1519 Book(s) Related to 100 years of solitude chapter summary

Aurora is a calm and patient girl, incredibly beautiful that her beauty will put the moon to shame, leaving her life with books and in solitude until she crosses paths with the devil himself on a stormy night. She helps him not even thinking that it's going to change her life forever.
Rafael Delgado! The Spanish mafia kings get captivated by the beauty at first glance and then what, the game of Obsession begins.
Will Aurora survive his wicked games or will lose her mind to the devil?
Will Rafael change his ways for her or will destroy her like every other thing in his life?

I'm crouched on this fucking balcony clutching a pregnancy test, hands shaking like a leaf—two blazing red lines staring me in the face. I was such a goddamn fool thinking I'd tell Remy about our baby tonight. What a sick joke!
The banquet hall's roaring below and there's that bastard on stage, arm wrapped around Olivia, shouting "This winery has NO future without her!" Each word slams into me like a sledgehammer. TEN FUCKING YEARS! When he was drowning in debt, I sold every piece of Mom's jewelry to save his ass!
Then the son of a bitch hurls a box of abortion pills at me like I'm garbage: "Kill it, or Olivia's daddy pulls his money."
I'm glaring at that box and it hits me—ten years of my life pissed away on this piece of shit, and now even the innocent baby growing inside me is worth less than his blood money! I gave him everything and he's ready to murder our child for a fucking check!

At the bar, I watched Ethan get publicly dumped and made a crazy proposal fueled by liquid courage—a three-month fake dating contract.

I thought this was my only chance after twenty years of secret crushing. Until his ex showed me the text: "With Mia? Pretty convenient. She's been following me around since we were kids."

So I was just a tool.

The day we broke up, he shouted with red eyes: "I've been crazy about you for twenty years!" I thought he was acting, until his mom handed me a worn journal—

That careless comment I made at thirteen, "I'm never marrying Ethan," he'd remembered for twenty whole years.

Every page of that diary was filled with my name...

My mad mother, in her final moments, pressed a set of Russian nesting dolls into my arms.
"These cost me thirty years of my life. In return, they'll give you three ways out of death."
The first doll told me to go to a bar and bring home the third strange man I met.
The second doll, she said to open on the eve of my wedding. There was no note inside. Only a photograph — my groom, killing a woman wearing the exact same wedding dress as mine.
Three years later, on the eve of another wedding, I opened the last doll. I read the note, smiled, and dropped it in the trash.
It was only later that I understood —
This mad woman saw more clearly than anyone sane in this world.
Mom, I'm sorry.

Seven years ago, I was Velmoor City’s youngest surgeon. A bloodied nursing assistant knelt at my feet, weeping that her thug boyfriend was going to beat her to death. I gave her my guest room.
On her chemo bed, my mother gripped my hand, begging me to kick that woman out. I said she had nowhere else to go.
Later, I caught her wearing my pajamas in my own home. Then, I caught her and my husband naked in his office. Immediately after, a fatal medical error was pinned on me, and my medical license was revoked.
My husband looked at me arrogantly and said: I can liquidate everything I own to settle this for you. On one condition—divorce.
What he didn’t know was that I was pregnant. On the day of the divorce, the judge read out the division of assets: $26.30.
Seven years later, I took a catering gig at a billionaire’s mansion. Less than half an hour into the banquet, his seven-year-old daughter pointed at my seven-year-old daughter. “She stole my ten-million-dollar diamond necklace!”
I looked up and finally recognized him. The billionaire was my "bankrupt" ex-husband. And the woman clinging to his arm, dripping in diamonds, was the nursing assistant who had once knelt at my feet.

Olivia, who had been in a deep slumber for a thousand years, was awakened and embarked on a journey to uncover her true identity.
Skilled in witchcraft, array formation, and magic, she was a master of all.
The vampire ancestors were so frightened that they fled away, exclaiming, “This terrifying woman is still alive! We can’t provoke her!”
The monster hunters pleaded to Olivia, “Please take in this thousand-year-old monster!”
The priests also begged Olivia, “We are all your descendants. You must revive our career!”
Olivia gave a cold smile. But how did she become a vampire?

