172 Book(s) Related to ten years late

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

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

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

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

Arthur sighed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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…

Our engagement has gone unfulfilled for ten years.

My parents saved his family in that yacht accident. With their dying breath, they asked his family to look after me. In return, we go to city hall every year, trying to fulfill this obligation.

Ten attempts. Ten failures.

Elevator malfunctions, food poisoning, home invasions, car crashes... Every single time, I get hurt at the worst possible moment while he walks away without a scratch.

This makes ten. A truck slams into the passenger side, my head smashes against the window, and he's already running across the street, pulling that woman into his arms.

On my way to find him after they stitch me up, I hear his assistant's voice in the hospital corridor:

"Mr. Ashford, the truck driver's been taken care of. Money'll hit his account like we agreed... but is this really fair to Miss Bennett? It's been ten years, every single year—"

William's voice comes out low and tired. "I don't have a choice. Her parents saved me, but I'm in love with Emma."

I look down at the diagnosis. ALS. Late stage.

Turns out I've been trying to marry a lie this whole time.

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.

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.

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."

I retired for three years, restraining my edge, thinking compromise could bring peace.

But what I got in return was my sister's abduction, my family's estate seized, and my benefactor hanged from the city gates!

Even the Council turned a blind eye, mocking me as bottom-tier trash without even a shred of magic.

Since mortal reasoning won't work, then I'll shatter the rules of this world myself!

Five years ago, I knelt on marble floors, cleaning wine with my own dress while they laughed.

Five years later, they knelt before me, begging for forgiveness while I walked away.

They thought three hundred thousand dollars could buy my soul. They thought I was just another disposable substitute, another broken girl desperate enough to sell her dignity for her dying mother's medical bills.

Caspian Ashford wanted a replacement for his precious Scarlett. The Hampton elite wanted a servant to humiliate. They all wanted me to disappear quietly when they were done with me.

They got their wish—I did disappear.

But the girl who drowned in that yacht "accident" five years ago? She was weak, desperate, powerless.

The woman who returned as Elena Whitman?

I'm their worst fucking nightmare.

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.......

On my birthday, my husband ditched me for his "innocent" adopted sister, mocking me as a useless housewife. He has no clue that I, Sophia, am actually "Sue"—the legendary designer his company is desperate to recruit!

Fed up, I slammed the divorce papers on the table, ready to crush his arrogance and expose his sister's lies.

But the moment I stopped caring, this icy CEO lost his mind. He pinned me against the wall, his eyes burning with dark obsession: "Sophia, trying to escape? Over my dead body. Tonight, I’ll show you exactly whose wife you are..."

My name is Jack Morris, a bottom-rung janitor on the docks.
Every day, people walk all over me, and I live on moldy bread.
Until one day, an old man I saved handed me a photograph. "This is my granddaughter. She's being held at the Black Swan Casino."
That used to be my place. Ten years ago.
Her father was a brother who died in my place.
I was once the king of the underground.
And now, at the banquet celebrating the tenth anniversary of my death, they're treating that old man's granddaughter like a toy.
If my disappearance only made those animals more brazen...
Then they can finish that drink and celebrate their own deaths next.

A one night stand with a mystery lover made her loose her marriage to her sister. She became pregnant with twins and thought her misery had just began. She left her country and returned four years later with two adorable twins. Her life made a turnaround for good when her sons ran into Mu Tinge, the idol of the business world and the richest man in the country. Lu Jingli wants her back but how does he intends to make Theresa Mo his lost love?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Let go. It's too late."

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

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

My first love was adopted by our family, and he promised he would always be there for me.
But after my dad passed away in a car accident, I found him with another woman in our bedroom.
He told everyone Caroline was his true love—that he only saw me as a sister—and claimed I was the one who was pestering him.
I was shamed by everyone. The stress gave my mother a stroke, and Caroline even had someone run me over, costing me an eye.
Seven years later, holding flowers, I ran into them outside a convenience store.
Arthur's son looked at me pityingly. "Dad, this lady lost an eye… Is she selling flowers? Should we buy some?"

Dante felt like a million needles were inserted in his body as he passed by Viviana without reaching out to her. Her familiar scent infiltrated his nostrils and brought back the memories of her he could never get rid of.
“Cazzo!” He hissed in Italian, his heavy steps fading away.

Viviana turned around to face the man that just passed by her. He felt and smelt oddly familiar, his physique looking as striking as one whom she had locked someplace in her heart, promising never to think of him…but always doing the opposite.
That intimidating stride, that purposeful gait…
She was about to turn back to take a clearer and better look at him when her boss called her attention.
“You look exceptionally lovely today” Jacob said, a little sultrily and she eye-rolled mentally but elongated the smile on her face. Any more now and Joker's face will seem like a joke when hers is compared.

