365 Nights, Two Stepbrothers, One Me.
I moaned out his name. "Damien, you are not trying hard to get me, yet .."
He smirked and whispered to my ears. "I like being hard, Not "trying" hard."
When Lila Sinclair's mother is sentenced to life in prison, her world collapses overnight. With nowhere else to go, she is taken in by Sebastian Blackwood, her mother's former lover. A powerful, reserved man who agrees to shelter her under strict conditions.
Lila is placed in his household... and into a life she never asked for, sharing a roof with two stepbrothers who change everything.
Damien is danger wrapped in charm...intense, controlling, and impossible to ignore. Ethan, on the other hand, is steady, kind, and grounding...the only place she feels safe when everything else feels like it's slipping away.
But Lila's situation comes with a hidden clause: her stay in the country is temporary. Within 365 days, her legal protection expires. To remain, she must marry one of the Blackwood heirs.
One house. Two brothers. Twelve months of blurred lines, buried secrets, and emotions she was never meant to feel.
As desire clashes with safety and passion wars with peace, Lila is forced into a choice that could secure her future...or destroy it completely.
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Chapter 5
Lila Sinclair's POV
I stared at my reflection in the mirror, hardly recognizing the girl in front of me. The soft curls Ethan had fixed in my hair bounced over my shoulders, my dress hugged my body in all the right places, and the light makeup made me look like I belonged to this mansion, like I'd always been this polished.
Ethan leaned against the doorframe with that smug grin of his.
"Damn, Lila. If Damien doesn't thank my father for adopting you, I will."
I rolled my eyes, but heat rushed to my cheeks. "Stop flattering me."
"I'm not flattering," he said, stepping closer, his eyes scanning me slowly, deliberately. "I'm stating facts. Tonight, you're about to make one woman very jealous."
I raised my brow. "Stephanie?"
He chuckled, shaking his head. "Smart girl. You'll catch on quick."
I sighed. "So let me get this straight. You're dragging me to your ex's birthday party to... what? Parade me like some trophy?"
"Exactly." He smirked wider, his tone playful but sharp underneath. "Steph's the type who hates losing. She dumped me thinking she'd crawl back whenever she pleased. Tonight, you're going to help me prove she lost me for good."
I folded my arms. "And what do I get in return for being your little prop?"
"Fun," he said immediately, leaning in with a mischievous wink. "And maybe... a tiny crash course in surviving rich-people drama. Trust me, you'll need it."
I laughed despite myself. His energy was infectious...flirty, cocky, but so damn easy to be around.
***
The ride to the party felt like something out of a movie. The sleek black car, the city lights reflecting off tinted windows, Ethan in a perfectly tailored suit beside me. He was humming along to some playlist, relaxed, while I kept fiddling with my fingers.
"You nervous?" he asked, catching me.
"Of course I am," I muttered. "This is my first time walking into some glamorous party as... well, anything."
He reached over, brushing his fingers over mine in a casual but reassuring way. "Relax, Lil babyyy. All you gotta do is stand beside me, smile when I tell you to, laugh at my terrible jokes. Easy."
I smirked. "Your jokes are terrible already. That won't be acting."
"Exactly. You're perfect for this role." he smiled warmly and brushed my hair softly off my shoulders.
The mansion where the party was hosted was dripping in luxury, crystal chandeliers, waiters with champagne, the faint hum of a live band playing something jazzy in the background. And the people... God, everyone looked like they had been carved straight out of fashion magazines.
I froze for a second at the entrance, but Ethan pressed a hand to the small of my back.
"Breathe," he whispered, warm against my ear. "And remember, they wish they looked as good as you."
We entered, and heads turned. I swore I heard someone whisper, "Who's she?" The power of appearances was insane.
Then I saw her.
Stephanie.
She was tall, striking, with flawless red lips and a dress that clung to her like second skin. And the look on her face when her eyes landed on me and Ethan? pure venom dressed in a smile.
"Well, well," she purred as she walked over, champagne glass in hand. "Ethan. You finally learned how to accessorize."
I stiffened, but Ethan slipped his arm around my waist smoothly.
"Stephanie," he said warmly, almost mocking. "Meet Lila. My girl."
Her brows arched, lips twitching. "Your... girl?"
I forced myself to meet her gaze, faking confidence I didn't feel. "Hi."
Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Cute." She turned back to Ethan, her voice sugar-coated poison. "Didn't think you'd move on so fast."
"Didn't think you'd care," he shot back easily, then kissed my temple for good measure. My stomach flipped, though I reminded myself this was all for show.
Stephanie's laugh was sharp. "Enjoy the party, Ethan. Don't choke on your rebound." And with that, she sauntered off, hips swaying like she owned the floor.
I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. "She hates me."
