Left At The Altar, She Became The Bride Of His Arch-Nemesis
Since returning to her family, Evelyn had never truly been accepted or treated as their own daughter.
On her wedding day, her parents chose her adopted sister over her, and the man she was supposed to marry abandoned her on the highway for his true love without even looking back once.
Heartbroken but resolute, she tore off her veil and stood before his rival. "I dare you to steal the bride."
Shane met her gaze. "Why wouldn't I?"
Their impulsive marriage shocked everyone. Her ex later begged, "Give me another chance."
Shane pulled her close, his voice cold. "Too late. She's my wife now."
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Chapter 6
Everyone's eyes stayed glued to the massive screen as the dice came into view. When the result showed, it left no room for doubt. Five sixes.
The noise from downstairs died out in an instant. No one had seen that coming. Evelyn had really pulled off five sixes.
Leland brought his hand down hard against the table, then rose quickly from his seat. His stare locked onto Evelyn. "You're the Night Rose," he said, his tone firm with certainty.
Confusion spread among the crowd below. "What?! She's the Night Rose?"
"Didn't she leave the gambling scene five years ago after defeating Mr. Barnett? How is that even possible?"
Now that the truth was out, Evelyn didn't try to hide it. A faint smile formed on her lips. "A bet's a bet," she said.
Without hesitation, Leland lifted his hand and gestured for his men to bring the contract forward. "A deal's a deal. Sterling Reach belongs to you now."
Instead of keeping it, Evelyn slid the contract across the table toward Shane. "Shane, looks like you owe me one now."
For a brief second, something shifted in Shane's eyes as he looked at her. From across the table, Leland spoke again. "Ms. Fowler, the third floor of Gilded Spire will always be open to you. No strings attached. I'd like another game with you someday."
Evelyn gave a small smile. "I'm sure that'll happen."
Leland then turned his attention to Shane. "Mr. Bennett, should we move on to the next project?"
Right at that moment, Evelyn's phone started ringing. She pulled it out, and her expression changed the instant she saw who it was.
"Shane, I need to step away. Something came up," Evelyn said.
He gave a short nod. "Alright."
Evelyn put some distance between them before answering the call.
The moment the line connected, Sallie Fowler's voice came through, sharp and direct. "Sharon told me what happened at the wedding. You've always been the sensible one. What were you thinking?"
Something tightened in Evelyn's throat before she could get a word out. "Mom, I—"
Before she could continue, Sallie spoke over her. "Do you even realize what this will do to our family's name, and yours?"
Another voice slipped into the call, soft and sweet. "Mom, could it be that Evelyn betrayed Cole? Is that why she ran off from the wedding?" Lilian Fowler, the Fowler family's adopted daughter, spoke.
Right away, Sallie's voice turned sharp. "Evie, you will not bring shame to this family. Tomorrow, you're going to Cole's family and you're apologizing."
Brandon Fowler, Evelyn's elder brother, grabbed the phone from Sallie, his voice sharp. "Evelyn, did you plan this just to mess up Lilian's birthday and make things hard for us?! I wouldn't have let Mom take you back if I knew you'd bring this kind of trouble! You can't turn a country bumpkin into a proper lady no matter what!"
"Brandon, don't say that," Lilian said in a soft tone. "I'm sure she meant to come celebrate my birthday. It's just unfortunate that her wedding ended up on the same day."
A short laugh came from Brandon. "She did it on purpose. She didn't want to show up for your birthday, so she picked the same day out of jealousy."
At that, a cold smile appeared on Evelyn's lips. It wasn't even Lilian's birthday today. She had only said she wanted to make up for the one she missed last year.
In the end, every single one of them chose to leave her wedding behind just to take Lilian to Fledmery for a delayed celebration. Now they were placing all the blame on her.
Brandon spoke again, his tone leaving no room for argument. "No matter what happens, you're going to the Bennett family tomorrow and you're getting their forgiveness. Our family won't take this kind of humiliation."
When she heard that, Evelyn's gaze turned cold. "Cole was the one who walked out of the wedding. If anyone should feel ashamed, it's the Bennett family."
"Evelyn, fix this with the Bennett family before we return," Brandon warned, his voice turning sharp. "If you don't, I'll make sure Dad deals with you under the family rules. Let's see how you handle that when he's done."
He didn't wait for her answer and ended the call.
The phone stayed in her hand as her grip slowly tightened. A faint smile crossed her lips, though it carried no warmth. To them, nothing mattered except Lilian and that hollow idea of reputation.
"Evelyn!" Cole's voice rang out with anger as he closed the distance between them. The moment he reached her, his hand clamped around her arm. "So this was your move? You handed the Sterling Reach contract to Shane just to get back at me?"
Evelyn turned to Cole, her expression hard. "Take your hand off me."