“Thank you sir and you are definitely not looking bad yourself”

Be careful what you wish for … After eleven years trapped in the Spadros crime syndicate, 23-year-old private eye Jacqueline Spadros is an independent woman, free to run her investigation business. But her problems are only beginning. Deeply in debt, Jacqui is in danger from both the rogue Spadros men calling themselves “The Ten of Spades” and the ruthless Red Dog Gang — who may be one and the same. Jacqui is determined to find Black Maria, the key to the identity of the Red Dog Gang’s secretive leader. To survive long enough to do that, Jacqui needs a paying case. The one she's offered may put her in the most danger of all … The Ten of Spades is part 5 of a 13-part serial novel - please begin with The Jacq of Spades or the Red Dog Conspiracy Act 1 box set.

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

OMG! I woke up to discover I'd had a one-night stand with my company's CEO!

By the next day, we were suddenly married. My supervisors and colleagues still think I'm just an ordinary intern, not knowing I've become the CEO's wife overnight.

For five years, Vivian sacrificed her brilliant scientific career to be the perfect wife to billionaire Dylan Hudson and a devoted mother to their son, Allen. Her reward? Her husband's cold indifference and her son's cruel rejection, both secretly manipulated by Dylan’s two-faced assistant, Hazel.

When her five-year-old son screams, "You're not my real mom! I want Hazel!", Vivian's heart finally shatters. She signs the divorce papers and walks away without looking back.

But Vivian isn't just a desperate housewife. She is the hidden heiress to the powerful Wilson family and a genius scientist. As she reclaims her empire and catches the eye of a devoted, even wealthier single father, Dylan realizes the massive mistake he made.

Now, her billionaire ex-husband and the son who pushed her away are on their knees, desperate to win her back. But Vivian only has one cold answer: "It's too late."

As the last stroke of the New Year bell rang,
I suddenly received a message from eight years ago:

“This is my first New Year with Zhou Guming!”
“I want to be with Zhou Guming forever!”
“I will play the piano for my whole life!”

At the same time, the news on TV was reporting:
On New Year’s Day,
my husband Zhou Guming was attending my best friend’s piano recital.

I looked down at my deformed fingers, bound by chains.
After cutting my wrist with a piece of iron I’d hidden for a long time,
I struggled to type one line:

“Lili, keep going forward. Don’t look back.”

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.

I was Alessandro Romano's wife in name only—the mafia godfather of Belluno City.
We had the most extravagant wedding this city had ever seen: three thousand guests, flowers lining every street. Everything except a legal marriage certificate.
Over three years, he promised to sign the papers twenty-two times. He canceled every single one.
He would buy two identical necklaces, hanging one around my neck and the other around his mistress's, trading a night spent comforting her for a dismissive apology to me.
After the twenty-one broken promise, I stopped waiting.
I packed my bags and left for the one city he vowed never to enter.
What I didn't know: after I left, the man who ruled the underworld completely lost control.

Betrayal cuts very deep, but who says revenge can't be sweeter and satisfying?

Married to the one man who once claimed he loved her wholeheartedly, Claire is broken when she finds out about her dear husband’s endless escapades. To make matters worse, he had also been cheating on her with his secretary and had gotten her pregnant, yet he tortured her physically, mentally and emotionally and wasn't remorseful about it.

Determined to take revenge on him for the intentional pain he had caused her over the years, she set out to shatter his world completely. She does the unthinkable, and is about to turn the tables in the most shocking way.

Aurora Baylee, a vampire, is in an illicit relationship with a werewolf. Her father and all the vampires strongly opposed the relationship. She decides to go with her boyfriend Igor. However, the father manages to capture them and punish Aurora to ashes.

Life passed for a thousand years. Aurora returned to life as an ordinary human. She is a company owner engaged in hospitality and she is also a hitman. She goes on a mission and reunites with Igor.

Igor is sure that Aurora is his lover. He struggled to get it back. However, everything he did didn't work out, and Aurora didn't believe everything Igor said. Just when Igor almost made Aurora believe, Marcus came, who was Aurora's father in the past. Marcus intends to finish off Aurora and Igor because of past grudges that destroyed all his people.

Will their thousand-year love have a happy ending? Or did Marcus again manage to finish off Aurora like a thousand years ago?

At twenty one, Liyana Whitmore inherits everything—billions, power, and a legacy built to shake the world.
There’s just one problem.
To claim it, she has to live for five years under the guardianship of Matthew Everleigh—her father’s closest friend… and the man she once swore she’d marry(at age seven,by the way).
Now he’s older, colder, and hiding secrets she was never meant to uncover.
And someone out there?
Wants her dead?!

