Anya's Second Chance

The Mute Heiress's Fake Marriage Pact

I was finally brought back to the billionaire Vance estate after years in the grimy foster system, but the luxury Lincoln felt more like a funeral procession. My biological family didn't welcome me with open arms; they looked at me like a stain on a silk shirt. They thought I was a "defective" mute with cognitive delays, a spare part to be traded away. Within hours of my arrival, my father decided to sell me to Julian Thorne, a bitter, paralyzed heir, just to secure a corporate merger. My sister Tiffany treated me like trash, whispering for me to "go back to the gutter" before pouring red wine over my dress in front of Manhattan's elite. When a drunk cousin tried to lay hands on me at the engagement gala, my grandmother didn't protect me-she raised her silver-topped cane to strike my face for "embarrassing the family." They called me a sacrificial lamb, laughing as they signed the prenuptial agreement that stripped me of my freedom. They had no idea I was E-11, the underground hacker-artist the world was obsessed with, or that I had already breached their private servers. I found the hidden medical records-blood types A, A, and B-a biological impossibility that proved my "parents" were harboring a scandal that could ruin them. Why bring me back just to discard me again? And why was Julian Thorne, the man supposedly bound to a wheelchair, secretly running miles at dawn on his private estate? Standing in the middle of the ballroom, I didn't plead for mercy. I used a text-to-speech app to broadcast a cold, synthetic threat: "I have the records, Richard. Do you want me to explain genetics to the press, or should we leave quietly?" With the "paralyzed" billionaire as my unexpected accomplice, I walked out of the Vance house and into a much more dangerous game.

Too Late Mr. Sterling: You Lost Me

I was the perfect fiancée to Archer Sterling, a tech mogul who demanded I be as polished as his marble countertops. I gave up my art and my identity to fit his world, believing our upcoming wedding was the start of our forever. A mysterious text led me to a hidden folder in a calculator app on Archer’s phone. Inside were photos of him with his assistant, Mia, and texts calling me a "dead fish" and "manageable" collateral for his upcoming IPO. The humiliation peaked at my final bridal fitting. Archer ditched me for a hotel tryst with Mia, leaving me to overhear the salon staff mocking me as a "clueless gold digger." When I collapsed in the hallway, barefoot and broken, Archer didn't offer a hand. He only scolded me for "making a scene" and ordered me to be "supportive" of his busy schedule. The seven years I spent molding myself into his ideal woman were a lie. I wasn't his partner; I was a character in a play he wrote for his investors. My love had been met with calculated contempt, and my sacrifices were treated as his due. That night, I found Mia’s silk stockings shoved in my guest bathroom. The scent of her perfume in my home was the final breaking point. When Archer tried to touch me, my skin crawled with a physical rejection I couldn't mask. I locked the door, shredded the stockings, and called the one man Archer feared: Julian Van Der Bilt. "Does your offer for help include getting me out of here?" I asked. "Pack a bag," Julian’s voice rumbled through the dark. "I'll be there in twenty minutes. Don't let him see you leave."

The White Wolf He Rejected For A Mistress

I lay in the ICU, silver toxicity turning my blood to lead. A chandelier had sliced through my shoulder, poisoning me and the secret life growing inside my womb. The doctor was frantic, gripping the phone. "Alpha, the silver has reached her marrow. She needs a transfusion of your blood. It's the only way to save the Luna and the... the potential life." I waited for my husband, Blake, to rush to my side. Instead, his voice came through the speaker, cold and clinical. "Keep the reserves in storage, Doctor. Ariana is in shock from a scratch on her finger. She might need it if she faints. I cannot risk depleting my supply for Caroline." The room went silent. In that silence, my inner wolf gave one last shuddering gasp and died. She couldn't survive the rejection. And the tiny spark of life in my womb flickered out with her. He had stopped our child's heart to protect his mistress's panic attack. I didn't scream. I reached for the black leather notebook on my bedside table. My ledger. For five years, I had tracked every insult. Every time he chose Ariana over me. We started with 100 points. He walked through fire for her and left me to burn under the debris. -20. He gave the family heirloom to her to 'soothe' her. -15. He refused the blood. He killed our son. I wrote the final number. Total: 0. The debt was paid. The bond was bankrupt. I signed the divorce papers and vanished into the storm, leaving a dead son and a dead marriage behind. Two years later, I returned as the most powerful architect in the region, the rare White Wolf. Blake, now a ruined, disgraced man, knelt in the rain before me, begging. "I can fix it," he sobbed, clutching the hem of my dress. "I can earn the points back!" I looked down at him with cold, dead eyes. "The ledger is closed, Blake. You hit zero."

