2147 Book(s) Related to jesse's song toy story

Accidental Pups×Contract Marriage × Multiple Identity × Drama × Vengeance & Betrayal × One-Night Stand × Billionaire/CEO × Brave Heroine × True & Fake Heiress

Warning: This is a slow-burn romance. The love story develops gradually through trust, healing, family, and shared secrets.

“He doesn’t trust anyone.”

“I know.”

“Then why does he trust you?”

I don’t have an answer.

I only know that when I found little Cassian bound and abandoned, I couldn’t walk away. I didn’t know then that he was the son of Alistair Voss—the cold, powerful billionaire who trusted no one.

But Cassian trusted me.

And that changed everything.

When Alistair asks me to stay for his son, I refuse. Until he makes an even more shocking offer: marriage.

What begins as an arranged marriage slowly becomes something neither of us expected. Beneath the same roof, Cassian becomes the family I never knew I needed, while Alistair begins to see the woman behind my guarded heart.

But I didn’t return to Verona simply for a new life.

Five years ago, I lost my memory. My identity was stolen. Someone betrayed me, and someone wanted me gone.

Now the past is catching up with us.

And when it finally does, I may discover that Cassian chose me for a reason no one ever expected.

Some loves take time. Some truths take even longer to uncover.

My son Emery scored a perfect SAT and got early admission to MIT Physics. Eighteen years old. His future was limitless.

My billionaire husband Reid's assistant—his mistress in everything but name—suggested Emery attend some garbage local business school instead. Inherit the empire. Fall in line.

Emery said no. Reid exploded.

He locked my son in the lumber yard and ordered him to split five tons of oak. "No water until he's done. That'll teach him respect."

The sun was brutal. My son's asthma attacked. I knelt before Reid's mistress and begged for his inhaler while Reid crushed my right hand—my surgeon's hand.

I got the inhaler and ran back as fast as I could.

But I was too late. My son was already dead.

To give my daughter, Lily, a childhood connected to nature, I put on worn-out overalls and carved out a small vegetable patch at the edge of the estate.
That was until today, when a vicious dog lunged without warning, sinking its teeth into Lily's calf. Blood instantly stained the dirt.
I threw myself over my daughter like a madwoman to protect her, only to be viciously whipped across the face with a diamond-studded leash.
"Where did this lowly gardener come from! You hurt my dog—can your two worthless lives afford to pay for it?"
A young woman in a haute couture white dress, her pregnant belly protruding, sneered and waved her hand. "Where is security? Beat this crazy, pathetic woman and her little thief of a bastard to death, and throw them out of the estate!"
Holding my convulsing daughter, I said, "Beat us to death? Have you asked the master of the estate?"
The woman giggled coquettishly.
"My boyfriend is the master of this estate! With just one word from him, he could crush you like an ant!"
What a coincidence.
The "masters of the estate" she spoke of... I know them both.
One is my husband.
And the other... is my son.

Five years ago, on the day when Isla realized she was pregnant with her boyfriend Alpha Adrian's child and excited to tell him, her life shattered in one night -- her Beta parents turned out to be Lycan spies and ruined Adrian's entire pack. Isla had no choice but to fled for her life after Adrian killed her parents before her eyes and believed IsIa was also part of the Lycan schemes.
Five years later, hidden in a quiet human town with her young son Noah, Isla has built a new life far from the werewolf world.
However, one viral post about her bakery exposed her location to Adrian. Captured and dragged back to Adrian's pack, Isla had to face her sin, love, desire and hatred this time....

After years of marriage, my husband and son never once treated me like I mattered.
In their eyes, there was only another woman.
When I heard them talking about abandoning me again, I finally hit my limit.
So I asked for a divorce.
From that day on, I lived for myself—and myself alone.

The room went deadly silent. Christopher, the CEO of Sullivan Group, looked at me with pure disgust. "Get this crazy girl out of here! My grandfather is dying, and you're playing sick games?"

But the old man on the bed... his eyes flew open. He stared at me—not at my young, beautiful face, but into my soul. He saw the sketch in my hand. A secret only a mother and her six-year-old son would know.

"Jimmy," I said softly, using the nickname no one had spoken in decades. "Do you remember the thunderstorms?"

Tears streamed down the old man's wrinkled cheeks. The most powerful man in Boston, reached out his frail hand to grasp mine. "Mama?" he choked out, his voice breaking like a small child's. "You came back?"

Christopher froze. The doctors froze. I climbed onto the bed and pulled my 80-year-old son into my arms. "I'm here, baby. Mommy's home."

