The Heiress's choice
For three years, Elena endured a husband who barely acknowledged her, a mother-in-law who treated her like hired help, and a sister-in-law who sneered that she was nothing but a golddigger. All the while, her husband, Damien, pined after his "perfect" ex, like his own wife didn't exist.
Until the day Elena had enough.
She signed the divorce papers, packed a single bag, and vanished.
Damien was certain she'd come crawling back within a week. But the woman they all dismissed? Turns out Elena is a billionaire heiress, the CEO of the very empire Damien has been desperate to partner with and the one now signing his paychecks.
Oops.
Now Damien is spiraling, realizing too late what he lost. But Elena has choices she never had before. Like her childhood best friend, an NFL star who's been in love with her all along.
So who will it be?
The ex-husband who finally woke up?
The best friend who never left?
Or has Elena finally decided she's done with men who don't deserve her?
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Chapter 4
Damien's pov
"She's been gone for two weeks."
I paced around my office while Victoria watched with concern.
"You know she'll come back," Victoria said. "She's probably staying with a friend, trying to make you worry."
"She doesn't have friends."
That came out wrong, but it was true. In our three years of marriage, I'd never met any friends of Elena's. Not one. She was always just... there. At home and alone.
Have I ever asked why? Had I ever wondered where her family was, or what she did before we met?
No. I'd never asked because I never cared to know. I told myself she liked the quiet, that she preferred small circles and soft spaces. But maybe she'd simply learned that I didn't have room for her world in mine.
Victoria gave a little hum. "You sound guilty."
"I'm not," I said too quickly.
"Then stop worrying," she replied. "Where can she go? She'll eventually run out of money and come crawling back."
But something felt wrong. Elena had left with almost nothing. Just one bag, no credit cards taken, no money withdrawn from our joint account, not that there was much there anyway. And yet, she didn't call or text. Didn't even leave a note behind.
It was like she'd vanished into thin air. And it made me uneasy.
"Have you tried her phone?" Victoria asked.
"Disconnected."
"See? She's just being dramatic. Give her another week to cool off."
"Another week," I muttered. "You make it sound like she's on vacation or something."
Victoria smirked. "Well maybe she needed one from you."
Another week. I could do that.
Except at home, my mother just wouldn't shut up about it.
"I told you she was trash," Margaret said over dinner. Jessica nodded in agreement, mouth full of expensive steak. "Running away like a coward. At least now everyone will finally see her for what she really is."
"She asked for a divorce," I reminded them.
"Which proves she was a gold digger all along!" Margaret slammed her hand on the table. "She probably already found some other man with money. You're better off, Damien. Much better off."
Was I though?
The house felt empty without Elena. Even in silence, she used to fill up the space. Her footsteps and soft hums always filled the house. Now, there was no one asking about my day, no quiet presence in the background and no one making sure there was coffee in the morning or that my favorite shirts were cleaned.
I hadn't really realized how much she did until she was gone.
"Focus on work," Victoria advised. "That's what matters. In fact, I have news. Sterling Global is looking for new partners. If we could land a meeting with them..."
"Sterling Global?" I sat up straight. "They're massive. We're nowhere near big enough to even..."
"Let me worry about that," Victoria said with a mysterious smile. "I have connections. But you need to focus, Damien. This could make your career. This could make you a major player in the field."
Sterling Global. One of the biggest corporations in the world. If I could land a partnership with them... Elena would see. She'd see that leaving me was a mistake.
Except Elena was gone, and I had no idea where she was.
"Have you considered hiring a private investigator?" Victoria asked.
"To find my wife?"
"To protect yourself. What if she's planning something, Damien? What if she's gathering evidence for the divorce to take you for everything?"
"Take me for what?" I asked bitterly. "My mother's pearls?"
Victoria smirked. "You'd be surprised at what women go after."
Take me for what? I didn't have anything. All I had was a mid-level executive salary, a decent apartment that was mostly empty now, some savings.
But Victoria had a point. Women did that, didn't they? Disappeared and came back with lawyers.
"Maybe," I said.
"I know someone. He's very discreet and efficient." Victoria pulled out her phone. "Let me make a call."
---
Three weeks after Elena left, the private investigator came to my office.
"Mr. Blackwell, I have to be honest. I can't find her."
"What do you mean you can't find her?"
"I mean she's vanished completely. No credit card usage, no phone activity, no travel records. It's like she completely ceased to exist."
"That's not possible," I said. "She doesn't have the means."
The man's expression didn't change. "Then she's a lot smarter than you thought."
That didn't make sense. People couldn't just disappear not unless they had help and not unless they had resources.
But Elena had nothing. No family, no money, and no connections.
"Keep looking," I demanded.
"Sir, I've been doing this for twenty years. When someone disappears completely, they either had help from someone with serious resources, or..." He trailed off.
"Or what?"
"Or they didn't need help because they had resources of their own."
"That's impossible."
The investigator shrugged. "Then I don't know what to tell you. Your wife is a ghost."
After he left, I sat in my office, staring at my phone. At my empty message thread with Elena. None of this added up.
The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. Elena wasn't the type to pull stunts like this.
Where was she? Was she okay? Was she safe?
Why did I suddenly care so much?
"Damien?" Victoria leaned in. I forgot she was even here. "Good news. I got us a meeting with Sterling Global. Next month."
"Next month?"
"With the new CEO. No one knows who they are yet, just that they go by E. Sterling, very mysterious. But this is our chance."
