
The moment she opened her eyes, her husband's calloused hand was crushing her throat, and her six-year-old stepson was pointing a box cutter at her face, screaming for her to die.
A cold system voice suddenly exploded in her brain, forcing a mandatory mission: save the villainous father and son, or face immediate death.
To survive the system's strict Out-Of-Character warnings, Aileen had to keep playing the role of the deranged, hateful wife.
She was despised by everyone. Her husband threatened to drag her to an asylum, and her terrified stepson scrubbed the floor with his own pajamas just to avoid her wrath.
Things escalated when the novel's original female lead publicly framed Aileen in Central Park, throwing herself onto the grass and clutching her pregnant belly.
"She pushed me. She tried to hurt the baby!"
Archer rushed over, shoved Aileen aside with absolute disgust, and looked at her with the eyes of a murderer.
Aileen felt a bitter wave of exhaustion. She had discovered the original owner's hidden antipsychotic pills; the woman wasn't just evil, she was severely mentally ill and completely broken by this loveless marriage.
Yet, no one cared, and her husband would always choose to believe his childhood sweetheart's fake tears.
Since everyone in this world was convinced she was an unpredictable lunatic, she decided to give them exactly what they expected.
Aileen turned her back on the ridiculous scene, a cold smile forming on her lips.
She was going to stage a massive, undeniable psychological breakdown, using her "insanity" as the perfect shield to play the system and rewrite her fate.

7.8
Evelyn was already suffocating under her family's impending bankruptcy when she rear-ended a ten-million-dollar Rolls Royce in the freezing rain.
The tinted window rolled down, revealing the cold, predatory face of Julian Hawthorne—the man she had brutally abandoned three years ago.
Now a ruthless billionaire, he demanded a seven-figure repair check she couldn't afford, or she would have to pay with her body.
Desperate, she went to her wealthy fiancé, Preston, for the money, only to find him in a VIP club with another woman straddling his lap.
Instead of helping, Preston threw the repair bill on the floor and laughed with his rich friends.
"You want the money? Fine. Get on your knees, crawl over here, and kiss the tip of my shoe in front of everyone."
Evelyn trembled with pure humiliation.
Three years ago, she had sacrificed the only man she truly loved to save her family from ruin, only to end up engaged to this pathetic, cheating scum.
Just as her knees bent toward the carpet, the heavy velvet door was kicked completely off its hinges.
Julian walked in like the grim reaper, beat Preston half to death, and dragged Evelyn away.
He pinned her in his car, threatening to destroy everyone she cared about if she didn't return to him.
Evelyn was terrified and confused. Why was this powerful tyrant going to such extreme, violent lengths to trap a woman who had thrown him away?
The answer slipped out through an accidental phone call: the cold-blooded CEO had spent the previous night drunk, crying and screaming her name.
Realizing the monster caging her was actually just a desperate, heartbroken man, Evelyn wiped her tears and made a decision.
She was going to break her engagement, walk into his corporate fortress, and finally face the terrifying debt of their past.