Married To My Toxic Ex-Boyfriend's Brother
Eleanore thought her fiancé, Johan, was her only salvation after her family went bankrupt.
But at a high-society gala, he handed her a drugged glass of water. As the unnatural heat burned through her veins, the horrific truth hit her. Johan had isolated her and controlled her finances, all while secretly getting engaged to a wealthy heiress. He drugged Eleanore to ruin her completely, planning to lock her away as his helpless, secret mistress.
Desperate and losing her mind to the drug, Eleanore fled down the hallway. With Johan and his bodyguards hunting her, she stumbled into the dark presidential suite.
But she wasn't alone. Sitting on the leather sofa was Alexander Briggs—the most feared corporate raider on Wall Street, and Johan's exiled brother.
Outside the door, Johan was screaming, ready to drag her back to hell.
"I can be your antidote. But it's going to cost you."
The ruthless billionaire looked at her trembling body with cold calculation. He offered her a staggering deal: a three-month fake marriage to destroy Johan's empire, and in return, absolute protection and her father's massive debts paid in full.
She couldn't understand why the most powerful predator in New York would use a ruined girl as his weapon, but she knew she would rather die than let Johan touch her again.
When Johan finally broke down the door to claim his prey, Alexander calmly pulled Eleanore into his arms.
"Watch your mouth. You are speaking to my future wife."
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Chapter 5
The morning sun cut through the large glass windows of the SoHo cafe, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air.
Eleanore sat in a corner booth, staring blankly at the oat milk cold brew in front of her. She hadn't slept. The drug had finally worn off, leaving her body aching and her mind spinning in a chaotic loop.
Halle Floyd stomped in, her heavy combat boots hitting the floorboards with purpose. She marched straight to Eleanore's table, took one look at the dark, bruised circles under Eleanore's eyes and her bloodless lips, and immediately pushed a mug of steaming hot water across the table. "You look like you've been chased by ghosts all night. Drink."
Eleanore wrapped her trembling fingers around the ceramic mug, the burning heat the only thing keeping her from collapsing into a dead faint.
Halle slammed her designer tote bag down. "Where the hell have you been?" Halle demanded, her chest heaving. "I called you twenty times! I was ten seconds away from calling the NYPD and telling them Johan finally kidnapped you."
Eleanore didn't say a word. She slowly unzipped her purse, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and slid it across the table.
Halle snatched it up. Her eyes scanned the document. She frowned, thinking it was a joke, until her eyes hit the red seal and the names printed in bold black ink.
Halle's jaw dropped. She slammed her hands on the table and stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor. Several customers turned to look.
"Are you out of your mind?!" Halle whisper-shouted, leaning over the table. "You married him? You married the wolf of Wall Street?!"
Eleanore rubbed her temples. "It's a contract, Halle. Three months. He gets to humiliate Johan in a boardroom, and I get my father's debts paid off. It's a transaction."
Halle yanked her phone out of her pocket. Her thumbs flew across the screen. She shoved the phone into Eleanore's face.
The screen displayed a Forbes article. The headline read: Alexander Briggs: The Machine That Dismantles Empires. The photo showed Alexander walking out of a courthouse, his eyes cold, his expression entirely devoid of human empathy.
"Look at him, El," Halle pleaded, her voice tight with panic. "This man doesn't have a heart. He has a calculator in his chest. If he's using you to get to Johan, what happens when he's done? You think he's just going to let you walk away? Men like that don't make deals unless they own the board."
Eleanore looked at the picture. She saw the ruthless predator the world saw. But then, unbidden, the memory of last night flashed in her mind-Alexander standing in the freezing rain, his shoulder getting soaked just to keep her dry under the umbrella.
She pushed the phone away. "I don't care. Anything is better than Johan. Johan was going to lock me in a cage. Alexander is just using me for PR."
Halle let out a long, frustrated sigh. She grabbed Eleanore's hand and squeezed it hard. "Fine. But we are getting your stuff out of your apartment right now. If Johan finds out about this, he's going to burn your place to the ground."
