Bound By Contract, Tied By Faith
Ivy Hart didn't just lose love, she was destroyed by it.
Publicly betrayed by the man she thought she'd marry, her heartbreak becomes a spectacle she can't escape. Humiliated, angry, and done believing in forever, Ivy swears she'll never be that vulnerable again.
Then Damian Blackwood steps in.
Ruthless. Possessive. A man who doesn't ask, he takes.
His offer is simple, his tone is not:
Marry me.
A contract. Strict rules. No love. No questions.
But Ivy quickly learns one thing. Damian doesn't share.
Not his power.
Not his control.
And definitely not what he considers his.
What was supposed to be a cold, calculated arrangement turns suffocatingly intense. The way he watches her. The way he touches her. The way his voice drops when he says, "You're mine, Ivy."
It's not part of the contract.
And neither is the jealousy that burns in his eyes when her past comes crawling back, begging for a second chance.
Because Damian doesn't believe in love...
But he believes in possession.
And once he's claimed something, he never lets it go.
As secrets unravel and the truth behind their marriage begins to surface, Ivy realizes she didn't just sign a contract.
She signed herself over to a man who would destroy anyone who tries to take her away... even if that means destroying her too.
When the contract ends, one question remains:
Will Ivy walk away with her heart intact...
or will Damian make sure she never leaves at all?
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Chapter 7
The Weight of Yesterday
I sat there, still holding the cup of tea, but I wasn't really in that room anymore.
My body was there. My hands were warm from the cup. The sunlight still touched the desk.
But my mind... had gone somewhere else.
Far away.
Back to a time when life was soft. When things were simple. When I still believed everything would be okay.
I closed my eyes slowly.
And just like that... I was ten years old again.
My father's laugh used to fill the house.
It was loud, warm, and full of life. The kind of laugh that made you feel safe without even thinking about it.
He was a firefighter.
To me, he wasn't just a firefighter. He was a hero. My hero.
I remember the way he would come home, tired but smiling, his uniform smelling faintly of smoke. He would lift me up into his arms like I weighed nothing at all.
"Did you miss me, little star?" he would ask.
And I always nodded, even if he had only been gone for a few hours.
Because I always missed him.
The day everything changed... didn't feel different at first.
It was just another normal day.
Until it wasn't.
There was a fire.
A bad one, a building burning so fast that people couldn't get out in time.
My father didn't hesitate. He never did.
He went in.
They said there was a little girl trapped inside.
He found her. He saved her.
He carried her out.
Everyone said he was brave.
Everyone said he was a hero.
But...
When he went back in again...
The building didn't hold.
It collapsed.
And it took him with it.
I remember the silence that came after.
The kind of silence that doesn't just sit in a room... it presses into your chest.
It was heavy.
Too heavy for a ten-year-old heart.
My mother didn't scream when she heard the news.
She didn't cry at first either.
She just... stood there.
Like the world had stopped moving.
Like she had forgotten how to breathe.
Then she collapsed.
Right in front of me.
That was the first time her heart failed her.
And it never truly recovered.
My mother was strong before that.
So strong.
She was a fashion designer.
Her shop in San Francisco was beautiful.
Bright fabrics. Soft lights. Dresses hanging like dreams waiting to be worn.
She loved what she did.
But more than that...
She loved my father.
Deeply. Completely.
Losing him broke something inside her that no one could fix.
Not doctors.
Not time.
Not even me.
Years passed, but things didn't get better.
They got quieter and harder.
The shop... the place she built with her own hands...
Was taken away.
Demolished.
Gone.
Just like that.
I remember standing there, holding her hand, watching the place disappear piece by piece.
It felt like watching her heart break all over again.
By the time I graduated high school, I already understood something most people my age didn't.
Life doesn't always give you time to breathe.
Sometimes it just keeps taking.
And taking.
And taking.
I got a job.
A small one.
As a secretary.
It wasn't what I dreamed of.
But dreams didn't matter anymore, survival did.
My mother's hospital bills kept growing, her condition kept getting worse.
And I...
I was desperate.
People don't understand desperation until they feel it.
It's not just fear.
It's not just worry.
It's like drowning slowly... while trying to smile like you're okay.
Rumors started.
Ugly and cruel ones.
They said I was sleeping with my boss.
That I was doing things just to get promoted.
It spread fast.
Faster than I could defend myself.
Faster than I could explain.
