Fake Marriage To The Undercover Boss
Emaline Finley was drowning in massive debt to keep her dying father alive, even enduring a humiliating blind date with an arrogant man just to find a financial lifeline.
But the fatal blow came from her former best friend, Kitty. Kitty, who was already engaged to Emaline's ex-boyfriend, deliberately told Emaline's father that his expensive treatments were bleeding his daughter dry.
Out of extreme guilt, her father threw away his life-saving medication and checked himself out of the hospital to die at home. When Emaline found him, he was coughing up pools of bright red blood, his lungs rapidly collapsing. As the paramedics rushed him away, Kitty called to gloat, mocking Emaline's poverty and telling her to go watch her father die.
Emaline was completely shattered, suffocating under the sheer injustice of it all. She had been betrayed, stripped of her dignity, and was now forced to watch her only parent slip away because of a cruel, spiteful lie.
Just as her world went dark, a wildly wealthy stranger stepped in. Cullen Preston, the mysterious man who had witnessed her humiliating date, paid the astronomical medical bills and brought in the city's top surgeon to pull her father back from death. But his salvation wasn't charity.
"Consider it a dowry."
He bought her father's life, and in exchange, he demanded Emaline as his wife.
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Chapter 2
Emaline stared at the white fabric. She did not take it.
"Were you eavesdropping?" she asked, her voice thick with unshed tears.
Cullen dropped his hand, letting the handkerchief fall back into his pocket. He shrugged.
"It was hard not to hear him," Cullen said. "The man projects like he is trying to be heard in the next state. He has the subtlety of a foghorn."
Emaline tightened her grip on her purse. She turned her body away from him, her boots scraping against the concrete. She did not have the energy for a stranger's games.
"Wait," Cullen said. He took a step to follow her. "Let me buy you a drink. Consider it compensation for the free entertainment."
Emaline stopped. She whipped her head back to look at him.
"I do not need your compensation," she snapped. "And I definitely do not need your pity."
Cullen held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. The streetlights caught the expensive glint of his watch.
"No pity," Cullen said. His tone was smooth, almost hypnotic. "Just a shared misery. My date was a disaster too. Tiffany spent forty-five minutes asking roundabout questions to figure out my net worth."
Emaline studied his face. The exhaustion in his eyes looked real. The tension in her shoulders dropped a fraction.
"Congratulations," Emaline said flatly. "We are both losers tonight."
The playful smirk vanished from Cullen's face. His dark eyes locked onto hers, suddenly intense and calculating.
"What if I told you I have a way for both of us to stop losing?" he asked.
Emaline frowned. Her brow furrowed.
Cullen closed the distance between them. He lowered his voice, forcing her to lean in slightly to hear him over the wind.
"A marriage," Cullen said. "You and me. Strictly business. We both get what we need."
Emaline's jaw dropped. The air left her lungs.
"Are you insane?" she breathed out. "We met five minutes ago."
Cullen did not blink. "I have my reasons. I need a marriage certificate to satisfy some family trust clauses. And you need money to pay those hospital bills."
A cold sweat broke out on the back of Emaline's neck.
Her hand flew to her coat pocket, covering the phone hidden inside. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
"How do you know about that?" she demanded, taking a step back. "Did you read my phone?"
Cullen stayed perfectly still. "I saw the notification light up on your phone screen when you were hunched over outside the restaurant. It is none of my business, but you looked like you needed help. I am a project manager. I make a stable income. I have no bad habits. We sign a prenuptial agreement. You get your bills paid, and I get my family off my back."
Emaline's mind spun. The pavement felt like it was tilting beneath her feet.
The proposal was madness. It was dangerous. But the image of her father's pale face in the hospital bed flashed behind her eyes.
"This is ridiculous," Emaline said, shaking her head. "Why would I ever trust you?"
Cullen reached into the inner pocket of his coat. He pulled out a crisp, white business card and extended it to her.
"My contact information," Cullen said. "I am not forcing you. But if you change your mind, call me."
Emaline hesitated. Her fingers trembled as she reached out and took the card.
It was thick cardstock. It just said 'Cullen Preston' and a phone number. No company name. No title.
Before she could say another word, her phone vibrated violently in her pocket.
She pulled it out. The screen showed an incoming video call from her younger brother, Leo.
Emaline swiped to answer.
Leo's face appeared on the screen. He was frantic. His hands moved in rapid sign language, a blur of panicked motion.
The mechanical voice of the translation app echoed from the phone speaker. "Emaline. Dad discharged himself. He will not stay at the hospital."
All the blood drained from Emaline's face. Her stomach plummeted into a bottomless pit.
"What?" Emaline gasped, her voice cracking. "Where is he?"
Leo signed faster. The app translated: "He is home. He looks awful. He is coughing. He threw his pills in the trash."
The world tilted violently. Emaline could not breathe. The edges of her vision went black.
"I am coming right now," Emaline shouted at the screen. "Do not let him move!"
She ended the call. Her fingers fumbled as she opened a ride-sharing app. The screen spun with a loading circle. No cars available. She looked up at the street. The Manhattan traffic was a solid wall of red taillights, but not a single empty yellow cab was in sight.
A wave of pure terror crashed over her.
"Get in," Cullen's voice cut through her panic.
Emaline looked up. Cullen was standing by the open rear door of a clean but unremarkable dark sedan that had just pulled up to the corner.
She looked at the ordinary vehicle. She looked at the stranger holding the door. Her instincts screamed at her to run away.
