Falling into the devil's bed
Penelope thought she was her husband's one and only love. Until she caught him in bed with her twin sister.
Penelope Verdant has lived her life as a pawn and slave to her family desiring freedom. The only happiness in her life was her marriage of four years. She believed her husband loved her, he treated her well and never gave her a reason to doubt his love. But when she finds out he's been sleeping with her sister longer than she's been married to him, she becomes disillusioned with her marriage.
She wants revenge for her wasted years. She files for divorce, only for her husband to reject it. Backed into a corner, she seeks help from a man she should never have sought out. The man known as The Devil of Deals, an elusive billionaire who wants nothing more than to possess her completely. His price is costly, one she isn't sure she can afford. But marriage is an even worse fate than selling her soul.
Will she get her revenge, shatter the chains of her old life, and rise as the queen? Or will she sink into the depths of hell? The path from pawn to queen isn't an easy one...and the Devil is not patient.
(Content Warning: this is a dark billionaire romance containing mature themes including but not limited to: explicit sexual content, unhealthy obsession, toxic love, forbidden love, pain and blood kink, physical and sexual abuse (not between main characters), taboo family dynamics, a lot of swearing, and violence. Morality is but a friendly suggestion to the characters of this story. Proceed with caution.)
THE THALORIAN PANTHEON SAGA LINEUP:
BOOK 1.0: FALLING INTO THE DEVIL'S BED.
BOOK 2.0: INFERNAL LILY (coming soon).
BOOK 0.5: HIS HEAVENLY CURSE (coming soon).
Chapters
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Chapter 5
Penelope's POV:
I gently place Leila on the bed and open up his envelope. "Oh wow, you're divorcing me too! Isn't this convenient? Why don't we both sign them and go on our merry ways?"
His eyes narrow. "You're cheating on me, isn't it?"
I blink rapidly. "I beg your finest pardon?"
"That's why you're divorcing me. How long has this been going on? Huh? Those business trips, that's when you meet him, isn't it?"
I don't reply. Only because I can't wrap my head around the nonsense coming out of his mouth.
"Is it my brother? Who is it?!"
Something snaps inside me. Something deeply fundamental to my sanity. Blood rushes to my head. My hand flies to my mouth and I bite down on my thumb. Hard. The pain shocks me out of the rage in my gut.
All my rational thinking flies out of the window.
"Don't give me that fucking shit! You're fucking my sister! And you have the....oh my goodness...you have the nerve to stand there and accuse me?!"
A calm washes over his face. "You know." He says. It wasn't a question. There wasn't the slightest bit of guilt in it. If anything he sounded annoyed.
I feel like clawing my hair out. I feel like bashing his face into my knee. I feel like ripping him to shreds.
"How did you find out? I made sure you'd never."
Tears of anger and hurt and betrayal burn my eyes. "You sick bastard."
"Don't give me that look. Did you really buy it? My affection? My love? You thought it was all real?" When I don't reply he scoffs and continues. "Wow. For such a smart woman, you're awfully dumb as well."
"Sign the papers, Charles. We're done." I clench my fists. My entire world feels like it's closing in on me.
He shakes his head, clicking his tongue twice. "How long have you known? Ah, let me guess. Before our anniversary? No wonder you were so cold to me. I just commend you though. Being able to bottle it up for this long....kudos. You're amazing. It must have hurt, no?"
A tear breeches my lash line. It's one thing knowing the truth, and it's another hearing him admit it so shamelessly. Without a single hint of remorse.
"Was any part of our marriage real?" my breath shudders as I ask. A sob claws up my throat and I swallow it done. "Even one part?"
"Your sister." He replies.
"You're disgusting. Both of you."
He smiles. "We'll settle out differences later, darling. Right now, you're going to help me stop your sister from marrying that Thalorian."
"Over my dead body."
He backs me into a wall, caging me between it and his body. "Don't be so difficult, love. I can't bear to see the love of my life marry some loser."
My hand moves on its own. I punch him square in the jaw. He reels back, howling in pain as he clutches his face. I waste no time and run to the door. I had barely grabbed the doorknob before he was on me.
"Get off me!" I scream, thrashing in his hold. He pins me to the ground, holding both my arms above his head. Blood drips down his nose and onto my chest.
He's livid. His eyes are wild with an anger I've never seen before.
"You fucking bitch," he snarls, his lip peeled back in anger. "I've tried to be nice to you, Penelope. Looks like you don't appreciate that."
He grabs my hair and lifts my head up, slamming my head into the ground. My mouth hangs open in a soundless scream, and I feel my brain rattle in my skull. The pain is blinding, exploding all around my head in a dull throb. Black splotches appear at the corners of my vision and I feel a stickiness at the back of my head. A metallic smell fills my nostrils and I gag.
