Irene

For four years, Isolde Navarro played the part of a broken, mindless doll, trapped in a severe trauma-induced haze after being brutally framed. The charade reached its climax the night she caught her perfect sister, Angele, and her fiancé, Julian, having sex in the estate's guest room. Instead of showing guilt, Angele violently shoved Isolde into a marble wall, laughing as blood poured down her face. "Get her out of my sight and clean her up," Angele sneered, disgusted by her own sister. Worse, Isolde overheard their ultimate plan through a hidden microphone: once the trust's protection clause expired tomorrow, they would declare her permanently incompetent and steal the massive fortune her mother had left her. Her own father was fully on board, eager to lock his "embarrassing" daughter in a padded cell and freeze every cent she owned. How could her own flesh and blood be so utterly ruthless? They thought she was just a drooling idiot, completely defenseless against their greed and cruelty. But they didn't know the lethal operative known as 'The Rose' had never been asleep; she was just waiting in the shadows. With a micro-camera recording their every dirty secret, Isolde calmly wiped the blood from her face and walked out the door. She had twenty-four hours to hijack a billionaire into marriage, trigger the trust's emergency clause, and burn her family's entire world to the ground.

I went to my fiancé's hotel suite to surprise him with a Patek Philippe watch the day before our engagement party. Instead, I found him in bed with my best friend. Through the crack in the door, I heard them plotting to steal my family's priceless data before breaking the engagement. I recorded their betrayal, threw the expensive watch in the trash, and went to a dark lounge to drink away the agony. In a reckless impulse born of whiskey and pain, I pulled a domineering stranger down for a kiss and took him to bed. But waking up the next morning, I realized the catastrophic mistake I had made. The man emerging from the bathroom wasn't just anyone. He was Garnet Crawford, my fiancé's ruthless, billionaire older brother. "Hello, future sister-in-law." He smiled coldly, revealing he had used my fingerprint while I slept to steal my blackmail video. He trapped me, forcing me to play the role of his fiancée to publicly humiliate my cheating best friend and destroy his own brother. He moved into my apartment, blocked the exits with his bodyguards, and claimed me as his property. I thought I was just using his power to get revenge on the two people who broke my heart. But the next morning, the news reported my fiancé had been brutally assaulted, his legs broken in a sudden mugging. Looking at the cold, possessive monster who had orchestrated it all, a terrifying realization hit me. I hadn't just struck back at my betrayers-I had sold my soul to the devil.

For twenty years, I obeyed my adoptive family, enduring my stepsister's mockery and my parents' cold neglect. But at a lavish hotel party, my stepsister forced a glass of spiked champagne into my hands. As my vision blurred and a strange, creeping heat consumed my body, my adoptive mother looked at me with ice-cold eyes. "We raised you for twenty years. It's time you paid us back." They had sold me to a sweaty, middle-aged businessman to save their failing company. I watched the man approach with a triumphant smirk, his oily hand reaching out to claim me. A wave of sheer nausea and profound betrayal hit me. I couldn't believe the people I called family were treating me like livestock to be traded. Using my last ounce of strength, I shoved him away and fled down the maze-like hallway. Terrified, dizzy, and desperate to hide from my pursuers, I stumbled into a random unlocked suite. I crashed into a tall stranger with sharp gray eyes before the world went completely black. When I woke up, I was in a presidential suite, wearing a man's oversized silk shirt. Sitting across from me was Damian Blackwood, the ruthless billionaire CEO and uncrowned king of Wall Street. I thought he would hand me a check to buy my silence or throw me back to my abusers. Instead, he looked at me calmly and offered me a deal. "Marry me, and the Foster family will never dare to touch you again." I looked at the marriage contract, took a deep breath, and chose to survive.

