680 Book(s) Related to movies on dan brown novels

The day I walked in on my boyfriend screwing that blonde tramp, I dropped the homemade tiramisu right there on the floor—our two-year relationship smashed to bits, messier than the splattered cream.

I ducked into a bar, slamming back whiskey, when this guy in a sharp black suit sidles up, his voice smooth as silk laced with bourbon. I spat out, "Help me forget him," but ended up totally lost in the presidential suite. He backed me against the wall, tore open my blouse, his tongue circling my nipple before biting down hard, leaving me breathless. "You taste like candy, baby—tonight, I'm gonna eat you up."

But then my boyfriend FaceTimes, spots the guy behind me, and loses it, screaming, "Dad!"

I went ice-cold—my hookup was my boyfriend's stepdad? Even worse, this thirty-three-year-old powerhouse was Brooklyn's deadliest mob boss.

What began as a vengeful fling spiraled into a forbidden nightmare?

My family's company went bankrupt, and my father was critically ill.

I dropped out of school and worked multiple jobs every day.

Debt collectors beat me and broke my ribs, but I couldn't afford painkillers.

Every penny I earned went to expensive medicine, all to save my father.

Until I saw my father, who should have been bedridden on oxygen, holding a champagne glass at a hotel banquet hall.

His words pierced through, "Five years, the punishment she earned."

The bankruptcy was fiction. The illness, theater.

All orchestrated because his stepdaughter suffered from depression, and I was her entertainment.

When the doctor finally spoke to me, "Days. You have only days."

I laughed.

The dying one had never been my father.

It had always been me.

My husband and parents wanted me dead. All because my sister was "dying."

They shoved a divorce agreement and an experimental surgery consent form at me.

I was supposed to be her donor.

But they didn't know I was the one actually dying.

Three days ago, they told me I had terminal bone cancer.

One month to live.

So when they threatened me into some back-alley surgery, I smiled.

I was already dying anyway.

Sebastian is dead.

And I'm the prime suspect.

I thought Lucy was the only one on my side, but there's always panic in her eyes. Black stockings showing up in my closet, red marks on my wrists I can't explain, texts sent from my phone that I never wrote...

The evidence keeps piling up, choking me.

My memory's slipping, the same broken nightmares on repeat. Strange perfume, cruel words, and the name "Leah" that won't leave my head.

Who is lying? Who's pulling the strings?

I can't tell what's real anymore. All I know is everyone's lying to me.

I need to find who's behind this before it destroys me.

Four years ago, I left my boyfriend when he had nothing.

Now, he's a billionaire. And he's forcing me to marry him—just for revenge.

Every day it's a different girl. Now there's a pregnant influencer he flaunts in my face, destroying what's left of my dignity.

"Kneel and beg her, and I'll give you money." He holds another woman and smirks at me.

I don't cry. I don't scream. I just swallow the blood rising in my throat.

He doesn't know my brain tumor is terminal. I have thirty days left.

I've already signed the organ donation papers. I just want to die in peace.

I stopped loving him a long time ago.

Three years ago, on their way to attend my graduation art exhibition, the cruise ship carrying my fiancé and my family caught fire.

Over the past three years, I downed sleeping pills countless times, desperately wanting to follow them into the afterlife. Every single time, my adopted sister, Serena, saved me, crying hysterically as she shoved her fingers down my throat to make me throw up.

"They are already gone! Harper, you can't keep living in the past. You have to live on for their sake!"

After fainting from yet another high fever and being rushed to the hospital, I was diagnosed with terminal leukemia.

The doctor said I had a month left, at most.

I refused their advice to find a bone marrow match. Clutching my family's belongings, I decided to go back to our old estate in the suburbs for one last look.

While I was walking in a daze, a little boy running wildly crashed hard into my legs.

A male voice that had haunted my dreams for years rang out from behind me. "Alistair, if you keep running off, what will you do if Mommy and Daddy don't want you anymore?"

In an instant, it felt like I had been plunged into freezing water. I froze in place.

At the Aurelia International Youth Violin Competition, someone had hidden steel needles in my daughter's violin and bow. Her fingers streaming blood, she lost her footing and fell from a railless platform thirty feet up. Both her hands and arms were shattered.
I ran to her like a madwoman, desperate to call an ambulance, but the other girl's mother had her people pin me to the floor.
"You stole my daughter's violin? This is what happens to thieves!" she sneered.
But that violin was the one my husband had specially commissioned for our daughter in Paris!
"Save my daughter first! We can sort out everything else later!" I fought with everything I had.
A slap cracked across my face.
"A worthless life. If she dies, she dies!"
"I'm the wife of Dawnfrost's CEO, Mr. Sterling. I can afford it!"
The blood in my veins turned to ice.
Yale Sterling? That was my husband.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Yale had the nerve to keep a mistress behind my back, and to let her spend my money to buy my daughter's life!
If I didn't tear you two apart piece by piece today, I'd have carried the name "Reaper of Wall Street" for twenty years for nothing.

