CEO's Runaway Lover: My Cold Ex Begs For My Love Again
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.
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Chapter 6
"And who exactly do you think you are to lecture me?" Lacey snapped back.
"I'm the executive producer," Madelynn replied firmly.
Lacey faltered, her response dying in her throat.
Abby's voice rang out from behind them. "Impressive. Throwing your weight around like that, Madelynn."
She approached in measured steps, heels clicking, and stopped beside Lacey, her lips curling into a faint, knowing smile. "Shame this isn't your project anymore. Mr. Willis made that very clear—you've been replaced, and I'm in charge now. So what exactly gives you the right to call the shots here?"
Madelynn met her gaze head-on. "I'm doing this as Margot's friend. Is that good enough for you?"
Abby laughed hard. "Friend? That's quite the claim. You're just an employee trying to latch onto a celebrity; do you really think she considers you as a friend?"
At that moment, Margot stepped forward through the crowd and took her place beside Madelynn. "She is my friend."
Abby's face went rigid at once.
One by one, people began to gather around them—the script supervisor, lighting crew, and even a couple of supporting actors. Each of them had, at one point or another, been on the receiving end of Lacey's deliberate or subtle mistreatment.
Not a single person said anything.
They simply stood there.
The shift in Abby's expression was impossible to miss.
Right in the middle of the tense silence, Louis' voice cut through the air. "What's with the delay? Are we shooting today or not?"
He pushed his way forward, and the moment his eyes landed on Madelynn, his brows drew together. "You again?"
Madelynn paid him no attention and continued addressing Abby, saying, "I've already arranged for someone to retrieve the behind-the-scenes footage. If Lacey doesn't provide Margot with a written apology before the day is over, I'll be sending the full, unedited recording directly to the Dawson Group's legal department on behalf of Infinity Entertainment. Since this is their production, I assume they won't mind stepping in to resolve the matter, right?"
Abby faltered. "You wouldn't—"
"Feel free to test that," Madelynn interjected calmly.
Louis quickly grasped the situation.
His gaze shifted from Lacey to Margot's swollen cheek, and his expression darkened.
"Did you do this?" he asked Lacey.
Lacey visibly panicked. "Mr. Barrett, just let me explain—"
"Answer the question. Did you do this or not?" Louis cut her off.
Lacey fell silent, not daring to respond.
Louis said nothing for a few seconds, then muttered a curse under his breath.
When he looked back at Madelynn, the usual mockery in his tone had disappeared for the first time.
"The Dawson Group will cover all of Margot's medical expenses," he said.
Madelynn didn't reply.
Louis lingered for a brief moment before turning and walking away.
Abby and Lacey followed behind him, their expressions stiff with embarrassment.
The crowd slowly dispersed.
Meanwhile, Margot remained beside Madelynn, her eyes rimmed red. "Madelynn..."
"It's alright now," Madelynn said, giving her shoulder a light pat. "Go put some ice on your cheek."
Margot nodded, but after taking a few steps, she turned back again. "Madelynn, you mentioned before that Louis and Caiden know each other personally."
"Yeah."
"Then... is that why he helped us just now?"
Madelynn didn't answer.
Her thoughts drifted to the message Jed had sent her the night before.
It was brief.
"Mr. Dawson said you can continue your work in Avlester. He'll take care of Louis."
She hadn't replied.
It seemed Caiden had already taken care of things with Louis.
As evening set in, a light rain began to fall.
Madelynn left the set without an umbrella, wandering down the street without any clear destination.
She didn't feel like returning to the hotel. She didn't want to sit alone there.
Her thoughts were tangled and restless.
It had been four years. She had believed she was used to handling everything on her own by now.
But standing there earlier, in the middle of that confrontation, she had suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of exhaustion.
It wasn't a feeling she experienced often anymore.
The last time she felt that had been four years ago, when she stood in front of Caiden and said, "The contract is over. Let's end things peacefully."
She had never forgotten the look in his eyes that day.
It was cold as ice.
She had always believed he hated her.
Maybe he did.
But why had he appeared in that alley the other night? And why had he asked Jed to pass along that message to her?
Could it be that he still hadn't broken the habit of helping her? Just like before.
The rainfall intensified, turning steadier and harsher.
Madelynn stepped beneath a roadside bus stop to dodge it, resting against the advertisement panel as she gazed absentmindedly through the veil of rain.
Her phone rang suddenly with a call from an unfamiliar number, and she picked it up.
"Madelynn." Caiden's voice came through the line.
Madelynn stiffened in place. "Caiden?"
A short silence followed from the other end of the line.
"Where are you?" Caiden finally asked.
Madelynn glanced around instinctively. "Avlester. Why?"
"Send me your location."
"What?"
The call abruptly disconnected.
Madelynn looked at her phone screen, momentarily unsure what to do.
After a long three minutes, she finally sent Caiden her location.
The second she hit send, she felt a bit foolish.
Why had she complied so easily just because he asked?
Acting on impulse, she quickly retracted the message.
Almost immediately, Caiden replied, "Already saw it."
A wave of awkwardness settled over Madelynn.
She slipped her phone back into her pocket.
The rain eased slightly, yet she remained where she was. She wasn't even sure what she was waiting for.
About twenty minutes later, a black car came to a stop beside the bus stop.
The car window slid down.
Caiden sat behind the wheel, his gaze landing on her through the curtain of rain. "Get in."
Madelynn didn't move. "What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I had a meeting nearby in the afternoon."
"A meeting that went on until now?"
Caiden gave no response.
They held each other's gaze for a brief moment before Madelynn finally reached for the door and got in.
The interior of the car was warm, carrying that familiar pine scent.