I returned to New York for my welcome-home party, expecting a warm embrace from Edwin, my devoted fiancé of twenty years. Instead, his first words to me were a cold, public warning to stay away from his new girlfriend, Kacy. He stood in my family's hotel, shielding a girl I had never even met, and painted me as a vicious, jealous bully. "She is very sensitive, Kaitlyn. Her background is tough. Please, be gentle with her. Don't upset her." He humiliated me in front of our entire elite circle, allowing them to mock me as the aggressive, discarded ex while he carried her away like a fragile princess. For twenty years, I had been his loyal shadow, fixing his mistakes and loving him unconditionally. I couldn't understand how decades of deep devotion could be instantly erased by a few crocodile tears and a manipulative damsel act. He was absolutely certain I would throw a tantrum, cry, and eventually crawl back to beg for his attention. But he was wrong. He didn't know that Everett Rowe, a billionaire tech mogul, had been patiently waiting five years to marry me. He also didn't know that during my three years abroad, I wasn't just studying art—I became "K.B.", the ruthless Wall Street predator who could swallow his family's empire whole. I calmly pulled out my phone, ignored the mocking whispers around me, and typed a single message to Everett. "Yes. I'll marry you."

For two years, I was the perfect, obedient wife to wealthy heir Grady Maddox. Then I found a hidden compartment in his study desk. Inside were dozens of explicit polaroids of his adopted sister, Jasmine, and a worn leather diary. The diary revealed the sickening truth. "Kaya is the perfect shield. As long as I have a wife, no one will ever look too closely at me and my little Yue." When Jasmine deliberately knocked a bowl of boiling soup onto my hand, Grady didn't even glance at my blistering skin. He frantically checked Jasmine for nonexistent scratches and yelled at me. "Why weren't you paying attention? Look at the mess you've made! You scared her." He then kicked me out to our empty penthouse as punishment, only to move Jasmine in the very next day, letting her parade around in his dress shirts and giving her my favorite custom furniture. Looking at the husband I had devoted my life to fawning over the sister he was secretly sleeping with, I didn't feel heartbroken. I just felt a deep, suffocating disgust. I was nothing but a paper wall meant to hide their twisted affair. I didn't cry, and I didn't beg for his love. I simply locked him out of the bedroom, gathered my financial records, and called Manhattan's most ruthless divorce attorney. I was securing my escape, completely unaware that Grady's estranged, terrifyingly powerful older brother had been waiting ten years for this exact moment.

On the anniversary of my mother's death, my father, the Alpha, threw a lavish wedding to marry a woman only four years older than me. My new stepmother publicly humiliated me, stomped on my hand, and shattered the only necklace my mother left me. When I confronted her, my father slapped me across the face and ordered me to respect my new Luna. Heartbroken and furious, I publicly disowned them all. In retaliation, my father sentenced me to death the very next morning. He offered me as a tribute to the cursed Lycan King—a monster whose beast savagely tore apart every she-wolf sent to his bed. My family watched with smug satisfaction as I was locked in an iron cage and dragged away, discarded like defective trash simply because I was born wolfless. I was supposed to be ripped to shreds on my first night in the pitch-black castle. But as I stood in the King's dark chamber, bracing for the bloody end, nothing happened. The terrifying beast just sat in the shadows, staring at me in absolute confusion. That was when the horrifying truth of his curse clicked in my mind. His madness was triggered by the spiritual scent of an inner wolf. And I was completely wolfless. The very defect that made my family throw me away was my ultimate, impenetrable shield. I wasn't going to die here. I was going to survive, use this terrifying King, and make my family regret the day they ever cast me out.

My doctor gave me weeks to live. But when I went to tell my family, they didn't care about my terminal cancer. They were too busy comforting my adopted sister, Isabell, over her latest "flare-up." They manipulated me into signing over my multi-million dollar company and my entire fortune to her. Then, my husband announced he was renewing his wedding vows-with Isabell-to lift her spirits. Even my eight-year-old son begged me to support them, for his "sick" Aunt Isabell. Stripped of everything and left to die, I was a ghost in my own life, watching them celebrate my demise. But as I collapsed in a hospital parking lot, I made one last call to the estranged best friend who had warned me about them all. She rescued me, flew me to the world's best oncology center, and made a single promise. "You're not dying. And when you're better, we will burn their world to the ground."