I'm the rightful fucking heir to the Sterling family fortune. My old man made me lay low, keep my head down, live like some regular broke college kid.
But there's this cunt in my dance crew. Walking around flashing her fake designer shit like she's hot shit, acting like she owns the fucking place.
And now she's got her eyes on my boyfriend.
To get close to him? She's telling everyone she's the Sterling family heiress.
Oh really? You're the Sterling heir?
Then who the fuck am I?

I found out I was pregnant the same week our savings hit zero.
I didn't tell my boyfriend, Jovan. He was already hauling bricks all day and running deliveries half the night. One more thing on his shoulders, and I was scared it would break him.
So I said nothing. Just started picking up more work.
A friend got me a serving job at a private club downtown. Cash tips, she said. Pour tea, carry trays, nothing dirty about it.
I took it without telling Jovan that either. I told myself I'd surprise him with the extra money. I told myself this was me carrying my share of the weight, quietly, the way a good partner should.
That night, I pushed open the door to the biggest room in the club, tray balanced on my arm.
And there he was.
Center seat. A dozen people leaning toward him like he was the only light in the room.
Eighteen thousand a bottle. Seven or eight empty already on the table.

"Clyde, no—stop this right now. I only came to your class because Aaron recommended you to help me learn motorcycle riding for my job, not to get into something like this." On the open training field, as I struggled to balance the bike and keep it steady, my husband's old college roommate Clyde climbed on behind me to "correct" my form, his hands boldly cupping my large, soft breasts through my fitted top. The real problem hit when I felt his massive bulge pressing insistently against my backside, hard and unyielding, as he leaned in too close under the guise of instruction.

My mother-in-law was a spoiled and soft woman.
Fifty years old and she couldn't book a rideshare. Couldn't pick up a package. When the breaker tripped, she cried into a video call to her husband and her son.
The whole family agreed on it. Her only skills were clinging and being adorable.
Then I bled at nine weeks and took myself to the ER.
The OB who picked up my chart was my husband's best female friend. Sable.
She saw me, photographed my chart into their med-school group chat, and hit record.
"Come look, everybody. Dog's wife. Pregnant five minutes and already bleeding from bed."
"Twenty-eight and she's already a geriatric pregnancy. You've got to pace yourself, honey."
The whole room laughed and looked at my stomach.
My face burned white. My nails went numb in my palm.
Thirty minutes later the door hit the wall.
My mother-in-law, the woman who covered her ears in her husband's arms over a tripped fuse, walked in on four-inch heels.
Behind her: hospital administration, the compliance office, and the sitting Chief of Obstetrics.
She pulled the chart out of my hand without lifting her eyes.
"Twenty-eight is advanced maternal age? Normal physiologic fluid, and you called it too much sex?"
"Dr. Smith, is your mouth that filthy because your brain's been marinating in locker-room jokes, or did your ethics get eaten by a dog?"

I saw a post on Reddit, "Urgent! How do I convince my wife to donate bone marrow to my mistress?"

I scoffed and typed back, "What a piece of shit."

Right after I hit send, my husband came home. He grasped my hand, his voice shaky: "You have leukemia... but it's okay, we found a donor."

His right eye twitched—he always did that when he lied.

Then I remembered the worst comment on that post, "Trick your wife into thinking she's the patient."

Life imitating the internet, apparently.

He wanted to harvest my bone marrow for someone else.

When I finally saw his mistress's face, my world fell apart.

I never thought his mistress would be her......

My husband sent me to a clinic to erase my "attachment distress" toward him and our daughter.

He said I was too obsessive, too clingy, that my love was suffocating him. So the day I found he'd booked three tickets to Zurich—one for himself, one for our daughter, one for another woman—I signed the consent form.

He said the treatment was temporary. That once I was "better," we'd still be a family.

Three months later, I walked out of that clinic. I remembered the white roses at our wedding. I remembered sitting up all night with our daughter when she had a fever. I remembered every time he'd told me he loved me. All those memories were still there, as clear as if they'd happened yesterday.

But when he stood before me holding flowers, eyes red, asking why I wouldn't fight anymore, why I wouldn't cry, why I didn't love him anymore—I could only tell him calmly:

I remember loving you.

That feeling, though? It's really gone.

He thought he was erasing my pain. He had no idea what he'd actually erased.

“End the ceremony,” Prince Kael ordered, his cloak wrapped around another woman’s shoulders.

Our six-year-old son stood beneath the moon glass, wings trembling, the royal binding already burning under his skin. If the ritual stopped now, Rowan could be scarred for life.

