Out Of Your League: The Lethal Ex-Wife
Erica Murphy had spent three years rotting in a freezing prison cell.
She thought she was serving time for a tragic accident, but the truth was much darker. Her husband, Colten, had framed her for his mistress's drunk hit-and-run, stolen her fortune, and left her to take the fall.
The day Erica was finally released, a speeding car intentionally slammed into her, shattering her spine. As she lay dying on the emergency room table, flatlining on the monitor, Colten and his pregnant mistress didn't come to save her. Instead, they tossed a stack of divorce papers onto her bloody hospital blanket. They wanted her to sign away her last remaining shares and take on thirty million dollars of toxic corporate debt.
"Sign it," Colten demanded coldly, looking at her crushed body with utter disgust. "Consider this the last bit of dignity I'm giving you."
The original Erica died right there, suffocating in despair and betrayal, unable to understand how the man she loved could be so monstrous.
But when the flatline on the monitor suddenly spiked and her eyes snapped open, the traumatized victim was gone.
Replaced by the cold, calculating consciousness of a future special ops commander. With microscopic nanobots rapidly fusing her shattered bones together, Erica picked up the pen, preparing to burn Colten's entire empire to ashes.
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Chapter 4
Erica stepped out of the ICU.
She wore a hospital gown that was three sizes too big, the thin cotton doing nothing to block the chill of the air conditioning. Her bare feet slapped against the freezing marble floor. With every step she took, the ORACLE System fired micro-electrical pulses into her leg muscles, deadening the residual pain from her shattered bones.
She walked to the VIP elevator bank. She pressed the down button. The red numbers above the metal doors slowly ticked downward.
Ding.
The stainless steel doors slid open.
Erica stopped. Standing dead center in the elevator car was Ebert Chase.
He was just slipping his sleek smartphone into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, having finished a call. He looked up. For a fraction of a second, genuine surprise flickered in his dark eyes when he saw her standing there, bleeding and barefoot.
Erica didn't hesitate. Her face remained a mask of absolute indifference. She stepped into the elevator, completely ignoring his presence, and hit the button for the ground floor.
The doors slid shut.
The elevator car was small. The air instantly thickened. The rich, heavy scent of Ebert's cedar cologne clashed violently with the sharp, metallic smell of Erica's fresh blood.
Ebert's gaze slowly dragged down her body. He looked at the blood dripping from the torn IV site on her hand. He looked at her pale, bare feet pressed against the floor.
He let out a low, amused breath. He adjusted his cuffs.
"Got your payout and running away already?" Ebert asked, his voice a lazy, arrogant drawl that filled the tight space. "You didn't even stop to put on shoes."
Erica kept her eyes locked on the floor indicator lights.
"It's called a tactical retreat, not running away," Erica replied, her voice flat and cold. "Your vocabulary is severely lacking, Mr. Chase."
Ebert chuckled. It was a dark, rumbling sound in his chest. He was surrounded by women who hung on his every word. This feral, bleeding creature who snapped back at him was entirely new.
Suddenly, the elevator violently jerked.
The overhead lights flickered and died for a split second as the hospital's backup generators kicked in.
The sudden loss of inertia threw Erica off balance. Her newly fused spine couldn't compensate fast enough. She stumbled sideways.
Ebert reacted instantly. His arm shot out. His large, warm hand wrapped firmly around her waist, catching her before she hit the wall.
Through the thin fabric of the gown, Ebert felt her muscles. They didn't yield. The second his hand touched her, her waist locked up like a slab of solid iron. There was absolutely nothing soft about her.
In the exact moment she regained her center of gravity, Erica's right hand blurred.
She flattened her fingers into a rigid blade. She drove it straight up, pressing the hard edge of her hand directly against Ebert's carotid artery.
They were inches apart. Their breath mingled in the dim light.
Ebert looked down at the hand pressed against his throat. His heart rate didn't spike. Instead, a dark, predatory fire ignited in his eyes. He didn't let go of her waist. He actually pulled her a fraction of an inch closer.
