Wedding Eve Betrayal

I am Cipher, an elite operative, but the world knows me as Evita Peck-the mute, illegitimate liability of a powerful political dynasty. To protect my sister and maintain my cover, I played the role of a fragile, broken doll, enduring my stepmother's abuse in silence. Everything shattered at a high-stakes gala when my stepmother forced a drugged cocktail down my throat to sell me to a wealthy donor for campaign funds. Fighting the chemical haze, I fled to a restricted suite and collapsed into the arms of the one man I should have avoided: Jedidiah Stone, the paralyzed, reclusive "Broken King." The drug stripped away my control, leading to a night of desperate passion with the man who was my family's greatest enemy. I escaped at dawn, but I accidentally left behind a bloodstain on his sheets and fled with a classified data chip hidden in his jacket, marking me as a target for the most dangerous security force in the city. When I returned home, my mother slapped me for the "failed" deal and immediately announced I was being sold into a marriage alliance with the Stone family. Before I could process the horror, Julian Kensington-Jedidiah's deadliest rival-publicly claimed me as his secret fiancée, turning me into a pawn in their brutal corporate war. I was trapped in a deadly tug-of-war between a man who wanted to use me as a shield and a man who was hunting for the "spy" who had breached his bed. I didn't know how much longer I could play the mute victim while the two most powerful men in the country fought to possess me. The game reached a breaking point when Jedidiah invoked a "hostile asset acquisition" clause to legally force me to marry him instead of his cousin. Now, I am moving into the Stone estate, realizing that the man I am about to marry is the same man who has sworn to break the very woman I truly am.

I woke up to a rhythmic thumping against the wall of our luxury apartment. I thought it was just a nightmare, but when I pushed open the bedroom door, the reality was much worse. My fiancé, Ignacio, was entangled with a blonde on the very sofa I had paid for three months ago. When he saw me, there was no guilt in his eyes, only cold annoyance. "I'm bored of the 'good girl' act, Aria," he said, standing up with terrifying casualness. "And frankly, I'm bored of waiting for your stepfather's money to clear." Before I could even process his words, he grabbed my arm and shoved me out into the hallway. He didn't let me grab my shoes or my phone. He just tossed my trench coat at my face and slammed the door, locking me out of my own life. Barefoot and shivering in the October rain, I wandered into a speakeasy and drank until the world blurred. That’s where I met him—a man who looked like a prince and radiated a dangerous kind of power. In a drunken, desperate haze, I asked him if he was for hire. I needed a husband to spite Ignacio, and he was the most expensive-looking man in the room. "Marry me," I pleaded, and to my shock, he agreed. We hit a twenty-four-hour chapel, signed the papers, and I passed out in the back of his Maybach. The next morning, I woke up in a penthouse on Billionaire’s Row. The man, Burke, stood there in a towel and handed me a bill for fifty thousand dollars for his "overnight services." I was terrified. My family was bankrupt, I was homeless, and now I owed a massive debt to a high-end escort I had accidentally married in a blackout. I fled to a job interview at Justice Group, hoping to earn enough to pay him off and disappear. But when I sat down in the waiting room, the "gigolo" was sitting right there, wearing a suit and holding a newspaper. "Don't tell anyone we know each other," I hissed, thinking he was just another desperate applicant. "Why? Ashamed of your husband?" he teased. Then the HR assistant called our names together, and I realized my nightmare was only just beginning.

I did everything for Damian, my childhood best friend. His promise-"Get in shape, Lena, and I'll take you to prom"-was the only thing that mattered. I starved myself and ran until I collapsed, all for the future he dangled in front of me. But on his birthday, clutching the cake I' d baked, I overheard the truth. The promise was a cruel joke. To him and his real girlfriend, Gigi, I was just a "fat pig" whose desperate attempts to impress him were "hilarious to watch." They didn't stop there. They framed me for bullying, and Damian publicly denied ever caring for me. He then got my Stanford scholarship revoked with a malicious report and stood by as Gigi plastered my most private love letters all over school. I became a pariah, a "delusional, conniving bitch." The boy I had loved my whole life, the one who was supposed to be my protector, had orchestrated my complete and utter destruction for a laugh. Yet he still expected me to follow him to college. So when he called on move-in day, buzzing with excitement for our shared future, I let him ramble on about our plans. Then, I calmly cut through his fantasy. "I'm not here, Damian."

My parents spent eighteen years grooming me for one singular purpose: to be the mate of Jax Little, the future Alpha. We grew up together, promising a hundred times that we would rule the Silver Moon Pack side by side. But on the night of the Recognition Ritual, because my inner wolf was silent and I hadn't shifted yet, everything shattered. Jax stood before the entire pack, looked at Catalina—a stranger in red silk—and then looked at me with cold, steel-gray eyes. "I, Jax Little, reject you, Eliana Carter." He didn't just break our bond; he let his new Luna destroy me. When Catalina shoved me into a pool, he saved her instead of me. When she framed me for an attack, causing me to fall onto deadly silver that seared my flesh like acid, he stepped over my convulsing body to comfort her fake tears. He left me dying on the floor to soothe the woman who had tried to kill me. I realized then that the boy who promised to protect me was dead. He prioritized ambition over love, treating me like a broken defect to be discarded. I survived the silver, but I killed the girl who loved him. I packed my bags and ran to New York City, believing I was wolfless and alone. I didn't know that I wasn't a defect—I was a rare White Wolf waiting to wake up. And I certainly didn't expect the most powerful Alpha on the East Coast to be waiting in the shadows, ready to burn the world down for me.

I am the sole heiress to a Texas oil empire. To protect me, my father adopted seven boys who were meant to be my future, and I was in love with their leader, Jax, my intended fiancé. But it was all a lie. I overheard them confess they were only playing along to secure my fortune for Daisy-Mae, the girl Jax truly loved. The humiliation was relentless. Daisy-Mae orchestrated a cattle stampede at our annual rodeo, nearly getting me killed, and Jax saved her first. He publicly shamed me at a charity gala, stealing my family’s honor and a hospital wing dedication for her after freezing my funds. The final blow came at my birthday party, where a doctored video was broadcast to hundreds of guests, painting me as a violent, unhinged monster and her as the innocent victim. He did it all for her. Even when I was about to expose Daisy-Mae's plot, he confessed to her crimes to protect her, then offered to marry me as a bribe to buy my silence. He thought he still had power over me. But in front of everyone, I looked him in the eye and delivered the killing blow. "I stopped loving you a long time ago, Jax." Then I turned to the one man who had defended me, Sterling Prescott, and announced, "The man I'm going to marry is him."

The last thing my husband of twenty years, Jaxson Blake, gave me was a suicide note. It wasn't for me. It was for Brinley Buchanan, his foster sister, the woman who had haunted our marriage from the very beginning. He put a bullet through his head, and with his last breath, he gave our entire tech empire—my life’s work—to her and her family. It was always her. She was the reason our child died, freezing to death in a broken-down car while Jaxson rushed to her side because she’d manufactured another crisis. My whole life had been a war against her, a war I had already lost. I closed my eyes, exhausted, and when I opened them again, I was a teenager. I was back in the group home, on the exact day the wealthy Blake family came to choose a child to foster. Across the room, a boy with familiar, tormented eyes was staring right at me. Jaxson. He looked just as shocked as I felt. "Eva," he mouthed, his face pale. "I'm so sorry. I'll save you this time. I promise." A bitter laugh almost escaped my lips. The last time he promised to save me, our son ended up in a tiny coffin.