Kael did not even look at him.

So I picked up the sacred blade and pressed it to the bond mark in my palm.

“You wanted freedom,” I said. “Take it.”

My name is Charles Cole, a blind lactation therapist.
Of course, apart from pretending to be blind, all my skills are genuine.
Ophelia sat on the bed and slowly took off her top right in front of me, her beautiful figure revealing its spring allure under the golden warm sunlight.
“Mr. Cole, let's begin!”
I nodded, reaching forward with both hands, yet I didn't dare show the slightest unusual expression on my face.
The reason was simple: Ophelia's husband, Russell, was standing coldly right behind me at that moment.

My husband abandoned a billion-dollar deal and flew back overnight for me.

Everyone envied Mrs. Harris and her perfect life.

Only I knew that when he knelt by my bed, holding my hand, his cuff was still stained with another woman's breastmilk.

He thought I'd just taken a fall.

He didn't know that while he was cradling his bastard child with that tender smile, our baby had already dissolved into a pool of blood and left me forever.

This time, I won't make a scene. I won't love him anymore.

I slipped the suicide note I'd written long ago into the drawer.

And on this rainy night, I began planning a "death" that would belong to me alone.

I’m Maria, thirty years old, my body like a forgotten vine, aching to be watered and revived. Once, I thought marriage was my safe harbor, but my husband—that useless bastard—not only left me unsatisfied in bed, he betrayed my heart, screwing around with another woman. My pussy has long been dry, yet desire burns in my chest, forcing me to flee that cold, empty home and seek refuge in the vineyards of Provence, desperate for a breath of life.

Here, I met Julian. That evening, under the grapevines, he fucked me hard. I know this is just the beginning. My body and soul will be reborn in this steamy affair.

"I want a divorce. "
The day before her third wedding anniversary, Fiona sees her husband walking to the obstetrics wing with his arm around his ex-girlfriend, Rowena. Rowena is pregnant.
Heartbroken, Fiona rejects Micah, her husband, her mate, the Lycan Prince of the Alastair Kingdom, and leaves the pack.

However, to Fiona’s surprise, after being rejected, Micah goes crazy looking for her all over the world.
Until one day, when he sees her walking down the street holding a little girl, he pins her against the wall.
“Is she my daughter?” Micah hisses.

On a stormy night, I, Freya Austen, the Alpha heiress, was secretly poisoned by my sister Tiffany. A towering figure loomed over me. My legs instinctively wrapped around his waist. His cock, hard as steel, thrust into my wet, aching pussy, each brutal slam hitting deep, shattering my willpower and driving me to collapse in endless waves of pleasure.
The last thing I remember was my father's hand across my face and his voice: "Get out of this pack."
Five years later, I'm back as Crystal, the jewelry designer every East Coast pack wants to hire. I have three kids now, and I want blood.
The moment I walk into Crown & Gem, I run straight into Alexander Reid—my ex-fiancé, the strongest Alpha.
"You're still just exiled trash," Tiffany says, hanging off Alexander's arm with that fake sweet smile. And Alexander's harder to read—ice cold one minute, almost uncertain the next.
Our world has simple rules: betrayers pay, and Alpha blood doesn't lie. I'm taking back everything they stole from me. Maybe even the Alpha who should have been mine—and the father who doesn't know his children exist.
To everyone who destroyed my life: I'm back. Ready to see what a she-wolf's revenge looks like?
（This book contains mature content. Not suitable for minors.）

"On. Your. Knees."
"Do it, Yvette," my tone held finality, but almost sounded like a plea.
"Tsk tsk, Knox, my boy. You better watch daddy cum or no deal for you."
"Please, Mr. Christopher," Yvette's voice finally broke after the long silence. "Anything but this,"
"Shhhh…"
I peered from my side to see my father position himself between Yvette's legs.
"You won't know a better experience after—"
"Enough!" I snapped, rising to my feet.
"Sit back down, boy," he threatened.
I ignored him completely while helping Yvette down from his desk.
"I am talking to you, Knox!" He snapped. "This is your only chance to get everything stated in your mother's will."
I ignored him.
"You just breached a necessary condition in this deal, Knox. Don't tell me you have feelings for this slut—"
I slapped him twice as hard as he slapped Yvette earlier before he could finish his sentence.
"You won't call her a slut or lay a fucking finger on her ever again," I lowered my voice while my eyes imprinted the seriousness of my words into his.
Hell!
"You dare to raise your hand at me because of her? I will make you pay heavily for this."
I smirked without uttering a word. If only he knew how badly I wanted to devour him right now.
"Touch her again, and we'll see who pays dearly for what."