The day I discovered my husband, Vincent, was cheating on me with my younger sister, I was seven months pregnant. I drove away in a panic, only to end up in a car accident.
When I woke up in the family’s underground clinic, Vincent was pressing a gun to his own forehead, begging me to forgive him.
My father immediately ordered Elena to leave Sicily.
From that day on, Vincent took over every family affair, big or small, never allowing me to worry about a single thing.
I never heard from Elena again.
Not until our son was suddenly hospitalized with acute pneumonia.
I rushed back to the family’s private hospital in the middle of the night.
Through the half-open hospital room door, I saw my parents and Elena, who were supposed to be thousands of miles away in Siberia.
Elena was bent over the bedside, sobbing.
"Leo is my child. Why can't he even call me Mom? Do you have any idea how much that hurts?"
Vincent wrapped his arms around her, his face full of tenderness.
"I know you've suffered, sweetheart. But if Isabella finds out that her baby actually died in that car accident, there's no telling how many people she'll drag down with her. You know what she's capable of."
I froze outside the door.

My son was killed in a horrific car bomb assassination.

At his rain-drenched funeral, my husband, Enzo—a Mafia Don—held an umbrella over my head, only to suddenly state with icy indifference:

"Gianna is pregnant. It's my blood."

Gianna. The illegitimate daughter of the Lucchese family boss.

I stiffened, looking up in sheer disbelief.

"What the hell does that mean?"

He cast a careless glance at me, completely unbothered.

"To end the war between the Corsican and Lucchese families, I've been with her in secret for a while now. Now that she carries the Corsican bloodline, I must give her a proper title. She will be moving into the estate tonight. You will not only accept this, but you will also give her the respect she deserves as the mother of my child."

Eilidh MacLeod thought she had escaped. Seven years after walking away from a cold marriage and a ruthless man, she has built a life of quiet stability with her son, Finlay.
But ghosts don’t stay buried forever. When Ruaridh MacKinnon—her powerful ex-husband—suddenly steps back into her world, her worst nightmare comes true. As the new owner of her company, he is now in control of her professional fate. And if he looks too closely, he may uncover the one secret she swore to protect.

The child I brought into this world through sheer determination now calls my husband's mistress "mother"; the youth who slew my father for my sake and was imprisoned, now confines me beyond the threshold, forcing me to hear his carnal symphony with his stepmother. Only then did I comprehend: the sixteen-year-old boy who committed patricide for me had long perished within the prison walls.

Three weeks after my son's death, I found the blood-stained cloth doll meant to "ward off disaster" with his name stitched on it.

Right there, in the hands of my husband's mistress, who was giggling as she idly toyed with it.
 
"The psychic said my life force was too weak to keep the baby, and that I needed a substitute to take the curse."
 
"I only sewed Leo's name into the doll. I never imagined... he would actually get sick and die."
 
"Declan, do you think Leo traded his life for our baby's?"
 
Through the crack in the door, the same man who had sobbed until he passed out at the funeral was gently stroking his lover's belly. "He was just unlucky. As long as our baby is safe, that's all that matters."
 
I turned away, pulled up the invitation for Chief Medical Examiner from the International Criminal Court in The Hague that I had shelved for a month, and hit accept.

When Alpha Alex chose to abandon our biological son Lucas in the fire and instead saved the son of Omega Isabella, my world shattered.

In an instant, I became a pitiful creature crushed under their feet.
Isabella humiliated me—forced me to lick the dirt off her shoes like I was nothing.

Lucas died in agony, and I wasn’t even allowed to attend his funeral.

But as the truth slowly began to unravel, I realized with horror that behind all this suffering…
lay a secret powerful enough to destroy me.

What should I do now?

Can anyone tell me—
how do I escape a fate that feels like a nightmare I can’t wake from?

Lily lived a normal life, when her mom passes away. Then she discovers that her mom had a complete life that she knew nothing about. Determined to figure out why her mom was laundering money, Lily makes use of her company resources.
In the same time, Lily's boss is in a predicament where he needs Lily to obey his commands at work. However, Lily is not prepared to break laws for him. Threats become harder and more dangerous for Lily to give in to those commands.
Because of her position in her work, there are more people after her with multiple agendas. Matteo is one of these people after her, but then they fall in love when they least expect it. But when Matteo's enemy kidnaps Lily, he needs to chose between business or love. Along the way, Lily also continues to learn about her mom, with many twists and turns.

Five years ago, my fiancée and a chaebol heir broke my ribs and threw me into the sewer like trash.

Five years later, they implanted a neurotoxin bomb into the back of my sister's neck, forcing me on all fours to crawl between the security guards' legs into their engagement banquet at a Manhattan penthouse hotel.