Just A Vessel: The Surrogate's Escape

I went to the bank to set up a trust fund for my twins, only to have the manager look at me with pity. "Mrs. Dunlap, the trust requires the *biological* mother's signature." I froze. I *was* their mother. Or so I thought. That day, I learned my husband, the most powerful Mafia Don on the coast, had used his ex-lover’s frozen eggs. For six years, I wasn't his wife. I was just the incubator. When his "true love," Iliana, returned from exile, my life disintegrated. My children, poisoned by her lies, pushed me down the stairs and called me "just the nanny." Gavyn didn't help me up. He stepped over my bleeding body to take his "real family" out for ice cream. But the ultimate betrayal happened on a windswept cliff. Staged by Iliana, we were both tied up, allegedly rigged to explode. Forced to choose who to save, Gavyn didn't hesitate. He cut Iliana loose. "You did this to yourself, Alex," he said, driving away with the children, leaving me to die. He thought he was leaving behind a corpse. He didn't know I had skimmed ten million dollars from the household accounts. "Cut me loose," I told the hitman, transferring the money. "And tell him the ocean took me." Two years later, the Don is on his knees in my garden, begging for a second chance. Too bad he has to get through my new fiancé first—the head of the rival cartel.

The Substitute Wife Escapes Her Gilded Cage

Everyone thought I was the pampered queen of Marcus D’Angelo, New York's most feared Don. But I was just a placeholder for the woman he couldn't have: his cousin, Izzy. The truth shattered everything at a family dinner. A waiter tripped, sending a tureen of scalding soup flying toward the table. Without a second of hesitation, Marcus threw himself over Izzy to shield her. He left me exposed. The boiling liquid seared my legs, but the real agony was watching him cradle her face, checking for scratches, while I screamed on the floor. "In my hierarchy of pain," he later told her, ignoring my burns, "her death is an inconvenience. A scratch on you is a tragedy." He didn't know that while he was comforting her over a bruise, I was in emergency surgery losing our unborn child. When I woke up, he didn't ask about me. He didn't ask about the baby he didn't know existed. instead, he asked if I would donate blood to help Izzy recover. That was the moment the old Liv died. I signed the divorce papers with a steady hand. And inside the envelope with the legal documents, I tucked a single, devastating medical report. *Diagnosis: Spontaneous Abortion. Cause: Trauma.* I left it on his desk and disappeared into the night. By the time he realizes he sacrificed his own heir to save his mistress, I will be a ghost he can never touch again.

The Negotiator's Cruelest Game

My husband, Harrison Phelps, was the FBI's golden boy, the hero negotiator who never lost his cool. To the world, we were the perfect couple. Then a bank robbery went wrong. The desperate kidnapper grabbed two women as human shields: me, and Harrison's colleague, Brooke. He gave my husband a choice: save one. Through the megaphone, my husband's voice boomed, clear and decisive for the whole world to hear. "Let Brooke Shelton go! She is a national asset!" He rushed to embrace her, shielding her with his body, never once looking back at me. The kidnapper, enraged, turned his gun on me. I saw the flash before the world went black. I woke up in the hospital and the first thing I did was call a lawyer. I wanted a divorce. But he returned from retrieving our marriage certificate with a strange look on his face. "There's a problem, Mrs. Phelps," he said, sliding the document across the table. "According to official records, this was never filed. Legally, you were never married." Six years. Our home, our friends, our life-all built on a lie. It was all for her. He built a perfect, fake life with me just so he could wait for Brooke to come back.

Burned By Him, Reborn A Star

The acrid smell of smoke still clung to Evelyn in the ambulance, her lungs raw from the penthouse fire. She was alive, but the world around her felt utterly destroyed, a feeling deepened by the small TV flickering to life. On it, her husband, Julian Vance, thousands of miles away, publicly comforted his mistress, Serena Holloway, shielding her from paparazzi after *her* "panic attack." Julian's phone went straight to voicemail. Alone in the hospital with second-degree burns, Evelyn watched news replays, her heart rate spiking. He protected Serena from camera flashes while Evelyn burned. When he finally called, he demanded she handle insurance, dismissing the fire; Serena's voice faintly heard. The shallow family ties and pretense of marriage evaporated. A searing injustice and cold anger replaced pain; Evelyn knew Julian had chosen to let her burn. "Evelyn Vance died in that fire," she declared, ripping out her IV. Armed with a secret fortune as "The Architect," Hollywood's top ghostwriter, she walked out. She would divorce Julian, reclaim her name, and finally step into the spotlight as an actress.

