Bound To The Devil From My Past

To save my family's dying company, I was forced to marry a billionaire I hadn't seen in fourteen years. But right outside the City Clerk's office, he tossed our marriage certificate at me like a cheap receipt and shoved a four-year-old boy into my arms. "Your new life has begun. You're on babysitting duty now." He sneered and left me stranded on the sidewalk. I realized with absolute horror that my new husband was Ellsworth Marshall, the sickly boy I had relentlessly bullied in middle school. He didn't spend five billion dollars to save the Bradford family. He bought me to execute a slow, suffocating revenge. He used his orphaned nephew as a pawn, explicitly threatening my father that if I failed to play the perfect, compliant nanny, he would instantly destroy our family's legacy. He even had his guards lock me out of his Long Island estate on my first night, forcing me to stand in the cold dark just to prove he owned me. I was trapped in a gilded cage, suffocated by the guilt of my past and the terror of my present. Why did he involve an innocent child in his twisted vendetta? How much humiliation was enough to pay for my childhood cruelty? Looking at the terrified little boy clinging to my skirt, I tightened my grip on my suitcase. If he wanted to destroy my will piece by piece, I had to find a way to survive the monster I created.

Chapters

Chapter 6

The lawyers filed out, leaving the two men alone in the heavy silence of the office. The air felt thick, charged with the aftermath of the signing.

Warren repeated his question, his voice hoarse. "What do you really want?"

Ellsworth didn't answer immediately. He stood by the desk, his fingers casually adjusting his cufflinks. The gesture was arrogant, dismissive, as if Warren's question was beneath his notice.

His gaze drifted across the desk, landing on a framed photo. It was Ashlie, smiling brightly in her graduation gown, her eyes full of hope.

Ellsworth's posture shifted, an almost imperceptible change. He didn't soften, but the harsh lines of his shoulders seemed to settle as he stared at the image. Warren couldn't decipher the look-it wasn't just coldness, but it wasn't warmth either. It was something else, something intense and possessive that made the hairs on Warren's arms stand up.

"What I want," Ellsworth said, his voice low, "doesn't depend on me. It depends on her."

Warren frowned. "Her? Ashlie?"

"Who else?" Ellsworth scoffed. "Did you think I bought half your company to be friends with an old man?"

Warren flinched but held his ground. "What are your plans for Ashlie? If this is about revenge for what happened back then-"

"Revenge?" Ellsworth cut him off with a cold laugh. "Mr. Bradford, you give me too little credit. I have no interest in childish games."

The denial confused Warren even more. If not revenge, then what?

"I married her for one reason," Ellsworth said, stepping closer to the desk. "To provide a stable family environment and a legal mother for my nephew, Keenen."

Warren stared at him, bewildered. His mind screamed that it was a lie. What a preposterous excuse! He expects me to believe he spent five billion dollars to find a nanny for his nephew? He must think I'm an absolute fool. This is a smokescreen, a ridiculous story to hide his real intentions. The real reason, the terrifying reason, is about Ashlie herself. "That's it? You could hire the best nannies in the world. Why marriage? Why Ashlie?"

"I've reviewed her file," Ellsworth said, his tone clinical. "She's clean, intelligent, and the Bradford upbringing wasn't entirely useless. She needs money, and I need a wife. It's a fair trade."

He paused, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "As for how I treat her... that will depend entirely on her performance."

Warren felt a knot of dread tighten in his stomach. "Performance?"

"Whether she can make Keenen happy," Ellsworth said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Whether she can play the role of a competent aunt. Whether she can... please me. If she performs well, the Bradford Group remains safe, and you and your daughter live comfortably."

He leaned in closer, his face inches from Warren's. "If she fails... Mr. Bradford, you know as well as I do that destroying a company is much easier than saving it."

The threat was explicit. He was tying Ashlie's well-being to the survival of the entire family. She was a hostage, and her good behavior was the ransom.

Warren's heart sank. He had saved his company, but he had placed his daughter in a gilded cage with a master who held all the keys.

Ellsworth straightened up, turning away from the despair on Warren's face. He walked toward the door.

At the threshold, he stopped. He glanced back over his shoulder.

"Oh, one more thing," he said, his tone casual. "Ashlie will be moving into the Long Island estate tonight. It's part of the agreement."

Without waiting for a response, he walked out, the door clicking shut behind him.

Warren collapsed into his chair. He felt like he had aged a decade in the last hour. He had sold his daughter's happiness, and the price was a prison.

He reached for the phone, his fingers hovering over the keypad. He wanted to call Ashlie, to warn her, to tell her to run.

But his hand trembled, and he slowly placed the receiver back down.

What could he say? It was done. He was the one who had pushed her into the tiger's den.

Continue to next part

To save my brother's life, I married a dead billionaire. My new home was a freezing, high-tech mausoleum where I was ordered to hold a year-long vigil beside Byron Hyde's cryogenic pod. But I wasn't alone in the dark. Every night, a terrifying shadow smelling of whiskey and sandalwood pinned me to my narrow bed. It tore my clothes and brutally claimed my body, leaving me bruised and trembling until dawn. When I begged the housekeeper for help, showing her my torn skin, she just smiled cruelly. "It seems the master's spirit has accepted you." I thought I was being haunted by a vengeful ghost, until Byron's arrogant nephew broke into the tomb to assault me. His tampering triggered the life-support system, and the heavy lid of the pod hissed open. Byron Hyde sat up, his eyes lethal and his skin shockingly warm. He was alive. Looking at his broad shoulders, I caught the faint scent of whiskey and sandalwood. The horrific truth hit me like a physical blow. My nightly tormentor wasn't a ghost. It was my living, breathing husband. When I confronted him, his eyes were cold and clinical. "That was a necessary test. I had to know if my wife would break." A white-hot rage choked me, but I didn't scream or run. He slipped the priceless, heavy sapphire of the family matriarch onto my finger, offering me absolute power over the treacherous relatives who wanted us both dead. To fight a monster, you can't be a victim. I looked into his deep, dangerous eyes and accepted the ring. If this was a cage, allying with the keeper was the only way to find the key.

