The Invisible Wife’s Silent Sacrifice
Claire spent every waking moment protecting the transplanted heart beating inside her billionaire husband, Cooper. Though his grandfather forced their marriage, she loved him enough to endure his endless coldness.
When she received a frantic text saying Cooper was in a fatal car wreck, she ran through a freezing storm to save him. But she pushed open the VIP club doors only to find no doctors. Instead, Cooper was making out with his mistress, Kendall, while his wealthy friends erupted into malicious laughter at Claire's soaked, panicked state. It was all a cruel prank.
To force a divorce, Cooper treated her like garbage. He threw the custom meals she secretly cooked for his failing liver into the trash, giving Kendall the credit. When Claire begged him to stop drinking hard liquor for the sake of his fragile heart, he made a sickening demand.
"Go kiss that waiter on the mouth right now, and I won't touch another drop."
To keep him alive, Claire swallowed her pride and kissed the terrified boy while cameras flashed.
But her total degradation didn't earn his mercy. Cooper called her a sickening gold digger and walked out with his mistress, leaving Claire to the wolves. His best friend poured a sticky martini over her head, tore the strap of her dress, and raised a massive fist to smash her face. She had sacrificed her soul to keep his heart beating, only to be destroyed by it.
Just as the fist swung down, the heavy oak door was kicked off its hinges. Cooper stood in the doorway, his eyes burning with a terrifying, primal fury. He had only returned for a forgotten phone, but seeing another man's hands on his legal wife ignited a possessive rage that was about to burn the entire room down.
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Chapter 7
The underground parking garage of the Guthrie Group tower was damp and smelled of exhaust. Claire stood in the shadows behind a concrete pillar, clutching the warm bento box against her chest.
The VIP elevator chimed. Joshuah stepped out, wearing a sharp navy suit, his eyes scanning the dim garage until he spotted her.
He walked over, his posture stiff. He looked at Claire with a complicated mix of pity and professional distance.
"Mrs. Guthrie," he said formally. "What is this about?"
Claire held out the black bento box. "I need you to take this up to Cooper. It's his lunch."
Joshuah instantly took a half-step back, shaking his head. "Absolutely not. With all due respect, ma'am, if I bring him food from you, he will fire me on the spot. You know he won't touch it."
"I know," Claire said, biting down hard on her lower lip. The sharp sting of pain grounded her. She tasted blood. "That's why you aren't going to tell him it's from me."
Joshuah frowned, confused. "Then who?"
"Tell him..." Claire's throat closed up. She forced the words out past the agonizing lump in her airway. "Tell him Kendall sent it."
Joshuah's eyes went wide. His jaw actually dropped. He stared at her as if she had just lost her mind.
"You want me to lie to the CEO," Joshuah said slowly, "and give his mistress the credit for the food his wife cooked?"
"Yes."
"Why would you do that?" he asked, genuine shock bleeding through his professional facade.
Claire looked at him, her eyes pleading, desperate. "Because his grandfather is watching his health. If he doesn't eat properly, Sterling will find out. Please, Joshuah. Just do it."
They stood in silence for thirty agonizing seconds. Finally, Joshuah let out a heavy sigh, reached out, and took the box.
Ten minutes later, on the 60th floor.
Cooper sat behind his massive glass desk, rubbing the center of his chest with two fingers. A dull ache had been radiating there all morning.
Joshuah knocked twice and entered, placing the sleek bento box on the desk.
Cooper scowled at it. "What the hell is that?"
Joshuah swallowed hard. "Lunch, sir. Miss Kendall Hess had it delivered for you."
The dark storm clouds in Cooper's eyes vanished instantly. The tight lines around his mouth relaxed into a soft, genuine smile.
He reached out and pulled the box toward him. He popped the lid. The steam rose, carrying the delicate scent of the perfectly seasoned fish.
He picked up the chopsticks and took a large bite.
Outside the office, standing in the hallway, Claire peered through the slight gap in the frosted glass blinds.
She watched him chew and swallow. Her chest tightened, her eyes burning with unshed tears, but a massive weight lifted off her shoulders. The heart was getting what it needed. She turned and walked away toward the elevators.
Inside, Cooper swallowed the food. He immediately picked up his phone and dialed Kendall's number.
"Hey, beautiful," he said, his voice dropping an octave, rich with affection. "The lunch is incredible. Thank you."
Across the city, sitting in a velvet chair at a luxury nail salon, Kendall froze. She stared at her manicurist for a full second, her brain racing.
But her survival instincts were elite. She didn't miss a beat.
"Oh, baby," Kendall cooed into the phone, her voice dripping with honey. "I'm so glad you like it. I just want to make sure you're taking care of yourself. Eat every bite for me, okay?"
She hung up the phone. Kendall looked at her own reflection in the salon mirror. A slow, greedy, and utterly triumphant smirk spread across her face.
Back in the office, Cooper looked at the half-empty box, feeling like the luckiest man in the world.
