Unwanted Wife: Dancing With The Blackwell Devil
I was the invisible daughter of the Graves family, a living ghost in a house of gold. On the morning of my half-sister Brittny’s wedding to the terrifying Elliot Blackwell, I watched from the shadows as she escaped, leaving behind a ruined reputation and a bankrupt legacy.
The panic in the foyer was a masterpiece of dysfunction. My father and stepmother realized their social ladder was burning to ash, and they only had one card left to play to save their fortune.
"We promised them a bride," my stepmother whispered, her eyes settling on me like a butcher assessing a spare piece of meat.
They didn't just want to sell me to the Blackwells; they planned to trigger a legal clause to steal my late mother’s multi-million dollar trust fund the moment I said "I do." I was being traded like a commodity to cover my father’s gambling debts, forced to marry a man the world whispered was a cold-blooded monster.
To them, I was a sacrificial lamb, a spare part used to fix a broken machine. I stood there, listening to them plot my ruin, and I realized that in this house, blood wasn't thicker than water—it was just another currency.
How could my own father sign away my life for a merger? Why did they think I would go quietly into the arms of a man who looked like he had just walked off a battlefield?
But they didn't know I was the one who orchestrated Brittny's escape. As the armored Blackwell motorcade smashed through our front gates like a strike team, I didn't cry. I walked into the parlor with a transfer protocol of my own, forcing my father to return every cent of my inheritance before I ever touched that white silk dress.
Elliot Blackwell didn't come for a wedding; he came for a head. When he gripped my chin, his eyes dark with a terrifying, predator-like clarity, I didn't flinch.
"You're not the bride I paid for," he growled.
"I'm the one you're getting," I whispered back. The game was just beginning, and for the first time in my life, I was playing for keeps.
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Chapter 8
The city faded into the rearview mirror, replaced by the dense, brooding forests of the north.
The Blackwell estate wasn't a home. It was a fortress.
Brooke sat in silence, her finger tapping a rhythm on the black diamond brooch.
Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
Elliot, who had been staring out the window, stiffened.
He turned his head slowly.
"Stop fidgeting," he said.
"I'm anxious," Brooke said innocently. She tapped again. A coded sequence. Phase one complete. Infiltration successful. Stand by.
Elliot's eyes narrowed. He knew. He recognized the cadence wasn't random.
"It's an antique," he said, his voice tight. "Don't scratch it."
"It's warm," Brooke noted. "For a rock."
"It's your body heat," Elliot lied.
Brooke looked at her phone. No Service.
"My phone is dead," she said. "Must be the trees."
"Must be," Elliot agreed.
He knew she knew. She knew he knew. The air between them crackled with unsaid accusations.
The car turned off the main road onto a gravel track. The suspension groaned.
"Why do you live in the middle of nowhere?" Brooke asked.
"So no one can hear the screaming," Elliot said.
He watched her face, waiting for the fear.
Brooke didn't blink. "Whose screaming? Yours or theirs?"
Elliot chuckled darkly. "Depends on the night."
The car hit a pothole. Brooke was thrown sideways.
Elliot's arm shot out. He caught her by the waist, steadying her before she hit the door.
His reflexes were inhuman. Too fast.
Brooke looked at his arm. The muscle was rock hard.
"You have good reflexes," she said. "For a drunk."
Elliot released her instantly. "I played varsity lacrosse."
"Lacrosse doesn't teach you to block a body check in a moving vehicle," Brooke said.
"You ask too many questions," Elliot snapped. He pulled a fresh pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
The trees cleared.
Blackwell Manor loomed ahead. It was a gothic nightmare of grey stone and turrets, surrounded by a twelve-foot wall topped with razor wire.
Guards with assault rifles patrolled the perimeter.
"Welcome home," Elliot said dryly. "Try not to get shot."
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9.3
Lena Martinez never imagined that her desperate need to save her younger sister's life would land her in billionaire Nathan Blackwood's world. When Julian, Nathan's loyal cousin and right-hand man, offers her a contract for a life-changing sum of money she cannot refuse-impersonate Nathan's fiancée and marry him-Lena has no choice but to agree. With the clock ticking and her eleven-year-old sister's life on the line, she steps into a life of wealth, power and secrets she never asked for.
But playing the role of the glamorous Kimberly Hayes is only the beginning of her nightmare. Lena must contend with a man who is kind, loving, and yet haunted by past heartbreak, while hiding the truth that could destroy them both.
In a world of lies, secrets and danger, can Lena survive as Mrs. Blackwood-without losing her heart to the man she was never meant to love?
9.0
I died alone in the medical wing giving birth to our son.
"Tell her to calm down and stop the theatrics."
Those were the last words my mate, the Alpha, said about me while I bled out.
Instead of passing on, my soul was tethered to the packhouse. I was forced to watch my best friend Seraphina seamlessly step into my life, taking my baby and my husband before my body was even cold.
To secure her place, she planted my blood-soaked birthing blanket in the woods to frame me for faking my own kidnapping.
Ryker swallowed her lies completely. He refused to send a search party, telling the entire pack my disappearance was just a pathetic plea for attention and money.
As a helpless ghost, I watched Seraphina brainwash my one-year-old son into calling her his mother and teach him to joyfully trample my beloved garden.
