Chapter 1 1

My fiancé Javen sent me to a yacht in the middle of a New York storm to finalize a high-stakes merger with Alfonse Wolfe, a billionaire rumored to have ice water in his veins. I did it for "us," shivering in a soaked evening gown and cutting my hand on broken glass just to get the signature that would save Javen's company. But when I rushed back to the Doyle estate, the manor was blazing with lights for an unannounced engagement party. Javen wasn't waiting for me with open arms; he was standing on the dance floor with Blossom Vega, the daughter of his biggest competitor, announcing their union to the elite of New York. When I stepped forward, dripping blood and water onto the marble floor, Javen didn't try to protect me. He looked at me with pure disgust and told the gathered press that I was a "charity case" suffering from mental delusions. His mother laughed while calling me a cockroach, and his father claimed my family's lost fortune was a hallucination. To ensure my silence, Javen leaned in and whispered that he would pull the plug on my disabled brother's life-saving medical care if I didn't disappear. I was hauled away by security and locked in a dark storage room like a stain on his perfect evening. I lay there in the dust, unable to process how twelve years of love could be a calculated lie. How could the man I was supposed to marry use my brother's breath as a bargaining chip after I had just sacrificed everything to save him? I escaped through a second-story window and went straight to the only predator powerful enough to tear the Doyles apart: Alfonse Wolfe. I didn't just ask for sanctuary; I demanded a marriage license to unlock my mother's secret trust and protect my brother. Standing in a high-security vault as the new Mrs. Wolfe, I discovered a truth that changed the game. I didn't just have the money to ruin Javen; the deed in my hand proved I now owned the very land beneath Alfonse's mansion. "I'm not the prey anymore," I whispered, watching the Doyle stock plummet on my phone. "I'm the hunter."

I was the "fallen princess" of New York, living in a charcoal silk cage while paying off my father's millions in debt with my own body. My owner was Braxton Kensington, a man who looked at me with the same cold interest he gave a fluctuating stock graph. One morning, a New York Times alert shattered the silence: Braxton was getting engaged to a billionaire socialite in the merger of the decade. When I demanded my freedom and the five-million-dollar severance promised in our contract, he just smirked and pointed to the fine print. "In a court of law, an engagement is just an intention," he whispered, gripping my chin until it bruised. "Until I sign that marriage license, you belong to me." He flicked a black AmEx at my feet like I was a tragic charity case, ordering me to buy a dress for his engagement gala. To save my dying mother from eviction, I took a secret translation job, only to realize my client was his new fiancée, Caroline. She dragged me to Braxton's office to humiliate me, and after he hid me in a secret room to avoid a scandal, he branded me a "security risk" and froze every cent I had. I stood in a CVS with my last sixty dollars, swallowing a Plan B pill dry while watching a news report about Braxton demolishing my family's last legacy. He didn't just want my body; he wanted to erase my entire existence and leave me with nothing. The cruelty was breathtaking, but Braxton forgot that a woman with nothing left to lose is the most dangerous player in the game. I reached out to the only man he truly feared-his billionaire half-brother and the boy whose heart I broke years ago, Ansel Neal. "Coffee isn't enough," Ansel replied to my message in seconds. "Dinner. Our old spot. 8 PM." As I walked into the club to meet Braxton's greatest rival, I knew the game wasn't over. I was just changing the rules.

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.

