1587 Book(s) Related to ever after: a cinderella story

Married for four years, Emily remained childless. A hospital diagnosis plunged her life into hell. Unable to conceive? But her husband was rarely home during these four years, so how could she get pregnant?
Emily and her billionaire husband were in a contractual marriage; she had hoped to win his love through effort. However, when her husband appeared with a pregnant woman, she despaired. After being kicked out, homeless Emily was taken in by a mysterious billionaire. Who was he? How did he know Emily? More importantly, Emily was pregnant.

“You owe me once. When are you going to pay it back?”
It was said that the reserved and noble Michael Johnson had no interest in women. But he wanted to spend a night with this woman.
Diana Garcia felt extremely regretful.
When she woke up in the morning, she felt her body extremely weak
Michael, however, smiled so cunningly. “Diana, we’ll continue tonight.”

Sophie was beautiful and eloquent, but Matthew despised her flirtatious sweet talk that came so easily.
Later, Sophie stopped flirting with him. Matthew cornered her in his arms.
"Sophie, flirt with me."
"I'd give you my life."
Matthew had always been aloof and cold.
Until he met Sophie, he lost control.

"Don't you want your fiancé to pay back for what he did to you?"
"I'm willing to be your contracted wife on one condition. You have to help me find out the reason behind my mother's sudden death."
Looking at the mischievous way she waved the papers, his lips curled into a smirk. "Deal."
Betrayed by her fiancé and stepsister on the eve of her wedding, Lina's world crumbled in an instant. The heartbreak cut deeper than the night she was drugged and unknowingly lost her innocence to a stranger.
Vowing to make her cunning stepsister and unfaithful fiancé pay a hundredfold, Lina's path to revenge takes an unexpected turn when the very stranger she once spent a blissful night with appears at her door—with a marriage contract in hand.
Unaware that he is the man from that fateful night, Lina agrees to the contract for her own reasons. But as secrets unravel and passions ignite, questions linger:
Will she find out he was the one she had that blissful one night stand with? Will she fall in love with him after being betrayed? Will she be able to get her revenge on those that betrayed her?

Ethan and I have been in a secret marriage for four years. For the sake of his white moonlight, Chloe, he asked me to sign the divorce agreement eight times.
When we first got together, he held me gently and promised to make our marriage public, but he abandoned me again and again for her.
During the first divorce, I stood in the cold wind holding flowers and cried bitterly. On the sixth divorce, he was accompanying her to celebrate her birthday.
My repeated concessions only brought me repeated hurt and betrayal from him. Until this time, I took the initiative to pack my luggage. He thought I would wait for him to remarry, but little did he know that this time, I would leave completely and never look back.

My husband and parents wanted me dead. All because my sister was "dying."

They shoved a divorce agreement and an experimental surgery consent form at me.

I was supposed to be her donor.

But they didn't know I was the one actually dying.

Three days ago, they told me I had terminal bone cancer.

One month to live.

So when they threatened me into some back-alley surgery, I smiled.

I was already dying anyway.

I donated a kidney to my adopted sister.

Seven days later, I lay on the cold hospital bed, listening to my fiancé and family laughing down the hall.

They were popping champagne to celebrate my adopted sister's discharge.

No one remembered I had just had surgery. No one remembered my nut allergy.

When someone handed me a plate of almonds, I smiled.

I shoved them into my mouth, handful after handful, and swallowed them down. Then I told them I was done fighting for their love.

My fiancé demanded I postpone our wedding. My brother beat me until I bled and locked me on the rooftop to die.

After being abandoned eighty-eight times, I finally learned how to love myself—by cutting everyone who failed me out of my life.

One Night. One Mistake. One Lifetime of Consequences.

I thought I was waiting for love. Instead, I got fucked by a beast.

My world was supposed to bloom at the Moonshade Bay Full Moon Festival—champagne buzzing in my veins, a hotel room booked for Jason and me to finally cross that line after two years. I’d slipped into lacy lingerie, left the door unlocked, and lay on the bed, heart pounding with nervous excitement.

But the man who climbed into my bed wasn’t Jason.

