Bound By Lies: The Unwanted Contract Wife

Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them. But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father. That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago. Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company. Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate. To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison. Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall. "Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!" Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child. Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone. He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown? With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered. Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.

Averie spent hours preparing a perfect third-anniversary dinner for her billionaire husband, Jarett Sharp. Instead of celebrating, she received an anonymous photo of him intimately holding another woman. When Jarett finally arrived, he didn't even look guilty. "Candida. It's okay. Don't be scared. I'm on my way." He simply took a call from his mistress, shoved Averie aside, and walked right back out the door. That same night, Averie's father suffered a massive heart attack. The hospital demanded a half-million-dollar deposit before they would operate. But when Averie frantically tried to use the emergency medical trust card Jarett had given her, it was declined. Jarett had deliberately frozen her access to the funds just hours earlier. While she begged his assistant on the phone, Jarett refused to be disturbed, busy wrapping his expensive coat around his mistress in the hospital garden. Averie collapsed in the hallway, realizing the man she loved was deliberately letting her father die. In the end, a childhood friend stepped in to pay the bill and save her father's life, while her billionaire husband later pinned her to their bed, throwing a check at her and reminding her he had bought her for three million dollars. Averie didn't shed a single tear. She slowly ripped his check into pieces, left her massive diamond ring on the dresser, and walked out into the cold New York night with nothing but her old suitcase. She pulled out her phone and dialed her old ballet professor. She wasn't just going to leave Jarett Sharp. She was going to destroy him.

When Christina woke up in the hospital after a severe car crash, her brain didn't just recover—it mutated. She was suddenly cursed with an agonizing, high-speed hyper-memory. The first thing her new mind processed was the pristine Army uniform of her fiancé, Major Burke, and the hand of her stepsister, Corrina, casually stroking his shoulder. Every lie, every gaslighting sigh, and every secret glance between them over the past three years flashed before her eyes with merciless clarity. Christina immediately called off the engagement, demanding only one thing back: her late mother's old silver pendant. "A broken pendant? Are you really making a scene over that piece of trash?" Corrina scoffed. Burke refused to return it, letting his spoiled sister Brielle steal it to wear as a trophy. When Christina finally forced them to hand it over under the threat of a military scandal, the metal was covered in deep, ugly scratches. The arrogant Clark family treated her like a pathetic, hallucinating widow clinging to a worthless dollar-store trinket. They had no idea what they had actually been holding. Alone in her apartment, Christina pressed a drop of her blood into the pendant's scratched grooves. A blue light flared, syncing instantly with her neural implant to unlock the "Ghost Protocol"—a top-secret military archive that also held a hidden clue about her supposedly dead husband. Looking at the unimaginable power now downloaded directly into her brain, Christina knew the Clarks hadn't just thrown her away. They had handed her the world.

For two years, Clementine played the perfectly obedient wife to billionaire Donovan Bray, wearing his heavy diamonds and enduring his cold indifference. Until she accidentally saw his tablet and discovered she was just a "collateral asset"—a cheap lookalike prop hired to make his ex-girlfriend, Gisela, jealous. When Gisela returned to New York, Donovan's mask completely slipped. During a vicious argument where he mocked Clementine as a pathetic shadow, he grabbed her, causing her to fall down a flight of marble stairs. Waking up in the hospital, Clementine learned she had miscarried a six-week-old baby she didn't even know she had. But what truly shattered her was hearing Donovan's voice through the cracked hospital door. "It changes nothing." He coldly lied to his friend that the fall had caused permanent infertility. "It was probably for the best." He had killed her unborn child and casually dismissed her worth, truly believing she was a penniless nobody who would suffer his abuse in silence. He thought he held all the power, leaving her broken and discarded for his true love. What Donovan didn't know was that his fragile, dependent wife was secretly "C.", the billionaire genius behind Aurelian, the world's most exclusive luxury jewelry empire. Lying in the sterile room, Clementine dried her tears, filed for a ruthless divorce, and permanently froze his supplementary black card. It was time to show him who really held the strings.

For three years, Aubree played the obedient wife to billionaire Eli Wolfe, even secretly donating her kidney to save his life. But at a family gala, Eli's pregnant mistress deliberately threw herself backward into the pool and framed Aubree for the fall. Without asking a single question, Eli lunged forward and shoved Aubree into the freezing water. He swam right past her sinking body to save the mistress, leaving Aubree to drown. Nobody cared that her missing kidney made her core muscles spasm violently in the extreme cold. While she was still burning with a deadly fever, Eli's family dragged her out of bed and forced her to kneel at the mistress's feet. They slapped a criminal confession across her face and threatened to ruin her brother's career if she didn't sign it. "I will do whatever it takes to protect Dayna," Eli told her coldly. Staring at the man she had literally given a piece of her body to, the last beating piece of Aubree's heart completely died. Her ultimate sacrifice meant absolutely nothing. She calmly signed the papers, took the fifty-million-dollar settlement, and walked out the door on the arm of a handsome stranger. This time, she was going to restart her life and make Eli pay for every single thing he took from her.

I woke up in a blindingly white hotel penthouse with a throbbing headache and the taste of betrayal in my mouth. The last thing I remembered was my stepsister, Cathie, handing me a flute of champagne at the charity gala with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. Now, a tall, dangerously handsome man walked out of the bathroom with a towel around his hips. On the nightstand sat a stack of hundred-dollar bills. My stepmother had finally done it-she drugged me and staged a scandal with a hired escort to destroy my reputation and my future. "Aisha! Is it true you spent the night with a gigolo?" The shouts of a dozen reporters echoed through the heavy oak door as camera flashes exploded through the peephole. My phone lit up with messages showing my bank accounts were already frozen. My father was invoking the 'morality clause' in my mother's trust fund, and my fiancé had already released a statement dumping me to marry my stepsister instead. I was trapped, penniless, and being hunted by the press for a scandal I hadn't even participated in. My own family had sold me out for a payday, and the man standing in front of me was the only witness who could prove I was innocent-or finish me off for good. I didn't have time to cry. According to the fine print of the trust, I had thirty days to prove my "rehabilitation" through a legal marriage or I would lose everything. I tracked the man down to a coffee shop the next morning, watching him take a thick envelope of cash from a wealthy older woman. I sat across from him and slid a napkin with a $50,000 figure written on it. "I need a husband. Legal, paper-signed, and convincing." He looked at the number, then at me, a slow, crooked smile spreading across his face. I thought I was hiring a desperate gigolo to save my inheritance. I had no idea I was actually proposing to Dominic Fields, the reclusive billionaire shark who was currently planning a hostile takeover of my father's entire empire.