166 Book(s) Related to hayley faiman

Elliot Knox and I were in court fighting over custody of our daughter.

In my first life, when the judge asked who she wanted to live with, I heard her thoughts.

Mom looks so sad. Cordelia wants to stay with Mom...

My eyes welled up right there. I signed away half of everything we owned and walked away with nothing else, just to keep her with me.

Three months after I got custody, my sweet, obedient daughter handed the FBI a forged tax fraud document herself.

I spent years in prison with everyone in there gunning for me, and I died coughing up blood on a snowy winter night.

In my second life, I wasn't about to risk it again. I gave custody to Elliot instead.

A few years later, he ended up in the hospital, gravely ill. By the time I got there, he was barely hanging on. He told me:

"It was Cordelia... she's been poisoning my medication..."

I opened my eyes again and found myself back in that courtroom.

That same childish voice went off in my head right on cue, word for word identical to the last two times.

But this time, I looked up and saw Elliot across from me, clearly reborn too, his face full of the same shock and confusion.

So which one of us does she actually want?

Connor Mitchell and I are the golden couple of our industry. Everyone sees him as the devoted husband, always bringing me soup when I work late into the night.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, he gave me an expensive diamond necklace and posted something sweet on Instagram. The comments were all variations of the same thing: jealousy.

I used to believe it too.

Until I cut my trip to Europe short and got into that SUV. The passenger seat was set at the wrong angle, too far forward for my height. A contact lens case fell out of the sun visor, and neither of us wears contacts.

When I had my cousin pull the dashcam footage and saw him with his arm around some petite girl getting into the car, the truth hit me. My attentive husband, the one who called me every night I was away, had been using my connections and resources to play successful mentor to a twenty-two-year-old intern.

The irony is, he thinks he's gotten away with it. He has no idea I can see right through every move he makes.

Once rot sets into a perfect marriage, no amount of perfume can hide the stench.

I was the Sinclair family's lost daughter, missing for fifteen years. The day they found me, I thought I'd finally found the home I'd always dreamed of.

I didn't know they only brought me back to keep their other daughter alive. The one with the rare blood disease.

For three years, they drained my blood over and over. Took my bone marrow once.

My birth parents told me, "Eloise is fragile. You're the older sister. Take care of her."

My fiancé said, "You have such a good heart. You wouldn't want to see her suffer, would you?"

Today, I just gave six hundred milliliters of blood. I'm lying here weak in this hospital bed, and I hear them talking outside my door.

"Eloise is getting worse. We should take Aria's kidney now. Give it to her. We can't wait any longer."

That's when I finally understood. I was never their found daughter.

I was inventory. A blood bag. Spare parts waiting to be harvested.

If that's what their love is, I don't want it.

The Enforcement Corps hauled me out of my apartment in the middle of the night and dumped me at the Southside Precinct.

The subordinate I'd trained myself had scratch marks all over her neck and collarbone, and she was shaking so hard she could barely stay on her feet.

The second she saw me, she pointed and started screaming that my mate had raped her.

"Director Cordelia, I've always looked up to you. You can't sic your mate on me just because I disagreed with you in a meeting!"

My brain just went blank. Because I don't have a mate.

Three months after my miscarriage, at the celebration dinner he hosts for my "recovery," he tells his partners in French, "She's just a trophy wife. Doesn't understand basic business."

"What about that new assistant? The twenty-two-year-old?"

"So much smarter," he laughs. "And in bed? Way more exciting."

They think I don't understand. To everyone here, I'm just the stay-at-home wife who gave up her VP position at an investment bank to play house.

They don't know I minored in French. I spent a full year studying abroad at the Sorbonne.

As I lay in the operating room, bleeding out from the miscarriage, he was already seeing her.

Je comprends tout. I understand everything.

Over the champagne and candlelight, I smile at him.

He has no idea this is the last time he'll ever see it.

The night before the SAT, I brought homemade pastries from our bakery to share with the whole class.

The next day, over thirty students collapsed at the testing center. The exam was voided.