Yvette Morgan would do anything to save her dying mother. Anything. Even sign her mind, soul and body over to a man she doesn't know.
Knox Luther doesn't do feelings. He does strategy. And Yvette— desperate, fierce and unknowingly irresistible, is the perfect instrument for burning his father's world to the ground. The arrangement is never supposed to feel like anything until it feels like everything. Whose walls will crack first, and whose will crumble the hardest?
WARNING: This book contains explicit scenes and very mature content. If you enjoy dark romance with morally grey characters, intense passion and heart-wrenching tension, then, welcome and happy reading!

Wale never expected the world he built to crumble. One drunken night with his staff, Maya, led to a scandal that forced him into a marriage he never wanted. Behind closed doors, he promised his true love, Kate, “I’ll get rid of her in a year.”
For a year, Maya tried to win Wale’s love, enduring his coldness and distance, but he remained emotionally locked away. Just as he was about to hand her divorce papers, she revealed a shocking secret—she was pregnant. Wale, torn but still set on leaving her, abandoned Maya on the day she went into labor to be with Kate. In a cruel twist, a devastating accident claimed their baby’s life.
Devastated and broken, Maya confronts Wale with a chilling finality, “Congratulations, Mr. Wale. My baby’s gone. I want a divorce. You’ve taken the last reason I had to stay.”
For the first time, Wale feels something he’s never experienced—fear. Fear of losing the woman he dismissed for so long. But now, as Maya walks away, he’s faced with the hardest question of all; is it too late to win back the woman he pushed away? And even if he tries, can Maya ever forgive him for the pain he’s caused?

In a frantic movement, he tries to move his hands towards me but he can’t because of the handcuffs. He groans and leans up to me. He wants to take control but he can’t. I laugh mischievously and kiss him now, putting my tongue in his mouth and he forcefully kisses me back, exploring my mouth. He becomes even harder and I moan from the intensity of him.
He growls through gritted teeth and it sounds like a promise to torture me with pleasure. It sends tingles down my spine and between my legs. My hands caress his muscular arms, they run up to the handcuffs and he clenches his hands into fists like he is trying to control some strong force within him. I am excited to see him battling with his desire. I want to tease him even more.
I laugh. "Seems like I'm in control after all."
******
I’m Ellie, an orphan. I fall in love with my daddy’s friend, Austin. He’s the Alpha King. He’s my adoptive father. And he’s twice my age.

Ellie accidentally has a one-night stand with a stranger the day her adoptive father returns from war.
Wow, this stranger is so hot and good in bed! He’s much better than her scary guardian, only the room is too dark to see his face.

When bloodthirsty, ruthless Alpha Austin learns his little Ellie had a one-night stand with a man, he is furious.
"Who is that guy?"
"You have no right to know who he is!"
"If I find out who that stupid male dog is, I'll make him regret doing this to you!"
"He isn't a stupid male dog. He’s the best man I've ever met. He's sexy, he's strong and he makes me happy!"
Until one day, Austin finds that stupid male dog is him…

"Shut your fvcking mouth close!!" Zach yelled out of anger.
Madison had been frustrating him for the past few days and deep down it hurts him, it was an emotional frustration.
"I thought you liked it wide open huh" she replied with a smirk and walked to his table.

He felt his body twitch at her dirty words, she had known him too well.
"I am remaining a Doctor!, Who do you think you are to tell me to quit my profession?!' she yelled out and he stood up from his table and walked to her while he was opening his suit jacket.

" Wha-wha--"
"I am your Daddy like you cried last night, and you are mine" he replied and crashed his lips on her before she could say anything.


Darly Madison, a well trained medical doctor and surgeon has been living a peaceful life until one day her best friend asked her to go with her to a night Party in one of the popular hotels in the city.

There she had a one night stand with no other person but Zach Westley, a dominant and possessive Mafia boss.
Now her world changes from being a surgeon to being claimed by the Mafia.

I swear, this is the craziest thing I have ever done in my life.

Being locked in the same laboratory as Kane Blackwood, the Alpha of the Blackwood pack and my sworn enemy, as test subjects.

They injected us with aphrodisiacs, forced us to strip naked and stand under lasers for vital sign scans. Ironically, the scanner showed we were 97% compatible fated mates. Fuck that.

Yet when he pinned me against the wall and kissed me forcefully, his tongue roughly invading my mouth, and that burning cock forced open my soaked thighs and thrust all the way in, I still fell into it. The enemy's son was fucking in the lab, shooting hot cum deep into my womb again and again.

But after the sex, we could not help wondering what those people in the lab really wanted.

