His Unwanted Wife, The Nation's Hero
On our wedding anniversary, I came home to find my husband, Jace, celebrating with another woman in our living room.
She was wearing my mother's necklace-the only thing recovered from the explosion that killed my parents. Jace laughed, calling it a "cheap piece of junk," and tried to write me a check to buy a new one.
His family called my parents' ashes "garbage" and "unsanitary." When I confronted them, Jace sided with his mother, ordering me out of the penthouse I secretly owned. He let his friends publicly humiliate me, calling me a gold-digging leech with no background.
But that wasn't the worst of it. When a gunman stormed the restaurant we were in, Jace shoved me directly into the line of fire to shield his mistress.
The shotgun blast tore through my arm. As I lay bleeding on the marble floor, I stared at the man who had just used me as a human shield, his face pale with terror as he protected her.
In that instant, every ounce of love I ever had for him died. The pain in my arm was nothing compared to the cold, hollow void that consumed my heart.
He thought he was sacrificing a quiet, useless wife to secure his future. He had no idea he had just declared war on Captain Cilla Henson, West Point valedictorian and the most lethal operator of the Eagle Task Force.
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Chapter 3
Cilla stepped out of the private elevator, the heavy black urn resting securely against her chest.
The hallway leading to the penthouse was silent, the thick carpet absorbing the sound of her footsteps.
She walked up to the double mahogany doors and reached out to punch in the security code.
Her hand stopped mid-air.
The door wasn't fully closed. It was cracked open just an inch.
Through the narrow gap, the shrill, grating voice of her mother-in-law, Meryl, spilled into the hallway.
"I don't care what you have to do, Jace. That uneducated hillbilly is a stain on this family," Meryl snapped.
Cilla froze. Her fingers tightened around the smooth surface of the urn.
"She literally just leeches off your bank accounts," Sierra, Jace's younger sister, chimed in. "She doesn't even know how to dress for a charity gala."
Cilla stood perfectly still. Her knuckles turned stark white from how hard she was gripping the ceramic.
"You need to divorce her and marry Carolyn," Meryl continued, her voice rising in pitch. "Carolyn is a star pilot. She comes from a good family. She brings prestige to the Hudson name."
There was a brief silence from inside the apartment.
Jace didn't defend her. He didn't tell his mother to stop.
"A divorce means dealing with the prenup," Jace finally said, his voice low and calculating. "It means splitting assets."
"Then you get the lawyers to bury her in paperwork," Meryl said coldly. "You freeze her out. You make sure she walks away with absolutely nothing. She deserves to be back on the streets where you found her."
"Fine," Jace agreed, the word hitting Cilla like a physical blow to the stomach. "I'll have the legal team draft something up. I'll get her to sign it."
Standing in the hallway, Cilla felt her pulse slow down.
There was no anger left. No sadness. Just a thick, suffocating wave of pure disgust.
She looked down at the flag draped over the urn. Her parents had died for this country.
And she was standing here listening to parasites plot to steal her dignity.
Cilla took a steadying breath, her hand closing around the spare key in her pocket. The metal bit into her palm, a grounding anchor against the tidal wave of disgust threatening to pull her under. She unlocked the heavy mahogany door and pushed it open with a sudden, overwhelming force that made it fly inward with a violent crash, the brass handle slamming into the interior wall.
Meryl, Sierra, and Jace all jumped, their heads snapping toward the entryway.
Cilla walked into the living room. Her face was a mask of stone. Her eyes swept over the three of them, sharp and unforgiving.
Meryl's face paled for a second, a flash of guilt crossing her features before it morphed back into arrogant annoyance.
Sierra stood up from the velvet sofa, crossing her arms. "Do you always sneak around and eavesdrop like a creep?"
Jace's eyes dropped to the object in Cilla's arms. His brow furrowed in deep confusion.
"What the hell is that?" Jace demanded, pointing at the black container. "Why are you bringing that morbid thing into my house?"
"These are my parents' ashes," Cilla said. Her voice didn't shake. It was dead calm.
Meryl shrieked, taking a dramatic step backward and clutching the pearls at her throat.
"Oh my god!" Meryl gasped, her chest heaving. "Get that out of here! You're bringing dead bones into my son's home? You're ruining the energy of this place!"
Sierra pinched her nose, her face twisting in exaggerated disgust. "That is so unsanitary. Take it outside."
Jace's jaw clenched. The veins in his neck bulged.
"Take that garbage out of my apartment right now, Cilla," Jace ordered, his voice echoing in the large room.
Cilla pulled the urn tighter against her chest. She stared directly into Jace's eyes, refusing to blink.
"This is my home too," Cilla said, enunciating every single syllable. "And my parents have every right to be here."
Meryl let out a furious noise. She lunged forward, her hand raised high in the air.
She aimed a vicious slap right at Cilla's face.
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8.0
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"And what am I supposed to do when the clock runs out?"
He's the meticulous, sterile CEO destined for a cold corporate marriage. She's the fiery, turpentine-scented artist who lives for chaos. Josh Sterling has been Vivian Rossi's safe harbor and secret heartbreak since they were ten.
But with his wedding just three months away, decades of tension finally explode. Terrified of losing their friendship but helpless against the attraction, they make a devastating bargain: 90 days. Friends with benefits. No feelings. No future
It was supposed to be a temporary goodbye to the 'what-ifs.' But as the days bleed into weeks, their arrangement becomes a seductive torture. Viv is forced to watch the man she loves prepare to marry another, and Josh must confront a terrifying truth, the only person who has ever truly seen him is the one he's set to abandon.
