Claimed By My Ex's Powerful Billionaire Uncle

He postponed putting my name on the deed 18 times. Each time, his mentee Ciera had an “emergency.” Each time, he ran to her. I watched him give her his prized Montblanc pen—the one he wouldn’t even let me borrow. I saw her post their late nights on Instagram. I ate anniversary dinners alone while he “mentored” her. Then he bought me a necklace—identical to the one she just flaunted online. That was when I stopped feeling anything. I didn’t cry. I didn’t fight. I simply packed two suitcases, resigned from our firm, and booked a one-way ticket to London. He thinks I’m coming back in a week. He has no idea I’m gone for good. Nineteen broken promises. One silent goodbye. And a new life waiting across the ocean.

The cold, damp concrete was the last thing I remembered. A guard' s boot had connected with my ribs, a brutal punctuation to a life spiraling out of control. They said I tried to kill Liam, my best friend. A frame job so perfect, even I almost believed it. My art career had evaporated. My finances were a joke. I was a magnet for every piece of misfortune the world could throw at me. Meanwhile, the Peterson family thrived. My fiancée, Chloe, was a local celebrity. Her father shot up the corporate ladder. Her aimless sister landed a six-figure job. And Derek Stone, Chloe' s deadbeat ex, became a tech mogul overnight. Their good fortune mirrored my ruin. It wasn't coincidence, I realized too late. It was a transaction. They were feasting on my life, my luck, my very soul, through some dark ritual disguised as love. Then, darkness. An endless, silent fall. Until a sharp, piercing ring jolted me back. It wasn't a prison bell. It was the clinking of champagne glasses. My eyes snapped open. I was standing on a plush red carpet, holding a champagne flute, wearing the suit I' d bought for my engagement party. Chloe Peterson stood before me, radiant in a white dress, a smile as bright and as fake as I now knew it to be. The same smile she gave me in the courtroom when they read the guilty verdict. I was back. Back in the grand ballroom of the Peterson family mansion, on the very day my life had been signed away. The day the ritual began. The rage, the betrayal, the memory of dying alone on a prison floor churned inside me. "Just a bit dizzy," I said, my voice steady, betraying none of the chaos in my mind. This wasn't a repeat. It was a second chance. And I was going to burn their entire empire to the ground.

A pact sealed by my father' s death dictated that on my twenty-second birthday, I would marry a Kline and crown the next CEO. For years, I chased Brett Kline, convinced my unrequited love would eventually win his heart. But at my birthday party, he gave the bracelet meant for me to my stepsister, Juliana, right in front of everyone. "Get used to it, Faith," he sneered. "I'm about to be CEO. I can't be tied down to just one woman." He called me shameless and vicious, a disgrace to my family name. He humiliated me, cheated on me with Juliana, and demanded I accept his affairs if I wanted to be his wife. His cruelty escalated until he slapped me in public and even tried to stab me on my wedding day. In my last life, this blind devotion led to a miserable marriage. He slowly poisoned me, and I died alone while he lived happily with my stepsister. But when I opened my eyes again, I was reborn and back at that party, the moments before he was about to give my gift away. This time, I knew the truth. And I knew I wouldn't be choosing him.

The doctor told me I had weeks to live. But the real death sentence was seeing my fiancé's hand slip into my best friend's outside the hospital room. They thought I didn't see. They had already turned my little brother against me, the boy I raised. He called her "Mom" now. At their engagement party, held in my house and paid for with my money, he looked me in the eye. "I hate you!" My own family praised her for being a "natural mother," while the world celebrated their love story. They saw a weak, dying woman, too broken to fight back. They thought they had won. So I gave them everything they wanted-my company, my fortune, my blessing. But I also left behind one final gift, a dead woman's last words. When I die, they will inherit my empire, but they will be forever branded by a legacy of eternal shame.

I had exactly forty-five minutes to get married, or I would lose the voting shares needed to stop my father from laundering millions through our family foundation. Everything was riding on this one legal signature at the City Clerk’s office. But just as I reached the front of the line, my phone buzzed with a high-definition photo of my fiancé, Preston, tangled in sheets with a junior associate at a SoHo hotel. The man I was about to tie my life to was a fraud, and my deadline was ticking toward zero. When I shoved the evidence in his face, he didn't even flinch. Instead, he gripped my wrist until the bone ground together, whispering that I was just a "junkie" fresh out of a Swiss clinic and that no one else would ever marry a liability with a personality disorder. My father was already standing by with a fraudulent medical affidavit, ready to force me into a conservatorship and strip me of my freedom the moment the clock hit 5 PM. They had spent years using my fake "instability" as a leash, treating me like a broken doll while they bled the company dry. I was the only one with the evidence to take them down, yet I was being discarded like a sunk cost by the very men who were supposed to protect me. I looked at Preston’s smug face and realized I didn't need a husband; I needed a predator. I scanned the room and spotted Dominik Mack, the "Vulture of Wall Street," a man who specialized in hostile takeovers and stripping men like my father of everything they owned. I walked straight up to the most dangerous man in New York and offered him a business transaction. "Do you want to get married?" I asked. He looked at my trembling hands, then at the man chasing me, and adjusted his collar with clinical detachment. "Deal," he said. I didn't just find a groom; I found an accomplice. This wasn't a wedding anymore—it was a declaration of war.

For seven years, I loved my guardian, Kendrick Page. He was my protector, my family, my entire world. The day I confessed, he called my love "unhealthy" and kicked me out. Then he brought home his fiancée, Chrissy. She took my room and my memories before revealing their engagement was a "charade"-a cruel game Kendrick designed to prove I was a burden and drive me away for good. His final act of cruelty was asking me to be his maid of honor. The man who raised me hadn't just rejected me; he had orchestrated my complete humiliation just to be free of his responsibility. Heartbroken, I escaped to Boston to start over. I met Adolfo Joyce, a brilliant, intense mentor who saw the pain I tried to hide. But just as I started to feel safe, he cornered me, his eyes holding a shocking secret. "Amirah," he whispered, his voice low and urgent. "What is your mother's name?"