Ariel Bruckman
15 Published Stories
Ariel Bruckman's Books and Stories
Flash Marriage To The Secret Chairman
Romance To escape my toxic ex-fiancé and the father who froze my assets, I entered a contract marriage with Barrett, a cold but protective corporate consultant.
I thought he was my safe harbor. I even confided my secret, ruthless strategy to take back control of my company from my ex.
But at the most critical board meeting, a mysterious new chairman dialed in.
The synthesized voice coming through the speakerphone systematically dismantled the board and took over the company, using the exact, word-for-word strategy I had only ever whispered to my husband in the dead of night.
My ex-fiancé turned pale with panic. The board members were stunned into silence.
And I sat there, my blood running completely cold.
The man who had held my hand in the hospital, who had slept in my bed, and who had promised to protect me, had just committed the ultimate corporate espionage.
Every tender touch, every late-night confession—was it all just a calculated move to steal my life's work? How could the only person who made me feel safe use my deepest vulnerabilities to orchestrate my ruin?
I packed up my files, walked straight out of that boardroom, and prepared to disappear from his life forever.
But when I fled to my best friend's apartment to hide, I looked out the window.
The ruthless mastermind who had just stolen my empire was standing completely still in the freezing downpour, waiting for me to come down. The Billionaire's Invisible Secret Wife
Romance For eighteen months, Seraphina had been the secret, invisible wife of Julian Montgomery, New York's most ruthless billionaire.
But her quiet devotion shattered the day a viral photo plastered the internet, showing Julian on an intimate date with his socialite ex-girlfriend.
While the world celebrated the "perfect couple," Seraphina was trapped in a cubicle at his own company.
Her jealous manager framed her for an invasive PR proposal right in front of Julian, pointing a finger directly at her.
"It was Seraphina! She's always trying to pull some flashy stunt to get noticed!"
Julian didn't say a single word to defend his wife.
He just looked at her with cold disdain, silently allowing her to be publicly humiliated and punished with a night of grueling labor.
And when a childhood friend simply gave her a ride home to comfort her, Julian saw them from his Maybach, his eyes turning to ice as he plotted to punish her for breaking his rules.
Seraphina felt a suffocating, bitter despair.
Why was he allowed to parade his ex around the city, while she was condemned as a manipulative schemer for just smiling at a friend?
She had endured this freezing, loveless marriage just to be near the man who had once saved her life.
Staring at the digital proof she had secretly recovered to destroy her lying manager, Seraphina finally wiped her tears.
She was done being the pathetic, obedient ghost in his shadow; it was time to tear down his rules and take her life back. Undercover Heiress: The Ruthless CEO's Trap
Modern Eleonore was the secret apprentice of a master jeweler and the hidden heir to the Pierce family legacy.
She spent two years in brutal training, hiding her immense talent from the world.
But just as she was ready to step out of the shadows, her grandfather's final masterpiece—the lost symbol of her family—surfaced at an auction.
Before she could even place a bid, it was bought in a private sale by Keaton Kaufman, the ruthless CEO of the Carlyle Group and her mentor's greatest enemy.
Eleonore desperately tried to buy it back, offering double the price through powerful connections.
Keaton coldly refused all offers.
Instead, he went on live television and announced that the priceless Pierce family artifact would be used as a mere corporate carrot.
"This piece will be the grand prize for our internal design competition," Keaton declared to the cameras.
Eleonore's fingernails dug into her palms until they bled.
He didn't care about the craftsmanship or her family's history; he was just using her grandfather's legacy as a pawn to stress-test his own employees.
The wall between her and her family's heirloom was made of billions of dollars, and she had no way to break it down from the outside.
So, she made a reckless decision.
She deleted her elite background, stripped away her protective armor, and created a fake resume as a desperate, entry-level nobody.
She clicked send on her job application to the Carlyle Group.
If she couldn't buy her family's legacy back, she was going to infiltrate his empire and win it back herself. Escaping The Billionaire's Deadly Surrogate Trap
Modern Blaire woke up in a Manhattan penthouse, her body covered in bruises and her innocence stolen.
