Pike
15 Published Stories
Pike's Books and Stories
The Christening That Broke My World
Modern My husband was in the shower, the sound of water a familiar rhythm to our mornings. I was just placing a cup of coffee on his desk, a small ritual in our five years of what I thought was a perfect marriage.
Then, an email notification flashed on his laptop: "You're invited to the Christening of Leo Thomas." Our last name. The sender: Hayden Cleveland, a social media influencer.
An icy dread settled in. It was an invitation for his son, a son I didn't know existed. I went to the church, hidden in the shadows, and saw him holding a baby, a little boy with his dark hair and eyes. Hayden Cleveland, the mother, leaned on his shoulder, a picture of domestic bliss.
They looked like a family. A perfect, happy family. My world crumbled. I remembered him refusing to have a baby with me, citing work pressure. All his business trips, the late nights-were they spent with them?
The lie was so easy for him. How could I have been so blind?
I called the Zurich Architectural Fellowship, a prestigious program I had deferred for him. "I' d like to accept the fellowship," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I can leave immediately." After losing my memory, I divorced Don
Mafia I woke up to find that I had lost five years of my memory.
I was told that I had been married to Caspian, the ruthless Godfather of the New York Mafia, for five years.
I had harbored a crush on him for a long time, so marrying him should have been good news.
But the terrible truth was, he didn't seem to love me.
After losing my five years of memory, he felt like nothing more than a stranger to me.
"Break the blood oath, Caspian," I said. "We're getting a divorce."
Yet later, he would pace outside my door late at night, refusing to leave: "Darling, just look at me one more time, please?" The Rejected Luna's Secret: Rise Of The White Wolf
Werewolf On our tenth mating anniversary, I stood outside my Alpha husband's office with his favorite coffee, only to be hit by the cloying scent of rotting peaches—a female in heat.
Through the mind-link, I heard him promise his mistress he'd deal with the "boring formalities" regarding me tonight.
I walked in to find him plotting with his pregnant assistant, Jami.
Instead of apologizing, Dustin sneered at me.
"She gave me in three months what you couldn't give me in ten years. A strong lineage."
He conveniently forgot that I was the one who built his empire, designed his impenetrable wards, and funded his lifestyle by selling my own family heirlooms.
When I confronted him about the betrayal, he didn't just dismiss me; he shoved me.
I crashed into a silver nightstand. For a normal wolf, silver is an irritant. For me, a descendant of the White Wolf bloodline, it is acid.
As my flesh sizzled and blood poured down my face, blinding me, Dustin didn't even flinch.
He stepped over my convulsing body—his wife of a decade—to ask his mistress if she was stressed.
Lying on the floor, watching him comfort the woman wearing my mother's stolen ring, the bond finally died.
He thought I was a broken, barren Luna who would accept his scraps just to keep her title.
He was wrong.
I didn't call the police. I called a specialist extraction team.
"I am the architect of this pack's security and financial systems," I told the crew. "Decommission everything."
I wasn't just leaving. I was taking my empire with me. The Underboss's Secret: A Mafia Bride's Escape
Mafia For three years, I was Dante Moretti's secret. I was the Underboss's property, the cure for a violent curse that plagued him. He promised that if he wasn't married by his twenty-fifth birthday, I would be his bride.
But on the eve of that birthday, he ended our arrangement. He brought home another woman, Sienna, and introduced me as "the help."
Sienna, with feigned innocence, knocked a precious memento from my hand, shattering it. When I confronted her, Dante slapped me twice in public, the humiliation searing my soul.
Later, I discovered Sienna had framed me for kidnapping her, a lie Dante readily believed. To force a confession, he had my mother tied in a sack and thrown into the freezing lake to drown. He left her there to die.
That was the moment the girl who loved him died, too. I saved my mother, and we fled the country, seeking refuge with my childhood friend, Julian.
I thought I had escaped. But then Dante appeared in Australia, begging for forgiveness. I rejected him, choosing a future with Julian. I thought it was over.
Until a car, driven by a vengeful Sienna, barreled towards us. The last thing I saw was Dante throwing himself in front of me, taking the full impact. After My Death, He Crumbled
Mafia Nathan Cross, the infamous underworld boss, married Jane Rivers on the day her family's wealth collapsed. He had harbored a secret love for her for a decade.
