My Villain Husband

Start Reading

[This side character has it so rough. Exiled to an Ivy League for three years, and all four billionaire heirs tied to her family trust fund got hooked by her cheap knockoff.]

[The tragic original is finally back. The male leads are about to put her through hell for that fake!]

I stared at the glowing comments materializing in the air before me. A cold laugh escaped my lips. No wonder the private jet tarmac was deserted today. Turns out those four scumbags were busy keeping my cheap copy company.

I let out a long exhale, as though discarding four heavy bags of unrecyclable trash. This saved me a lot of trouble. I pulled out my phone and shot off a quick text.

"The dead weight is gone. Come get me, Silas."

Ten minutes later.

I clicked my stilettos against the pavement, my arm looped through the crook of a drop-dead gorgeous man's elbow as we strode away from the terminal.

The floating comments above exploded instantly:

[WTF?! The side character is sneaking around behind everyone's back?!]

[Wait isn't that the psychotic Mafia Godfather who almost bankrupts the entire main cast and dumps their bodies in the Hudson River later on?!]

Chapter 1

[Silas?! Isn't he the main villain who doesn't show up until the second half of the book?! The one who almost single-handedly wipes out the entire main cast! Why is he here now?!]

The main villain? I glanced at Silas, who was currently pouting despite having his arm wrapped tightly around mine. With a jawline sharp as a knife and a highly aggressive gaze, he definitely had the intimidating aura of a Mafia Godfather. Well, if he wasn't currently sulking like a brat.

"Francesca, I've been with you since I was twenty!" His voice hitched, dripping with grievance. "And what do I get?! You didn't even tell me you had four backups waiting for you back home!

You even tried to make me hide! I'm your actual boyfriend, but you treat me like some dirty little secret! You're taking terrible care of me!"

So unfair! Wasn't I just afraid those four rabid dogs would bully him?! If I had known he was the so-called "villain," I wouldn't have stopped him from doing his worst. It was his own fault, really.

When we were overseas, he was always clinging to me, acting so attentive and harmless. I honestly thought he was just a gorgeous boy toy looking for a sugar mommy!

"I was wrong, okay?" He was such a sensitive guy. If I didn't coax him right, he'd throw another fit.

So I apologized immediately. "Tell me, how do you want me to make it up to you? Just say the word. You can swipe my Amex black card as much as you want, or you can do whatever you want to me against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse tonight~"

"Who cares about your money?" Silas snapped. Then he narrowed his eyes, leaning in dangerously close.

"Francesca, let me tell you right now. I'm dating you to marry you. If you dare betray me I'll lock myself to the king-size bed in the master bedroom with silver handcuffs.

You can blindfold me with a tie and choke me until I'm gasping for air, as long as you promise never to leave me!"

I raised an eyebrow, my lips curving. "Sounds like I'm getting a pretty good deal!"

He looked smug. "Obviously. Who else could take that kind of punishment and let you play with them like I do?"

True enough. No one else could.

The floating comments flooded the air, all losing their minds over his dedication:

[It took exactly one second for me to become a die-hard fan of this Power Couple!]

[He talks like a domineering billionaire wanting forced love, but deep down, all he wants is to be her exclusive boy toy! This villain puppy is way too manipulative!]

[Is this seriously the ruthless villain who drives all four male leads to the brink of ruin on his own?! Omg girl! Drop the dog training tutorial!]

I didn't train him. This simp behavior was innate. You just can't manufacture this kind of devotion.

Although, I really could consider the whole marriage thing. After all, the only reason I let him come back to the States with me was to make things crystal clear to my grandfather, who was obsessed with setting me up in an arranged marriage.

If I was going to get married, it had to be with someone on Silas's level. As for those four childhood friends he picked out for me? I honestly wouldn't give any of them the time of day.

Chapter 2

I brought Silas back to the family estate. None of my four childhood friends were there either. Only their parents were waiting in the grand foyer, their faces plastered with overly eager smiles to welcome me back.

Before they could get two words out, my grandfather slammed his cane against the floor and ordered the staff to kick them out.

