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 5
Elena vowed to herself she wouldn't respond to the message. She wouldn't look out the window. She wouldn't-
And she did.
And there he was. Damien. Standing by his car as if staking his claim on it, shadows curled around him, predator at rest. His eyes lit upon hers almost instantly behind the rain-glazed panes. Everything came to a stop.
Come down.
Two words. An invitation.
Her body carried her before her head knew. Her jacket on, keys in her pocket, and she floated towards the scent of wet cement and night danger.
Fog stuck to her eyelashes as she advanced toward him. Her heart pounding so rapidly that she thought he might hear it.
"You shouldn't be here," she panted.
Damien's eyes slid over her lazily, devouring. "And yet, you are."
She thrust her lips forward to speak, but the words fled from her. He closed the space in two strides, his fingers wrapped around her wrist. Not cruel-never rigid-but possessive, as if she was already his.
Her breathing ceased. "Damien-"
Her protest dissolved in his kiss.
This kiss was no different. This wasn't a test, this wasn't foreplay. This was blaze. His lips were hard and commanding, pulling the air from her lungs. Her hands struck his chest in response, but instead of pushing, they slipped over the softness of his shirt and clutched hard to the storm he unleashed.
His flavor hit her-liquor-sour, whiskey-bitter, and a richer, brasher kiss. She whined before she could bite it back, and he latched onto the sound, nipping her more fiercely. His tongue caressed hers, smooth and bold, and she shuddered.
He had the flavor of sin. Of everything she ought to run from and everything she secretly desired.
Her knees buckled and Damien's arm wrapped around her waist, dragging her into the crook of his body. His other hand was deep in her wet hair, tilting her face to bury the kiss deeper, shoving her away so she couldn't breathe.
Her mind was screaming stop, but her body had betrayed her with every shuddering breath, every leaning into his touch.
"Say you don't want this," he snarled into her mouth, voice raspy.
She tried to say something, but words jammed in her throat. His mouth tracked down the line of her jaw, then on, igniting a hunger-unslaked fire running down the back of her neck. She gasped on her breath coarsely when his teeth closed on the flesh, the bite hot with the fire of his tongue.
"Damien." A prayer she did not even know.
His hand fell beneath her coat, down her waist shape, the cotton hump her blouse clung to wet skin. His belly-hand, hard and gripping, pulled her in until she was all of him on her.
Rain wet her clothes, plastered her blouse to her skin, and his hand became more confident, moving up, exploring the underside of the curve of her breast. She quivered at helplessly, fire searing its way through her, every nerve screaming for more.
Her head was thrown back against the cold metal of his vehicle as his lips again possessed hers, tongue piercing with savage ferocity. He kissed her as if he belonged to her, as if she was a puzzle to be unraveled piece by piece.
It was spinning, reeling, terrified.
Her fingers were digging into his shoulders, looking for balance, nails scrabbling into him as if that would contain the storm within her.
He growled softly in the back of his throat, a vibration against her mouth. His hand came lower this time, over the curve of her hip, his fingers pressing hard, pulling her up into him until she felt the unmistakable proof of his hunger.
Her flesh dissolved to water, a traitor. A cry was torn from her lips, taken by his kiss.
And when the world was spinning so madly she would never know herself again, Damien let her go.
Abrupt. Crude.
He backed off, fingers still on her hip, gasping harshly but his eyes flashing and in control. She was trembling, mouth puffed out, breasts rising and falling against her wetted blouse.
"Because." His voice was gruff. "Because I'm not going to lose control like that."
Damien's retort was tracing her bottom lip with his thumb, his black-lit and dark eyes brimming with potential. "Because control is mine, Elena. And when I take you finally." His voice dropped, steel and velvet.
".you'll beg me not to stop."
Her heart pounded, her knees so weak she was afraid she'd fall on her face.
He stepped back from her, standing there trembling in the night air, the memory of his touch seared onto her skin.
The door of the car creaked open. He was there.
And despite all rational thought telling her to climb out, Elena was getting into the car, still shaking at the kiss she had just received, at the way he had undressed her with hands and mouth only.
She knew it then, in a fear of knowing.
Damien would murder her.
And she was going to let him.
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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.