In the pitch-black room, drowned in a heady, spicy scent that made my head spin, I felt hands—urgent, scorching—searing my skin. His thick, pulsing cock pressed against my dripping cunt, and before I could gasp, he thrust hard, tearing through my innocence with ruthless force. Pain burned, my walls clenching as I clawed at his iron shoulders, stifling sobs. Wet, slick sounds echoed with every brutal stroke, his body unrelenting until he shuddered, spilling hot and deep inside me.

"That was amazing, Jason," I managed to say.

"Who the fuck is Jason?"

My blood turned to ice. Light slashed across his face—Brad Rayne, Alpha of Moonshade Pack, a werewolf, not my boyfriend. Horror choked me as I realized what I’d done.

I ran away for my life!

But weeks later, I woke up pregnant with his heir!

They say my heterochromatic eyes mark me as a rare true mate. But I’m no wolf. I’m just Elle, a nobody from the human district, now trapped in Brad's world.

Brad’s cold gaze pins me: “You carry my blood. You’re mine.”

There is no other choice for me but to chose this cage. My body also betrays me, craving the beast who ruined me.

WARNING: Mature Readers Only

After a one-night stand with him, I left hundreds of dollars for him.
I thought we have no relations any more, but in reality, he was actually my fiancé’s brother!
I never imagined I would develop feelings for him.
It’s a forbidden love, a secret that can’t be spoken...

On her wedding anniversary, Annabelle Whitmore meticulously planned a surprise. However, she drank a drugged drink given to her by her stepsister. When she awoke, she was in a strange man's bed. Photos of her surfaced online instantly, and her reputation was utterly destroyed.

Her husband, Abel Donovan, a ruthless and powerful figure, gave her no chance to defend herself, readily believing his stepsister's lies.

Anna was pregnant with his child and was cruelly driven away.

Five years later, Annabelle was no longer the infamous, abandoned woman she once was. She returned as the CEO of the global fashion empire BelleNova.

Abel never imagined she would return, especially with his child.

"I hope you're not serving that dirty maid my food!" Eliora—the woman Adrian truly loved and the one who acted as if she already owned the house—snapped with a sharp, venomous voice from the staircase.
"I wasn't planning to eat it anyway," I said calmly, rubbing my stomach. "I have better taste than that. And I don't want anything, or anyone, that might harm my child."


She loved him in silence. He denied her without remorse. Alvara was forced into a marriage with the billionaire who took her innocence, only to discover it was a nine-month trap.
Forced into a marriage built on cold rules and public lies, Alvara quickly learns that being a wife does not mean being wanted. Every kindness has conditions. Every smile hides control. And every mistake is hers to bear alone.
When the marriage ends, Alvara walks away with nothing but scars and a vow never to be weak again.
Years later, she returns...changed, guarded, and no longer willing to beg for what she deserves. But the man who once denied her isn't ready to let go.
In a world ruled by power, pride, and regret, can love survive after divorce… or is denial the one thing that never truly ends?

Kayla Brookes once believed in forever. She gave her heart to Adrian, the man she thought was her soulmate, and trusted her best friend like a sister. But everything came crashing down the day she walked in on their betrayal. In one brutal moment, her marriage ended, her heart shattered, and her world fell apart.

Left with nothing but her pain and a dream, Kayla vowed to rise again. She buried her tears and built herself from the ground up, turning every ounce of heartbreak into strength. Four years later, the woman who was once broken now sits on top of the world—CEO of the country’s most successful interior design company, admired, respected, and untouchable.

But fate has a cruel sense of humor. Adrian returns, filled with regret and desperation. He begs for forgiveness, pleads for another chance, and promises he’s not the same man who let her go. For the first time, Kayla sees sincerity in his eyes… but she also remembers the pain.

And then there’s Steven Wade—the cold, calculating heir to Europe’s most powerful family. Mysterious, charming, and impossible to read, Steven offers Kayla everything Adrian couldn’t: security, admiration, and a chance at a future untouched by the past. Yet beneath his polished mask lies secrets of his own.

Caught between a man who destroyed her and a man who might never let her in, Kayla faces a choice that could define her forever.