Grandpa's knuckles were white as he gripped his cane over their absence. But the second his eyes landed on Silas, they practically lit up!

"No wonder you stayed abroad for three years and refused to come home, you brat! You really managed to bag yourself a premium catch behind my back!" He poked me twice with his cane.

He grabbed Silas's hand, smiling like a total creep. "Good boy. So handsome! Truly handsome!

I don't care about your background! Just marry my Francesca and give me great-grandkids!"

As expected, my grandfather was driven entirely by aesthetics. One glance at Silas, and he had already tossed the four heirs he picked out for me into the back of his mind.

Silas's face flushed red. I had no idea why he was acting so innocent all of a sudden. "Grandpa, I'll I'll listen to whatever Francesca says"

Then he seized the opportunity to add, "My last name is Vincent."

Grandpa gasped sharply. He stared at him, jaw slack. "Which Vincent?! The Vincent family that controls the entire city's economy?!"

Silas lowered his eyes, playing the perfectly harmless prey. "Vincent is my father."

Grandpa immediately let go of his hand, his expression turning solemn.

Silas pulled a thick, neatly folded stack of contracts from his pocket and shoved them straight into my grandfather's hands.

"Grandpa! Don't treat me like an outsider! My mother holds thirty-two percent of the family's shares, and I hold thirty percent.

We're each transferring twenty percent to Francesca, which gives her two percent more than my father! These are the share transfer agreementssign them first!

If that's not enough, I'll have my mother initiate divorce liquidation proceedings, instantly cash out ten percent of our Wall Street options, and buy Francesca a yacht and her own private island!"

Grandpa's eyes welled with tears. He grasped Silas's handscontracts and alland held them up high.

"T-This doesn't count as selling my granddaughter for wealth, does it?!"

Silas fake-cried right along with him. "Grandpa! You're the grandfather of the richest woman in the world now! Have some confidence!!"

Grandpa: "Dad! I'll call you Dad from now on!"

"We can just" Silas chimed in, "ignore the generation gap!"

The two of them let out the signature evil laugh of Wall Street old money splitting their spoils: "Muahahahaha!"

I watched the ink dry on the contracts. They both got what they wanted. And so did I.

I only knew his last name, I never expected him to be from that family!

How did my damn charm manage to conquer the absolute ceiling of high society? Who said side characters have tragic fates? My fate was fantastic! Good job, Francesca, you really outdid yourself!

[What the hell am I even watching?! Is this still the reverse harem trope from the synopsis where the replacement gets all the guys? The untouchable first love already has her endgame! Who's going to turn evil out of jealousy and push the main cast's relationship forward now?!]

[Am I the only one who thinks Silas's character absolutely destroys the four male leads? Just let me watch the side character and the villain be cute together! The other five can stay gone!]

[Impossible. Just a second ago, the parents of those male leads saw Grandpa's attitude and immediately rushed to call their sons! The plot is definitely going to force the main storyline!]

[Ah?! The side character better not do anything stupid!! Those four scumbags aren't worth it!!]

Through the floating comments, I finally figured it out. The reason my four childhood friends hadn't shown their faces yet.

It was because my replacement, Hazel, had slit her wrists and attempted suicide last night.

Chapter 3

[Honestly, the female lead has it pretty rough too. She was just a broke, innocent girl, but because she looks a little like the side character, those four rich heirs played her without mercy]

[Before this, whatever she wanted, the male leads gave her. They spoiled her rotten! Then yesterday, she finally found out she was just a replacement for the side character, and the guys were about to ditch her for the original. Who wouldn't lose their mind over that?]

[Heh, she isn't pitiful at all. She's a textbook pick-me girl. A tiny scratch on her wrist scared those four idiots half to death. They brushed off the side character's return and started doing all this remorseful reflecting, wondering if they've actually fallen for the fake.]

[With scumbags like that, the side character dodged a massive bullet by tossing them aside]

Who says otherwise? Just a moment ago, during a quick trip to the restroom, I overheard Beckett's father yelling at his son out in the hallway.

