A Ruthless kind of love
Elena Marlowe is a quiet and gentle woman who never looked for trouble. But everything changes the night she meets Damien De Luca, a powerful Mafia boss known for being cold, arrogant, and ruthless.
From the beginning, Damien wants her-and he always gets what he wants. At first, Elena is afraid of him, but as time passes, she sees another side of the man everyone fears. With her, Damien becomes softer, more human. And for the first time, he learns what it means to love.
Their love is strong, but danger follows them everywhere. Friends turn into traitors, and even family members plot against them. Surrounded by lies and betrayal, Elena and Damien must fight for each other and for the life they dream of.
This is a story of love and danger, of passion and betrayal-where even in the darkest world, love can change everything.
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Chapter 1
The ballroom was a glitter cage. Chandeliers poured light into every corner, violins swooped over the buzz of money voices, and air had that wraithlike sheen of high perfume and greed. Elena Marlowe had never been so out of her depth in her life.
She stood on the periphery of the throng, black silk gown clinging to her form like a mourning shroud, the rim of the champagne flute chilled against her skin. She did not mingle. She did not come in order to be groomed like some man's trophy. She came as an assignee, a reluctant observer in a society that was alien to her. The thought caused a shiver along her spine.
And still, she could sense it-that pins-and-needles sensation of being watched.
Her spine tensed before she'd spun half around. He was the other side of the room, by the bar.
He didn't belong, either-not that the others did. When men swaggered and blustered, this one stayed silent, deadly, his black tuxedo fitted to a body that pulsed with power. He didn't need to intrude; he didn't need to be. He was adamant in a voice that boomed he never once heard the one word: no. His dark, inscrutable eyes fixed on hers as if the rest of the ballroom melted away.
Elena's own throat constricted. Something deep within her growled warning. She ripped her face away, only to feel the weight of his eyes still upon her.
A wrist was ensnared in a hand.
"Miss Marlowe," slurred the drunk smile of one of her editor's friends. His mouth whiskey-tasting, his grip too tight. "You are lovely. May I-"
"No," she snarled, trying to squirm loose.
The man just laughed, holding her closer. "Don't play games. I insist-"
"Let. Her. Go."
The voice cut through the noise like a knife. Smooth and cold and commanding.
Elena froze.
The man in the black suit materialized out of nowhere-huge, ominous, the acrid smell of his aftershave cutting and burning, reminiscent of the smell of heated metal fumes. His presence overwhelmed her, of a kind that warped the air itself.
The investor brushed her aside with a flinch under that intense scrutiny. Without a word, he melted into the crowd and disappeared.
There was a pause between Elena and the stranger. Her heart was pounding in her ears, her skin tingling with a presence that she could not shake.
"Are you all right?" His voice softened now, but no less commanding.
She swallowed. "I could have done it myself."
His brow furrowed. His lips curled, but not in a smile, a sneer of laughter at her expense. "Perhaps. But I dislike men playing with what does not belong to them."
The words hit her like a match to tinder. What in the world don't they have. Their haughtiness made her want to strike him-although the tone, the very commanding tone of it, sent sparks flying up her breast and terrified her.
"Excuse me?" she managed, her voice smaller than she wished.
His eyes locked with hers. He didn't blink, and he didn't back down. As if he could see through every obstacle she had worked so doggedly to erect around herself.
"Do you always interfere in other people's affairs?" she spat, trying to put steel into her voice.
"Only when I want to," he said, an equanimity about his words that suggested that was all there was to it.
The nerve left her breathless. This man wasn't asking-this man was used to commanding. His arrogance of the sort that shattered resistance before it ever had so much as a chance to form.
"You shouldn't-"
But he moved toward her, close enough that she could feel the vibration of his breath along the whorl of her ear. His voice a whisper, lethal in its softness.
"You'll see," he breathed, "I don't always do what I should."
Her gut tightened. Promised and threatened, the words were bound together.
And then he withdrew, as suddenly as he'd appeared. "Enjoy the rest of your evening, Elena."
She stiffened. He'd said her name. She hadn't provided it.
Before she could ask him how he'd known it, he melted into the crowd, was gone as if the ballroom swallowed him up.
Elena's heart stalled, thudding. Terror gripped her ribcage, but it was tangled with something she couldn't let her brain acknowledge. Attraction.
No. No, she didn't. He was danger. Men like him always were.
She lingered no longer, his presence burdening her like a specter. On the ride home, she tried to remind herself that he was nothing more than another condescending man, one she would never lay eyes on again. But the pitch of his voice-icy, authoritative-would not be silenced.
Not until she reached the apartment, by which time she'd nearly given up on it.
Nearly.
For when she came in, the tableau brought her up short.
A single white rose, whole and unblemished, on the table by the window. Lost. Irrecoverable. Meant.
She gasped with shock. She hadn't placed it there.
Her heart stumbled to burst, half-way between fear and something infinitely worse: the thrill of knowing she'd already been taken.
And against her will, a shuddering thrill ran through her.
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8.2
The prophecy didn't save me, it claimed me.
Death was not her ending...... it was her rebirth.
Awakened into a world of gods, bloodlines, and ancient curses, she learns that her second life is bound to a prophecy written long before she existed. Marked by divine blood and hunted by fate, she becomes the one Olympus never wanted to rise again.
As secrets unfold and forbidden bonds form, she must decide whether to obey the destiny forced upon her or defy the gods who control her future. But prophecies always demand a price, and some rebirths are meant to destroy the world that created them.
