Shattered Bonds: The Reborn Heiress Strikes Back
Eloise Ferguson was the legitimate daughter of a powerful Senator, yet she was treated like a hysterical burden by her own family.
In her past life, her parents forced her to marry a sadistic billionaire for political funding.
When she resisted, they locked her in a psychiatric facility, drugged her, and left her to die in restraints while her "fragile" cousin Jaylene stole her life.
She never understood why her mother hated her so fiercely.
Why did her mother treat her brother Cortez and her cousin Jaylene like absolute royalty, while throwing her own flesh and blood to the wolves?
Opening her eyes again, Eloise found herself back at age twenty-two, trapped in a restroom at a charity gala.
Escaping her abuser, she used her awakened mystic abilities to look at her family's life forces.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Thick, red biological cords connected her mother directly to both Cortez and Jaylene, intertwining in a perfect symbiotic bond.
They weren't cousins. They were illegitimate twins born from her mother's secret affair.
Eloise was the only true outsider in her own home.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her entire life of abuse was just a cover-up for a nest of parasites stealing her father's name and her inheritance.
But this time, she refused to be their victim.
Armed with an unchallengeable executive order she blackmailed out of the United States President, Eloise crushed the hidden microphone in her bedroom.
"Game on, Mother."
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Chapter 6
Marcus Ferguson froze. The flashing red and blue lights caught the gold badge clipped to Alastair Kingston's belt. The Senator's political survival instincts kicked in instantly, choking off his rage. He recognized the man. Kingston was the President's shadow.
Idella, lacking her husband's political radar, stepped forward. Her face twisted into a mask of aristocratic disgust. "Eloise! Have you lost your mind? Bringing armed thugs to our home in the middle of the night? You are a disgrace to this family!"
Cortez pointed a finger at Eloise. "She's having another episode, Mom. Look at her dress. She's completely unhinged. We need to call Dr. Aris and get her sedated."
Alastair's head snapped toward Cortez. The agent's eyes were dead, devoid of any human warmth. The sheer, physical weight of his stare made Cortez swallow his next words and take an involuntary step back.
Marcus grabbed Idella's arm, squeezing hard enough to make her wince. "Shut up," he hissed through his teeth. He forced a tight, panicked smile and stepped down the stairs. "Agent Kingston. I apologize for the confusion. What brings the Secret Service to my home?"
Alastair ignored the Senator's outstretched hand. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the thick envelope bearing the Presidential Seal.
He broke the wax seal with his thumb. The sound was unnaturally loud in the tense silence. He unfolded the heavy paper.
"By order of the President of the United States," Alastair read, his voice projecting across the lawn like a military command. "Effective immediately, Eloise Ferguson is granted absolute, unmitigated control over her personal trust fund and all marital decisions. Any attempt to coerce, medicate, or confine her against her will shall be treated as a direct threat to a protected federal asset."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Idella's hand dropped from her pearls. The blood drained from her face, leaving her looking like a corpse. Her entire plan-selling Eloise to Bradyn Chandler for political funding-was dead.
Cortez's jaw dropped. The trust fund. He had been secretly siphoning money from it to cover his failed startup. If Eloise controlled it, he was ruined.
Jaylene, hiding behind Cortez, dug her manicured nails into her palms. Her wide, innocent eyes narrowed into slits of pure, venomous jealousy.
Marcus began to sweat. The cold night air hit the moisture on his forehead. He knew exactly what this was. The President was holding a gun to his political career.
Alastair folded the letter, placed it back in the envelope, and handed it to Eloise. He did it with both hands, a gesture of absolute respect that made Marcus's stomach churn.
"Furthermore," Alastair said, his eyes locking onto Marcus. "The President has instructed me to conduct random, unannounced health checks on Miss Ferguson. Her well-being is now a matter of the highest federal interest. Any harm, physical, psychological, or otherwise, that befalls her on this property will trigger an immediate and thorough federal investigation, with you, Senator, as the primary person of interest."
Marcus wiped his forehead. "Of course. Of course. Eloise is our beloved daughter. She is perfectly safe here."
Idella opened her mouth to argue, but Marcus shot her a look so violently angry she snapped her mouth shut.
Alastair gave Eloise a curt nod. "Ma'am. We will be in touch."
He turned, signaled his men, and the agents seamlessly piled back into the SUVs. The vehicles reversed down the driveway, leaving the Fergusons standing in the cold.
Eloise walked up the marble steps. She didn't look at her parents. She stopped right in front of Cortez.
Cortez tried to puff up his chest, but he was trembling.
Eloise leaned in, her voice a whisper that only he could hear. "If you ever try to block my path again, Cortez, I will send the SEC the real accounting books for your little tech company. The ones showing the wire transfers to the Cayman Islands."
Cortez's eyes bulged. He stumbled backward, hitting the heavy oak door.
Eloise walked past him into the grand foyer. The smell of Idella's heavy floral perfume made her nauseous. She stopped at the base of the grand staircase and looked back at her stunned family.
"I have an announcement," Eloise said, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "Family meeting. Tomorrow morning at nine. Don't be late."
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7.0
Eight years ago, Alaina forced herself to say the most vicious, heartless things to break up with her fiercely loyal college boyfriend, protecting him from his billionaire family's wrath.
Now, she is a top maxillofacial surgeon, and Jarred Mcknight has returned as the ruthless CEO of Wall Street's most powerful corporation.
Their worlds collide in the ER, but Jarred isn't alone. He is accompanying his rumored heiress fiancée.
