The Unwanted Husband Returns To The Top
For three years, Connor lived as a ghost. A crippled, useless Uber driver, enduring a self-imposed exile orchestrated by his dying grandfather's will to prove he was worthy of the Hoffman empire. He even married into the wealthy Barlowe family, becoming their favorite punching bag.
On the very last day of his test, his final Uber passengers slid into the backseat. It was his wife, Genevieve, and her wealthy lover.
They didn't recognize him behind his mask. Right there in his rearview mirror, they kissed hungrily, mocking her "pathetic loser" of a husband and plotting to dump him after her sister's wedding.
The next day at the wedding, they didn't just want a divorce. They wanted to publicly crucify him.
Her lover framed Connor as a violent, cheating degenerate. They rallied the city's elite, getting his Uber manager to publicly fire him and convincing the entire ballroom to blacklist him from every job, apartment, and business in Ninverton.
They even brought in an arrogant Vice President from the Hoffman Group to publicly declare Connor was a fraud, sealing his social execution.
Standing alone in that lobby, surrounded by the mocking laughter of the people who had trampled on his dignity for a thousand days, Connor felt the last shred of his patience burn away. They were so utterly, hopelessly blind.
Then, his encrypted phone rang.
"Mr. Wise, the test is officially over. You are now the Global CEO of the Hoffman Group."
Connor looked at his cheating wife and the arrogant elites laughing at his demise. He dropped the signed divorce papers on the table.
The game was over. The slaughter was about to begin.
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Chapter 2
The Barlowe estate was a monument to old money and quiet arrogance. Connor's car, the humble Toyota, felt like a trespasser as it rolled up the long, manicured driveway. He didn't park in his usual spot. He left the car directly in front of the main entrance, a small act of defiance.
He walked into the wing of the mansion he and Genevieve had called home. His gait carried a faint, almost imperceptible limp, a ghost of the accident that had served as the perfect cover for his exile. It was a lavish suite, decorated in shades of cream and gold, a gilded cage he had occupied for three years.
She was there, fresh from a shower, wrapped in a silk robe that cost more than his monthly earnings. Surprise flickered across her face, quickly replaced by a familiar look of disdain.
"What was that phone call about?" she demanded, her tone accusatory. No mention of Jett. No hint of guilt. "You can't just call me like that."
Connor ignored her. He walked past her, the scent of her expensive perfume filling the air, and went straight into the walk-in closet. It was the size of a small apartment, filled with her designer clothes and his few, simple things.
He pulled out a small, worn suitcase.
He began to pack. A few changes of clothes. A worn copy of a book his grandfather had given him. His father's watch. He left the expensive suits and shoes the Barlowes had bought for him untouched. They were part of the costume, and the play was over.
"What are you doing?" Genevieve's voice was sharp, laced with confusion.
Connor zipped the suitcase shut. He turned to face her, his expression unreadable. "I'm packing," he said, his voice calm. "And then I'm divorcing you."
She stared at him for a beat, then let out a short, sharp laugh of disbelief. "Divorce? Are you insane, Connor? How will you live? Where will you go?"
She gestured around the opulent room. "This. All of this. It belongs to my family. You have nothing."
"I don't need any of this," he said. He walked to the antique vanity where she did her makeup and placed a single folded document on its polished surface. A divorce agreement, already signed by him.
This is what he prepared on his way back.
Genevieve's eyes widened as she saw the papers. The laughter died in her throat. This was real.
Her entire demeanor shifted. The arrogance vanished, replaced by a frantic, calculated panic. She rushed toward him, her hand grabbing his arm.
"No," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Not now. You can't. Clarissa's wedding is tomorrow. Everyone will be there. The entire city."
She was pleading, but not for their marriage. For appearances.
"We have to be the perfect couple, just for one more day," she insisted. "It would destroy my family's reputation."
Connor looked down at her hand on his arm, then met her eyes. His were cold, empty. "Your reputation," he said flatly, "is not my concern."
He pulled his arm away.
Her patience snapped. The mask of civility fell away, revealing the ugly, hysterical woman beneath. "You ungrateful crippled bastard! You're nothing without us! A piece of trash we picked up off the street!"
She jabbed a finger at his chest. "If you dare cause a scene before this wedding, I will make sure you can't even get a job washing dishes in this city!"
He didn't flinch. He didn't raise his voice. He just delivered the final, fatal blow.