They left the cafe and took a cab to Eleanore's small apartment on the edge of the Upper East Side. It was a cramped, fourth-floor walk-up she paid for with her art restoration gigs. It was her only safe haven.
Eleanore unlocked the door. She immediately pulled her suitcase from under the bed and started throwing clothes into it.
Halle went to the bathroom to pack the toiletries. A minute later, she walked out holding a small, framed photograph she had found shoved in the back of a drawer.
It was a picture of Eleanore and Johan from college. Johan was laughing, his eyes bright and clear, completely devoid of the paranoid darkness that consumed him now.
Halle looked at Eleanore with pity.
Eleanore stopped packing. She walked over, her face a mask of stone. She snatched the photo from Halle's hand, ripped the frame apart, and tore the photograph directly down the middle. She threw the pieces into the trash can.
"That boy died a long time ago," Eleanore said coldly. "The man wearing his face is a monster."
Suddenly, three heavy, rhythmic knocks pounded against the apartment door.
Eleanore and Halle froze. The color drained from Eleanore's face. Johan.
Halle grabbed a heavy metal baseball bat from behind the door. Eleanore took a shaky breath, tiptoed to the door, and looked through the peephole.
It wasn't Johan.
It was a man in a sharp black suit. L. Thorne. Behind him stood two massive bodyguards.
Eleanore exhaled a shaky breath and opened the door.
Thorne didn't smile. He held out a sleek, black keycard with an embedded gold chip, along with a thick, wax-sealed envelope.
"Good morning, Mrs. Briggs," Thorne said politely. "Mr. Briggs requested that you keep this certified copy of your marriage license on your person at all times, for your protection. He also requests that you relocate to The Elysium immediately. Your safety is his primary concern during the duration of the agreement."
Eleanore crossed her arms, her defensive instincts flaring. "I can stay here. I have a deadbolt. I don't need to move into his penthouse today."
Thorne didn't argue. He simply stepped to the side and pointed toward the small window at the end of the hallway that overlooked the street.
"There are three black Range Rovers parked on your block," Thorne stated flatly. "They belong to the Conway family. They have been watching your fire escape since 6:00 AM. This location is compromised."
Eleanore's stomach twisted into a tight knot. She walked to the window and peered through the blinds. Down on the street, two men in leather jackets were leaning against a black SUV, staring directly up at her building.
A cold sweat broke out on the back of her neck.
She turned around, her jaw set. She grabbed her suitcase. She hugged Halle goodbye, promising to call, and walked out the door with Thorne.
As they walked out of the building, the bodyguards formed a tight wall around her, completely blocking the line of sight from the street.
Eleanore slid into the back of the armored SUV. As the car pulled away, she looked out the tinted window. Her safe haven was gone. She was now entirely in Alexander's world.
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8.0
When gifted cellist Vivienne Aurel inherits her late father's catastrophic $4.2 million debt, she expects to lose everything. She doesn't expect the debt to be bought by Caspian Vane, the most feared private equity magnate in New York. Caspian doesn't want to ruin her; he wants her to work exclusively for him as the artistic director of his new cultural foundation for eighteen months. Forced into his world under a binding agreement, Vivienne prepares to fight against a cold, transactional cage. But as the intense, quiet proximity between them begins to blur the lines of their contract, she discovers a terrifying truth: the man who now owns her future has been watching her from the shadows long before she ever knew his name.
9.6
Minutes before announcing her grand engagement, Darla caught her fiancé sleeping with her stepsister.
She publicly exposed them and canceled the wedding on the spot.
Furious, her adoptive mother demanded Darla marry a fifty-five-year-old predator to save their broken business deal.
"If you don't do exactly what I say, I'll let your father rot in prison for the rest of his life."
Desperate to escape her family's control, Darla grabbed a massive, intimidating hotel security guard she bumped into in the hallway.
She shoved all the cash in her purse at him—eight hundred dollars—and begged him to fake-marry her.
They signed the papers at City Hall that same day.
But the nightmare didn't end.
