Fragments Beneath His Silence
Two years ago, Amaya Bennett witnessed a murder.
A powerful man was killed in cold blood, right in front of her. She should have died that night too.
Instead, she woke up in a hospital with no memory of what happened. No faces, no names and no clues. Just fragments, blurred images that slip through her fingers every time she tries to hold on.
Now, Amaya lives a quiet life, piecing herself back together. She works part-time, avoids trouble, and stays invisible. Until she lands a job at Twilight Global.
A company owned by Jake Anderson, the cold and untouchable CEO whose father was murdered the same night Aria lost her memory. Jake spent years searching for the only witness. But she vanished without any trace. Or so he thought.
But somehow, they cross path again, working under his roof, completely unaware of the truth she carries.
The killer is still out there.
And when Amaya starts getting flashes of blood, a voice, a ring glinting under the dim light, the hunt begins again.
But this time, she's not alone. Because even before he realizes who she is... Jake has already started protecting her. In the most relentless and dangerous way.
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Chapter 4
Instead of feeling confident or hopeful, Amaya stepped out of the building rather feeling... lighter. A relief of it all finally being over.
The glass doors of Blooms Global slid shut with a soft hiss behind her, cutting off the polished silence of the corporate world as she returned to the familiar chaos of the street.
The afternoon air brushed over her; as noises from cars, voices and heat rising from the pavement welcomed her to the real life. She exhaled slowly, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder.
"Well," she murmured, "at least I didn't completely embarrass myself." That, alone counted for something.
Her stomach growled in reminder. "Right." She muttered. She hadn't gotten anything down there since morning.
Fortunately across the street, a small food stall was set up. It was nothing fancy. Just a man grilling skewers while chatting loudly with customers. The warm, spicy and comforting smell immediately hit her
Amaya hesitated for a second, before crossing over. "Two, please," she said, holding up her fingers.
The vendor grinned. "Good choice."
She leaned against the side of the stall while waiting, watching while different caliber of people pass by. Office workers on lunch breaks laughing in small groups. Someone arguing over the phone. And a couple sharing drinks.
Just the normal and grounded life she needed. "Here you go," the vendor said, cutting through her distruction as he handed her the skewers.
"Thanks." She said, took a bite and nearly sighed. "Okay... worth it." She muffled with her mouth half full.
The vendor chuckled. "First time here?"
"Yeah." She nodded, enjoying her little satisfaction.
"Then you'll be back."
Amaya faintly smiled faintly. "Maybe."
She stayed a little longer than necessary, slowly eating and allowing her nerves settle. In the moment, her phone buzzed. Quickly, she wiped fingers and checked it.
Surprisingly, it was from an unknown number again. Her brows furrowed, this was somehow, becoming rampant. For a moment, she considered ignoring it. But then, something, maybe the subtle urge made her answer.
"...Hello?" She uttered, but was met with silence. Then, a click. And just like that, the call ended.
Amaya stared at the screen. "...Weird." She mumbled. And that made a small chill crept up her spine. But she shook it off. "Probably nothing."
Yet, that didn't stop her from blocking the number. Just in case.
By the time she got back to the convenience store, the afternoon rush had started. "Hey, you're late," her coworker called.
"Interview," Amaya replied, tying her apron quickly.
"Oh? Fancy."
"Not really." She slipped into routine again. Registering, restocking, and small talks with customers.
Steadily, time passed with it's normal activities.
Untile the door chimed, at an odd hour when the the door tag clearly read...CLOSED .
Intuitively, Amaya looked up. But then, froze. It was him.The man from yesterday. But this time, there was no pretence in his eyes, neither a smile.
Amaya watched as she walked straight to the counter. Her pulse spiked. "...Coffee?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
"No." His gaze held hers. Direct and intense. "You applied to Blooms Global," he uttered. But that sound like a question.
Amaya's stomach dropped. "How do you?"
Slightly, he leaned in. And lowered his voice, only to Amaya's hearing. "You shouldn't have."
Her breath caught. "What?" She stared at him.
But he quickly straightened, just as if nothing had happened. And reached for a bottle of water instead. Paid, and then left. Just like that.
Aria stood there, frozen. Her coworker frowned. "You know him?"
"No." Her voice came out too tight and fast. Because that...that wasn't something normal.
~~~~~
Across the city
Lucien Blues had already read the reports, seen the candidates and analyzed the data. He didn't need interviews to make his decisions.
And yet, "Her," he said, sliding the file forward.
His assistant blinked. "Sir?"
"Amaya Bennett. Hire her." There was a brief pause as his assistant glanced at her profile.
"But she's not the strongest candidate."
"I didn't ask for the strongest." His tone didn't rise, and neither did it sharpened. But it ended the discussion anyway.
"...Understood."
Lucien leaned back slightly, with a distant gaze.
