Nayko Ayasame

"It's still her." Three words. That was all it took for the carefully constructed world of my last five years to shatter into dust at my feet. Zane didn't even have the decency to look away as he said it. For twenty years, I had been the third wheel. The reliable shadow to Jovienne's brilliant sun. I had buried my own feelings for Zane so deep I almost forgot they existed, only daring to dig them up and confess them after Jovi had left the country and broken his heart. We built a life. A marriage. I truly believed, in my foolish, hopeful heart, that it was my happy ending. Now Jovienne was back, and the illusion was gone. The love of my life saw me only as a consolation prize. As my world collapses, the last person I expect comfort from is her husband-a man as cold and polished as he is powerful. Vance sees the same betrayal in my eyes that he sees in his wife's. Leaning in, his voice a dangerous whisper, he proposed the unthinkable: "They are living in the past. Let's be each other's revenge. What do you say, Nerissa?" I should avoid at all costs. It was a game that could burn our broken worlds to the ground. But as I looked into his eyes and saw the same raw, humiliating betrayal reflected back at me, the answer poised on my lips wasn't "no." It was a terrifying, thrilling question. "What," I whispered, my voice steadier than I felt, "did you have in mind?"

The Revenge Affair Series_Book 2 She loved him for five years. He never realized. So when her family announced her marriage to another man... The only thing Samuel Hart said was- "Congratulations." That single word shattered Celeste Ashworth's heart. For five years, she hid her feelings behind sharp words, icy confidence, and endless arguments, convincing everyone-including Sam-that they were nothing more than coworkers. But somewhere between rebuilding coral reefs, impossible deadlines, and weekends spent with his warm, chaotic family, the arrogant heiress had quietly fallen in love with the one man who never expected anything from her. Except friendship. Now her beloved grandfather is gone. Her family's powerful empire is slipping into the hands of greedy relatives. Worse, her mother has arranged a marriage to a ruthless businessman who sees Celeste as nothing more than a strategic investment. With nowhere left to run, she asks the one man who unknowingly broke her heart to save her. "Marry me." Sam knows it isn't real. Just a temporary arrangement to protect her inheritance. A fake marriage. Nothing more. He has no idea that every smile she gives him, every touch, every stolen moment beneath the same roof has been real from the very beginning. But pretending to be husband and wife becomes far more dangerous than either of them expected. Because the greatest lie in their marriage... ...is that only one of them believes it's fake. P.S : This is the second book of The Revenge Affair My Bestfriend Husband Offered Me, You can read both book to understand the story better. But reading this book directly wouldn't prevent you to enjoy this.

Chloe had just given birth to twins, lying exhausted in a cramped, bustling hospital ward. When she called her husband, Julian, he was busy partying with his actress mistress. He coldly hung up on her, having already drafted a brutal divorce agreement that would leave her with a pittance. Strangers in the next bed loudly mocked her pitiful state, gossiping about how Julian was dumping her. For years, Chloe had erased her own identity to fit into his elite world, only to be thrown away like garbage. She was completely alone, clutching her helpless babies, bracing herself to sign the cruel papers just to survive. She couldn't understand why her absolute devotion was met with such chilling indifference. Why did she have to suffer this ultimate humiliation while he celebrated with the woman who ruined her life? But then, a senior doctor noticed a unique mole on her wrist and ran a secret DNA test. The results were staggering: Chloe was the long-lost daughter of the billionaire Beaumont family. With her fiercely protective parents and three powerful brothers suddenly forming an impenetrable fortress around her, Chloe picked up her phone and texted her arrogant husband. "City Hall tomorrow at 10 AM. If you don't show up, my lawyer will handle everything. And trust me, you won't like their terms."

Five years ago, I stood in the freezing rain at my mother's funeral, waiting for my husband. Blake Knight, the billionaire NHL superstar, was two hours late. When he finally showed up, he brought his rumored girlfriend, the woman he had just rented a hotel rooftop for to celebrate her birthday. Watching him defend her fake tears, my heart completely died. I took off my diamond wedding ring, placed it on my mother's headstone, and walked away from my marriage forever. I fled to London, changed my name to Ava, and secretly raised the triplets he never knew existed. I thought I was finally safe from him. But today, my kids vandalized a silver Aston Martin in our apartment's parking garage, and the owner caught my youngest daughter. My phone rang. The voice on the other end was Blake's. He had moved into my building, and he was holding my little girl in his penthouse, demanding her mother come get her immediately. Panic suffocated me. If I walked through that door, my five years of hiding would be instantly destroyed. He would recognize me, realize I didn't get rid of our child like everyone thought, and he would use all his power to take my babies away. I couldn't let him ruin my life again. "I'm just her nanny," I lied through my teeth. I frantically begged my best friend to go upstairs and rescue my daughter in my place. He bought the disguise, but now, the King of the Ice is dangerously obsessed with investigating my new identity.