Every night, my mother-in-law Margaret would make a special cup of hot cocoa just for me, a Harvard graduate—my husband and his younger brother never got this special treatment.
The night before my first bar exam, Margaret brought me my usual mug of hot cocoa as always.
But the next day, despite being perfectly healthy all my life, I blacked out right in the exam hall!
I missed out on finishing the test and failed outright. Meanwhile, my husband, who flunked every single law school class, somehow miraculously passed California’s notoriously brutal bar exam, widely regarded as the hardest in the country.
Margaret told me not to worry, saying I could just retake it the following year, and she kept making my nightly hot cocoa without fail every day after that.
When the second bar exam rolled around, my cousin was staying with us temporarily. She only wanted a tiny sip of my cocoa, yet Margaret screamed at her, calling her shameless.
This time, sharp, crippling abdominal pains hit me the second I stepped into the exam room, and I had to rush to the hospital for emergency care.
Once again, I failed the exam. My cousin, who’d only attended a community college, shocked everyone by walking away with a full attorney’s license.
The whole family celebrated nonstop, and I was the butt of everyone’s jokes.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why my body would break down in every possible way whenever bar exam season rolled around.
Heading into my third attempt at the bar, I told myself this was my last shot—I could not afford to let my guard down for even a second.
But the night before the exam, my mother-in-law showed up at my door yet again, holding a warm mug of bedtime hot cocoa just for me…

A short contemporary domestic-drama romance. Clean to sweet. Happily ever after.

My husband's family slid the folder across the table — sign here, family helps family, it's just a signature.

What they didn't know: I had almost three million dollars in an account none of them could find. I silenced the alert before the number could glow.

They think we're the broke ones. For four years they've bled the kindest man I know dry, dressing every demand up as love and cashing it. So I let them keep believing it — and I built a wall they will never see.

They're about to find out what happens when you spend a lifetime underestimating the quiet one.

And this time, I'm not the one who pays.

The folder slid across the table toward Hannah's husband. Sign here. Family helps family.

What the Whitfields never once thought to wonder was that the quiet daughter-in-law they'd spent four years bleeding had almost three million dollars they couldn't see.

She'd hidden it for one reason: to keep the only good man in that family from being turned into their wallet.

Now they wanted his signature. His house. His name on their debt.

They had spent a lifetime underestimating the quiet one.

They were about to learn what that costs.

In the sixth year of my life as a Scale-Stripper, I finally gathered the hundredth vial of Dragon Breath Essence.

I knelt before the altar, cradling the crystal bottle in both hands. The golden light swirling within it cast a warm glow across my scarred knuckles. Six years — six years of wandering the most dangerous battlefields of the Five Clans and the plague-ridden wastelands, using dragon breath to heal the wounded. For every person I saved, I had peeled away a living scale from my own flesh, baring the raw, bleeding meat beneath.

Seven scales left on my back.

Only seven.

But as long as it saved my brother Lucien, it was worth it.

Six years ago, during the Dragon Slaughter War, our parents had been assassinated by humans. An ancient curse had struck Lucien; his scales were crumbling away, day by day. He told me that only a hundred vials of Dragon Breath Essence could break the curse.

I held the crystal bottle out to him, my voice trembling with barely contained emotion. "Lucien, a hundred vials. We finally have enough."

Lucien took the bottle and glanced at it.

Then he tossed it off the altar without a second thought.

I went rigid.

Lucien stood at the top of the altar.

"I was never cursed," he said.

My hands were still cupped in the shape of holding the bottle, all ten fingers suspended in midair.

"Our parents never died, either."

"The Dragon Slaughter War six years ago, I planned it. The only one left crippled, with broken wings, was you."

Yes, I jumped from that rooftop. Wind screaming in my ears as I fell, thinking it might finally earn me one fucking tear from them. Instead, all I got was "she's so dramatic."
Now I'm staring at fifteen-year-old skin in the mirror. Downstairs, their fake voices call my name—identical to that "welcome home" afternoon three years ago.
Yvette rushes to hug me, sugar-sweet venom dripping from her lips: "Remember who the princess is." I give her the same plastic smile right back.
I hear the voice in my head crystal clear: This time, I'm not fighting for their love—I'm taking back the life that was always mine.

They paid me a fortune to authenticate a masterpiece. It took eight seconds to know it was a forgery — and eight more to understand I was the forgery they'd hired.

The brushwork was my great-grandmother's. The woman they let die in a county ward, calling herself a liar for daring to say the paintings were hers.

The Ashford name sits on three centuries of art, scholarship, and law. None of it is theirs. He stole her words. His wife stole her paintings. They built a dynasty on a woman they erased — and never learned her blood runs in me too.

I'm the lawyer they brought in to seal one more theft. I said no.

By the time they remember her name, they won't have one left to sign.

Travis Savage and I were a notorious public pair, bound together by nothing but hatred.

In the glittering, indulgent world of Chicago, he was an untouchable mafia king who ruled with absolute power, making and breaking rules on a whim. And I? I was the wife he loathed above all others in his criminal empire.