After their marriage, he treated her like royalty.
Jane believed she had found the right man, until their fifth year together.
She discovered she was pregnant, but Nathan, who had always cherished her, demanded she terminate the pregnancy.
She overheard him speaking with a friend and learned that Nathan had betrayed her with another woman, and for the woman, he forced Jane to get rid of their child.
Worse, she learned he had engineered her family's downfall, driving her parents to their deaths.
Out of no choice, Jane contacted Nathan's sworn enemy abroad and faked her death to escape.
After she was gone, Nathan wept, pleading for her return.
But it was too late. The pain he inflicted would be repaid a hundredfold. Shattered Heart, Rising Spirit
Billionaires The moment I told Jake Reynolds we were over, he didn't believe me. He just laughed like I was joking. We had been together for five years, living in his penthouse with my mom. I never thought our life would change.
It all started when his ex-girlfriend, Brittany Davis, showed up. He asked me to cook for them, but I couldn't. My mom was in the hospital, fighting terminal cancer, and I was with her. That was my first mistake. Three days later, my mom's health insurance, which was under Jake's company plan and kept her pain manageable, was canceled.
I begged him, called him repeatedly, left desperate voicemails, but he blocked my number. He never answered. Two weeks later, my mom died; she spent her last days in agony because she couldn't get her medication. The day after her funeral, I saw a picture of Jake and Brittany on a yacht in the Caribbean, arm-in-arm, smiling. The caption read, "An escape with my one and only."
I went to his penthouse, the place I once called home, to tell him it was over. He sneered, "I was just teaching you a lesson. You can't just say no to me." I told him simply, "You killed my mother." He knew exactly what he was doing when he cut her off. He did it because I wouldn' t cook a meal for his ex-girlfriend. A life for a dinner. This made no sense.
I returned to his penthouse to retrieve my mother' s last painting. Jake and Brittany were there. When I asked for the painting, he told me to get Brittany a glass of water. Then, she deliberately ruined my five years of artwork, my sketchbook. He then took my mother' s sunflower painting, the one she painted with shaking hands, and snapped it over his knee. The crack of the wood echoed like a gunshot. He threw the pieces at my feet. But in that moment, something shifted. I started to laugh, realizing he had nothing left to take from me. Stolen Genius, Twisted Love
Billionaires Three years ago, I was Ava, an AI research star on the cusp of changing the world, deeply in love with my fiancé, Mark, my partner in every sense.
Then, a rival company framed me for corporate espionage, and the man I loved, my legal advisor, stood in court and testified against me, his calm words sealing my fate.
Released from prison, I found Mark a Silicon Valley titan, his empire built on my stolen research, the very work he now claimed as his own, his sister Clara whispering venom to ensure my continued subservience. He declared he' d take care of me, only to trap me in a luxurious apartment, subtly sabotaging every attempt I made at independence, crushing my professional and personal life.
Why would the man who loved me do this? Why would he actively destroy me, then pretend to be my savior? His actions were a twisted perversion of love, a calculated move to break my spirit and control my ambition, reducing me to a shell of who I once was.
Just as despair threatened to consume me, a surprising offer from Liam, Mark's fiercest rival, ignited a flicker of hope, forcing me to decide: crumble under Mark's crushing control, or rise from the ashes to fight for my stolen identity and reclaim my future. Anniversary Betrayal, A New Dawn
Romance The table was set for our fifth wedding anniversary, with his favorite meal and a carefully wrapped gift, but my phone buzzed with a text that erased it all: "Something came up at work. Can\'t make it."
Just that. No apology, no explanation.
A familiar hollowness spread through me, deepened by the sight of his briefcase, unlatched by the door, a thick manila envelope peeking out. What I found inside shattered everything: pre-signed divorce papers, dated three months ago, detailing a "dissolution of marriage." My husband, Mark, had been planning to discard me.