She married him out of desperation, becoming the perfect docile wife while he treated her like dirt beneath his shoes. But everything shattered the night she overheard him mocking her with his friends-and discovered the necklace she'd cherished, her only link to the boy who once saved her life, didn't even belong to him. It was all a lie. No longer the doormat he married, she discards her fake identity and reclaims her birthright as the hidden heiress of Salvadore City. Now she's on a mission: find the necklace's true owner among his circle of friends, no matter how many hearts she has to break along the way. But her husband isn't ready to let go. Convinced she's playing games to make him jealous, he's blindsided when divorce papers land in his hands. By the time he realizes the woman he dismissed was never who he thought she was, she's already moved on-living her truth, chasing her destiny, and leaving him choking on regret. Some cages, once opened, can never be closed again.

My stepmother’s bodyguards were seconds away from dragging me back to a life that was essentially a prison cell wrapped in silk. I couldn't even scream for help because the words always died in my throat—a clinical condition called selective mutism that felt like drowning on dry land. I had just discovered the sickening truth: my father was planning to sell me to a sleazy investor named Sterling to cover his company’s bankruptcy. They were going to drug me, ship me off to a private island, and strip away the only thing I had left—my late mother’s multimillion-dollar art trust. When I arrived at the manor, my stepmother Lydia handed me a glass of wine laced with bitter sedatives, her smile sharp as a razor. "Drink up, darling. It’ll make the transition to Mr. Sterling much easier." My stepsister Harper stood in the corner, wearing a dress bought with my mother’s stolen money, mocking my inability to speak. My father didn't even look me in the eye as he calculated my price tag, treating his own daughter like a piece of damaged, mute inventory. They thought because I didn't speak, I didn't hear them laughing about the "accident" that killed my mother or how they planned to burn her final restoration work. They assumed my silence was a sign of surrender, a white flag waved by a broken girl who would never fight back. How could the people who were supposed to be my family treat me like a commodity to be traded? Did they really think my silence meant I was weak, or that I didn't know every dirty secret they were hiding in their ledgers? I didn't drink the wine. Instead, I burst into the VIP suite of Carlisle Pierce, the most cold-blooded billionaire in New York, and slammed a crumpled napkin on his table with a desperate, last-second gambit. "MARRY ME. NOW. $1 MILLION."

As I lay on the floor of our manor, bleeding out from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, I used my last ounce of strength to call my husband, Cole. I begged him for help, my vision blurring. But the only thing I heard was the clinking of champagne glasses and his mistress's giggle in the background. "Stop the drama, June," Cole snapped, his voice cold. "We're about to go on stage. Don't call again." He hung up, leaving me to die alone on the Persian rug while he accepted an award with another woman on his arm. I woke up in the hospital days later. My baby was gone. They had removed my fallopian tube. Cole finally arrived, smelling of expensive scotch and his mistress's perfume. He didn't hug me. He didn't cry. Instead, he leaned over my hospital bed, pressing his knee into the mattress until my fresh stitches tore open and bled. "You embarrassed me by calling an ambulance," he hissed. "My mistress, Alycia, says you're faking it. Clean yourself up." He left me bleeding again to go announce a $10 million donation to Alycia's "groundbreaking" medical research. I stared at the TV screen, numb. The research Alycia was taking credit for? It was mine. I wrote that patent years ago under a pseudonym. They thought I was just a poor, orphan housewife who needed Cole's money to survive. They had no idea I was actually a billionaire scientist hiding my identity. I pulled the IV needle out of my arm. A drop of blood fell onto the divorce papers I had been hiding. I didn't wipe it off. I signed my name right over it. Then I walked into the bank, reactivated my dormant account with $128 million, and bought the penthouse directly overlooking Cole's house. The mourning widow is dead. The avenger is born.

On our third anniversary, my husband canceled our dinner, claiming a sudden work emergency. I tracked his phone to an exclusive French restaurant, only to find him tenderly fastening a blessed bracelet—one I had flown across the world to get for him—onto his college ex-girlfriend's wrist. The sheer shock triggered a violent placental abruption. Bleeding out in my car just across the street, I frantically called his number. Through the window, I watched him glance at his screen, frown in annoyance, and press decline to focus on his lover. While I was wheeled into a freezing operating room for an emergency C-section utterly alone, he took his mistress back to our marital bed. He didn't even bother to check if I was alive, completely oblivious that our premature daughter was fighting for her life in the NICU. I soon discovered our entire marriage was a sham. He had used my family's wealth to save his company, and now he was trading me to secure a massive business deal with his ex's father. The man I loved didn't exist; he only saw me as a disposable asset. "I'm going to make him wish he had never been born." After secretly securing my baby in a private retreat, I ordered a medical-grade silicone pregnancy belly to hide my flat stomach. I stepped back into our penthouse, ready to burn his precious empire to the ground.

