1931 Book(s) Related to her last wish

For three years, I was Julian Vance’s perfect shadow.

By day, I was the flawless executive secretary who kept his multi-billion-dollar empire running without a single hitch. By night, I was his secret, contract wife a convenient arrangement kept hidden behind the closed doors of his penthouse to satisfy a dying man's wish. I loved him in the quiet darkness, enduring his coldness, his family’s venom, and the cruel taunts of his elite childhood friend, Victoria.

But three months ago, the illusion shattered. When I was trapped in a hospital room losing our unborn child, Julian was on a red carpet with Victoria. His message to me through his assistant? “Do not interrupt important business meetings with minor domestic emergencies.”

That was the day Vivian Lane died.
The moment our three-year contract expires at midnight, I slide two papers across his mahogany desk: our signed divorce decree and my immediate resignation.

Julian scoffs, arrogant and completely convinced I’ll be crawling back to him within a month when my bank account dries up. He thinks I'm a penniless outcast with nowhere to turn.

He has no idea that while I was playing his submissive secretary, I was quietly building my own foundation. Now, his biggest corporate clients are jumping ship to my new boutique firm, and an international venture capital network has just hired a legendary, anonymous digital strategist known as "The Cipher" to engineer a hostile takeover of Vance Enterprises.

That strategist is me.
As his empire begins to bleed out brick by brick, the billionaire who once looked down on me finally drops to his knees. But I’m no longer his secretary, and I’m no longer his wife. If he wants me back, he’ll have to survive the ruin I’m about to bring to his doorstep.

For five years of marriage, Sibel devoted herself completely to her husband and son, even giving up her own career for their family.
Then she was rushed to the hospital with acute cholecystitis, writhing in pain. Her husband arrived with their son, only to walk right past her and rush to the woman he cherished most, his adopted sister.
"She’s terminally ill. You should take care of her," her husband said.
Her son added, "You’re only Mom because you cook and do housework."
In that moment, Sibel realized that her five years of sacrifice had been nothing but a joke.
She filed for divorce, walked away with nothing, and returned to the world of medical research. But just as she was ready to start over, she was framed, thrown into detention, and nearly left to die in a pool of blood.
Everyone thought Sibel was nothing without a man.
But when she returned as a world class medical expert, when the truth was finally exposed, and when the man who once treated her like she was worthless knelt before her with red eyes full of regret...
She looked down at him and said,
"You once said I wasn't good enough for you. Now you're not good enough for me."

They said a perfect luna should be gentle, obedient, and tolerant of everything.
My husband, Alpha Cedric Blackwood, said that as his luna, I had to be virtuous and generous, and I had to take good care of his "little woloves."
If anyone was led astray, it meant I, as luna, had failed to set a proper example, and I had to be punished in their place.
And so, when his adopted sister, newly graduated from Crescent Moon Academy, ran off to party at a bar and stayed out all night, I was ordered to wash clothes for the entire pack in the bitter winter cold until my hands were covered in frostbite.
When his little lover chased thrills and went alone to the border, drawing rogues to her, I was punished for poor discipline with ninety-nine lashes from a silver whip, beaten so badly that my wolf fell into a deep sleep.
When the two of them grew bored with life, went traveling together, and even stole my unlimited black card, they had barely left before their wild spending drew the attention of an enemy pack and got them kidnapped.
The news that Cedric had spent fifty million to ransom the two women was exposed, turning the Blackwood family into a laughingstock across the werewolf world.
The elders were furious and demanded that the matter be dealt with severely.
Cedric's face darkened. Then he turned around and ordered someone to tie me up.
"You knew they were young, naive, and easy to deceive, yet you deliberately gave them the black card. Weren't you trying to attract the enemy pack's attention so they would get rid of the thorns in your side?"
"A vicious, jealous she-wolf like you deserves to taste what it feels like to be kidnapped and tortured!"
But he did not know that on the first night after I was taken away, I was tortured to death.

Ethan and I grew up together. We were supposed to exchange rings at the altar, make our vows. But on our wedding day, he left me standing there to go save his so-called suicidal ex. Almost killed my parents from the shame.

Four years later, I'm back in Portland with my husband. The city isn't that big, and of course fate decides to throw him in my path again.

He has the nerve to ask me to be his mistress.

I hold up my left hand, the ring catching the light. "Are you blind?"

I'm two months pregnant with Tristan's baby when Brielle, the woman he'd do anything for, shoves me down the stairs.

She calls it an accident. I lose the baby.

I beg my husband to do something about it. Instead, he shields her and turns it around on me.