SCORNED EX WIFE : Queen Of Ashes

Camille Lewis was the forgotten daughter, the unloved wife, the woman discarded like yesterday's news. Betrayed by her husband, cast aside by her own family, and left for dead by the sister who stole everything, she vanished without a trace. But the weak, naive Camille died the night her car was forced off that bridge. A year later, she returns as Camille Kane, richer, colder, and more powerful than anyone could have imagined. Armed with wealth, intelligence, and a hunger for vengeance, she is no longer the woman they once trampled on. She is the storm that will tear their world apart. Her ex-husband begs for forgiveness. Her sister's perfect life crumbles. Her parents regret the daughter they cast aside. But Camille didn't come back for apologies, she came back to watch them burn. But as her enemies fall at her feet, one question remains: when the revenge is over, what's left? A mysterious trillionaire Alexander Pierce steps into her path, offering something she thought she lost forever, a future. But can a woman built on ashes learn to love again? She rose from the fire to destroy those who betrayed her. Now, she must decide if she'll rule alone... or let someone melt the ice in her heart.

The Sterling Scandal: Married To The Uncle

I was at my own engagement party at the Sterling estate when the world started tilting. Victoria Sterling, my future mother-in-law, smiled coldly as she watched me struggle with a cup of tea that had been drugged to ruin me. Before I could find my fiancé, Ryan, a waiter dragged me into the forbidden West Wing and locked me in a room with Julian Sterling, the family’s "fallen titan" who had been confined to a wheelchair for years. The door burst open to a frenzy of camera flashes and theatrical screams. Victoria framed me as a seductress caught in the act, and Ryan didn't even try to listen to my pleas, calling me "cheap leftovers" before walking away with his pregnant mistress. When I turned to my own family for help, my father signed a document severing our relationship for a five-million-dollar payout from Julian. They traded me like a commodity without a second thought. I didn't understand why my own parents were so eager to sell me, or how Ryan could look at me with such disgust after promising me forever. I was a sacrifice, a pawn used to protect the family's offshore accounts, and I couldn't fathom how every person I loved had a price tag for my destruction. With nowhere left to go, I married Julian in a bleak ceremony at City Hall. He slid a heavy diamond onto my finger and whispered, "We have a war to start." That night, inside his secret penthouse, I watched the paralyzed man stand up from his wheelchair and activate a screen filled with the Sterling family's darkest secrets. The execution had officially begun.

One Night With My Billionaire Boss

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.

The Queen Returns: Pampered By Her Three Powerhouse Brothers

After five years of playing the perfect daughter, Rylie was exposed as a stand-in. Her fiancé bolted, friends scattered, and her adoptive brothers shoved her out, telling her to grovel back to her real family. Done with humiliation, she swore to claw back what was hers. Shock followed: her birth family ruled the town's wealth. Overnight, she became their precious girl. The boardroom brother canceled meetings, the genius brother ditched his lab, the musician brother postponed a tour. As those who spurned her begged forgiveness, Admiral Brad Morgan calmly declared, "She's already taken."

I Slapped My Fiancé-Then Married His Billionaire Nemesis

Being second best is practically in my DNA. My sister got the love, the attention, the spotlight. And now, even her damn fiancé. Technically, Rhys Granger was my fiancé now-billionaire, devastatingly hot, and a walking Wall Street wet dream. My parents shoved me into the engagement after Catherine disappeared, and honestly? I didn't mind. I'd crushed on Rhys for years. This was my chance, right? My turn to be the chosen one? Wrong. One night, he slapped me. Over a mug. A stupid, chipped, ugly mug my sister gave him years ago. That's when it hit me-he didn't love me. He didn't even see me. I was just a warm-bodied placeholder for the woman he actually wanted. And apparently, I wasn't even worth as much as a glorified coffee cup. So I slapped him right back, dumped his ass, and prepared for disaster-my parents losing their minds, Rhys throwing a billionaire tantrum, his terrifying family plotting my untimely demise. Obviously, I needed alcohol. A lot of alcohol. Enter him. Tall, dangerous, unfairly hot. The kind of man who makes you want to sin just by existing. I'd met him only once before, and that night, he just happened to be at the same bar as my drunk, self-pitying self. So I did the only logical thing: I dragged him into a hotel room and ripped off his clothes. It was reckless. It was stupid. It was completely ill-advised. But it was also: Best. Sex. Of. My. Life. And, as it turned out, the best decision I'd ever made. Because my one-night stand isn't just some random guy. He's richer than Rhys, more powerful than my entire family, and definitely more dangerous than I should be playing with. And now, he's not letting me go.