He leans down, his lips grazing the shell of my ear. "Listen to me, Calypso is carrying my child. No matter what happens, she will not marry that fucker. Am I clear?"
I didn't think it was possible for my heart to break any further, but it did. I sobbed quietly, my vision swimming in and out of focus.
My heart completely shatters to dust. The air leaves my lungs and it feels like every part of my body splinters in unison with my heart.
"No..."
"Yes," Charles chuckles. He kisses my ear gently, a stark contrast to what he just did. "Your actions are pointless, my love."
"I'll kill you...both of you..."
"You're welcome to try. And don't even think about divorce. You're not going anywhere. You signed a contract, remember? Let's face it, you don't have that kind of money, and you wont survive jail."
He raises his head and stares at me. He's smiling like he just won the lottery. The bastard is fucking happy.
"Gods, you look fucking incredible like this," he says with a deep groan. Before I could react, he kisses me, shoving his tongue into my mouth like he's trying to dig a hole.
I want to vomit. I press my lips tightly together, but that only makes him bite them. I feel helpless, defeated and so tired. He pulls back after a few seconds and licks his lips.
"Just let me go..." I sob. I hate how broken I sound. But I hate the words I say more. "I don't care, marry her, fuck her, whatever. Just let me go, were done."
"No way. I own you, Penelope Verdant. All of you. Let you go? Why would i do that?"
He kisses me again. Fear coils in my heart when he starts to touch my waist. But he stops and pulls back. "We're stopping that wedding tomorrow. I don't care how, even if I have to haul in your dead body."
He gets off me and leaves, the door shutting behind him. I don't know how long I lay there for. I can't even pass out, the pain gets worse and worse but I'm wide awake through it all.
The tears come, and I let them. I've never felt so violated and used in my entire life. And by the one person I loved so much.
Calypso is pregnant with his child. And yet she acts like nothing happened. Gods. She must be laughing at me. She's laughing at me. Both of them. Even the gods are laughing at me.
Poor Penelope. Sad Penelope. Stupid Penelope.
The ringing of my phone shatters the silence. I realize it's dark, and I've laid on the floor for hours.
I force myself to sit up. The blood had dried in my hair, making it matted and filthy. I could smell It, copper and betrayal. It hurt, but it was bearable. I pick my phone up. My mother is calling. She's called six times already.
"Where are you?!" Her screeching makes me wince and nearly drop the phone.
"I'm at-"
She doesn't let me finish. "Come to the hospital immediately! Your sister just had an accident!"
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8.0
I sat on the edge of the examination table, the crinkle of the sanitary paper sounding like thunder in the sterile room. The doctor didn't even look at me as he confirmed the news: the pregnancy was over. My husband, Keyon, didn't answer my call. He just sent an automated text: "In a meeting."
When I returned to our cold mansion, I found his iPad glowing with a message from his "muse," Katina. He was throwing her a secret gala tonight-on our third wedding anniversary. He told her he couldn't wait to escape the "boring" and "draining" atmosphere I created at home.
Keyon didn't stumble in until 3 AM, smelling of Katina's perfume with a smear of red on his collar. When I handed him the divorce papers, he laughed in my face. He called me a "glorified housekeeper" with no skills and no future, promising I'd be back in three days begging for a subway ticket. He even bet his friends ten thousand dollars that I wouldn't survive a week without his name.
He had his assistant cancel my credit cards and block my gate access before I even reached the end of the driveway. He wanted me to starve. He wanted me to crawl. He sat in his office, mocking the "desperate" woman who pawned her three-million-dollar wedding ring for scrap metal just to pay for a meal.
I stood on the rainy curb, watching the man I had protected for three years treat my life like trash. He didn't know about the ultrasound I just threw in the bin. He didn't know that while he was calling me "dull," I was the one secretly writing the code that kept his billion-dollar empire from collapsing.
As I slid into a cheap Uber, I opened a hidden, encrypted app on my phone. The screen refreshed to a dashboard for an account Keyon didn't know existed. The balance was ten figures long-the accumulated wealth of "Solaris," the world's most elusive tech genius. Keyon thinks he just evicted a parasite, but he's about to find out he just declared war on the only person who can hit "delete" on his entire life.
9.1
Aurora Sinclair thought she had closed the chapter on Damian Blackwood, the man she once loved, married, and walked away from. But when he unexpectedly comes back into her life, she realizes their story is far from over.
Damian is the heir to Blackwood Enterprises, a corporate empire built on deceit, betrayal, and secrets darker than Aurora ever knew. For years, he obeyed his ruthless father's every demand, even marrying someone else to keep Aurora safe. But now, he's done playing by his father's rules. He's ready to reclaim the company his late mother built, expose the crimes that destroyed his family, and protect the woman he's never stopped loving.