"Brielle saved my life in that fire. The whole Merrick family owes her. So drop it."

That debt. Always that debt.

Three years. No matter how many times Brielle humiliates me, degrades me, Tristan only ever has one answer: "I owe her my life."

But the truth about that fire? I'm the only one in the world who knows it.

I tried to tell him once. He laughed in my face. "Adeline, you're so desperate for attention you'd make up something like that?"

So I shut my mouth. Buried the truth. Buried whatever was left of my heart along with it.

The man I trusted with my life just handed my child to the woman who killed them, and called it loyalty.

I'm done.

I pull up the number I blocked three years ago and hit call.

"Dad. I'll take over the company. I'll go through with the engagement to Everett. But I have one condition. I want Tristan and Brielle ruined beyond recovery. Nothing and no one left."

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...

When the screen lit up, my heart stopped beating.
The woman twisting on the bed, breathless and flushed, was Rachel. The innocent girl we grew up with. The adopted sister I had fiercely loved and protected for over a decade.

And the hands claiming her body?
They belonged to my childhood sweetheart, Sebastian. On his finger glinted the very wedding band I had lovingly slipped onto his hand.

"I missed you so much..."
"You drive me crazy, baby..."

His hoarse moans coming through the speaker were agonizingly familiar. Those exact sweet whispers, the ones that used to make my heart flutter, now completely destroyed me.

To the outside world, we were the ultimate power couple. I ran his empire, exhausted myself to build his perfect life, while he bathed in everyone's envy. But who knew my flawless marriage was nothing but a sick, twisted lie?

Tears blurred my vision, but as the video ended, my sorrow morphed into something cold and lethal.

Sebastian thinks he is a master manipulator. He thinks he can have my loyalty while drowning in my sister’s bed.

Well, since he loves acting so much... I think it’s time I gave him a taste of my own performance.

Playtime is over. I am going to tear down his 'perfect husband' facade piece by piece, and I won't stop until I witness his total ruin.

"Come see our wedding invitations!" I excitedly held up the document folder I'd grabbed from ,my fiancé, Lorenzo's study, showing it off to his men in his private safe house on the Upper East Side.

Lorenzo and I had been running ourselves ragged this month preparing for the wedding.

Lorenzo's guys raised their glasses, waiting to see our custom-designed invitations. I eagerly turned the folder upside down—

Marriage certificates, wedding photos, and a property transfer document came tumbling out onto the floor.

Dead silence.

"Oh, these aren't our invitations..." I was still grinning foolishly. "Must be the wrong folder."

"Let me see which lucky lady is about to become a happy bride."

I looked down at the wedding photo. A beautiful brunette woman in an elaborate white gown smiled from the center of the picture, looking so blissful, so content.

When my eyes shifted to the groom beside her, my world collapsed.

It was Lorenzo. He wore a perfect black tuxedo, but he was tenderly embracing a woman I'd never seen before.

A stranger sneaked into Grace's tent and made her his woman after he had drugs. Then, she got the baby of the stranger. She went to find that man but failed.
Although she wanted to quit the child, she still backed out.
Five years later, to raise her little boy, she became a paparazzi and accidentally caught in the scene the hottest movie queen seducing the most powerful CEO in this city. She could get a promotion or pay raise from this photo. But unfortunately, she got caught by the domineering CEO.
She thought she was facing an imminent catastrophe, but what he just said to her? "How about I arrange a better job for you, and... you stay with me tonight?"
Why did it sound like he was flirting with her?

Melia Bournemouth thought she had lost everything when her father died and a tragic accident left her in a wheelchair.

Her only comfort was her devoted husband, Mathew. But when Melia discovers Mathew is secretly liquidating her last remaining assets to build a life with his pregnant mistress, her grief turns into cold, hard rage.

Desperate for retribution, Melia turns to the only man Mathew fears: Illya Cosgrave, a ruthless and dangerous billionaire with a dark reputation. But as they plot to dismantle Mathew’s empire from the shadows, Melia realizes Illya isn't just a weapon for revenge. He harbors a secret connection to her past that changes everything.

Now, Melia must decide: will she remain the victim, or will she rise from her chair and burn her ex-husband’s world to the ground?

My husband Michael's father and my own father shared the same name—Robert. His was Robert Carter; mine, Robert Smith. I once thought it a sweet coincidence, until that 3 AM phone call turned this quirk of fate into a living nightmare.
The nursing home called to say Robert Carter had died, but when Michael returned from his business trip, he assumed it was my father who had passed. "Old Robert's finally gone," he smirked. "Should've moved him to the cheaper nursing home ages ago." Can you believe it? His own father—the man who'd left him an inheritance—and there he was, helping his medical intern mistress cover up malpractice, dismissing the death as "just some useless old man."
He has no idea he's protecting his father's killer. No clue I've seen through his cold-bloodedness all along.
I wonder, when the truth finally hits him, how will this absurd tragedy end?