Caiden started the car without another word. He didn't ask why she had been standing alone there or why she looked so drained. He simply drove. The only sound was the steady sweep of the wipers cutting across the windshield.
Madelynn leaned back against the seat, her eyes drifting toward the blurred city lights outside.
"Thanks for today," she said after a while.
"What do you mean?"
"For handling Louis."
Caiden gave a quiet nod in response, offering nothing more.
Silence settled between them again.
Then, out of nowhere, Madelynn spoke, her voice quiet, almost distant. "Four years ago, when I left..."
Caiden's grip tightened slightly on the steering wheel.
"It wasn't because of Isaac," Madelynn continued.
She kept her eyes forward, not looking at him. "Back then, your mother came to see me."
The rhythmic sound of the wipers continued, the only thing breaking the stillness.
Caiden said nothing.
Madelynn waited for a moment, then let out a faint laugh. "Forget it. That was all in the past anyway."
She shut her eyes.
Caiden didn't press her further, and she offered no more explanation, either.
Four years had gone by, long enough that neither of them knew how to begin to talk about this topic anymore.
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8.0
Elva used a spare key card to quietly enter the hotel penthouse, only to find her boyfriend of two years panting heavily on the king-sized bed with her own cousin.
Instead of showing remorse, her cousin shamelessly mocked her background, while her ex aggressively lunged at her to destroy the photographic evidence she had just captured.
"You think you can just walk away? Warren already made the deal. By next week, you're being shipped off to marry that fifty-two-year-old crippled freak from the Ramirez family!"
Her ex spat the words to threaten her, and the nightmare only escalated when Elva returned to her uncle's estate, where Warren confirmed he was indeed selling her off for a business connection.
Her family eagerly joined the abuse, threatening to permanently freeze her late mother's trust fund and even plotting to secretly drug her morning milk so she couldn't fight back when the groom's family arrived.
They looked at her like a pathetic, orphaned burden they could bleed dry, fully expecting her to drop to her knees, cry, and accept her miserable fate without a single word of defiance.
But they had no idea that just hours ago, Elva had already signed a marriage certificate with Bronson Ramirez, the undisputed billionaire king of the dynasty, and she was stepping into the living room ready to watch their greedy world burn.
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."
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
8.9
For three years, Alana acted as the sole tactical brain for the Dawnbreaker squad, keeping them alive despite being labeled a useless "Dud" Conduit.
But right before the crucial Ascension Trials, squad leader Cash handed her a corporate sponsorship contract. The condition? She had to become the "private companion" to a greasy corporate heir just so the squad could get high-tier gear.
When she refused, the teammates she had bled for unanimously voted to kick her out.
"You're just window dressing, a liability."
They revoked her safehouse access, burned her belongings, and the academy advisor even tried to force her into a state-sanctioned breeding program. They left her to freeze in the slums, betting she would desperately crawl into the rich man's bed.
What they didn't know was that her inability to summon an Eidolon wasn't a lack of talent. Her teammate Dallin had been secretly sabotaging her rituals for years, crippling her potential just to keep her chained as their free tactician.
Stripped of everything and pushed to the absolute brink, Alana's despair morphed into a deadly resolve.
Using a million-credit black market loan and a forbidden blood matrix, she forcibly anchored an Apex-Tier cosmic wolf disguised as a harmless silver pup.
When her ex-squad tried to publicly humiliate her and burn her new "pet" alive in the cafeteria, a flash of silver light severed Dallin's hand instantly.
Looking at her screaming former teammates, Alana finally smiled.
7.9
On my wedding day, my fiancé Connor received an urgent phone call.
He told me a D-list actress had broken her leg on set, then abandoned me right at the altar.
In my past life, I cried until my throat bled, begging him not to leave.
But my tears only brought endless humiliation. My mother and adopted sister mocked me, framed me, and forged my signature to steal my multi-million dollar trust fund.
They kicked me out of the family estate without a single dime.
I ended up freezing to death in the minus-twenty-degree New York blizzard, listening to my mother's voicemail telling me to die in the street as long as I didn't bleed on her carpets.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why my own blood relatives hated me so much, yet treated an adopted daughter like a precious princess.
The only person who showed me any mercy—draping his wool coat over my frozen corpse and giving me a proper burial—was Connor's ruthless, untouchable uncle, Harding Snow.
Opening my eyes again, I was back in the bridal suite, right as Connor was rushing out the door.
This time, I didn't shed a single tear.
I let him run to his actress, then walked straight into the VIP room to face the most feared billionaire on Wall Street.
"The wedding proceeds as planned, but the groom's name changes to yours."
9.3
For five years, I was Ashton Miller's invisible partner, his loyal fiancée, pouring my life into building his empire from the shadows. Tonight, the Bronze Deer exhibition, my masterpiece, was finally opening at the Met, a testament to our shared future.
Then, Bianca, a third-tier actress, stepped into the spotlight in *my* custom Vera Wang wedding dress. My blood ran cold as Ashton's arm circled her waist, his whispered words promising to make her the "new queen of the city."
Five years of trust and sacrifice crumbled. I was a blood bag, drained and discarded. When I publicly exposed their lies, Ashton cornered me backstage, his face twisted in fury, threatening to ruin me, to blacklist me forever. I ripped off his engagement ring, tossing it at his chest. "We're done," I said, walking out as his enraged screams echoed.
The man whose empire I secretly built called me a parasite, his mistress feigning tears, painting me as delusional. My guilt vanished, replaced by freezing, absolute hatred for the man who twisted reality to erase my existence.
Standing in the New York rain, I finally pulled out the military-grade encrypted phone hidden for five years. The line clicked open instantly, a low, gravelly voice asking, "Is it you?" Before I could answer, Archer's voice hardened: "Give me the location. I'll be there in ten minutes. Who touched you? I want his life."