The Disgraced Heiress's Deal With The Devil

“I was working a catering gig under a fake name at the Pierre Hotel, desperately trying to stay invisible after my father's high-profile financial fraud ruined our lives. Everything shattered when Silas Thorne handed me a glass of drugged champagne and cornered me in a locked restroom, his slurred voice demanding I "thank him properly" as he kicked in the door. To escape a fate worse than death, I lunged across a hundred-meter drop onto the balcony of the city's most feared billionaire, Everet Adams. But the nightmare didn't end there. When I finally crawled back to my family's cramped apartment, my father wasn't relieved to see me alive; he was furious I had "ruined the deal." He held my mother's last gold locket over a flame, threatening to melt it unless I returned to Silas to finish what he started. My stepmother stood by, screaming that my body was the only currency we had left to pay the rent. I stared at the man who raised me, realizing he had orchestrated my assault just to secure bail money for my brother. To my own flesh and blood, I wasn't a daughter-I was a commodity, a piece of meat to be traded to the highest bidder. When Everet Adams tracked me down and offered me a way out, it came with a two-hundred-page marriage contract and a cold demand for an heir. I looked at the live feed of my brother being cornered in a prison yard and picked up the pen. "I'll sign," I told him, stepping out of my father's shadow and into a gilded cage. As the elevator doors opened to a wall of paparazzi cameras, I leaned into Everet's cold embrace. The world saw a fairy tale, but I knew the truth-I had just sold my soul to the only monster capable of protecting me from my own blood.”