My ex-fiancée poured champagne over my wounds, while the chaebol heir ground caviar into the muddy water with his leather shoes, forcing me to lick it clean like a dog.

The room full of Wall Street elites laughed at my humiliation, thinking I was still the same bottom-tier temp worker from back then.

They had no idea that through my micro-earpiece, a heavy armored division was already on standby under the cover of night.

When the confirmation came that the bomb had been defused, I slowly stood up straight.

Outside the window, engines roared. Ten heavy Black Hawk helicopters tore through the curtain of rain, their heavy machine guns instantly shattering the banquet hall's reinforced glass.

Looking down at the chaebol heir who was now slumped in the muddy water, I drew my sidearm: "The debt from five years ago—today, I'm collecting it with your family's lives."

Alexandra Moretti has not taken a single step down the aisle when the cathedral doors open behind her.
A nurse comes in with a newborn and a birth record. The mother is in surgery. The father, she says, is the groom.
Vincent DeLuca does not deny it. Neither does his family. They offer ten minutes in the priest's office and a simple arrangement: the boy will be provided for quietly, and Alexandra will still be Mrs. DeLuca.
They have misjudged her.
This was never a wedding. It was a merger, and Alexandra is the only person in the room who read every clause. She sets the ring on a pew, orders her security chief to recover the signed papers, and walks out of St. Patrick's before the ink is dry.
Her father does not stop her.
By tonight, the DeLucas will find out how much of their empire was only ever borrowed.

"Enough, Serafina! The thing rigged to the parasail is just a mannequin. It's not your mother! Cut the damn act!"

I watched helplessly as my severely ill mother plummeted from hundreds of feet in the air, smashing into the bone-chilling ocean.

My husband was holding my stepsister, a doting smile playing on his lips.

My own biological son clapped his hands in glee—because he was the one who had blindly pushed the release button.

They all said I was faking it. They said I was vicious, toxic, and jealous.

It wasn't until I erased every last trace of my existence and vanished entirely from their lives that they dug through the wreckage of our past like madmen, desperate to find me.

Haley Reed thought she had the perfect life—a devoted husband, a sweet son, and a home filled with love. But when her husband’s ex-lover, Joye, slithers back into their lives, determined to steal everything Haley holds dear, her world shatters.
The ultimate betrayal? Her own son turning against her, demanding she leave, and claiming that he wanted Joey instead of her to be his mother!
Cast out with nothing—no money, no safety net—Haley collapses on the streets, broken… until crosses paths with Logan Hartwell, a powerful Billionaire with a guarded heart, and his fragile, enchanting daughter, Lily, who clings to Haley with a desperate hope: "Will you be my mommy?"
However, as Haley rebuilds her life, chilling connections emerge—between Logan’s mysterious past and Joey, the woman who destroyed her marriage. "Did you choose me to hurt her?" she demands, but Logan couldn't give her a satisfactory answer.
Realizing her world was surrounded with lies, Haley transforms into the powerful woman she was meant to be—wealth, influence, and hard-won independence at her fingertips—her past comes begging. Her ex-husband. Her lost son. The life that failed her.
Will she return to the love that broke her… or claim the family that truly sees her worth?

I used to be the nation's top lock-picking expert. I saved countless lives.

But I couldn't save my own daughter.

At the dock, two children were strapped to bombs.

The girl had less time—I should've saved her first.

But my husband Damien held a knife to his throat, forcing me to save the other one first.

His illegitimate son.

I compromised.

The moment I opened the lock, the kidnapper ripped off the girl's hood.

I never expected her to be Rosie.

My five-year-old daughter.

She looked at me.

Her lips moved, forming the word "Mommy."

Then the explosion tore through everything...

The system made me an outcast live-in husband in a werewolf clan for three years. The mission reward: 80 billion dollars. Now there's only half a day left until retirement settlement.

The arrogant pure-blood Alpha wants to force me into a deadly full moon execution array, roaring for me to kneel and die.

I don't even lift an eyelid. Right at quitting time, I directly withdraw my soul, leaving the body to the original owner "Ancestor Wolf Emperor" to handle, while I return to my Manhattan penthouse, sink into the leather sofa, and start a holographic livestream.

"Enjoy your night shift, everyone." I take a light sip of hot coffee, coldly watching the screen as the Wolf Emperor crushes that pure-blood Alpha's spine into mush with one foot, shocking my mission wife and mother-in-law into idiots.

Not your regular billionaire romance

She had a son with the most dangerous man in the city.
And he can never find out.

Four years ago, Aurielle Duval spent one reckless night with a stranger—
a night that left her with a little boy who has his impossible blue eyes.

She never learned his name.
He disappeared before sunrise.
And she rebuilt her life alone… until the day she walks into an interview at the world’s most powerful company.