As old wounds reopen and dangerous enemies close in, Damian and Aurora are drawn together once more and bound by passion, loyalty, and a shared determination to end the nightmare once and for all. But with betrayal around every corner, they must face a chilling question: can they survive the past... and have a future together?
7.2
"Be my contracted boyfriend for two years, and I'll grant you three wishes."
What happens when Aurora Everly the billionaire heiress and co-CEO of Everly Elite Enterprise, who is used to getting what she wants until her father demands she marry a man twice her age for the sake of their company's future, desperate for an escape, she finds herself in a roadside convenience store, drunk and reckless she makes an outrageous proposal to a total stranger.
Theo Winslow a struggling graduate looking for a means to pay off his family's debt but never expected a night shift at his parent's store to change his life. After three failed job interviews, he is out of options until Aurora stumbles in and offers him a deal that seems too good to be true.
But with Theo's heart set on another and Aurora's strict and scary father standing in their way, will the reckless contract still stand? And even worse...can the world accept her BOYFRIEND FROM THE STORE.
9.2
I was just a placeholder, a warm body in silk sheets to keep the bed from getting cold while my billionaire "owner," Garrick Head, dreamt of another man’s wife. To the world, I was Ever Wells, the lucky girl he’d plucked from obscurity, but in reality, I was a doll on a 145-day contract, counting every second until I could disappear.
Everything shattered when a burner phone buzzed in my hand with a message that turned my blood to ice: "I know your secret, Everly."
My real name was the one thing I had buried to protect my four-year-old son, Leo, who was hidden in a cramped apartment in Queens. Just as the blackmailer closed in, Leo’s asthma flared into a life-threatening fever, and the medication he needed cost thousands I didn't have. When I tried to siphon money to save him, Garrick sensed my desperation and froze my credit cards, mocking my "poverty" and demanding I crawl back to his bed to earn his favor.
The nightmare intensified at a high-society gala when Clarence Frazier, a dangerous ghost from my past, cornered me. He mouthed my real name in front of the cameras, his eyes promising to tear my fake life apart. Garrick’s possessiveness turned violent as he broke a man’s jaw for insulting me, yet in the same breath, he reminded me I was nothing but a "rented whore" he’d bought off a shelf.
I had to smile while he kissed me and detach my mind while he touched me, all while siphoning pennies into a hidden account. He thought he could finalize my imprisonment with a twenty-million-dollar apartment on Central Park West, calling it a gift when it was really just a heavier lock on my golden cage.
"I don't want to save the world," I whispered to the empty, marble penthouse after he fell asleep. "I just want to save my son."
With a predator from my past watching my every move and a master who treated me like a pet, I realized I couldn't wait for my contract to end. I had to run tonight, or Leo and I would both die in this cage.
7.4
My husband stood by the window of his Manhattan office, his silhouette cutting through the storm like a blade. He didn't even look at me as he tossed the divorce papers onto the desk, his voice a cold baritone. "Sign it," Isaiah commanded, "or your brother’s dialysis treatment ends today."
He believed the lie that I had pushed his pregnant mistress down a flight of stairs in a jealous rage. To save my dying brother, I signed the confession and accepted the role of a murderer, trading my freedom for a life of disgrace.
At the funeral, Isaiah forced me to crawl on my knees through the freezing mud to the grave while a mob of mourners spat on me and cursed my name. When I went to prison, his influence followed me into the showers, where inmates told me the King wanted me to "remember my crime" before they used rusty shears to hack off my finger.
Five years later, I was a ghost living in a damp basement with the son Isaiah never knew I had, hiding my mangled hand under a leather glove. When he eventually tracked us down, he didn't show mercy; he tore my son from my arms, calling me an unfit monster and swearing I would rot in a cage.
I couldn't understand how the man I once loved could look at my broken body and see only a criminal, never realizing that every scar I carried was a gift from his own hatred.
As he walked away with my child, I swallowed a bottle of pills to end the nightmare, leaving Isaiah to rip the glove from my hand and discover the mangled truth just as my eyes finally closed.
8.0
When her twin sister falls into coma a day before her wedding, Tiana Palmer is forced to do the unthinkable, pretend to be her twin and act like the perfect wife at a two-week honeymoon, to protect the billion-dollar inheritance of her boss and sister's fiancé, Seth Berkley.
It was supposed to be a business deal, a secret between the two. But secrets don't always stay simple, they turn into obsessions.
The honeymoon ended, the deal was over, but that was just the beginning. Seth Berkley isn't a man who lets go easily. But how can she stay away from a man like him? Cold, insanely attractive, a man whose touch makes her feel things she shouldn't.
Every kiss, every touch pulls them deeper into a love that was never supposed to happen.
And when her sister wakes up...
Their forbidden desire might ruin everything.