The Secretary's Fake Rockstar Husband
For twelve years, Cora lived in silent agony, loving her boss Bennett Hodges while serving as his perfect, invisible secretary.
But after one night of drunken despair, she woke up in a stranger's penthouse. The man, an indie musician named Callum, showed her viral paparazzi photos of her ripping his shirt off and demanded a fake marriage to save his career.
Cora immediately agreed, desperately needing a legal shield. Bennett had just ordered her to attend a gala as the personal date of a billionaire known for sending women to the ER. When Cora refused and showed Bennett her marriage certificate, he thought it was a pathetic bluff. To force her submission, Bennett froze her entire savings, permanently denied her hard-earned department transfer, and watched with a smug smile as his sister humiliated Cora for being the "maid's daughter." He wanted to completely destroy her life until she crawled back begging.
Looking at her ruined design portfolio scattered on the floor, Cora felt her heart turn to ice. She had dedicated her entire youth to a man who saw her as nothing more than a piece of furniture that knew its place. How could she have blindly loved such a cruel, controlling monster for so long?
The violent shaking in her hands stopped, replaced by a terrifying calm.
"I have documented every single abusive directive from this office."
She flashed the massive diamond her new fake husband had given her, threatened to burn Bennett's pristine reputation to the ground, and finally walked away.
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Chapter 2
Cora stared at the phone. Then she snapped her head up to look at Callum.
"You're out of your mind," she said.
She threw the phone back onto the mattress and pulled his white shirt tighter around her thighs. "I am not marrying a stranger. We can issue a PR statement. We can say it was a misunderstanding."
Callum stood up slowly. He walked over to the minibar, turning his back to her. He poured a glass of ice water. "A statement doesn't fix a viral photo of you ripping my clothes off," he said, taking a sip. "My investors want a clean image. A secret, passionate romance is clean. A drunken hookup is a liability."
Before Cora could argue, the doorbell rang. It wasn't a polite chime. It was a frantic, aggressive pounding.
Callum sighed. He set the glass down and walked to the door, pulling it open.
A man burst into the room. He was sweating through a cheap, wrinkled grey suit. He pushed thick black glasses up his nose and waved a tablet in the air.
"The investors saw the photos, Cal!" the man yelled, his voice cracking with panic. "They just called me to invoke the morality clause! They are pulling the funding!"
This was Simon. He pointed a shaking finger at Cora on the bed. "Is this her? Is this the woman who just flushed our entire loan down the toilet?"
Cora flinched. The word 'loan' hit her like a physical blow. The guilt she had pushed down came rushing back, burning the back of her throat.
Callum ran a hand through his damp hair, looking stressed. "Back off, Simon. I'm handling it."
"Handling it?" Simon shouted, pacing the floor. "We borrowed money from dangerous people to fund this album! If the investors pull out because of this scandal, they will break our legs! The only way out is to tell the press you two have been secretly engaged."
"I am not participating in fraud," Cora interrupted, her voice shaking but firm.
Simon stopped pacing and glared at her. "Then I hope you have a spare hundred grand to pay off the loan sharks, lady."
Cora opened her mouth to reply, but her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
She reached for it. The caller ID read 'Brenda - Hodges Group'.
Cora hesitated, then swiped to answer. "Brenda?"
"Cora, thank God," Brenda whispered. Her voice was tight with anxiety. "Do not come to the office today. Bennett is on a warpath."
Cora's stomach dropped. "What happened?"
"He issued an internal directive this morning," Brenda said, her voice dropping lower. "He ordered that you are to accompany Caspian Thorne to the charity gala tonight. As his personal date."
The blood drained from Cora's face. Her fingers turned white as she gripped the phone. Caspian Thorne. The billionaire heir known in the New York social circles as a violent sadist. He had sent two of his previous dates to the emergency room.
"Bennett wouldn't do that," Cora whispered, though she knew it was a lie.
"Madam Justine signed off on it," Brenda added gently. "She told HR it was your duty as a ward of the Hodges estate to secure this networking opportunity."
Cora couldn't breathe. The walls of the penthouse felt like they were closing in. Bennett wasn't just rejecting her love. He was treating her like a piece of meat, trading her to a monster just to punish her for walking away last night.
"Okay. Thank you, Brenda," Cora said, her voice entirely devoid of emotion.
She hung up the phone. Her arms lost all their strength. The phone slipped from her fingers and bounced onto the carpet. She stared blankly at the wall.
Callum watched her. He walked over and dropped to one knee right in front of her. He was so close she could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
He didn't look like a panicked musician anymore. His eyes were steady, grounding. "What kind of trouble are you in, Cora?" he asked, his voice a low, hypnotic rumble.
Cora looked at him. He was a stranger. But he was a stranger offering a legally binding contract.
If she was a married woman, Bennett had zero legal or moral authority to force her into a matchmaking arrangement. Justine Hodges couldn't touch a married woman. It was the ultimate shield.
Cora dragged a breath of air into her lungs. Her eyes burned, but she refused to cry.
"How long?" Cora asked, her voice hard. "How long does this PR marriage need to last?"
Callum's pupils dilated slightly. He kept his face perfectly neutral. "One year."
Cora locked her jaw. She pressed her hands together, her knuckles white. She lowered her hands.
"Fine," Cora said.