"I saw you," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "At the Olympus Spire."
The words hung in the air between them. Genevieve's face, already pale, turned a ghastly white. The realization dawned in her eyes, a slow-motion horror.
The Uber driver.
Shame, fear, and fury warred on her face. She opened her mouth to form a denial, a lie, but no sound came out.
Connor had already turned away. He picked up his suitcase and walked toward the door.
She lunged, trying to block his path, to grab him again. He sidestepped her easily, pushing her aside with a gentle but firm pressure that sent her stumbling back. The strength in his touch was unfamiliar, frightening.
He paused at the doorway, his back to her.
"Sign the papers," he said. "My lawyer will be in touch."
He walked out, leaving her to collapse onto the plush carpet, a crumpled heap of silk and desperation.
She scrambled for her phone, her fingers trembling as she dialed Jett's number. Her voice was a ragged sob, thick with anger.
"He knows! Connor knows everything! He wants a divorce, right before the wedding!"
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, then Jett's cold, dismissive laugh.
"Don't worry, darling," he purred. "He can't do anything. He's a nobody. Tomorrow, at the wedding, I'll make him regret he was ever born."
Outside, the night air was cool and clean. As Connor stepped out of the Barlowe mansion for the last time, a black Rolls-Royce Phantom glided silently to a stop in front of him.
Finchley Abernathy stepped out and held the rear door open.
"Welcome back, Mr. Wise."
Upon hearing this, Connor didn't rush to get into the car. Instead, he shifted his gaze to his humble Toyota.
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7.6
After an exhausting fourteen-hour flight, Katia returned to her Upper East Side penthouse, expecting the quiet comfort of the life she had built.
Instead, she found a pair of familiar red stilettos in the foyer and her fiancé, Caleb, tangled in their bedsheets with his twenty-two-year-old assistant.
She didn't scream or cry. She simply took off her three-carat engagement ring, threw it at his bare chest, and demanded he buy out her half of the penthouse by Friday.
Seeking to numb the sickening disgust, she got blackout drunk and crashed at a luxury hotel, accidentally stumbling into the wrong suite.
Thinking the imposing man inside was a high-end escort hired by her friend, she threw him over her shoulder and spent a wild night with him.
The next morning, she left five thousand dollars on his nightstand with a lipstick-stained note.
"Good Job."
For six years, she had funded Caleb's dreams and built his startup from the ground up, only to be treated like a lifeless ATM.
With ruthless precision, she spent the next two months systematically bankrupting his company, cutting off his venture capital, and erasing his life's work.
She felt no heartbreak, only a cold, calculating need to cleanse herself of his betrayal.
But when Katia finally returned to corporate headquarters to co-lead a massive merger, she literally crashed into the new Vice President.
Strong arms caught her waist, and the sharp scent of cedarwood and whiskey hit her like a freight train.
"You came back," Jackson whispered, his eyes burning as he stared at the woman who had treated him like a cheap gigolo.
8.0
Abigayle was the proud heir to the Pena Group, living a perfect life and engaged to Jeffery Sullivan.
But the morning after a charity gala, she woke up drugged in a hotel room, blinded by paparazzi cameras. Her fiancé and her best friend stood at the foot of the bed, throwing a forged pregnancy report at her face to publicly frame her for cheating.
The betrayal was only the beginning of the slaughter. Before she could even clear her name, the Sullivan family ruthlessly bankrupted her family's company overnight. Her father was rushed to the ICU with a heart attack, her brother was run off the road into a coma, and violent repo men raided her penthouse. Just as she was thrown out into the freezing rain, Jeffery's terrifying uncle, Donovan Sullivan—the very mastermind who engineered her family's ruin—stepped in. He offered to cover the life-saving medical bills, but only if she agreed to become his personal plaything.
Abigayle's blood turned to ice. She couldn't understand how the people she trusted most could plot such a vicious, coordinated destruction just to break an engagement. How dared the man who destroyed her entire family stand there playing the savior, trying to buy her body with her own stolen wealth?
Facing a $100,000 hospital deadline and abandoned by everyone she knew, she didn't shed another tear.
"I will never beg him."
Clutching her last diamond bracelet, she hailed a cab straight to the biggest pawnshop in the Diamond District. The Sullivans thought they had buried her, but her counterattack was just beginning.
