ENGAGED TO A CHEAT

His Trophy Wife, The Apex Predator

Eydie Pfefferle

My husband of three years, Arthur Vanderbilt, came home smelling of his mistress's perfume and threw divorce papers on our marble kitchen island. He demanded I sign away all rights to our assets for a five-million-dollar "severance," calling me a leech his family picked up from the suburbs to solve a temporary PR crisis. When I refused and demanded my four percent equity in the Vanderbilt Group, he and his mistress, Serena, launched a vicious smear campaign. They planted false stories on Wall Street forums, accusing me of laundering money for an Eastern European crime syndicate. They tried to force my hand with a check for five hundred million, which I tore up and threw in his face. To them, I was just a trophy wife they could easily discard. They had no idea that the "leech" they so despised was the anonymous investor who had secretly bailed out their entire company three years ago, saving them from bankruptcy. Their final move was to hire an actress to publicly accuse me of fraud in the lobby of the most powerful law firm in Manhattan. They didn't realize I was there to retain the firm's most ruthless lawyer. After security threw them out, I looked my replacement in the eye and made her a promise. "Prepare for an FBI probe into perjury and corporate defamation."

Modern Revenge

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My fiancée smiled as she showed me the "intruder" she had dealt with in the ER.

I looked past her to see my mother beaten unconscious on the floor.

And on the gurney next to her lay my seven-year-old brother, cold, blue, and dead.

Brittnie clung to my arm, beaming with pride.

"I handled it, Cannon," she chirped.

"That gold digger tried to claim this bastard was your son. But I made sure they wouldn't bother us again."

My blood turned to ice.

She was holding my mother' s emerald brooch, a family heirloom, convinced it was her engagement ring.

Because of her delusion, she had refused to give my brother his EpiPen.

She had watched him suffocate to death, thinking she was winning my heart.

I looked at Gabe' s lifeless body, then at the woman I was planning to marry.

I pulled out my phone and shoved a family photo in her face.

"That gold digger is my mother," I whispered, my voice trembling with lethal rage.

"And you just murdered my brother."

Chapter 1

Eleanora Bryan POV:

The world narrowed to a tunnel of fear. Gabe' s small body convulsed in my arms, his face swelling, lips turning blue. Every breath was a rasping battle he was losing, and I knew, with a mother's chilling certainty, that this was it. Anaphylaxis. Again.

"Gabe! Stay with me, baby, stay with me!" My voice was a frantic whisper against the roar of the engine as I sped towards the hospital.

My hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white. The emergency kit was empty. I' d given him the last EpiPen minutes ago, but it wasn't enough. His throat was closing.

I tried Cannon's number again. Straight to voicemail. "The neurosurgery wing doesn't allow phones," a cold voice reminded me. Of course. His life-saving work, always more important.

My jaw ached from clenching. I had to focus. Gabe. Just Gabe.

The emergency room entrance of Bryan Medical loomed, a beacon of stark white light against the oppressive night. This was Cannon's hospital, the one he practically lived in. It had to save my son.

I burst through the automatic doors, Gabe a dead weight in my arms, his once bright eyes now glazed and unfocused. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a desperate plea.

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