There was something about her. Something he was finding hard to ignore or trust. And until he figures out what it was, he wanted her close.
.
.
.
The evening slowly drift on. Amaya was halfway through organizing a shelf, when her phone buzzed again. And this time, it was an email.
She hesitated briefly before opening it. A few seconds after, her eyes widened.
"...No way." She muttered.
Her coworker glanced over. "What?"
"I-I got it."
"The job?" She asked.
Amaya slowly nodded, still staring at the screen. "They... hired me." Just like that. No second interview. No delay.
Her coworker let out a low whistle. "Damn. You're moving up."
Amaya softly laughed. But deep down, something about it didn't feel normal or earned.
It felt...Fast. Too fast.
After the long hours, she finally retired to bed. But the whole job thing kept hunting her. She sat on her bed, staring at the email again.
Offer letter. The start date. Everything was well documented. It was official. Like real. Her life was changing. Just like that.
But instead of the usual excitement, a strange unease settled in her chest. Remembering what the man had said.
"You shouldn't have." Those words felt funnily scary.
Amaya slowly lay back staring at the ceiling. "Why...?" She didn't know. But something told her that job...wasn't an opportunity. It was a door. And once she stepped through, there would be no going back.
But she was ready for the challenge.
Back in a dark office, the man loosened his tie, staring at a screen. A CCTV footage to the convenience store. It was paused and zoomed in on her face. Her features clear.
His lips slightlt curled. "Unlucky," he murmured.
For her. Because this time, he wouldn't let her walk away just like those passed years.
.
.
Somewhere in the city..
Lucie stood by his window. Unaware that the girl he had just brought into his world was the answer he had been searching for all those passed years.
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9.7
Clarissa rushed into a crowded nightclub for one simple reason: to save her wildly drunk best friend.
But her ruthless billionaire husband, Giovanny, was watching from the VIP room. After effortlessly ruining a man just for grabbing her wrist, Giovanny punished Clarissa for breaching their public image contract with an impossible curfew.
When she inevitably arrived back at his penthouse late, he didn't just yell. He forced her to her knees by his bathtub to wash his back, making her watch an explicit, humiliating video as punishment.
A sudden family medical emergency dragged them to his parents' estate. Still in her soaked, transparent dress and his misbuttoned shirt, Giovanny's mother caught them. She joyfully assumed they had been passionately intimate.
Instead of clearing her name, Giovanny pulled Clarissa close and lied to his mother's face.
"We are working very hard on the family's future, Mother."
He locked her in the guest suite, tossed a sheer silk nightgown on the bed, and literally shattered the tablet holding their "no-contact" prenuptial agreement. He then slapped a file against the window—he had secretly bought all her father's toxic debt.
Clarissa was terrified. They were supposed to be business allies bound by a strict contract. Why was he suddenly acting like a predator determined to own her body and soul?
"Give me an heir, or your father goes to federal prison," he whispered.
Stripped of all choices, Clarissa picked up the white silk. She would surrender tonight to save her family, but as his shadow swallowed her, she made a silent vow to survive this monster, and one day, tear his empire to the ground.
9.7
"Sign it. You're no woman if you can't give me an heir."
Niamh gave Marcus two years of her life, her unwavering loyalty, and her silent love. In return, the billionaire CEO served her divorce papers and a one-way ticket to the gutter.
Cast out into a rainy night with nothing but the clothes on her back and twelve dollars, Niamh’s story should have ended there.
Instead, she stumbled on a stranger in the rain.
In an attempt to save him, he kisses her senseless. He is the last Lycan King standing, and a man of terrifying power, yet he is haunted by a seven-century curse.
When the king has a taste of Niamh in the pouring rain, he knew he had to keep her for himself, even though she was human and it was against the laws of their kind not to mingle with humans.
The King needs her essence and Niamh realizes she could use her body to get what she wanted; revenge on Marcus and his mother for humiliating her and making her waste her time.
Now, the woman Marcus discarded is rising as a global conglomerate queen and a Divine Enchantress as assigned by the Moon Goddess.
While her ex-husband’s empire crumbles into bankruptcy and his body rots with a shameful curse, Niamh is learning that being "claimed" by the King is much more than the contract she'd initially made with him.
He wanted to use her as his cure. She wanted to use him for her revenge.
But in the Lumina Realm, the Goddess has other plans.
9.6
Haylie waited nervously at the Wall Street charity gala for her boyfriend Bryan, but a spiked drink hit her hard, leaving her stumbling into a VIP lounge.
There, Chester Steele, the ruthless CEO of Steele Industrial, found her—drugged and vulnerable. What started as a frantic claiming in the shadows ended with him whispering she was his.
But moments later, a security alert shattered everything: data breach traced to Haylie's terminal. Chester's fury exploded. He saw her brush past a Logan Group rival on footage and dumped her in the rain, firing her as a corporate spy.