"She hates losing," Ethan corrected, grinning. "And thanks to you, she's losing big time tonight."
I couldn't help but laugh. The rest of the evening blurred into music, laughter, and Ethan keeping me close, introducing me to his friends, making me laugh so much my cheeks hurt. For a moment, I forgot I was the outsider.
But somewhere between the toasts and the endless glasses of champagne, Ethan started to slip. His jokes got louder, his arm heavier around me. His laughter, looser.
By midnight, he was leaning against the bar, glass in hand, eyes half-lidded. "Lil babyy... you're the best fake girlfriend ever."
I frowned. "You're drunk."
"And you're... so pretty," he slurred with a lazy grin.
I sighed. "Great. Just great."
"Catch ya later, imma go hook up with some ass." he rose as he walked off
"Great! Time up, Lila." I muttered, and suddenly I felt out of place again. Alone, despite the crowd. Ethan was lost in his drunken haze, his friends laughing around him. Nobody noticed me slip away.
***
The night air was sharp as I walked down the driveway, heels clicking on pavement. I tried to call an Uber, but the app kept glitching. Figures.
Frustration bubbled in my chest. My first night out in this world, and of course, I end up stranded. I started walking, hugging myself, when headlights flashed across me. A car screeched to a halt inches away.
I gasped, stumbling back. My heart pounded as the tinted window lowered slightly.
"What the hell?!" I yelled, anger and nerves spilling out. "Do you not know how to drive? You almost killed me, you idiot!"
No answer. Just silence. My hands trembled as I stepped closer, glaring.
"Whoever you are, you need to open your damn eyes instead of speeding like a maniac..." I cursed.
Yes. This was me, whenever I get frustrated and confused.
"Move away!" I barked.
Then my gaze fell on the license plate.
My breath caught.
I knew that number. I knew the name written on the top of the plate.
My lips parted in shock, the words dying in my throat.
The car's engine revved, and before I could say anything else, it sped off into the night, leaving me standing frozen in the middle of the street.
Damien Blackwood.
It had been Damien.
The realization hit me like ice water, and my knees almost buckled. He'd seen me. Heard me. And the way I had screamed at him...God.
If looks could kill, I was sure I had just signed my death sentence.
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7.2
Azura Briggs was just a broke college student working freezing valet shifts to pay her adoptive mother's crushing medical debt.
Her desperate life shattered the night a bulletproof Maybach violently cornered her in an alley, and a ruthless billionaire kidnapped her by mistake.
After a harrowing escape, Azura was forced to take a humiliating "plus-one" gig at a high-end gala just to survive. But her date turned out to be the billionaire's arrogant nephew, who promptly abandoned her to the wolves. Cornered by a sleazy executive and his psychotic wife, Azura was publicly slapped, her dress torn, and left bleeding on the floor while hundreds of elites watched in disgust.
Just as she prepared to fight to the death, the crowd violently parted. Hunter Mcintosh, the terrifying man who had kidnapped her days ago, dropped to his knees in the broken glass and wrapped his bespoke jacket around her trembling shoulders.
Azura was completely paralyzed. Why was the monster who threatened her life now destroying billionaires just to protect her?
But the illusion of safety didn't last. Trapped in his Maybach hours later, Hunter threw a draconian employment contract at her feet.
"Sign it, and her care is covered. Forever."
He knew exactly how to break her. He was offering to pay off her mother's debt, but only if she signed her life away to become his personal assistant. With no other way out, Azura picked up the heavy pen.
8.3
He laid me on the sheets, climbed over me, caged me with his arms. "Last chance to run," he said, voice low."I need the money," I whispered, feeling so tiny in his arms."You're soaking," he muttered. "Virgin or not, your pussy wants this."I moaned, looking away, couldn't help it,"Eyes on me, sweetheart," he pushed his tip in slowly."Fuck," he groaned. "So tight."He fucked me like he was claiming something. "Come for me," he whispered in my ears, moving faster."Damien," I cried out his name as I came."That's it," he growled. After a long minute he pulled out slowly. "One night," he said again, almost like a reminder....weeks later, I walked through the quiet hall of my school. A massive portrait stared back at me.Damien BlackwoodPrincipal Benefactor and OwnerColumbia University.Same man who'd just taken my virginity for money. My stomach dropped. "Oh fuck... what have I done?"
9.2
When Alma's father stood in front of the bulldozers to protest, the energy company's thugs beat him half to death in the mud.
Instead of arresting the attackers, the police handcuffed her bleeding father and threw him into a cruiser.
"Stay back, kid," the officer barked, shoving Alma away.
Her father was denied bail and framed for assaulting an officer. The corrupt mayor just smiled and told her not to cause a scene. Meanwhile, the company mailed her weeping mother a severance check that barely covered a month of groceries.