It all started when my parents lost their lives saving him, gunned down by his rivals. After their deaths, he kept me close as I grew up, and eventually, our marriage became what everyone expected. For a long time, he was my only anchor in this lonely world.

Once, he’d knelt before me and sworn to protect me for the rest of my life.

Now, he hated me.

He hated that I refused to sign the divorce papers, that I stood in the way of him running off with Renee Sutton — the orphan girl he claimed to have rescued off the streets.

He let her walk all over me and flaunt herself openly in front of me. To get back at them, I leaked their sordid secrets overnight across all of Chicago: their flirty messages, their hotel stays. Word spread through both the criminal underworld and high society alike, leaving the pair mocked and shunned by everyone.

Our marriage had rotted away years ago, worn thin by endless mutual resentment. It was stagnant, foul, and long dead.

Until three days ago.

A string of ambushes left Travis a hunted man. While swerving to avoid an oncoming truck, he was involved in a devastating car crash.

He lay unconscious in the ICU for three full days. When he woke, he claimed he’d forgotten every ounce of the nine years of hatred between us. In his mind, he was still nineteen — the age when he loved me with everything he had.

He Thought I'd Wait Forever. I Wore White for Someone Else.

Nora canceled the wedding venue on a Tuesday. The deposit was nonrefundable. She let it go.
Eight years she'd held that stretch of coast — the cliff, the white tent, the January date they circled and let slide every spring. She slid the ring off at the kitchen counter and dropped it in the drawer with the dead batteries and old takeout menus. It didn't feel like heartbreak. It felt like setting down something she'd carried too long.
Adrian would find out. Not tonight. He still thought her silence was a thing to be coaxed out of. He still thought she'd always be there.
She'd already decided she wouldn't. By the time he understood, she'd be on that coast in a white dress — and the man beside her wouldn't be him.

I suffered from a severe congenital heart defect.

And my mother, Jamie, had terminal bone cancer.

My family was not a happy one. It marked the third year since my father, Nelson, had openly and unapologetically betrayed their marriage.

That morning, my mother swallowed a handful of painkillers and forced herself to stand up from her wheelchair.

She asked her best friend, Zoey, who was also my attending physician, to forge a medical report.

Zoey trembled with anger, her tears dropping heavily onto the paper.

"Jamie, are you crazy? Your bones are being eaten away by cancer cells every single day. You're in so much pain you bang your head against the wall all night. Why would you fake a clean bill of health?"

"Do you think that bastard Nelson will change his mind and come back to you just because you pretend to be healthy?"

I thought I was the perfect wife and mother, until I heard my husband outside his office, laughing, calling me a "prison warden" and planning to use our daughter as cover while he ran off to Tuscany with his grad student.

Everything fell apart. Then my daughter, in front of everyone: "That's just our annoying nanny."

I tried to hold on to what was left of our family, but my daughter shoved me down the stairs. I lost the baby, and my husband just checked his watch while I bled out on the floor.

They locked me in and left for Italy.

Alone in the hospital, they told me I'd lost the baby and had "memory damage."

Now they're back, expecting the same obedient wife.

She's gone.

And I'm done loving them.

On my twenty-second birthday, I cut my wrists and texted the undertaker I'd hired to collect my body.
My family was across town celebrating my sister— – the daughter they loved, believed, and chose every time. I expected to die alone before they remembered I existed.
Instead, the undertaker came running.
Elijah Hayes was supposed to bury me. He became the first person who asked me to stay. He took me to treatment, gave me the birthday I'd never had, and offered to be my family when my own had thrown me away.
By the time the Bennetts learned I was telling the truth, they were ready to give me everything.
They were simply too late.

I was "Ghost," the undefeated legend of the underground racing circuit. To uncover the truth behind the tragic fall that left my sister, Sylvia, in a coma, I disguised myself as a timid, pathetic scholarship student and infiltrated Spencer Academy—an elite world ruthlessly ruled by old-money families and the hockey dynasty.

I thought my petty revenge was flawless when I slashed a bully's tire with a razor blade hidden in my sleeve. But I was caught red-handed by the academy's most feared predator: Rowan King, the "Tyrant of the Ice."

He was Sylvia's rumored boyfriend. More importantly, he was the last person to see her that night.

With a single glance, he shattered my "good girl" facade. He knew my true identity as the street racer "Ghost," and he knew exactly why I had sneaked into his school.

I should have treated him as my prime suspect. But between his fiercely dominant advances and his reckless, deadly protection, he was making my heart race entirely out of control...

My husband Ronald's best friend Clyde died three months ago, and with his last breath, he made Ronald promise to take care of his pregnant widow, Jennifer. From that moment, Jennifer invaded our lives, and I was only four months pregnant at the time.