On the seventh wedding anniversary, I woke up in the lounge and found a big word "BITCH" sprayed with red paint on my chest.
The culprit, holding a spray-paint can, had a naive-looking smile on her face and said, "I'm doing you a favor. Your white outfit's way too boring."
I was just about to take action when my husband rushed in to protect her, frowning and scolding me: "She's just a little girl; she doesn't know any better. Do you have to be so petty?"
At this moment, looking at the man in front of me who had risen because of my family's influence, I suddenly laughed.
He probably forgot who had given him this overwhelming wealth.
I unscrewed the red-tipped thick paint pen and walked step by step towards the trembling girl.
"Your face is boring, too. Let me do you a favor."
As for my husband?
I'll make him know that without me, he's worse than a dog.

Ten years of secret love, and what did I get? Watching him fall for another woman at MY art exhibition.

The most ridiculous part? He turned to me and said, "Harper, you have to help me win her over."

I orchestrated their romantic encounters, taught him how to charm women, even told him what flowers she liked. I was the perfect wingman, watching them fall in love while I licked my wounds in the dark.

Until Dr. Avery confronted me with one devastating question: "Do you really think he doesn't know you love him?"

When I finally screamed "I've loved you for ten years!" at Mason, his response froze my blood:

"I know. I've always known."

Turns out, my ten years of devotion were nothing more than a free emotional dumping ground to him—the convenient girl who would never leave. He enjoyed my care while pretending not to see my love, because that was safest, easiest.

Pathetic, right?

A woman wastes ten years loving a man, only to end up pushing him into someone else's arms.

Until Blake appeared.......

Mona would do anything to get money for her mother's surgery, even if it means accepting a rich, spoilt girl's bet. All she has to do is get caught in some incriminating photos with billionaire tycoon Ian Harrison.

Easy peasy.

Until it's not.

Caught in the billionaire's twisted web, in a world of wealth, glamour and deceit, Mona will soon learn that everything isn't as it seems, and there's more to Ian that meets the eye.

But first, she must protect her heart from being crushed under his cruel hands.

Madeline Quinn was supposed to spend the summer tracking whales—not falling for the two rugged, infuriating brothers who run the research boat.

Jake is steady and silent. Reid is sharp and impossible. They’re both off-limits.

And yet… the deeper she goes, the harder it is to come up for air.


“You should’ve stayed on the boat,” Jake said, voice quiet but firm.

“I’m not made of glass,” she snapped.

Reid pushed off the wall with one boot. “No, you’re made of trouble.”

“Reid—” Jake warned without looking at him.

“What?” Reid said with a shrug, moving a step closer. “Look at her. She knows what she’s doing.”

Madeline lifted her chin. “And what exactly am I doing?”

“Turning this into something dangerous,” Reid said, almost too calmly. His eyes didn’t waver.

Jake finally looked at her. “It already is.”

She swallowed. Her pulse thudded in her throat.

“You think I don’t feel it too?”

Reid’s lips twitched like he almost smiled. “Oh, she feels it.”
He stepped closer—just enough to make her catch her breath.
“But I don’t think she knows what to do with it.”

Jake stood now, his movements slower, more deliberate. “That’s enough.”

“No,” Madeline said, softer now. “He’s right. I don’t know what this is. With either of you.”

Reid’s voice dropped. “Then let us show you.”

A long silence. The kind that doesn’t feel empty—just heavy.

Jake’s gaze didn’t waver. “Together.”

Her breath hitched. Rain hit the windows. Her towel slipped an inch lower on her shoulder.

“God help me,” she whispered.

Three years ago, on a night when it wouldn't stop raining, I carried Victor Caster out of a pile of bodies.

He'd taken two bullets. He grabbed my ankle and said: when I get back, I'll give you the world.

But when he came back, it was my sister Sabrina on his arm.

After that she was the woman who ran the Caster house, and I was the crazy one they locked away upstate.

Three years later, at the engagement party, Sabrina opened up her own wrist and screamed that I did it.

I tried to explain.

But the man I'd given half my life to save wouldn't even look at me. He just flicked his hand.

"Her hands don't know their place. Take them. And I don't want that face in front of me."

He never once looked up.

So why is it that the next time he sees me, the moment he really looks at my face, he goes down on his knees?

