All Chapters of Reborn to Seduce the Devil CEO : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

If there was one rule in high society, it was this: never miss the Sterling Charity Gala. It wasn't hosted by Julian. It was hosted for him. Every year, the richest families in the city donated millions to his foundation just for a chance to be in the same room as the untouchable Sterling patriarch and beg for a contract. It was the Oscars, the Met Gala, and a shark tank all in one. And this year, I was going as his wife. "You don't have to come if you don't want to," Julian said that afternoon, watching me from his wheelchair in our dressing room. He was already dressed — black tuxedo, black shirt, no tie, his black hair combed back, looking like a fallen angel who decided suits were more fun than halos. His cane rested against his wheelchair. Tonight, he was the cripple again. For the public. He had been in that chair all day. No walking. No standing. Even though I knew his legs only hurt after an hour, he stayed in it. For me, he had once told Mark, it was safer if people though

I woke up the morning after the gala to find that I was a very, very rich woman. And I had no idea why. It started with Finch knocking on the master suite door at 7 AM, carrying a silver tray. Not breakfast. Documents. A thick stack of them, bound in black leather with gold lettering. "Madam," he said, bowing so low his silver hair almost touched the tray. His voice was shaking. Not with age. With shock. "Master asked me to give you these to sign after you wake up." I sat up in Julian's huge bed — Julian himself was already gone, his side of the bed cold, a faint dent where he had slept for a few hours before leaving for a 5 AM conference call. We still had the connecting door, but after the gala, after he carried me to the car with his arm around me like I was made of glass, he had started sleeping in the same room. On the far side of the bed. Fully clothed. Pretending to be asleep while I pretended not to notice him watching me. "What are these?" I asked, pulling his shirt — yes

Grandfather called me to the Lin mansion at 8 AM on a Monday, which meant something big was happening. The Lin family never did anything at 8 AM on a Monday unless it involved money or power. Usually both. The old house was buzzing. Servants running, lawyers in suits drinking tea in the living room, and Margaret sitting on the sofa in a perfect beige Chanel suit, holding Chloe's hand, her eyes red like she had been crying all night. Chloe wore white again — she always wore white when she wanted to look innocent — and looked at me with that fake, wounded sister look that used to make me feel guilty. It didn't anymore. "Vivian, my dear, you're here," Grandfather said from his armchair. He looked older since the last time I saw him, but his eyes were sharp. Since I gave him the evidence about Margaret's stealing, he had quietly removed her from all financial positions. He hadn't divorced her or kicked her out — yet — because he needed more proof, but he no longer trusted her. That dr

If you think high society socialites are cruel, you have never met old money family. I learned that at 7 PM on a Friday, at Sterling Old Manor — the original Sterling estate, not the modern glass one Julian and I lived in, but a sprawling, terrifying, hundred-year-old castle on the hill where the real Sterling family lived. The ones with blood so blue it was almost black. Julian didn't want to go. "My family is... difficult," he said in the car, his hand tight on mine, his wheelchair already loaded in the trunk. Tonight he needed it. In front of his family, he always needed it. "My uncle, my cousins, my aunts. They will say things. You don't have to listen." "Are they worse than Tiffany Chen and Chloe combined?" I asked, trying to joke, adjusting the simple white dress I had chosen — modest, elegant, no slit, no sapphire. I didn't want to provoke them. Julian looked at me, his black eyes dark. "They are worse. Because they think they own me. And now they think you are trying to st

I have seen Julian Sterling angry. I saw him angry when Arthur's thugs grabbed my wrist in the parking lot and he told his men to break their legs. I saw him angry when Robert Sterling called me a gold digger at the family dinner and he stood up from his wheelchair in front of twenty vultures. I thought I knew what his anger looked like. Cold, quiet, controlled. Like black ice. I was wrong. What I saw on Pier 7, under the moonlight, with Arthur bleeding in the mud and five of Victor Kane's snake men surrounded by guns, was not anger. It was something older. Something terrifying. The kind of rage that burns cities down and doesn't bother to count the bodies. Julian stood in front of me, his back to me, his black suit jacket off and thrown over my shoulders because I was shaking so hard my teeth clattered. He held a gun — I had never seen him hold a gun before — in his right hand, steady as a rock, pointed straight at Arthur's forehead. His left hand was behind him, holding my wri