After five years of marriage, Dylan returned home drunk and shoved a divorce paper into Jessica's hands, ordering her to sign it.
Jessica Albert is a kind, compassionate woman from a well-respected home. She did all she could to support her husband to become a great man after his family's downfall. But what did he use to pay her back with?
Dylan Robinson, a billionaire CEO of DY Group, is a dark-skinned man, very attractive. Upon his first love's return to their city, he changed and filed for a divorce.
Will Jessica agree to divorce her husband, the man that she loves the most?
Will Jessica sit back or move away to her family house and watch Dylan bring his first lover into their marital home?
Read to find out how Jessica handled her husband and see who came back begging her to forgive him and return back home to him.

On the day I received my late-stage gastric cancer diagnosis, the business proposal I’d pulled three all-nighters to finish was being fed straight into a paper shredder by my husband, Lu Ting.

Amid the deafening roar of the machine, his voice was cold and unapologetic: “Put Yingying’s name on this plan. She just got permanent employment and needs this achievement to get a firm foothold.”

I said nothing. My fingers crumpled the diagnosis report in my pocket. I turned around, opened the ticket-booking app, and booked a seven-day, six-night ultra-luxury customized honeymoon package for Lu Ting and his mistress Zhou Yingying—an overwater villa in the Maldives, with first-class flights for the entire trip.

When Lu Ting saw the order, he curled the corner of his mouth at me for once, speaking in a patronizing tone: “Finally being sensible. I’ll bring you a bag when I get back.”

I said quietly, “No need.”

You two will never come back.

For seven years of marriage, I've been silent in front of my wife.
It's not that I don't have anything to say; it's just that she can hear everyone's voice—except mine, which seems to trigger her sensitivity.
I've tried everything to change my voice, even going under the knife to fix my vocal cords.
But no matter how hard I try, she just ends up in pain, covering her ears.
I've broken down countless times, feeling like I've let her down.
Until the day of our daughter's birthday.
My daughter stood at the front door, grinning, and said, "Mom, can I pretend to be voice-sensitive like you?"

On the day of our seventh wedding anniversary, I tried to send a work email using my husband's account, but the connection was too poor to go through.
When I clicked into the drafts folder, a glaring message caught my eye:
"Tingzhou, I've prepared a new battle outfit~ Ready to drain you dry."
Seconds later, that draft vanished, replaced by a new one:
"Naughty girl, get the ultra-thins ready and wait for me."
Only three people knew the password to this email account: me, my husband, and his first love...
Watching their increasingly explicit flirtations,
tears streamed down my face uncontrollably.
Turns out, no matter how many years you spend by someone's side, it all crumbles the moment their first love returns.
I steadied my trembling fingers, sent the email, and cleared the history.
Then I dialed a number that had been dormant for seven years.
"I give up. I'm willing to come home for the arranged marriage."
On the other end came my godfather's familiar, authoritative voice,
"Get rid of anything that shouldn't be left behind. Make it clean."
My hand trembled as it touched my lower abdomen. "Okay."
"Someone will pick you up in three days."

I died the night I refused to postpone the engagement party.

The morning after my death, my parents were still having breakfast with my sister Blair, excitedly planning her award ceremony.

Before I died, the only person who answered my desperate call was my mother. I was being chased by kidnappers at the time, and I begged her to save me, telling her I was dying. But she said, "Stop being so dramatic! You're just trying to get our attention. If you want to die so badly, then go ahead and die."

That was my last call for help before the line went dead, and then I was struck by a car.

I lay on that dark road, bleeding profusely. They thought I was just sulking, hiding away to get attention. They thought if they ignored me, I would come back and apologize to them.

They didn't know I was already dead.

When that dealer tortured me, my dad, a narcotics cop, and my mom, the city’s chief medical examiner, were busy celebrating my sister’s win in the volleyball semifinals. To get back at my dad for destroying his drug network three years earlier, that man cut my throat. Right before I died, I called my dad. Before I hung up, he said, “Cut it out. Serena’s game is what mattered most right now.”

It took me five years after my son was born to finally realize the truth—he never loved us.
To end this painful marriage, I decided to take my son and leave. But fate played a cruel trick on us. During a rogue attack, I lost my wolf spirit, and my son lost an eye.
Just as I was drowning in despair, my usually cold and distant husband knelt before everyone, begging for forgiveness and swearing he’d be our rock for life.
So, my son and I gave him a chance—a 100-day trial.
If he proved himself, we’d stay.
But on the 99th day... fate shattered everything again.

Savannah thought marriage would bring her love, but it only gave her pain. On the night of her anniversary, her husband handed her divorce papers and chose his mistress instead. Left with nothing, Savannah ran away carrying a secret — a baby growing inside her.