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8.0
When gifted cellist Vivienne Aurel inherits her late father's catastrophic $4.2 million debt, she expects to lose everything. She doesn't expect the debt to be bought by Caspian Vane, the most feared private equity magnate in New York. Caspian doesn't want to ruin her; he wants her to work exclusively for him as the artistic director of his new cultural foundation for eighteen months. Forced into his world under a binding agreement, Vivienne prepares to fight against a cold, transactional cage. But as the intense, quiet proximity between them begins to blur the lines of their contract, she discovers a terrifying truth: the man who now owns her future has been watching her from the shadows long before she ever knew his name.
8.8
I discovered I was pregnant with twins from my marriage to Ell Steele, the ruthless CEO of the Steele Group. But he saw me as a gold-digging nobody, unworthy of his heir.
He stormed into our penthouse with his lawyer, slamming down abortion consent forms and a divorce NDA, offering five million to terminate and vanish. "You're not fit to carry my child," he spat, gripping my jaw.
I refused the abortion, signed the zero-payout divorce to keep my company insurance for my dying mom's ICU bills, but stayed on as an admin assistant. Brittany, his mistress, spilled coffee on my reports, got me demoted to the dusty sub-basement sorting old files.
She framed me for attacking her, security dragged me out, slamming me into doorframes that cramped my belly. Trapped in a sabotaged freight elevator, I nearly miscarried in the dark, gasping for air while Ell rescued me—only to find my prenatal pills and rage.
At the gala, I warned Brittany the Angel's Tears necklace—Georgina's flawed design—was cracking. She accused me of theft; Ell ordered me stripped and searched publicly. It snapped anyway, shattering the diamond, but he blamed me, firing and blacklisting me on the spot.
Beaten down, humiliated, body aching from their cruelty—how could my husband, who I once loved, destroy me without a shred of doubt? What made him so blind to my pain?
Dragged from our home in the rain, a black Rolls-Royce Phantom pulled up. The butler bowed: "Madame Aura, your suite awaits." As Ell watched from his Maybach, I initiated the hostile takeover—time to bankrupt them all.
9.6
HIS Minnie Mouse
9.6
When Claire agrees to play her cold-hearted boss's girlfriend for a weekend, she never expects a fake romance to turn into a nine-month marriage contract worth millions. She becomes trapped in the world of the ultra wealthy and her abusive ex resurfaces to blackmail her with millions. She also falls in love with her cold-hearted boss, leading to an affair that gets her pregnant. But the reason for the contract marriage is no longer necessary. What happens now that Claire has no reason to stay married to her cold boss?
8.7
Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them.
But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father.
That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago.
Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company.
Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate.
To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison.
Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall.
"Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!"
Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child.
Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone.
He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown?
With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered.
Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.
9.6
To escape my sister-in-law selling me off to a local thug, I married a complete stranger I met at City Hall.
My new husband, Drake, claimed to be a broke Uber driver who could barely make rent.
He even made me sign a brutal ten-page prenup just to ensure I wouldn't take his rusted, beat-up Ford sedan if we ever divorced.
I thought I was just sharing a decaying Brooklyn apartment with a struggling man at the bottom of the ladder.
But things quickly stopped making sense.
When that local thug cornered me at a restaurant, my "weak" husband didn't cower.
Instead, he dismantled three massive mobsters in ten seconds with the terrifying, fluid speed of an apex predator.
"I used to be a human punching bag in an underground boxing gym to pay off debts."
I believed his excuse, until his supposedly homeless grandfather showed up at our door in a moth-eaten sweater, begging to sleep on our lumpy sofa.
Before going to sleep, the old man casually pressed a heavy, intricately engraved pocket watch into my hand as a wedding gift.
He claimed it was a cheap flea market find that didn't even keep time.
But the sheer weight of the solid rose gold and the flawless mechanical gears inside screamed otherwise.
Why did a destitute driver have the aura of a man who controlled empires?
And what kind of homeless old man casually hands over a priceless, museum-grade antique?
I had no idea the "broke driver" sleeping on my floor was actually a ruthless billionaire CEO, and I had just walked straight into his trap.
9.4
Dorene survived a terrifying night with a bleeding, dangerous intruder in her hotel penthouse, only to receive a far more devastating blow the next morning.
A black and gold envelope arrived. It was an engagement invitation. Her boyfriend of seven years, Kadyn, was marrying her sweet, innocent best friend, Dolly.
Refusing to hide, Dorene crashed the gala in a blood-red gown. But Dolly was ready. Grabbing Dorene's wrists, Dolly purposely threw herself backward into a tower of champagne glasses, shrieking about her stomach and her unborn baby.
"If anything happens to Dolly or my child, I swear to God, I will destroy you!"
Kadyn roared, holding the weeping Dolly in the broken glass. He didn't ask a single question. He branded Dorene a jealous monster. To completely break her dignity, he publicly handed her over to the city's most notorious, sleazy playboy just to appease Dolly's fake tears.
"Give him a shot," Kadyn told her coldly.
Seven years of love were ground into the marble floor. She was framed, publicly humiliated, and discarded like trash by the two people she trusted most.
Dorene didn't shed a single tear. She gave them a smile of pure, freezing mockery and walked out of the gilded cage into the freezing Manhattan night. She didn't know that as she left, the lethal, blood-stained man from her penthouse was watching from the shadows, ready to help her burn their world to the ground.