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 5
Erica stood perfectly still by the massive glass walls of the hospital lobby.
Outside, in the sun-baked valet area, stood Colten and Ivy.
Colten was screaming into his cell phone, his face red with rage, demanding to know where his driver was. Ivy stood behind him, wiping away fake tears and playing the victim.
Erica narrowed her eyes.
The ORACLE System booted up its tactical environment scanner. A pale blue grid overlaid the busy Manhattan street outside.
Accessing municipal traffic data ports... Analyzing vehicle density and traffic light sequencing.
A bright red trajectory line painted itself across Erica's vision. The system calculated the physics of the intersection at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street.
Collision imminent in exactly three minutes. Target vehicle match: Black Maybach, registered to Colten Fischer.
Erica's lips curled into a vicious, mocking smile. She decided to give the happy couple a parting gift.
She pushed through the revolving doors. Her bare feet hit the scorching asphalt. She walked straight toward Colten, her posture relaxed but her eyes locked on target.
Colten saw her coming. He took a step back, his face twisting in disgust. He thought she was coming back for more money.
Ivy peeked out from behind Colten's shoulder. "You got your money! Get out of here! Are you trying to extort us again in public?" she screeched.
Erica ignored the barking dog. She crossed her arms over her chest. She tilted her head, looking at Colten with a disturbing, manic pity.
"Beautiful weather today," Erica said, her voice dropping into a raspy, theatrical whisper. "Perfect weather for a funeral."
Colten's face flushed with anger. He raised his hand, ready to strike her across the face.
Erica didn't flinch. She just stared at his raised hand with such dead, freezing intensity that Colten's muscles locked up. He slowly lowered his arm.
Erica leaned in close. She lowered her voice to a haunting, prophetic pitch.
"If you want to live to see tomorrow, Colten," she whispered, "do not take Fifth Avenue when you leave this hospital."
She pointed a finger toward the street. "At the 42nd Street intersection. A heavy transport truck is going to lose its brakes. It's going to crush your Maybach into a cube of scrap metal."
Colten stared at her for a second. Then, he threw his head back and let out a loud, barking laugh.
"You are completely out of your mind!" Colten yelled, pointing at her face. "You're not just a blackmailer, Erica. You're a certified psycho!"
"She lost her mind in prison," Ivy sneered, clinging to Colten's arm. "Playing a witch now? Pathetic."
Erica shrugged. She uncrossed her arms and let them hang loosely at her sides. "I warned you. Dead men don't listen."
Tires screeched lightly against the pavement. The black Maybach finally pulled into the valet zone, stopping right in front of them.
Colten turned to the driver. He wanted to prove to this crazy bitch just how powerless she was.
"Take Fifth Avenue!" Colten barked loudly, making sure Erica heard every word. "And don't you dare slow down at the 42nd Street intersection! Push through the yellow!"
The driver looked confused, but he nodded and opened the rear door.
Colten shoved Ivy into the leather backseat. He turned back to Erica, raised his hand, and flipped her a hard, aggressive middle finger. He climbed in and slammed the heavy door shut.
The Maybach's engine roared. The car shot out of the hospital driveway, speeding directly toward the intersection.
Erica stood on the hot asphalt. She watched the red taillights shrink in the distance. She glanced at her bare wrist, pretending to look at a watch.
She started counting down in her head.
Ten. Nine. Eight...
Three. Two. One.
A massive, sickening crunch echoed across the Manhattan skyline.
It was a deep, metallic explosion of sound, followed instantly by the shrieking of tires and the shattering of safety glass.
Inside the hospital lobby, people gasped. Patients and nurses rushed to the glass windows, pointing down the avenue. A thick plume of black smoke began to rise into the blue sky from the direction of 42nd Street.
Erica smiled. It was a cold, satisfied expression.
She turned around and walked back through the revolving doors into the air-conditioned lobby. She needed a computer. It was time to take back what was hers.
Her eyes scanned the waiting area. She locked onto a young guy sitting in the corner. He was frantically typing on a high-end Alienware gaming laptop.
The distant sound of sirens made the boy look up, stretching his neck to see out the window.
Erica walked up behind him. Her footsteps were completely silent, like a ghost stalking its prey.
She reached out and tapped him firmly on the shoulder.
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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."