Alma was forced to watch her family be completely destroyed by men with money and power.
Kneeling in the cold dirt where her father's blood had spilled, she didn't shed a single tear. The panic in her chest died, replaced by a cold, absolute hatred.
She realized that crying wouldn't do anything. In this world, justice didn't exist for the weak.
Years later, Alma stepped onto a prestigious Ivy League campus, her cheap backpack slung over her shoulder.
She was surrounded by the arrogant children of the very executives who ruined her life.
She lowered her head, hiding her dead eyes, and put on the perfect mask of a timid, helpless charity case.
Undergrad was just a training ground, and these elite kids were just her practice dummies. The hunt was officially on.
9.8
Erica Murphy had spent three years rotting in a freezing prison cell.
She thought she was serving time for a tragic accident, but the truth was much darker. Her husband, Colten, had framed her for his mistress's drunk hit-and-run, stolen her fortune, and left her to take the fall.
The day Erica was finally released, a speeding car intentionally slammed into her, shattering her spine. As she lay dying on the emergency room table, flatlining on the monitor, Colten and his pregnant mistress didn't come to save her. Instead, they tossed a stack of divorce papers onto her bloody hospital blanket. They wanted her to sign away her last remaining shares and take on thirty million dollars of toxic corporate debt.
"Sign it," Colten demanded coldly, looking at her crushed body with utter disgust. "Consider this the last bit of dignity I'm giving you."
The original Erica died right there, suffocating in despair and betrayal, unable to understand how the man she loved could be so monstrous.
But when the flatline on the monitor suddenly spiked and her eyes snapped open, the traumatized victim was gone.
Replaced by the cold, calculating consciousness of a future special ops commander. With microscopic nanobots rapidly fusing her shattered bones together, Erica picked up the pen, preparing to burn Colten's entire empire to ashes.
8.6
Eleanor Sinclair always knew her stepmother and stepsister were leeches, but she never expected their betrayal to reach into her private study.
In the dead of night, she caught the family's trusted nanny of twelve years photographing confidential trust documents. The mastermind paying her off was Lillian, Eleanor's stepmother, who had been secretly embezzling estate funds and bribing tutors to deliberately ruin the academic future of Eleanor's younger brother, the only legitimate heir.
Emboldened by their deceit, the parasites grew arrogant. Her stepsister, Isabelle, deliberately flaunted her secret affair with Eleanor’s billionaire fiancé, sobbing fake tears while waiting for Eleanor to suffer a humiliating nervous breakdown.
When the tension finally peaked, Lillian played the victim so perfectly that Eleanor's own father, a powerful U.S. Senator, stormed into the room with a raised hand, ready to strike his own daughter.
"You will apologize to your stepsister immediately! I will not have this family harmony destroyed by your petty jealousy!"
They actually expected her to be a weeping, heartbroken girl. They thought cheap hotel affairs and stolen pennies could outsmart the true Sinclair bloodline. Did they really believe a few fake tears and a weak-willed father could strip her of her empire?
Eleanor didn't feel anger; she felt the cold, detached fascination of a biologist observing doomed insects. She calmly pulled out the forensic audits, locked down the estate's exits, and prepared her stepmother's psychiatric commitment papers. The merciless purge of her family had officially begun.
9.4
Blurb;
"I don't love you and I will never love you, Isabelle Yang!" I froze as the hatred in his eyes held me captive. I knew he wasn't happy with this arrangement. Neither was I.
"But I am your wife, Emerson."
"Wife?" He scoffed, stepping closer until my back hit the wall and I was trapped between his arms.
"You mean wife... or just the woman chosen to carry my heir?" His words were the truth. That was the only reason I was here. Still, they hurt more than I expected.
"You hurt my girlfriend by coming into our lives," he continued coldly.
"And I plan to make you feel twice the pain you caused her."
Then he did something worse than yelling-he sanitized his hands after touching me, as if I disgusted him.
He walked away, leaving me heartbroken and shaking, wondering what I had done to deserve so much hatred.
...
Isabelle Yang never imagined that her life could spiral into more darkness after catching her boyfriend and twin sister in bed on the night meant to celebrate their two-year anniversary.
Before she could even recover, a call from home changed everything. Her marriage had been arranged with the Winters-one of the most powerful families in Europe. And her husband? Emerson Winters, the ruthless heir who cared about only two things... himself and his childhood sweetheart, Salma Hayden.
But what happens when his love isn't enough to bear an heir, and he is forced into a marriage with Isabelle-a woman he sees as a mistake, a burden, an obligation?
What will become of two hearts trapped in a marriage where hatred and resentment rule the day?
Read this book to find out;
The Billionaire's Unwanted Wife
A novel by Queenebunoluwa15