Divorcing The CEO To Save My Baby
I went to a private clinic for a routine physical, only to find out I was pregnant.
It was impossible. I took my birth control every single day. But when the doctor tested my pills, they turned out to be high-purity vitamin placebos. My billionaire husband, Denton, had been systematically replacing my medication.
Yet, on our anniversary, he brought my sister Beverly home, demanding a divorce so he could marry her. When I refused to sign a settlement that left me with nothing, he froze my accounts and blacklisted me across New York.
My own father disowned me. When an old friend offered me a job just so I could afford prenatal care, Denton launched a ruthless financial attack to bankrupt his firm.
Then, Beverly got into a car crash. Denton's bodyguards dragged me off the street and forced me into a hospital trauma room. Beverly was hemorrhaging, and I was the only blood match.
I cried and begged Denton to stop, desperately trying to protect my fragile pregnancy without exposing my baby to the monster who controlled my life.
"Please, my body can't handle this. Don't do this to me!"
But he just looked at me with pure disgust and ordered his men to strap me to the chair, forcing the needle into my vein while threatening to kill me if his mistress died.
As I dragged my bleeding, cramping body out of the hospital into the freezing snow, my last shred of hope died.
I touched my stomach and made a vow: I would disappear, and I would make them all pay.
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Chapter 2
Emma saw the black Maybach parked at the corner of Park Avenue, with Denton's usual driver, Robert, sitting behind the wheel, his eyes fixed on the clinic's entrance. A cold certainty washed over her: she was being watched. Instead of walking toward the car, she turned her collar up against the freezing wind and walked three blocks to the subway station.
She swiped her MTA card and descended into the loud, crowded underground platform.
The train roared into the station. She pushed her way into the dense crowd of commuters, ensuring any eyes Denton had on her were completely lost in the rush hour chaos.
Half an hour later, she emerged from the subway in Tribeca. She walked the remaining two blocks to the Chaney family's penthouse.
She pressed her thumb to the biometric scanner on the private elevator. The doors slid open with a soft hiss, revealing the top floor.
The main lights in the penthouse were off. The only illumination came from the neon glow of the Manhattan skyline bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Emma hung her coat in the foyer. The moment she turned around, the heavy, pungent smell of Scotch whiskey and cigar smoke hit her face.
She froze. Denton Chaney sat submerged in the deep shadows of the leather armchair in the living room.
He swirled the crystal glass in his hand. The ice cubes clinked sharply against the rim.
He didn't look up. "Where were you this afternoon?" His voice was a low, dangerous rumble.
Emma's heart slammed against her ribs. Her hand instinctively moved to cover her lower stomach.
She forced her breathing to slow down. "I went to Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue. I was looking for an anniversary gift."
Denton let out a harsh, humorless laugh. He tossed a stack of printed credit card receipts onto the glass coffee table.
The papers scattered. There were no transactions from today.
Denton stood up. His six-foot-three frame instantly sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
He closed the distance between them in three strides. His large hand shot out, his fingers gripping her jaw roughly, forcing her face up.
His eyes were pitch black, swimming with pure disgust. "Still playing these pathetic, lying games, Emma?"
His grip tightened, his thumb pressing painfully into her cheekbone. "You think I forgot the yacht? You think I forgot how you bullied Beverly out of the picture just to steal the Chaney name?"
Emma's eyes watered from the pain in her jaw. "I didn't hurt my sister, Denton. I didn't." Her voice was a weak, desperate whisper.
Denton didn't listen. He shoved her face away, his disgust palpable. He threw the remaining whiskey in his glass onto the expensive Persian rug.
"Don't think our anniversary gives you any leverage. This marriage is a contract, and your position in it is temporary," he spat out, every word dripping with venom. He stepped closer, towering over her. "Whatever pathetic scheme you're cooking up to secure your place here, it won't work. I will never let a vicious, manipulative bitch like you stay in this house permanently."
The words acted like a physical blade plunging straight into Emma's chest. She stumbled backward, her heel catching on the rug.
The ultrasound photo in her coat pocket suddenly felt like it was burning a hole through her skin.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper. She forced the tears back, lowering her head. "I understand."
Her sudden submission seemed to irritate him more. Denton ripped his tie loose, turned on his heel, and walked toward his study.