Before she could process the terror, her adoptive sister Danita burst in, acting heartbroken and accusing Blaire of shamelessly seducing the powerful Kamryn Lane. Kamryn threw a one-million-dollar check at Blaire's bleeding face, calling her a calculating gold digger.
That night, Blaire overheard a conversation in the family study that shattered her entire reality.
"Once she gives birth to the Lane family's seed, we'll stage an accident, drain her blood, and transplant her healthy heart into your chest."
Her adoptive mother and Danita were celebrating the success of their trap. She wasn't an adopted daughter; she was a living organ bank and a disposable surrogate. Even her adoptive brother, Calhoun, knew everything, trapping her in the dark hallways with a sick, possessive obsession to ensure she never escaped.
The horrific truth suffocated her. The family that had taken her in had raised her like livestock for slaughter. How could they smile at her every day while planning to carve out her heart?
Terrified but burning with a desperate will to survive, Blaire swallowed a Plan B pill to ruin their surrogate plot and fled the estate. To get the money and power she needed to crush her adoptive family, she pulled out Kamryn Lane's business card. This time, she would make a deal with the devil. The Defective Wife's Lethal Comeback
Fantasy Jolie transmigrated into a high-tech universe ruled by beast-shifting Primals, only to wake up in the body of a "defective" female. With a Genetic Compatibility Index of zero, she was publicly discarded by her mandated military partner.
Before she could even adapt, her stepmother drugged her with an illegal aphrodisiac and locked her in a pitch-black suite with that same ex-fiancé-now a feral, maddened beast. The family wanted her torn apart to permanently erase their embarrassment.
But instead of dying, Jolie awakened a rare plant-manipulation power. She bound the raging General, drained his energy, robbed him blind, and fled to a remote farming planet. Just as she thought she was free, the Commonwealth system flashed a new mandate. They assigned her a new husband: Keanu Robertson, a psychotic assassin who had murdered his last three wives.
The system wasn't giving her a partner; it was handing her a death warrant. Keanu despised females, especially a "useless" zero-GCI burden. He tracked her forged alias across the galaxy, descending upon her barren farm in the dead of night with pure murderous intent. How could a discarded, defective girl survive the most feared apex predator in the Shadow Sector?
But as the legendary assassin stepped onto her property to finish the job, a mutated, neurotoxic vine whipped out and completely paralyzed him. Watching the massive killer crash face-first into the dirt, Jolie lowered her rifle and smiled.
"Welcome home, husband." Flash Marriage To The Coldhearted Billionaire Uncle
Romance My mother was dying and desperately needed a half-million-dollar deposit for an experimental heart surgery by tomorrow.
I swallowed my pride and begged my wealthy husband, Garrick, to save her life.
Instead of helping, he laughed coldly and threw a thick stack of divorce papers right in my face.
"A hen that can't lay eggs gets slaughtered," he sneered, ruthlessly poking my flat stomach.
He revealed that his secretary, my supposed friend Lacey, was already pregnant with his heir.
To him, our three years of marriage was just a business transaction, and now that my family was bankrupt, I was nothing but damaged goods.
He flicked a humiliating five-thousand-dollar check at me as his final act of charity, then locked me out of our townhouse into the freezing, pouring rain.
I had spent years enduring agonizing hormone treatments for a fertility issue that wasn't even my fault, only to be discarded like trash when I needed him the most.
Was my dignity, my absolute devotion, and my mother's life really worth nothing to him?
Driven by pure, reckless desperation, I threw myself directly into the path of a moving Rolls-Royce Phantom on Fifth Avenue.
It belonged to Holden Tillman, the ruthless patriarch of the Tillman empire—and the uncle Garrick lived in absolute terror of.
I thought I was walking into my death, but instead, I became his fiancée, ready to make Garrick and Lacey pay for every tear I shed. The Girl He Called Practice
Modern I turned down a full scholarship to Stanford to follow my boyfriend of ten years to Columbia.
I thought my sacrifice was an act of love, until I heard him laughing with his best friend in the kitchen.
