Trapped With My Best Friend’s Brother

Modern

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.

현대

혼인 신고를 하는 당일, 김이서의 예비 신랑이 다른 여자와 도망가 버렸다. 어쩔 수 없이 그녀는 구청에서 랜덤으로 '가난뱅이' 기사 이재준과 스피드 결혼을 해 버렸다. 전남친의 현 부인이 비아냥거렸다. "거지가 거지한테 시집갔으니, 평생 밑바닥 신세겠네." 그녀를 배신한 전남친 역시 가식적으로 말했다. "나한테 차였다고 해서 그렇게 자포자기하면 안 되지. 그런 놈이랑 결혼하다니, 조만간 땅을 치고 후회하게 될걸!" 김이서는 코웃음을 쳤다. "이렇게 떡 벌어진 가슴 근육에 기대서 자고 있는데 백 살까지도 살 것