But her father was dying in their living room.
Emaline clenched her jaw. She gripped the business card so hard the edges dug into her palm.
She walked past Cullen and slid into the back seat of the sedan.
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8.3
I was the long-lost Donovan heiress, finally brought home after a childhood in foster care. My parents adored me, my husband cherished me, and the woman who tried to ruin my life, Kiera Reese, was locked away in a mental facility. I was safe. I was loved.
On my birthday, I decided to surprise my husband, Ivan, at his office. But he wasn't there.
I found him at a private art gallery across town. He was with Kiera.
She wasn't in a facility. She was radiant, laughing as she stood beside my husband and their five-year-old son. I watched through the glass as Ivan kissed her, a familiar, loving gesture he’d used with me just that morning.
I crept closer and overheard them. My birthday wish to go to the amusement park had been denied because he’d already promised the entire park to their son—whose birthday was the same day as mine.
"She’s so grateful to have a family, she’d believe anything we tell her," Ivan said, his voice laced with a cruelty that stole my breath. "It's almost sad."
My entire reality—my loving parents who funded this secret life, my devoted husband—was a five-year lie. I was just the fool they kept on stage.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ivan, sent while he stood with his real family.
"Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you."
The casual lie was the final blow. They thought I was a pathetic, grateful orphan they could control.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were.
9.3
Jessie's biological parents brought her back from a Rust Belt wasteland just to force her into marrying a paralyzed heir to save their bankrupt empire.
Three years later, when the global doomsday apocalypse hit, her own family shoved her into a swarm of infected corpses.
As she was being torn apart by mutated hounds, she was stunned by what she saw.
Her fake sister, Harley, was clutching the antique silver necklace she had stolen from Jessie—an heirloom that secretly contained a magical spatial dimension.
When the infected swarmed them, her biological mother didn't even look back.
"Jessie is just white trash, she is perfectly suited to buy us time to run!"
Harley used Jessie's stolen necklace to live in absolute safety and luxury, while Jessie's windpipe was ripped out in the rotting wasteland.
Until she died, Jessie didn't understand. She was their true flesh and blood.
Why did her parents hate her so much? Why was she sacrificed so easily while the fake daughter got everything?
Opening her eyes again, the blinding glare of a crystal chandelier stabbed into her retinas.
She was back in the Manhattan penthouse on the exact day they sold her off.
This time, Jessie calmly signed the marriage contract, demanded a one hundred million dollar buyout, and walked out to prepare for the apocalypse.
7.6
To pay for her father's life support, Haleigh sold herself into a marriage with Fabian Blackburn, a ruthless billionaire in a deep coma.
But on her wedding day, she caught her boyfriend cheating with her stepsister, laughing about how they would steal the inheritance the second Fabian stopped breathing. Cornered and desperate, Haleigh secretly underwent IVF using her comatose husband's frozen sperm to secure the family trust.
Weeks later, a miracle happened. Fabian woke up.
But instead of gratitude, he treated her like trash. He threw annulment papers at her face, completely disgusted by the arranged marriage.
"If you try any dirty tricks to get pregnant, I will personally drag you to a clinic and have that bastard scraped out of you."
Terrified, Haleigh hid her positive pregnancy test and desperately tried to hack her way to enough cash to escape. But while using his computer, she accidentally opened a highly classified folder.
Inside was a medical file and a photo of a severely disabled girl who looked exactly like Fabian.
Before she could process it, Fabian walked in. Seeing the screen, his cold mask shattered into pure, unhinged madness. He lunged across the room, lifting her off the floor by her throat, completely ignoring her desperate gasps for air.
"Lock her in the basement," he roared to his guards. "No food. No water."
Curled on the freezing concrete, clutching her newly pregnant belly, Haleigh didn't understand what she had just seen that turned him into a murderous monster.
But she knew one thing: if she didn't escape this terrifying estate, both she and his unborn heir would die in the dark.
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."
9.5
Jennifer, a fiercely independent entrepreneur, never imagined that running her company would put her in the orbit of Joseph, a reclusive billionaire with a dangerous agenda. Their professional clashes ignite a forbidden attraction, drawing them into a passionate affair that threatens to unravel everything Jennifer has built. As corporate sabotage, hidden heirs, and dark secrets from Joseph's past begin to surface, Jennifer's world spirals into a web of betrayal, desire, and moral peril. In a story where power and love collide, nothing is as it seems and every choice could be lethal.
9.5
Eda Roman clutched her father's diagnostic report, its sharp edge cutting her finger. His cancer had mutated, standard treatment failed, and a fifty thousand dollar deposit for experimental therapy was due by midnight. Fail to pay, and his hospital bed would be cleared.
Wife to Axel Foley, a multi-billion dollar CEO, Eda faced an impossible chasm. Her family trust, controlled by Keri Lane, offered a meager three hundred dollars.
An emergency fund request met a forty-eight-hour review—a death sentence. Keri's assistant denied expedite and blocked calls. Desperate, Eda called Axel, but his assistant dismissed her with lies, Axel's laughter echoing.
Humiliation and betrayal ignited cold fury. Wife to Seattle's wealthiest, yet begging on a hospital floor? Axel's indifference and Keri's games showed her: her father's life couldn't be left in their hands.
Wiping tears, the pleading girl vanished; her survival instinct roared. Red lipstick her war paint, Eda Roman marched to Foley Group Headquarters, ready to reclaim what was hers.