Its CEO is Kieran D’Angelo.
Cold. Untouchable. Ruthless.

The man she prayed she would never see again.

He doesn’t recognize her
but he watches her, tests her, and claims her as his personal assistant.

What Kieran doesn’t know is that Aurielle carries more than his past.

She is the erased daughter of the D’Angelo empire—
a child they tried to destroy before she ever opened her eyes.

And the son she hides?
He’s the living proof of a truth that could tear the family apart.

When Kieran’s dark, charming cousin Dante returns—
obsessed with Aurielle and hungry for power—
a dangerous game begins.

Love, obsession, and blood collide.
And in a family built on lies,
the woman they tried to erase may be the one who brings the empire to its knees.

Four years ago, I left on a top-secret mission, and everyone assumed I was dead.

Four years later, I returned expecting a joyful homecoming, only to be struck by a devastating nightmare: three years ago, a local cartel hanged my wife from the rafters, and my ten-year-old son was locked in a cellar, suffering unimaginable abuse.

Right now, in a local dive bar, my enemies have a gun pressed to my head. They’re laughing, mocking me, thinking I'm just some washed-up, helpless veteran they can easily crush.

But what they don't know is that just ten minutes ago, I severed the only fiber-optic cable connecting this town to the outside world.

The hunt has officially begun...

Three years ago, billionaire Theodore Chambers handed Victoria Ellis divorce papers with cold eyes and colder words—all for the sake of his first love, Isabella Waters.
Victoria didn't cry. She didn't beg.
She simply signed her name, walked out of that golden cage, and disappeared from the world of the rich.
What the world didn't expect…
Was for the discarded ex-wife to rise from the ashes—not as a socialite, but as the world's most sought-after reconstructive mortician. Behind every high-profile crime scene and closed casket, she was the one restoring dignity to the dead—and building a name powerful enough to shake law enforcement and the elite alike.
Now, at a funeral of all places, their paths cross again.
She stands beside another man, radiant, untouchable.
He watches in disbelief—his ex-wife, no longer his.
"You handle corpses every day. Aren't you afraid of bad luck?" he growls, grabbing her wrist.
She smiles coldly.
"In my heart, the grass over your grave has already grown two meters tall."
But fate has one final card to play.
When Victoria finds Theodore lying in a pool of blood, clutching an old photo of her, everything unravels.
Was it too late after all?
Or is love just another body she's not willing to reconstruct?

Before the apocalypse hit, my ex-girlfriend called me, laughing like a maniac: "Jack, you pathetic loser—still playing that stupid farming game? Gonna whack zombies with a hoe? Open the door right now, get on your knees, and beg us, and maybe we'll throw you some table scraps."
I listened to the faint scrape of a tactical knife being drawn on the other end of the line, and silently glanced at my computer screen—at the maxed-out Greenfield Manor game, with its gold cap glowing at [999,999,999] .
"You misheard." I dropped my voice, lacing it with just the right amount of embarrassment. "I was checking the weather forecast."
The other end erupted in unrestrained laughter: "Then forecast this—how you're gonna die today!"
I hung up without changing my expression, flipped open the system, and spent a million on the [Absolute Defense Shield] —then brought out a steaming plate of roasted meat.
Forecast?
I forecast that tonight, you'll be gnawed down to bare bones by zombies.

She built a quiet life from the wreckage of a marriage that nearly swallowed her whole. A bakery. A hidden talent for art. And a son she loves more than breathing. At forty, Corinna Adler is composed, grounded, but devastatingly unsated, starved and untouched.

One night was supposed to fix that.

One anonymous night at Obscura, the city's most secretive underground club with a man whose hands knew things about her body she had forgotten were possible. Young, commanding, and patient. The kind of man Corinna would unfortunately, never forget.

Because the morning after, he re-introduces himself into her reality in a way she never sees coming.

I was an orphan, and when I turned twelve, my parents found me. I thought I could finally escape my suffering and experience the warmth of a home and the love of parents. To fit in, I did everything I could to please and serve my family.
But what I never expected was that the reason they sought me out was for my bone marrow... They wanted to use it to save someone else!
My heart shattered. How could parents be so cruel?
Disillusioned with the world, I fell from the balcony and died.
But to my surprise, I was reborn!
This time, I would live for myself! Those who had hurt me would pay the price!

After eight years of dating, Declan Wright finally agreed to marry me.

But he had one absolute condition: no sunlight on our wedding day.

The rule was strictly to protect his childhood best friend, Daisy, who supposedly suffered from a severe UV allergy.

Over the next six years, I planned six different weddings.

Every single one was washed out by torrential storms.

Today, in our fifteenth year together, was our seventh attempt.

I thought I had finally gotten it right with a gloomy, drizzling afternoon on the Oregon Coast.

But just as we stood on the sand to exchange our vows, the heavy clouds parted.

A single, brilliant shaft of sunlight pierced through the gray, landing directly on my face.

Guests whispered it was a blessing.

Yet, before I could even say "I do," Declan bolted.

Grabbing a black umbrella, he rushed off the altar.

He pulled Daisy into his chest, spiriting her away into the deep shade of the trees.

I stood alone in my mud-soaked gown, watching their retreating silhouettes.

Slowly, I unpinned my veil and left the ring in its velvet box.

If he was always going to keep me in his shadows, it was time I found my own sun.

"Get out of here with your dying bastard!"
My son suddenly fell critically ill, and the only matching organ was locked in my wife's family's cold storage. I stormed into the company with my critically ill child, only to be met with a severe suspension notice.
Everyone thought I was some lowly social outcast, someone they could crush at any moment.
Until I pulled out that dusty badge, my father-in-law, who controlled a New York business empire, was so terrified that he cleared the room on the spot, his legs going weak.
"Arrange surgery for my son immediately." I looked at him coldly. "If he misses the optimal transplant window, I guarantee your entire family, and this city, will be executed for him."

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 realized a wife and mother could stop chasing them, I had already chosen divorce, distance, and a life that belonged to me.

At our annual family masquerade gala, my best friend, tipsy from champagne, suddenly leaned close to my ear.
"If I ever became another man's mistress, would you still want to be my best friend?"
Before I could recover from the provocative question, she swirled her champagne and continued.
"Actually, I didn't miss yesterday's family meeting because of a migraine."
"The man installed a floor-to-ceiling mirror in his private casino office. He wanted to try something a little crazy with me."
"And that trip to Las Vegas last month? I lied about inspecting the casinos. His wife is about as exciting as a block of wood, so he took me to Monaco on his yacht instead."
My fingers tightened around my champagne flute. I froze.
Then she burst out laughing and patted my shoulder.
"Oh, God, I'm kidding! You should have seen your face."
I slowly exhaled, managing a strained smile.
It wasn't until late that night that I went to the casino with an urgent port smuggling agreement in hand to find my husband.
The moment I opened his office door, I noticed that the original floor-to-ceiling windows had been replaced with a massive one-way mirror.

"William, you've made me suffer for three years, isn't that enough?"
He misunderstood her intentions as unrequited love, indirectly leading to the death of the woman he cherished.
Therefore, he used marriage as a cage, trapping and tormenting her by his side for three years.
Her child, her dreams, her life, all were sacrificed to his hatred...
It wasn't until Emily's love was completely drained that he finally realized his mistake.
Love her until the break of dawn.
With no end in sight.

I died once.

In my last life, someone posted my photo on the company's anonymous forum, claiming I slept my way to the top.

The comment section exploded.

Colleagues whispered behind my back and pointed fingers.

A blurry video convinced everyone the woman in it was me.

I explained. I cried. I begged.

No one believed me.

The company forced me out. My parents kicked me out.

I walked to my death, condemned by everyone.

Then I opened my eyes.

Everything went back to the beginning.

The same post, the same accusation, the same man swearing in the comments he'd seen it all himself.

This time, I'm getting my revenge.

Due to his grandmother's dying wish, Leonard, the hospital's most eligible cardiac surgeon, was forced to marry the nurse who secretly loved him—me. Through six years of hidden marriage, we pretended to be mere colleagues at the hospital while he remained utterly cold toward me and our daughter Vera. When his first love returned, I watched him reignite his passion for another woman and my heart died completely. I signed the divorce papers and vanished from his world with Vera. This time, he lost us forever.

"Lucien, let's get a divorce," I said in a peremptory tone that was long overdue, the most decisive farewell to this absurd marriage.
We had been married for exactly three years—three years that, for me, were filled with nothing but endless loneliness and torment.
For three years, the husband who should have stood by my side through every storm, Lucien Sullivan, had completely disappeared from my life as if he had never existed. He vanished without a trace, leaving me alone to endure this empty, desolate marriage.
Today, I finally received his message:
"I'm back. Come pick me up at the airport."
When I read his words, my heart leapt with joy, and I raced to the airport, thinking that he finally understood my love and was coming back to me. But his cruelty was far worse than I could have ever imagined—he was accompanied by a pregnant woman, and that woman was Carla, my closest and most trusted friend.
In that moment, all of my previous excitement, all my hope, and all of our shared laughter and tears turned into the sharpest of daggers, stabbing into my heart and leaving me gasping for air.
Now, all I want is to escape from this place that has left me so broken—to lick my wounds in solitude. Even if these wounds will remain with me for the rest of my life, I refuse to have anything to do with him ever again.
He should know that it was his own hand that trampled our love underfoot, that his coldness and betrayal created this irreparable situation. But when he heard those words, he desperately clung to this broken, crumbling marriage, unwilling to let it end—almost as though doing so could rewind time and return everything to how it used to be.
"Aurora, come back. I regret everything!"
Regret? Those simple words stirred no emotion in me—only endless sadness and fury. My heart let out a frantic, desperate scream: It's too late for any of this!

He left without breathing a word of it to you, and you still believe he's gonna come back? How sure are you?"

I didn't speak, cause I'm not sure..

"What if he doesn't come back until your baby is born? Let's say two years later?"

"I don't know" I shook my head.

Arthur sighed.

"I spoke with my dad before coming here, he said it'll be dangerous for you if you keep it"

Doctor Morris is his dad, I forgot to mention that.

"It's better you abort now, it might cost your life..you know about your cervical condition"

I blinked and looked away from him, my gaze focused on the rain.

"That's all the more reason I shouldn't abort it. Who knows if I'll ever be able to conceive again?"

He didn't say anything after I said those words.. he sighed.

"I told you not to trust college boys, but you paid no attention.. now you've been played" he grumbled.

He opened an umbrella, which I didn't know he was holding.. then led me to his car.

He opened the door for me and I slide into the passenger door, he rushed to the driver's side as I was fastening my seatbelt.

"Whatever your decision is, I'll stand by you!" He said.

After ten years together, Ethan Caldwell, head of New York's Caldwell crime family, finally proposed.

Then, a week before the wedding, my eighteen-year-old self traveled ten years into the future and met the woman I'd become.

Still wearing her school sweatshirt, she beamed at me. “Claire Bennett! Are you and Ethan married already?”

She walked through the foyer, looking around the three-story house that was supposed to become our marital home. Outside the window, two guards in dark suits stood beside the iron gates.

“So you went back to the Caldwell family with him after all?”

I didn't answer. Still holding on to a little hope, she continued farther into the house.

“Three stories. Good. Just what I wanted.”

“And there's a garden. Not bad. But why are there roses instead of sunflowers? I don't like roses.”

The farther she went, the more she frowned.

“Didn't I say I wanted a movie room where I could curl up and watch films?”

“And didn't Ethan promise he'd be home with me by ten every night? It's ten thirty. Where is he?”

Everyone thinks I'm the wild child of the family, the one who won't fall in line.

Blake's the young king of the business world—rational, cold, always in those perfectly cut suits.

But every night, he's got me pinned underneath him, breathing my name.

He said I was his, but never let me see daylight. Until she came back—my father's mistress's daughter, in her white dress, smiling like an angel.

On my birthday, he went to pick her up from the airport. When the chandelier crashed down, he carried her to the hospital and left me bleeding on the floor. When she smashed my mother's heirloom, he made me apologize on my knees. He said she was fragile, needed care; said I was strong enough to understand.

Then I heard them on my bed, her moaning his name.

So I left. Married a man who truly loved me. And he went insane.

He kidnapped me, forced a wedding, announced to the world I was his wife.

But this time, I just smiled and shook my head.

"Let go. It's too late."

A loving sister, a talented dancer, a loyal lover—I was once all of these. Until a fatal night turned my family and fiancé against me. Framed for a murder I never committed, I spent six hellish years in prison, crippled and terminally ill, while my stepsister stole my life, my love, and my glory. After I escaped to live out my final days in peace, my betrayers hunted me down to trample on my last hope. No longer the gentle girl they abandoned, I will drag every hidden crime into the light and destroy the perfect lives they built on my suffering.

I died on the day I was supposed to marry Grayson.
Because my sister Delilah had her heart "broken," my family decided to bring her to our farm in Ashwood to heal through horseback riding. The wedding was postponed.
I lay in the stable at the Clarke family farm, dialing my mother's number with blood-covered fingers.
All she said was: "What kind of game are you playing now? You think if you act pitiful we'll come running? Vivienne, enough!"
My fiancé Grayson was even more brutal: "It's just a postponement, not a cancellation. If you can't handle that, then let's just call the whole thing off—I'll marry Delilah instead."
This was the last time they would disappoint me.
And the last time I would call for help.
I lay in my own pool of blood, already without breath. They thought I was just throwing a tantrum, hiding somewhere to sulk. They thought if they ignored me long enough, I'd come crawling back to apologize.
But they didn't know.
I was already dead.

She never saw it coming. After five years of marriage, it took a DNA test to blow everything up.

The son she raised from birth? Her husband's kid with his ex. And somehow, both of them knew the whole time and said nothing.

It gets worse. She overheard her husband's actual plan: wait for the ex to come back, then push her out of the company "nicely" and hand her five million as a goodbye gift.

Five million? She single-handedly kept that company alive, pouring in her own money and connections to clean up his messes. And that's all she's worth?

She was done. She wanted everything back that was hers.

The ungrateful kid? She's over it. The husband chasing his first love? Good riddance.

But the moment she walked away for real, both of them came running back.

"Baby, please. Just give me one more chance."

She didn't even look up.

My mafia husband has a childhood sweetheart. Whenever she or her son needed anything, he would eagerly rush to their aid.
This time, when our son Noah suffered from acute retinopathy and desperately needed his signature for surgery, he claimed she was in mortal danger and couldn't leave.
Because he wasn't there to sign the paperwork, Noah ultimately went blind.
Yet later, on his sweetheart's Instagram, I saw that he was just dining with her and her son...

Second book of 'The Nerd Can Fight' Series

You'll need to read the first book to understand this one

After Adam's memory loss, Cassandra struggled to keep her distance in an attempt to protect the person she loves.

This time, she doesn't have a choice in fighting the dangerous battle anymore. For the sake of the people she loves, she's forced to endanger her own life, fighting her way to the top.

Cassandra survived high school but who was to say that her story ends there. Trouble was piling up and she's determined to start sweeping.

This is the story of a girl who was fighting through life with everything she's got when everyone else tried to hold her down.

Warning: Heavy flow of profanities ahead. Read at your own risk

L“Secure me. Protect me. Save my life.”
That was all Sophie Langford asked for but fate twisted her plea into something far more dangerous. “Take my heart, save it and let it be yours .”

Sophie Langford has always lived behind walls of privilege, the only daughter and heiress of a billion-dollar fashion empire. But privilege breeds enemies. When an attempt on her life leaves her broken and bleeding at the edge of a cliff, she is saved by an unlikely hero Talia Cross, a disciplined boxer with a haunted past who steps in when no one else dares.

Bound by necessity, Sophie and Talia sign an agreement as bodyguard and client. But fate has other plans.....

What begins as a rescue soon spirals into something darker. As Sophie recovers, betrayal festers in her family’s boardroom uncles scheming for her inheritance, allies turning into foes, and assassins sent to finish the job.

The deeper the danger, the closer Sophie and Talia become. For Sophie, it’s the first time she feels truly safe and seen. For Talia, protecting Sophie means risking more than her life…
If protecting Sophie will cost her her life she is ready to lay it down she doesn’t just guard Sophie’s body she begins to guard her heart too .

But every kiss they steal is shadowed by the knowledge that one wrong move could destroy them both. In a world where power is a weapon and love between them is forbidden, can they survive the game of betrayal or will their love itself become the trap to bring Sophie down ?

To save my cousin from a car accident, my mother, a medical luminary, used me as a "human guinea pig" for twelve years.
When I was twelve, she made me inject myself with three injections of unproven new drugs every week;
when I was fourteen, she directly shoved toxic compounds into my mouth.
When my organs were irreversibly failing and I was vomiting blood in the ICU, she coldly tossed me a payment order:
"Stop pretending to be dead. Immediately kowtow and apologize to your brother, or no hospital will admit you."
As she wished, I was forced to leave the hospital and died at her glamorous new drug launch.
Later, that high-and-mighty mother, obsessed with fame and fortune, knelt for an entire night in a snow-covered fir forest, holding my crudely made urn.
Sadly, I will never forgive her.

On my son's seventh birthday, he hid behind my husband's first love and shouted at me, "You're a bad woman! She's my real mom!"
My husband was even crueler. He threw me out of the house without a second thought.
"To me, you were nothing but a surrogate."
Heartbroken, I walked away—and later adopted an abandoned little boy.
Years passed, when my husband finally learned the truth about the woman he had always protected, he came to me with our biological son, both of them kneeling before me in tears, begging for forgiveness.
Holding my adopted son's hand, I smiled calmly.
"Sorry. I only have one son."

On our wedding night, my husband proposed a game.
Absolute honesty. Trading secrets lethal enough to destroy us both.
He went first.
"I fucked Chloe today," he stated, tossing out his hours-old infidelity like it was nothing.
My turn.
"I killed a man." I swirled the dark red wine in my glass, keeping my voice dead flat. "I butchered my own father."
He threw his head back and laughed out loud. He was so sure it was a pathetic joke. So sure I was still his perfect, helpless prey.
He laughed too soon.
And he definitely shouldn't have swallowed the wine I just poured him.

Book 8.5: Mercerian Tales: Honour Thy Ancestors Driven from their ancestral home by the Humans, the Orcs are forced to eke out an existence until one hunter dares to defy tradition. They had one sacred rule. Never, under any circumstances, go into the mud hut  Unlike other young Orcs, Urgon sees it as a challenge, and he's prepared to risk everything to unlock its secrets. Shrouded in mystery, what's inside reveals a hidden past of his people, leading him to question all that he thought he knew.  Urgon's father sacrificed himself for the future of the tribe—will he now do the same?  Mercerian Tales: Honour Thy Ancestors delves into the rich history of the Orcs of the Black Arrow by following the rise to power of their greatest chieftain, Urgon. Although best read between books eight and nine of the Heir to the Crown series, this book can also be read as a stand-alone tale.   Reach into the past to discover the future as you begin Honour Thy Ancestors today!

Adrian was a four-hundred-year-old vampire, and also my boss.

He always thought time was the cheapest commodity he had.

So he had no qualms about keeping me hidden in the dark for five years, no qualms about destroying my promotion in the name of "protecting" me, and no qualms about favoring a young girl who looked just like me.

He thought that as long as the danger passed, as long as he was willing to hand out a little compensation, I would stay right where I was and wait for him forever.

That is, until I cleared out my apartment overnight, cut off all contact, and completely vanished from his world.

He panicked.

He spent two years clearing every obstacle, surrendering all his power and wealth, just begging for me to spare him a single glance.

Beneath the New Year's Eve fireworks, he pleaded humbly, "I can wait. Ten years, twenty years, as long as you need..."

I took a step back, putting distance between us. "I used to love you very much, but love is not an exemption from consequences."

At that moment, he finally understood: for an immortal like him, his long life had, for the very first time, become the cruelest punishment of all.

At three in the morning, I dragged my suitcase through the front door.
After a full week at an exchange program in Germany, I was too tired to even turn on the lights. I went straight to the shower.
The hot water poured over me, and I went cold all over.
A hundred and thirteen degrees.
My temperature. The one I always use.
Ryan had always said it was scalding. In five years of marriage I must have reminded him a thousand times, but every time he showered, the dial stayed parked at his lukewarm ninety-eight. Not once had he turned it back.
Tonight, the temperature was right.
Which meant only one thing: the last person to use this shower wasn't him.
I wrapped myself in a towel and leaned against the bedroom doorframe. "So," I said, keeping my voice light. "Since when do you think about your wife?"
The man in the bed blinked, then grinned and snapped me a textbook salute. "Yes, ma'am. Won't happen again, ma'am. I'll always remember from now on."
I didn't say a word. I turned and went back into the bathroom.
As the steam slowly cleared, two pairs of handprints surfaced on the glass shower door, one over the other.
One large pair, one small. The fingertips of the small pair sat a good few inches below where mine would reach.
And caught in the drain was a single strand of hair—long, straight, black, glossy as satin.
My hair is short and honey-blond.
Credit where it's due: they'd gotten creative.
Swallowing the nausea rising in my throat, I took a photo and sent it to my cousin Riley. She was a senior at West Point, majoring in cybersecurity.
Long straight black hair. About 5'1".
Find her and I'll give you five thousand dollars.
She answered in seconds:
On it. Let's see who this little home-wrecker is.

My wife is upstairs with another man—her first love.
But I don't want to fight about it.
I'm not staying here because of her.
Her father once saved my father's life. I'm here to repay that debt.
So they pushed even further.
She wants me to give way to her first love.
Give up my seat at dinner, my trust fund eligibility, my position as family consigliere, even our couple's travel tickets.
Fine. Have it your way.
I'm leaving to go back to being the Don I was meant to be.
Hope your family can survive the mafia wars without me.

Grim Reapers. Saving lives. Lessons in love. 

(This book was previously published as When Death Became A Woman.)

For some, it's a fictitious world. But for Debra Stone, it's everyday life. 

After a chance encounter with a man she enjoys throws her down a path she almost can't believe, she struggles to cope with her newfound purpose. 

Saving lives. 

Ushering souls into the afterlife. It can't be real, right? But the men who catch her in the act are real. And their adoration for her is very real. 

The attention they give her is real. The words they whisper in her ears are real. But after running into a man who flips her already twisted world on its head, she questions everything once again.

Can Debra deal with her radically successful business, help others before Death takes them, and still have a love life?

Or will it all come crashing down around her?

Grab a glass of wine, and read Debra’s Paranormal Women's Fiction story. Just be careful when drinking, the laughs can be dangerous!​