Then Jennifer got caught in a gang shootout. She needed an emergency blood transfusion, and she had this rare blood type—Rhnull. Turns out, I'm Rhnull too.

To save Jennifer and her baby, Ronald forced me to abort mine.

When I woke up in that hospital bed, legs wrapped in casts and burning like hell, everything came flooding back. This time, I wasn't the naive fool I'd been before.
Tyler, my brother Ryan, and that bitch Savannah—they destroyed me. Turned a gymnastics prodigy into a cripple.
Tyler had the nerve to grab my hand, begging me to forgive Savannah for ruining my legs. My brother chose outsiders over me, screaming about "family reputation."
Fuck their love. Fuck family.
This time around, I've got evidence of the $1.2 million they owe me. I know all their dirty secrets. Round two has started, and I'm done being their victim.
Those three bastards are going to pay back every damn cent they stole from me.

My biggest regret? Trusting my husband with my mother's life.

The day the mudslide hit, I was on my knees. Begging him to send a helicopter.

He told me to wait. Twenty minutes. But when the helicopter came, it went for his adoptive sister Vivian instead.

I held my mother in the ruins. Her body was shutting down. I waited. Waited until she went cold in my arms.

When he finally showed up at the hospital, the first thing he said? Accused me of faking it. Said I just wanted attention.

In that moment, my heart died too.

Later, I found out Vivian wasn't even sick.

She said "I don't feel well"—that's all it took. And he left my mother and me to die.

Called me a lunatic. In front of everyone. All for her.

I was ready to leave. For good. Then someone shattered my mother's ashes.

I was six years old when Mom took my brother and me by the hand, leading us into a mansion that looked like a palace. She told us this was our new beginning, after all the hardships we'd been through. But no one warned me that this so-called better life would mean giving up everything I had.

My scholarships, my prom dress, even my Stanford acceptance letter—they all turned into bargaining chips just to keep my stepfather and his daughter Sienna happy. Then, the night before my wedding, they even asked my fiancé to "temporarily" give himself to her as well.

I've always been the one giving everything, pouring myself out until there's nothing left, yet I've never heard the words, "You're enough." If love means endless sacrifice, why am I never the one on the receiving end?

Maybe only when I vanish completely will they remember my name—for the first and last time.

I am Seraphine Marchwood. For five years, I gave every piece of myself to Alpha Veyron, convinced our mate bond was fated—until the night I accidentally overheard the truth.
He never wanted me as his mate. The entire proposed bond was nothing but a cover, a farce to hide his scandalous affair with Ophelia, the woman he actually loved. She was carrying his pup, and I was just the disposable, respectable shield to keep his reputation untarnished.
I ran that night, blind with grief and rage, until I crashed through the rotting beams of an old, rain-soaked ruin. The last thing I remembered before blacking out was the taste of blood in my mouth, and the sound of his voice calling my name, too late.
When I woke up, I didn’t recognize him.
And for the first time since I’d known him, he looked terrified. The cold, unshakable Alpha who’d cast me aside without a second thought was panicking, desperate, scrambling to bring back the version of me that had loved him more than anything—even as a new, unforeseen path began to unfurl before me.

“Smile, Natalie,” Callum whispered before he walked onstage.

So I smiled while he thanked another woman for the crisis plan I had written. I smiled when he pinned my grandmother’s sapphire brooch to her dress. I even smiled when his message came in, canceling our nineteenth appointment at the county clerk’s office.

Then I walked out with our unsigned marriage license papers in my purse and called the one CEO he hated most.

By the time Callum realized I wasn’t waiting anymore, I had already taken my name, my work, and my future back.

I loved Finley for two years.
Until 1:00 AM on a Tuesday, when his best friend, Orion, sent me a half-naked photo and a jarring voice note."
If I actually bag her, don't go flipping out on me. A deal's a deal."
I booked the first flight out to confront him, only to catch the boy I loved naked and thrusting into another woman.
But that wasn't even the part that broke me.
When my roommate bypassed the hockey team's private Discord server, I found a channel named: #locker-room-bets.
There was my boyfriend, typing the words that shattered my world: "She's boring... She's like a lost puppy, you can't shake her... Play with her all you want."
My loyalty and two years of my life were nothing but a sick joke.
The entire hockey team had put money down on when I would willingly spread my legs for his best friend.

I put up with my husband's cheating because I needed money for my brother's medical bills.

Until I found the heart donor report he'd been hiding in his study for three months. 98% match. He'd signed it "postpone."

That night, fireworks filled the London sky, his mistress laughing in the background. Standing over my brother's body, I finally got it—he'd been killing my brother all along.

I ripped up his check, sold every piece of jewelry he'd ever given me, and threw the divorce papers in his face.