The betrayal hit me with a physical force, a wave of nausea. Five years of my life, put on hold for him, for our home, only to be thrown away like yesterday' s news. Then it all clicked – the distance, the late nights, the sudden reappearance of Emily, his "first love." She wasn' t just back in town; she was back in his life. I remembered the company dinner, the way he' d ignored me, the way Emily had purred, "Some things are just meant to be, aren\'t they?" He hadn' t just neglected me; he had actively replaced me. I had been a fool, lying to myself, pretending not to see the obvious cracks in our marriage.
The humiliation, sharp and painful, burned through me. He wanted out? Fine. He could have it. But he wouldn' t be the one to end this on his terms.
I stood up, walked to his briefcase, and meticulously placed the divorce papers exactly as I' d found them. Then, I went upstairs, to the room we' d shared for five years, and began to pack. He wouldn' t be the one to discard me. I was leaving him. Our Enduring Flame
Romance The crystal chandeliers glittered over the ballroom, a cold parody of joy as I stood in the shadows, a forgotten daughter at my father' s company anniversary.
Then, the announcement shattered my carefully constructed composure: my stepsister, Clara, was engaged to Julian Croft, the only man who had ever shown me kindness in this suffocating life.
His averted gaze, her cruel, triumphant smile directly at me-it was a public execution of my last fragile hope, a final, devastating blow after years of being blamed, dismissed, and having my mother' s legacy sold off for a symbolic dollar.
How could the man I loved stand by while she destroyed me, just like my father had ignored my mother' s pain and my own cries for years? What twisted game was this, where their happiness was built on my ruin?
Cut off and cast out, a mysterious stranger offered me a terrifying choice: remain a victim, or begin a war for justice, for my mother' s honor, and for myself. The Vow He Broke
Modern I was pregnant, happily married to Julian Vance, a successful tech mogul. I believed we had the picturesque life, our future unfolding perfectly before us.
Then, the words hit me like a physical blow, broadcast live from our building lobby. Julian, my loving husband, announced on TV that Liv Cartwright's child was his, shamefully implying our unborn baby was the byproduct of a violent robbery.
My world shattered. Julian callously dismissed my heartbreak, choosing to sacrifice me and our child for Liv' s supposed vulnerability. Liv moved into our penthouse, systematically turning my existence into a living hell, her manipulations and humiliations an unending torment. He blindly believed every one of her lies, even when she physically assaulted me and then twisted the narrative, leaving me injured and abandoned. Drowning in an abyss of disgrace, I secretly ended my pregnancy.
How could he be so utterly blind? How could the man I loved betray me so profoundly, abandoning our sacred bond for a calculating, deceitful woman? The searing injustice festered, transforming my grief into a cold, burning rage.
But I wouldn't allow myself to be a silent casualty. He thought he could escape the wreckage he created? I would ensure he paid for every single lie, starting with an unforgettable delivery at his precious Liv' s lavish baby shower. It was time for him to face the truth. Her Last Game
Modern My daughter, Emily, lay brutally assaulted in a hospital bed, clinging to life.
But the real nightmare began when my wife, Jessica, cold and unfeeling, told me the police found Emily' s blood on my jacket.
The Assistant District Attorney I married betrayed me instantly, letting the police drag me away while she watched.
She froze my assets, publicly shamed me, and twisted our shared love for Emily' s art into proof of my depravity.
Driving home, a dashcam recording exposed her chilling plot with her ex-lover, Ethan: they orchestrated Emily' s attack to frame me, seize my brewery, and coldly deemed Emily's suffering a "small price."
Even worse, I learned Jessica had been feeding him information for years, believing his lies that I had wronged her, making her a willing participant in the scheme to destroy me.
How could the woman I loved, Emily's mother, be such a monster?
The betrayal was a physical blow, choking me, drowning me in a profound sense of injustice and utter powerlessness.
But after Ethan and Jessica left me for dead, a hospital call pierced the darkness: Emily was awake.
And she had named her attacker. My Unconventional Bride
Xuanhuan Eleanor Hayes, my godmother, sat across from me in her familiar study, presenting glossy portfolios for my future.
"It's time you thought seriously about settling down," she said, gentle yet firm.
My heart slammed against my ribs, a desperate drum.
This conversation.
This room.
I knew it.
A cold dread, sharp as a winter blade, pierced through me, an echo from a life already lived.