The silence in Sterling Manor wasn't empty; it was heavy, pressing against my eardrums like deep water. I sat on the edge of the oversized velvet sofa, waiting for my husband to return from a "merger closing" that I knew was actually a hotel room. At 2:00 AM, a notification glowed on his forgotten work tablet: "You left your tie on my nightstand. I'll keep it safe for next time. - S." When Ethan finally walked in, he didn't look at me. He just smelled like Serena's signature sandalwood perfume and expensive scotch. He didn't apologize for the infidelity; instead, he transferred a million dollars into my spousal account and told me to go buy some jewelry to keep my mouth shut. I realized then that I wasn't a wife; I was an expensive placeholder. I left my ten-carat diamond ring on the foyer table and walked out into the freezing rain with nothing but a canvas duffel bag. But Ethan wasn't about to let his "ornament" escape so easily. He froze my credit cards, revoked my trust access, and used his billion-dollar influence to blacklist me from every architecture firm in New York City. He even tracked me down to a restaurant where I was playing piano for tips, throwing a stack of hundreds at me in front of his mistress. When I still refused to crawl back to the manor, he played his final, cruelest card. He leaned in and whispered that if I didn't return to his bed, he would stop protecting my brother from a prison sentence he had manufactured himself. I stood there shivering, realizing that every "favor" he'd ever done for my family was actually a shackle. He thought he could buy my soul, my talent, and my silence by holding the people I loved hostage. How could the man I once loved turn into a monster who viewed my life as nothing more than a line item on a balance sheet? I looked him straight in the eye, my voice as cold as the winter air outside. "Make the call, Ethan. Send him to jail. I'd rather visit my brother through plexiglass than spend another night sleeping next to you." I'm done being a victim. I've just walked into the offices of Azure Architects, the only firm in the city Ethan can't bully. I'm not just going to finish my degree; I'm going to help his biggest rival burn his empire to the ground.

After ninety-nine failed engagements, I finally married Brooks Preston, a stoic tech mogul who seemed to be the only man on earth who found my motormouth personality "charming." But his quiet acceptance was a lie. I was just a convenient prop, a wife he needed to hide his obsessive, incestuous love for his adopted sister, Everleigh. When I discovered their secret and demanded a divorce, he locked me in a dark, windowless room, weaponizing my childhood claustrophobia to break me. He needed me to take the fall for Everleigh's crimes, to protect her at all costs. He watched me scream and claw at the walls for three days, my terror a spectacle for his cold, calculating eyes. He wasn't just indifferent; he was a monster. I didn't break. Instead, I waited. On the night of a live-streamed gala, I looked into the camera and smiled. "Everleigh, darling, congratulations. I've already divorced him. He's all yours."

For seven years, I was the perfect wife to a man who saw me as the hired help, and a mother to a son he treated like a stranger. On our son's fifth birthday, my husband came home with another woman's child. He smiled a smile I hadn't seen in years and introduced me. "This is Chelsey," he said. "She's the housekeeper." Soon after, I was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. My own family's reaction was to demand I divorce my husband so he could marry his true love and secure their business merger. All while their new perfect family tormented my son, bullying him at school until he lost his voice. The final straw came when my husband slapped our son across the face in public for refusing to give his new stepbrother a toy. In that moment, I realized my marriage wasn't a shield for my son; it was the weapon being used against him. With only days to live, I kissed my son goodbye and walked to my husband's penthouse. My final act of revenge would be to die on his pristine white sofa. Let him be the one to clean up the mess.

Today was supposed to be my fourth wedding to Chloe, my fiancée since we were sixteen. I stood at the altar, surrounded by friends and family, the grand church filled with white roses. But instead of Chloe, her maid of honor rushed down the aisle, clutching her phone, her face etched with panic. Then, my phone vibrated. A text from Chloe: "I' m so sorry, Liam. I can' t. Mark needs me. He' s at the hospital. He said he was in a car accident." Not again. Another one of Mark' s car accident lies, the same one he used months ago. Hundreds of eyes fixed on me, a mix of pity and morbid curiosity. This wasn't postponement; it was a public execution. Tears of profound humiliation stung my eyes. My decade of devotion meant nothing; she chose her manipulative assistant over me, again. Then, a new notification. A social media post from Mark. A selfie. Mark, smug and triumphant. And Chloe, asleep on his shoulder, in a hotel room, not a hospital. "Some things are worth fighting for. So happy you' re finally mine," the caption read. Rage, hot and white-hot, surged through me. This was a calculated, public humiliation. They weren't hiding; they were celebrating. Then, a message request from Mark. A picture. Chloe, asleep in the hotel bed. My wedding dress, draped over a chair in the background, a ghostly white sentinel. He had planned this. He was taunting me. Mark answered my call, his voice smooth and arrogant. "We're at the Grand Star Hotel, room 1208. You know, the one right next to the general hospital. It' s so much more comfortable for Chloe to rest here while I recover from my, ah, 'terrible accident' ." He laughed, a smug, ugly sound. He sent another picture: Chloe' s hand, intertwined with his. My great-grandmother' s engagement ring gone, replaced by a simple gold band. "It feels like nothing," I said, my voice devoid of emotion. "You can have her." I hung up. I left it all behind, the house, the memories, the woman. I was free, but I had to fight to stay that way.