After being poisoned by her foster sister for years—fed weight-gain hormones disguised as vitamins—Chloe Harrison lost 90 pounds and clawed her way back from rock bottom.
Her cruel foster sister Mia even tricked her into a humiliating one-night stand with what she called "a fat, balding stranger." But that night was anything but shameful—it was unforgettable.
Now Mia has one final insult: marry the "pathetic cripple" Mia publicly rejected—a bankrupt, wheelchair-bound recluse named Julian Astor.
However, everything changes when Chloe walks into that conference room. Julian isn’t a broken old man—he’s six-foot-three of raw power in a Tom Ford suit, a devastatingly possessive billionaire CEO who makes her forget how to breathe.
All of a sudden, her contract marriage turns into something dangerously real. Julian doesn’t just want her on paper—he wants to worship every curve, trace every scar, and take her every single night.
Why does his touch feel so hauntingly familiar? And why does he look at her like he’s been searching for her since that rainy night?
A ruthless billionaire couldn’t possibly be obsessed with the woman he was never supposed to keep… could he?

On a stormy night, a horrific crash unfolded on the overpass. The victim was brought to the city forensic center.
My husband, Ethan, slipped on his gloves and expertly examined my shattered body, his voice detached. "Record this: Female, approximately twenty-five years old, suffered severe trauma before death."
His assistant sighed. "That's rough. Not a single family member showed up."
Just then, the assistant slid a misshapen silver band off my mud-streaked finger.
"Sir, this ring... isn't it identical to the one you keep in your desk drawer?"
With a sharp clatter, the scalpel slipped from Ethan's hand and hit the floor.

In his eyes, I had always been "understanding." Understanding enough not to fight, not to make scenes, not to ask for status.

He said we couldn't go public now, but it was for our future.

Only later did I realize that his "future" never included me.

He chose power, chose arranged marriage, chose to keep me hidden. When I finally left, he started having regrets, started saying he loved me.

But by then I understood—he wasn't regretting losing me. He panicked because I was no longer obedient, no longer his.

So I never gave him another chance. I turned and walked away.

But that was only the first step.

I chose to let the truth surface at his moment of greatest triumph, to let him taste what it feels like to lose everything.

"You were like a starved beast last night," I complained, spreading jam on my toast.
Gideon's hands froze mid-knot on his tie. He turned to me, his eyes filled with utter bewilderment.
"Nadia, are you out of your mind? I was in the study finishing up that proposal last night. I crashed on the couch at three in the morning. I never even went into the bedroom."
The knife dropped from my hand onto the table.
If the man I made love to all night wasn't my husband.
Then... who was it?

He once swore the whole world to me，yet he threw me aside without a second thought，all for his precious adopted sister.
He trampled on my love, ruined my youth, and let me fall into the abyss alone while doting on another woman.
Years later, I return from the ashes, powerful and cold.
I will step into his world, shatter his fame, destroy his fortune, and take away everything he holds dear.
He abandoned me for his adopted sister.
Now, I am his inevitable ruin.

Twenty years ago, he took the blame for my murder, was branded with the Silver Flame mark, and banished to the wilderness. Twenty years later, I escaped from a prison-like marriage and searched the world for him. He wasn't there in the Alaskan blizzards. He wasn't there in the deep mountains of Romania. Under the polar night in the Arctic Circle, I called his name into the darkness. No one answered. Until a hunter told me: deep in the Yukon, someone had seen a lone wolf with the Silver Flame mark.

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

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

What if your husband lived a double life and you are the fake wife?

I woke up to my husband celebrating our baby's death. He had poisoned me with abortion pills so he could marry Catherine Morrison-the rich woman he thinks is better than me and pregnant with what he thinks is his child.

I overheard him laughing; 'if she shows up somewhere demanding answers, I'll just say I've never seen her before in my life, Who are people going to believe? Me or some random girl from nowhere?'

David thought I had no evidence. He thought he had covered his tracks perfectly. He thought he was untouchable.

But when I'm done, he'll wish he never met me.

"Starting price for my wife—one dollar!" James announced, pointing at the dog cage where I lay curled up like a dying animal.