He was speaking French, confident that his "simple" girlfriend couldn't understand a word.
"Elle était juste une pratique," he sneered. "She was just practice. A training session. That' s all."
My blood ran cold.
He went on to explain that I was just a "safety net" to keep his bed warm while he pursued his real target, a famous model named Bella.
He claimed I was pathetic, loyal, and would never leave him.
The irony?
I had spent years secretly mastering French to impress his grandmother.
I understood every single insult.
I didn't confront him.
I didn't make a scene.
I simply walked into the bedroom, withdrew my application from Columbia, and accepted the offer from Stanford.
By the time he realized his "safety net" was gone, I was already across the country, and he was blocked on everything. Wired For His Betrayal
Sci-fi The cold silver wires felt like ice against my skin, a stark contrast to the familiar warmth of my lab.
Three years of my life, three years of marriage, were supposed to lead to our shared triumph, not this.
Not me strapped to a chair in our penthouse, the neural interface humming ominously as it pressed against my temple.
This was Mark' s project, but it was my creation.
The MindSync algorithm was my soul, coded into existence.
I, Ava Green, a software engineer who believed in technology that could connect people, had designed it to personalize user experience on a level never seen before.
I gave it to my husband, Mark, the brilliant tech CEO I loved, the man I thought loved me.
He re-engineered MindSync to extract a user\'s deepest desires, their most private emotional data, turning human feeling into a commodity he could monetize for unparalleled market control.
And I never knew.
"Ava, Sophia\'s condition is agonizing," he said, his voice flat. "Only your personalized MindSync can truly help her. Your emotional core is the key."
He didn\'t look at my tears.
He watched the monitor, tracking the progress of the extraction.
The machine whirred to life, and a piercing pain shot through my skull.
It felt like my thoughts were being ripped out one by one, my memories shredded, my feelings siphoned away into the humming device.
Tears streamed down my face.
"Mark, why?" I begged, my voice cracking.
He looked at me like I was a piece of hardware.
When it was over, he detached the wires.
I slumped in the chair, a hollowed-out shell.
The vibrant world of emotions I once lived in was gone, replaced by a gray, empty void.
He handled the glowing data chip with more care than he had ever shown me.
I became a shadow, following him from a distance, a desperate attempt to stay connected to the last piece of myself.
Without the MindSync core, my cognitive functions were degrading.
My mind would fray, my thoughts would unravel, and soon I would be a vegetable.
Mark never offered to help.
"You\'re not human, how could you possibly understand her pain?" he said, his voice sharp.
Three years of marriage, and in his eyes, I was just a tool.
I managed to get inside the building, my movements stiff and uncoordinated.
I found them in the lobby.
Sophia, seeing me, feigned surprise and shrank into Mark\'s arms.
"Can I have my MindSync back?" I asked, my voice thin.
"That\'s just a shell now, it' s useless to you," he said dismissively. "It' s for the greater good."
My last hope, my only chance.
My decision was made.
I would take back what was mine. The Day I Became Free
Young Adult Thanksgiving was supposed to be a day of gratitude and family. I' d worked double shifts, saved every penny to buy my mom, Maria, a warm winter coat. I even clung to a fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, today would be different, that she'd finally see my efforts.
But my brother, Caleb, saw a massive banner for a 'Gratitude Exchange' TV show, offering a new PSX-Pro console. Maria didn't hesitate. She looked at me, then at the gaming system, and declared, "Why spend money when you have all that gratitude? It's not like it does anyone any good." My heart shattered as she forced me to sign a contract, agreeing to trade "my gratitude for her" for a video game.
On live television, they hooked us up to a memory scanner. Maria and Caleb twisted my past, painting me as an ungrateful, destructive monster to the whole country. They exposed selective, ugly moments, cheering as the 'Approve Trade' vote soared, while I stood there, voiceless, watching my own mother publicly erase me.
How could she? How could my own mother weaponize my memories against me, fabricating a monstrous version of her daughter for a new gaming console? Was my entire existence, my endless sacrifices, truly worth less than a toy?