"Bad mommy ran away. Don't love Kaelen."
Hearing my own child parrot those venomous words was a dagger to my soul.
Whenever anyone questioned my absence, Ryker fiercely defended her, dismissing the desperate warnings of my loyal friends and his own elders.
The man I loved and died for treated my memory like a malicious joke, grateful for an excuse to replace me while living with my murderer.
But when Seraphina's mask finally slipped, and the horrifying truth of my death crashed down on him, it was far too late.
Seeing him crumble in agonizing regret brought me no comfort.
I no longer wanted his love or his desperate apologies.
Now, I only wanted his absolute ruin.
9.7
Some chains are forged in iron.
Others in desire.
Sebastian Kol has existed for six centuries. Cursed to burn alive in his own skin every night he transforms into a beast even he cannot control. He wants one thing. Freedom. And after five centuries of searching, a prophecy finally gives it a name.
Leilani Ravenwood.
She carries the mark of the moon goddess on her skin and a prophecy that brands her as his salvation. Her blood silences his beast, and her touch sets him on fire.
In the worst possible way. And in the best possible way.
Furious at the hold she has over him, Sebastian takes her, strips her of everything, and bends her world until it breaks, determined to own what the goddess dared to use against him. What follows is dark and consuming. A monster who has never met his match, and a woman who proves to be it.
But Leilani Ravenwood does not break easily. And somewhere between the hatred and the hunger, the punishment and the pull, the ancient beast begins to suspect the terrible truth.
The woman born to be his salvation may already be his undoing, his poison and cure wearing the same skin.
And he is running out of reasons to care.
7.6
I was the fiancée of the Chicago Outfit’s heir, a bond sealed by blood and eighteen years of history.
But when his mistress pushed me into the freezing pool at our engagement gala, Jax didn’t swim toward me.
He swam past me.
He scooped up the girl who pushed me, cradling her like fragile glass, while I struggled against the weight of my gown in the murky water.
When I finally dragged myself out, shivering and humiliated before the entire underworld, Jax didn’t offer a hand. He offered a scowl.
"You’re making a scene, Eliana. Go home."
Later, when that same mistress shoved me down the stairs, shattering my knee and my dance career, Jax stepped over my broken body to comfort her.
I overheard him telling his friends, "I’m just breaking her spirit. She needs to learn she’s property, not a partner. Once she’s desperate enough, she’ll be the perfect obedient wife."
He thought I was a dog that would always return to its master. He thought he could starve me of affection until I begged for scraps.
He was wrong.
While he was busy playing protector to his mistress, I wasn't crying in my room.
I was packing his ring into a cardboard box.
I cancelled my transfer to UCLA and enrolled at NYU instead.
By the time Jax realized his "property" was missing, I was already in New York, standing next to a man who looked at me like a queen, not a possession.
9.0
There was blood on his hands, and something worse in his eyes. And it terrified her to death.
---
Crystal Peterson's only crime was to fall in love with her brother's best friend, Jaden Astor. She thought he loved her, too. Until he came back home one day with Valerie, the woman he was going to marry in two weeks.
Already pregnant and disowned by her adoptive family, Crystal ran away from home without even a word to Jaden.
Five years later, Crystal and her son, who had a terminal illness, were barely surviving and trying to make ends meet when she answered a knock on her door one day and found the one man she would rather stay away from all her life standing there and begging for her forgiveness.
But forgiveness was something Crystal never had to offer Jaden. Not when she had to sell one of her twins just to keep the other twin alive. Not after being disowned and mocked by her family and everyone she once held dear, loosing everything she ever worked for, including her education.
But what happens when she finds out who had actually bought one of her twins four years ago?
Does she have a place for Jaden in her heart anymore, or she'd rather stick to Noah, the only man who was ever there for her when her world crumbled to the ground?
***
Obsession. Possession. Love. Betrayal.
9.2
Celestia woke up heavily sedated, her wrists bound tightly to the legs of a grand piano in a cold, opulent room.
Before she could even process the panic, a towering billionaire named Sterling Sinclair IV stepped in, looking at her like a possessed piece of art.
The head maid then handed Celestia a thick surrogacy contract with her perfectly forged signature.
"You are here to bear an heir for Mr. Sinclair," the maid stated flatly.
Celestia screamed that they had the wrong person, but her desperate cries bounced uselessly off the soundproof walls.
Stripped of her clothes, phone, and identity, she was trapped on an isolated island surrounded by high-voltage electric fences and armed guards.
When she furiously fought back, Sterling physically overpowered her, punishing her resistance with brutal, terrifying dominance until she lost consciousness on the marble floor.
She didn't understand who had kidnapped her from her normal life.
Why was her biometric data perfectly faked in a classified dossier?
Who had framed her as a willing, ten-million-dollar premium product for a ruthless billionaire?
Driven by pure survival, Celestia began aggressively consuming raw garlic and bathing in harsh white vinegar to destroy her fertility and repel his touch.
And when Sterling finally reviewed her bizarre, self-sabotaging dietary logs, the terrifying truth hit his calculating mind like a physical blow.
The broken, innocent woman he had been brutally tormenting all week was never his hired surrogate.