His eyes are pure ice. He treats Alaina with a suffocating, clinical detachment, fiercely protecting the heiress from Alaina's medical examination. The professional slap in the face shatters Alaina's heart all over again.
Later, at an exclusive restaurant, Jarred catches Alaina on a miserable, forced blind date. Still believing she left him for money and status, he publicly mocks her for working herself to the bone just to climb the ladder.
Her sleazy date, humiliated by the billionaire's sheer dominance, turns his bruised ego on Alaina. On the dark street outside, the lawyer aggressively grabs her arm, trying to force himself on her.
Alaina thought Jarred despised her. She thought he had completely moved on, leaving her to drown in the memories of the future they never had.
But why did Jarred suddenly explode from the shadows like a lethal predator, brutally snapping the lawyer's wrist just for touching her?
Pinning her trapped against the cold brick wall, Jarred's dark eyes burn with a terrifying, unhinged possessiveness.
"Is this the kind of garbage you date now?"
The eight years of separation mean nothing. The billionaire hasn't let her go, and this time, there is no escape.
8.3
For three years, I hid my identity as a billionaire heiress to build a life with the man I loved. I gave up everything to support Ben's career, believing we were creating a future together from the ground up.
The day before our engagement, I overheard him with his boss, Haylie. He called me a "stepping stone," a poor, simple girl he was using to climb the corporate ladder and get closer to her.
He laughed about our "humble" life and mocked the silver ring on my finger, calling it a necessary prop. He was sleeping with her, taking credit for the multi-million dollar deal I secretly engineered, and saw my love as a naive distraction.
The man I sacrificed my entire world for saw me as less than nothing. My love didn't just die; it turned into ice-cold rage.
So I walked out of his life and straight into the arms of my family's biggest rival.
He offered me a deal I couldn't refuse.
"Marry me," Jaxson Banks said with a smirk. "And together, we'll burn their world to the ground."
7.4
My mother was dying and desperately needed a half-million-dollar deposit for an experimental heart surgery by tomorrow.
I swallowed my pride and begged my wealthy husband, Garrick, to save her life.
Instead of helping, he laughed coldly and threw a thick stack of divorce papers right in my face.
"A hen that can't lay eggs gets slaughtered," he sneered, ruthlessly poking my flat stomach.
He revealed that his secretary, my supposed friend Lacey, was already pregnant with his heir.
To him, our three years of marriage was just a business transaction, and now that my family was bankrupt, I was nothing but damaged goods.
He flicked a humiliating five-thousand-dollar check at me as his final act of charity, then locked me out of our townhouse into the freezing, pouring rain.
I had spent years enduring agonizing hormone treatments for a fertility issue that wasn't even my fault, only to be discarded like trash when I needed him the most.
Was my dignity, my absolute devotion, and my mother's life really worth nothing to him?
Driven by pure, reckless desperation, I threw myself directly into the path of a moving Rolls-Royce Phantom on Fifth Avenue.
It belonged to Holden Tillman, the ruthless patriarch of the Tillman empire—and the uncle Garrick lived in absolute terror of.
I thought I was walking into my death, but instead, I became his fiancée, ready to make Garrick and Lacey pay for every tear I shed.
7.9
On my wedding day, my fiancé Connor received an urgent phone call.
He told me a D-list actress had broken her leg on set, then abandoned me right at the altar.
In my past life, I cried until my throat bled, begging him not to leave.
But my tears only brought endless humiliation. My mother and adopted sister mocked me, framed me, and forged my signature to steal my multi-million dollar trust fund.
They kicked me out of the family estate without a single dime.
I ended up freezing to death in the minus-twenty-degree New York blizzard, listening to my mother's voicemail telling me to die in the street as long as I didn't bleed on her carpets.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand why my own blood relatives hated me so much, yet treated an adopted daughter like a precious princess.
The only person who showed me any mercy—draping his wool coat over my frozen corpse and giving me a proper burial—was Connor's ruthless, untouchable uncle, Harding Snow.
Opening my eyes again, I was back in the bridal suite, right as Connor was rushing out the door.
This time, I didn't shed a single tear.
I let him run to his actress, then walked straight into the VIP room to face the most feared billionaire on Wall Street.
"The wedding proceeds as planned, but the groom's name changes to yours."
8.6
For years, Elvera lived as the despised charity case in the cramped Wright household.
When she caught her foster sister Donita straddling her fiancé, they didn't even panic. Instead, they loudly framed Elvera for stealing a diamond necklace to justify kicking her out.
Her foster parents immediately sided with the cheaters, screaming at her to pack her trash and starve in the gutters. Only her dying foster brother tried to sneak her his medical savings, but the family violently shoved him away, mocking him as a walking corpse.
Standing in the freezing Brooklyn wind, Donita and Crockett followed her outside just to laugh. They waved a crisp twenty-dollar bill in her face, mocking her biological family as a bunch of unemployed street thugs.
They really thought she was going to freeze to death on the pavement with nothing but a faded backpack.
But then a roaring, matte-black supercar pulled up.
The man who stepped out wasn't a street thug; he was her real brother, an FBI task force commander.
He effortlessly snapped Crockett's shoulder out of its socket, put Elvera in the passenger seat, and drove her straight to a sprawling billionaire estate in the Hamptons.
Sitting by the fire in her biological parents' palace, watching them casually display an eight-million-dollar sculpture she had secretly designed, the head butler suddenly walked in.
"Sir, the fake heiress has returned from Europe."
Elvera took a slow sip of her coffee. The real game was finally about to begin.
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?