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 8
Abigail limped through the dim, concrete expanse of the hotel's underground parking garage.
The cold air bit at her bare arms. The bathrobe belt holding her torn dress together felt heavy and ridiculous.
She spotted her Porsche in the VIP section. She dug her keys out of her bag and pressed the unlock button.
The headlights flashed twice.
Before she could take another step, the screech of heavy tires echoed through the garage.
Two massive, black Cadillac Escalades shot out from the lower ramp. They swerved violently, one braking inches from her front bumper, the other boxing her in from behind.
Abigail froze. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
She took a step back, her hand diving into her bag, her fingers wrapping around the cold metal of her pepper spray.
The rear door of the lead Escalade swung open.
A long leg stepped out.
Josephus Hodges emerged from the vehicle.
He was wearing a flawless, dark grey tailored suit. His hair was perfectly styled. His jaw was locked in a hard, unforgiving line.
He looked nothing like the feral, desperate man from the night before. He radiated cold, absolute authority.
Between his index and middle finger, he held the crumpled hundred-dollar bill she had left on the table.
He walked toward her. His sheer size and presence sucked the oxygen out of the damp garage.
He stopped two feet away, forcing Abigail to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
"Your note," Josephus said. His voice was a low, flat baritone. "Was very creative."
Abigail didn't flinch. She stared straight into his dark, calculating eyes.
"I thought it was an accurate appraisal," she shot back. "Since you seem to put a price tag on everything."
Josephus didn't blink. He didn't show a flicker of anger.
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
Alex Stone stepped out from the shadows behind the SUV. He walked forward and held out a thick, leather-bound legal document to Abigail.
"What is this?" she demanded, refusing to take it.
"A solution to both our problems," Josephus said coldly. "I require a wife to satisfy a clause in my family's trust, and a strategic entry point into the media sector. You require a shield."
Abigail let out a harsh laugh. "I don't need a shield."
"Don't you?" Josephus tilted his head. "Vance Media is burning to the ground as we speak. Preston Vance's scandal will drag you down with it. The board will freeze your assets by noon."
He stepped closer. The scent of cedar wrapped around her.
"Sign this prenuptial agreement. Be my wife in name only for one year. In exchange, I will personally dismantle Preston's empire and hand you the ashes."
Abigail snatched the folder from Alex. She flipped it open.
The terms were brutal. Total compliance for public events. No interference in his private life. She would leave with nothing after twelve months.
It was a transaction. Cold, sterile, and utterly devoid of humanity.
"Why me?" she asked, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Why pick a woman with a ruined face and a public scandal?"
Josephus looked at her left cheek. His eyes lingered on the scar for exactly one second before snapping back to her eyes.
"Because you are messy, and you are the key to a very lucrative acquisition," he stated flatly. "Vance Media's collapse will trigger an industry panic. I intend to absorb their assets at a fraction of the cost. Marrying you gives me a legitimate, inside angle to dismantle them from the top down. As for my family, they will never believe I would willingly marry someone so physically flawed and embroiled in scandal. It makes the lie perfect. They will assume it's purely a ruthless business move, satisfying their demands without them digging deeper into my personal life."
The words hit her like ice water.
Any lingering, stupid fantasy she had about the way he kissed her scar last night died instantly.
He didn't care about her pain. He just saw her defect as a convenient tool.
Abigail's blood boiled.
She raised the heavy folder and slammed it directly into the center of Josephus's chest.
The binder popped open. Dozens of pages fluttered through the air, scattering across the dirty concrete floor.
"I would rather go bankrupt," she hissed, her eyes blazing with fury, "than sell myself to a tyrant like you."
The air in the garage turned to ice.
The bodyguards by the SUVs instantly stepped forward, their hands dropping to their waists.
Josephus raised a single finger. The guards froze.
He looked down at the papers on the floor, then back at Abigail. His eyes were pitch black.
"You will regret this," he said softly.
Abigail turned her back on him. She yanked the door of her Porsche open and threw herself into the driver's seat.
She slammed the door shut and hit the ignition. The engine roared, echoing violently off the concrete walls.
She slammed her foot on the gas. The tires squealed as she cut the wheel hard, the side of her car missing the Escalade's bumper by a millimeter.
She sped up the ramp and disappeared into the daylight.
Josephus stood perfectly still in the exhaust fumes.
He looked down at the scattered contract.
"Keep eyes on her," he ordered Alex. "She won't last forty-eight hours."
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9.5
The disgraced daughter of the Patton family is back from the countryside.At the news, everyone spurned her with contempt!
A good-for-nothing young lady, a crude village wench, a vicious devil...
Until one day--The world-famous life-saving medical sovereign is her.The enigmatic top forensic specialist is her.The grandmaster hacker hunted across the globe is also her.
One hidden identity of the young miss came to light after another.Shocked and dumbfounded, the crowd fell to their knees to beg for forgiveness.
In an instant, Evie was cornered by the mysterious powerhouse.Hartwell's voice lured and mesmerized:"Darling, you have countless secret identities. Would you mind taking on one more, being my wife!"
8.4
Carissa's son was dying in the ICU, and the bone marrow match had just failed.
The billionaire father, Guilford Gates, cornered her with a cruel ultimatum: naturally conceive a "savior sibling" to save their son. But what shocked Carissa more was his family's sudden accusation that she had heartlessly sold her baby to them three years ago.