"Beckett! I don't care where you are, you need to get back to the estate right now! Francesca is already back! Does it make any sense for you to be messing around out there?!"

Beckett's father was in his fifties, and the patriarch of this old money family had a habit of handling his business on speakerphone. The volume was deafening.

Beckett's impatient voice crackled through the speaker. "Dad, Hazel is hurt. I'm stuck at the hospital.

Tell Francesca we're completely tied up. If she can wait, we'll throw her a welcome-back party later."

"Beckett you you should go" a weepy female voice chimed in, sounding impossibly broken and wronged. "I'm just a fake anyway, a cheap replacement Go back to your precious moon I-I'm not worth it"

That was probably Hazel, the female lead the floating comments were talking about.

The other three guys immediately scrambled to play the knight in shining armor. They all started chiming in.

"Beckett, if you're so desperate to be Francesca's little kept man, then get lost. We can keep Hazel company." That was Griffin.

"Hazel, ignore him. He's been used to being Francesca's undignified simp since we were kids.

If he wants to leave, let him. I'm not going anywhere!" That loyalty pledge came from Miles.

"Hazel, listen to me. I admit we went a little too far with you before but don't worry.

We won't hurt you over some irrelevant person ever again. Right now you are very important to me." This remorse-filled Silicon Valley tech billionaire was Sebastian.

Finally, Beckett fired back to wrap it all up: "Who said I'm Francesca's simp?! I forgot about that childhood garbage a long time ago.

You guys clung to her just as much! Don't pin this all on me! Dad! Stop calling me!

I'm not going back. If her highness needs someone to wait on her hand and foot, she can go find someone else!"

Beckett's dad cursed at the phone before he finally noticed me standing nearby. He flashed me an apologetic smile. "Francesca"

I gave a polite, dismissive shake of my head. It didn't matter. I figured out those four were trash a long time ago.

The comments said Hazel was frail, the kind of woman who instantly triggered a man's protective instincts. That made perfect sense.

Growing up, my four childhood friends absolutely loved "protecting" the weak. This peaked right after my parents died in that accident; the four of them clung to me like ghosts.

Calling it guardianship was putting it nicely. In reality, it was nothing more than a self-indulgent game of playing house.

Chapter 4

They forbade me from making new friends, terrified someone might ask about my parents. They barred me from attending yacht parties hosted by Upper East Side socialites, claiming they were afraid it would trigger my trauma.

When an Ivy League-bound football quarterback confessed his feelings to me in high school, they literally blocked him from getting close to me.

"Don't think you can just manipulate Francesca because she doesn't have parents!"

"Francesca, even though your mom and dad are gone, you still have us!"

A waking nightmare. Without them hovering over me, I would have moved on ages ago!

That was exactly why the very first thing I did after graduating high school was study abroad to get the hell away from them.

Getting into a top-tier university on my own merit shut those pay-to-win idiots out of my life. I hoped they would just stay madly in love with their female lead and leave me alone forever.

Yet, on the night of the massive welcome-home gala my grandfather threw for me, those four bastards still showed up with zero shame.

"Those old foxes heading their families have lived in our shadow for years. They were counting on one of their sons marrying you to pull their status up to our level," Grandpa noted, his tone entirely unfazed.

"Too bad for them. They could handle a little replacement popping up. But the second you returned, you brought back a boyfriend.

If you marry someone else, their entire scheme falls apart. Of course they're panicking! Who knows what kind of hell they raised with their sons before coming here!"

[Hahahahaha! Grandpa's got that high-level corporate warfare mindset! But that's not even what's happening!]

[The male leads' parents just told them the side character was getting engaged to someone else, and the scales they had tipped toward Hazel instantly shattered. It's that simple!]

[They always want what they can't have. These four idiot men are exposing the absolute worst traits of masculinity!]

The floating comments dissected it perfectly:

[Plus, they're so incredibly stupid for agreeing to bring the female lead along. She only came to play the innocent saint, to highlight how 'evil' and 'snobby' the side character is while showing off her own purity. Why did they even bring her?]