"In Manhattan," Ebert whispered, his voice dangerously soft, "anyone who puts their hand on my throat ends up at the bottom of the Hudson River."
Erica didn't blink. She stared right back into his aggressive eyes. The corner of her mouth twitched upward.
"Maybe today you'll be the first exception," she hissed.
Warning. Target extremely hostile. Recommend immediate distance. The system flashed red across her retinas.
The elevator lights snapped back on. The car resumed its smooth descent.
Erica shoved her hand against his chest, breaking his grip. She stepped back, pressing her shoulders into the opposite corner of the elevator.
Ebert casually smoothed the front of his suit jacket. He looked at her, clearly savoring the adrenaline of the physical contact.
"I can offer you top-tier security and unlimited resources," Ebert said, his tone shifting to pure business. "I can help you crush Colten. But you work for me. You become my blade."
Erica looked at him like he was an idiot.
"I don't need protection," she stated, her voice dripping with venom. "And I'm not trading one cage for another cage with your name on it. Keep your Wall Street balance sheets away from me, or I'll tear you apart too."
The elevator chimed. The ground floor button lit up.
The doors slid open to the bustling hospital lobby.
Erica walked out without looking back.
Ebert stood in the elevator. He watched her bare feet disappear into the crowd. The smirk on his face deepened into a genuine smile. He tapped the earpiece hidden in his ear.
"Put a twenty-four-hour surveillance team on her," Ebert ordered. "Every move."
Erica felt the heavy weight of his stare on her back the second she stepped out. She knew she had just caught the attention of a much bigger, much deadlier wolf.
She walked toward the lobby seating area, scanning for a device connected to the internet.
Then, she stopped. Through the glass doors, she spotted two very familiar faces.
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7.0
On her wedding night, Liora Vale expected passion from her wealthy husband. Instead, she got rejection and humiliation.
When his dangerously seductive best friend, Kael Draven, corners her on the balcony and claims her virgin body with raw, unprotected fury, Liora discovers a pleasure she never knew existed.
Now addicted to Kael's brutal touch and filthy promises, the once-innocent bride becomes his secret slut, sneaking creampies in limos, riding him at galas, and begging to be bred while her husband sleeps nearby.
Kael won't stop until he destroys Silas and fills Liora's womb with his child.
She was supposed to be the perfect wife... now she's the shameless breeding whore who belongs only to him.
7.9
Justice was dragged back from the slums by her biological father, only to be sold off to the billionaire Aguirre family. Her purpose was simple: marry their comatose heir to secure a three-hundred-million-dollar lifeline for his company.
Her stepmother and stepsister sneered at her cheap canvas shoes, treating her like a contagious disease.
"A high school dropout from the slums marrying a billionaire? It's a miracle your trashy bloodline is getting anywhere near the estate," her stepsister Emery mocked.
At the sprawling estate, the "comatose" heir, Auguste, was secretly conscious. Disgusted by his new bride, he orchestrated her enrollment at an elite prep school, hoping the ruthless rich kids would break her. On her very first day, Emery ambushed her, loudly broadcasting Justice's "dropout" status to the entire classroom and turning her into an instant social pariah. The teachers tried to humiliate her with impossible calculus, and the students treated her like garbage.
They all thought she was just a pathetic, uneducated pawn they could easily crush and discard. They had no idea that her "dropout" file was a manufactured ghost, or that the Aguirre family's top intelligence network had just hit a military-grade firewall trying to look into her past.
Justice didn't panic. She flawlessly solved the university-level equation on the board, then walked into the cafeteria and looked right at Emery.
"She has no Barnes blood. She is a squatter living in my father's house."
With three casual sentences, Justice completely incinerated her stepsister's elite life. The billionaire heir wanted to play games? She was about to show them all what a real monster looked like.
7.5
"I know you're pregnant, Valentina. That's why you have to die tonight. Two lives for the price of one, efficiency was always my strong suit."
On her third wedding anniversary, Valentina was gifted a shallow grave.
Her husband, Kennedy, the man she adored, was never a billionaire. He was a fraud who drugged her, watched her drown in a poisoned bath, and ordered her burial so he could marry his mistress.