The heavy oak door slammed shut with a deafening crack.
Emma's knees gave out. She slid down the cold wall, hitting the floor hard.
She wrapped both arms tightly around her stomach, curling into a tight ball. In the pitch-black hallway, she wept silently.
This was why she could never tell him. He would weaponize this child the same way he weaponized everything else in her life. He would call it manipulation. He would call it a trap. And then he would find a way to take it from her—or worse, to make her wish it had never existed.
She pressed her forehead against her knees, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The ultrasound photo pressed against her chest, a fragile secret tucked over her heart.
"I won't let him hurt you," she whispered into the darkness, her voice so low only the baby could have heard it—if the baby could hear anything at all. "I swear to God, I won't let him touch you."
Her mind was completely made up. She would take this secret to her grave.
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9.7
I ran through the freezing rain, desperate to escape the Pennington estate. My adoptive family had raised me for one purpose: to be sold off as a bargaining chip in a wealthy arranged marriage.
But before I could reach the highway, I was cornered. Not just by my family's cruel guards, but by Hollis Wall—a terrifying, ruthless billionaire who snapped my tormentor's wrist and dragged me into his car. He didn't want a ransom. He threw a prenuptial agreement in my lap.
I thought he was insane until he took a scalpel to his own arm, and a burning agony ripped across my flawless skin. Because of a near-drowning accident three years ago, our nervous systems were linked. Every time I bled, he felt the agony. He locked me in his fortress to keep me safe, but when I finally escaped back to my adoptive parents, they didn't protect me. Instead, my adoptive father smiled and showed me a live video of my biological father on life support, a guard's hand hovering over the plug.
"You will marry Douglas Cherry tomorrow, or your father dies," he sneered.
My own family was willing to murder my only real flesh and blood just to secure their wealth. I collapsed onto the cold marble floor, my heart crushed in a vice of absolute, suffocating despair.
"I'll marry him," I sobbed, surrendering to the darkness.
But miles away, in his dark study, the ruthless Hollis Wall violently collapsed to the floor, gasping for air as my severe panic attack bled directly into his chest. Our twisted bond was killing him, and I knew he would tear the city apart to find me.
8.5
Alexandrea woke up with a splitting headache in a strange hotel bed, terrified to find a brutally handsome, half-naked stranger beside her.
Before she could even scream, the door burst open. Her adoptive mother, Ivette, stormed in with a swarm of reporters and flashing cameras.
"How could you disgrace our family name like this?"
Ivette sobbed, putting on a theatrical performance of a heartbroken mother. It was a setup to completely ruin Alexandrea's reputation in front of New York's elite.
For ten years, Alexandrea had lived in a house of horrors. Her back and arms were covered in silvery scars and puckered cigarette burns left by Ivette's vicious abuse.
Yet to the public, Ivette had carefully crafted Alexandrea's image as a wild, ungrateful, and manipulative liar.
Trapped under the duvet, Alexandrea was drowning in shame, her voice lost in the storm of accusations.
She didn't understand why her adoptive family hated her so much, treating her worse than a stray dog while using her brother's future to keep her chained.
But what she understood even less was the stranger beside her.
Instead of panicking, the man slowly sat up, his presence alone silencing the frantic room. He was Ace Griffith, the billionaire heir who owned half of Manhattan.
He wrapped his suit jacket around her trembling shoulders, looked Ivette dead in the eye, and dropped a bomb.
"I will be marrying her."
Then, he carried Alexandrea away from her ten-year prison, ordering his men to dig up the Terry family's darkest secrets and her true identity.
7.9
Valerie Ashford, a girl who had just turned twenty-one, was introduced by her father to his business associates at a grand party, where she met a frightening, cold-blooded man.
That man was none other than her father's business partner, the CEO of a major corporation. He was taken with Valerie and had wanted her from the moment he first laid eyes on her.
For Rovano Morvane, whatever he desired was absolute and he had to have it, even by the worst means possible.
That night Valerie vanished without a trace and Rovano became the prime suspect, yet the Ashford family could not prove their allegations.
"P-please, I don't want to die, sir..." Valerie whispered so softly that Rovano had to bend down even lower.