I told the truth.
I begged people to believe me.
But no one listened.
No one cared.
Then it reached the news.
And my mother saw it.
I still remember that moment.
The way her eyes looked at me.
Confused and hurt.
Like she didn't recognize me anymore.
She tried to speak...
But the words never came.
She collapsed again.
This time...
She didn't wake up.
The doctors said it was too much for her heart.
Too much shock.
Too much pain.
She slipped into a coma.
And just like that...
I lost her too not completely, but enough to feel like I was alone. Life after that was... quiet.
But not peaceful.
Just empty.
I resigned from my job.
I couldn't stay there.
Not after everything.
Not after the whispers.
The stares.
The judgment.
I tried to explain.
To the people close to me.
To anyone who would listen.
But the truth didn't matter anymore.
Once people believe something bad about you...
It's hard to change their minds.
Then I met him.
Lucas.
He was kind.
Gentle in a way I didn't expect.
He didn't look at me like I was broken.
He looked at me like I was still... me.
He helped me.
He stayed with me at the hospital.
He talked to my mother, even when she couldn't respond.
He told me things would get better.
That I wasn't alone.
For a while...
I believed him.
But life has a way of reminding you...
That hope can be fragile.
I opened my eyes slowly.
The office came back into view.
The sunlight.
The desk.
The cup in my hands.
And the card.
Fifty thousand dollars.
Six months.
A contract.
My fingers tightened around the cup.
My chest felt heavy.
Everything I had been through...
Every loss...
Every struggle...
Every moment of being alone...
It all led me here.
To this choice.
I looked down at the card again.
Then I whispered, softly...
"My mom needs this."
My voice shook, but I didn't stop.
"She needs me."
Tears slipped down my face quietly.
I didn't wipe them.
I just let them fall.
"I don't have a choice..."
And in that moment...
I knew.
This wasn't about pride.
It wasn't about fear.
It wasn't even about him.
It was about her.
I took a deep breath, steadying myself.
Slowly...
I reached for the card.
"I'll do it."
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7.2
Title- A Name Without A Past
Author- Abraham Tejiri Onojighofia
Genre: Psychological Suspense Romance / Crime Thriller
Tagline: Memory lies. Danger doesn't..
Larry awakens in an abandoned hospital with no name, no past, and no memories-except one. A woman's face. Her voice. Her presence. The single image floating in the hollow wreckage of his mind is so sharp, so undeniable, that he knows she matters. He doesn't know who he is, but he knows he must find her.
Moments after he escapes the hospital, someone tries to kill him.
Driven by instinct and the one memory he trusts, Larry follows the fragment of recognition until it leads him to Ella Morgan, a composed and fiercely intelligent homicide detective. But instead of relief, he's met with confusion. Ella has never seen him before. According to her, he is a stranger.
But danger arrives before either of them can walk away.
A sudden attack convinces Ella that Larry is not lying-someone wants him dead. And the attempt on his life mirrors the recent string of unsolved murders she is investigating. Against policy and against her better judgment, Ella takes him under temporary protection. Immediately, unsettling cracks begin to appear in her certainty.
Larry recognizes places connected to the case.
He reacts to threats with a trained instinct he can't explain.
And his fragmented flashbacks seem tied to secrets Ella wasn't supposed to uncover.
As they race to piece together his missing identity, a darker truth begins to emerge. Larry's amnesia is no accident. Evidence points to a covert operation, a covered-up crime, and powerful enemies determined to bury the truth permanently. His erased memory may hold the key to a conspiracy that reaches into the police force, the city's elite-and Ella's own past.
With each step closer to the truth, the connection between them deepens. Larry feels drawn to her with an unshakable certainty that defies logic, while Ella fights the pull of a man who may be the missing link to her most dangerous case yet.
But as Larry's memories begin to return, so does a chilling realization:
Ella wasn't just a face in his mind. She was the last person he tried to protect before everything went dark.
Now, the enemies hunting Larry have turned their sights on her.
In a deadly race against a faceless adversary, Larry and Ella must unravel the past he's forgotten before it destroys them both. Because the silence Larry woke up with isn't empty-it's hiding a witness, a secret, and a truth someone is willing to kill to keep buried.
And the closer the truth gets, the more dangerous remembering becomes.
7.3
Five years ago, he had abandoned her, betrayed her, destroyed her company when she had trusted him and needed him the most.