My perfect life, a meticulously crafted facade, shattered the moment I walked into my lawyer' s office, signing a new will to kill the man everyone thought I was. That night, at my pre-wedding dinner, I saw it: my fiancée, Olivia, laughing with my half-brother, Liam, his hand possessively on her back, their betrayal so blatant it stole my breath. The pain intensified as Olivia, with a perfectly fake smile, kissed my cheek, reeking of Liam' s cologne, then dismissed the custom-made key to our dream home as "just a key," leaving me standing alone with my rejected love. As I saw them kiss the next morning, followed by a voice recording of Olivia' s cruel laughter describing me as "poor, sad Ethan" and her "ticket" to Liam and wealth, a terrifying clarity pierced through me. They thought I was weak, a fool to be manipulated, but the man they knew died that day; I would rise from the ashes, a new man ready to enact a revenge they would never see coming.

The rain outside mirrored the chill in my grand, empty house, a constant reminder of how Liam, my guardian and the man I loved, had grown distant. On the eve of my birthday, he returned home, dismissing my wishes and harshly criticizing my art, his words a familiar sting. Just as his cold judgment left me reeling, a call came from the hospital: late-stage pancreatic cancer. In that hollow silence, a flicker of hope arrived in the form of an experimental cryogenic program-a chance, however small, for a future cure. But my desperate private choice was cruelly exposed when the brochures for my "coffin-like sleeping pod" scattered across the living room floor, revealing my grim secret to Liam and his stunning fiancée, Chloe Vance, who sneered at my "morbid projects." Liam, already distant, erupted in fury, convinced I was staging a dramatic plea for attention. Chloe, the insidious socialite who had usurped my place, spun a web of lies to solidify the deception. She faked my medical records, planting doubt in Liam's mind and confirming his belief that I was a manipulative liar inventing a terminal illness for sympathy. His anger and disgust were a final, crushing blow. He banished me from my longtime room, his disdain a heavy cloak. How could he not see the truth? How could the man who had once been my protector, my entire world, now believe I was a vile, twisted monster? The injustice burned, transforming my grief into a quiet, icy resolve. With nothing left to fight for, and the world stripped bare of hope, I confirmed my place in the Neptune Project: deep-sea cryogenic preservation, set for December 12th-my birthday, and his wedding day. I would disappear, quietly and permanently, leaving him to his new life, unaware of the profound lie that had shattered mine.

My brother didn't die. He just used a hurricane to run away, leaving me to pay for his escape. For eight agonizing years, my parents blamed me, punishing me for a "sin" I didn't commit, calling my very existence a penance for their lost golden child. On my nineteenth birthday, I tried to break free from their toxic grip. But as a notorious killer stalked me, I begged my father-a detective hunting this very monster-for help. He had already broken my only self-defense, a pepper spray he'd derided as a "useless toy," and then he dismissed my desperate texts as just another one of my dramatic cries for attention. I died because of their callous neglect, because the weapon I relied on failed me. As a ghost, I watched in horrifying silence as they grieved for a son who was never truly gone, while simultaneously dismissing my actual death. My dismembered body on their evidence board was just another case; my own parents were too consumed by mourning a lie to see the devastating truth of my final moments. How could they be so utterly blind? How could they condemn me for a lie, only to be completely untouched by my real, horrific truth? My entire life was an inconvenience, my death an unacknowledged whisper. But then, Ethan returned, alive, shattering their carefully constructed grief and revealing his selfish deception. And my killer, caught by my father, delivered the final, crushing blow: a confession detailing how my parents' neglect had sealed my fate, forcing my father to finally confront his own daughter's terrifying final pleas.