Alone, broke, and hunted, she tried to survive in a strange city. Just when her strength failed, a powerful stranger saved her life and rushed her to the best hospital in town. She never knew his face before, but fate was not done with her.

Now Savannah must fight for her baby, hide from the man who betrayed her, and guard her heart against the stranger who shows her the love she never had. But can she really trust him… or will history repeat itself?

On my first day back in the country after studying abroad, my mother sent me to my fiancé’s company. I was to work low-profile as a secretary, just to slowly cultivate our relationship.
The moment I stepped into the office, a domineering woman started ordering me around, demanding I fetch her coffee.
I endured it.
That was until she deliberately spilled the coffee all over me. Only then did I realize that this woman—running amok in my fiancé’s company and treated like a queen by everyone—was his mistress.

I was the best student, the most obedient, the most compliant—yet the only unloved child in our family.

When my brother got into fights, I took his punishment. When my sister snuck out with boys, I bore the consequences. Mom force-fed me pills and made me get my stomach pumped just to scare my brother away from smoking. Dad dressed ten-year-old me like a prostitute and threw me into a bar to warn my sister against going astray.

In the end, they sold me to a gambler for a few hundred dollars.

I died in a dark pond, and no one heard me calling for help.

But when my spirit drifted home, they were gathered around the dinner table, laughing and talking as if nothing was wrong.

It wasn't until the police knocked on their door that they realized—I had been missing for seven whole days.

Later, my brother clutched the chocolate he never got to give me, crying every day. My sister dreamed every night of ten-year-old me struggling and screaming in that bar. Dad knelt at my grave daily, consumed by guilt. And Mom, after killing that gambler, threw herself into the same pond where I had drowned.

Finally, they loved me.

But I was already dead.

Everyone knows Adrian loves me more than life itself. When that car crashed, he threw himself over me and took the hit. First thing he said when he woke up in the hospital: "Where is she? Is she okay?"

Everyone says I married the best man in the city.

What they don't know is this man has married me ten times. And divorced me ten times. All for the woman he's never gotten over.

The first time, I got on my knees and begged him not to leave. He just looked at me with those cold eyes and said, "Don't embarrass yourself."

The fourth time, we were fighting in the car. Then we crashed, and I lost our baby.

By the seventh time, I stopped crying. Just signed the papers, packed my things, waited for him to come back like he always did.

My tears, my compromises, all those times I bent until I nearly broke. What did I get? Him coming back like clockwork, just to do it all over again.

This time, when he slides that tenth divorce agreement across the desk, I finally get it. Some people's hearts never had room for you in the first place.

So this time, I'm throwing him out. Him and this whole Mrs. Hayes charade. Straight into the trash where they belong.

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.

Sometimes, when things are set in motion there is no stopping the landslide to follow…

A woman always hopes one day to fall in love: to…you know…live the happy ever after dream.
Sometimes though, dreams go haywire when you fall in love with the wrong man. My name is Nicole Leathers, and I own the events my actions brought about within my life. When I fled Los Angeles, California, to Dallas, Texas, having lost my partner in a sting gone horribly wrong, I had no idea what a shit-ball I was about to create when I fell for a man I shouldn’t want—my team leader—a Harley driving, wicked-smile wielding, melt your panties morsel, I wanted to lick like an all-day lollipop! But, he had a wife that stood in my way…at first.

He’s everything I ever wanted, but the one person I cannot have.

We made a bet. A deal. One month of celibacy, and I’d be his plus one to his brother Elijah's wedding. I know my best friend. He won’t be able to do it. For him, sex is the one thing he can’t possibly live without.
Until he does, proving me wrong.

Now, I’m stuck with the very man I’m secretly in love with at a romantic resort in Hawaii. I can’t tell him my true feelings, because I refuse to lose him …

That is, until we wind up in bed together after a night of partying. It’s everything I ever dreamed of and more, but it doesn’t matter. It won’t work between us. So we agree …

No strings.
No attachments.
Just a free card while we’re in Hawaii.
Either way, I'm not falling for him.

Not my best friend. Not unless he falls for me, too.

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...

Abandoned in the forest by her desperate father, she survived alone for 25 years. Now, a mysterious billionaire offers her $10 billion to play the role of his 'bad wife' for five years. Faced with a choice between pride and survival, she chooses life.
Marrying into a powerful billionaire family turns her world upside down. As secrets unravel, she begins to uncover the truth about her real family. Torn between a king who drives her heart wild and a loyal knight who loves and protects her unconditionally, she finds herself caught in a storm of emotions.
Love, she learns, can make people blind and foolish—but it can also change them. For her, the hardest choice isn’t between two men, but between loving and being loved.