I loved Julian for ten years, carving every sweat-stained day into my love for him.
He once said I shined brighter than any gold medal.
Yet in five short minutes, he handed my dream, my glory, and my whole world to a scheming transfer girl.
Betrayed, discarded, and broken on the fencing strip, I lost my first love and everything I fought for.
Until the retired cold Olympic champion stepped out of the dark midnight shadows.
He offered me hellish training and a sharp blade of revenge.
I buried my soft heart, handed over my soul, and vowed to make every traitor pay.

Chiara Benedetti thought her wedding day would be the start of her freedom, instead, it becomes her descent into hell. Before she can say "I do," the chapel doors are torn off their hinges by Nico Ferraro, the brutal Don of the Ferraro family and her father's greatest enemy. He doesn't come for blood; he comes for his property.

He reveals a chilling truth: three years ago, her father sold her to him in a blood debt, and her entire life has been nothing but a fraud to hide the transaction.

Nico doesn't want a wife. He wants a possession to break. He expects Chiara to cower, to beg, and to kneel but Chiara is made of the same iron as the men in her world. She fights, she provokes, and she talks back, turning her captivity into a psychological battlefield. Her defiance doesn't disgust Nico, it intoxicates him. What begins as a cold exchange of power spirals into a dark, erotic obsession that neither can control.

As Nico introduces Chiara to the darker edges of his desire, scenes of rough possession and degradation, she is terrified to realize she doesn't just endure him; she craves him. When a rescue attempt by her former fiancé offers her a way out, Chiara makes a choice that shocks everyone: she stays. Not for love, but for the dark intensity only Nico provides. Caught between a secret rebellion within Nico’s own family and a rival family demanding her head, Nico must decide if he will sacrifice his empire to keep the woman he swore was just a debt. In a world where love is a weakness, their mutual destruction might be the only thing that makes them feel alive.

I spent six years working with the dead, earning money to save my son—enduring the stench and loneliness, clinging to hope.
I trusted my family, my husband, my parents, but they turned their backs on me.
They hated the smell of death on me, lied to me, and used my sacrifice for a fake sister.
All my efforts were for nothing; the hope I clung to was just a lie.
I walked away, broken and empty, while they panicked at my absence.
The pain is real, the betrayal is real—and there’s no going back.

Seven years ago, my father, the Wolf King, listened to the slander of his new lover and personally brought a bowl of abortion poison to my mother.

My mother fought desperately to turn her head away in resistance, but he forced it down her throat anyway.

In her absolute despair, she let out a harrowing scream, vowing she would never see him again in this lifetime!

Since then, the soul bond between my parents was completely severed.

My father, however, brushed it off, dead certain that my mother was "blocking the bond" to throw a temper tantrum.

Until today, when the vampire army massed at our borders, specifically demanding a royal blood slave.

To protect his new lover's daughter, my father seized me to take her place.

He set fire to my mother's beloved sea of moonflowers, pointing at the soaring flames and roaring: "If you come out and beg me, I'll spare Aria's life!"

But even as the inferno reduced half the courtyard to ashes, the space behind that tightly shut door remained in a state of dead silence.

He didn't know—

The severed bond wasn't a tantrum.

Because of that bowl of poison seven years ago, my mother had drawn her last breath that very night.

Five years after breaking the mate bond, Vincent became one of the youngest Alphas of the North, worth hundreds of billions, with a fiancée who was a perfect match for him — the daughter of Silver Claw Pack’s Alpha.
But I had already disappeared from his world, my name now only whispered in rumors about me being a bar hostess at Midnight Howl Bar, catering to Alphas and nobility.
When someone mentioned my name to him, he simply held his fiancée’s hand with a cold look in his eyes.
"I don't know her."
At his bonding ceremony, everyone congratulated the "perfect match."
But I, floating in the air, watched as Vincent stood beside his dazzling Luna.
What he didn't know...
He was the only Alpha I ever loved.
What he didn’t know...
I had been dead for a year.
Before I died, I was desperately earning money just to get our daughter the treatment she needed.
Then one day...
He found me at the Midnight Howl Bar where I worked in life, catching a faint but familiar scent of me. That moment...
His wolf spirit completely lost control.

There are too many ways of taking revenge on a woman. But he chose marriage. In the past three years, he acted like a ruthless husband, treating her coldly, and even more worse, humiliating her. Even when she was pregnant, he tried to force her to give it up, to retire from film field, to expel her from her country.

