The Convict Heiress: Marrying The Billionaire

The Convict Heiress: Marrying The Billionaire

Rollins Laman

5.0
Comment(s)
View
150
Chapters

The heavy thud of the release stamp was the only goodbye I got from the warden after five years in federal prison. I stepped out into the blinding sun, expecting the same flash of paparazzi bulbs that had seen me dragged away in handcuffs, but there was only a single black limousine idling on the shoulder of the road. Inside sat my mother and sister, clutching champagne and looking at my frayed coat with pure disgust. They didn't offer a welcome home; instead, they tossed a thick legal document onto the table and told me I was dead to the city. "Gavin and I are getting engaged," my sister Mia sneered, flicking a credit card at me like I was a stray dog. "He doesn't need a convict ex-fiancée hanging around." Even after I saved their lives from an armed kidnapping attempt by ramming the attackers off the road, they rewarded me by leaving me stranded in the dirt. When I finally ran into Gavin, the man who had framed me, he pinned me against a wall and threatened to send me back to a cell if I ever dared to show my face at their wedding. They had stolen my biotech research, ruined my name, and let me rot for half a decade while they lived off my brilliance. They thought they had broken me, leaving me with nothing but an expired chapstick and a few old photos in a plastic bag. What they didn't know was that I had spent those five years becoming "Dr. X," a shadow consultant with five hundred million dollars in crypto and a secret that would bring the city to its knees. I wasn't just a victim anymore; I was a weapon, and I was pregnant with the heir they thought they had erased. I walked into the Melton estate and made an offer to the most powerful man in New York. "I'll save your grandfather's life," I told Horatio Melton, staring him down. "But the price is your last name. I'm taking back what's mine, and I'm starting with the man who thinks he's marrying my sister."

Chapter 1 1

The heavy thud of the ink stamp hitting the paper echoed like a gunshot in the small, concrete room.

Warden Thompson didn't look up. He just slid the file across the metal desk.

"You're done, Haynes. Get out."

Camille Haynes stood still. Her heart rate didn't spike. Her palms didn't sweat. Five years ago, she would have been trembling, tears streaming down her face, begging for someone to tell her this was a mistake.

Now, she just reached for the plastic bag Officer Grant held out.

It was light. Pathetically light. A tube of chapstick that had expired three years ago and a medical textbook with the spine broken in three places.

"Sign here," Grant said, bored.

Camille signed. Her handwriting had changed. It used to be loopy, girlish. Now it was sharp, jagged lines that looked like they could cut skin.

She walked toward the heavy steel door. The buzzer sounded, a long, angry drone that vibrated in her teeth. The door slid open.

Camille stepped out.

The sun hit her like a physical blow. She flinched, her arm coming up to shield her eyes. The air didn't smell like bleach and stale cabbage anymore. It smelled of dust and exhaust and something terrifyingly open.

She lowered her arm. She expected cameras. She expected the flash of bulbs that had blinded her five years ago when she was dragged away in handcuffs.

There was nothing.

Just an empty road and a single black stretch limousine idling on the shoulder.

The windows were tinted so dark they looked like oil slicks. The car sat there, ominous and silent. It looked like a hearse.

Camille adjusted the collar of her trench coat. It was the same one she had worn the day she was arrested. The hem was frayed, and the fabric was tight across her shoulders. She had been a waif then. Prison had stripped the fat and built muscle in its place.

She walked to the car.

The driver got out. He wore white gloves. He didn't look at her face. He opened the rear door and stared at the horizon, as if looking at her would contaminate him.

Camille ducked inside.

The air conditioning hit her instantly, freezing the sweat on her neck. The door thudded shut, sealing her in a leather-scented vacuum.

Across from her sat her mother, Victoria, and her sister, Mia.

Victoria held a crystal flute of champagne. She didn't offer one to Camille. She looked at Camille's worn coat with a curl of her lip that suggested she smelled something rotting.

Mia pressed herself into the corner of the leather seat. She looked terrified.

"Close the curtains," Victoria said. It was the first thing she had said to her daughter in five years. "I won't have the paparazzi getting a shot of your face."

Camille reached out and slid the velvet curtain shut. Her movements were fluid, controlled. She sat back, her spine not touching the seat.

"You look like a ghost," Mia said. Her voice was high, brittle. "The food in there must have been garbage. You're skeletal."

Camille looked at her sister. She didn't blink. She just watched Mia's pulse flutter in her throat.

Mia shivered and looked away.

Victoria opened her crocodile skin purse. She pulled out a thick document and tossed it onto the small walnut table between them.

It landed with a heavy slap.

"Sign it," Victoria said. "The family has arranged a stipend. You take the money, you go to Europe, and you never come back to New York. You are dead to this city."