The view from our twenty-million-dollar penthouse was stunning, but all I could see was the cracked screen of my phone. A single message from a contact named Sienna had just appeared: "Game On." For four years, I had worn the shapeless beige cardigans and played the quiet, submissive wife the elite Rutledge family demanded. "Dorothea is back in the city," my husband Hunter said, refusing to meet my eyes as he pushed the divorce papers toward me. He offered a "generous" settlement, patronizingly claiming that with my felony record and "creative resume," I'd be living on the streets without his charity. He had no idea that while he was rehearsing his breakup speech, I was already zipping up a duffel bag filled with cash and a passport in a name he didn't recognize. His sister Kamala didn't even wait for me to pack before she was in our bedroom, calling me a leech and trying to destroy the only photo I had of my mother. I didn't cry or beg; I simply dropped Hunter's favorite three-million-dollar Ming vase, watched it shatter, and walked out the door with a cold smile. That night, I traded my sensible flats for a crimson silk dress and lethal heels, leaving Hunter's jaw on the floor when he saw me at an exclusive club. He watched in horror as I smashed a vodka bottle over a harasser's head, still believing I was a broken woman who needed his protection. He didn't know the truth until his grandmother finally revealed that I was the anonymous investor who had rescued their company from bankruptcy. I had gone to prison to protect his father's reputation, wearing the shame for years so their family name wouldn't implode. Hunter fell to his knees in the driveway, begging for a second chance and promising to dump his mistress, but the anger in my heart had already turned to ice. The man I had sacrificed my life for was now just a stranger I used to know. "The opposite of love isn't hate, Hunter. It's indifference." I climbed into a purple supercar as my phone buzzed with a call from Mount Sinai Hospital. My medical license was reinstated, and a high-profile trauma case was waiting for my hands. Iris the housewife was dead, and Dr. Gutierrez was finally back in play.

I'm a top surgeon at Mount Sinai, but at 432 Park Avenue, I'm just the invisible "placeholder wife" of Fletcher Montgomery. After three months of silence, I didn't hear from my husband; I found out he was back in New York via a news alert tracking his private jet. When he finally walked into our penthouse, he didn't bring a greeting-he brought the scent of another woman's perfume and a heart full of ice. He looked at me with pure revulsion, telling me he was "tired of looking at mistakes" before slamming the bedroom door in my face. The humiliation escalated the next morning when his mother cornered me with a divorce agreement, calling our seven-year marriage a "charity project" that had run its course. She reminded me I was a "peasant" who owed the Montgomerys for saving my reputation, even as I spent my days saving lives in the OR. At a family dinner on Long Island, Fletcher turned our private struggle into a public execution. In front of his entire elite clan, he sneered that I should stop fixing other people's hearts and figure out why my own womb was a "wasteland." When I tried to defend myself, he dragged me into his car, only to kick me out on a dark, rain-slicked street in Queens. I stood there shivering in a thin blouse, without a phone or shoes, watching his taillights disappear while a group of men whistled at me from the shadows. I couldn't understand how seven years of devotion ended with me barefoot in the mud, or why the man I once loved now treated me like a stray he regretted picking up. The injustice burned hotter than the freezing rain, fueling a cold, surgical rage I hadn't felt in years. I eventually made it back to the penthouse, but I wasn't the submissive wife anymore. I rescued my cat from the freezing terrace, fired the malicious house manager, and deadbolted the master suite from the inside. When Fletcher's assistant called, I gave him a simple message: "Tell him the locks have changed, and the war has officially begun."

I married Clive Harrington, the coldest billionaire in Manhattan, under a strict contract that forbade any emotional burdens. When I needed a high-risk surgery to save my sight, I checked into the clinic alone, hiding the procedure from a husband who saw me as nothing more than a legal asset. I thought I could handle the darkness in silence. But while I was blind and bandaged in my hospital bed, my biological mother called, screaming that if I didn't produce a Harrington heir by the end of the fiscal year, she would cut off the life-saving treatments for my disabled sister. I was crawling on the cold hospital floor, desperately feeling for a cane I had dropped, when I touched a pair of expensive leather shoes. It was Clive. He was supposed to be in London closing a multi-million dollar deal, but there he was, watching his "contract wife" groveling in the dark like a beggar. He didn't walk away in disgust. He carried me to a five-thousand-dollar-a-night VIP suite and sat by my bed, listening in chilling silence as another voicemail from my mother filled the room, calling me a "useless broodmare" who was only worth the trust fund disbursements my marriage secured. I expected him to remind me of Clause 34B or hand me divorce papers now that I was "damaged goods." Instead, I felt his thumb brush a stray tear from my cheek, his presence shifting from a statue of ice into a predatory shield. "I thought I was just currency to you," I whispered, my voice trembling behind the gauze. "Just an investment." Clive didn't answer with words. He picked up his phone and called his head of legal with a single, terrifying command: "Kill the Douglas family's credit lines. Every debt, every lien-trigger them all. If they want a war, I'll give them a massacre." As he leaned down to kiss my bandaged forehead, I realized the contract was dead. My husband wasn't protecting an asset anymore; he was hunting the people who had dared to touch what belonged to him.