[Why? To make the side character jealous, obviously~ These toxic control freaks think they can throw her away, but she's not allowed to throw them away. Four narcissistic NPD scumbags~]

And so, at the gala that evening, there were two people dressed to the absolute nines. One was my soon-to-be fianc, Silas, whom I was preparing to formally introduce to everyone.

The other was Hazel, the delicate little flower who didn't even have an invitation and had to be forcefully smuggled in by my four childhood friends.

Her facial features did resemble mine a bit. She just had a much more petite, fragile build.

Yet she chose to wear a glaringly obvious fake Chanel haute couture knockoff; the cheap lace looked like an absolute disaster.

Combined with the fact that her head was slightly too large for her narrow shoulders standing surrounded by my four childhood friends, it looked a bit like the Apocalypse and her Four Horsemen.

I stood at the top of the grand staircase. The moment those four looked up at me, their breath hitched collectively.

The floating comments flared up again:

[What's the matter? Spent so much time with the knockoff that you forgot how gorgeous the original is?!]

[Heh! Men just want something new. If they haven't tasted it, even garbage smells good. But once they eat it, they suddenly realize the premium chocolate they haven't had in a while is the real delicacy!]

Hazel glanced left and right, noticing their shifted attention. She bit her lower lip, her fingers digging into the cheap lace of her gown.

Chapter 5

Suddenly, she hiked up her skirt in a fit of pique and marched right up to me.

"You must be Francesca, right? I'm Hazel.

I came today to personally give Beckett and the others back to you! When you came back the other day, even though they were all at the hospital keeping me company, I know who they really care about the most

I'm so sorry I never wanted to fight you for them Please forgive me" She reached out, trying to grab my arm.

The floating comments sneered:

[Here it comes. According to the original plot, the side character throws a jealous fit over the female lead stealing her spot and shoves her down the stairs right here.]

[Are you kidding me? The side character has the villain now. There's no way she still cares enough to fight the female lead over those losers!]

[Is the side character really doomed by the plot script?!]

[Is the female lead about to throw herself down the stairs on purpose? So tacky! Pathetic!]

They nailed it. The second Hazel got close to me, her body suddenly tilted, pitching backward.

Too bad she was way too slow.

Silas's custom haute couture leather shoe mercilessly stomped down on the excessively long train of her skirtwith a loud rip, she shrieked and tumbled down the marble staircase!

Hazel rolled down the steps with a chaotic clatter. She landed in a miserably hilarious, sprawling heap at the bottom.

Good thing she picked the perfect distance. Just enough to stun her, not enough to cause actual damage.

The pose, however, lacked the curated grace of a deliberate swoon. It went from a delicate damsel-in-distress swoon to a full-on linebacker face-plant.

Judging by how she covered her face and sobbed into the marble floor before she even tried to get up, her fragile saint persona was shattered.

Silas, the instigator who stomped on her skirt, stood perfectly pristine at the top of the stairs in his tailored suit that perfectly matched my gown. With his towering frame and striking features, he looked like a mobster dressed to the nines.

He tilted his head back, jutting his chin toward Hazel, who was currently being hoisted up by the four male leads. Exuding pure, arrogant old-money entitlement, he scoffed.

"Who the hell are you? Trying to steal my spot? Don't you know I'm the only one allowed to stand next to Francesca?

You glue eight layers of false lashes on your eyes to cosplay a spider, and suddenly you think you have enough vision to test me?!"

Mean. So incredibly mean! He had this dramatic, high-maintenance diva persona down to a literal science.

I crossed my arms, looking down at Hazel sobbing pathetic tears after Silas's verbal slaughter. And then at the four men frantically holding her up, glaring daggers at me.

So what? You guys get to coddle your manipulative knockoff, but I'm not allowed to spoil my dramatic fianc?

You came here to start a war? Bring it on. Let's see who burns first.

"Francesca! Don't you think you've gone way too far?!" Griffin had the shortest fuse of them all.

His brows snapped together as he led the charge. "Hazel is our honored guest. What is the meaning of letting your man treat her like this?!

