Jilted Heiress: Seducing My Fiancé's Ruthless Uncle

“I stood in the center of the Pierre Hotel's grand ballroom, a mute, smiling doll in a Dior dress. My job was to signal stability to investors while my fiancé, Clive Fitzpatrick, looked for any excuse to ignore me. The night of our engagement, the world turned into a different kind of hell. I watched Clive disappear onto the terrace with another woman, his hand possessively on her waist. Distraught and drunk, I stumbled into a dark penthouse suite seeking sanctuary. I woke up the next morning to a gravelly voice and the smell of expensive tobacco. I hadn't slept with my fiancé; I had accidentally spent the night with his uncle, Bruno Fitzpatrick-the man Wall Street called the "executioner." The humiliation was only the beginning. Clive didn't just cheat; he admitted he was only marrying me to steal my family's voting rights so I could "rot" in an apartment while he lived with his mistress. When I tried to protest, my adoptive mother, Claudia, dragged me into a private room and whipped me with a riding crop to remind me of my place. She held up a video of my frail, sick sister, Lucia, making it clear that my total obedience was the only thing keeping Lucia alive. I was a business asset to be traded, used, and beaten into submission. I couldn't understand why everyone I was supposed to trust was so eager to destroy me. Was I really just a mannequin to be discarded once the merger papers were signed? The marks on my back burned, but the ice in my veins was colder. I was done being the victim of a mediocre man and a heartless mother. Then Bruno offered me a way out. At the family dinner, right in front of my cheating fiancé, he proposed a lethal bet: if I could raise the company's stock by ten percent in thirty days, he would give me his board veto-the ultimate power to crush Clive and Claudia forever. If I failed, I would owe him any favor he asked. I looked at the man who had ruined me and the man who wanted to own me, and I realized I had nothing left to lose. I wasn't going to be a doll anymore; I was going to be the one who burned the house down.”