Healed By The Ruthless Billionaire's Touch
I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him.
Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister.
Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair.
I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people.
But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse.
I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges.
The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill.
When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell.
But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone.
His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life.
I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me.
Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference.
"I'll do it, but I control the venue."
I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.
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Chapter 2
Abigail sat in the driver's seat of her Porsche.
Her hands gripped the leather steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned a stark, bone-white.
The phone on the passenger seat vibrated. The screen lit up.
Preston.
Bile rose in the back of her throat. Her stomach twisted into a violent knot. The urge to vomit was overwhelming.
She closed her eyes. She forced her facial muscles to relax. She took a deep, shuddering breath.
She tapped the speaker button.
"Hey, beautiful," Preston's voice filled the car. It was smooth, warm, and sickeningly gentle. "How was the trip? Did you land the investment?"
Abigail swallowed the acid in her throat.
"Everything went perfectly," she said. Her voice was steady. Professional. "I'm on my way back to the office right now."
"Wait, don't come in just yet," Preston interrupted. His tone shifted. It became urgent.
"Why?"
"I need a massive favor. You need to call Julian Finch. Right now."
Abigail stared at the dashboard. Julian Finch was Hollywood's most elusive director. He was her personal contact.
"Julian is casting for 'Echoes of the Dark'," Preston continued. "Lorelai needs that lead role, Abigail. You have to make it happen."
Abigail let three seconds of dead silence pass.
"Preston, Lorelai doesn't have the acting chops for a Finch movie. It's a heavy drama. She'll be eaten alive on set."
Preston's voice dropped an octave. The warmth vanished. The manipulative, authoritative edge bled through.
"She is my sister, Abigail. She is family. And soon, she'll be your family, too. We don't hold back resources from family."
The scar on Abigail's left cheek pulsed with a sharp, stabbing pain.
She looked up at the rearview mirror. She stared at the jagged, angry red tissue that ruined her face.
A cold smile stretched across her lips.
"Fine," Abigail said. "But a favor from Julian costs. Are you willing to give up ten percent of the company's backend profits for the fourth quarter to secure this?"
"Yes," Preston answered instantly. He didn't even hesitate.
"That's a lot of money, Preston."
"I don't care," he snapped. "As long as Lorelai gets what she wants, I'll pay whatever it takes. Just get it done."
The absolute desperation in his voice solidified everything. Lorelai was his priority. Abigail was just a tool.
The ice in her veins froze solid.
"Okay," Abigail softened her voice, faking a sigh of defeat. "I'll go see Julian this afternoon."
"You're the best, Abby. Truly. The perfect partner."
Before the call disconnected, Abigail heard a faint, breathy giggle in the background.
The line went dead.
The silence in the car was suffocating.
Abigail slammed her foot down on the gas pedal.
The Porsche roared to life, tearing down the Los Angeles freeway. She rolled the windows down. The wind whipped her hair across her face, stinging her cheeks.
She pulled into the private garage of her apartment building.
She walked through her front door and hurled her car keys onto the entryway console. They hit the wood with a loud crack.
She marched straight to the liquor cabinet.
She grabbed a bottle of neat whiskey, poured a generous measure into a crystal glass, and threw it back.
The alcohol burned a fiery trail down her throat. It numbed the shaking in her hands.
She walked over to the marble kitchen island. She pulled the silver USB drive from her pocket and set it down.
It sat there, gleaming under the pendant lights. A loaded gun.
She opened her laptop.
She navigated to the internal PR coordination portal for the Star Awards.
As the senior crisis consultant for the event, she had a backdoor login credential to the live broadcast routing system.
She pulled up the minute-by-minute run of show.
Her eyes scanned the spreadsheet until they locked onto the 9:45 PM slot.
Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Lorelai Thorne was the frontrunner.
The corner of Abigail's mouth twitched upward.
She opened the administrative broadcast terminal. As the senior crisis consultant for the event, she possessed the emergency override credentials designed to cut the feed in case of a live disaster. She didn't need to write complex code; she just needed to redirect the feed. Her fingers began to fly across the keys, re-routing the emergency broadcast protocol to pull from the hidden video file she had just uploaded. She set a delayed execution timer.
She was going to give them the biggest audience they had ever had.
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9.1
With only fifteen days of cash flow left to save her tech startup, Aida had no choice but to seek a five-million-dollar bridge loan from Brendan Walls, a ruthless billionaire predator.
He agreed to sign the check, but on one sickening condition. He demanded Aida act as bait to get close to his corporate rival, Grayson Lott, treating her like a high-end call girl for a business transaction.
Forced to comply to save her employees, Aida let Grayson take her to a windowless underground club, where he secretly spiked her whiskey.
As the drugs paralyzed her body, triggering horrific flashbacks of a brutal assault from six years ago, Aida locked herself in the bathroom. She had to shatter a mirror and slice her own thigh open with a jagged shard of glass just to stay conscious enough to call Brendan for help.
Brendan's armored SUV immediately smashed through the club's wall to save her, and Grayson was arrested. But lying in the hospital, the horrifying truth finally clicked in Aida's mind.
The rescue was too fast. Brendan’s men hadn't rushed from Midtown; they had been parked outside the entire time. He had watched Grayson drug her and waited for the felony to happen just so he could legally seize Grayson's company. He had gambled her life and trauma for a hostile takeover.
