A Million Dollar Bluff

A Million Dollar Bluff

Apache

3.5
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The air was thick with the smell of barbecue, but my stomach was churning with dread. My upscale Austin life was supposed to merge with my fiancé Ryan's small-town roots this Thanksgiving weekend, finalizing our wedding plans. But then Ryan's family started a poker game, and my father, a notorious soft touch after a few bourbons, lost everything. Every cent of the $200,000 wedding fund I' d given him for safekeeping was gone, wiped out in one night. Ryan, instead of comforting me, put on a masterclass of manipulation, shaming my father and threatening to call off the wedding, using "tradition" as an excuse. His whole family watched, smug and complicit, as if I was the problem, not their pathetic, greedy scheme. The humiliation was suffocating, crushing not just me, but my parents too, turning a celebratory weekend into a public shaming. How could the man I was about to marry betray me so completely, letting his family fleece mine, then blaming us? But as my mother begged me to leave, a cold resolve settled in my gut, hardening into steel: I wasn't leaving until I' d taken back what was mine. I walked to the table, pulled out a chair, and calmly declared, "I want to play."

Introduction

The air was thick with the smell of barbecue, but my stomach was churning with dread.

My upscale Austin life was supposed to merge with my fiancé Ryan's small-town roots this Thanksgiving weekend, finalizing our wedding plans.

But then Ryan's family started a poker game, and my father, a notorious soft touch after a few bourbons, lost everything.

Every cent of the $200,000 wedding fund I' d given him for safekeeping was gone, wiped out in one night.

Ryan, instead of comforting me, put on a masterclass of manipulation, shaming my father and threatening to call off the wedding, using "tradition" as an excuse.

His whole family watched, smug and complicit, as if I was the problem, not their pathetic, greedy scheme.

The humiliation was suffocating, crushing not just me, but my parents too, turning a celebratory weekend into a public shaming.

How could the man I was about to marry betray me so completely, letting his family fleece mine, then blaming us?

But as my mother begged me to leave, a cold resolve settled in my gut, hardening into steel: I wasn't leaving until I' d taken back what was mine.

I walked to the table, pulled out a chair, and calmly declared, "I want to play."

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The Billionaire's Doll: Her Secret Escape

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I was just a placeholder, a warm body in silk sheets to keep the bed from getting cold while my billionaire "owner," Garrick Head, dreamt of another man’s wife. To the world, I was Ever Wells, the lucky girl he’d plucked from obscurity, but in reality, I was a doll on a 145-day contract, counting every second until I could disappear. Everything shattered when a burner phone buzzed in my hand with a message that turned my blood to ice: "I know your secret, Everly." My real name was the one thing I had buried to protect my four-year-old son, Leo, who was hidden in a cramped apartment in Queens. Just as the blackmailer closed in, Leo’s asthma flared into a life-threatening fever, and the medication he needed cost thousands I didn't have. When I tried to siphon money to save him, Garrick sensed my desperation and froze my credit cards, mocking my "poverty" and demanding I crawl back to his bed to earn his favor. The nightmare intensified at a high-society gala when Clarence Frazier, a dangerous ghost from my past, cornered me. He mouthed my real name in front of the cameras, his eyes promising to tear my fake life apart. Garrick’s possessiveness turned violent as he broke a man’s jaw for insulting me, yet in the same breath, he reminded me I was nothing but a "rented whore" he’d bought off a shelf. I had to smile while he kissed me and detach my mind while he touched me, all while siphoning pennies into a hidden account. He thought he could finalize my imprisonment with a twenty-million-dollar apartment on Central Park West, calling it a gift when it was really just a heavier lock on my golden cage. "I don't want to save the world," I whispered to the empty, marble penthouse after he fell asleep. "I just want to save my son." With a predator from my past watching my every move and a master who treated me like a pet, I realized I couldn't wait for my contract to end. I had to run tonight, or Leo and I would both die in this cage.

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