He didn't know the gardener would hesitate. He didn't know she would crawl out of the mud, pregnant, broken, and alive. And he never imagined that ghosts would come back with teeth.
Dragged from the storm by Ian Kingston, the Titan of industry, Valentina is saved by a man so powerful that Kennedy is nothing more than a disposable bookkeeper in his empire.
To the world, Ian is a monster.
To Valentina, he is survival.
But Ian doesn't see a victim.
He sees Misha, his vanished wife, the mother of his two children, the woman who disappeared without a trace.
"You have 365 days to prove you aren't her, little bird. Until then, you will sleep in my bed, wear my name, and obey every rule I set."
Trapped in a deadly case of mistaken identity, Valentina signs the contract.
She becomes Misha Kingston, cold, ruthless, untouchable. Wrapped in emerald silk and Ian's dark protection, she walks back into the world that tried to bury her.
The next time Kennedy sees his dead wife, she isn't in a coffin.
She's in the arms of his boss. Wearing a queen's crown. Looking down at him from a throne of gold.
But as Ian's control turns into obsession, Valentina faces an impossible truth.
She is hiding a child conceived by her enemy... While being claimed by a king who refuses to let her go.
He buried a wife.
He's about to kneel before a Goddess.
8.8
Bella Danvers aka Isabella Powell is a 20-year-old college student who encountered the hot and ruthless CEO of the Rinaldi Corporation, Gabriel Rinaldi. They had a forgetful one-night stand that took a turn for the worst. Will he be able to find her before he is forced into an arranged marriage? Will she be able to tell him the news? Or will they be forced apart?
7.2
For ten years, Aurora was abandoned by her wealthy family to rot in the countryside.
When she finally returned, there was no warm welcome. The Lott family only brought her back to replace her adopted sister in an arranged marriage with Damian Yates, a notoriously violent, crippled billionaire, just to save their bankrupt company.
Her grandmother mocked her as uneducated trash. Her fake sister feigned disgust at her very presence.
When her biological father desperately tried to stop them from sending his daughter to her death, the family turned on him.
Her grandmother struck her father across the face, kicked the three of them out of the manor into the freezing rain, and arrogantly declared they would starve on the streets by nightfall.
They thought Aurora was just a helpless, pathetic hillbilly who would quietly accept being sold as livestock.
They had no idea that over the past decade, she had survived the darkest corners of the world, becoming a lethal operative with unimaginable power.
Standing in the cold rain, Aurora didn't shed a single tear.
She calmly pulled out her encrypted phone, personally canceled the billionaire's marriage contract, and ordered her hacker to completely freeze the Lott family's accounts.
"Total financial annihilation. Burn them to the ground."
But as she watched her abusers' legacy crumble, a classified file arrived on her phone, revealing that the very billionaire she just rejected was tied to her mother's unsolved murder.
The real hunt was just beginning.
9.0
I spent a year scrubbing floors in my fiancé’s club, hiding my identity as the daughter of the Capo dei Capi.
I needed to know if Connor Bishop was a King worth merging empires with, or just a puppet.
The answer came walking in wearing a neon pink dress.
Jaden Juarez, a civilian he was infatuated with, didn't just treat me like a servant; she deliberately poured scalding espresso over my hand because I refused to be her valet.
The pain was blinding, my skin blistering instantly.
I video-called Connor, showing him the burn, expecting him to enforce the code of our world.
Instead, seeing his investors watching, he panicked.
He chose to sacrifice me to save face.
"Get on your knees," he roared through the speaker. "Beg her pardon. Show her the respect she deserves."
He wanted the daughter of the most dangerous man on the East Coast to kneel to his mistress.
He thought he was showing strength.
He didn't realize he was looking at a woman who could burn his entire world to ash with a single phone call.
I didn't cry. I didn't beg.
I simply hung up the phone and locked the kitchen doors.
Then, I dialed the one number everyone in the underworld feared.
"Dad," I said, my voice cold as steel. "Code Black. Bring the papers."
"And send the wolves."