The Unwanted Heiress: A Billion-Dollar Reckoning

The Unwanted Heiress: A Billion-Dollar Reckoning

Gavin

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The day of my SATs, my first step toward freedom, began with a slap. Our Texas ranch was a river of mud, and the testing center was twenty miles away. My father, a self-made oil tycoon, didn' t even look up as I begged for fifty dollars. "Fifty dollars? Do you think money grows on trees, Gabrielle?" he sneered. Then came the slap, hard and fast, echoing through our cavernous living room. "Lazy and entitled," he spat, stealing the seventeen dollars I' d painstakingly saved. He kicked me out into the storm, telling me not to return until I'd learned the value of a dollar. My brother, Andrew, stood by, his face a mask of indifference. My mother was upstairs, oblivious, probably admiring a new diamond. As I trudged through the mud, a news report on our giant billboard flashed. It showed my family smiling on a stage, celebrating a one-million-dollar donation to an arts program in honor of my adopted sister, Molly. Her achievement? A C+ in art. They had just slapped me and thrown me out for a fifty-dollar ride to the most important exam of my life. The image of their smiling faces burned into my mind, washing away the tears I didn' t even realize I was crying. Defeated, I reached the testing center, only to find the doors locked. I tore my soggy admission ticket into tiny pieces, letting the rain carry them away. Something inside me broke. Or maybe, it finally healed.

Introduction

The day of my SATs, my first step toward freedom, began with a slap.

Our Texas ranch was a river of mud, and the testing center was twenty miles away.

My father, a self-made oil tycoon, didn' t even look up as I begged for fifty dollars.

"Fifty dollars? Do you think money grows on trees, Gabrielle?" he sneered.

Then came the slap, hard and fast, echoing through our cavernous living room.

"Lazy and entitled," he spat, stealing the seventeen dollars I' d painstakingly saved.

He kicked me out into the storm, telling me not to return until I'd learned the value of a dollar.

My brother, Andrew, stood by, his face a mask of indifference.

My mother was upstairs, oblivious, probably admiring a new diamond.

As I trudged through the mud, a news report on our giant billboard flashed.

It showed my family smiling on a stage, celebrating a one-million-dollar donation to an arts program in honor of my adopted sister, Molly.

Her achievement? A C+ in art.

They had just slapped me and thrown me out for a fifty-dollar ride to the most important exam of my life.

The image of their smiling faces burned into my mind, washing away the tears I didn' t even realize I was crying.

Defeated, I reached the testing center, only to find the doors locked.

I tore my soggy admission ticket into tiny pieces, letting the rain carry them away.

Something inside me broke. Or maybe, it finally healed.

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Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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