Because being reborn under a cursed prophecy means there is no escape, only fate.
7.4
My husband, a powerful tech mogul, stole my sister' s posthumous research award. He gave it to his young protégé. The same woman who killed my sister.
He didn't just steal her legacy. He threatened to destroy my lab and my life's work-the cure for the very cancer that took our family-if I didn't publicly endorse his mistress.
When I confronted him, he let her destroy my irreplaceable samples. Then, he had my hands, the hands of a neuroscientist, systematically broken to ensure I could never work again.
He imprisoned me, forcing me to sign away my entire career and publicly apologize for crimes I didn't commit.
He called it "discipline," a lesson I needed to learn. How could the man who swore to protect me become my personal tormentor?
But as I lay in a hospital bed, broken and alone, a text message lit up my screen: "Need help? I owe your family a debt." He thought he had erased me. He had only forged me into a weapon.
9.7
Existing in a depressed life without a glimpse of hope, Alice lived with her uncle, who mistreated her badly.
She finally found her mate whom she had sought for and wished to have.
Her mate rejected her after she caught him cheating.
She ran away but found out that she was pregnant. She moved on with her life and planned to raise her kids alone.
On a momentous day, a sinister plot by jealous forces threatens; her children; they were kidnapped by unknown people.
Alice was unable to find her kids after all efforts. In a while she discovered that it was her powerful rival, the Villain that orchestrated the kidnap.
She got back to her mate, Andrew, to help her find her kids.
What was his reaction to his secret babies Alice has hidden from him, can Andrew and Alice put their differences aside to rescue them?
9.6
"I don't want you. I hate you."
Those words from her only son slice deeper than any blade.
Sarah returns from the hospital expecting love, only to find her place at the family table stolen.
Her husband, James, stands arm in arm with Tiana - his late brother's widow, while her son clings to the other woman's waist, rejecting his own mother.
The betrayal does not end there.
After a confrontation with Tiana, she woke up in an abandoned building, her hands tied, and mouth taped.
Beside her was Tiana too. Tied. James stood, his confused gaze darting from Tiana to Sarah.
And then came the baritone voice from one of the kidnappers: "One life. One choice. You can only save one. Choose!"
Sarah turned, seeing how Tiana was communicating with the kidnappers with her eyes.
She struggled to let James see the truth; that this was all a setup. But she couldn't. Her mouth was tapped.
But then, like a match striking steel, James' voice came brittle and final. "Tiana."
He chose his ex over his own wife. Over the mother of his child.
Sarah was abandoned in the warehouse. Immediately they left, the warehouse exploded, covered in flames.
And Sarah's screams and cries inside, filled the night.
Did Sarah survive the fire outbreak?
If she did, can they stand her revenge when she finally returns?
8.0
For six years, I played the perfect, submissive wife to Wall Street titan Francis Castro. I suffocated my own ambitions to fit into his conservative world.
But while I waited alone at a Michelin restaurant, a news alert popped up. My husband had just dropped millions on an aquamarine diamond necklace for his "muse," Chanelle.
The real nightmare began when I rushed home to find our five-year-old son in severe anaphylactic shock. I frantically called Francis from the ambulance, but he manually rejected my calls. He couldn't leave the bidding war for Chanelle's PR launch.
When he finally arrived at the ER, Chanelle was right beside him, wearing that blinding multi-million-dollar necklace. He didn't ask about our dying son.
"Why weren't you watching him?" he demanded, his voice hard and accusing.
And when my son woke up, hazy from the drugs, he rejected my touch and reached for Chanelle instead. Francis just stood there, praising Chanelle for knowing exactly how to calm him down.
I stared at the three of them looking like a perfect, happy family. Six years of swallowing my pride, only to realize my husband would let our son choke to death just to buy another woman's smile.
The last thread of my heart snapped. I handed him the divorce papers, demanding zero alimony. Then, I drove to a hidden Brooklyn loft, cut off my hair, and unlocked my safe.
It was time to resurrect my true identity—the legendary fashion designer, Ember.J. I am going to burn her empire to the ground.
8.9
I lay on a mildewed mattress in a run-down motel, my body trembling from withdrawal. Once the most feared "Gossip Queen" in Hollywood, I was now a forty-three-year-old ghost staring at a cracked mirror, waiting for the end.
The door clicked open, and Brittany Potts stepped in, looking immaculate in a beige trench coat that cost more than my life. She didn't come to help; she tossed a waiver of marital assets onto my bed and handed me a cup of coffee laced with something that smelled like bitter almonds.
She laughed, telling me my husband, Bennet, was already in the Bahamas celebrating my death. I froze when I saw the sapphire pendant around her neck—my mother’s necklace, which had vanished the day she died. As the poison began to burn through my chest, Brittany leaned in and whispered her final secret: she was the one who cut the brake lines on the car that killed my father when we were teenagers.
My entire life had been a lie. The pills, the scandal, the bankruptcy—it was all a masterpiece of betrayal orchestrated by the two people I trusted most. I died on that filthy floor, suffocating on my own rage and the taste of chemicals, praying for a single chance to make them pay.
But when I opened my eyes, the pain was gone. I was sitting in my old bedroom, the morning sun shining on a calendar that read September 15, 2024. My mother’s voice, warm and alive, called me for breakfast from downstairs. I was eighteen again, back in my senior year at Crestview Academy, and the monsters who destroyed me were still pretending to be my friends. This time, I’m the one who holds the shears.