Bryan answered her desperate call with ice: "It's over." Reporters swarmed her door, branding her a traitor. Arrested at the office by FBI agents, she watched smug coworker Erin wave goodbye.
Thrown in a cell, chained and grilled with fake evidence—offshore accounts in her name—Haylie learned the worst: charges now included her sick father, Ernest, framed for laundering the leak money. Plead guilty or he dies in prison.
Innocent and raging, she couldn't fathom who planted it all—the gala bump, the logs, the forgeries. Why her? Who hated her enough to destroy her life?
Chester burst in, posting unlimited bail but forcing her signature on a slave contract: live in his penthouse, serve him 24/7. As she collapsed in his arms, trapped in his gilded cage, Haylie vowed silently—she'd uncover the real traitor and make them pay.
7.2
Elmore Thomas rushed into the emergency room, clutching his feverish seven-year-old son, Buddy, tightly to his chest.
When the privacy curtain was pulled back, the air in Elmore's lungs vanished. The attending physician standing under the harsh lights was his wife, Kendal—the woman everyone believed had burned to death eight years ago.
But there was no tearful reunion. Kendal looked at him, and her eyes froze into impenetrable ice. She treated him like a biohazard, strictly referring to him as the family member.
Worse, she didn't recognize Buddy. She comforted their crying son with the same gentle warmth she used to reserve for Elmore, completely unaware she was soothing the baby she thought had died.
Days later, Elmore watched from the shadows as she picked up another boy outside a prep school, her left hand flashing a massive diamond engagement ring.
When his butler accidentally recognized her, Kendal shielded her new stepson with pure disgust in her eyes.
"Tell that psychopath to sign the divorce papers immediately. I have a new family now."
The words 'new family' echoed in Elmore's skull, tearing him apart. For eight years, he had lived in a hell of guilt and madness, raising their son in the shadow of her ghost. How could she just erase their past? How could she give her tender smiles to a stranger and look at him with absolute revulsion?
Standing in a luxury ballroom, Elmore squeezed his hand until his crystal champagne flute shattered, thick blood dripping onto the rug. The murderous obsession in his dark eyes returned as he called his lawyer.
"Freeze her divorce application. Use every dirty trick in the book. She isn't leaving."
7.6
I was once the untouchable heiress to the Schroeder empire, until a corporate fraud conviction stripped away my life and threw me into federal prison for five brutal years.
On the day of my release, I stepped out into the freezing rain only to realize I had been utterly abandoned by everyone I loved.
My family sent no one. My former best friends blocked my number, and high-society women took photos of my shivering, pathetic state for laughs. To survive, I made a desperate deal to act as the fake fiancée of Kayden Washington, a ruthless, disgraced billionaire fighting his own blood. But the moment we joined forces, the nightmare escalated. Our safehouse was ransacked, we were hunted by tactical hitmen in the dark, and my adoptive brother stole my dead mother's diary just to bribe me into leaving New York forever. Worse, the digital trail of my framing traced back to a top-tier operative manipulating both our families from the shadows.
I didn't understand why my own family had sacrificed me like a worthless pawn to ignite a massive, invisible war. What dark secret was I actually taking the fall for?
Just as Kayden and I prepared to burn both empires to the ground, a mysterious courier dropped a package at my door. Inside rested the Schroeder Patriarch's solid gold ring—the ultimate symbol of absolute power—sent directly to me, the disgraced exile.
"They took your past, but I will give you the power to forge a new future."
The game hadn't just changed. The board had been flipped, and I was going back to take the throne.
9.0
Seventeen years after going missing, Brooklyn was finally brought back to her ultra-wealthy biological family.
But instead of a tearful reunion, her parents and sisters treated her like infectious garbage, mocking her cheap clothes and calling her a country bumpkin.
They dumped her into a remedial class to hide her away, cut off her allowance, and threatened to lock down her trust fund to force her into absolute submission.
One night, Brooklyn stood in the shadows of the estate and overheard a conversation that shattered everything.
She hadn't wandered off as a child.
Her parents had deliberately thrown her away because a fake fortune teller claimed her birth chart was a jinx to the family's wealth.
They felt zero remorse, only plotting to banish her again the moment she turned eighteen.
Her biological father thought he was putting a leash on a helpless, uneducated girl by cutting off her pocket change.
He had no idea that Brooklyn was the anonymous VIP who casually dropped sixty million dollars on an emerald at the city's most exclusive auction.
He didn't know she was the elusive medical genius that the world's most powerful billionaires were currently tearing the city apart to find.
The last microscopic shred of hope for a family withered into cold ash in her chest.
"Lock down my trust fund?"
She pulled out her encrypted phone and activated her shadow networks, severing herself entirely from their pathetic surveillance.
Since they believed she was a jinx, she was going to show them exactly what a real curse looked like.