Horror Modern Romance

8.3

He Erased Me, I Erased Him First

8.3

On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news. He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city. The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.” For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets. My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me. So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts. He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked. He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree. He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies.

Horror Modern Romance

9.1

His Ultimatum, Her Dying Heartbreak

9.1

My family and fiancé begged me to donate my last remaining kidney to my twin sister, Kyleigh. They didn't know I was already dying. My fiancé, Axel, gave me an ultimatum. "Donate the kidney, or I'll break our engagement and marry Kyleigh. It's her dying wish." I agreed, only for them to frame me for plagiarism with my own thesis, forcing me to confess on camera. They never knew I was the one who secretly saved our father with my other kidney five years ago-a sacrifice Kyleigh had stolen all the credit for. As they wheeled me into the operating room, they celebrated with Kyleigh, promising her a future built on my death. I was already a ghost to them. But I died on the table. The surgeon, seeing the old surgical scar and the poison riddling my body, walked out to face them. "This wasn't a donation," she announced, her voice cold as steel. "This was murder."

Horror Mystery Romance

7.3

My Mad King's Love, Forever Mine

7.3

For a thousand years, the Vora beastmen have been cursed by a madness-a burning sickness in their blood that only one thing can soothe: the legendary 'Blood-Blessed,' a human female whose very scent is a living cure. When a virus wiped out nearly all females, their desperate hunt for this mythical girl turned into a brutal conquest. They crushed our fallen human kingdoms, reducing us to breathing meat under their cruel "Livestock Codex." To save my little sister from being branded for their elite breeding auction, I took her place in the male-only death draft. Disguised as a boy, I was thrown into a pitch-black labyrinth, a living sacrifice meant to feed their ultimate nightmare: the feral, half-dragon Mad King. He tore our steel cage apart like wet paper. I pressed my back against the freezing wall, watching in horror as he slaughtered the screaming men around me. He ripped the filthy coat from my body, exposing my true gender. As his crimson eyes locked onto my throat and he opened his jaws for the kill, my rage burned away my fear. I was a pureblood heiress of a dead empire, but I would not die cowering like an animal. I gripped a shard of glass, ready to aim for his eye. But as he lunged, the glass sliced my palm. The moment my blood hit the air, the legend became my reality. The sweet, intoxicating scent that flooded the dark wasn't just my pheromones-it was the living cure. The terrifying, apocalyptic tyrant froze mid-strike. He dropped his massive body to his knees, his fangs retracting as he gently, desperately licked my bleeding hand. His chaotic red eyes darkened with an absolute, world-ending obsession as he pulled my fragile body against his burning chest. "Mine." I was meant to be his final meal. They called me the Blood-Blessed. He called me his Queen.

Fantasy Horror Romance

9.2

Reborn As The Cold Villain's Daughter

9.2

I woke up suffocating in the dark, only to find my mind trapped inside a tiny, plump, and entirely uncoordinated body. A cold, mechanical voice echoed in my brain, announcing that I was dead in my original world and had transmigrated into a corporate revenge novel as the six-month-old illegitimate daughter of Edward McClure, the story's ruthless villain. The system mercilessly outlined my doomed fate. Tonight, my cold-blooded father would abandon me to a state orphanage. By age two, he would officially sign my rights away, leaving me to die miserably at the hands of human traffickers. Outside my nursery, I could hear his terrifying footsteps approaching, his voice devoid of any human warmth as he debated throwing me out like garbage. I was completely helpless, trapped in a baby's body, staring up at a man who looked at me with pure, visceral disgust. Why did I have to be reborn as the tragic cannon fodder of a tyrant destined to put a bullet in his own head? How was I supposed to win over a severe germaphobe when my unequipped infant reflexes made me literally pee and vomit all over his pristine Tom Ford suits? "Your ultimate mission is to prevent Edward McClure's self-destruction. Step one: Survive tonight's abandonment crisis." Hearing the system's terrifying ultimatum, I swallowed my adult panic, forced a pool of pitiful tears into my large eyes, and reached my chubby little hands toward the monster.

Adventure Fantasy Horror

8.9

Surviving My Deadly Contract Beast Husbands

8.9

I died in the apocalypse, only to wake up as Kenzie Banks, a bankrupt high-society monster in an interstellar beast-world. But before I could even process my new reality, a cold AI voice informed me of my impending death. "Your contract beast-husbands possess the legal right to execute you at the end of the two-month trial period." I rushed to the basement and saw the horrific truth. The original Kenzie had starved them, whipped them with thermal blades, sent their brothers to die as cannon fodder, and framed the youngest to rot in a maximum-security prison. Now, these lethal, broken men were methodically planning to rip my organs out the second the contract dissolved. To make matters worse, she had squandered her fortune on a man who despised her, leaving me two million credits in debt and facing imminent exile to the deadly wastelands. I had survived rotting zombies on Earth, only to be trapped in a weak, universally hated body, doomed to be butchered by the very people I was supposed to call family. Why did I have to pay the ultimate price for a psychotic woman's deadly sins? I refused to just sit around and wait for my execution. Tapping into my apocalyptic subspace inventory, I hauled out military-grade rations, healed their bleeding wounds, and slammed a legally binding divorce contract on the table. If I wanted to survive this sixty-day countdown, I had to turn my executioners into my loyal allies—starting with breaking the husband she framed out of prison.

Horror Modern Romance

Bound To The Devil From My Past

Chapter 6

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