The Untypical Marriage
While My Husband Cheated, I Married His Powerful Brother
To help her husband build his business empire, Veyra worked two jobs, skipped meals, and sacrificed everything she had. When her mother desperately needed life-saving treatment, she couldn't even scrape together the money. Then, on a New Year's Eve flight, fate seated her beside her husband's mistress. That's when she discovered the cruel truth. Her husband had secretly amassed millions long ago. The wedding ring that belonged to Veyra now glittered on another woman's finger. The $500,000 that could have saved her mother's life had been spent instead on luxury gifts and pocket money for his lover. She lost her baby. She lost her mother. And finally, she lost every illusion about the man she'd loved for years. After leaving the airport, Veyra walked into a bar, kissed the most dangerous-looking stranger she could find, and spent one reckless night in his arms. By sunrise, she disappeared without leaving so much as her name. She thought it was nothing more than a farewell to her broken past. She was wrong. The stranger was Dorian-the most powerful, mysterious billionaire in the business world. Meanwhile, her cheating husband finally realized what he had thrown away. He begged on his knees, signed a postnuptial agreement worth billions, and swore he would give up everything if she would come back. But just as Veyra began plotting to reclaim everything that had been stolen from her, a mysterious car accident brought Dorian back into her life. Only then did she learn the truth. He wasn't a stranger at all. He was her ex-husband's older stepbrother. Now two powerful men are fighting for the same woman-one consumed by regret, the other determined to make her his. Sorry, cheating ex... I choose your brother.
Chapter 1 First Class Betrayal
Caspian had been working overtime through the entire New Year holiday. Veyra Solenne decided she would surprise him. She'd fly out, knock on his hotel door, watch his tired face crack into a smile.
Only business class seats were left. Although she felt bad about the ticket price, she thought it was worth it.
She sat there for a full minute, unable to figure out how to lower the tray table.
The woman beside her - polished, bored, gorgeous in the particular way that costs money - let out a short laugh.
"Never flown business before?"
Veyra managed an awkward smile. "Sorry. You must run a company or something. You've got that air about you."
"Me? No." The woman waved a manicured hand. "But my benefactor does. If I'm not in business class, he sends a private jet."
"A benefactor," Veyra said. "Those must be hard to come by."
"Not really." The woman's mouth curved. "I'm his subordinate. I keep making expensive mistakes at work. He scolds me until I cry, and then-" she smiled, letting the sentence finish itself.
A small chill moved down Veyra's spine, though she couldn't have said why. "Funny," she said slowly. "My husband has a colleague like that too. Always making mistakes."
"You're married?" The woman's eyes swept over her, cataloguing. "His wife's about your age, actually."
She examined her nails.
"He says he got tired of her ages ago. Says touching her feels stale. Less interesting than watching me flip my hair."
Veyra's stomach turned, quietly, the way it does before you know why.
"I told him I wanted to see him over the holiday," the woman went on, pleased with herself. "So he told his wife he had to work."
That was when Veyra saw it. The ring on the woman's finger. A diamond, cut exactly like the wedding band she had lost two years ago.
She went still.
Caspian is an ordinary employee, she thought. So, calm down. Similar rings don't mean anything.
Her eyes fixed on the ring.
"That's a wedding band," Veyra said, her voice coming out strange to her own ears. "Did you marry him?"
"This?" The woman - Xiomara, she introduced herself, admiring the stone as it caught the cabin light - "I made him take it from his wife."
The air went out of Veyra's lungs.
"I wasn't trying to make trouble for her, honestly," Xiomara said. "But on my birthday she had a miscarriage and dragged him to the hospital. I spent it alone."
Veyra's hand drifted, without her permission, to her stomach.
The memory came back whole and freezing: black ice on the walk home from the market, a fall she hadn't seen coming, three months along, and then nothing but blood on frozen concrete. Caspian at her bedside for three days straight, not sleeping. Waking to find her ring gone along with the child.
It's okay, he'd said, voice breaking. We'll have another baby. I'll make you a new ring.
Don't, she'd told him. They're doing layoffs. Save the money. When you make it, get me one then.
She had believed, at the time, that this was a small and noble sacrifice. She had not known she was negotiating away her own ring to a woman she hadn't met yet.
"So he gave you his wife's ring," Veyra said carefully.
"He didn't want to, at first. Said he'd buy me something better." Xiomara tilted her hand, watching the light slide across the diamond. "But that old thing acts so superior just for being his wife. If I don't put her in her place, she'll think she owns the world."
