His Forbidden Mistress: Veil of Deception
Sandra was a mistress: a temporary escape for billionaire David Kingsley.
But in the shadows of his study, "temporary" turned into a dangerous addiction.
When David brutally casts her back into the poverty she fought to escape, Sandra plays her final card: a lie about a pregnancy to keep him tied to her.
The lie becomes a terrifying reality just as David announces his "perfect" life is expanding with a child of his own.
Now, Sandra isn't just a discarded mistress; she's a woman with a secret that could topple an empire.
How far will a woman go when she has nothing left to lose but the life growing inside her?
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Chapter 6
I woke up to the sound of screaming.
"You're absolutely useless! A flat-out parasite! You can't even pay your damn rent, so why should I keep you under my roof?"
I was disoriented.
My head felt like it had been cracked open, and my vision was blurry.
As I blinked my eyes open, the first thing I saw wasn't a ceiling, but the gray, overcast sky.
I wasn't in a bed. I was lying on the cold, cracked pavement of the alleyway outside my apartment building.
My heart skipped a beat as I looked around. My things-my cheap belongings-were scattered everywhere.
People were standing around, stopping on their way to work or market.
They weren't helping. They were laughing. They were pointing at me like I was a piece of street theater.
"W-What are you doing?!" I shrieked. I scrambled to my feet, but my knees were weak, and I nearly fell back down.
"Stop it! What is going on?"
I didn't remember how I got here. How did I end up back at the apartment?
My landlord, Marta, stood at the top of the stairs, her face purple with rage.
She held my last remaining bag and threw it with all her might. It hit the ground near my feet, the contents spilling out into the mud.
"What am I doing? I'm throwing out the trash!" she yelled, pointing a finger at me.
"Get out of here! Don't you ever show your face in this building again. You haven't paid a cent in two months. I let you stay here out of pity, but I'm done. Enough is enough!"
"P-Please!" I begged, "You can't do this! I have nowhere to go. I don't have any money!"
"I don't give a damn!" she shouted back, crossing her arms tightly over her chest, her eyes flashing with anger. "I've had enough of this nonsense!"
"Please... you have to listen. I'm pregnant!"
"That's your problem to figure out. Go sleep on the sidewalk for all I care. Maybe one of your 'customers' will give you a box to live in!"
She turned her back on me and slammed the door. I stood there, frozen.
My heart was breaking, but I forced myself to stood up straight.
I remembered the man from last night-the one who carried me.
Who was he?
Did he bring me here?
Or did he just drop me off like a package he didn't want to deal with?
My memory was a dark, foggy hole, and the disorientation made me feel like I was drowning.
I managed to shove most of my things into the suitcase. I stood up, dragging the heavy, broken bag behind me. I didn't know where I was going.
I had no friends, no family...nothing.
But as I reached the end of the alley, a black car with tinted windows pulled up sharply, screeching to a halt right in front of me.
I tried to ignore the car.
I was too tired, too broken, and too filthy to care about another luxury vehicle parked in a place it didn't belong.
I tightened my grip on the handle of my broken suitcase and tried to limp past, but the rear door swung open with a smooth, expensive click, blocking my path.
A man stepped out, and for a terrifying heartbeat, my breath hitched in my throat.
He was tall, built with the same broad shoulders and commanding presence that David had.
From a distance, in the glare of the morning sun, I almost called out his name.
But then the stranger reached up and slid his dark sunglasses off, and the illusion shattered.
He was handsome-dangerously so-but in a way that was sharper, more predatory than David.
His eyes were a piercing, cold gray, and they scanned me from my tangled hair down to my scraped, muddy knees.
"Can you fucking excuse me?" I snapped, "You're in the way."
I tried to side-step him, dragging my heavy bag through the dirt, but he let out a low, sexy chuckle that grated on my nerves.
"I believe you owe me a thank you, Sandra," he said.
I stopped in my tracks.
"W-What? How did you know my name?"
"I saved you last night," he said, tilting his head.
"You were face-down in the gutter outside a mansion that didn't want you. If I hadn't picked you up, someone would have finished what he started."
The memories of the night came rushing back.
I looked down.
"How do you know about David?"
He leaned against the frame of the car, crossing his arms.
"After finding out you were the 'mistress'..."
He used his fingers to make air quotes around the word.
"...and hearing all about how you were 'seducing' poor, innocent David, I figured you were someone worth knowing. Especially since he wants to dispose of you so badly to keep his perfect little life from falling apart."
He was probably at the party, that's why he knew.
"You brought me back here."