I gave birth to three children for my ruthless mafia husband. And every single time, he tore the newborns from my blood-soaked sheets and handed them straight to my barren sister.
For seven years, I endured electroshock therapy and brutal captivity, reduced to nothing but a breeding vessel to complete their "picture-perfect" family.
He thought he had broken my spirit long ago. That’s why, when the assassins struck, he didn't hesitate to shove me into the line of fire as a human shield.
To protect his true love, he threw my bleeding, wounded body into a freezing water cell as their perfect scapegoat.
He thought tossing me a few scraps of mercy would have me crawling back to him, begging like a dog.
But he was dead wrong.
When the bone-chilling water swallowed me, I didn't panic or thrash. I simply smiled, letting the black depths drag me under.
Domenico could never have imagined that the cold, lifeless corpse he personally sent to the morgue was my perfect escape, seven agonizing years in the making.
He stole my babies. He stripped away every last ounce of my dignity.
So now, I’m going to take away everything he holds dear, piece by agonizing piece: his empire, his power, and the love he arrogantly thought he could control forever.

I once thought I’d married the perfect husband, Kael, pouring all my heart and soul into trying to have a baby—until the birth certificate and adoption agreement in the study safe shattered every beautiful lie.
He and my dearest friend, Celeste, had long ago secretly had an illegitimate child,
and even plotted to trick me into being his foster mother, keeping me in the dark for the rest of my life.
What was even crueler was that on the very day I uncovered the truth, the doctor gave me the news—I was pregnant.
Once I faced the harsh truth, I resolutely faked a shipwreck to flee, going into hiding with my unborn child and leaving my old life behind.
He searched the entire world to find me, casting aside all his pride to beg for my forgiveness with a humble heart—but he could never win me back, not ever.

I am the leader of the world's largest mercenary group. After retiring, I went to work as a bodyguard at the home of the woman who saved my life.
I hid my identity, wanting only to protect the woman who had saved me — until one day, her family fell into crisis. Everyone came to bully her, take everything she had, and even force her out onto the streets.
I stopped hiding and stepped forward. Anyone who dares to harm her will pay the price!

Aurora is A simple maiden living in the occupied lands of Montenegro.

At a banquet truss, She was invited to the mansion of the Montenegro and one night changed her life when she met her siblings, Manuel and Ezekiel.
She discovered that the siblings had a strange feeling for her. She discovers that she also has a secret love for Montenegro.

How can he fight that love without hurting the other one?

From the heat of summer nights to the quiet of winter mornings, each book in The Seasons of Us series follows a journey of first love, heartbreak, and the fragile hope of starting over. With every season comes a new chapter, new beginnings, painful goodbyes, and moments that linger long after they’ve passed.

ORIGINALLY ON AMAZON

I was naïve grateful for scraps of kindness, blind to the rot beneath the surface. I thought I’d found a home. Instead, I walked straight into hell. And I paid for that mistake… with my life.
Venessa Gordon was framed for a murder she didn’t commit and executed before the truth could breathe. But death wasn’t the end it was a punishment wrapped in mercy.
Sent back with one final chance, Venessa has one year to rewrite her fate, expose the darkness that destroyed her, and stop a war destined to consume everything.
Fail, and her soul and her wolf will be cast into the eternal void.
But even if she succeeds…
will fate allow her to live long enough to see the end?

Revenge brought her back. His unwavering love made her stay.

Paisley Hughes opens her eyes three years in the past, at the start of her gilded cage marriage to tycoon Clive Harrington. Haunted by the memory of her tragic end, she is a storm of vengeance, ready to expose the betrayal that awaits. Yet she swiftly uncovers a stunning truth: her powerful, enigmatic husband has loved her silently but fiercely all along.

Thrust into the heart of his family's ruthless succession war, Paisley discovers that Clive's devotion is her greatest weapon. Together, they battle hidden enemies and poisonous alliances. This time, she fights not just to settle scores, but to claim the powerful love and the true family that were always her destiny.