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?"

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.

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

Allison Montgomery was waiting at the airport when an audio alert from her parked Range Rover flashed on her phone. Assuming it was a break-in, she checked the live dashcam feed, only to see her fiancé, Finn, and her younger sister, Cheyanne, passionately making out in the backseat. "Tell me I'm better than her," Cheyanne whispered. "Tell me I'm better than Allison." "You are," Finn gasped. "God, you are." When Allison confronted her family with the video, she expected justice. Instead, her uncle and mother fiercely defended the cheaters. They blamed Allison's "cold and frigid" nature for pushing Finn away, victim-blaming her in front of the entire household staff. To protect their corporate alliance, her uncle ruthlessly announced that the engagement would be transferred to Cheyanne, and threatened to strip Allison of her inheritance. Stripped of her fiancé, her family, and her dignity, Allison realized her pristine twenty-year life was a complete lie. The people who were supposed to love her were actively protecting her abusers, leaving her utterly isolated and burning with a cold, protective rage. Refusing to be their victim, Allison targeted Finn's ruthless, billionaire uncle, Adam Kensington, proposing a fake marriage to secure the capital needed to crush her family. But when the notoriously untouchable Wall Street phantom not only accepted her proposal, but demanded she immediately move into his penthouse to raise his secret daughter, Allison realized she had just sold her soul to the devil.

"Let's get a divorce. She's pregnant and deserves a place in my life." He once promised to protect Claire forever, yet when his first love returned, he cast her aside. For three years, Claire dimmed her brilliance, living quietly as the obedient wife behind him. When he handed her divorce papers to give his pregnant mistress a place, Claire no longer hid her talents. The woman he had overlooked was a legendary healer, racing prodigy, and a genius designer. After the divorce, she reclaimed her glory. When he pleaded, "Honey, let's remarry," another man pulled her close. "She's my wife now. As for you... Someone, take him out and give him what he deserves!"

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.

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."

Elliana, the unfavored "ugly duckling" of her family, was humiliated by her stepsister, Paige, who everyone admired. Paige, engaged to the CEO Cole, was the perfect woman-until Cole married Elliana on the day of the wedding. Shocked, everyone wondered why he chose the "ugly" woman. As they waited for her to be cast aside, Elliana stunned everyone by revealing her true identity: a miracle healer, financial mogul, appraisal prodigy, and AI genius. When her mistreatment became known, Cole revealed Elliana's stunning, makeup-free photo, sending shockwaves through the media. "My wife doesn't need anyone's approval."

For four years, I played the part of the perfect, pathetic wife to my billionaire husband, Damian Nunez. Bleeding from a gunshot wound I took to secure a multi-billion-dollar deal for his company, I dragged myself to our penthouse, ready to finally end the charade.

I stood in the darkest corner of the Pierre Hotel’s ballroom, my cheap polyester dress itching against my skin while my wristband buzzed with a DARPA Priority Red alert. In front of the city’s elite, my fiancé Bryce Calloway took the stage, not to toast our future, but to publicly end our engagement and announce he was with my sister, Chloe. The room turned on me instantly, a hundred pairs of eyes pinning me down with pity and disgust as they physically backed away like I was contagious. When I returned home, my mother shattered a crystal vase at my feet, screaming that I was a humiliation and a "dropout" who didn't deserve a cent of the family fortune. Chloe and Bryce mocked me, laughing when I told them I had a mission with the National Security Agency, convinced I was either a pathological liar or a low-level criminal. They watched in horror as a black, unmarked military helicopter descended on our backyard to extract me, yet they still chose to believe I was being arrested for drug trafficking. They saw a pathetic girl who couldn't even parallel park, never realizing I was Dr. Nova Vance, the lead physicist behind the world's first successful fusion reactor. To secure funding for my research and gain a "fortress" of a name, I signed a thirty-day marriage contract with the arrogant billionaire Roman Knight. He treats me like a fraud, convinced I’m a gold-digger who failed out of college, while I quietly run global energy simulations from his guest bedroom. He has no idea that the "loser" he’s forced to live with is the same anonymous grandmaster who has been ruthlessly crushing him in online strategy games for months. "The contract is active," I told him, looking past his expensive suit. "But don't expect me to be your maid."