"Yes," he said with a smirk.
"I didn't know which room was yours, so I left you near the entrance. I was supposed to take you to my home, but then again, I knew that would look weird. It seems things turned into a bit of a ruckus this morning, though. Seeing your life thrown out onto the pavement... it's a bit pathetic, don't you think? I believe you actually need some help."
The pity in his voice sparked a flare of my old pride.
"I don't need help from someone like you. I'll be better off alone," I spat.
"So back off. I don't know how you found out where I live, but I don't care. I'm done with him. I'm done with all of it."
I turned my back on him, determined to walk away even if it meant sleeping under a bridge. But before I could take two steps, his hand shot out and gripped my wrist.
The contact sent a jolt of electricity through my body.
It wasn't the creepy, skin-crawling feeling I got from the men at the club.
It was something else-a sudden, paralyzing chill that made every hair on my arms stand up.
I was unable to pull away, trapped by the intensity of his grip.
"I am the only one who can help you now, Sandra, and bring about my brother's downfall," his voice dropping to a serious, dark tone.
His brother?
I froze, heart skipping a beat. I hadn't known he had a brother.
I slowly turned to face him, my heart hammering.
"How? Why do you care about David's problems?"
His eyes darkened, a shadow of something unreadable flickering across his face.
Everything suddenly made a little more sense, and yet, a thousand questions raced through my mind, leaving me both stunned and uneasy.
"Or, more accurately, my half-brother. And we are not on good terms. He has something that rightfully belongs to me. I think you're the key to helping me take it back."
"No," I said, shaking my head and trying to wrench my arm free.
"I'm done. I don't want any more of David. He threw me away like trash. I won't be a pawn in your family drama."
"You don't understand, Sandra," he said, stepping closer until I could smell the expensive tobacco and mint on his breath.
"Your life is in danger. You think you're safe just because you're away from the mansion? You saw Cyndrel yesterday. She looks like a saint, doesn't she? Those soft smiles, that gentle voice?"
He let out a dry, humorless laugh.
"Underneath that fake exterior, she is ruthless. She's a predator who protects what's hers with blood."
"She wants you dead, Sandra. Not just gone, but erased. She wants David all to herself, and she won't let a 'mistress' with a pregnant belly stand in the way of her perfect family. Whether you like it or not, I'm the only wall between you and whatever she has planned for you."
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8.6
I was the untouchable Mafia Queen, but my reign ended in the blood-soaked depths of a damp dungeon.
My half-sister, Kelsey, drove a rusted, sharpened spoon into my chest, screaming about the unfairness of fate.
In my past life, my father sold me to the ruthless Don Dante Blackwell as collateral to pay off his debts.
To survive, I took a black-market fertility drug, birthed his heir, and clawed my way to the throne through sheer ruthlessness.
But in the mafia world, a pregnant woman isn't a queen; she's a walking target.
I survived countless bombings and poisonings, only to be betrayed and slaughtered by my own family.
Until my last breath, I couldn't understand. I had sacrificed everything to secure our survival in the empire. Why did my blood and tears only earn me a rusted spoon to the heart?
Opening my eyes again, I am seventeen, sitting in my father's drawing room.
Two black velvet boxes sit on the mahogany table.
Kelsey greedily snatches the box containing the fertility drug, her eyes gleaming with feverish triumph.
"I'll take this one, Papa."
She thinks she is stealing my golden ticket to the crown, completely unaware that she just chose a death sentence.
I lower my gaze, letting my eyelashes mask the cold, lethal amusement pooling in my eyes as I take the remaining box.
Inside is the detailed psychological profile of the Don's dead fiancée.
This time, I won't be a breeding mare fighting off assassins. I will dissect the devil himself.
9.2
For four years, I was the Silvercrest Pack's biggest joke—a scentless, wolfless Omega who somehow became the Alpha's Luna.
I thought I was just naturally defective, until our fourth anniversary, when I overheard my husband Adrian talking to his Beta.
"I’ve been having the kitchens slip a silver-based compound into her meals since the day I marked her."
He confessed the poison was meant to suppress my inner wolf and keep my womb permanently barren. He only married me as a power play to make his highborn mistress, Seraphina, jealous. While I wept over my empty cradle and apologized to his family for my broken body, he was using pack funds to buy her custom luxury goods, tossing me the leftover wrapping paper. When I finally confronted him about the silver and tried to leave, he flew into a feral rage. He violently smashed my head against the marble vanity, leaving me bleeding on the floor, and locked the bedroom door behind him.