I was carefully folding a new silk nightgown, ready to fly to New York and surprise my fiancé of several years, Donald. Then my phone pinged with a photo from my stepsister, Cindy. It was a high-resolution image of her and Donald, tangled together naked on messy bedsheets. On his arm was the one-of-a-kind silver bracelet I had custom-designed for his birthday last month. Cindy was staring right at the camera with a triumphant, provocative smile. A second message popped up: "Omg, sis, so sorry! Sent that by accident!" It was a blatant, mocking slap in the face. Later, I even intercepted a call where Donald laughed with his mother about how my declining family was just a worthless stepping stone for them. He called me a "boring, good girl" who was easy to manage, bragging that he would just go back to having his fun with Cindy right after our wedding. They really thought I was just a naive fool who would either come crying to him or quietly swallow this humiliating betrayal. They thought my silence meant I was weak and defeated. But I didn't shed a single tear, nor did I scream. A cold, sharp anger shot up my spine, extinguishing every last ember of heartbreak. I threw the silk nightgown into the trash, opened my laptop, and used my MIT computer science background to hack straight into their luxury hotel suite's smart system. I wasn't going to New York to cry. I was going to broadcast their filthy affair to the entire city at the most prestigious charity gala of the year.

My sister-in-law didn't want me to marry for love. She wanted me to marry rich-so she could turn my husband into her personal ATM. So I did the one thing guaranteed to ruin all her plans. I got myself a broke hockey player. At least, that's what everyone was supposed to believe. Beckett Hayes needed a girlfriend badly. The Chicago hockey star had a reputation problem, angry sponsors, and too many headlines painting him as arrogant, reckless, and impossible to settle down. I needed a man convincing enough to stop my family from arranging my future for me. Our solution was simple: fake date. His rules were even simpler. Live in his shabby apartment. Help sell the struggling-player act. Smile for the cameras. No real feelings. Easy. Until my family showed up to mock the "loser" I'd chosen-and Beckett stepped between us like they had insulted something that belonged to him. Until he put a no-limit black card in my hand and told me to stop sacrificing my dream of becoming an artist just because I was afraid to spend money. Until our fake dinners started feeling domestic, his hand started finding mine under the table, and I began forgetting that every protective look and possessive touch was supposed to be part of the contract. Then Beckett's grandfather arrived at our tiny apartment wearing cashmere, flanked by bodyguards, carrying a priceless Hayes family heirloom for me. Apparently, pretending to be broke was the easy part. Pretending I wasn't falling for my fake boyfriend was becoming impossible. Especially when his grandfather took our only bedroom and left Beckett and me with one pullout sofa, one night, and absolutely nowhere left to hide.

I was an intern nurse working exhausting shifts, yet my mother constantly forced me into blind dates with wealthy, arrogant men to secure our family's social standing. During a terrifying hospital lockdown, an assassin disguised as a doctor held a scalpel to my throat. I was almost killed, but a high-ranking military colonel threw his own body down a flight of concrete stairs to shield me. I survived with cuts and bruises, but when I went home, my mother didn't care about my near-death experience. She was only furious that I had rushed out on my blind date with Preston, a rich financial analyst. She forced me to meet him to apologize. When Preston grabbed my arm, bruised me, and mocked my attack as a pathetic lie, my mother still took his side. "Men get angry," she told me coldly. "It's your job not to provoke them. You will beg for his forgiveness, or you are no longer welcome in this house." I had narrowly escaped an assassin, yet my own family was willing to feed me to a monster just for a fat paycheck and neighborhood gossip. My heart went completely dead. So, when the intimidating Colonel appeared, offering me maximum military protection through a sudden marriage, I didn't hesitate. I walked back into my parents' house and calmly slapped a crisp marriage certificate onto the coffee table. "I won't be apologizing to Preston. I got married today."

I woke up on silk sheets that smelled of expensive cedar and cold sandalwood, a world away from my cramped apartment in Brooklyn. Beside me lay Ezra Gardner-my boss, the billionaire CEO of Gardner Holdings, and the man who could end my career with a snap of his fingers. He didn't offer an apology for the night before; instead, he looked at me with terrifying clarity and proposed a cold, calculated business arrangement. "Marriage. It stabilizes the board and solves the PR crisis before it begins." He dressed me in archival Chanel and sent me home in his Maybach, but my life was already falling apart. My boyfriend, Irving, claimed he had passed out early, yet his location data placed him at my best friend's apartment until three in the morning. When I tried to run, I realized Ezra was already ten steps ahead, tracking my movements and uncovering the secret I'd spent twenty years hiding: my connection to the powerful Senator Grimes. I was trapped between a CEO who treated me like a line item on a quarterly report and a boyfriend who had been using me while sleeping with my closest friend. I felt like a pawn in a game I didn't understand, wondering why a man like Ezra would walk up forty flights of stairs on a broken leg just to make sure I was safe. "Showtime, Mrs. Gardner." Standing on the red carpet in a gown that cost more than my life, I watched my cheating ex-boyfriend's face turn pale as Ezra claimed me in front of the world. I wasn't just an assistant anymore; I was a weapon, and it was time to burn their world down.