"Our chance," I repeated. My voice didn't sound like mine. "Right."
Business. Career. The things that actually mattered. So why couldn't I stop thinking about Elena's face when she asked if I loved her?
Why couldn't I stop remembering the way she'd looked at those divorce papers like her heart was breaking?
"This is what you wanted," I muttered to myself.
But was it? Was it really?
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8.4
For twenty years, I lived as the adopted daughter of the wealthy Hill family.
But today, they forced me to sign a severance agreement and kicked me out so their precious biological daughter, Malia, could marry my fiancé.
To ruin me completely, they framed me for stealing Malia's engagement bracelet, threatening me with prison.
I calmly exposed the "sapphire" as cheap glass, then rolled up my sleeves to show the reporters my scarred, punctured arms.
For two decades, I wasn't a daughter. I was Malia's living blood and bone marrow bank.
They drained my health to keep her alive, even ordering doctors to ignore my failing organs just so she could attend a gala.
"Take this million dollars and shut your mouth," my adoptive father sneered, throwing a check at my feet.
My ex-fiancé looked at me with disgust, and Malia screamed that I was a crazy, vindictive liar.
They had stolen my life and my health, yet they still looked down on me like I was garbage.
I ripped the check into pieces and threw it in their faces.
Just as they ordered the butler to drag me out, a group of men in black suits shattered the chaos.
The heir of the untouchable Montgomery dynasty stepped through the door, ignoring the Hills' fawning, and handed me a DNA report.
I wasn't a disposable blood bag. I was the long-lost true heiress of old New York money.
And now, I was going to take back everything they stole from me.
8.1
Arnetta had been married to a wealthy man for three years, but she had never even seen his face.
After a wild night of drinking, she woke up in a hotel room next to a handsome, ruthless stranger.
He coldly kicked her out, mocking her as just another desperate woman trying to sleep her way to the top.
To her shock, she soon discovered the stranger was Brennan Kirkland—her firm's top-tier client and a legendary Wall Street billionaire.
Hiding her true identity as a corporate spy, she manipulated her way into becoming his executive assistant to steal his data.
During a business dinner, Arnetta received a humiliating text from her absent husband, demanding a divorce and calling her a greedy parasite.
"He is a deadbeat coward who thinks money solves everything," Arnetta spat in anger.
"A man who hides behind lawyers is weak," Brennan agreed coldly.
He had absolutely no idea he was insulting his own actions, nor did he realize the wild, gold-digging wife he despised was sitting right across from him.
The next day, her husband's legal team sent a brutal twenty-million-dollar settlement offer, threatening to ruin her if she didn't take the payoff and disappear.
Staring at the degrading ultimatum, Arnetta's hands shook with blinding rage.
She looked at Brennan, who was busy plotting to destroy his own wife, and a terrifyingly calm smile touched her lips.
She wasn't just going to take the money; she was going to completely destroy him.
9.5
Bridget left the office early on her anniversary, her pocket heavy with a custom velvet ring box meant for her fiancé.
But when she pushed open the bedroom door, she found him tangled in their bed with her best friend, Chloe.
"Bridget! Wait, it's not what it looks like!" Jacob stammered, his eyes wide with panic.
"Evidence," Bridget stated coldly, snapping a photo of their naked bodies before fleeing into the freezing New York night.
Desperate to numb the betrayal, she got blackout drunk at an underground lounge and threw herself at a dark, terrifyingly handsome stranger.
She woke up in a penthouse suite alone, finding only a limitless black credit card left on the nightstand.
Humiliated and feeling like a cheap escort, she ran away, swearing to forget the nightmare.
But the nightmare had just begun. When she rushed into the office, she discovered the stranger was Jevon Rocha—the ruthless billionaire CEO of her company.
He didn't fire her. Instead, he trapped her in a twisted, obsessive power game, forcing her into his private life and demanding she report to his penthouse.
Bridget couldn't understand why a ruthless billionaire was so dangerously fixated on a low-level employee.
Until she stumbled upon his secret social media account and saw a crayon drawing of a little kid, captioned with a single word: "Finally."
A wave of absolute horror washed over her. He wasn't just playing games; he was hiding a secret child and a messy, high-stakes family drama.
She refused to be the naive collateral damage in a billionaire's twisted life.
Trembling, Bridget hit "Block" on his profile, determined to escape his dangerous web.
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."
9.8
When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future.
For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed.
Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone.
I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back.
But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours.
When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along.
"What's in your pocket, Felicie?"
This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands.
9.5
Eda Roman clutched her father's diagnostic report, its sharp edge cutting her finger. His cancer had mutated, standard treatment failed, and a fifty thousand dollar deposit for experimental therapy was due by midnight. Fail to pay, and his hospital bed would be cleared.
Wife to Axel Foley, a multi-billion dollar CEO, Eda faced an impossible chasm. Her family trust, controlled by Keri Lane, offered a meager three hundred dollars.
An emergency fund request met a forty-eight-hour review—a death sentence. Keri's assistant denied expedite and blocked calls. Desperate, Eda called Axel, but his assistant dismissed her with lies, Axel's laughter echoing.
Humiliation and betrayal ignited cold fury. Wife to Seattle's wealthiest, yet begging on a hospital floor? Axel's indifference and Keri's games showed her: her father's life couldn't be left in their hands.
Wiping tears, the pleading girl vanished; her survival instinct roared. Red lipstick her war paint, Eda Roman marched to Foley Group Headquarters, ready to reclaim what was hers.