Will she listen to her heart—or protect herself from love’s cruel game?
Because in the end, even power, success, and revenge can’t silence the heart that still remembers what it means to love… and what it means to hurt.

"You have a ….." His hand moves towards my mouth, skimming over my bottom lip. I'm frozen. Never has a man affected me like this.
Pulling his hand back, he holds his finger up for me to see. Even his hands are perfect. I imagine what it would feel like to have hands like that caress my body. The thought sends a shiver down my spine. But it soon vanishes when I notice the small piece of chocolate sitting on the tip of his finger. I'm immediately consumed with humiliation. My eyes widen and my mouth gapes when he places his finger in his mouth, sucking the chocolate off.
"Yummy" he says as he nods his head.
Emily, adopted at eleven years old by a very rich socialite after ten years of being placed from one foster home to the other. She was given a life of luxury and groomed for seven years for a role she didn't know about. At eighteen, she began her life as a sex-worker, lacking companionship and love, she never experienced it until she had a one-night stand with a handsome stranger. One-night of passion that changes everything. 
Damian grew up privileged, he had it all; looks, money, charm, success and endless array of beautiful women who threw themselves at him. He then met Emily, a breath of fresh air. 
Their one-night-stand together ignited something in him, he wanted to own and possess her, but Emily had other plans. 
Will he be able to get what he wants? Will he be able to claim her? Or will her secrets crush or destroy any chance they have at being together?

On my wedding day, my entire family received Iris’s desperate plea for help.
“Mom, Dad, Brother! I’ve been kidnapped, come save me, quick!”
Everyone panicked—including my fiancé, Theodore.
They interrupted the wedding ceremony to rush to Iris.
I begged them through tears not to go. I said it was a trick, something Iris had staged herself.
“The ceremony would have been over in ten more minutes. Can’t you just wait ten minutes?”
My parents called me a heartless, ungrateful wretch. My brother, Ron, pried my fingers from his tuxedo lapel.
“Chloe, stop being so selfish! Even if Iris isn’t your blood sister, how can you be so cruel?!”
“All you care about is your own wedding! Do you really want to see her die?!”
My fiancé looked at me with disappointment. “Let’s cancel the wedding for now.”
“I just realized… the one I care about more… is Iris.”
Watching their hurried figures disappear, I picked up a knife and locked myself in the bridal suite.

My ex-husband found me selling hair clips at a flea market. Rosie was asleep in her stroller.
"Come home. She's too young for this."
I said yes.
After that, I stopped checking his phone.
Rosie stopped crying when the other girl took her toys.
He spent the night at Simone's—we didn't call.
We ran into them at the mall—we walked the other way.
We finally became what he always wanted. Easy. Quiet. No drama.
So why is he the one who can't sleep now?
"Why don't you get mad anymore?"
"Rosie, why won't you ask me to stay?"

I looked at the naked stranger lying asleep beside me. Lightning flickered, illuminating his muscular body only in glimpses. He was covered in mud and blood, and though in human form now, he still looked wild and monstrous. I’d never found myself lying beside any naked man before in my life. He pulled at my clothes, and I let him rip them off. The thunder came closer, booming right overhead. We kissed with frantic passion and grasped at every inch of each other. One of the only normal human girls at the Werewolf Noble Academy, I was at the bottom of the social order from the start. But even worse than that, just about everyone at school picked on me for being fat. One day I slept with a stranger in an accident. He is the second prince of the werewolf, and wants to marry me!

After Amelia has woken from the encounter with the fates, she must find a way to prevent her own death. Only as her day goes on she realizes nothing is like it had been in the vision she saw of her future.

An internal struggle for her to emerge as the white wolf send her into an encounter with a blood beast, who succeeds in enticing her. That is until they are interrupted by the arrival of her mate.
Nothing is how it should be and it is going to take every alley she has to find out why, and maybe a little help from an enemy....

The future is never set in stone....and sometimes you need to break all the rules.

This is the sequel to the book 'More Than Me', it can be read as a standalone.

After being betrayed by my boyfriend, I immediately turned to his friend, a handsome and wealthy CEO, and slept with him.
I initially thought it was just an impulsive one-night stand, but I never expected that this CEO had been infatuated with me for a long time.
He had approached my boyfriend solely because of me...