I became the target of everyone's rage. My family fell apart. I ended up in a detention cell.

The internet tore me apart. My classmate Lainey Prescott went on camera sobbing, saying all she wanted was for me to own up to what I did.

While I was in detention, I found out my mom had a mental breakdown and jumped off the overpass outside of town.

That same night, I went into the river too. The water was freezing.

When I open my eyes, Lainey is right there. She's holding that same sheet of paper with everyone's signatures, smiling like nothing's wrong, eyes just as calculating as I remember.

I'm back.

And this time, I'm not making anything for anyone.

I just get back from three months of hell on the northern border, dust still on my jacket, when Grandpa's calls start blowing up my phone.

"Seraphina! You need to swing by Black Ridge City and meet your fiancé!"

The old betrothal, arranged before I was even born. The guy is Derek, son of the Black Ridge Pack's Alpha.

I couldn't care less about the engagement, but I owe the elders that much respect.

So I send my unit back to base and head into the city alone, figuring I'll grab a gift and get this over with.

I find a necklace I like at Tears of the Stars, the fanciest jewelry store in town. The sales clerk looks at me like I'm trash. "That necklace runs eight million dollars. You break it, you'll be washing dishes for the rest of your life and still not pay it off."

I'm reaching for my black card when a wall of perfume hits me.

A woman dripping in jewelry storms in with a pack of bodyguards, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "What kind of gutter wolf is this? Keep talking and I'll have someone skin you and turn you into a rug. That necklace is mine. I'm Derek's girl."

I actually laugh, I'm that pissed off. Call up my dear fiancé right there on the spot.

"Derek. Your girl just told me she's going to skin me and make me into a rug."

The day college applications were due, Fern Whitmore wouldn't stop crying — and my two childhood best friends were completely wrapped around her finger.

They actually threatened to give up their Ivy League spots to follow her to community college.

I tried everything to talk them out of it. Nothing worked. So I went behind their backs and called both their parents.

Their parents showed up that same night and put a stop to it. Applications corrected, crisis averted, everyone back on track.

Or so I thought.

Fern lost her two personal ATMs, and one night she posted a goodbye message on social media and swallowed a bottle of pills.

Nash and Declan didn't blame her for it. They blamed me.

They lured me up to the roof. Both of them shoved their hands against my chest.

"Maren." Declan's voice was ice. "You ruined Fern's future. Go apologize to her in hell."

I fell twelve stories.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at the beginning.

This time, I'm not saving anyone.

He owns me.

Not as a man owns a woman—as a master owns property. Legally. Completely. Efrem Mustafin, leader of one of the five Rings, the most dangerous man I have ever stood beside, and the only thing standing between me and a death sentence.

My name is Alaki Bea Miller. In the ground above, they call me something else: X.

That's what they call us—the inferior. The ones whose only crime is the blood in our veins. In this world, it is illegal to carry more than one bloodline, and I carry the proof of it in mine. I am not a person here. I am not human. I am an abomination, a flaw the system was built to erase.

So when Efrem saved my life, he could only do it one way the law would allow. He took me as property.

Before the watching eyes, I submit. I lower my head. I belong to him.

In private, it was only ever supposed to be pretend.

He says my word means nothing against his. That without him, I have no rights, no protection, no future. I know he’s right. And I can’t tell you when it stopped bothering me. Because the scariest part—the worst part—isn’t the facade. It’s that somewhere along the way, I stopped pretending. The surrender I was performing became real. And he, the man who could lose everything for owning me, risks all of it anyway.

Master Efrem Mustafin, he is.

Subject Alaki Bea X, I was.

My name is Alaki Bea Mustafin.

And in this world, I am Mustafin.