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7.3
Seven years ago, my fiancé, Don Dante Moretti, sent me to prison to take the fall for my adopted sister, Chiara. He called it a gift-a way to protect me from a worse fate.
Today, he picked me up from prison only to abandon me at my family's estate. His reason? Chiara was having another one of her "episodes."
My parents then informed me I'd be staying in the third-floor storage room, so as not to disturb the fragile girl who stole my life.
They celebrated her "recovery" with a lavish dinner party, while I was treated like a ghost. When I refused to join, my mother hissed that I was ungrateful, and my father called me jealous.
They assumed I couldn't understand their venomous whispers. But prison was my university. I learned Spanish. I understood every word.
It was then I realized I wasn't just a sacrifice; I was disposable. The love I once felt for all of them had turned to ash.
That night, in the dusty storage room, I logged onto an encrypted channel I'd set up years ago. A single message was waiting: "The offer stands. Do you accept?" My hands, scarred and steady, typed back, "I accept."
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.
9.5
Xander Savage plays with footballs.
Freya Woods plays with hearts.
The other plays to win, one plays for fun.
Xander is the campus football champion, gentle, gorgeous, misunderstood. Everyone thinks he's a player, but he's actually the only good boy in school.
Freya is the campus play girl, bold, wild.
When fate throws them together, sparks fly...Neither knows their souls have met before...long ago, in another life, where they loved passionately and broke disastrously. But this time? They're destined to rewrite their ending...can they actually re write the stars?
LOVE ME LIKE A CHAMPION is a reincarnation campus romance about a boy who loves too deeply and a girl who's terrified to be loved.
9.5
Janet woke up gasping, the phantom fire of a deadly explosion still scorching her lungs. She had been reborn three years in the past, on the exact day her mother forced her into a marriage contract with Gaylord Bradford, a paralyzed and severely disfigured billionaire.
Before she could even process her second chance, her cousin Kandy kicked the bedroom door open, flaunting a massive diamond ring. Kandy, who had also been reborn, smugly announced she had stolen Janet's Wall Street golden boy fiancé, Jax Adler.
"You're going to marry that paralyzed monster," Kandy spat, gloating that she would build a billionaire dynasty with Jax while Janet wiped drool off a rotting corpse. Kandy expected Janet to have a complete mental collapse, completely unaware that Gaylord's own medical team was secretly injecting him with lethal neurotoxins to finish him off.
But Janet only felt a cold, clinical pity. Kandy's "prophetic" memories were a polluted lie. Jax was actually sterile and dying of irreversible kidney failure, while Gaylord wasn't a dying freak—he was a dormant god whose body was merely in a high-dimensional hibernation. Why would Janet mourn losing a doomed fraud?
Leaving her delusional cousin behind, Janet packed her bags and headed straight to Gaylord's maximum-security military cell. She physically tackled his corrupt doctor, drove three bio-electric silver needles into the crippled king's spine to awaken his deadened nerves, and looked him dead in his glacial blue eye.
"Sign the marriage contract," Janet whispered. "I will make you walk again, and we will take back everything."
9.0
Eileen woke up in a trashed hotel room, her head pounding with the pathetic memories of a despised Hollywood actress.
Outside the window, paparazzi were already screaming about her manufactured cheating scandal, but the real nightmare was waiting at her door.
Her paralyzed, billionaire husband, Carlisle Vinson, looked at her with pure disgust while his butler shoved a divorce settlement at her chest.
"Mr. Vinson is offering a severance package of fifty million dollars, provided you sign immediately and vacate the premises."
The original owner had left her an absolute mess.
Her trusted assistant had sold her room number to the press to frame her, and a playboy had scammed her out of her entire two million dollar life savings.
If she signed those papers and lost the Vinson family's protection, the breach of contract fees and her enemies in the industry would swallow her alive in days.
Eileen felt a cold fury override the original owner's lingering panic.
Why should she take the fall and be thrown out on the streets while the parasites who set her up lived out their wealthy fantasies?
She had died once, and she wasn't about to waste her second chance playing the victim.
Eileen slammed the heavy divorce folder shut right against the butler's chest.
"I'm not signing," she said with a terrifying, absolute calm.
She stepped behind her husband's wheelchair, ready to shield him from the cameras, secretly cure his dead legs, and make everyone who betrayed her bleed.
9.5
How far are you willing to go for your family's company?
Eloise Jane Lopez is the one true child of the Lopezes, and due to her sick father's wish, she needs to marry a man she doesn't know to keep the company her parents manage in order. And the man she will marry is none other than Cosmo Dominguez, a multi-billionaire, whose supposed fiancée was Eloise's step-sister but got pregnant, leaving Eloise with no choice but to be the substitute bride.
After the wedding, Cosmo laid out another agreement with Eloise, that the marriage would only be temporary, and that they would have to separate after two years.
Can they uphold the signed agreement until the end, or can they stop the feelings forming between them?