"When a woman lets herself get that pathetic," Xiomara added, almost kindly, "there's really no saving her."
Veyra's fingers found the hem of her sleeve and held on. "If he spends this much on you, he must be paying her a fortune to keep quiet."
Xiomara laughed, bright and careless, and leaned in close enough that her perfume became a wall.
"Here's the funny part," she whispered. "That pathetic woman doesn't even know he runs a company."
---
"Why keep it from her?" Veyra asked. Something in her was still hoping - stupidly, stubbornly - that there was an explanation that didn't end where she thought it did.
"Because what's the point?" Xiomara turned her nails toward the window light. "She already spent her best years slaving beside him while he built everything. If you were a man and you finally made it, would you keep spending on a wife who's already worn out? Money doesn't buy back anyone's youth."
Veyra caught her own reflection in the cabin glass - hollow-cheeked, shadowed under the eyes, ten years of scraping by written into her skin. She used to look better than this. She used to look like Xiomara.
"You know, sis, you've still got some looks left," Xiomara said, studying her with the clinical warmth of someone appraising livestock. "A little cosmetic work wouldn't hurt. Your husband hasn't been that interested lately, has he?"
Veyra said nothing.
"My benefactor gives me half a million a month just for living expenses," Xiomara added, unprompted, unbothered. "Procedures are separate."
"How long," Veyra made herself ask, "has this been going on?"
"Since June twelfth, last year." Xiomara checked her nails again, already bored of the question.
Veyra's grip on her own sleeve went white-knuckled.
June twelfth. The day her mother had needed five hundred thousand dollars for surgery she never got. Caspian had begged everyone he knew and come back with three hundred fifty thousand - everything I have, he'd told her, weeping, and she had believed him, had scraped together eighty thousand more herself and still watched her mother die eighty thousand short of enough.
I'm sorry, he'd said into her hair. I'm worthless. I couldn't even save your mother.
She had wiped his tears instead of her own. You gave everything you had. That's enough. Just wait a little longer, she'd told him, and he'd gripped her hand like a man drowning and sworn they wouldn't suffer forever.
He'd had the other hundred and fifty thousand the whole time.
"Funny thing," Xiomara said, watching her now with real interest. "That woman's mother needed exactly five hundred thousand that same month."
Veyra looked at her and said nothing at all.
Xiomara winked. "He was going to pay it. Originally."
"You took it," Veyra said. "For an allowance."
"Please, he's got plenty more where that came from. I just told him - once her mother's dead, that woman has no family left. Nowhere to go. If he ever gets caught keeping me, she won't dare make a scene." Xiomara smiled, cat-content. "I wanted a Chanel piece that month. Five hundred thousand, as it happens."
"Aren't you afraid she'll find out?"
"I'm smarter than that." Xiomara stretched, satisfied. "It was my idea - tell his wife he'd scraped together everything, let her think he gave his all. She'd be too grateful, too guilty over the shortfall, to ever look for someone else in the picture."
Then, almost as an afterthought, she added the last piece.
"The annoying part is, the only reason he finally agreed to do it was so that if I ever got found out, his precious wife wouldn't leave him." She snorted. "Tch. Some women have all the luck."
The slap landed before Veyra had decided to throw it.
"What is wrong with you?" Xiomara shrieked, hand flying to her cheek.
