Betrayed And Married To The Billionaire Cousin

"Suite 802. Your fiancé has prepared a 'surprise' for you."

Ivana Chase didn't blink. She stood on the plush hallway carpet of a luxury Manhattan hotel, clutching the anonymous text on her phone that displayed suite 802. She gripped the brass handle, ignored the warning, and pushed the heavy oak door open.

The scent of expensive cologne and cheap floral perfume hit her instantly. A trail of discarded garments--a tailored designer jacket, a silk tie, a pair of red stilettos--led straight toward the inner bedroom.

"Fletcher?" Ivana called out, her voice flat, without the tremor in her chest.

A breathy, theatrical giggle answered her. Ivana stepped past the archway and stopped dead.

On the king-sized bed, tangled in Egyptian cotton sheets, was her fiancé, Fletcher Wooten. Straddling his waist was Breanne Wiley, the self-proclaimed diamond heiress who had spent the last three months worming her way into the Wooten family's elite circle.

Breanne gasped, pulling the duvet over her bare chest with exaggerated modesty, though her lips curved into a sharp, victorious smirk.

"Oh, Ivana!" Breanne gasped, her voice dripping with mock horror,"What are you doing here?"

Fletcher didn't even scramble to cover himself. He ran a hand through his messy sandy-brown hair, exhaling a cloud of gray smoke from the cigarette between his fingers. As the eldest son of the Wooten family's second branch, he had always treated Ivana--an investigative journalist who refused to use the family trust funds--like an inconvenient ornament.

"You really couldn't just stay at the office, could you?" Fletcher asked, his voice laced with pure irritation. "You always have to ruin everything."

Ivana bit her lower lip so hard the metallic tang of blood bloomed on her tongue. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird, but she refused to shed a single tear.

"So this is the emergency board meeting you had to attend?" Ivana said, her gaze sweeping over the rumpled sheets. "You broke our dinner plans to sleep with a fraud?"

"Watch your mouth," Fletcher sneered, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "Breanne comes from real wealth. Her family owns diamond mines. What do you bring to the table? A low-paying job at a second-rate magazine? You're boring, Ivana. You're bland and boring, and there's no fun in being with you at all. Our engagement is done."

Ivana parted her lips to speak, but a sudden, violent wave of heat exploded from the pit of her stomach. Her knees buckled slightly, a dizzying fog instantly clouding her vision.

Her mind flashed back to thirty minutes ago in the hotel lobby, when Breanne had gracefully handed her a glass of sparkling rosé.

The drink.

A cold realization sliced through the drug-induced haze. This wasn't just a spontaneous betrayal. It was a setup.

"You two worked together to drug me," Ivana whispered, her breath turning ragged as sweat broke out across her forehead, her mind clouding and her limbs rapidly losing strength.

Fletcher snorted, stubbing out his cigarette in the bedside tray. He stood up, towering over her with a cruel, calculating grin.

"You're not leaving this hotel room pure and innocent, Ivana," Fletcher murmured, stepping closer. "There's a suite down the hall with three of my venture capital partners. Once they're done playing with you, you won't have the leverage to demand a single cent from our engagement agreement."

"Stay back," Ivana warned.

She lunged sideways, her fingers wrapping around a heavy crystal ashtray on the console table. With every ounce of adrenaline left in her body, she hurled it at his feet. The crystal shattered with an explosive crack, jagged shards cutting across the leather of Fletcher's loafers.

Fletcher cursed, leaping back to avoid the flying glass.

Ivana spun on her heel and bolted into the corridor.

"Catch her!" Breanne shrieked from the bed. "Don't let her reach the elevator!"

The hallway spun around Ivana like a tilted carousel. Her skin burned as if fire flowed through her veins. Behind her, heavy, hurried footsteps echoed against the marble tiles. Heavy male laughter came from around the corner.

She dragged herself along the wall, her fingernails digging into the wallpaper. Ahead of her, the double mahogany doors of suite 888 stood cracked open by an inch.

She threw her entire weight against the door, tumbled inside, and slammed it shut, slapping the deadbolt into place.

Collapsing onto the cool marble foyer, she gasped for air, her lungs burning.