The crowd at the wedding erupted in laughter. "Five dollars!" "Ten!" They threw bids like trash, mocking the woman who used to be Mrs. Windsor. Lillian, wearing my stolen necklace, poked me through the bars with a metal rod. "Look at you, Aurora. You're nothing but filth." I closed my eyes, accepting my fate. My husband had sold me. My dignity was gone.

Suddenly, a cold, authoritative voice cut through the noise.

"Two hundred million."

Silence fell over the hall. Every head turned. Walking through the doors was a man radiating power—Louis Smith, the newly found heir to the Smith empire. The man I had pushed away ten years ago. James turned pale. "Mr. Smith... this is a joke..."

Louis didn't even look at him. He walked straight to the cage, his eyes burning with a terrifying mix of rage and tenderness. He ripped the lock off with his bare hands and pulled me into his arms. James tried to block him. "She's my wife! You can't just take her!"

Louis smirked, his voice dripping with ice. "Your wife? I just bought her. She's mine now."

Sean Turner kissed his childhood sweetheart, Mia Moore, right in front of me.
He said he married me for benefits, not love.
He even tried to force me to give Mia my heart.
I agreed.
But after the transplant surgery, he regretted it—while I smiled.

Six years ago, Marlowe Kestrel drowned in the Duskhaven canals, or at least that is what the obituary said, what the empty coffin implied, and what every ruling House in the city has believed ever since.

In reality she swam two streets over, bribed a mortician with a forged signature, and built herself a new, gloriously unremarkable life as a small time magical forger who fixes other people's problems for coin and never, ever asks about bloodlines. It was a good plan.

It worked for six entire years, which is roughly five years and eleven months longer than anyone expected a Kestrel to survive in hiding. Then Jonas, the only man alive who knew her real name, turns up dead in his own workshop with a mark burned into his palm that Marlowe has spent her whole life trying to forget she carries too, and the only lead worth following belongs to Cassian Draven, heir to the most feared criminal House in the city, a man with a smile like a drawn blade and a family reputation built on making problems disappear as thoroughly as Marlowe once did herself.

Cassian recognizes her in under a minute, does not turn her in, and instead offers a deal she has no good reason to accept and every practical reason to take, pose as his fiancée at the season's summit of ruling Houses, help him smoke out whoever is hunting them both, and maybe, if she is very lucky and very careful, walk away with her second fake death arranged before anyone notices the first one was fake too.

The trouble is, the longer she spends pretending to love a Draven, the harder it gets to remember that hating him was ever supposed to be the easy part.

Seventy-two hours before my wedding, I stood in front of the fitting mirror at a bridal shop.

My best friend sent me a social media post, and the red exclamation mark in the message box stung my eyes sharply.

The post’s title read: Guys, my boyfriend is getting married to his current partner. What should I do?

The comment section had already erupted into chaos.
“Dude, are you out of your mind? You’re the other woman here!”
“You’re the homewrecker and you dare post this to get roasted? Where’s your shame?”

The poster was firing back furiously, every word oozing unapologetic madness:
“We’ve been inseparable since we were kids! His first love, first kiss, first time—all mine!”
“He doesn’t even like that old hag; he’s only marrying her out of obligation!”
“Who’s the real mistress, anyway?”

I should have swiped past it like a silly joke, but my gaze was locked onto the poster’s profile picture.

It showed two hands laced together. Peeking out from the man’s wrist was a dark green watch dial—a Richard Mille Valentine’s Day limited edition. It was the seven-figure engagement gift I’d bought him by selling my mother’s last precious heirloom, the only one of its kind in the world.

My heart was squeezed tight by an icy hand, plummeting to the bottom in an instant.

I tapped into the account’s homepage. The second my finger swiped open the photo album, a dizzying, world-spinning sensation crashed over me.

In the photos, the man holding the girl closely was none other than Lu Yanchen—my fiancé, who was supposed to marry me in three days.

I stared at the screen. All the wedding hopes and love I’d saved up over three years shattered into nothing but dust at this moment.

I couldn’t believe it, yet I had to. The man who’d loved me for three years and sworn to protect me forever had been lying to me from start to finish.

“Marry me, and I’ll help you destroy everyone who hurt you,” he said in a deep voice, sending chills down my spine.

Betrayed by her husband and best friend, stripped of the life she worked so hard to protect, and left for dead, Elaine Ferguson wakes up to a world turned against her.

Enter Zayn Von Richter, a ruthless and devastatingly powerful billionaire who offers her a chance at revenge on the condition that she marries him for a year.

But Zayn may not be who he appears to be, and as their connection intensifies, the lines between pretence and reality begin to fade, threatening to unravel everything Elaine has fought to reclaim.