The Untypical Marriage
"If you think that you have been living in hell all your life, let me break that illusion for you," Adrian said. He spoke slowly, his voice full of menace. "This place–this is true hell, right here, where I am. His statement, "In this place, death is not an escape, no matter how much you may yearn
The Perfect Marriage Fraud
After a tragic accident, Camilla's mother is critically ill in the hospital, and the medical bills are piling up. Desperate to save her mother's life, Camilla accepts a contract from Logan Delaware to be his bride unaware that he is the company's CEO for the new job she got and that his father, is h
The Marriage Demands
Meet Zackriya Islam, Zac as he likes to be called, is a young man of twenty five years of age who converted to Islam two years prior. Now that he has settled down with a decent job, he wishes to enter the advanture of marriage. With an impeccable wanderlust for change and adventure, we contacts the
The Unsucessful Marriage
Philie Amber was an introvert as a child. She faced years without socializing because she was labeled a "witch" for her differences. Nonetheless, she was satisfied with her auntie, Deni, who had rescued her when her own parents had dumped her years before. She needed to marry Xylde, who is recognize
The CEO's Second Marriage
Clara Allen thought the marriage between her and Hadrian was full of happiness and sweetness, but what she thought was far from reality. At the beginning of their marriage, Hadrian was very attentive to her like a dream husband. But, after the older man died of cancer, there was only coldness and i
The Marriage Proposal
đź”¶Blurb đź”¶ What will you do when you are in power?? When the world can fall under your feet because of the authority you possessed.. For me? I will take that opportunity and sought for more power but did you know what Andrew William did? He feeds and ripped off from the poo
The Accidental Marriage
In the heart of Seattle, two very different souls collide in a whirlwind of passion and hardships. When a chance encounter leads Amelie Campbell to having a one night stand with charming billionaire, Sebastian Romano, her life turns upside down. Fate interweaves their destinies when a shocking sca
The Marriage Expedient
Synopsis: Roshni's life shattered and turned into the shadow of its formal self when she was dissuaded and lured into marriage with Desmond Dean, the powerful, scary, and invincible Billionaire. However, she concurred to that just for the sake of her family's happiness and to ensure they are free fr
The Billionaires Fake Marriage
Alexandra Thompson, a self-made tech billionaire, and Julian Saint Clair, a charismatic real estate heir, agree to a 6-month fake marriage to secure a lucrative business deal. As they navigate their growing attraction amidst deception, they face complications from rival CEOs, past lovers, and family
The Billionaire's Regretful Marriage
Amelia Miller, a simple woman who was supposed to marry Ethan Blackwell-the CEO of the renowned Blackwell fashion brand-was instead left at the altar with nothing but a letter of apology. Humiliated by the failed wedding, Amelia tried to call Ethan, but all access to him was cut off, and it was as i
The Tycoon Marriage Bargain
What if your first visit to Greece lands you into a marriage with the city most wealthiest man. _______ On the day Olivia Thompson got to Greece to visit her boyfriend, she found him getting married to someone else. Feeling hurt and shattered, Olivia decided then and there to get back at him, whic
The arranged marriage
"I am sorry if this sounds off but is Mr. Maverick a blind man?" I asked, I didn't fail to notice the frown that appeared on her face and for some reason she looked past me, unable to give me the answer. "Is this how it is now? Asking my maids for information about me." The husky voice I heard fro
Secrets In The Marriage
The conspiracies brought Annie and Ronald together. They had the wrong notion about each other. While Ronald thought that his bride was Florrie, the first daughter of the White family, Annie thought that her groom was a poor man called Addy from the countryside. But that was very far from the truth
The Second Marriage Chance
"Did you ever, even once, imagine yourself loving me?" Sarah posed a hopeful question to Philip. “Don’t make me laugh, Sarah. Everything between us has been purely about pleasure and business.” Sarah had harbored feelings for Philip ever since she first saw him in a sports magazine. When his
The Unexpected Marriage Deal
"Marry me. Put on this ring, tomorrow you are going to tell the press that Bella cheated on me and we started dating, when Bella found out she tried to separate us and when she could not, she blackmailed you to upload this photo. This will make me hate you, but we have already reconciled," he explai
The Unplanned Contract Marriage
Monica Watson was dating a man who worked in the same department as her. Regrettably, her boyfriend cheated on her. One night, she resolved to drink in order to forget what had occurred and what her lover had done. However, she had a one-night stand with a stranger while intoxicated. She just
Renew the Marriage
Here's a piece of news: Shocked, ex-wife of Duncan Empire Group's President comes back with her son!!! Noah Duncan is dealing with business in the office. When seeing the news, he is shocked. It has been five years. She finally comes back with his son. Does this mean she still loves him? Noah: Isabe
The Billionaire's Secret Marriage
In the glitzy world of Manhattan's elite, wedding planner Victoria Harper is about to orchestrate the grandest event of her career – the marriage of billionaire playboy Alexander Sterling. Little does she know that behind the charm and opulence lies a web of secrets. As they dance between society's
The Fake Marriage
Rina is very happy for her best friend that finally she got married to the love of her life. After being betrayed by her boyfriend Eros, she has lost her hope to fall in love again. She doesn't want any love relationship. But suddenly at her best friend's wedding "Be my girlfriend" the biggest playb
The CEO (Contract marriage)
No one thought that just one night could change anyone’s life. But for Alyssa, all it took was an encounter. She found herself marrying the richest man, the CEO of the biggest company, Andrew Michael Ford. The contract was about her marrying Andrew and he will give her 2 billion. Now after a mont