"Murderer"—that's all I said.

Three years later, I'm getting a standing ovation at the Golden Hall. He shows up in the snow, eyes red, begging for forgiveness.

I just smiled. "Charles, you died three years ago."

I donated a kidney to my adopted sister.

Seven days later, I lay on the cold hospital bed, listening to my fiancé and family laughing down the hall.

They were popping champagne to celebrate my adopted sister's discharge.

No one remembered I had just had surgery. No one remembered my nut allergy.

When someone handed me a plate of almonds, I smiled.

I shoved them into my mouth, handful after handful, and swallowed them down. Then I told them I was done fighting for their love.

My fiancé demanded I postpone our wedding. My brother beat me until I bled and locked me on the rooftop to die.

After being abandoned eighty-eight times, I finally learned how to love myself—by cutting everyone who failed me out of my life.

My daughter died on her seventh birthday.
I held her in the cold ward as her body slowly lost all warmth.
Meanwhile, her father—my husband Vincent—was on a mountain top with his mistress, making love to her all night long.
He said, "She’s just a child. There’ll be better ones sooner or later."
He said, "Camila, you’re the only one I love."
He has no idea that he’s killed the only soul in this world that loved him unconditionally.
After the divorce, I am no longer the meek Mrs. Lucchese who begged for his affection.
Funeral, scandal, a worthless bastard...
Everything I lost, I will make him pay for—with his entire family.

One drunken night. One baby. One Don who married me out of duty.

I was the family doctor, a nobody, when I got pregnant with Don Rafael Salvatore’s child. I thought if I stayed quiet, stayed good, and made myself useful, he would eventually love me and our daughter.

Seven years later, I’m still waiting.

Rafael never let Nina call him “Daddy.” When she was two, she said it by accident in public, and he made her walk home alone. She fell again and again, and he never looked back. When she was four, she slipped in the middle of an amusement park, and he dropped her hand. She was lost in the crowd for hours. She was found shaking in the bushes.

Still, my little girl kept hoping. Every time he tossed her a crumb, she held on to it like treasure.

Then Jasmine Hale, his first love, came home with her daughter, and everything changed. Suddenly Rafael had time. He smiled. He picked Nina up. He even gave her a teddy bear, which, I found out, Jasmine’s daughter had thrown away.

That night, Nina gave him three last chances.

He missed the first when he looked straight past her and chose another woman’s child. He missed the second when he skipped her parent-teacher night to play blocks with Jasmine’s daughter. And the third? He finally showed up, only to stand by while Nina’s class monitor title was handed to someone else.

So I signed the divorce papers, sent them off from the airport, and took our daughter far away.

At my engagement dinner, my fiancé asked me to sign the prenup that killed me once before.

Last time, Adrian smiled, kissed my hand, and promised I would never be alone again. Three weeks later, debt collectors came for money I had never borrowed, black veins crawled under my skin, and his dying mother walked out of hospice in pearls.

This time, I turned to the second page first.

My name was already printed there.

Beside it was a date that had not happened yet.

Under it was another bride’s name.

A woman declared dead twenty-three years ago.

My aunt was terrified I'd end up with a human. So she arranged a marriage herself.

The groom? Kael Voss. Alpha heir to the most powerful pack on the East Coast.

I had a Moonstone Mate Necklace custom-made for the occasion. Global commission. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

The day I went to pick it up, it was snatched right out of my hands.

The woman who took it? Chloe Hart. Kael's so-called childhood best friend.

She looked me up and down like I was a stray dog that had wandered in off the street.

"A hundred and eighty grand? Sweetheart, you can't even afford the tax."

Then she told me to get on my knees. Right there, in front of the whole store. Scream three times, "I'm a worthless stray Omega and I know my place."

I didn't kneel.

I threw her own words right back in her face and put her on the floor with one kick.

That's when Kael walked in. My fiancé. The man I'd never met until that very moment.

And damn... he was gorgeous.

I'll be honest, I'm shallow. Always have been. That face hit every single thing on my list.

So I walked right up to him, gave him my sweetest smile, and said, "Hi. I'm Judy. Your fiancée."

My husband, Zachary, chose to save his sister-in-law right in front of the kidnappers.

The kidnapper pressed the gun to my temple and asked, "Choose your wife or your sister-in-law?"

Zachary didn't hesitate. "Let Valerie go," he said.

He actually chose to save his sister-in-law! In that moment, even the baby in my belly seemed to stop kicking.

Later, they locked me in the basement. Drugs to delay labor were pumped into my veins over and over. Zachary wanted to save the "firstborn son" status for his sister-in-law's child.

When warm blood finally soaked through my skirt, I dialed the number I knew by heart with shaking hands.

"Zachary," I whispered into the phone, "our child... can't wait any longer."