I lay there in the cold, staring at the pool of my own blood. My entire life, my endless pain, and my unborn pups were nothing but a cruel, calculated joke to the man who was supposed to be my Mate.
But Adrian didn't know I wasn't just a brainless Omega.
I wiped the blood from my face, climbed down the balcony trellis into the freezing rain, and pulled out an encrypted burner phone.
"The cage is broken. Initiate Phase Two."
7.7
For two years, I played the role of the "Midwestern mistake," the mousey wife Julian Ford-Sterling IV kept hidden like a shameful secret. I hid my true self behind thick glasses and ashen foundation, acting as the perfect, cowed charity case while he lived a life of marble and indifference.
The day our marriage contract ended, the headlines were already screaming about his affair with Hollywood’s sweetheart, Lana Vane. Julian didn't even grant me a final conversation; he simply sent his legal team to hand me divorce papers that gave me nothing—no alimony, no shares, just a non-disclosure agreement and a one-way ticket out of his life.
I signed the papers and walked away, but a drugged encounter in a dark club that same night led me back into his arms. We collided in the shadows, two strangers stripped of their titles, but I fled before dawn, accidentally leaving behind my vintage silver locket. By the time I reached my secret design studio the next morning, I discovered Julian had executed a hostile takeover of my entire life’s work.
To my horror, Lana Vane was already there, clutching my stolen locket and shamelessly claiming she was the woman Julian had spent the night with. Julian stood before me in his charcoal suit, looking at me with total lack of recognition. To him, I was just a "gold-digging" architect he had bought along with the furniture.
I watched them together, the man who had discarded me and the woman who had stolen my identity, realizing that Julian was obsessed with the genius of "Rose" while despising the woman who stood right in front of him. He had no idea that the wife he’d just divorced was the very person he was now desperate to control.
I straightened my spine, my violet-blue eyes cold and lethal behind my new designer frames.
"Mr. Ford-Sterling, you wanted the best designer in the city? You’ve got her. But you should know—I don't just build empires. I know exactly how to tear them down."
8.5
They say the devil is the most dangerous evil alive.
Until he met her.
She didn't run from his darkness.
She walked straight into it - and made it hers.
He's ruthless, feared by all, a man who destroys without remorse.
She's cunning, seductive, and far more dangerous than she appears.
Their deal was supposed to be simple.
Power for loyalty.
Protection for obedience.
But desire was never part of the agreement.
Every glance burns.
Every touch feels like a sin.
Every kiss tastes like betrayal.
They hate each other.
They crave each other.
And neither knows who will ruin who first.
Because when two monsters fall in love,
it isn't sweet - it's war.
And in the end,
the devil may lose his throne...
to the woman who stole his heart and his soul.
9.4
"I'm terribly sorry my champagne found your face so magnetic, Captain."
Theodore Ashford does not get angry. No - he smiles. Slow. Amused. Dangerous.
"No apology necessary, Lady Cruelton. In fact, I insist you join us for dinner next week. I find you... fascinating."
-
Beatrice Whitmore died once already.
She wakes up inside a 1940s romance novel - not as the heroine, but as the infamous purple-haired villainess destined for scandal, disgrace, and an early grave. Everyone hates Lady Cruelton.
Which is perfect.
Because survival comes with rules.
A mysterious System rewards her with Hatred Points for humiliation, social ruin, and expertly executed cruelty. The more she's despised, the longer she lives. Reform is fatal. Kindness is suicide.
Being terrible should be easy.
Until Captain Theodore Ashford - decorated war hero, heir to an estate as vast as his ego - refuses to despise her. Immune to her schemes, unfazed by her insults, he watches her with knowing amusement... as if he sees through every calculated performance.
Faking her death was supposed to secure her escape from the plot.
Instead, his attention drags her deeper into it.
Now Beatrice must outmaneuver gossip, rewrite a story determined to destroy her, and earn enough Hatred Points to survive - without falling for the only man who doesn't hate her.
Because in a world where love is the true death sentence for a villainess...
Cruelty might be her only way out
8.6
Eight years ago, Rosalyn sold herself for money, and Nathan became her first and only client.
Now, with her wedding approaching, her own fiancé sent her back to the same man.
What should have been one more humiliating transaction dragged her into Nathan's dangerous orbit again-an orbit he had no intention of letting her escape.
As her fiancé cheated and schemed, Nathan crushed him in secret.
When rumors tore at her name, he spent freely to protect her.
But just when he reached for forever, Rosalyn walked away, leaving behind a truth written in blood, loss, and the child they never got to keep.