What do you do when everything doesn't go to plan? At 33, Demi’s five-year plan is on track. She’s moved in with boyfriend, Wil, and is waiting patiently for her father to retire so she can take over the running of the family café. But when her father blindsides her by handing the café to her older brother Nick, and discovers Wil is hiding something, Demi’s five-year plan crumbles like crostoli. Determined to get her life back on track, Demi travels to Italy to learn about her Italian heritage and mend her frayed heart — hoping her father will come to his senses while she’s away. However, Demi’s Italian escape isn’t so perfect. Long-held family feuds, a love triangle from the past, and a surprising new friend in Leo, find Demi questioning everything; especially her five-year plan. Will Demi get her plan back on track? Or will she learn that the best plans are the ones you don’t make? The Five-Year Plan is contemporary women’s fiction with a touch of humour and a lot of heart. It will appeal to readers who want to be whisked away from their day-to-day life and immersed in a feel-good story full of food, travel and romance.

Beta Aaron Keizer brings Diwa back to the packhouse after being away for more than ten years. However, as soon as she arrives, a dangerous presence from her past begins stalking her and her newly found mate. Even worse, Di’s elder brother, who happens to be the Gamma of the pack, openly shows his disapproval of the union. Will Di be able to find freedom from her past while finding happiness in Aaron? And can the Beta be able to see beyond the bond so he can help Di finally fight the monster who continues to claim her as his?

Fourteen years ago, Isabella Winston died.

At least, that's what everyone believed.

One moment, she was trapped inside a sinking car beneath the icy waters of the Hudson River. The next, she woke up in her own bathtub and somehow fourteen years in the future.

Her husband is no longer the warm, easygoing man she remembers.

Her five-year-old son is now a nineteen-year-old stranger who looks at her with suspicion.

Her twins barely remember the mother they lost—one forever chasing affection, the other keeping the entire world at arm's length.

And the family she left behind has become something broken, distant, and unrecognizable.

Now Isabella faces an impossible challenge: rebuilding a family that never truly recovered from losing her.

Fourteen years have left scars on everyone.

Unfortunately for those causing the damage, Isabella Winston has returned to set things right.

“You don’t love me, do you?” Luke whispered, pinning my wrists above my head.

His body pressed mine into the bed, hot, heavy, inescapable. His mouth brushed my ear, gentle enough to feel like a kiss, cruel enough to feel like punishment.

“It’s okay,” he murmured.“Your body is mine.”

I left Luke Morrison unconscious in an ICU eight years ago and rebuilt myself in London—elite auctioneer, an ocean between me and the past.

Then my brother's condition crashed. I'm back in Pennsylvania, standing behind an auction podium at his company's charity gala.

A little boy runs through the crowd and wraps his arms around me: "Mama, you came back."

"Daddy shows me pictures every day," Asher says.

Every. Single. Day. How long has this been going on?

Luke's watching with ice-cold eyes. The bullied boy I left behind? Gone. Replaced by a tech billionaire who makes predators look soft.

"Get in," he says. Not a request.

Then he takes me back to his home.

His penthouse is frozen in time—the art I chose, the books I organized. Our past preserved like he's been waiting.

"You owe me eight years, Mia," he says, showing me the scar. "The girl who watched them destroy me and did nothing. This time, you don't run."

When he fucks me, it's worship and punishment. Making me pay for every day I was gone.

"I've waited eight years for this. Every breath you take belongs to me."

He's not just possessive. He's broken. And Asher is the perfect weapon to keep me trapped.

He made sure he protected her, till she got on her feet again.

I died in a rainy day. For twenty-eight years, I clung desperately to my adoptive family, craving nothing but warmth and a home. Yet all my devotion was nothing but a joke.
Everyone in the household loathed me, quick to side with my adoptive sister Isabelle over every lie she spun. I gave my whole heart to my fiancé Damien Sterling, believing he would be my salvation. But when the truth surfaced, he looked at me like I was filth beneath his shoes, his face twisted with contempt.
“You were never more than a distraction,” he snarled. “Isabelle is the only one I love. Can’t you see how tainted you are?”
Those words shattered me more than any injury. Abandoned by everyone I cared about, I had nowhere left to turn before they arranged my death.
But somehow, I’m twenty-two again—returned to that fateful year before all my nightmares unfolded.This time, I’ll burn down everyone who destroyed me.

"We're done, Arthur."

That was how I ended a ten-year relationship with my childhood sweetheart.

He didn't take it seriously. He just smirked and asked, "How many days is this tantrum going to last? Three? A week?"

Then, his phone lit up. It was her—the helpless scholarship student he had been protecting.