But then, it was my turn. As my memories flashed across the screen, the real story unfolded: my sacrifices, their manipulations, their true cruelty revealed to the world. And as the public' s outrage turned the vote decisively in my favor, I knew exactly what I had to do. This wasn't just about a console; it was about freedom. The Heiress He Threw Away
Romance For five years, I poured my life, my talent, and my unpaid labor into building Ryan Blakely' s dream. I was his graphic designer, his strategist, his every support, believing our shared struggle would culminate in a shared future.
Then, live on a pixelated stream, bathed in the glow of his multi-million dollar success, he smiled, that brilliant, camera-ready smile. "I'd like to announce my engagement to the brilliant and beautiful Stella Lawrence."
The name hit me like a physical blow. But he wasn't done. He then publicly dismissed me as a "clout-chasing groupie," "good for the struggle, but not for the high life."
My world went silent. After everything, he called me trash, then marked me one last time before discarding me with a morning-after pill. The next day, his new fiancée, Stella, called me a "charity case." When I dared speak back, Ryan stormed over, slapped me, and then abandoned me as thugs, hired by Stella, stabbed me in an alley.
How could the man I loved, the man I gave everything to, not only humiliate and betray me, but physically harm me and leave me to die? Was our entire five years a lie, or was there something more sinister at play?
Just as I lost all hope, a powerful hand shoved Ryan aside. My protector, Andrew Scott, stood over me, instantly revealing my true identity: Gabrielle Fuller, heiress to a tech empire. Now, it was time for Ryan to face the real world he had so carelessly discarded. He Shattered Her Love, She Forged An Empire
Romance Ava Thompson, a Manhattan heiress, was poised for a pragmatic marriage to Ethan Sterling, uniting two powerful dynasties.
She'd always overlooked his indiscretions, prioritizing their monumental merger.
But after discovering his mistress, Lindsey, was pregnant, Ethan' s true nature surfaced.
In a private suite, he chillingly pressed a glass shard to Ava' s stomach, demanding she accept his illegitimate child as her own.
Shaken, Ava endured further degradation: Lindsey flaunting herself in Ava' s penthouse, her childhood mementos "donated," and overhearing Ethan dismiss her as an "unexciting business arrangement."
He then had Ava physically removed from her own home.
The man she' d known forever reduced her to a transaction, violently threatening her, stripping her of dignity.
The bruise on her temple was nothing compared to the cold, shattering truth: every ounce of love she felt for him was annihilated.
No longer clinging to a broken past, Ava instantly pivoted.
She called Noah Vanderbilt, her tech billionaire rival, for a ruthless new business proposal and a strategic, lightning-fast wedding.
On the day of her ex-fiancé's dramatic plea, Ava walked down the aisle to a man who truly respected her, leaving Ethan with agonizing, self-inflicted loss. Her Sister's Shadow, His Family's Downfall
Mafia For seven long years, I built my life in Las Vegas, brick by careful brick.
I was Ava, Marcus Thorne' s shadow, his loyal dog-cold, calculating, and feared.
But it was all a lie.
My true name burned deep inside: avenger.
My half-sister, Sarah, loved Marcus.
His family-wicked and powerful-took her.
A whispered ritual. A sacrifice.
Sarah, my sole childhood kindness, was brutally stolen.
I endured Marcus' s cruelties, cleaned his messes, and fought his women, all while he saw only Sarah' s ghost in my reflection.
I even staged public meltdowns and self-harm, meticulously crafting a dangerously obsessed image, solidifying my crazed devotion.
Why Sarah?
Why my kind sister for their unspeakable rituals?
The Thornes' dark whispers forged my grief into a precise, cold fire of revenge.
Her profound injustice and their unshakeable power fueled my every move.
I became pure darkness, plotting patient destruction.
I would burn their entire world down, as they burned mine.
Marcus Thorne, seeing his dead love in my eyes, would unwittingly light the match.
He just didn' t know it yet.
Seven years was a long wait.
For Sarah, I had eternity.
My trap is set, and they are already marching into the flames. The Day I Sold My Husband
Romance My husband, Captain Mark Olsen, just returned from deployment, his uniform sharp, his smile fake.
