Escaping My Vicious Billionaire Husband

My life was a perfect fairytale, or so I thought. Born into old money, I was the golden girl who married Yale University's campus prince, Liam Vanderbilt. Two years into our blissful marriage, I quit my job, ready to start the family we'd always dreamed of. Then, Liam announced a year-long project in London, barely coming home to pack. I missed him terribly, barraging him with texts, but only met with silence. My best friend, Chloe, delivered the crushing news: Liam' s old flame, Serena Dubois, was back from Paris and working in his London office. Then Liam' s assistant confirmed: the new Vice President, familiar with Europe, accompanied him – a woman. My worst fears confirmed, I lay in bed, the realization hitting me like a punch: Liam's private Instagram account, a shrine to a girl from his prep school, Serena. He didn't just leave, he left for his first love, the jet named after me presumably carrying her. I was suffering through fertility treatments, waiting for him, while he was with her. My dream of a baby, our perfect life, shattered by his betrayal. Why marry me if he only truly loved her? Then I woke up, sweating, to a message from Liam. My desperate "I want a divorce" text received only one two-word response: "Fine." He didn't beg, he didn't explain. He just agreed. The only jet available to follow him to London was 'The Hailey,' the one he gifted me. Then I collapsed. When I opened my eyes, I was back on Yale's Old Campus, the day I first tried to ask Liam out. He stood before me, arrogant and young, wearing the Rolex I knew was Serena' s gift. I remembered his cutting rejection from my past life, and the thought of reliving that humiliation made me sick. But this time, I wouldn't let him break me. This time, I was getting off this rollercoaster before it even started.

Today was my four-year anniversary with Chace. He told me to wear my white dress for a surprise he had planned. I spent all afternoon getting ready, practicing my "Yes," certain he was finally going to propose. But when I arrived at the hotel ballroom, the banner read, "Congratulations, Chace & Karyn." In front of all their friends and family, he got down on one knee and proposed to his childhood friend, Karyn Warren. He used his mother's heirloom ring—the one he once showed me, saying it was for the woman he would spend his life with. He then introduced me, his girlfriend of four years, as "a very good friend." His new fiancée smiled sweetly and told me their marriage would be an open one, giving me permission to stay on as his mistress. I overheard him telling his friend his real plan: "Karyn is my wife for show, but Ember can be my woman on the side for fun." He thought I would just accept being his toy. He was wrong. I pulled out my phone and texted a number I'd never dared to call before—the executor of my estranged father's will. "I need to claim my inheritance." His reply was instant. "Of course, Ms. Ford. The stipulation is a marriage to me. Are you ready to proceed?" "Yes," I typed back. My life with Chace was over.

I woke up in a sterile hospital room, my head split open from a horrific car crash. But the pain in my skull was nothing compared to the memory burned into my retinas just before the impact: my billionaire husband, Dawson, walking into a luxury hotel with a woman who looked exactly like his dead first love. When Dawson finally arrived at the ward, there was no panic or relief in his eyes. He just coldly looked at my bloody bandages. "Your reckless driving just forced me to postpone the quarterly board meeting." Even our seven-year-old son, who I almost died giving birth to, didn't spare me a single glance. He kicked my hospital bed in annoyance. "The Wi-Fi here is garbage. You're a bad mom! Dad said Aunt Angelita should be the one living with us!" My blood turned to ice. For five years, I had bent over backward, wearing the hideous pale dresses he picked, starving myself to maintain a fragile figure, all to be a perfect, obedient substitute for a ghost. And this was what I got. An unfaithful husband who would rather bury me in debt than grant me a divorce, and a son who wished I was dead. The weak, subservient Charlene died on that wet asphalt. When the doctor pointed to Dawson and asked for his name, I looked at my husband with a hollow, defensive stare. "Who are you?" I whispered. Using retrograde amnesia as my shield, I was going to tear their perfect world apart.

I was dying at the banquet, coughing up black blood while the pack celebrated my step-sister Lydia’s promotion. Across the room, Caleb, the Alpha and my Fated Mate, didn't look concerned. He looked annoyed. "Stop it, Elena," his voice boomed in my head. "Don't ruin this night with your attention-seeking lies." I begged him, telling him it was poison, but he just ordered me to leave his Pack House so I wouldn't dirty the floor. Heartbroken, I publicly demanded the Severing Ceremony to break our bond and left to die alone in a cheap motel. Only after I took my last breath did the truth come out. I sent Caleb the medical records proving Lydia had been poisoning my tea with wolfsbane for ten years. He went mad with grief, realizing he had protected the murderer and rejected his true mate. He tortured Lydia, but his regret couldn't bring me back. Or so he thought. In the afterlife, the Moon Goddess showed me my reflection. I wasn't a wolfless weakling. I was a White Wolf, the rarest and most powerful of all, suppressed by poison. "You can stay here in peace," the Goddess said. "Or you can go back." I looked at the life they stole from me. I looked at the power I never got to use. "I want to go back," I said. "Not for his love. But for revenge." I opened my eyes, and for the first time in my life, my wolf roared.

I was the invisible trophy wife, a silent liability who just signed away another two years of my life for a monthly allowance and a closet full of clothes. My husband, Holmes Wilson, didn't even look at me as he dismissed me like a servant, his voice a cold baritone that made the room drop ten degrees. Everything changed when he suddenly threw a divorce agreement at me, offering twenty million dollars to walk away forever. That night, I shed the mask and went to a club to celebrate my freedom, only to end up dismantling three men with the surgical efficiency of a spec-ops soldier to save my friend. I didn't know Holmes was watching from the shadows, his eyes locked on the "lifeless" wife he thought he knew. The next morning, the divorce was gone, replaced by a predatory ultimatum that turned my world into a gilded cage. "Withdraw the papers," Holmes commanded, his gaze now filled with a terrifying curiosity. "We're going to the Hamptons." My family-in-law cornered us, demanding an heir for board control, while my secret handler went completely dark. Holmes trapped me in his penthouse, suspecting I was a corporate spy, his touch becoming a possessive trap as he realized my entire background was a "ghost file" that shouldn't exist. I didn't understand how my carefully rehearsed theater had failed so spectacularly, or why the man who had ignored me for years was now obsessed with breaking my secrets. As the world outside hunted for the data I carried, I realized the man I feared most was now my only shield. "There's nowhere left for you to run," he whispered against my skin, his voice thick with a dark, dangerous obsession. "You're mine now."

After our parents died in a plane crash, my brothers were my whole world. That ended the day they brought Francis home-a manipulative liar they treated like a saint while he systematically turned them against me. He framed me for everything, from fake injuries to sabotaging the neuro-linker compound that was my life's work. My brothers always chose his crocodile tears over my truth. "He's in the hospital, Jenna. Thanks to you," Bryan snarled over the phone. They even offered him my childhood bedroom right in front of me, as if I was already a ghost. They had no idea I was about to become one. I had a one-way ticket to Zurich and a contract with their biggest rival, a man who saw my value when my own blood saw a problem. I wasn't just running away-I was taking all of their secrets with me.