"Didn't you just say you didn't care whether you were kidnapped or not? So shut your mouth." Rovano ordered.
Cold, Valerie felt the other side of the folding knife pressed against her cheek.
Rovano was going to mark Valerie.
It felt like something was missing if Rovano didn't take out his psychopathic urges on someone.
And this time, for the first time, he wanted a girl: Valerie Ashford.
Would Valerie's life end here?
9.3
Candice Luna thought her marriage to Julius Hansen was a lifeline to save her father's struggling company.
She didn't know it was a death sentence until Julius coldly slid divorce papers across his mahogany desk.
His true love, Amina Rowe, was nestled in his arms with a triumphant, mocking smile. The "merger" Julius promised had been a brutal, hostile takeover designed to bleed the Luna Group dry from the inside. Bankrupted and utterly broken, Candice's father stepped off the roof of their corporate tower. Meanwhile, Candice was publicly humiliated, stripped of her dignity, and mocked by all of Wall Street as a discarded stepping stone.
She died in a car accident, her final moments consumed by an agonizing, feral scream. She hated herself for letting her blind devotion destroy the father who had always believed in her.
But when Candice opened her eyes to the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room, she realized she wasn't dead.
She was twenty-two again. Three years before the wedding. Three years before her father's suicide.
When Julius's assistant walked in holding a bouquet of blue roses to discuss the preliminary merger, he expected a docile, desperate heiress.
Instead, Candice grabbed a glass of water from the nightstand and flung it directly into his smug face.
"Tell Julius Hansen to never, ever send his dogs to my door again."
This time, there would be no engagement. This time, the Hansen family would choke on her family's legacy.
7.7
Jaclyn woke up in the sterile hospital room after falling down the stairs. The nurse delivered the devastating news: she had bled heavily and lost her baby.
But before she could even cry, her trusted cousins, Katelyn and Cherri, locked the door and revealed the horrifying truth.
"It wasn't an accident," Katelyn smirked, pinning Jaclyn's arm down. "The lubricant on the top step was a very deliberate choice."
They needed her broken and unstable. They had forged her signature, draining her massive trust fund to save their uncle's bankrupt business.
What shattered Jaclyn's world was the fresh hickey on Cherri's neck. Her lover, Bradford, had helped plan the entire murder.
When Jaclyn tried to scream, they smothered her with a pillow, framing her as a lunatic having a mental breakdown.
Two weeks later, when she confronted them, Bradford violently shoved her through a second-story glass window to silence her forever.
As she fell to her death, the husband she had spent her life hating—the ruthless billionaire Gaines—burst through the doors.
He threw himself forward, his face filled with pure terror, desperately trying to catch her.
When her body hit the stone patio, Gaines fell to his knees in her blood, weeping and begging her not to close her eyes.
Until her last breath, Jaclyn was consumed by suffocating regret. Why did she trust the monsters who killed her, and hate the only man who truly loved her?
Opening her eyes again, she was back in the penthouse, exactly one month into her marriage with Gaines.
8.9
My family's company went bankrupt, and my biological father was lying in the ICU, kept alive by machines that cost tens of thousands a day.
I thought it was just a tragic business failure, until I caught my mother in bed with my stepfather.
They had secretly transferred all our assets months ago, deliberately bankrupting the company and leaving my father to die.
To pay the hospital bills, my stepfather forced me to a private club, trying to sell me to a sleazy investor.
When I refused, he slapped me across the face, and my mother just looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"Be realistic, Jaelynn. A woman's body is a tool. Use it to get what you need."
Later, right before my father's emergency surgery, my stepfather signed a Do Not Resuscitate order and froze the medical accounts.
"If you don't get on your knees and spread your legs for him, I will tell the hospital to pull your father's plug."
Standing in the freezing rain, covered in mud and blood, I stared at the astronomical hospital bill in my hand.
My own family had plotted to murder my father and sell me to the highest bidder. The betrayal shattered every ounce of sanity I had left.
I didn't cry or beg them anymore.
Instead, I pulled out a water-stained, gold-embossed business card.
It belonged to Dolph Valentine, the most ruthless billionaire in New York and my ex-fiancé's uncle.
If they wanted to destroy my life, I was going to sell my soul to the biggest monster of them all and drag them straight to hell.