Workplace

To celebrate landing our biggest client of the year, the company rented out the entire terrace of a beachside bar.

When it was time for the team photo, the only open spot left was next to my boyfriend, Harrison Kent.

I'd barely moved over when he waved toward the back of the crowd. "Lacey, come stand here."

Lacey Monroe was my best friend. She squeezed in beside him with a smile. The second the...

Just before Easter, my husband, Ethan Cole, surprised me by arranging a weeklong trip to Switzerland.
In ten years of marriage, it was the first time he had ever planned a vacation for me.
I thought he had finally remembered that I was human, too, and needed a break.
Then, one day, I accidentally overheard a conversation between him and our daughter, Ella.
"Daddy, if you and Sophia have a wedding,...

Ethan Calloway and I had been together for eight years. Married for three—or so everyone thought.
We had the ceremony. The hospital chapel, the white dress, his boss giving a toast. But we never made it to City Hall to sign the papers. He promised we would. Eighteen times.
Every time, something came up. Or rather, someone came up—his young protégée, Chloe. She needed him at the hospital. She neede...

Three years together, and the texts I'd sent Nolan Garrett could probably fill an entire medical chart.

Pasta or salad for dinner. Rain boots or sneakers when it was pouring. I ran everything by him.

Then one night, right in front of me, he muted my texts.

"Can you grow up a little?" He didn't even look up. "Not everything has to go through me."

After that, I really did stop asking.

I signed ...

On the night of my college graduation, Sloane Callahan, the biological daughter my Mafia family had only recently brought home, asked me what I planned to do next.

Before I could answer, my four childhood friends spoke up one after another.

One by one, all four showed me documents proving they were moving to California.

Then Graham Whitmore, heir to one of Chicago's most powerful Mafia families...

The night I graduated from college, Bianca Moretti asked what I was going to do next. My Mafia family had only recently brought their biological daughter home.
I didn't get a chance to answer. The four men I'd grown up with answered first, each taking his turn.
They all had paperwork showing that they were moving to California.
Then Dante Romano, the future head of one of Chicago's most powerful c...

The second the graduation ceremony ended, my parents took us all to the nicest restaurant in town.

They said they wanted to properly celebrate having "two graduates" in the family.

Pierce, my boyfriend of four years, showed up last with a huge bouquet of champagne roses in his arms.

I'd just gotten up from my chair when he walked right past me and handed the whole bouquet to my friend Brooke. "...

Nathan Cole had been overseas on business for two weeks.

The night he came back, he kept me in bed until well past midnight.

Afterward, I could barely lift an arm. It took a while before I noticed the empty box on the nightstand. The last one.

I reached for my phone to order more condoms. I always bought them. Nathan never bothered with it.

This time, just as I was about to pay, he took the ph...

After the woman Adrian Cole had always loved pushed her out of a helicopter as it lifted off, Summer Bennett handed in her notice.
She remained the most dependable assistant in Cole Group's executive office. But everyone noticed small changes.
She no longer carried Adrian's coffee into his office herself. Lunch came from the company cafeteria instead of the private chef who had prepared his carefu...

When I was eight, my older sister pointed a finger in my face and told me I'd been adopted out of foster care.

I went crying to our parents. With their arms around her, they nodded.

“Yes. Your real parents didn't want you.”

After that, I stopped competing with her for affection. I didn't dare ask for new clothes. I took over the housework and fought for the highest grades in my class, terrified...

In my family, there's a rule: any woman who reaches thirty without getting married must return to the family estate and have her marriage arranged by the Council of Elders.
When I told Dominic Moretti about this, he was sitting on my desk flipping through financial reports.
After hearing me out, he let out a derisive laugh.
"Is the Bennett family some medieval royal house? A bunch of old men get t...

In the ten years I was with Chase Holloway, I got used to him "forgetting" things.

The night he proposed, he showed up empty-handed and said the ring was still at the jeweler's. The day we went to City Hall for our marriage license, he dug through every pocket of his coat and said he'd left his paperwork at home. On our wedding day, he didn't show up at all.

I found out later he'd been in the ba...

At the company gala, in front of everyone, the man I'd been with for ten years asked me if he could have the first dance with the new intern.

I didn't argue.

I didn't make a scene.

I stepped aside, turned around, and walked out.

For ten years I'd been there.

The tiny apartment with no heat. The credit card debt I helped him pay off. Every rung of the ladder he climbed to get where he is.

I...

I chose Adrian Cole for a strategic marriage because he understood boundaries.

For three years, he never gave me a reason to regret it.

Then his new assistant fed him from her fork, took my seat in his car, and appeared on his arm at a charity gala while society reporters called them a perfect match.

I gave my husband three chances to remember that I was his equal. He used every one—then adm...

I waited ten years for Ethan.
He was in London getting his PhD.
I was back in the States, teaching.
I taught alone, moved alone, sat alone in the ER with an IV in my arm.
He said that when he came home, he'd marry me.
But the day he came home, he brought her with him. The woman who'd followed him all the way to London.

My daughter was running a fever. When I carried her downstairs, my sister-in-law was already waiting beside my husband Ethan Cole's car with her son in her arms.

Ethan hesitated. “Do you want me to take you?”

Before I could answer, Claire cut in.

“Ethan, it's Zack's preschool open house today. We're going to be late.”

“Besides…didn't we agree you weren't going to help her financially for a few...

When I was seven weeks pregnant, my husband, Jacob, seated his mistress and their secret son at the head table of our anniversary dinner.
In front of everyone, he said, "Ella hasn't given me a child in four years. Why should I keep waiting?" His mistress was already tired of waiting to take my place.
So I gave them what they wanted. I faked my death in the car crash his mistress had planned and wa...

My wolf was damaged the day I first shifted, when I was ten. I’ve healed slower than other wolves ever since, and a wolf like that can’t inherit a pack.

I grew up mocked and bullied for being the weak one.

My sister, Seraphina, shifted on the same day and came through it perfectly. She became the Alpha heir, the prodigy my parents poured everything into.

I thought they loved her more because sh...

I didn’t come from money, so Julian’s friends decided I was a gold digger.

His best friend, Sloane, was the worst. She liked to say she used to be a gold digger herself, so she knew my type.

To prove her wrong, I spent three years with Julian without accepting a single expensive gift.

Sloane had an answer for that, too: “She says she doesn’t want anything, but she’s really waiting for him to of...

I spent six years trying to warm an emotionally distant husband and raising a son who learned to copy his coldness. On the day my civil assault case went to trial, they flew to Switzerland to comfort my husband's ex-girlfriend. When my five-year-old admitted he had deleted the strongest video evidence because he didn't want Vanessa to cry, the last bit of love in me went quiet. By the time they re...