No one can imagine what I went through on my wedding night.
My husband and I went from first love to marriage, but I was forced to lose my virginity to a completely anonymous man...
That night, my husband was next door, passionately making love with another woman all night long.
The next day, however, all he did was selfishly shift all the blame onto me and angrily accuse me of betraying him.
He never touched me afterwards and every day he brought a different lover to have sex in our bedroom, which was a punishment to me in his words.
I was tired of being forced to listen to the sound of their lovemaking, until one day, I met the man who took my virginity, and the passion was kindled again...
Continuously updating, with 3 chapters added daily.

Is love something that fades away? I used to think not. But here I am, Wendy Knight, stuck in a loveless marriage with a husband who has rekindled an old flame, and a mother-in-law who seems to live to make me miserable. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse, I got diagnosed with liver cancer...
Little did I know, a childhood friend had been quietly watching over me all these years. He's drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly wealthy, and powerful, and he showers me with tender, unwavering care. As for my cheating ex-husband? Let him regret and stay out of my life!

Natalie Brooks, the young lady of the Brooks family, hid her identity to marry Samuel Morgan for love. The three-year cold marriage ended with a divorce when his first love, Lily, returned. Natalie left proudly, returning to her home, the most powerful Brooks family in New York, with her four talented brothers.
Natalie gradually transformed into a strong businesswoman. Samuel was surprised because Natalie was completely different from the image of the weak wife she had been before. He began to waver, remembering the years of living together, but was still surrounded by Lily's weak pretense.
Although Natalie was divorced, she still had lingering feelings, but she chose to strongly confront him, determined to prove her worth. From here, she continuously confronted Samuel and Lily, both to regain what she had lost and to force them to regret ever looking down on her. Meanwhile, Lily always played the role of the "weak girl", taking advantage of Samuel's pity, but she increasingly revealed her jealousy and hypocrisy. Natalie's brothers – especially Nathaniel Brooks and Henry Brooks – were fiercely protective of their sister and wanted Samuel to repent for what he had done to Natalie.

I was kidnapped. My brother drugged me and sold me to the Serpent Pack.
The desire was getting stronger, and my heart was in despair. Suddenly, a man appeared and told me that I was safe. I didn't know who he is, but I wanted him so badly. He told me he is Owen and demanded I remember his name.
I hope my mate Blake could forgive me. I had no choice.
When I went to tell Blake about all this, I was shocked by what I saw. Blake was sleeping with his good friend Jeremy! OMG! My mate is gay!
While filming them to keep some evidence, Owen showed up...

“Klaus, I love you…” I spread my legs, wrapping them tightly around the alpha’s waist.
After learning I was pregnant, I stripped naked and let my alpha husband fuck me hard.
Klaus sucked on my nipple, growling: “Emma, ​​you bitch! You’re so alluring!”
After a passionate sex I wanted to show him the pregnancy test results, but Klaus coldly said: “Let’s get a divorce, Emma. Nancy needs me.”
——
Klaus thought Emma would always wait for him, love him.
But from the day she signed the divorce papers, Emma’s heart died.
She gave up all possessions, left the wolf pack, and never looked back.
Klaus went mad.
This supreme alpha chased after his ex-wife countless times, just wanting her to look at him one more time.

Reborn into the world of Greek mythology, she becomes the youngest daughter of Zeus and Hera, the goddess of youth, Hebe. What? She is the weakest and most powerless goddess of youth? The most dispensable cupbearer of the gods? A trophy of the great hero Heracles? Hebe declares that this is impossible. She will use modern scientific wisdom to create her own glory, trampling anyone who dares to humiliate her underfoot!

In her five years of marriage, Elsie loved her husband, Oswald, with all her heart. Even when their life wasn't happy.
But now the man she loves so much is looking at her with a hateful look, slandering her without proof.
"Tess is awake, she told me everything! You fu*king murderer!"
Tess, Oswald's beloved woman, and if she hadn't had the accident, it would have been Tess, not her, who would have become Oswald's wife.
And now Tess was awake. Her dream had awakened instead. She didn't want to have to explain. She didn't want to have to go through countless detentions and begging...
Elsie looked at Oswald, who was still indifferent, and said, "Let's get a divorce..."
Oswald doesn't believe that the greedy Elsie can give up her life as a rich madam, and he assumes that she will come back and beg him for money.
Until Elsie's true identity is revealed and everyone is stunned...