9.3
Chandler was the secret wife of Avery Osborn, a powerful media heir who kept their marriage hidden to avoid the scandal of her illegitimate birth.
After catching him openly flirting with a rival at a gala, Avery mocked her low status and told her she was nothing without his money.
Instead of crying, Chandler immediately signed a zero-payout divorce agreement, left her wedding ring on his glass table, and walked out.
To numb the pain of her shattered life, she went to a notorious underground club.
Drugged by a bartender, she lost her mind and ended up having a wild night with a handsome stranger she mistook for a high-end male escort.
Panicking the next morning, Chandler transferred her entire life savings of $50,000 to the man to buy his silence, then fled to her corporate job.
But at the afternoon executive meeting, her blood ran cold.
The man she had paid off was standing at the head of the boardroom table. He wasn't a gigolo. He was Brennan George, the ruthless new COO of her company.
Cornering her in the women's restroom, Brennan held up a printed copy of her $50,000 wire transfer.
"Wiring a massive sum of cash to your direct superior after a night together is classified as commercial bribery and solicitation," he whispered dangerously.
Chandler was terrified, realizing she had handed him the exact evidence needed to destroy her career and sue her into bankruptcy.
"Marry me," Brennan demanded coldly. "It's the only way to make this HR problem disappear."
7.9
Justice was dragged back from the slums by her biological father, only to be sold off to the billionaire Aguirre family. Her purpose was simple: marry their comatose heir to secure a three-hundred-million-dollar lifeline for his company.
Her stepmother and stepsister sneered at her cheap canvas shoes, treating her like a contagious disease.
"A high school dropout from the slums marrying a billionaire? It's a miracle your trashy bloodline is getting anywhere near the estate," her stepsister Emery mocked.
At the sprawling estate, the "comatose" heir, Auguste, was secretly conscious. Disgusted by his new bride, he orchestrated her enrollment at an elite prep school, hoping the ruthless rich kids would break her. On her very first day, Emery ambushed her, loudly broadcasting Justice's "dropout" status to the entire classroom and turning her into an instant social pariah. The teachers tried to humiliate her with impossible calculus, and the students treated her like garbage.
They all thought she was just a pathetic, uneducated pawn they could easily crush and discard. They had no idea that her "dropout" file was a manufactured ghost, or that the Aguirre family's top intelligence network had just hit a military-grade firewall trying to look into her past.
Justice didn't panic. She flawlessly solved the university-level equation on the board, then walked into the cafeteria and looked right at Emery.
"She has no Barnes blood. She is a squatter living in my father's house."
With three casual sentences, Justice completely incinerated her stepsister's elite life. The billionaire heir wanted to play games? She was about to show them all what a real monster looked like.
7.6
I am the illegitimate, mute daughter of the wealthy Owen family, kept hidden in the attic like a shameful secret.
To save his failing company, my father decided to sell me off to a repulsive, predatory investor named Grossman.
At the family dinner, Grossman's sweaty hands roamed my bare legs while my half-sister Kaleigh intentionally spilled red wine on my dress, laughing as she watched me suffer.
When I grabbed a steak knife to defend myself, my father slammed his fist on the table.
"Sit down, or I will cut off the maintenance payments for your mother's grave."
My stepmother and sister sneered, treating me like a piece of meat meant to be sacrificed for their luxury. I was starved, locked away, and treated worse than a stray dog, all while my family paraded their high-society status to the world.
I couldn't understand why they hated me so deeply, or who really ordered the hit that killed my mother twenty years ago. The police reports were buried, and I was entirely powerless, trapped in a house of monsters.
But they didn't know that the night before, I had accidentally stumbled into the secret life of Burleigh Livingston—the ruthless, supposedly paralyzed billionaire who was faking his madness.
When Burleigh suddenly crashed our family dinner and threw a limitless Black Card on the table to outbid Grossman and buy me for the night, I didn't hesitate.
I grabbed the handles of his wheelchair, accepted his twisted deal, and prepared to use the devil himself to tear my family apart.
8.6
To save my father's failing workshop from ruthless loan sharks, I sold one year of my life.
I signed a fake marriage contract with Cameron Fox, an icy billionaire who needed a wife to pacify his sick grandmother. The rules were strict: it was purely a commercial transaction, with absolutely no physical contact and no emotional attachments.
Soon after, that cold hearted man seemed different to me. Wait, is he pursuing me?