You're just jealous we aren't orbiting around you anymore, terrified she's going to steal your spotlight! You're exactly the same toxic drama queen you were before you left the country.

The more you pull this dictatorial bullshit, the more you drive us straight to Hazel. Tell that guy to get his ass down here and apologize to Hazel right now.

We might go easy on you, but don't think we can't completely destroy him."

Beckett chimed in to back him up. "Exactly, Francesca. This was a highly irrational move.

We are not your property. We don't need your permission to like whoever we want. You're targeting Hazel, and she has done nothing to you."

Chapter 6

[God what textbook toxic scumbag quotes! Are these four hallucinating? Do they even know what they are looking at in the mirror?!]

[LMAO. Where do they get the nerve to demand an apology from the villain bro? All their families combined don't even equal the net worth of a single Vincent family subsidiary.]

[Wait, do they seriously not recognize the heir to the Vincent empire?! The secondhand embarrassment is killing me]

[Can't blame them. The Vincents have always kept a low profile, keeping their faces out of the Wall Street Journal. Plus, Silas was raised abroad. Even though they bumped into the male leads' parents earlier, they didn't hear Silas and Grandpa introduce him, so]

"Ah? What happens if I mess with you? Oh, I'm so terrified!" Silas faked a perfectly startled expression.

He spun around, wrapping his arms around my waist and burying his face in the crook of my neck. "Baby these guys are so mean. You have to protect me~"

He was just taking the opportunity to flirt, and it worked perfectly on me. I played along, running my fingers through his hair as I looked down at the five people at the bottom of the stairs.

"My boyfriend simply wanted to stand next to me. That woman was blocking his spot, so naturally, she had to move.

As for her little tumble" I let out a careless laugh. "My boyfriend is naturally strong. He didn't do it on purpose.

He's very pure, not twisted with all those manipulative schemes like you guys. Now you've scared him.

I expect you to get on your knees and apologize to him right now. Otherwise, you should know exactly what happens when you cross me."

[Hahahahaha! The best way to deal with overconfident, entitled men is to throw that exact energy right back at them! The side character is a genius~]

[She's too gorgeous and badass to be basic! It's giving absolute Boss Queen and her exclusive boy toy~ The male competition is off the charts! Blatantly telling these guys: my baby is the only innocent angel here, and the rest of you are absolute trash!]

"Francesca!" The blood drained from the faces of all four men.

Beckett ground his jaw. "The hell did you just say?! He's actually your boyfriend?!

We've spoiled you and protected you since we were kids. What exactly are you dissatisfied with? How could you just switch up on us?!

Let me tell you right now. Throwing a jealous fit is one thing, but pushing it this far is just pathetic!"

"Beckett please don't be so mean to Francesca" Hazel, who had been weeping pathetic tears, wiped her eyes and spoke up. She gently tugged at Beckett's sleeve.

"I understand her. She's just a little girl who desperately wants to be loved

Seeing her four childhood friends who used to dote on her protecting another girl must make her feel so bitter. It's totally normal for her to hire some boy toy just to make you guys mad"

As she finished, she sneaked a glance at the "boy toy" she was talking aboutSilasand a highly suspicious blush crept onto her cheeks. Yet she clung desperately to her innocent saint persona.

"Honestly, I don't get it either. Miss Francesca is so perfect, so smart and beautiful Why did you guys choose me instead?"

She blinked her eyes, tilting her head like a lost fawn. "I guess it's because I know how to cherish this hard-won happiness much better than she does"

"You fool" Beckett looked like his heart was melting. "I wish you weren't so endlessly kind all the time.

But then again, who says your kindness isn't exactly what we love about you? Francesca, now do you understand why we all like Hazel so much?"

Miles crossed his arms, backing him up. "She knows how to be grateful. She knows what love is.

Unlike you. You're just a block of ice that can't be melted, an ungrateful wretch.

If you had just given up going abroad for us back then, we wouldn't have been so disap"

"Are you fcking delusional?"

Chapter 7