Camille looked down. Trust Fund Divestiture Agreement. Non-Disclosure Agreement.

"And if I don't?" Camille asked. Her voice was raspy from disuse.

"Gavin and I are getting engaged next month," Mia blurted out, a cruel smile touching her lips. "He doesn't need his ex-fiancée convict hanging around." She reached into her own purse, pulled out a black credit card, and flicked it onto the table. It skittered across the polished wood and came to rest next to the documents. "Here. For a bus ticket out of town. Don't say we never gave you anything."

Camille's finger twitched. Just once.

"You have no leverage," Victoria snapped, taking a sip of her champagne. "You are a stain on this family. You sign, or you starve."

Camille leaned forward. The air in the car shifted. It became heavy, suffocating. A faint wave of nausea rolled through her, a familiar companion these last few weeks. She pushed it down, turning the weakness into ice.

"You sent me there," Camille said softly. "You and Gavin. We have a lot of accounting to do."

Victoria's face flushed red. She opened her mouth to scream.

The car slammed sideways.

Metal screeched against metal. The impact threw Camille against the side panel. Victoria's champagne glass shattered, spraying liquid and shards everywhere.

"Madam!" the driver's voice crackled over the intercom, panicked. "We're being rammed! Three SUVs! No plates!"

Continue Reading

Other books by Rollins Laman

More
The Scorned Wife's Secret Billionaire Identity

The Scorned Wife's Secret Billionaire Identity

Modern

5.0

It was our third wedding anniversary, and I was waiting in our cold Manhattan penthouse with a gift Cedric would never open. He hadn’t even looked at me that morning, adjusting his cuffs and walking out as if I were just another piece of furniture in his museum-like home. The silence was shattered by a call from St. Jude’s Hospital. My grandmother, the only person who had ever seen me as a human being rather than a charity case, had gone into cardiac arrest. By the time I reached her room, she was gone, her skin already waxen and grey. As I collapsed by her bed, I smelled it—a cloying, heavy gardenia perfume. It was the signature scent of Chloie Serrano, the socialite who had made my life a living hell while clinging to my husband’s arm. When Cedric finally arrived, he didn’t comfort me; he checked his watch and asked for the time of death. At the funeral, he shielded Chloie from the rain with his umbrella while I stood soaked in the mud, and when I accused her of being in that hospital room, he crushed my wrist and told me I was an embarrassment to the Malone name. The hospital cameras had been conveniently wiped by a power surge, and the police told me there was no crime. I was left alone in the dirt, discarded and gaslit by the man I had loved for three years, while he comforted the woman who had likely killed my only relative. I couldn't understand how a man could be so cold. How could he protect a murderer just to save his reputation? Why did his wealth buy a version of the truth that left me with nothing but a broken heart and a shallow grave? I stopped crying and put on a blood-red silk dress designed to burn worlds down. I walked into his private club, crashed his high-stakes meeting, and slammed the signed divorce papers onto the table in front of the city's elite. "Happy Anniversary, Cedric," I said, as I dumped a glass of champagne over his mistress's head. I wasn't his invisible wife anymore. I was a woman with nothing left to lose, a secret heir to a rival empire, and I was going to take everything he owned.

You'll also like

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Dorine Koestler
4.1

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.

He Thought I Was A Doormat, Until I Ruined Him

He Thought I Was A Doormat, Until I Ruined Him

SHANA GRAY
4.5

The sterile white of the operating room blurred, then sharpened, as Skye Sterling felt the cold clawing its way up her body. The heart monitor flatlined, a steady, high-pitched whine announcing her end. Her uterus had been removed, a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, but the blood wouldn't clot. It just kept flowing, warm and sticky, pooling beneath her. Through heavy eyes, she saw a trembling nurse holding a phone on speaker. "Mr. Kensington," the nurse's voice cracked, "your wife... she's critical." A pause, then a sweet, poisonous giggle. Seraphina Miller. "Liam is in the shower," Seraphina's voice purred. "Stop calling, Skye. It's pathetic. Faking a medical emergency on our anniversary? Even for you, that's low." Then, Liam's bored voice: "If she dies, call the funeral home. I have a meeting in the morning." Click. The line went dead. A second later, so did Skye. The darkness that followed was absolute, suffocating, a black ocean crushing her lungs. She screamed into the void, a silent, agonizing wail of regret for loving a man who saw her as a nuisance, for dying without ever truly living. Until she died, she didn't understand. Why was her life so tragically wasted? Why did her husband, the man she loved, abandon her so cruelly? The injustice of it all burned hotter than the fever in her body. Then, the air rushed back in. Skye gasped, her body convulsing violently on the mattress. Her eyes flew open, wide and terrified, staring blindly into the darkness. Her trembling hand reached for her phone. May 12th. Five years ago. She was back.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book