The sound of rushing water cut through the silence. A second later, the frosted glass door of the master bathroom swung open. A cloud of steam spilled out, carrying the crisp, sharp scent of cedarwood and cold rain.

A man stepped out, a single black towel slung low on his narrow hips. Water droplets tracked down the defined contours of his broad shoulders, chest, and washboard abs. His dark gray eyes, cold and sharp as crushed slate, locked onto the intruder on his floor.

Adrian Wooten. The undisputed head of the Wooten empire, the ruthless titan of Wall Street, and Fletcher's estranged, terrifying older cousin.

"Get out," Adrian said, his voice a low, lethal gravel that vibrated in the quiet suite.

Ivana tried to push herself up, but her limbs had completely liquefied. The drug roared through her bloodstream, overriding every instinct of self-preservation. Instead of retreating, she stumbled forward, collapsing straight against his bare, hard chest.

Adrian's jaw tightened. He seized her slender wrists to fling her away, but the unnatural, scorching heat radiating from her skin made his grip stall.

"Help me..." Ivana whimpered, her fingers curling into the damp skin of his shoulders as her trembling body pressed against his coolness. "Please... help me..."

Adrian looked down at her flushed face. Through the haze of lust and panic in her wide eyes, he recognized her instantly: Fletcher's supposedly docile fiancée.

His gaze darkened with a dangerous, predatory glint. He caught her chin, forcing her head up. Her breath brushed against his throat, rapid and intoxicating.

"Do you know what you're asking for, Ivana?" Adrian murmured, his voice dipping lower.

"Please," she sobbed, burying her face into the curve of his neck, her entire body shuddering with need.

Adrian's ironclad restraint, forged through years of corporate warfare, fractured in a single second. He knew that letting himself get involved in this mess would only bring trouble, yet he could not stop himself from sinking into it. His arm hooked beneath her knees, lifting her off her feet effortlessly, and he carried her toward the massive, silk-draped bed.

Outside in the corridor, the distant, muffled sound of running feet and the unmistakable metallic click of camera shutters echoed against the walls. Adrian's eyes darkened.

The harsh Manhattan morning light pierced through the sheer drapes, stabbing straight into Ivana's eyes.

She groaned, her skull throbbing as if a hammer were pounding against her temples. Every muscle in her body ached with a dull, bruised soreness that made last night's feverish, chaotic madness rush back into her memory in vivid, agonizing detail.

Ivana jerked upright, pulling the charcoal silk sheet up to her collarbone.

Across the sunlit room, Adrian Wooten sat in a charcoal-gray leather armchair. He had already showered and dressed, looking immaculate in a tailored white shirt and dark trousers. He was calmly fastening the silver cufflink on his left wrist, his Patek Philippe watch catching the morning light.

"Are you awake?" Adrian asked without looking up, his tone as flat and cool as a winter morning.

Ivana clamped her teeth together, scanning the floor for her clothes. Her pride refused to let her break down, but before she could formulate a sentence, a violent crash obliterated the quiet.

The suite's heavy double doors were kicked open with a deafening bang. Fletcher had bribed the hotel front desk overnight and, under the name of a side branch of the Wooten family, obtained floor access.

He had brought this pack of paparazzi to wait at the far end of the corridor last night, but Adrian's security team had blocked them outside the elevator lobby in a standoff that lasted all night. Finally, at dawn, they simply broke down the door by force, pouring into the foyer like a breached dam, telephoto lenses raised, flashes firing wildly.

"Mr. Wooten! The night before the board review--did you really spend the night with an intern?"

"Look over here, Mr. Wooten!"

Blinding white light flashed across the room in a relentless strobe.

Adrian's eyes turned lethal in an instant. He rose in a single, fluid motion, stepping in front of the bed and completely blocking Ivana from the lenses. His broad frame cast a dark, protective shadow over her.

He tilted his head slightly and murmured, in a voice only the two of them could hear, "Trust me once."

"Turn those cameras off," Adrian said. His voice wasn't loud, but the sheer menace in it made the front row of photographers freeze in their tracks. "Or I will ensure every outlet you work for is bankrupt by noon. My security has already recorded the ID information of every one of you. Not a single one of you will get away."

Before the reporters could fully digest the threat, the crowd parted. Fletcher strode into the room, followed closely by Breanne, who was clutching a vintage-style Chanel bag.