When Owen cheated, he thought Avery would never leave him.
“Avery, I was wrong. Please give me another chance,” he begged, filled with regret.
But another man stood by Avery’s side, firmly holding her hand.
“She’s mine now. You don’t deserve her,” the mysterious billionaire declared.

The night Owen kissed another woman in a bar, Avery’s heart shattered. Determined, she filed for divorce. Owen brushed it off, convinced she couldn’t survive without him.
But after the divorce, Avery rose from the ashes. She conquered multiple industries, earning admiration and respect from everyone around her.
Now, as Owen tries to win her back, he realizes it’s too late—Avery has found someone new, a powerful and enigmatic tycoon who’s ready to protect her at all costs.

I'm Jennifer, a stay-at-home mom. I gave up my art career eight years ago to take care of my family. My husband Julian and my son Garry, they're my whole world.

But lately, I've noticed them getting closer to Mia, Julian's secretary. Little things. Garry asking where "Miss Mia" is. Julian mentioning her at dinner. I told myself it was nothing. I kept quiet. I put up with it.

Until last week, when Garry broke his arm playing hockey. The school called Mia, not me. She was listed as his emergency contact.

That's when I knew I was done.

From a young age, I understood that my asthma was a shackle for my entire family. My parents took turns caring for me, their hearts gripped by the fear of any sign of respiratory distress. In their fervent concern for my health, they even compelled my sister, Sophie, freshly accepted into university, to postpone her studies and return home to assist in my care.
At Sophie's eighteenth birthday celebration, I lingered at the edge of the crowd, my chest constricted, and my throat felt as if it were ensnared by invisible hands. I gently tugged at my mother's sleeve, my voice barely a whisper: "Mom, I... can't breathe. I want to go back to my room..."
In an instant, my mother whirled around, her eyes ablaze with fury, as though she had awaited this moment of eruption. She seized my inhaler and hurled it into the farthest corner of the room.
"If it's this painful, then go die!" she shrieked, her words cutting like a knife. "Stop using your illness to hold us hostage!"
The inhaler tumbled to the floor, rolling away like a forgotten piece of trash. I stared at it blankly, a sudden laugh escaping my lips.
And then, I truly died. Yet, in the wake of my passing, those who once found me a burden descended into madness.

Everyone in town said I dumped my blind boyfriend because I couldn't stand being poor.
Five years later, I'd become a blind drifter myself, relying on handouts just to eat.
And he'd become one of Silicon Valley's hottest rising tech moguls.
He recognized me, but pretended he didn't.
He wanted me on my knees. Wanted me begging. Wanted me to pay for "abandoning" him.
Until he found out the person who gave up everything for him back then was no one else...
But me.

I looked at the naked stranger lying asleep beside me. Lightning flickered, illuminating his muscular body only in glimpses. He was covered in mud and blood, and though in human form now, he still looked wild and monstrous.
I’d never found myself lying beside any naked man before in my life.
He pulled at my clothes, and I let him rip them off.
The thunder came closer, booming right overhead.
We kissed with frantic passion and grasped at every inch of each other.
One of the only normal human girls at the Werewolf Noble Academy, I was at the bottom of the social order from the start. But even worse than that, just about everyone at school picked on me for being fat. One day I slept with a stranger in an accident. He is the second prince of the werewolf, and wants to marry me!

On the day I got engaged to the heir of an elite old-money family, my own birth mother spread vicious lies about me in front of the entire crowd. She claimed I’d lived a wildly promiscuous life while studying abroad, and had even secretly given birth to a stillborn child with no known father.
Afterwards, she took my hand and sobbed out an apology, saying she’d only wanted to test whether my fiancé truly loved me enough to stand by me. I was foolish enough to believe her, and drank the calming tea she’d personally handed me.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, everything was destroyed. I lay in my bedroom, disheveled and half-dressed, and the man beside me was none other than my younger sister’s boyfriend.
In the end, my fiancé married my sister. And I was mercilessly disowned and cast out by my own family.
But twenty years later, every single one of them would come to regret what they’d done.

