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 5
Amaya woke up before her alarm again.
But this time, it wasn't the usual unease pulling her from sleep. It was rather anticipation. She laid still. Just for a moment, staring at the ceiling, and letting reality settle in.
You got the job. At Blooms Global. Her mind told her. But the words still felt foreign.
Instictively, she let out a slow breath. Then pushed herself out of bed. "No overthinking," she muttered. "Just get through the day."
Her mornings were that simple, but intentional. Shower, then get dressed. But this time, she took extra care. She choose her outfits, three times before settling on something clean.
A professional soft cream blouse tucked into a fitted black skirt, paired with low heels. It was nothing flashy, just... presentable.
She stood in front of the mirror for a second longer than usual. "You'll be fine." She told herself but didn't fully believe it. But she grabbed her bag anyway.
.
.
.
Today, the bus ride felt different. Not because of any major changes she had had. But in the subtle ways. Like how she stood a little straighter.
And how she paid closer attention to the people around her. First, it was a man arguing loudly on the phone. Then, a woman fixing her makeup in the reflection of the window.
A student half-asleep, head bobbing with every turn. Life was moving on as always. But today, felt different.
After about Thirty minutes, she finally alighted at Blooms Global. It was still massive and powerful But the building didn't feel as intimidating as yesterday. Because she felt a sense of belonging. At least... on paper.
"First day?" the receptionist asked with a polite smile as Aria approached.
"Yes." Amaya said.
"Welcome. HR is expecting you. 12th floor."
"Thank you." She answered, and strolled off.
Orientation wasn't as scary as she expected.
There were five of them in total. The new hires sat around a sleek table while an HR manager walked them through company policies, expectations, schedules.
Amaya listened carefully, jotting down notes in a small notebook she had brought. Details helped her feel in control. On her list were;
Names, Departments and Procedures.
Beside her, sat a curly girl. She leaned over slightly. "First corporate job?"
Amaya glanced at her. "Is it that obvious?"
The girl grinned. "A little. I'm Maya."
"Amaya."
"Relax," Maya whispered. "Everyone looks like they're about to pass out on their first day."
Amaya huffed a small laugh. That... actually helped.
By midday, Amaya was assigned her department. Administrative support. Mid-level management.
It was not directly important. And neither was it directly invisible. It was just between a balance she could work with.
"This is your station," the supervisor said, gesturing to a neat desk with a computer, phone, and a small stack of files.
Amaya nodded. "Thank you."
"Just observe for today. And et familiar." He instructed.
"I will." She said, and he was gone.
The office floor was alive in a quiet, controlled way. Phones rang softly in the background. While keyboards clicked. Low conversations drifted between desks.
Aria sat down, taking it all in. This was different from the convenience store. Everything here had structure and precision. Even the way people moved felt... calculated.
She turned on her computer, logging in with the credentials she had been given. Emails, Schedules and Documents. It was a lot, but manageable. She could do this.
"Hey." A voice came in.
Amaya looked up. Maya stood beside her, holding two cups of coffee.
"Peace offering," she said, handing one over.
Amaya smiled. "You're a lifesaver."
"I know, right?."
They sat in a comfortable silence for a moment.
Then Maya leaned slightly closer. "Word of advice?"
Amaya glanced at her. "Yeah?"
"Keep your head down. Do your work. Don't get noticed by the wrong people."
Amaya blinked. "Wrong people?"
Maya shrugged. "It's a big company. Not everyone here is... nice."
Something about the way she said it made Amaya pause. But before she could ask more, a voice cut through the air.
"Ms. Bennett."
Amaya stiffened. She knew that voice before she even turned. Slowly, she looked up. And there he was. The man from the convenience store.
He was standing right in front of her desk. Dressed in a sharp suit, composed.
Her stomach dropped. "...You work here?" she asked before she could stop herself.
A faint smile touched his lips. "Of course."
Her pulse quickened. Maya glanced between them, confused. "You two know each other?"
"No," Amaya quickly said.
"At least," the man smoothly added. "not formally." His gaze locked onto Amaya's. Sharp, knowing and unsettling.
"I'm Daniel Reed," he said. Senior operations manager." The title landed heavily. He wasn't just any employee. He was someone with power.
Amaya forced herself to stand. "Aria Bennett."
"I know." The words came out soft. But it sent a chill down her spine. A brief silence swept between them. Then, a pleasant and controlled smile spread through Daniel's face. "Welcome to Blooms Global."
And just like that, he walked away. Maya immediately leaned closer. "Okay... what was that?"
Amaya slowly sat down. "I have no idea." But that wasn't entirely true. Because deep down, she knew. That man wasn't normal. He had something fishy about him.
~~~
High above them, behind the glass walls. Lucien Blues watched. His gaze fixed on the floor below. On one particular desk, and iinteraction.
His expression didn't change. But slightly, his eyes darkened. "Daniel Reed," he quietly muttered.
His assistant stepped forward. "Yes, sir?"
"Keep an eye on him." He paused, "Discreetly."
"...Understood sir."
With the instructions given, Lucien's gaze shifted back to Amaya. She looked small from this height. Unaware of his prescence. Yet, she was the center of something he couldn't ignore.
Something feels wrong ahout her. He could feel that. And he intended to find out whatever it was.
Back at Amaya's desk, she tried to focus on her screen. The emails, schdules and tasks at hand.
But her fingers paused over the keyboard. Her mind replaying one thing.
You shouldn't have.
She swallowed, subtly glancing across the office like she was being watched. Obviously, Daniel was gone. But the feeling he left behind wasn't.
For the first time since she got the job, Amaya clearly realized something. She needs to keep her guards up for whatever challenge it was.
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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.