90 days with the man i can't have is a searing, high-emotion contemporary romance. When time runs out, duty and desire will clash, demanding the ultimate sacrifice.
7.6
After an exhausting fourteen-hour flight, Katia returned to her Upper East Side penthouse, expecting the quiet comfort of the life she had built.
Instead, she found a pair of familiar red stilettos in the foyer and her fiancé, Caleb, tangled in their bedsheets with his twenty-two-year-old assistant.
She didn't scream or cry. She simply took off her three-carat engagement ring, threw it at his bare chest, and demanded he buy out her half of the penthouse by Friday.
Seeking to numb the sickening disgust, she got blackout drunk and crashed at a luxury hotel, accidentally stumbling into the wrong suite.
Thinking the imposing man inside was a high-end escort hired by her friend, she threw him over her shoulder and spent a wild night with him.
The next morning, she left five thousand dollars on his nightstand with a lipstick-stained note.
"Good Job."
For six years, she had funded Caleb's dreams and built his startup from the ground up, only to be treated like a lifeless ATM.
With ruthless precision, she spent the next two months systematically bankrupting his company, cutting off his venture capital, and erasing his life's work.
She felt no heartbreak, only a cold, calculating need to cleanse herself of his betrayal.
But when Katia finally returned to corporate headquarters to co-lead a massive merger, she literally crashed into the new Vice President.
Strong arms caught her waist, and the sharp scent of cedarwood and whiskey hit her like a freight train.
"You came back," Jackson whispered, his eyes burning as he stared at the woman who had treated him like a cheap gigolo.
9.8
Blurb (Synopsis)
Outspoken florist Elara Vance thought she was storming a billionaire's empire to reclaim her mother's stolen legacy. Instead, she walked into a trap-and walked out bound by a marriage contract.
As Elara and the cold, calculated Julian Vane clash in a world of opulence and deceit, a dangerous attraction ignites. But in the Vane family, secrets are deadlier than scandals. When the price of honor becomes their very survival, Elara must decide if the man she's forced to marry is her greatest enemy-or her only hope.
7.5
Five years ago, Alisson Ford's adoptive family drugged her and offered her to a repulsive old investor to save their failing company.
She escaped the trap, only to accidentally stumble into the bed of Jake Yates, the most terrifying and powerful billionaire in the city.
Months later, while she was painfully giving birth to triplets in a freezing basement, her adoptive sister Bella tracked her down. Bella violently snatched Alisson's firstborn son to pass off as her own ticket into the Yates family. Then, Bella smiled as her men poured gasoline over the mattress and set the room on fire, leaving Alisson and her two remaining newborns to burn alive.
Shielding her fragile babies with her own blistering skin in the roaring inferno, Alisson's despair turned into absolute, blood-soaked hatred. She couldn't fathom how the family she had trusted for years could steal her flesh and blood and condemn her to such a horrific death.
Five years later, Alisson returns to the city as a powerful trauma specialist. She steps right into Jake and Bella's grand engagement banquet, watching coldly as her five-year-old daughter runs straight up to the untouchable billionaire and hugs his leg.
"You are a bad daddy! You abandoned Mommy and us, and now you are going to marry an ugly old witch!"
8.0
Tim Mercer has always been alone.
Awkward in conversation and uncomfortable in crowds, he spends most nights inside his small apartment with only his cat and the glow of a television for company.
Until the night the power goes out. Bored and curious, Tim pulls an old Ouija board from a dusty closet and asks the darkness if anyone is there.
Something answers. She calls herself Serenity, a beautiful woman trapped between worlds. At first, she is gentle. Comforting. Everything Tim has ever wished someone could be, but every night she visits, Tim grows weaker.
Serenity isn't looking for love, she's feeding.
7.5
I had been a "decoration piece" for Kenton Parker for three years, a contract wife bought to pay off my father's gambling debts. I lived in a cold penthouse, making his coffee and answering his phones, while he treated me with the clinical indifference of a stranger.
On our third anniversary, I waited alone at the city's most exclusive restaurant, only to see a news alert flash on my phone. Kenton wasn't coming. He was caught on camera at a hospital, looking at his "friend," ballerina Blanca Donovan, with a raw, frantic worry he had never once shown me, not even when I fell down a flight of stairs.
I finally snapped and filed for divorce, citing his "irreversible erectile dysfunction" just to destroy his massive ego. I thought I was free, but Kenton retaliated with a cruelty that left me breathless. He froze every bank account I owned and had his secretary smash the last photo I had of my mother. He reminded me of the five-million-dollar penalty in my contract-money I didn't have.
"You don't get to leave until I say so," he roared, dragging me into his office. He used my father's life as a leash, forcing me to play the part of a doting wife at his family's Hamptons estate to please his sick mother. He wanted to starve me out until I crawled back to his side.
I couldn't understand how a man could be so heartless. He didn't want my heart, yet he refused to let me go, treating my life like a line item in a corporate merger. He wanted to keep me as his prisoner while he spent his nights with another woman.
But Kenton made one fatal mistake. He thought I was just a broke, submissive secretary with nowhere to turn. He didn't know that I was "Vee," a world-renowned art restorer with a secret legacy and a six-figure commission waiting for me.
As we shared a bed in the Hamptons and he pulled me against his chest, whispering that I was "his," I didn't feel comfort. I felt the cold, hard spark of a woman who was finally ready to burn his contract to the ground.