I looked at him and said, flatly, “We need to separate.”
It was the only way to escape the nightmare that haunted me.
My five-year-old son, Leo, dead.
Because of Mark.
Because of his sister-in-law, Jessica.
That future, that premonition, could not happen.
Mark poured all our money into Jessica’s lavish spending, while our own son, Leo, wore hand-me-downs.
He'd promise Leo the world, then cancel for Jessica’s 'emergencies.'
The final straw: Leo burnt with fever, but Mark raced off to tend to Jessica’s perfectly healthy daughter.
My son lay dying, just like in the terrifying vision, while Mark, a military hero to others, coldly dismissed my screams.
How could a father abandon his own flesh and blood for a woman who manipulated his every move?
The injustice, the rage, burned a hole inside me.
But then, Jessica, emboldened, asked Mark to father *her* next child.
She wasn't just taking my husband's money; she wanted his legacy.
I saw my opportunity, a twisted, desperate path to freedom.
I wouldn't just leave.
I would sell him.
For a cold, hard sum, I would hand over my husband, giving Jessica what she desired and freeing myself and Leo forever.
This was my vow.
My future, and my son's, depended on it. You might like
Shielded By The Ruthless Military Boss
Mo Yufei I was an intern nurse working exhausting shifts, yet my mother constantly forced me into blind dates with wealthy, arrogant men to secure our family's social standing.
During a terrifying hospital lockdown, an assassin disguised as a doctor held a scalpel to my throat. I was almost killed, but a high-ranking military colonel threw his own body down a flight of concrete stairs to shield me.
I survived with cuts and bruises, but when I went home, my mother didn't care about my near-death experience. She was only furious that I had rushed out on my blind date with Preston, a rich financial analyst.
She forced me to meet him to apologize. When Preston grabbed my arm, bruised me, and mocked my attack as a pathetic lie, my mother still took his side.
"Men get angry," she told me coldly. "It's your job not to provoke them. You will beg for his forgiveness, or you are no longer welcome in this house."
I had narrowly escaped an assassin, yet my own family was willing to feed me to a monster just for a fat paycheck and neighborhood gossip.
My heart went completely dead.
So, when the intimidating Colonel appeared, offering me maximum military protection through a sudden marriage, I didn't hesitate.
I walked back into my parents' house and calmly slapped a crisp marriage certificate onto the coffee table.
"I won't be apologizing to Preston. I got married today." Flash Marriage To My Best Friend's Father
Madel Cerda I was once the heiress to the Solomon empire, but after it crumbled, I became the "charity case" ward of the wealthy Hyde family. For years, I lived in their shadows, clinging to the promise that Anson Hyde would always be my protector.
That promise shattered when Anson walked into the ballroom with Claudine Chapman on his arm. Claudine was the girl who had spent years making my life a living hell, and now Anson was announcing their engagement to the world.
The humiliation was instant. Guests sneered at my cheap dress, and a waiter intentionally sloshed champagne over me, knowing I was a nobody. Anson didn't even look my way; he was too busy whispering possessively to his new fiancée. I was a ghost in my own home, watching my protector celebrate with my tormentor.
The betrayal burned. I realized I wasn't a ward; I was a pawn Anson had kept on a shelf until he found a better trade. I had no money, no allies, and a legal trust fund that Anson controlled with a flick of his wrist.
Fleeing to the library, I stumbled into Dallas Koch-a titan of industry and my best friend's father. He was a wall of cold, absolute power that even the Hydes feared.
"Marry me," I blurted out, desperate to find a shield Anson couldn't climb.
Dallas didn't laugh. He pulled out a marriage agreement and a heavy fountain pen.
"Sign," he commanded, his voice a low rumble. "But if you walk out that door with me, you never go back."
I signed my name, trading my life for the only man dangerous enough to keep me safe. While I Was Bleeding Out, He Lit Lanterns For Her
Katie Oettgen As I lay on the floor of our manor, bleeding out from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, I used my last ounce of strength to call my husband, Cole.
I begged him for help, my vision blurring.