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9.5
On the day she discovers she is pregnant, Amara is handed divorce papers by the man she loved for three years. Betrayed by her husband and her best friend, she walks away with nothing-except the secret growing inside her.
But what Ethan Cole doesn't know is that the woman he abandoned is not weak... and not alone.
When Amara returns as a powerful heiress, no longer the woman he could control, Ethan begins to regret everything. But as secrets unravel and the truth about her pregnancy comes closer to light, one question remains-
When he finally finds out the child is his... will it already be too late?
8.7
Five years ago, I was the invisible scholarship charity case at an elite Manhattan prep school, trying to survive in a sea of trust-fund babies.
Arlo Hammond, the untouchable billionaire heir, made sure to completely dismantle my soul.
When his wealthy friends asked if he noticed me, his mocking laughter echoed down the hallway.
"Are you out of your mind? You seriously think I'd be interested in a boring little nerd like her?"
But the moment we were alone, he would corner me in dark alleys, pinning my wrists against brick walls with terrifying, possessive jealousy if my phone even buzzed. He played his twisted games until I was left standing in the rain with my shattered dignity.
Now, I am an Assistant District Attorney. I spent years burying those memories under mountains of legal files.
But tonight, he returned.
When we crossed paths at an exclusive club, he looked at me with the cool detachment he'd give a piece of furniture. In front of a crowd of elites, he coldly declared:
"We have absolutely nothing to do with each other anymore."
Then he walked away to pick up a supermodel, leaving me trembling from the sheer humiliation.
I didn't understand. If I was so worthless to him, why did he still have my birthday tattooed in dark ink on his wrist? Why did he look at me with such raw, painful vulnerability in the shadows?
I stared at my pale reflection in the mirror and made a silent vow.
I am not that pathetic seventeen-year-old anymore, and I will prove to him that I am completely, entirely over him.
8.6
Marrying Theron Draix in a few days was a life long dream come true.
For seventeen years, I'd loved him, revolving my life around him, and in just three days, we should be married.
"Let's break up. I won't be attending the wedding," he said.
My life shattered in that instant.
Finding out he was in love with my adopted sister was worse. They had played me and controlled my emotions.
At the end, Mireya had killed me.
If I was given a second chance, I would never love Theron and never trust Mireya.
7.6
My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Damien Paul, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through.
That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Eve—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister.
But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Fellows talking in the library.
They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Damien.
Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Eve.
I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen.
This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Damien over.
"No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Hunter Beach."
9.7
Charity woke up in a hellish, acid-rain-soaked slum, trapped inside a bloated body covered in festering, toxic sores. She was the exiled Grand Princess of the Empire.
But the real nightmare wasn't her ruined body. It was the fact that the original owner had used her royal authority to force genetic marriage contracts onto four top-tier, powerful men.
Now, she was bound to them, and they absolutely loathed her.
Hjalmar, chained to a bed in her filthy room, smiled like a feral beast and promised to rip her head off the second his chains snapped.
Braden, a ruthless military officer, saved her from a mutated rat only to look at her with pure disgust.
"If you want to die, go die somewhere else. Don't dirty my patrol sector."
Even the locals mocked her fallen status, and a wealthy heiress publicly framed her for stealing a hundred-thousand-coin energy core just to see her rot in a dark cell.
She was universally despised, physically repulsive, and a lethal biological toxin gave her exactly 59 days left to live. How was she supposed to survive this absolute hell when her starting affection with her partners was at negative 100?
Then, a mechanical voice echoed in her skull, activating a survival system. To purge the poison, she had to harvest emotional energy by making these four men fall for her. Charity accepted the mandate, unlocked a top-tier culinary skill, and grabbed a rusted meat cleaver to start her counterattack.
8.4
Juliette was an agriculture major desperately trying to get top-tier CRISPR potato data from Adrian Castillo, the untouchable physics genius and wealthy heir.
But to get it, she was dragged to a high-end shooting club, where Adrian suddenly lost all his legendary motor skills, shooting zeroes and acting like a helpless nerd.
His clumsy act made Juliette a target. Blair, a wealthy heiress, cornered her, mocking her mud-stained cargo pants and calling her a pathetic dirt-girl.
"If you lose, you leave this club and never speak to Adrian again."
Blair challenged her to a professional air pistol match. The crowd of elites laughed, waiting for the farm girl to humiliate herself.
Even worse, Adrian just stood behind her, pretending to be terrified of Blair and whispering that his sinuses would swell shut if Juliette didn't save him.
The mockery and judgment felt suffocating. Everyone thought she was just a desperate fangirl who didn't even know how to hold a gun.
But they didn't know the dark trauma she had buried years ago. And she didn't understand why Adrian, a man who could supposedly shoot a coin at eight hundred meters in a sandstorm, was deliberately playing weak to push her to the firing line. What was his sick endgame?
To secure her experimental fertilizer, Juliette finally stopped hiding.
She picked up the competition pistol, locked her perfect stance, and fired ten flawless shots.
108.5. Total, undeniable annihilation.