Isabelle Vance.
Her beautiful, cruel face flashed, bringing with it the suffocating memories of my first existence.
"You were never good enough for me, Ethan," she' d hissed, her eyes like ice, a final cut.
That bitter, public divorce, her humiliating betrayal with Julian Croft.
Then, the shouting, the chaotic confrontation, and her spoiled child' s reckless prank.
The fall.
Darkness.
A chilling plunge into an ornamental lake, drowning amidst the detached laughter of society.
My own death, undeniably real, my last breath choked with bitter regret and public ridicule.
Now, I was back.
Years earlier.
At this exact, pivotal moment that began my first life' s spiral into ruin.
I could feel the ghost of that past betrayal, the hollowness of a future wasted, screaming at me.
I had been a fool, desperate for acceptance from the wrong woman.
But this time, a second chance pulsed with terrifying clarity.
This time, I would defy expectations.
This time, I would choose my own destiny, no matter how unconventional. A Father's Unseen Battle
Modern My 5-year-old son, Leo, watched helplessly as I slowly withered away from endless bone marrow donations.
My wife, Victoria, dismissed my agonizing decline, blinded by her childhood flame Julian Vance's manufactured illness and charisma.
Leo frantically pleaded for help, but Victoria, consumed by Julian, ignored his desperate cries, even after he reported me coughing up blood.
Instead, she pushed him violently, leaving him injured and alone amidst Julian's cruel laughter.
After my death, Leo tried to fulfill my last wish, only for Julian to mockingly destroy my favorite donuts and viciously slash my son’s lip, forcing him to call him "Father."
My spirit, helpless, watched as Leo collapsed, unconscious and bleeding, onto my lifeless body, utterly abandoned.
How could a mother be so utterly deaf to her child's pleas, so complicit in such monstrous cruelty?
The injustice was a burning void, a father's agony witnessing his son's betrayal.
Found near death, Leo was rushed to the hospital, where Julian later crept in to silence him with a pillow.
But a spectral surge of pure, desperate paternal rage—my rage—slammed Julian away, alerting security and shattering the monstrous facade.
The truth about his fake illness and vengeful plot would finally unravel, setting the stage for a dramatic reckoning and Leo’s long fight for justice and redemption. You might like
Phoenix Of Ruin: My Second Life Comes With A Better Man
Maple Breeze Ashley gave Nicolas ten years of love and five years of loyalty as his perfect housewife, only to be repaid with betrayal, humiliation, and death at the hands of him and his mistress.
After being reborn, she vowed to make them pay.
She tore apart the mistress, kicked her useless husband aside, and returned as the heiress of a top-tier family.
Surrounded by billions, luxury, and a parade of elite bachelors, Ashley became the woman everyone wanted-including a cold, powerful tycoon.
When Nicolas came begging for forgiveness, she smiled coldly. "Fuck off! My man is worth a hundred of you." The Unwanted Wife Is A Zillionaire
Reilly Mcardle For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse.
Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée.
She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm.
"Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital."
As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire.
I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit.
"I'm done with you."
The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies. Flash Marriage to the Tycoon, I'm Spoiled Rotten
Hollow Echo Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town.
They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done."
Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me."
As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world.
When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?" No Longer Mrs. Cooley: The Architect's Return
Xiao Xiaosu I went to the City Clerk's office for a routine copy of my marriage license to finalize a trust fund audit. I expected a simple piece of paper, but the clerk's pitying look told me my entire life was a lie.
"The license was never finalized, Ms. Oliver. In the eyes of the state, you are single."
The three-hundred-guest wedding at the Plaza and the Vogue features meant nothing. My husband, Gray Cooley, had intentionally filed the documents with a "procedural defect" so he could discard me without a legal divorce. Moments later, an iCloud invite titled "Our Little Secret" popped up on my screen. It was a photo of my best friend, Brylee, holding a positive pregnancy test at our Hamptons estate.
Gray's text to her was the final blow:
"Happy anniversary, babe. This baby is the best gift. Once the trust unlocks today, we're done with the charade."