I was meant to wed the man I love, Damien Blackwell. Rather, I was humiliated in front of his whole family and falsely accused of business espionage. They ruined my reputation. My accounts were frozen. They took everything.
Then his uncle made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Cold, merciless, and frighteningly strong, Kael Blackwell offered me two options: marry him or perish in prison for crimes I didn't commit.
I'm now imprisoned in his penthouse, wearing his grandmother's ring and pretending to be his submissive wife while he treats me like the criminal he thinks I am. He keeps an eye on my calls, has authority over my life, and reminds me every day that I am under his command.
But when the truth finally comes out, when he realizes I was innocent all along, will his regret be enough? Or will I be the one walking away while he begs me to stay?
He wanted revenge. He got a wife he'll have to grovel to keep.

My father was a pastor. He was also the reason I died.

In a world already on its knees, vampires in the streets, daylight a memory, the human race running out of places to hide. You would think a man of God would know better than to make a deal with the devil. Or, in our case, the Vampire Lord.

He didn't.

And I paid for it.

The part I can't quite make peace with is what came after. Because dying wasn't the end of it. Someone pulled me back, one of the five men they call Sentinels, blessed with something older than the war itself. and now I'm supposed to be grateful. They tell me I've been given a second chance. What they don't tell me is that the second chance comes with a war, a calling I didn't ask for, and five men I'm not sure I'm ready to trust.

Especially him. The one in charge. The one they call Elion.

He is not what I expected. Nothing about this is.

I have exactly two questions and no good answers: am I supposed to feel this way about a man whose job is to protect me? And if he's as dangerous as everything in me already knows he is. Would I be safer keeping him at arm's length?

I'm starting to think that was never really an option.

The darkness in his eyes, the dangerous smell of alcohol in his breath, and his deathly grip keeping me bound to him made my heart pound in my chest and my body quiver beneath him. Shamefully, it wasn’t anything that I wasn’t used to, because…the things I let him do to me?

When he was frustrated, annoyed, and angry at the world, I was here to be his pound of flesh. In return, he masked the void of my loneliness because for months, that was the transaction of our relationship. He’d pin me to the wall, bend me over the counter, pull my hair, slap me, choke me, and I enjoyed every second of it because in that moment, it finally felt good to be powerless.

Irony is a funny thing. I enjoyed being in pain because it made me forget how much I was hurting.


“I warned you, doll.” His voice strikes a string of chills down the base of my spine, a reminder that all of the time in the world could pass, and he’s still not letting go.

This is where the good girl in me dies.

“You’re mine now,” he whispers.


My name is Mercy—Mercy Carter. I went to college. Got myself a useless Bachelor of Science in Mathematics degree.

His name is Marcel—Marcello Saldívar. However, at the time, I didn’t know that he, the heir to the Saldívar Mafia empire, was the man that I had blindly offered myself to.

As smart as I am, I was stupid all the times when it actually mattered. After all, he did warn me that he was dangerous. I just didn’t think he could be much worse than my thug of a brother.

I was vulnerable—naive.

My name is Mercy, and I am the Mafia’s Mercy.

My hips work shamelessly, riding his hand as he sucks bruises into my neck. This dirty secret, this indecent proposition so at odds with my buttoned-up life. The light, near-cruel flicks, rip a scream from my throat as I shatter, my eyes rolling to the back of my head, my body locking down in a bone-deep spasm.

I just had sex…with a stranger…in a dirty back alley…


"Be a good girl. Good girls get rewarded."

Bullshit.

Being a good girl doesn't get you jack shit, but a cheating husband and piles of credit card debt in your name—credit cards that he used to pamper his side piece, the mock with I really want to erase from my mind from that bitch: Maybe if you could give him a baby, he wouldn't need to go looking somewhere else."

After years of negative tests, how cruel is it that one reckless encounter with a stranger could succeed where my marriage failed? A strangled laugh escapes my lips, edging on hysteria.


The sexy man with dark eyes leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Who I am doesn't matter," he says, the words echoing in the marrow of my bones. "What matters is that you, Penelope, are carrying my descendant."

"Your…your descendant..?"