"I'm on my way," he promised her softly, turning his back on me without a second thought.

He walked away, assuming I would always be his safety net.

What he didn't realize was that my answer was forever.

Ten years of being his fool, and I was finally cutting the cord.

He married me because I look like her.
For three years, I played the role. I cooked his meals. I warmed his bed. I smiled when he forgot my birthday. I stayed quiet when he left in the middle of the night to hold her hand.
I told myself it was enough. I told myself I didn't need his love.
Then I got pregnant.
He said he hated children. So I didn't tell him. I was going to keep it. Our baby. The only thing that was truly mine.
But my body had other plans.
When I called him from the hospital floor, bleeding out, begging for help—he didn't come. He said I was lying. He was too busy with her.
That night, I lost everything.
The baby. The hope. The lie I'd been living.
Now he's calling me. Again and again.
But the substitute wife? She's not picking up.

No tears. No scene. Just one thing —
A divorce agreement on the dining table, and she walked out the door.
Under Reason for Divorce, she wrote: Husband's sexual dysfunction.
For the first time, Fu Yuting's cold composure cracked. He tore the papers apart.
She just smiled. "That's fine. I made copies."
Three years she loved him. Three years he hurt her.
The moment she finally let go — he realized the woman who had lived for him would never look back.

After her mother’s funeral, Lena Ward returns to a small town and a house built on silence: a sealed sunroom, a will that forbids witnesses, and a sister blamed on a storm fifteen years ago. As buried records, sedatives, and a hidden trust fracture the family’s righteous facade, a chilling truth begins to surface beneath concrete and grief. Dark, tense, and emotionally sharp, this is a cold-case family thriller of rain-soaked memory, courtroom reckoning, and a child’s toy waiting under the floor.

Three years ago, I saved the life of Alessandro Gambino, New York's most powerful mafia boss.

He fell in love with me, a bartender.

His family was dead set against us, but his love won out. We got married.

After we married, he disappeared every month for "punishment day," claiming his family beat him with sixty-six lashes for breaking their rules by staying with me. Watching him suffer tore me apart.

Actully, I'm Sloane Lucchese, sole heir to the largest arms empire on the East Coast, hiding from a family war. I decided to reclaim my family name as soon as possible, so his family would finally accept me.

Finally, on our fifth wedding anniversary, I found out I was pregnant, and my father called to say they'd announce my return in two weeks.

I was going to tell Alessandro everything that night, both pieces of good news.

But that same day, I stumbled onto a secret—one that would destroy me completely.

For fifty years, I bathed in blood for my world, only to return home to find my wife dead and my daughter about to be sacrificed.
The High Priest stepped on my daughter’s head, branding me a traitor, and declared he would burn her to ashes. Scarred, broken, and with my magic depleted, I was bound to the pyre alongside her. Tens of thousands cursed us from below as the flames engulfed the stage.
Weeping, my daughter asked me, "Daddy, are you really a hero?"
I crushed the pendant on my chest.
Dragons, Dwarves, Berserkers—the million-strong allied army I had united over those fifty years descended across dimensions.
The High Priest slumped to the ground, trembling uncontrollably. "Who... who exactly are you?"
Staring into his eyes, I said only one thing:
"Dragons have reverse scales; touch them, and you die. You crossed the line!"

When the earthquake struck, my fated mate—Alpha Cassian—instinctively shielded me with his body, taking the full impact and breaking nearly every bone.
In the hospital room, the girl next door sighed enviously. "Luna Yolanda,Alpha Cassian risked his life to save you. He really loves you."
I forced a smile. "Yes."
But just last night, after I had fallen asleep, he slipped into the bathroom and spoke in a gentle voice, comforting his eighteen-year-old mistress—Rosalind Graves.
"I'm fine, don’t cry, be good."
"As long as I think of you, I'm not afraid of anything."
Cassian and I grew up together. From first love to now, it has been ten years.
We are the Blue Moon Pack’s model mates—admired by all.
No one knows he has a secret lover.
A girl who looks just like me when I was eighteen.

I spent three years as a "useless son-in-law," humiliated in public by my wife, all to repay a debt of life-saving gratitude.
That night, she handed me a cup of poisoned wine, smiling as she told me to "disappear from this world."
But she didn't know that the wine served to terminate our contract of protection—and unchained my shackles completely.
When the fighter jets of the Northern Command cast their shadows over the entire estate, she finally knelt in the mud, crying out for "Adrian."
But this time, I will not look back.