"You sold your own flesh and blood to us for five million dollars, so your body belongs to the Gates family."
She was dragged into their gilded estate, treated like a filthy, rented womb. Guilford's new fiancée mocked her, the matriarch humiliated her, and Guilford looked at her with pure disgust. When she desperately tried to feed her sick son and accidentally made him vomit, Guilford violently shoved her away and banned her from the room.
Carissa was devastated and entirely confused. She had never seen a single cent of that five million. Driven by a desperate need for the truth, she investigated and uncovered a horrifying reality: her own father and stepmother had secretly trafficked her baby to the billionaire behind her back, leaving her to bear the ultimate blame.
Looking at the bank transfer record bought with her son's life, the last shred of Carissa's vulnerability died.
She signed the conception contract without asking for a single penny. She was going to use the Gates family's immense power to destroy the blood relatives who sold her, and she would survive this hell to take back her son.
9.2
Averie spent hours preparing a perfect third-anniversary dinner for her billionaire husband, Jarett Sharp.
Instead of celebrating, she received an anonymous photo of him intimately holding another woman.
When Jarett finally arrived, he didn't even look guilty.
"Candida. It's okay. Don't be scared. I'm on my way."
He simply took a call from his mistress, shoved Averie aside, and walked right back out the door.
That same night, Averie's father suffered a massive heart attack.
The hospital demanded a half-million-dollar deposit before they would operate.
But when Averie frantically tried to use the emergency medical trust card Jarett had given her, it was declined.
Jarett had deliberately frozen her access to the funds just hours earlier.
While she begged his assistant on the phone, Jarett refused to be disturbed, busy wrapping his expensive coat around his mistress in the hospital garden.
Averie collapsed in the hallway, realizing the man she loved was deliberately letting her father die.
In the end, a childhood friend stepped in to pay the bill and save her father's life, while her billionaire husband later pinned her to their bed, throwing a check at her and reminding her he had bought her for three million dollars.
Averie didn't shed a single tear.
She slowly ripped his check into pieces, left her massive diamond ring on the dresser, and walked out into the cold New York night with nothing but her old suitcase.
She pulled out her phone and dialed her old ballet professor.
She wasn't just going to leave Jarett Sharp. She was going to destroy him.
8.7
I woke up from a coma in the hospital, universally condemned as the vicious daughter who pushed the beloved fake heiress, Georgina, down the stairs.
My ruthless billionaire brother, Angelo, stood over my bed with cold eyes, ready to destroy me for hurting his precious sister.
But as I looked at him, a terrifying prophecy from my coma flooded my brain. Our entire family was doomed.
In the original timeline, Georgina would team up with corporate rivals to bankrupt the company, frame Angelo, and send him to federal prison, while our parents would abandon me to die miserably.
Lying there, I didn't dare speak. I just desperately cursed my idiot brother in my head.
"This stupid brother is still yelling at me for that fake heiress. He doesn't even know he's going to be framed and sent to prison next month!"
I just wanted to stay quiet, let them ruin themselves, and run away from this toxic family.
But strangely, Angelo didn't strangle me. Instead, his attitude took a shocking turn.
He abruptly fired the driver plotting to kill him, destroyed the abusive fiancé of a family ally, and publicly humiliated Georgina at a high-society gala.
He even shielded me from our abusive parents, declaring to the world that I was the only sister he would ever protect.
I was completely terrified and confused. Why was the tyrant brother suddenly acting like a protective beast?
It wasn't until he flawlessly crushed a massive corporate attack using the exact financial secrets I had just complained about in my mind that a horrifying realization hit me.
He could hear my inner thoughts!
9.7
I died with blood pooling and betrayal.
My fiancé never loved me-he only wanted. My stepsister never saw me as family. And when I discovered I was carrying his child and tried to expose their affair, they shoved me into a shattered glass table and left me to bleed out alone.
But I woke up a year earlier, with my voice miraculously returned and a second chance burning in my chest.
This time, I refuse to be the silent, obedient sacrifice they used and discarded. This time, I'll make them pay. And when a ruthless billionaire offers me an impossible deal-a fake marriage to save his crumbling empire, I accept without hesitation.
They still see me as that broken, voiceless girl who couldn't fight back.
They have no idea I've already won.
8.0
Eloise Ferguson was the legitimate daughter of a powerful Senator, yet she was treated like a hysterical burden by her own family.
In her past life, her parents forced her to marry a sadistic billionaire for political funding.
When she resisted, they locked her in a psychiatric facility, drugged her, and left her to die in restraints while her "fragile" cousin Jaylene stole her life.
She never understood why her mother hated her so fiercely.
Why did her mother treat her brother Cortez and her cousin Jaylene like absolute royalty, while throwing her own flesh and blood to the wolves?
Opening her eyes again, Eloise found herself back at age twenty-two, trapped in a restroom at a charity gala.
Escaping her abuser, she used her awakened mystic abilities to look at her family's life forces.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Thick, red biological cords connected her mother directly to both Cortez and Jaylene, intertwining in a perfect symbiotic bond.
They weren't cousins. They were illegitimate twins born from her mother's secret affair.
Eloise was the only true outsider in her own home.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her entire life of abuse was just a cover-up for a nest of parasites stealing her father's name and her inheritance.
But this time, she refused to be their victim.
Armed with an unchallengeable executive order she blackmailed out of the United States President, Eloise crushed the hidden microphone in her bedroom.
"Game on, Mother."