"Adrian!" Fletcher shouted, his face twisted into an expression of theatrical outrage. "I came to deliver the quarterly reports, and I find my own cousin sleeping with my fiancée? You shameless bastard!"

Breanne dabbed at the corner of her eye with a manicured fingertip, squeezing out two dry tears, but her eyes kept darting secretly toward the cameras. Her fingers clenched the purse strap until her knuckles went white. There was not a shred of sincerity in her.

"Ivana, how could you?" Breanne cried, loud enough for every microphone to catch. "Fletcher loved you! How could you sell your body to seduce his cousin just to climb the social ladder?"

Ivana sat beneath the sheet, watching the two of them perform. The fog in her brain cleared entirely, replaced by a razor-sharp realization.

Fletcher hadn't just tried to humiliate her last night. He had set up a trap to destroy Adrian. In the Wooten family trust, any moral scandal before the annual board meeting could freeze a trustee's voting rights. Fletcher was trying to kill two birds with one stone: ditch her for Breanne's supposed fortune, and strip Adrian of his CEO position.

Adrian didn't even flinch. He looked at Fletcher as if he were a speck of dirt on his shoe.

"Your acting is as pathetic as your portfolio, Fletcher," Adrian remarked dryly.

"Don't change the subject!" Fletcher roared, gesturing wildly toward the press. "The whole city is going to see this! You're unfit to lead the Wooten Group!"

The paparazzi, emboldened by Fletcher's shouting, started creeping around Adrian's sides, trying to snap a shot of the woman in the bed.

Ivana took a slow, deep breath. The panic was gone. The bloodline of the Chase family--the ancient Seattle dynasty she had kept hidden from everyone in New York--surged through her veins with icy resolve.

She reached over, grabbed Adrian's oversized plush bathrobe from the foot of the bed, and wrapped it securely around herself. She swung her legs out and stepped barefoot onto the freezing marble floor.

Standing at her full height, her chin held high, Ivana walked directly past Adrian.

She stopped a few feet from Fletcher.

"Ivana, you slut, don't you dare--" Fletcher began.

Smack!

The sharp crack of the slap echoed through the entire suite like a gunshot.

Fletcher's head whipped to the side, his sentence cut short. The room plunged into absolute, suffocating silence. Even the camera shutters stopped.

Fletcher staggered back a step, his hand flying to his rapidly swelling cheek. Breanne gasped in genuine terror, stumbling back into the press pack.

"You disgust me," Ivana said, her voice cutting through the room with absolute clarity. "Last night, at ten-thirty, I found you in room 802 with Breanne Wiley. From the moment I caught you in bed together, our engagement was over."

Fletcher's face drained of color. "That's... that's a lie! You have no proof!"

"The security footage from the hallway outside 802, the anonymous luring text you sent me, and the residue in that drugged rosé glass--I have already encrypted and backed all of it up to the cloud." Ivana's gaze pinned him to the spot. "Today you illegally broke into this suite, secretly photographed me, and maliciously defamed me. If even one photograph of me is released without my permission, my legal team will file lawsuits against every one of you on every charge. Try me."

The reporters glanced at each other, visibly unnerved by the sheer authority in her tone.

Then, a seasoned tabloid reporter in the back row recovered, thrust his microphone forward through the crowd.

"Miss Chase! Even if your engagement to Fletcher is over, that still doesn't explain why you're in Adrian Wooten's bed this morning!"

The microphone hovered inches from Ivana's chin. Every lens in the room shifted toward her, waiting for her to stumble, waiting for the crack in her armor that would let them label her a corporate social climber.

Fletcher lowered the hand from his swollen cheek, a vindictive smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He thought Ivana had nowhere left to turn.

Ivana didn't hesitate for a second. She deliberately stepped sideways, closing the distance between herself and Adrian, and reached out to wrap her arm firmly around his tailored sleeve, pressing her shoulder lightly against his arm.

"We have been secretly seeing each other for weeks. I came here last night to find him." She looked straight into the central camera lens, her voice steady, without the slightest ripple. "Fletcher is the one who betrayed our engagement."