I soon discovered they were even stealing my career, reassigning my architectural masterpiece to Brylee while preparing my eviction notice. Gray's mother called me a "barren mule" in a leaked recording, mocking the infertility I suffered after saving Gray's life in a construction accident. I wasn't a wife; I was a three-year placeholder used to secure his inheritance.
How could the man I bled for treat me like a disposable prop? How could my best friend carry his child while pretending to comfort me through my darkest moments? The betrayal burned until it turned into a cold, hard stone of fury.
I didn't cry. Instead, I walked into the penthouse of the Barretts, the Cooleys' most powerful rivals. I signed a marriage contract with Kane Barrett, the man the tabloids called the "Beast of Wall Street."
"I want a wedding," I told his father, my voice steady and lethal. "Bigger than the one I had with Gray."
If they wanted me gone, they would have to watch me become the woman who owns their world. Cheated On Me? I Married a Tycoon
Rum Runner I spent three years building my husband, Axel Farrell, into Silicon Valley's ultimate "family man." As his lead PR strategist, I carefully managed his public image, making sure the world saw him as a perfect, devoted husband while I worked in the shadows of our estate.
The illusion shattered when he came home one night smelling of sandalwood and roses, with three deep fingernail scratches carved into his back. When I tried to check his phone, the passcode we had used for years-our wedding anniversary-had been changed.
The betrayal got worse the next morning when his mother called me a "defective product" and tried to force me into a fertility clinic. Axel didn't defend me; instead, he shoved me against a marble bar at a public gala to protect his mistress in front of the world's elite. By the time I tried to leave, Axel had frozen my bank accounts and filed a forged legal petition to have me declared mentally incompetent.
He planned to have me legally kidnapped and locked in a private psychiatric ward just to stop me from filing for divorce. He even blocked every major law firm in the city from taking my case, leaving me with no money, no identity, and no one to turn to.
I couldn't understand how the man who "saved" me from the mud years ago could be the same monster now trying to legally erase my existence. Was our entire marriage just a grooming process to exploit my genius for his billion-dollar empire?
As the deadline for my forced commitment approached, I stopped crying and opened my laptop. I leaked the video of his affair to every tech journalist in the country, watching his stock price crash in real-time.
"Axel thinks starving me out will make me crawl back to him," I whispered as I walked into the headquarters of his biggest rival.
"But he forgot that the most valuable part of his company is in my head."
I was no longer the abandoned wife; I was the one who was going to take his throne and burn it to the ground. Abandoned Ex-Wife: Now Untouchable
Tao Yaoyao My five-year-old daughter was dying in the ICU, her heartbeat replaced by the continuous, electronic scream of a flatline. I gripped her cold hand, my throat sealed shut by a terror so absolute I couldn't even cry out.
I dialed my husband Grayson's private number, the one reserved only for me and his assistants. He declined the call instantly. A second later, a text buzzed against my palm:
"In a meeting. Do not disturb. Stop calling."
Five miles away, Grayson was at a luxury gala, adjusting his silk tie and laughing with Belle Escobar. He told her I was just being "dramatic" and using our daughter's "fever" as an excuse to avoid the event. He had no idea Effie's heart had already stopped.
When I finally reached our penthouse, soaked from the rain and carrying Effie's small socks in a plastic bag, Grayson didn't even look at me. He snapped at me for ruining the hardwood floors and asked if I'd left Effie with the nanny just to "feel sorry for myself."
Three days later, while I buried our daughter in a small, lonely ceremony, Grayson was at the Hamptons. Belle posted a photo of him golfing with the caption: "A mental health day with the boys." He didn't even attend the funeral, but he returned home demanding I clear out Effie's room to make a study for Belle's son.
The injustice burned through me until there was nothing left. I swallowed a handful of sleeping pills, desperate to join my daughter. But instead of the darkness, I woke up to blinding lights and the scent of Grayson's expensive cologne.
I was standing in a ballroom, wearing a blue silk dress I had already burned. Above me, a banner read: "Happy 5th Birthday Kaiden & Effie."
I was back, exactly one year before the tragedy. This time, I wasn't going to be the grieving wife. I was going to be their worst nightmare. Phoenix Rising: The Scarred Heiress's Revenge
Xiao Hong Mao I lived as the "scarred ghost" of the Stephens penthouse, a wife kept in the shadows because my facial burns offended my billionaire husband's aesthetic. For years, I endured Kason's coldness and my family's abuse, a submissive puppet who believed she had nowhere else to go.
