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 7
At three o'clock that afternoon, Cilla sat in a secluded booth at an ultra-exclusive Manhattan cafe.
She had received a text from Meryl demanding a meeting. Cilla only agreed because she wanted to see how desperate the woman was.
Meryl sat across the table, wearing oversized designer sunglasses inside the dimly lit room. Her Hermes Birkin bag sat on the leather seat next to her.
Meryl reached into the bag and pulled out a sleek blue folder. She slid it across the table.
"This is a settlement agreement," Meryl said, her tone dripping with superiority. "Jace has already signed it."
Cilla didn't touch the folder. She just looked at it.
"Open it," Meryl commanded.
Cilla flipped the cover open. She scanned the legal jargon quickly.
The terms were laughable. She was to forfeit all claims to Hudson Tech shares, give up the penthouse, and waive any right to spousal support.
In exchange, she would receive a one-time severance payment of one million dollars.
"One million," Meryl sneered, taking a sip of her sparkling water. "Consider it an act of extreme charity. You take this, and you disappear."
Cilla kept her face completely blank.
"If you try to fight this in court," Meryl threatened, leaning forward, "the Hudson legal team will bury you. You won't even be able to afford the retaining fees. You'll be bankrupt before the first hearing."
Cilla looked down at the signature line. Jace's messy, arrogant scrawl was already there.
He had told her he wouldn't sign the divorce papers, but he had secretly sent his mother to ambush her with this insulting offer.
Cilla picked up her porcelain coffee cup and took a slow sip.
Meryl misinterpreted the silence. She thought Cilla was calculating the money.
"You need to leave him alone," Meryl added, her voice dropping lower. "Carolyn is pregnant. Jace needs to focus on his real family now."
Cilla's heart didn't even skip a beat. It was a classic Meryl tactic, a lie designed for maximum emotional damage. If Carolyn were truly pregnant, the news would have been plastered on every high-society blog for a week, celebrated with sickening extravagance, not weaponized by Meryl in a desperate, quiet attempt to gain leverage. The lie was so obvious, so pathetic, it didn't even register as pain.
Cilla set her coffee cup down. She reached into her blazer pocket and pulled out a heavy Montblanc fountain pen.
She uncapped it with a smooth twist.
Meryl's eyes lit up with triumph. She thought she had won.
Without a single second of hesitation, Cilla pressed the gold nib to the paper and signed her name on the dotted line.
She flipped to the next page and signed again.
When she was done, she casually tossed the folder back across the table. It slid and hit Meryl's water glass with a clink.
Meryl stared at the signed documents. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.
"Did you... did you even read the terms?" Meryl stuttered, completely thrown off balance by how easy that was.
Cilla stood up. She looked down at Meryl, her eyes cold and empty.
"Keep your pathetic million dollars," Cilla said, her voice cutting through the quiet cafe. "Buy yourself a nice coffin with it."
Meryl gasped, her hand flying to her chest. "Excuse me?"
"I don't want a single cent from your disgusting family," Cilla stated clearly. "I just want to be legally scraped clean of the Hudson name."
Meryl was completely speechless. The intimidation tactic had failed spectacularly.
Cilla picked up her bag and turned to leave.
She paused at the edge of the booth. "Don't ever contact me again."
Cilla walked out of the cafe and pushed the heavy glass door open.
The cool New York air hit her face.
She had just signed away millions in marital assets, but as she stood on the sidewalk, a massive weight lifted off her chest.
She was free.
She pulled out her phone and dialed Lena's number.
"Hey," Cilla said, a genuine smile touching her lips for the first time in months. "I'm officially single. Let's get dinner."
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8.0
"Just ninety days, Viv. Then I have to marry her."
"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.