But the only thing I heard was the clinking of champagne glasses and his mistress's giggle in the background.
"Stop the drama, June," Cole snapped, his voice cold. "We're about to go on stage. Don't call again."
He hung up, leaving me to die alone on the Persian rug while he accepted an award with another woman on his arm.
I woke up in the hospital days later. My baby was gone. They had removed my fallopian tube.
Cole finally arrived, smelling of expensive scotch and his mistress's perfume. He didn't hug me. He didn't cry.
Instead, he leaned over my hospital bed, pressing his knee into the mattress until my fresh stitches tore open and bled.
"You embarrassed me by calling an ambulance," he hissed. "My mistress, Alycia, says you're faking it. Clean yourself up."
He left me bleeding again to go announce a $10 million donation to Alycia's "groundbreaking" medical research.
I stared at the TV screen, numb. The research Alycia was taking credit for? It was mine. I wrote that patent years ago under a pseudonym.
They thought I was just a poor, orphan housewife who needed Cole's money to survive.
They had no idea I was actually a billionaire scientist hiding my identity.
I pulled the IV needle out of my arm. A drop of blood fell onto the divorce papers I had been hiding.
I didn't wipe it off. I signed my name right over it.
Then I walked into the bank, reactivated my dormant account with $128 million, and bought the penthouse directly overlooking Cole's house.
The mourning widow is dead. The avenger is born. Too Late, Mr. CEO: Watch Me Shine
Nieves Gómez Kayla stood outside the CEO suite, holding a custom suit for her fiancé, Brennon. They had spent seven years building a tech company from a freezing garage into a billion-dollar empire.
But through the cracked door, she heard the breathy laugh of Evelin, the newly hired director. Then came Brennon's low, careless voice.
"The wedding's a PR milestone for the IPO, nothing more."
Kayla's blood turned to ice.
"She's comfortable. Makes sense on paper," Brennon continued. "But you, Evelin. You understand ambition."
The betrayal hit her like a physical blow. She had written the core code that made him a billionaire. She had stayed up until 4 AM debugging while he slept on a futon. Now, he was mocking their relationship to his mistress and handing over her life's work to a woman who couldn't even read a data log.
Seven years of loyalty, reduced to a PR stunt. She didn't cry. Instead, a cold, violent clarity washed over her. Why should she let him keep the crown she forged?
Without a word, she pulled the three-carat diamond off her finger and dropped it into her bag. She walked out of the building, drafted her resignation, and accepted a VP position at his biggest Wall Street rival. It was time to show Brennon what happened when the real genius behind his empire decided to tear it down. One Night With My Billionaire Boss
Nathaniel Stone I woke up on silk sheets that smelled of expensive cedar and cold sandalwood, a world away from my cramped apartment in Brooklyn.
Beside me lay Ezra Gardner-my boss, the billionaire CEO of Gardner Holdings, and the man who could end my career with a snap of his fingers.
He didn't offer an apology for the night before; instead, he looked at me with terrifying clarity and proposed a cold, calculated business arrangement.
"Marriage. It stabilizes the board and solves the PR crisis before it begins."
He dressed me in archival Chanel and sent me home in his Maybach, but my life was already falling apart. My boyfriend, Irving, claimed he had passed out early, yet his location data placed him at my best friend's apartment until three in the morning. When I tried to run, I realized Ezra was already ten steps ahead, tracking my movements and uncovering the secret I'd spent twenty years hiding: my connection to the powerful Senator Grimes.
I was trapped between a CEO who treated me like a line item on a quarterly report and a boyfriend who had been using me while sleeping with my closest friend. I felt like a pawn in a game I didn't understand, wondering why a man like Ezra would walk up forty flights of stairs on a broken leg just to make sure I was safe.
"Showtime, Mrs. Gardner."
Standing on the red carpet in a gown that cost more than my life, I watched my cheating ex-boyfriend's face turn pale as Ezra claimed me in front of the world. I wasn't just an assistant anymore; I was a weapon, and it was time to burn their world down. Pampered By The Cold Mind Reading Tycoon
Hen Bu I woke up from a coma in the hospital, universally condemned as the vicious daughter who pushed the beloved fake heiress, Georgina, down the stairs.
