Reborn: Marrying My Ex's Comatose Uncle

I returned to New York for my welcome-home party, expecting a warm embrace from Edwin, my devoted fiancé of twenty years. Instead, his first words to me were a cold, public warning to stay away from his new girlfriend, Kacy. He stood in my family's hotel, shielding a girl I had never even met, and painted me as a vicious, jealous bully. "She is very sensitive, Kaitlyn. Her background is tough. Please, be gentle with her. Don't upset her." He humiliated me in front of our entire elite circle, allowing them to mock me as the aggressive, discarded ex while he carried her away like a fragile princess. For twenty years, I had been his loyal shadow, fixing his mistakes and loving him unconditionally. I couldn't understand how decades of deep devotion could be instantly erased by a few crocodile tears and a manipulative damsel act. He was absolutely certain I would throw a tantrum, cry, and eventually crawl back to beg for his attention. But he was wrong. He didn't know that Everett Rowe, a billionaire tech mogul, had been patiently waiting five years to marry me. He also didn't know that during my three years abroad, I wasn't just studying art—I became "K.B.", the ruthless Wall Street predator who could swallow his family's empire whole. I calmly pulled out my phone, ignored the mocking whispers around me, and typed a single message to Everett. "Yes. I'll marry you."

My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family. Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb. When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump. "You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly. To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding. I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded. But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot. When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony. Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number. "You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."

I was trapped in a greasy diner by my own mother. She was forcing me to marry my abusive cousin because he had paid her twenty thousand dollars. To escape, I used a contract marriage app and begged a complete stranger to marry me at City Hall that very day. Ethan drove a cheap Ford and wore a plain suit. I thought he was just an ordinary guy needing a fake wife. When my mother found out, she brought thugs to destroy my flower shop—my only home and livelihood. To protect Ethan from her endless extortion, I shielded him and screamed that he was bankrupt and drowning in credit card debt. My mother fled in disgust, and Ethan took me into his apartment for the night. But out of trauma and habit, I locked my bedroom door, muttering that he must be old and desperate. He stormed out into the freezing night, leaving me terrified that I had ruined my only lifeline. I didn't understand why he was so furiously offended, completely unaware that my "broke" husband was actually the most ruthless billionaire in New York, and I had just trampled his massive ego. The next morning, his face was a mask of ice as he dragged me back to City Hall to annul the marriage and get rid of me. "Annulment. Now," he demanded. But the clerk just popped her gum and slid a pink paper across the counter. "State law changed. Mandatory thirty-day cooling-off period."

Years ago, when I was very small, we lived in a great house in a long, straight, brown-coloured street, in the east end of London. It was a noisy, crowded street in the daytime; but a silent, lonesome street at night, when the gas-lights, few and far between, partook of the character of lighthouses rather than of illuminants, and the tramp, tramp of the policeman on his long beat seemed to be ever drawing nearer, or fading away, except for brief moments when the footsteps ceased, as he paused to rattle a door or window, or to flash his lantern into some dark passage leading down towards the river.

I took a pet-sitting gig at a luxury apartment, thinking my life was perfect. I was pregnant and engaged to Damien, a successful attorney who had spent seven years proving his unwavering loyalty. But the moment I stepped inside, I recognized his cologne. Then I saw the photos. The apartment belonged to his mistress, Candace. She had deliberately hired me to flaunt their year-long affair and the massive diamond ring he had just bought her. Candace even set a trap, calling the police to falsely accuse me of stealing that ring to completely destroy my reputation. But I turned the tables, using my knowledge of his habits to expose her perjury and their affair right in front of the detectives. Furious that his flawless public image was ruined, Damien confronted me outside the precinct. When I told him I was pregnant, instead of joy, his eyes filled with panic for his career. "Shut up!" he roared. He violently shoved me to the ground in front of a crowd of onlookers. Blood pooled on the cold pavement. I lost our baby. As I lay in the ICU, my heart turned to ash. He had spent seven years promising me a safe harbor, only to brutally murder our unborn child just to protect his own selfish ego. I didn't shed a single tear. I used his overwhelming public guilt to make him sign over all his assets to me, then vanished without a trace. A year later, I returned to New York not as the broken Addison, but as "Phoenix," the world's most powerful jewelry designer. And I am here to personally put him in a prison cell.

Celestia woke up heavily sedated, her wrists bound tightly to the legs of a grand piano in a cold, opulent room. Before she could even process the panic, a towering billionaire named Sterling Sinclair IV stepped in, looking at her like a possessed piece of art. The head maid then handed Celestia a thick surrogacy contract with her perfectly forged signature. "You are here to bear an heir for Mr. Sinclair," the maid stated flatly. Celestia screamed that they had the wrong person, but her desperate cries bounced uselessly off the soundproof walls. Stripped of her clothes, phone, and identity, she was trapped on an isolated island surrounded by high-voltage electric fences and armed guards. When she furiously fought back, Sterling physically overpowered her, punishing her resistance with brutal, terrifying dominance until she lost consciousness on the marble floor. She didn't understand who had kidnapped her from her normal life. Why was her biometric data perfectly faked in a classified dossier? Who had framed her as a willing, ten-million-dollar premium product for a ruthless billionaire? Driven by pure survival, Celestia began aggressively consuming raw garlic and bathing in harsh white vinegar to destroy her fertility and repel his touch. And when Sterling finally reviewed her bizarre, self-sabotaging dietary logs, the terrifying truth hit his calculating mind like a physical blow. The broken, innocent woman he had been brutally tormenting all week was never his hired surrogate.