A collective gasp rippled through the suite. The flashbulbs exploded into a frenzy of renewed light, dazzling the eyes.

Fletcher let out a harsh, incredulous bark of laughter.

"Dating Adrian?" He pointed an accusing finger at Ivana, his face full of mockery. "Adrian Wooten doesn't date a penniless little reporter! Ivana, stop deceiving yourself! Adrian, tell these people she's delusional before she drags your reputation into the gutter!"

Breanne chimed in, her voice shrill. "Mr. Wooten, don't let this woman use you! She's just trying to save face after getting dumped!"

Ivana's fingers tightened slightly. Her palms were damp with cold sweat. She knew she was walking along the edge of a bottomless abyss. If Adrian pushed her away now, her career in New York would be burned to ash.

Adrian remained silent for three agonizing seconds. He looked down at her pale, resolute profile, his dark gray eyes unreadable.

Then, his large, warm hand settled firmly on the curve of her waist. With a slight pull, he drew her flush against his side.

"She put it inaccurately," Adrian's deep voice resonated across the room, carrying the undeniable weight of absolute power.

Fletcher's eyes lit up with triumph. "See! I told you--"

"She is not my girlfriend," Adrian interrupted, his gaze sweeping over the reporters like an executioner surveying condemned prisoners. "She is my fiancée. We are getting married. We intended to announce it officially next week. Fletcher simply dragged it onto the table early."

The words seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room.

Fletcher's jaw dropped so hard his cigarette slipped from his fingers and hit the carpet without him even noticing. His knees weakened slightly, his mind completely short-circuiting under a development so far beyond his expectations.

Breanne froze in place, her carefully painted face twisting into an undisguised mask of jealousy. She stared fixedly at Adrian's hand resting on Ivana's waist, her knuckles turning white around her purse strap.

"You have five seconds to clear this floor," Adrian said, his tone dropping to ice. "Security."

As if on cue, a dozen hotel private security guards in tactical uniforms flooded in through the broken doorway. They moved with military precision, registering the identity and media outlet of every reporter one by one, confiscating all memory cards and recording devices on the spot, knocking down the extended boom mics thrust toward her, and herding the reporters back out into the corridor. "My legal team will issue a temporary restraining order to every media outlet within an hour," Adrian's voice was not loud, but it carried clearly into every ear. "Any unauthorized photograph that leaks will trigger full defamation lawsuits."

"Wait! Adrian, you can't do this!" Fletcher screamed, flailing as two burly security guards grabbed him by the arms. "She's playing you! She was mine first!"

"Throw him out onto the curb," Adrian commanded without even glancing at his cousin.

The guards dragged Fletcher backward out the door. His furious curses faded down the hallway until the heavy suite doors slammed shut, locking all the chaos outside.

Silence descended upon the room.

The instant the latch clicked into place, Ivana immediately stepped back, putting distance between them as if she had just touched a live wire. She pulled the bathrobe tighter around herself, all the way up to her neck.

"Thank you for playing along," Ivana exhaled a long breath, her voice still carrying a trace of tension. "I'll release a clarification statement afterward. I won't drag your reputation into this."

Adrian did not step back. Instead, he moved forward, trapping her between his towering frame and the wall.

"Who told you I was playing along?" Adrian asked, his voice low and dangerously oppressive.

Ivana's back hit the cold wallpaper. Her heart leaped into her throat. "What?"

Adrian leaned in slightly, bracing one large hand against the wall beside her ear. The scent of cedar mixed with clean linen enveloped her completely. His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingering there for a fraction of a second before meeting her eyes.

"You just announced to the entire New York press that you are my fiancée," Adrian murmured, his thumb gently grazing the high curve of her cheekbone, deliberately not touching her lips. "In my world, Ivana, spoken words carry corresponding legal consequences. The Wooten family trust has an explicit morality clause. If a scandal breaks before the annual board meeting, a trustee's voting rights are frozen immediately. Fletcher went to all this trouble to stage this scene because he wants to use public opinion to seize my control."

Before she could digest the information in that sentence, Adrian straightened and stepped back, breaking the suffocating tension.

He walked over to the mahogany desk, unzipped a leather briefcase, and pulled out a thick, bound document. He tossed it casually, and it landed on the glass coffee table with a dull thud.