“Daddy…” I mindlinked my father.
I haven’t spoken to him in the 3 years I’ve been married.
“Evelyn? What’s wrong?” My father asked, his voice was soft and yet was so superior.
“I’m divorced” I told him solemnly.
“Return home to the palace, my princess” my father ordered.

When I woke up with a hangover, I found a handsome and naked stranger sleeping beside me.

I’m Tanya, a surrogate’s daughter, an omega with no wolf and no scent.
On my 18th birthday, when I planned to give my virginity to my boyfriend, I found him sleeping with my sister.
I went to the bar to get drunk, and accidentally had a one-night stand with the handsome stranger.
I thought he was just an ordinary werewolf, but they said he was Marco, the alpha prince and the most powerful Lycan in our kingdom.
‘You slut, you’re pregnant! Fortunately, Rick is kind enough to let you be his mistress and save you from shame.’ my stepmother said, tossing a pregnancy strip on the table.
Rick was an old pervert. No she-wolf could keep up with his sexual demand. No she-wolf could survive with him more than 1 year.
When I was in despair, Marco came to my rescue. He got down on one knee, took out a ring and said he would marry me.

I thought Marco married me because he loved me, but later I found that was not the truth…

Blake pinned me against the edge of the desk, his fingertips scorching, papers scattering across the floor. "Stop lying to yourself," he murmured coldly, "You need me."

I should have hated him—his father was the prime suspect in my parents' death, yet his touch made me tremble. "I hate you…" I gritted my teeth, but my voice was weak.

He smirked, his grip tightening, "Yet your body is responding to me." His fingers slid deeper, "So wet, and you still say you don’t want me?"

"Ah…Blake…" I arched my back, my sanity crumbling.

He chuckled softly, "Good girl."


After Emma's parents passed away, she was supported by the Reynolds family, particularly Gavin. She gradually fell in love with him. After knowing each other for ten years and being together for five, she accidentally discovered Gavin's ambiguous relationship with Sophia, his late brother's widow, just as she was about to marry him.

Then fate led her to an emotional entanglement with Blake from her partner company, but it also hinted that the car accident that caused her parents' deaths seemed to be related to Blake's father...

The man who healed her wounds might be the son of the man who destroyed her life. Thunder roared as Blake’s key turned: "Emma?" Standing before the evidence, her heart was torn. When love and vengeance collided, what would she choose?

For three years, she nursed her paralyzed husband, risked her own life testing experimental drugs, and nearly destroyed her health to pull him back from the brink of death.
But on the very day he fully recovered, he held his first love in his arms and declared, “I will take care of her and our child for the rest of my life.”
Heartbroken, she asked for a divorce. In return, he coldly froze all her bank accounts and forced her out of the house with nothing, sneering, “You are nothing without me.”
It was not until she hid her pregnancy test and walked away for good that he finally panicked.

Barbara thought that she had married an ordinary man, but who knew that this man transformed into the CEO of her company.
Not only that, he was also the most mysterious successor of the richest empire in Asia.
In front of others, he was the decisive, cold-blooded leader of the business empire. While in front of her, he spoiled her very much.

One month before my wedding, I was trying on the wedding dress I'd designed myself when a message from a friend popped up: [Diana, get over here! Your fiancé just lost at Truth or Dare and has to kiss your rival.]

Eight years of marriage — she thought she'd married love itself.
Until the day she watched her husband's Bentley rocking on the roadside, and knew exactly why.
She played it cool. Maneuvered him into signing the divorce papers without a clue, then waited for her billion-dollar exit.
But before she could walk free, someone poisoned her drink and staged a crash that nearly killed her.
The man who saved her wasn't the husband who swore he loved her — it was Erwin, cold, dangerous, and ruler of a business empire.
The untouchable, legendary Erwin — shielding her, risking himself, again and again.
When Levi finally woke up to what he'd lost, he came back red-eyed and desperate: " I was wrong. Can we start over? I can't live without you."
Erwin simply tilted his head and kissed her — eyes cutting straight to Levi's ashen face:
"I don't think you understand. The moment you let her go, she became my wife."