⬥ Keegan ⬥
I was sent to her.
To watch her. To protect her. And, when the order comes… to kill her.
My name is Keegan Caffery. I’m the Carter Mafia’s best hitman. I don’t miss. I don’t fail.
At least, I didn’t use to.
I don’t know what it is about her that got to me first—her mouth, her mind, or the way she looks at me like I’m not what she should fear.
I’ve had a gun to her head since I walked into her life.
She knows it.
And she still doesn’t run.
She just watches me back like she’s studying a problem she refuses to call impossible.
She’s the one variable I can’t control.
And God help me… I don’t want to.
I have an order. I have loyalty. I have a trigger.
But every time I imagine it—
I can’t stand it.
Her or me. That’s the math.
It’s a deadly equation I don’t want to solve.
⬥ Maisie ⬥
I’m not ordinary. I stopped pretending long ago.
My name is Maisie Seo. IQ 145. Clinical genius.
Which sounds impressive until you realize what it actually means: I don’t fit anywhere people expect me to.
I see patterns everywhere. Outcomes before they happen. People like equations I’ve already solved.
It gets lonely in a world you’ve already figured out.
So I dull myself down. Smoke the edges off. Pretend, badly, to be the kind of normal that lets people stay.
Then he walked in.
I knew what he was immediately. Dangerous. Intentional. Wrong in all the right ways.
I should be afraid of him.
I keep waiting for that to kick in.
Instead, I’m fascinated.
Because for the first time in my life… I’ve found something I can’t solve.
He is my deadly equation.

I wish someone had taught me you can’t make your happiness all about loving one person, because what happens when you lose them? What happens to what’s left of you after they’ve taken half of you?

My name is Elysian Reign, and unlike my last name, I’m not extraordinary. My mother died when I was born, and my father drank himself to death. I graduated with a Mathematics degree of which I hardly use as a junior Network Security Engineer. I live in a one-bedroom apartment around the corner of my favorite gym, and I have a Saint Bernard named Bubbles—unextraordinarily so.

His name is Cade Sinclair, and unlike me, he is extraordinary. His mother was one of my professors before she passed, and his father is the owner of Sinclair Enterprises. Yes, as in Sinclair Enterprises: the largest firearm manufacturer for the Armed Forces.

I should’ve known better. But you never imagine that the love of your life’s own father would go through lengths to make sure his son doesn’t end up with someone like you—even if it means forcing him into an experimental military hypnosis treatment.

After three years of putting myself back together, you’d think I’d have learned my lesson. You’d think that I would’ve double checked before accepting a job for a company his father happens to own. You’d think that I would’ve changed my identity and left the country after walking in on my first day to find that Cade is the lead Network Engineer on my team—aka, my boss.

Now, how am I supposed to work with him when he’s made it his mission to make my life a living hell? How am I supposed to make him—at the very least—tolerate me when he’s been hypnotized to hate me?

On their third anniversary, instead of a gift, Bryce threw divorce papers directly at Rose’s face so his first love could move into their marital bed.

"Sign it immediately. Lily is back, and she’s the only woman I’ve ever loved," Bryce sneered, looking at Rose's faded dress with utter disgust. "I’ll give you a million dollars. Don't let my grandmother know you're struggling on the streets like a beggar."

For three years, Rose had swallowed every humiliation, scrubbing floors and secretly using her own connections to build Bryce’s empire from nothing. She loved him so deeply she willingly played the role of a poor orphan. But looking at his cold, arrogant eyes, her love turned to ash.

"Keep your dirty money," Rose whispered. She picked up the pen, signed the papers without a single tear, and slammed them onto the table. "Give me half an hour to pack. Johansen is nothing without me!"

An hour later, Bryce stood by the window, expecting to see his pathetic ex-wife crying in the rain. Instead, he watched in absolute shock as a limited-edition white Rolls-Royce smoothly pulled up to her. A man in a custom Armani suit stepped out, respectfully opened the door, and gently kissed her hand before she slipped inside.

Bryce’s blood boiled instantly. "She left with a billionaire? Who the hell is that man?!"

What Bryce didn't know was that the man wasn't just any billionaire. He was Dominic Cavendish, the most ruthless CEO in the country—and Rose’s fiercely protective older brother, coming to take the true heiress of the Cavendish empire back to her throne.