Five years ago, I woke up after surgery with my mind completely blank. The doctor said I had been in a training accident, and I was lucky just to be alive. Due to my injuries, after being discharged from the military, I was assigned to the mess hall at Fort Kiernan. Every day, I stood behind the same serving window, dishing out the same beef and potato stew to the same group of new recruits. I thought my life would always be like this. Then one day, a female journalist from the detention cell was escorted over by military police to get her meal. She slid her tray toward me and spoke a word I had never heard before. The ladle slipped right out of my left hand. My right arm dropped to my side, and my fingers curled instinctively into the shape of a gun grip. Who on earth am I?

On his deathbed, my husband Marcus confessed he'd swapped our baby with his mistress Chloe's seventeen years ago. Staring at his tearful, repentant face, I barely held back a laugh—I'd uncovered this secret sixteen years prior. I'd quietly swapped my real daughter back, sending his bastard to her cruel biological mother. Seventeen years of patience wasn't weakness, but waiting for the perfect moment. Now he's dying, Chloe's panicking, and my half-lifetime revenge? It's only just starting…

Eight years ago, I was the heir to a powerful dynasty—the man set to inherit an empire.

On the way home from a business deal, our convoy was ambushed and I was taken. My fiancée arrived with the ransom, and the kidnappers gave her a choice: save one man. She saved my closest friend—and left me bleeding in the ruins.

They thought I was dead. They went on camera, announced my “tragic death,” took my company, split my legacy, and lived on my name for eight long years.

But I didn’t die. A gray-zone mercenary unit pulled me out of a pile of bodies. I changed my name and climbed from the bottom of their world—training, bleeding, killing, leading—until I became one of their commanders.

Today, my fiancée is marrying my best friend. The invitation arrived with my name on it. I board a first-class flight under a new identity and head straight for their wedding.

Halfway through the ceremony, the priest asks if anyone objects.

I stand up. “I object.”

I didn’t come back to give my blessing. I came back to collect.

“You can stand there and deny it all you want,” he said huskily in my ear. “But I know how drenched you were that night. Your tight little p*ssy? It was calling my name, baby.”

“You’re insane! I never wanted you!” I gritted out, hating how weak I sounded. Hating how my arms suddenly didn’t have the strength to push him away.

How there was a part of me that truly wanted him, despite everything.

“Keep denying it,” he murmured, eyes darkening. “It just makes me more eager to bend you over my desk and f*ck that attitude right out of you.”


When executive assistant Alice Rhodes sent her arrogant and insufferable boss, Theodore Linden-Hawthorne, a sext during the company’s New Year’s party, her life turned completely upside down.

She lost everything: her fiancé, her family, and her best friend, all because of one embarrassing mistake. To make matters worse, Theodore seemed incapable of staying away from her, and Alice was horrified to realize that the feeling was slowly starting to become mutual.

But this attraction between them came at a price. Alice and Theodore came from two completely different worlds. Their attraction was forbidden and frowned upon by everyone around them. Would their love survive vengeful exes, juicy scandals, hidden secrets, and unexpected surprises?

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."

In this prestigious North American university, I was just a lowly physical education teacher, working long hours and being bossed around.
No one knew that two years ago, I was a special forces legend, codenamed "Tyrant," who climbed to the top of the dark web, stepping over the corpses of countless enemies in the abyss of hell.
I thought I had washed the blood off my hands.
Until that day, the only ordinary female student I cared about was lured into a black market industrial park on the Balkan border, facing a butcher's chainsaw.
For five million dollars to save my life, I was willing to swallow all my pride and bow to the school's richest family.
But what I got in return was public humiliation and a beating from the powerful.
They laughed at me, calling me a weakling, saying my life was less than that of a lowly dog.
Watching the video showing only five hours left of life and death, I snapped the spine of the richest man's bodyguard with my bare hands, tearing apart the docile mask I had worn for two years.
Crossing half the globe to storm into a heavily guarded, lawless land?
It had been a long time since I'd stretched my muscles.
It seems the world has forgotten why this dark jungle, filled with warlords and evil, still cannot bear to hear my name!