The end came with a blue folder tossed onto my silk sheets. Kason's mistress was back, and he wanted me out by sunset, offering a five-million-dollar "silence fee" to go hide my face in the countryside.
The betrayal cut deep when I discovered my father had already traded my divorce for a corporate bailout. My step-sister mocked my "trashy" appearance at a high-end boutique, while the sales staff treated me like a common thief. At home, my father threatened to cut off my mother's life-saving medicine unless I crawled back to Kason to beg for a better deal.
I was the girl who took the blame for a fire she didn't start, the wife who worshipped a man who never looked her in the eye, and the daughter used as a human bargaining chip. I was supposed to be broken, penniless, and desperate.
But the woman who stood up wasn't the weak Elease Finch anymore; she was Phoenix, a tactical predator with a $500 million secret. I signed the divorce papers without a single tear, walked past my stunned husband, and wiped the Finch family's bank accounts clean with a few taps on my phone.
"Your money is dirty," I told Kason with a cold smile. "I prefer clean hands."
The cage is open, the hunt has begun, and I'm starting with the people who thought a scar made me weak. The Humble Ex-wife Is Now A Brilliant Tycoon
Flory Corkery For three quiet, patient years, Christina kept house, only to be coldly discarded by the man she once trusted.
Instead, he paraded a new lover, making her the punchline of every town joke.
Liberated, she honed her long-ignored gifts, astonishing the town with triumph after gleaming triumph.
Upon discovering she'd been a treasure all along, her ex-husband's regret drove him to pursue her. "Honey, let's get back together!"
With a cold smirk, Christina spat, "Fuck off."
A silken-suited mogul slipped an arm around her waist. "She's married to me now. Guards, get him the hell out of here!" Seven Years A Fool, One Day A Queen
Stella Montgomery Everyone knew Kristine loved Colton. Still, his heart clung to a woman overseas-someone he spent most days with, now pregnant with his baby-and Kristine still asked him to marry her.
On their registration day, however, he never came; his "true love" had flown back.
Seven years of loyalty later, Kristine walked away, blocked him, and left his city.
Colton didn't blink-until he saw her at the courthouse, arm-in-arm with another man, and the proud CEO went pale. He went after her, desperation overtaking him.
"I'm sorry. Please give me another chance."
She snapped, "Could you stop? I'm already married." The Placeholder Bride's Secret Billionaire Revenge
Luo Ye For two years, I was the invisible force behind tech billionaire Kieran Douglas, convinced that our "private" romance was his way of protecting us from the tabloid spotlight. I managed his mergers, warmed his bed, and waited for a future that didn't exist.
The illusion shattered at 6:00 AM when a Page Six alert debuted Kieran's "real" romance with socialite Aspen Schneider. Before I could even process the betrayal, Kieran sent me a cold, professional text: "Order flowers for Aspen. Pink peonies. Her favorite."
When I tried to walk away, my own mother called me a disgrace and threatened to lock my inheritance forever unless I married a sixty-year-old businessman to save her failing estate. At a high-society gala that same night, Aspen intentionally crushed my burned hand in front of the cameras, while Kieran stood by and dismissed me as a "mediocre assistant" who had overstayed her welcome.
I stood in the cold New York rain, drenched in champagne and humiliation, realizing that every sacrifice I made for Kieran was a joke. I was a ghost in a penthouse that was never mine, discarded the moment his "soulmate" returned. To the world, I was just a placeholder whose time had run out.
But Kieran forgot one thing: my father's multi-million dollar trust fund unlocks the moment I legally marry. I didn't need love; I needed a signature and a shield. I walked into a discreet law firm and signed a marriage contract with a man I believed was the city's most notorious, scandal-ridden playboy.
I thought I was marrying a degenerate "beard" to buy my freedom and secure my revenge. I didn't realize the man who signed that paper wasn't a playboy at all, but Gaston Collins-the most powerful and dangerous man on Wall Street-and he had no intention of letting our fake marriage stay fake. 
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