Seven years of marriage turned to ash the moment I discovered my husband had arranged for his sister-in-law to carry his dead brother's child—using his own sperm to continue the family bloodline.
Lorenzo Corvino—New York's most ruthless don—would drive three hours through a storm just to get me imported cherries. He held me at my mother's funeral, crying until dawn. He hospitalized a man for disrespecting me at a charity gala.
I thought I was the center of his world.
Until the private investigator's flash drive revealed the truth: Lorenzo at the clinic for Claudia's prenatal appointments, his hand on her pregnant belly, whispering "Marco would be so proud."
In the end, on the Corvino family's scale of priorities, continuing his dead brother's bloodline would always outweigh his infertile wife.
The night the yacht exploded, the New York sky burned red. The news reported the mafia don's wife had perished in the flames. He collapsed on the dock, clutching the charred wreckage, breaking down completely.
But he didn't know—
That "dead" woman was across the Atlantic on the Amalfi Coast, one hand on her seven-week baby bump, protecting the secret he'd never discover.
Seven months later, when he stepped into my new life and saw the infant with his deep brown eyes cradled in my arms—
This man who'd built an empire on violence and fear finally understood what he'd truly lost.
And I'll spend the rest of my life making sure he knows: some betrayals are so deep, even "I'm sorry" is more than he'll ever deserve.

My marriage to Matthew was a transaction, a substitute—everything except love. When his white moonlight came back, I was abandoned, diagnosed with gastric cancer, and carrying his child. His late regret could never bring back my life, nor could it keep our unborn baby.

I divorced the same man nine times.
The first eight times, I was the one sobbing, begging him not to go.
The ninth time, I was the one who slid the papers across the table.
He signed them, then told me we'd remarry once she left.
I said okay.
What he didn't know was that my flight was already booked.
This time, I was leaving for good.

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.

An hour ago, at the company’s press conference, I had just helped my husband Carlisle quell the ninety-ninth scandal of his affair.
Now, he has my assistant Russell pinned against my office desk, kissing him, his hand slipping under Russell’s miniskirt and groping wildly.
In that moment, I’ve already planned the publicity spin for the hundredth time.
But I’m not sure if my dear husband Carlisle and his lover will make it that far.
Because the revenge banquet I’ve been preparing for three years is about to begin.

He broke down the morgue door, his guttural scream echoing off the cold tiles as he yanked open drawer after drawer.

"Emily!"

Ethan's hands shook violently as he pulled it open. She lay inside, a white sheet draped over her face. With trembling fingers, he peeled back the fabric. Her face was paper-white, lips bloodless, her eyelashes casting faint shadows. So still.

This wasn't the Emily he knew. The Emily he knew could smile, could cry, could clumsily try to warm his frozen heart. But now, she was just a corpse. A corpse because of him.

"Cancer... stage four..." he whispered, drowning in a tidal wave of panic.

He remembered all those times she had clutched her stomach in agony, and he had mocked her. He remembered demanding she give her heart to his lover. He remembered her final silent words through the surgical glass: "I hate you."

"AHHH—!!" A raw scream tore from his throat. He slammed his fist into the metal drawer, blood blooming across his knuckles.

He collapsed beside her, pulling her stiff, freezing body into his arms. She was so light. Like holding air.

"Emily, I was wrong. I was so wrong," he choked out, crying for the first time in years. "Wake up. Hit me. Hate me. I'm begging you..."

But death is the most absolute silence of all. How far will a man go when he realizes he murdered his only salvation?

My fiancé accused me of not caring about family.
To appease him, I planned a family vacation.
But the night before we left, he informed me that he'd given my first-class seat to his childhood sweetheart.
And me? He stuck me in coach on a flight flagged for possible terror threats.
Everyone in his family thought I should just go along with it.
That was the moment I woke up.
I tore up the itinerary and booked myself a trip to Hawaii instead.
Then I turned off my phone and let them sweat over the hotel bill.
It wasn't until their reservation got canceled that they finally started to panic.