My ruthless billionaire brother, Angelo, stood over my bed with cold eyes, ready to destroy me for hurting his precious sister.
But as I looked at him, a terrifying prophecy from my coma flooded my brain. Our entire family was doomed.
In the original timeline, Georgina would team up with corporate rivals to bankrupt the company, frame Angelo, and send him to federal prison, while our parents would abandon me to die miserably.
Lying there, I didn't dare speak. I just desperately cursed my idiot brother in my head.
"This stupid brother is still yelling at me for that fake heiress. He doesn't even know he's going to be framed and sent to prison next month!"
I just wanted to stay quiet, let them ruin themselves, and run away from this toxic family.
But strangely, Angelo didn't strangle me. Instead, his attitude took a shocking turn.
He abruptly fired the driver plotting to kill him, destroyed the abusive fiancé of a family ally, and publicly humiliated Georgina at a high-society gala.
He even shielded me from our abusive parents, declaring to the world that I was the only sister he would ever protect.
I was completely terrified and confused. Why was the tyrant brother suddenly acting like a protective beast?
It wasn't until he flawlessly crushed a massive corporate attack using the exact financial secrets I had just complained about in my mind that a horrifying realization hit me.
He could hear my inner thoughts! Too Late: The Masked Heiress Returns
Annabell Seto Chloe Beaumont's adopted sister, Victoria, handed her a glass of champagne with a sweet smile right before the violent car crash.
Victoria and Chloe's fiancé, Asher, left her in the freezing rain with broken ribs and a dislocated arm, certain she would die.
When Chloe dragged her bleeding, mud-caked body back to the estate three days later, her family didn't offer a shred of comfort.
Instead, Victoria squeezed out fake tears, claiming Chloe had gone insane.
"Mother! Chloe came back and started saying these crazy things, and then she attacked me!"
Her stepmother slapped her, her brothers called her a disgrace, and her father coldly watched as they accused Chloe of faking her horrific wounds for attention.
They even conspired to marry her off to a dying, reclusive heir just to clear the path for Victoria's grand engagement.
Looking at their disgusted faces, Chloe's usually warm eyes turned to ice.
She finally understood that her own family never cared if she lived or died; they only wanted her out of the way.
But she wasn't the weak, naive girl they thought they had broken.
Using her hidden skills, Chloe meticulously painted a grotesque, permanent-looking burn scar across her cheek.
She picked the lock of her bedroom door and headed straight for Victoria and Asher's lavish engagement party.
If they wanted to treat her like a ruined monster, she would use that mask to tear their perfect, glittering world to shreds. Bought The Billionaire For One Night
Cait A week before my wedding, I went to the airport parking garage to surprise my fiancé with a luxury watch.
Instead, I caught him having sex in his car with my best friend and maid of honor.
Devastated and desperate to forget, I went to an exclusive club and blew my $50,000 trust fund to buy a one-night stand with a gorgeous stranger.
But the nightmare was just beginning.
At work, my cheating best friend stole my hard-earned promotion, and my ex shamelessly defended her.
Worse, the escort I had paid for sex turned out to be the ruthless new CEO of my airline.
He tormented me on a flight to Paris. When I was robbed of my passport and wallet on the freezing streets, he forced me to be his gala date just to get my life back.
But the ultimate trap was waiting for me in New York.
A secretly taken photo of me leaving the CEO's penthouse leaked on the company forum.
"I knew she got that Paris trip for a reason."
My ex and my former best friend led the charge in the comments, framing me as a shameless gold digger who slept her way to the top.
I was stripped of my flying credentials, suspended from the job I loved, and publicly humiliated.
I didn't understand why the CEO was playing these cruel games, or who had orchestrated this perfect trap to ruin my life.
Standing outside the airport with my career in ashes, I realized crying wouldn't save me.
I wiped my tears, accepted my mother's invitation to a high-society mixer, and prepared to make everyone who set me up pay the price. 
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