Five years later, Evelyn was back for revenge. She would return everything he had done to her tenfold, and to do that, she needed to live in the same house with him again.
"Ex-husband, let's sign a marriage contract again!" Evelyn demanded after barging into her ex-husband's party.
"Okay."
****
She had sworn to frustrate and destroy his life as they live under the same roof but who can tell Evelyn why everything was different from what she had expected?
Who was this man cajoling her every request? Why is her ex-husband who's supposed to be an enemy looking at her dotingly?
Ex-husband, this was supposed to be a fierce revenge battle, not a love battle!
8.8
Scarlet's world shattered the night she discovered her husband in her bed with her own sister.
The betrayal was brutal. The humiliation, unforgivable. And what hurt the most? Neither of them felt a single ounce of remorse.
Within months, her husband divorced her and married the very woman who helped destroy her life, her sister.
They thought she would break. They thought she would disappear quietly.
They were wrong.
Ryan Marchetti-cold, calculating, and dangerously powerful, has spent years waiting for the perfect chance to destroy his business rival. Marrying that rival's ex-wife is the ultimate move. Strategic.
For Scarlet, marrying Ryan isn't about love. It's about revenge.
A calculated alliance. A public statement. A promise that she will rise from the ashes they left her in. Together, they become the scandal that shakes empires.
But revenge is never simple.
Because behind Ryan's icy control lies a secret, one tied to her past, to her ex-husband, to the very marriage that ruined her life. A truth so explosive it could unravel everything she thought she knew.
Was she just a pawn in Ryan's war from the very beginning?
Or is the man she's slowly falling for capable of betraying her too?
In a game fueled by vengeance, power, and buried truths, Scarlet must decide:
Will she let betrayal destroy her again...
Or will she risk her heart for the one man who might truly love her?
7.2
SYNOPSIS:
"I spent ten years scrubbing your floors, Greene. Tonight, you'll scrub mine."
Elara Vance has always been the pride the Republic until she ran away from home, fell in love with Greene Jones, a man who treated her like dirt and discarded her like she was never the girl the entire Republic feared because of her strong dominating pheromones.
Now she's back after twelve years to serve revenge to Greene Jones like a hot dish in a way that he will pay for every act meted out on her for twelve years. But things wasn't going to go as planned as she meets Silas, the handsome bulky head of her father's security but a recessive omega of her past that she has totally forgotten but now wears a new stance as her bodyguard, recognized by the entire republic as an Alpha, and her perfect chosen mate, Calvin; ruining the comeback and revenge she planned out for herself and now she has to think about saving and claiming her mate, Silas while navigating and protecting the seat meant for her.
The real question becomes; will Calvin ever allow her take all it took him twelve years to build?
THEME: The true definition of power. Is it found in the biological dominance of an Alpha, or in the resilience of an Omega who survived in the lion's den?
9.6
My world revolved around Jax Harding, my older brother's captivating rockstar friend.
From sixteen, I adored him; at eighteen, I clung to his casual promise: "When you're 22, maybe I'll settle down."
That offhand comment became my life's beacon, guiding every choice, meticulously planning my twenty-second birthday as our destiny.
But on that pivotal day in a Lower East Side bar, clutching my gift, my dream exploded.
I overheard Jax' s cold voice: "Can't believe Savvy's showing up. She' s still hung up on that stupid thing I said."
Then the crushing plot: "We' re gonna tell Savvy I' m engaged to Chloe, maybe even hint she' s pregnant. That should scare her off."
My gift, my future, slipped from my numb fingers.
I fled into the cold New York rain, devastated by betrayal.
Later, Jax introduced Chloe as his "fiancée" while his bandmates mocked my "adorable crush"-he did nothing.
As an art installation fell, he saved Chloe, abandoning me to severe injury.
In the hospital, he came for "damage control," then shockingly shoved me into a fountain, leaving me to bleed, calling me a "jealous psycho."
How could the man I loved, who once saved me, become this cruel and publicly humiliate me?
Why was my devotion seen as an annoyance to be brutally extinguished with lies and assault?
Was I just a problem, my loyalty met with hatred?
I would not be his victim.
Injured and betrayed, I made an unshakeable vow: I was done.
I blocked his number and everyone connected to him, severing ties.
This was not an escape; this was my rebirth.
Florence awaited, a new life on my terms, unburdened by broken promises.
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.