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 8
Midnight. The Manhattan sky was violently torn apart by jagged flashes of lightning. Thunder rattled the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse.
BANG.
The heavy front door was kicked open with such explosive force it slammed against the wall, cracking the plaster.
Cooper stormed into the foyer. He was drenched in rain, his hair plastered to his forehead, smelling heavily of ozone and expensive scotch.
In his right hand, he gripped the black Japanese bento box. The veins in his forearm bulged against his skin.
Claire stepped out of the hallway, wearing a thin silk robe, her eyes widening at the sight of him.
Before she could speak, Cooper hurled the bento box directly at the marble floor at her feet.
The plastic shattered. The stainless-steel inner core bounced with a deafening, metallic crash, spraying leftover sauce and rice across Claire's bare toes. She flinched, stumbling backward.
Cooper's eyes were bloodshot, burning with a psychotic level of rage. He looked like a predator ready to tear her throat out.
He lunged forward, backing her up until her spine hit the cold wall of the hallway.
"You think you're clever?" he roared, his voice louder than the thunder outside.
He slammed his hands against the wall on either side of her head, caging her in.
"I took Kendall to Le Bernardin tonight," he spat, his breath hot and smelling of liquor against her face. "I ordered the exact same cod you put in that box. Do you know what she did?"
Claire's breath caught in her throat.
"She screamed," Cooper yelled, his face twisting in disgust. "She panicked because she is deathly allergic to that specific fish! She could have gone into anaphylactic shock! I know you know she's allergic! This was a deliberate attack! You looked it up just to poison her!"
The lie had collapsed. The biological impossibility had exposed the entire charade.
"You set us up," Cooper sneered, his voice dripping with venom. "You cooked that garbage, slapped her name on it, just so you could watch us make fools of ourselves at a Michelin-star restaurant. You manipulative, disgusting bitch."
Claire looked up at him, the lightning illuminating her pale, terrified face.
"No," she whispered frantically. "Cooper, listen to me. I made that for your heart. Your liver enzymes are spiking. You can't process heavy sodium or-"
"Shut up!"
The word heart snapped the last thread of his control.
His right hand shot out and wrapped around her throat. He didn't squeeze hard enough to cut off her air, but the physical degradation of the grip was absolute. His thumb pressed against her pulse point.
"Do not ever use my medical history as an excuse for your pathetic jealousy," he hissed, his eyes black with hatred. "If you ever try to humiliate Kendall again, I will make you wish you were dead."
He shoved her back against the wall, releasing her neck as if her skin had infected him.
He turned on his heel, marched into the master bedroom, and slammed the door. The lock clicked loudly.
Claire slid slowly down the wall until she hit the floor. Her knees pulled up to her chest.
She looked at the ruined bento box scattered across the marble. Slowly, numbly, she reached out to pick up a jagged piece of the shattered plastic lid.
The sharp edge sliced deep into her index finger.
A drop of bright red blood welled up and fell onto the white marble.
Claire didn't flinch. She just stared at the blood. The diet plan was dead. He knew she was watching him. The crisis inside his chest was only going to accelerate, and she was running out of ways to stop it.
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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.