That evening, Darla received a cold phone call from the state penitentiary.
Her father had been found dead in his cell, and her company, owned by her ex-fiancé's family, fired her immediately.
They had taken everything from her, leaving her completely broken and sobbing on the floor of her tiny apartment.
She thought she had nothing left but a broke, fake husband to keep her company.
She had no idea that the "poor security guard" holding her in his arms was actually Anson Prince, a ruthless billionaire CEO.
And he was already making the calls to tear her abusers' empires to the ground.
8.1
Desperate for a way out of rejection and poverty, Pearl Augustine accepts a nanny job with an outrageous salary-working for billionaire Ace Warren. What she doesn't expect is his daughter.
Mia Warren is spoiled, sharp-tongued, and feared by everyone in the mansion. Behind her cruelty is a lonely child longing for a mother. As Pearl becomes the only one who can reach her, walls begin to fall-especially those around Ace, a grieving man hiding behind wealth and control.
What started as "just a job" quickly turns into something dangerous: attachment.
Sometimes, healing begins where you least expect it.
9.2
Nica caught her boyfriend, Chris, and her best friend, Ella, in a shocking betrayal. Chris was kissing Ella while caressing her close, and Ella only smirked at Nica as if she had won. Nica got pissed off and swore she would not let their betrayal go unpunished. What happens next? Read the story and find out for yourself.
8.4
Kenzie, the former leader of the Aegis Alliance, opened her eyes to find herself reincarnated as a freezing, abandoned infant in a wet cardboard box.
She was rescued from the rain by Devin Ayers, a ruthless billionaire, and rushed to a private hospital, but a deadly threat was already waiting for her.
The ER doctor, Desiree Dillon, approached her with a syringe. Through a sudden burst of telepathy, Kenzie read the doctor's dark thoughts. Desiree wasn't trying to cure her fever. She deliberately ignored the safe dosage, drawing a lethal amount of Diazepam to permanently silence the crying baby and disguise it as sudden infant death.
"This will make it all go away," Desiree smiled gently, the needle glinting as it moved inches from Kenzie's arm.
Trapped in a weak, paralyzed three-month-old body, Kenzie couldn't run, fight, or even speak. She could only watch the poison inch closer.
How could she survive death only to be assassinated in a hospital bed by a corrupt doctor? She used to command armies. The sheer injustice and terror of dying completely helpless in this tiny body ignited a blinding rage inside her.
Refusing to be a victim again, Kenzie pushed her newborn brain to its absolute limit and unleashed a desperate telepathic scream directly into the billionaire's mind.
"Poison! She's trying to kill me!"
Devin, who had been looking away, suddenly froze, his icy gray eyes locking onto the doctor's wrist.
9.3
Ginny was chained to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, bleeding and betrayed by the two people she trusted most.
Her fiancé, Brant, and her adopted sister, Coretta, had just slashed her face open. Brant coldly admitted she was nothing but a disposable key to a vault, right before he tossed a lighter onto the gasoline-soaked floor.
As Ginny burned alive in the roaring inferno, the heavy iron doors were violently smashed open. Bedford Parks—the notoriously ruthless, germaphobic "monster" of Silicon Valley whom Ginny had always feared—charged straight into the flames. Ignoring the blistering heat, he shielded her charred body with his own. A massive steel beam collapsed, snapping his spine.
"I love you."
He coughed up blood, whispering his final words against her blackened skin before dying to protect her.
Hovering as a ghost, Ginny's soul screamed in agonizing realization. She had spent her life terrified of Bedford, yet he was the only one who truly loved her, while her supposed family laughed at her gruesome murder.
Suddenly, a blinding white light swallowed the warehouse.
Ginny gasped for air, opening her eyes to find herself sitting in the back of a luxury Maybach. She was eighteen again, wearing the humiliating clown makeup Coretta had tricked her into wearing on the day she was brought back to the wealthy Steele estate.
Ginny stared at her reflection, her dark eyes turning cold and sharp.
This time, she would tear her betrayers apart piece by piece, and she would protect her "monster."