When Brendan casually tossed a signed contract and luxury car keys onto her hospital bed as hush money, the last thread of Aida's sanity snapped.
"The deal is dead. NovaTech is mine. If you ever come near me again, I will kill you."
Bleeding and shaking with icy rage, Aida threw the keys at his chest, formally declaring war on the monster who thought he could buy her soul.
9.3
Alyssa Gregory slept with Benton Steele, a recently disgraced and bankrupt heir, just to humiliate him.
She threw a massive check at his bare chest, treating the former prince of Wall Street like a cheap escort.
But Benton didn't take the charity.
Instead, he manipulated her anger, tricking her into signing an ironclad contract that surrendered absolute control of her entire trust fund to him.
When her abusive mother found out she had funded a penniless outcast, she slapped Alyssa across the face.
Her mother froze all her bank accounts, locked her inside her bedroom, and arranged to sell her off to a degenerate politician.
Desperate to escape, Alyssa climbed down her balcony, falling fifteen feet and shattering her ankle on the stones below.
Stripped of her money and freedom, she dragged her broken body to a VIP club just to publicly declare that Benton belonged to her.
She thought she was the boss, playing a rebellious game with a broken man.
But when Benton effortlessly carried her away from the club and locked her inside his rundown apartment, the terrifying calculation in his dark eyes shattered her illusion.
How could a man stripped of his entire empire still radiate such suffocating, violent power?
"You bought me," Benton whispered, his massive frame trapping her against the sofa. "That means I have to take care of you."
Physically trapped and completely broke, Alyssa stared into his consuming eyes, her mind racing to find a way to turn the tables.
9.1
For three years, June played the perfect, submissive wife to billionaire Augustus Pruitt, hoping a child would finally warm his cold heart and secure their marriage.
But when she cautiously suggested they have a baby, he looked at her with pure, unfiltered disgust.
"A woman who schemes her way into a marriage doesn't get to carry my blood."
He sneered, leaving immediately to lavish his mistress with diamonds. The nightmare only escalated from there. Augustus bought the one painting June desperately wanted—a piece she had secretly created herself—just to gift it to his mistress. He publicly outbid June at the gallery, mocking her lack of wealth, and left her to collapse in the freezing rain. When the storm gave her a severe 104-degree fever and she nearly died on their staircase, he didn't even stay by her hospital bed. Instead, he sent an assistant with a box of jewelry to buy her silence, then forced her to attend a family dinner where his mother and sister viciously mocked her barren womb and background.
Looking at Augustus, who sat there casually cutting his steak while his family tore her apart, the last flicker of hope in June's chest sputtered and died.
She finally understood that her three years of bleeding devotion were nothing but a pathetic joke to them.
She dropped her silverware, the sharp clatter silencing the entire room. She wasn't going to be their punching bag anymore. It was time to finalize the divorce papers, reclaim her hidden identity as the world-renowned artist 'mr.sun', and make them all regret it.
9.3
"Adrian, why would you lie to me? Why would you let her push my mum like that?"
Yvonne's voice trembled, holding back tears.
Adrian smirked. "Wake up, Yvonne. You really thought I wanted you when Tricia was right here?"
That was how Adrian-her first crush, the boy she thought cared-chose to humiliate her in front of everyone as she was the cleaner's adopted daughter.
But fate had other plans.
Because the Diamond Belfort brothers-the heirs everyone adored were coming to their school in search of their missing heiress- baby sister. But the queen bee steals the chance that should have been hers. Then again, secrets don't stay buried forever. With her true identity waiting to explode, Yvonne must decide to rise from the ashes, claim her place, and bring down everyone who tried to destroy her.
Because the real heiress doesn't beg.
She takes rather.
Now, Yvonne is done playing small. It's her time to rise, reclaim her crown, and make everyone regret ever doubting her.
8.9
Ava Kidd just wanted to escape her abusive stepmother when she got drunk at a high-end club and stumbled into the wrong hotel room.
She woke up the next morning in a luxury penthouse, lying naked next to a terrifyingly handsome man covered in her scratch marks.
Recalling rumors of the hotel's secret underground concierge, she immediately assumed she had accidentally slept with an elite male escort.
Desperate to settle the bill, she offered him her only debit card with a pathetic $1,800.
But the man, who was actually Garrison Terry, the ruthless billionaire CEO, was deeply insulted by the cheap plastic.
He trapped her against the bed, coldly demanding a half-million-dollar service fee.
When Ava frantically offered her dead mother's tarnished locket as collateral, he cruelly dismissed it as worthless junk.
Ava was humiliated, her heart pounding with absolute terror.
She didn't understand why this arrogant gigolo was acting like a deranged extortionist, demanding a fortune from a broke girl who had clearly made a mistake.
Furious and refusing to cower, she sneaked out, put on his oversized designer shirt, and aggressively ate his $800 truffle breakfast.
Having no money left, she grabbed her cheap red lipstick, wrote a defiant IOU on his expensive linen napkin, and fled the hotel.
She thought she had escaped a criminal, but upstairs, the billionaire traced her lipstick-stained name with a predatory smile.
"Ava Kidd, I will absolutely find you."
9.8
When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future.
For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed.
Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone.
I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back.
But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours.
When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along.
"What's in your pocket, Felicie?"
This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands.