3117 Book(s) Related to my dad is my best friend

"I'll have her in my bed before prom."
That's what my "perfect boyfriend" wrote about me, in a group chat with his best friend — betting on me like I was some kind of prize, with his friend's ridiculously expensive vintage Porsche on the line.
Me, the nobody scholarship girl, somehow ending up with the most popular playboy in school? I actually thought it was fate. I thought it was my fairy tale.
Turns out, I was just the trophy they were fighting over the whole damn time.
So if you boys want to treat my heart like it's just some stupid bet, fine. Let's play this game to the very end.
At prom, I'll make sure they know it: they picked the wrong girl to mess with.

Four years of scholarships. Four years of straight A's. Four years with Leo—my first love, my forever. I thought I had it all figured out. Study hard, graduate, build a life with the boy who promised me the world. Except the world he promised me was a lie.

Because why is my broke boyfriend wearing a designer suit in a restaurant I couldn't afford in ten lifetimes? And why is he kissing a girl dripping in diamonds?

Heartbreak tastes like betrayal. But I don't have time to fall apart—I have a lesson to teach. Sophia Voss, daughter of Wall Street's most elusive billionaire, is waiting.

What I don't expect? Her father, Elias Voss, cornering me in his room. His thumb catching my tears, tilting my chin up until I'm drowning in those gray eyes.

"He's a fool," he murmurs, his breath warm against my temple. "A boy who couldn't see the woman right in front of him."

His hand slides to my waist. My resistance crumbles. Then he leans in, his lips brushing my ear:

"You're so tight, Miss Reed. Perfect."

Wait—is he talking about my teaching? Or something else entirely?

One night becomes one mistake becomes his mouth claiming mine, growling, "Marry me."

By day, I'm still her tutor. By night? I'll be Mrs. Voss.

Some lessons happen after hours—and my new husband grades on a curve.

Elara Whitmore buried her twin sister three weeks ago. Then a video arrived. Wren was alive, bound to a chair, whispering her name.
The trail leads straight back to Blackthorn Academy, the school Wren vanished from, the school the powerful Vale family quietly owns. So Elara does the only thing left. She cuts her hair, steals her dead sister's face, and walks back through the gates as Wren.
Nobody is supposed to notice the difference. Cassian Vale notices in three seconds flat.
He is the golden heir everyone fears and nobody questions, cold enough to freeze a room and sharp enough to see straight through a lie built from grief. He knows exactly who she is. He knows exactly why she came. And instead of exposing her, he makes an offer that terrifies her more than exposure ever could. He will help her find her sister, if she becomes his eyes inside a family that has been disappearing students for years, including the girl he never let himself mourn.
What starts as a cold, calculated bargain twists into something neither of them can control. Every clue pulls them deeper into locked tunnels, buried files, and a family business built on stolen lives. Every stolen moment between them makes betrayal more dangerous and more inevitable.
Because Elara is not just lying to a school. She is falling for the one boy whose last name could bury her sister for good, and whose family has already proven that Blackthorn does not let its ghosts leave twice.
She has weeks, maybe less, before someone notices the crack in her disguise or before Wren simply stops being useful to keep alive.

Cameron Mikael Rutten is a vampire detective who makes sure to avoid cases related to magic. But when his mother is murdered, his quest to find the killer draws him deep into West Mount's homicidal cases and dark underworld.

Cameron realizes he must ignore faction policies while evading a dangerous enemy even as he gets entangled with a female coworker. However, things take a drastic turn when he has to make a balance between being a vampire that other dangerous creatures wants and his new horrible self, being a dybbuk.

After inheriting a quiet little inn, Elowen Maris expects nothing more exciting than difficult guests and slow business. Then she wakes one night able to see ghosts and discovers several have been living at the inn for years. Things become even stranger when Lucien, a mysterious necromancer, checks in and can see them too. The ghosts quickly decide he belongs there and begin pushing the two reluctant strangers together. But when one of the ghosts suddenly vanishes, Elowen discovers the inn may be hiding something far older than its walls.

At seventy-two, Richard Hayes finally asked my mother for a divorce.

He thought he was setting himself free.

He did not know Eleanor Hayes had been waiting ten years for him to say the words.

By sunset, his new woman would be calling my mother cruel.

By winter, he would be standing on her porch with two suitcases and nowhere soft to land.

And my mother, who had spent nearly half a century opening doors for him, would finally learn how peaceful a locked door could sound.

When the armored car had room for only one passenger, Damian Russo chose me.

I was saved, but Lilia Brown didn't make it. She bled out in the crossfire, her body left in the rubble. Damian pretended he didn't care and married me as planned.

For three years, he made me pay for her death—beating me, starving me, blaming me for the fact that she was gone.

In the end, he drove us both off a cliff instead.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the docks on the night of the ambush. This time, I stepped aside and let him save the woman he truly loved.

They call it an "alpha team," boasting about our million-dollar AI equipment. I thought I just had terrible luck at work—the scanner bruising my arm, the coffee maker intentionally scalding me. Trapped by a $500,000 resignation penalty, I must survive tonight’s overtime. But in the dark copy room, the shredder is... breathing.

The chieftainess returned from the poisonous fog with a swollen belly.
She announced that she carried the child of a god—a child who would bring hope to the entire base.
Only I knew that what she bore was no divine offspring, but a demon that would devour every soul in the base.
Because in my previous life, I was the one it had gnawed to death, alive...

Betrayed to death by my own brother, I was reborn before the apocalypse descended.
He rushed to seize the god-tier [Copy] talent first, leaving the trash [Purification] talent for me.
He thought that with this talent, he'd have no worries and reign supreme in the apocalypse.
Meanwhile, I quietly closed the last door of my fortress.
He didn't know that his prized copying ability had a fatal flaw.

At the family banquet, a power-hungry male special assistant projected a dimly lit bed photo onto the massive screen. He claimed he had slept with my wife—the heiress to the family—and demanded I walk away from the marriage with nothing.
While all the relatives were waiting for me to become the laughingstock, my eyes landed on a red rose burn scar in the corner of the photo. I couldn't help but laugh out loud.
He hadn't even turned on the bedside lamp. He had no idea that the woman he had just slept with was actually the wife of a psychopathic serial killer.

Adeline had one choice: marry Grayson Archer, the ruthless billionaire, to save her dying mother and erase her father’s gambling debts.

Five years as his contract wife meant enduring cold indifference, sharp words, and a life overshadowed by his manipulative family. When the contract ends, Adeline shocks everyone—especially Grayson—by walking away.

But Grayson isn’t ready to let her go. Determined to win her back, he devises a new plan, only to discover feelings he never expected. Just as their fragile bond begins to heal, a devastating secret from his past and a betrayal Adeline can't forgive threaten to destroy everything.

Can love survive the ultimate test, or will Grayson lose the only woman he’s ever truly wanted?

"And.. you are?"
"Camila..."
Lawson frowned. "What..."
Camila’s gaze hardened. "I didn't walk back from the dead for a friendly chat or to rehash how thoroughly you all ruined what was left of my life..." She held her chin up as if trying to keep herself from breaking her fragile composure. "I came to settle the score."


Camila thought she had lost everything when she received the shock of her life. But when she was forced to fake her own death and assume a new identity, she realized she had been accidentally given a second chance.
This new life came with a new discovery that Camila, the once shameful and disgraceful wife of the wealthy and powerful Miller family, turned out to be a force to be reckoned with, a rival worthy of respect, and a woman not to be underestimated.
Not even her husband stood a chance.

Ten years of rules built her whole life. One boy she should never have looked at twice tears it all down.

Elena Hart believes every loss of control comes with a price. She watched her mother gamble everything on love—and she watched that gamble lose, completely. So, since the age of eighteen, she has trusted exactly one thing: rules. Rules carried her from scholarship girl to a tenure-track seat in Calloway University's psychology department, the kind of position people claw each other apart to get. Three more years through review, and she'll finally have a life no one can take from her.
She just can't make a single mistake.

Then, on the first day of the semester, a name appears on her roster—Eli Bennet.

Her best friend's little brother. The boy she's watched grow up since he was fifteen. Now twenty-one, sitting in the back row of her lecture hall, cap pulled low, eyes fixed on her without a flicker of hesitation. He enrolled in her course. He applied to her research program. Every single thing he does "happens" to place him directly in front of her.

They killed his whole family. They left the boy alive, thinking he was nothing. A pup with no den, they said. The city would eat him soon enough.

They were wrong about that. The city did not eat him. It forged him.

Ten years later, Kaelen comes home to Charter. He is not a boy anymore. He carries a cold magic that was born from his own pain and suffering, the ability to pull bad memories out of places and make them real for a while. A scream trapped in a wall, the shadow of a victim, the last feeling of someone who died wrong: it is all fuel for him now.

But the power is wild and untamed. Every time he uses it, it hurts him and costs him something valuable. His enemies are still here, rich and comfortable, three of the most powerful people in the city. They do not know he is coming for them. They are about to learn.

To destroy them, Kaelen must first master himself. He must grow stronger and learn the full depths of his power. Because the echoes do not just haunt his enemies. They haunt him too. And the stronger he becomes, the less of his original self remains behind.

Three years ago, Ye Chen was the unrivaled genius of the Azure Cloud Sect—until the woman he loved betrayed him, shattered his dantian, and stole his Spiritual Bone to climb higher. Cast into the Spirit Beast Stables as a cripple, he is beaten, starved, and forgotten.

But when his blood awakens an ancient ring, everything changes.

The Supreme Overlord System binds to his soul, repairing his body and granting him heaven-defying power. In mere breaths, he reclaims lost cultivation. In a single night, he crushes his first enemy.

The sect believes he is trash.

They are about to witness the birth of a god.

And Ye Chen has a debt to collect.

My husband is sleeping with my own sister. Cliché, right? I drove to Black Pine Lake to catch them, but stumbled into a brilliantly twisted murder trap instead. Now, the cops think I am a jealous, psychotic killer. Declan believes he dug the perfect grave for me. But did he?

I'm an ancient vampire prince who's been playing human boyfriend to a demon hunter.
Big mistake.
She's completely unhinged—GPS tracking, 24/7 surveillance, the works.
When she threatens to dump me unless I surrender all my secrets, I do the unthinkable:
I actually say yes.
Too bad she doesn't know her "helpless" boyfriend has been the one keeping her alive all this time.

My wife is the city's renowned "Community Angel." She donates every single cent of her high salary to the poor, all to buy herself a saintly reputation.
Meanwhile, as her husband, I spend my days rolling beneath cars in a factory, covered in grease, juggling four credit cards just to keep our large family afloat.
My parents-in-law survive on the expensive, imported life-saving meds I pay for, yet they constantly mock me for being a powerless nobody;
My own children attend private schools on my dime, only to look at me with disgust and call me an embarrassment;
And my wife? Dressed in her high-end couture, she looks down at me and condescendingly urges, "For the sake of the poor children, why don't you get another part-time job and just endure it a little longer?"
Looking at this den of parasites sucking the life out of me, a sudden, overwhelming wave of disgust washed over me.
I didn't argue. I silently put away my overdue bills, packed my bags, and completely vanished from this twisted household.
Later, at the highly anticipated Annual Charity Gala, in front of the entire city, I presented her with an ultimate "gift"—

In my last life, my parents favored my younger brother. They promised him to the angel who would remain on the surface, and shoved me to an abyssal demon.
When the apocalypse came, the angel burned through her divine power and fell. I took my family in out of kindness, and they repaid me with a bowl of poisoned soup.
When I opened my eyes again, our whole family had reincarnated.
This time, my parents couldn’t wait to push my brother into the demon’s arms, dreaming of living off him inside the abyssal lair.
I watched them sign the shadow contract like they were grabbing a priceless treasure, then took the rejected holy-light angel without hesitation.
They had no idea the Abyss’s shelter is paid for in flesh and blood.
But an angel’s loyalty can raise an iron divine kingdom that never falls, even in this world-ending flood.

We’ve been married for five years. Then, she got pregnant with someone else's child.
In front of everyone, she said: "Ethan doesn't want this baby. You've always wanted one, right? Fine, take it and raise it."
In that moment, I finally understood: she wasn’t incapable of loving someone—she simply never saw me as a human being.
I took off my wedding ring, left it on the tray, and bought a one-way ticket to the North. My family said I wouldn't survive in the frozen North; she said that without her, I was nothing.
Three years later, she tracked me down using the GPS hidden inside that ring. She pushed open the door to my attic room, finding only a note I’d left: "Don't look for me. We're square."

She’s a widow by day, a wild biker by night. Two ruthless men want her. Only one will own her in the end.

Carlotta Russo survived her marriage to the cruel Alpha Dante—now, at just eighteen, she’s a widow with scars and secrets. By daylight, she keeps her head down, playing the good girl everyone wants to break. But after dark, she becomes a legend on the city’s underground racetrack—leather-clad, fearless, riding her bike like she’s running from hell itself.

And hell is coming for her—twice.

Gabriel, the school’s dangerous king, wants her on her knees, desperate for his touch.
Paxton, the cocky, blue-eyed street racer, wants her screaming his name, begging for more.

They don’t just want her. They want to own her.

Tonight, the rules are simple—first to catch her, first to claim her. The loser walks away.
The winner gets Carlotta in his bed. All night. No limits.

“You want a taste, Gabriel?” Paxton smirks, eyes dark with hunger. “Beat me on the track. Winner takes her home.”
Gabriel’s grin is pure sin. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll make you forget you ever belonged to another man.”

Carlotta’s heart races almost as fast as her bike. She should run. She should fight. But every wicked promise, every hungry glance, makes her body ache for more.

In the dark, between burning engines and hotter hands, she’s the prize in a game that will break every rule—and maybe her.

Widow. Biker. Bad girl in the making.
Tonight, Carlotta will be claimed.
But when the sun comes up, who will she be calling Daddy?
18+ ONLY. BDSM, EROTIC, AND RAW HOT SCENES INSIDE.
Read this book if you want to cum hard and beg for more.

He doesn’t know I watched him for years.
Not from afar. Not casually.
Obsession isn’t casual.

I was fourteen the first time I saw him.
He was eighteen, beautiful, untouchable, everything I decided I needed.

So I made a plan.

I befriended his brother.
I won his mother’s trust.
I moved into his orbit so seamlessly, he never questioned it.

Now, I’m his wife.
He calls it fate.
He tells people we were meant to be.
But he doesn’t know the truth was designed.

He doesn’t know about the notes.
The maps.
The screenshots.
The years of silence, waiting, stalking, perfecting the version of me he would fall in love with.

But secrets don’t stay buried forever.
And the deeper you bury a lie, the louder it screams when it surfaces.

Because he just found my old phone.

And the man I stalked for a decade…
Is now stalking me.

Was it ever love, or just revenge in disguise?

I died the night before my wedding, betrayed by the man I loved and the friend I trusted more than anyone. I thought death would be the end.
Instead, I woke up in another woman’s body. The same queen that ordered my death. And the mother of two pups who now look at me like I am their whole world.

But the cruelest twist is Alpha King Lucien Silver. The man who once loved the girl I used to be… and now stands beside me as my husband without knowing who I am. And with every passing day, I feel myself falling for him all over again.
But this second life is not a gift. Every time I fail, time drags me back to the beginning. I remember every betrayal, every death. And with each rebirth, my soul cracks a little more.

This is my last chance to change fate. If I die again, I will disappear forever.

Renee thought marriage meant forever. But to Clark, she was nothing more than a burden… a mistake he planned to erase. The night of the fire, he made his choice: to leave her behind, to let the flames consume her, and to start over without the wife he once vowed to love for a mistress he once introduced as “Just a Friend”.
But fate had other plans.
Pulled from the ashes by Andrew Kinsley… the man who’d always loved her in silence…Renee was given a second chance at life. Now stronger, sharper, and no longer blinded by love, she returns not as Clark’s wife, but as his nightmare.
With Andrew at her side, Renee is ready to dismantle everything Clark treasures… his career, his reputation, his family… piece by piece.
Because some betrayals don’t deserve forgiveness. They deserve fire.

I married a rapist.
After the wedding, I played the perfect wife. I always took off my makeup after he fell asleep, and reapplied it before he woke up.
My husband loved showing off on his livestream, bragging that women should know their place.
One viewer sent a warning in the chat:
[Run, man. Only vengeful spirits do their makeup in the middle of the night—when their resentment is strongest, the makeup lasts longer!]
I covered my face and grinned wickedly.
Oops, forgot concealer. My corpse marks are showing.

The day I died, my sister wore the wedding dress I had always dreamed of, and married my boyfriend.
My family felt no sorrow over my disappearance.
My brother suspected I deliberately avoided blessing my sister.
My silent father believed I was malicious, unwilling to see my sister surpass me.
My mother called me ungrateful and demanded I apologize to my sister.
They didn't care if I was alive.
They were only worried that my absence would sadden my sister by denying her my blessing.

WARNING! Adults only! Please, enjoy all the way if you are old enough...


"Come to think of it. I thought I gave you the morning after pills after our sessions!"

"What happened?"

Da D,wei asked Bai Zhen with an emotionless face. She immediately lowered her head while fiddling with her fingers.

"You didn't take them, right?" He asked again while staring deeply at her.

"I...I took the last one"

"So, what happened to the other ones?"

"I...I...um, you see, I wanted to take them, but the smell was horrible. So, I decided to wait a little while but I eventually forgot to take them. I had to throw them away!"

"Oh, really?"

"Bai Zhen?! What were you thinking while keeping those pills, huh?"

"What do you think those pills were meant for, hm?"

"I did my job and you were supposed to do yours but you failed! So, don't blame me for the morning sickness!"

"Bear with it, ok?! And don't disturb my son again!"

Bai Zhen"....."


"Da D,wei…?"

"Mhm?"

"I...mmm... I feel strange again…!"

"It's normal, baby…! Dance with me!"


"A pure love story between two people from two different worlds"

A billionaire CEO of the Da Surgical Hospitals, who finds love in a poor beautiful girl, Bai Zhen. He is a well known skilled surgeon who is respected and feared by all.

Bai Zhen is just a poor girl who lost both parents and becomes noticed by Da D,wei. They struggle as they fight for their love. Being poor is the main barrier in their lives.

"Will they survive it? Will their love be strong enough to wedge the storm?"


Happy Reading!

Please, stay safe.

#For me and for all.

from Author Elaami.

In my past life, I personally dug up two alien meteorites, handing the blue one that granted "Frost Mastery" to my childhood friend, Mike. He repaid me by sealing me inside an ice wall, cursing me to "die like a piece of trash" in the minus 70-degree blizzard.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the initial blast site.
This time, I didn't even spare him a glance; I stuffed both meteorites into my pocket.
I transformed a missile silo into a doomsday bunker, brought my parents inside, and stockpiled ten years' worth of supplies.
When Mike arrived with a gang of thugs to smash my door down, I stood in the warm command center, watching half his face rot with frostbite on the monitor.
I didn't open the door.
This time, I am sending back the despair of my past life tenfold.

"Shit! I want her under me."
Alex couldn't take it anymore. He moved her hand to touch Irene's thick, full lips until Irene woke up and opened her eyes. Somewhat surprised, he managed to control her. They teased each other with their gazes.

Alex Matthew was a boss of all kinds of big business, one of which was dangerous narcotics. The police struggled to catch him and hired a spy from a secret agent. She is a female spy with a good reputation. Irene is her name.
Irene uses her psychometric abilities to find out Alex's loopholes. However, for the first time, she fails and gets into a heated relationship with the dealer while Irene is married to a police detective.
Infidelity and psychometry become a demonic circle.
Will Irene be able to get out of the hot relationship and return to her husband? Or is it the other way around?

WARNING: [R-18] STORY WITH EXPLICIT/MATURE CONTENT

When Daniel kissed Ara in front of many students because she accused him of being a thief, the man had a reason to have more opportunities with her. And that was when Daniel himself requested their Guidance Counselor to give him disciplinary action, to make him a student assistant in the library throughout the school year, for free.
Ara knew that Daniel meant it, and even though she was annoyed, she still couldn't avoid having this romantic feeling of excitement because the young man is very handsome.
The more you hate, the more you love. But Daniel diagnosed with a serious illness, and Ara knew she could do nothing but to let go.

Six years ago, to save her mother, Heather betrayed the man she loved - sending Kieran to prison with her own hands.
Six years later, he returned as the most ruthless and powerful CEO in the capital. His heart turned to ice. Her name? A curse on his lips.
Now a disgraced single mother, Heather works odd jobs to raise her daughter. When fate throws them together at a nightclub, he pulls her into his arms, "You've fallen far, haven't you?"
He humiliates her, punishes her, and demands she repay every tear he shed behind bars... until he discovers the truth: she never meant to betray him.
But it's too late. She had already walked into the ocean - convinced the world no longer had a place for her.
He thought he'd erased her from his heart. He was wrong.
Now, he'll do anything to bring her back - no matter the past, no matter the cost.

In Chicago, the Belinni name is not spoken—it is feared.

Dan Belinni was raised inside violence, trained in the blood-soaked discipline of the Outfit until he became its sharpest weapon. At nineteen, he is already known for illegal fights, brutal enforcement, and a temperament that turns any challenge into punishment. He doesn’t believe in mercy. He doesn’t believe in love. He believes in control.

Milena Lima has spent her life surviving, not living. An undocumented immigrant in Chicago, she works herself to exhaustion just to stay afloat and protect the only stability she has left—her friend María. But when she loses her job and her visa expires, Milena becomes invisible to the law and vulnerable in ways she never imagined.

Desperate, she steps into a Belinni-owned nightclub, hoping to earn enough to survive another week. One stage. One performance. One decision.

That is all it takes for her to cross paths with Dan Belinni.

He is not a man who lets go.
And she is not a woman who submits.

But beneath survival and violence lies a truth neither of them is ready for—Milena is tied to a mafia legacy she never chose, one that makes her both a target and a claim in a world where women are never just women.

When their worlds collide, obsession replaces restraint, and a single night changes everything.

Because in Dan’s world, love is not given.

It is taken.

I was seventeen when I fell desperately in love with Orion Blake. He didn’t see the Holt heiress or the fortune. He saw me. Our love was forbidden, fierce, and all-consuming. In his arms, I believed forever was real. Until the night my father caught us and a gunshot that shattered my world. They broke me that night,my body and soul. But from the ashes of my pain, a vow was born: I would destroy the Holt family from the inside. Slowly. Painfully. Completely.
For years I played the perfect daughter. The cold, brilliant CEO. The obedient heiress. All while sabotaging everything my family held dear. Then my father forced me to marry Roman Kade, the ruthless CEO of KA Global, the man single-handedly dismantling my family’s empire. A man who looked at me with dark hunger and barely contained fury. A man whose touch sets my skin on fire even as he seems determined to break me. But Roman Kade has secrets of his own. Dangerous ones. The way he watches me… the familiar intensity in his eyes… it feels too personal. Too knowing. He thinks he’s the one in control. He thinks he can ruin me, but he has no idea I’ve been planning my revenge for years and he has no idea how deep my devotion runs… or how far I’m willing to go for Orion and for the child we lost. This forced marriage was supposed to be my prison but Instead, it’s becoming a battlefield where love, hate, and buried secrets collide. Because some loves refuse to die and some vows were never meant to be broken. When I had promised forever, i really meant forever. It was all for him. No one could have me, if i couldn't have Orion Blake.

To save my wife’s family, I buried my name, wore myself down, and let a few strands of my hair turn gray while caring for her on the edge of death.

Three years later, she slipped into custom Chanel and slapped a divorce agreement down in front of me.

With her arm wrapped around a so-called old-money heir from Wall Street, she mocked me as a worthless nobody who couldn’t even afford a luxury handbag, a bottom-feeder who was never fit to stand beside her.

I signed my name without a word and watched her leave in triumph.

What she didn’t know was that the man preaching investments was nothing more than a Ponzi fraudster facing multiple charges.

And when the conference room door closed, Manhattan’s most feared ice-cold attorney bowed to me at a perfect ninety degrees and welcomed me to unlock the seventy-billion-dollar trust fund and take back control of the entire conglomerate.

A few months later, inside a women’s maximum-security prison in Brooklyn, she was dressed in a filthy, tattered prison uniform, sprawled across a floor slick with dirty water, sobbing as she was beaten and begging for my forgiveness.

I simply lifted my whiskey and calmly switched off the surveillance feed.

Ryan loves me deeply—at least that's what everyone says. Seven years together, we look like the perfect couple to outsiders. But only I know he's betrayed me three times.

The first time was three years ago. His brother died saving him, leaving behind his widow Sophia—Ryan's unforgettable first love. He married her behind my back. When I found out, I completely fell apart. I have dignity. I refuse to be the other woman. I wanted to leave, but he begged on his knees. "This is just to take care of my sister-in-law. Once I find the truth about my brother's death, I'll divorce her. Then we can get married."

I believed him. I forgot that a man never lets go of a lost love he's gotten back.

The second time was at last year's company anniversary. In front of everyone, he introduced Sophia as his wife. I watched them on stage, a knife through my heart. That night he explained, "It's just for show. Once everything's over, we can be together."

I believed him again.

The third time was two weeks ago. Surveillance footage showed Ryan with Sophia entering a hotel room. I rushed to confront him, but heard her voice outside his office. "Ryan, I'm pregnant. It's your baby."

Through the crack in the door, I see him hesitate. In that instant I understand.

He's going to keep her.

He spots me and rushes out in a panic. "It was an accident! Let me explain! After she has the baby, I'll give her money and make her leave. She won't be in our lives anymore!"

In that moment, I finally wake up. There will be no future for us.

“When you think that life cannot get better, Blake Pierce comes up with another masterpiece of thriller and mystery! This book is full of twists and the end brings a surprising revelation. I strongly recommend this book to the permanent library of any reader that enjoys a very well written thriller.”--Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Almost Gone) ALMOST DEAD is book #3 in a new psychological thriller series by USA Today bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose #1 bestseller Once Gone (Book #1) (a free download) has received over 1,000 five star reviews. After the disastrous fallout from her last placement in England, all 23-year-old Cassandra Vale wants is a chance to pick up the pieces. A high-society, divorced mother in sunny Italy seems to be the answer. But is she? With a new family come new children, new rules, and new expectations. Cassandra’s determined to make this one last - until a horrifying discovery pushes her to a breaking point. And when the unimaginable occurs, will it be too late to pull herself back from the brink? Who, she wonders, is she becoming?A riveting mystery replete with complex characters, layers of secrets, dramatic twists and turns and heart-pounding suspense, ALMOST DEAD is book #3 in a psychological suspense series that will have you turning pages late into the night. Book #4 in the series will be available soon.

Rosemary Decker, a 27-year-old marketing executive fleeing corporate burnout in Seattle, inherits her great-aunt's mysterious bookshop in Thornwick Hollow just as her life crumbles. But the inheritance comes with a chilling countdown—twenty-eight days until a crimson eclipse that occurs once per generation. Holden Ashworth, a devastatingly compelling stranger with secrets older than the mountain town itself, seems to know intimate details about her family history that she's never heard before. As Rosemary discovers the horrifying truth about an ancient covenant that has claimed six generations of women from her bloodline, she realizes Holden isn't courting her—he's preparing her for a ritual that will grant him immortality while consuming her life essence. But some family legacies are worth fighting for, and in Thornwick Hollow, the hunted might just become the hunter when the crimson eclipse rises and old debts written in blood come due.

Holly Leefe has seen it all. Being a medium keeps life interesting. Not that it needed any help. She already had a psychic for a husband and a clairsentient teenage daughter. Data analyst by day, ghost hunter by night. Unless it was football season. She did live in Texas after all.
This fall Holly and her husband Jesse are trying to help a widower and his fiancé discover why suddenly stilettos are being thrown through their TV. Plus a few other nuisance cases. As if helping the dead and raising a teenager wasn’t enough, the ghost of her grandmother won’t rest until the family home is returned to its 1980’s glory.

I’ve seen the living; I’ve seen the dead. I’ve seen angels and I’ve seen demons. No matter how many malevolent or benevolent beings I interacted with, none could terrify me as much as the spirit that walked through the door into the kitchen where I was cooking dinner. Mentally bracing myself, I stirred in chili powder to the ground beef on the stove before I acknowledged the woman that was now looking over my shoulder.
“That’s too much seasoning. It’s going to be too spicy.” I turned to face the food police. “You need to call your mother.” It was an order, not a request. I raised an eyebrow, inviting her to explain. “She won’t listen to reason.”
“Are you two still feuding?” She had been fighting with my mother for the last two and a half years. I’d inherited the “gift” from my mother who had gotten it from my grandmother and so on and so forth. They didn’t need me to pass messages back and forth. She seemed to have forgotten that I had refused to get involved.

The mafia boss chose me as his decoy—a body double for the woman he loves.

Eight years. Three bullets, one car crash, one explosion. The doctor said ten more minutes and I would've died on that operating table when they took my kidney. I gave him a son. He let me play "the boss's wife" in public.

Until he cleared every obstacle for her and decided to marry her.

Her wedding photos replaced mine in the master bedroom. He has her initials tattooed on his arm. When I questioned him, he had his men slap me at a charity gala, forced me to admit "I'm just a stand-in." When I touched her, he took away my custody, declared she was "the true lady of this house."

The punishments got worse. When he threatened to cancel my mother's insurance, I finally learned to shut up.

He pulls me close, whispers in my ear: "She gave up everything for me. Not like you—you were born to take bullets for me."

"Deal with it. She's not replacing you. This is her house now."

Even my son took her side.

"Stop being dramatic! Natalie actually loves us! You're nothing!"

But their pure, innocent Natalie? She unplugged my mother's ventilator while I was locked in the basement. Let his enemies slip poison into my drink during the last job.

When Grayson found me, all he said was: "She's pregnant and emotional. Go rearrange the flowers at the wedding venue."

I wipe the black blood from my lips. Look at him quietly.

"I'm dying."

Blake's keeping me locked up in a villa outside the city, with a dozen bodyguards watching me around the clock. They won't let me step foot outside my room.

He once promised Vanessa, the woman he never got over, that he'd give her company shares and his estate. Now she's back after her divorce, pregnant, crying to Blake that I threatened her, told her to give up what he promised, and that I wanted to hurt her and her baby.

Blake believed her.

He's convinced I'm evil and gold-digging. He locked me up here while he stays at the hospital, never leaving Vanessa's side.

I'm going into sudden labor, crying and begging him to let me go to a hospital. I swear I never wanted those things, never hurt her.

Blake just sneers. "You're such a liar. I don't believe a single word from someone as vicious as you. After Vanessa delivers, I'll get you a doctor. Stop trying to fool me."

But when he finally sees my body, he completely falls apart.

Due to an arranged marriage between our families, I married Damien Blackwood, heir to a business empire.

During five years of marriage, I tried hard to play the perfect wife, bore him a daughter Lily, thinking I had finally won his love.

Until his first love Serena returned from abroad, I watched him rekindle his passion for another woman, watched them rekindle their old flame.

A car accident changed everything.

I was taken to court, sentenced to three years in prison, becoming a "murderer" despised by everyone.

And he personally sent me to prison.

My stepsister and I tumbled down the stairs together. As someone with a blood clotting disorder, my spleen ruptured—I was bleeding internally, desperate for surgery to stop it.
But my mother—the renowned chief of surgery—pulled every specialist from the ER. To consult on my stepsister's condition.
All she had was a sprained ankle. Not even a scratch. Yet mom insisted on running every test in the book. And me? Left alone on that cold floor, bleeding out, half my body already soaked in blood.
I clutched at her pants, begging her to save me. But she kicked my hand away and looked at me with pure disgust.
"Lily, are you really so desperate for a man's attention that you'd pull a cheap stunt like this? Your sister's foot is swollen—and you have the nerve to fake your death here?"
In the end, I died alone in a corner of that ignored ER.
But when they wheeled my cold body out of the morgue—and they finally learned about my clotting disorder—
That mother who claimed to hate me completely lost her mind.

All nobles mocked me for rejecting the talented common mage and picking a brutal gladiator with no magic as my escort. They called him a filthy hound unworthy of serving an Oberlin lady. But only I remember—this scarred man died twice for me in my past life. Reborn before my family’s ruin, I swear bloody vengeance on Cedric and Liliana, who poisoned my father and stripped my skin. I endure searing magic backlash, fight bloody death matches, and burn all traitors alive. The shadow they sneer at will become the indestructible shield of my reign.

The moment I saw my name on that wedding invitation, I was already dead.

On Highway 23, a steel rebar had pierced straight through my chest. I was two months pregnant.

I called my fiancé Michael seventeen times. The first sixteen, he hung up without a word. On the seventeenth, his voice dripped with impatience: "Marrying Sophia is just for show. Stop making a scene."

The man who once knelt outside my family's estate for three days and nights, swearing to love me for a lifetime—he wouldn't spare me a single second more.

With my last breath, I dialed the funeral home. "I'm calling... for myself."

Flames consumed my body. My soul drifted toward the engagement banquet that should have been mine. When the killer's phone lit up, the name on the screen was Sophia...

When he destroyed my entire family, he never once thought of me.

So now, let me watch with my own eyes as this wedding becomes their funeral.

I'm a figure skating prodigy from one of the wealthiest families in the country. I'm also an idiot.

I believed that if I was kind enough, people would be kind in return. So I sponsored Haley Dunning, a scholarship skater on our team, and treated her like my own little sister.

The day before the NCAA qualifier, she came up to me with a sports drink, said she wanted to help keep my energy up.

I drank it. Went down on the ice with a broken leg. Drug test came back positive for banned stimulants.

Overnight, I went from the queen of the rink to the face of a scandal no one could stop talking about.

Expelled from school. Torn apart on social media. Calloway Corporation's stock in freefall.

Haley stood in front of the cameras, tears in her eyes: "Piper just wanted to win so badly. I never thought she'd go this far..."

I fell into a depression. Couldn't sleep without medication.

Then one day, she showed up at my hospital room with my boyfriend, bearing "comfort": a cup of water and a few pills: "Piper, take your meds, okay? This is all my fault for being so stupid..."

Three minutes later, I'm coughing up blood, convulsing on the floor.

Right before I died, I caught the look on her face. That sweet, innocent face. A slow, vicious smile spreading across it.

She knocked over the pill bottle and started screaming: "I grabbed the wrong ones! I mixed up her antidepressants with some old person's heart meds! I'm so stupid!"

My boyfriend pulled her into his arms. Didn't even glance at me dying on the floor: "She meant well. Piper just had bad luck."

I was poisoned to death in that hospital room.

Then I opened my eyes, and it was the day before the qualifier.

At the Morello family’s Christmas dinner, I stood beside Vincent, waiting for him to announce our engagement.
Instead, in the very next second, he walked in holding a little boy and claimed him as his son.
And the woman he said he was going to marry? Scarlett Morello. The one he had always introduced as his “sister.”
The whole room erupted in applause. I stood there frozen, like a nail hammered into the floor.
Later, in his study, he took my hand and said, “Scarlett is dying. Late-stage breast cancer. She only has six months left. After she’s gone, I’ll marry you.”
But there was no guilt in his eyes. No love, either.
Then he told me to go to his villa that afternoon, to take care of the woman who was supposedly “dying.”
I opened the photo he sent me. Scarlett was lying in a hospital bed, pale-faced, an IV in the back of her hand.
A professional tennis player who had been playing in an exhibition match three weeks ago, and who had dropped three grand at Louis Vuitton on Fifth Avenue just five days ago.
But sure. She was “dying.”
At three in the morning, I was curled up by the front door of my apartment, crying so long I lost track of time.
Then my phone lit up. A text from an unknown number:
[Elena, I’m downstairs. When we were kids, you told me that once I controlled the docks on the East Coast, you’d marry me. The docks are mine now. Does that promise still stand?]
I pulled back the curtain and there he was. Ethan Vitale, my first love, leaning against the door of a black Cadillac, lifting a hand in a lazy wave.
Three years ago, when he left New York, he was only a Capo.
Now, he was the Don of the Vitale family.
He didn’t rush me. Didn’t pressure me to come downstairs.
He came for one reason only, to let me know he was back.
I wiped away my tears and texted back:
[It still stands.]
Because I wanted to see for myself just how long that woman could keep up her act.

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.

One hundred years married to Everett, and I've learned one thing: whenever he wants to push me into a corner, he throws the mate bond dissolution agreement in my face. Whenever my parents want me to cave, they hold the family name over my head.

They've always wanted the same thing — for me to hand over everything I have to my twin sister Rosalie, who's been sick her whole life.

I've fought it. I've grieved over it.

But when the doctor slid the diagnosis across the desk — Blood Depletion Syndrome, late stage, less than two weeks left — something in me just went quiet.

What's the point of fighting when you're already dead?

While I bled to death locked in a storage room, my fiancé Adrian was holding my sister's hand, comforting her.

He hung up on my final call for help, leaving only a voicemail: "If anything happens to Lena, the engagement is off."

My sister once said her birthday wish had always been for me to disappear.

That night, her wish came true early.

But my soul never left.

I watched everyone gather around her, singing happy birthday.

As she blew out the candles, I whispered in her ear:

"Enjoy it while it lasts. This will be your last birthday."