I Fell Where His Love Favored Another
Half a month into our cold war, I, Claire Parker, found an abortion procedure slip tucked inside Daniel Carter's suit pocket.
The patient's name belonged to the fragile little childhood sweetheart he had always protected so fiercely-Sophie Bennett.
I folded the paper calmly and slipped it back where I had found it.
Daniel noticed the movement immediately. His eyes flicked toward me through the rearview mirror, resignation coloring his voice.
"What are you overthinking now? Sophie was just keeping a friend company at the hospital. She accidentally left it there."
I turned toward the window and said nothing.
This was Sophie declaring war on me, yet the man who could crush competitors without mercy in the business world believed her completely.
The silence inside the car grew suffocating until Daniel finally stopped outside an upscale jewelry boutique.
He reached over and ruffled my hair with easy familiarity, his tone indulgent and affectionate.
"Come on. Pick out a ring. Your birthday's next month anyway, so we might as well register our marriage too."
I bit down hard on my lip as tears fell soundlessly onto the back of my hand.
What he still didn't know was that I wouldn't live long enough to see next month.
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Chapter 4
When I returned to the mansion, I dug a few cardboard boxes out of the storage room.
Then I began sorting through the things that belonged to me, one item at a time.
There really wasn't much.
Every corner of this house carried traces of Daniel and Sophie.
Sophie's favorite throw pillows were scattered across the couch. Imported snacks she liked sat casually on the coffee table.
As for me, it felt as though I had never truly existed here at all.
I folded the cheap everyday clothes from my closet and packed them neatly into the boxes.
Then I tossed my toothbrush and towel from the bathroom counter straight into the trash.
Finally, I opened the drawer and took out the plastic bag containing the plain ring band.
I placed it squarely on the center of the coffee table, impossible to miss.
The sound of the keypad lock echoed from the front door.
Daniel walked in with his tie loosened slightly, exhaustion clinging faintly to his face.
In his hand was the bag of chestnut cakes I had refused earlier.
The moment he noticed the boxes scattered across the floor, he stopped dead in his tracks. His grip around the paper bag tightened instantly.
"It's getting colder. Makes sense to reorganize your clothes for the season." He tugged at his tie and forced out a strained smile before reaching for the packing tape in my hand. "Leave it alone. We can have the housekeeper deal with it tomorrow."
In the past, whenever he offered me even the smallest olive branch, I would end up throwing myself into his arms with tears in my eyes.
But this time, I didn't even pause my packing.
The tape ripped apart with a harsh tearing sound, sharp enough to feel like the final thread between us snapping clean in two.
Avoiding his hand, I said quietly, "Daniel, let's cancel the marriage registration next month."
His fingers curled sharply in midair.
For the first time, a flicker of panic surfaced in those always-confident eyes.
"Claire..." His voice came out hoarse, even trembling slightly, though he still struggled to maintain the composure and authority he was so used to. "Don't joke about something like this. I've had a long day."
"I'm not joking." I looked at him calmly. "And one more thing. I can't eat chestnut cakes with peanuts in them. I'm allergic."
The color drained from Daniel's face instantly.
He drew in a deep breath, walked over to me, and pulled an unlimited black card from his wallet before placing it on top of the box beside me.
"Claire, throwing a tantrum has its limits. Take the card. Go buy yourself something you like. Stop taking your anger out on yourself just to upset me."
I stared at the black card while violent cramps twisted through my stomach hard enough to leave a sheen of cold sweat across my skin.
Then I lifted my head and smiled at him with impossible gentleness. "Daniel, you don't need to spend money buying yourself peace of mind anymore. For the past three years, I've been the one constantly backing down. I'm tired of climbing down from that ledge over and over again. From now on, I won't put you in a difficult position anymore."
Daniel's pupils constricted sharply, but within seconds, he tightened his jaw and forcibly shoved every surging emotion back down.
"Fine. Claire, if you insist on leaving, I won't stop you. Starting today, your card access is suspended." He straightened his suit jacket with his back facing me, his voice lowered almost to a whisper. "When you've calmed down and thought things through, come back to me."
At the doorway, his hand clenched around the handle so tightly that his knuckles turned ashen.
After several long seconds of silence, he finally said without turning around, "I'll wait for you to come back."
But his tone stayed cold and unyielding, as though he was simply waiting to see how long I could keep this up without him.
A second later, the front door slammed shut with a violent bang.
I remained standing where I was as cold sweat slid from my face and dripped onto my collar.
My stomach churned violently, and this time, I couldn't hold it back anymore.
A thick metallic sweetness surged straight up my throat.
I doubled over suddenly and vomited a mouthful of blood onto the carpet.
My body collapsed helplessly to the floor, fingers digging desperately into the thick fibers beneath me.
Yet as I stared at the shocking splash of crimson spreading across the carpet, a relieved smile slowly curved across my lips.
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9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
7.5
For five years, I was locked away in the freezing royal dungeon, starved and used as a bloody plaything by the kingdom's sadistic Cabinet Minister, Brandt Fischer.
He tortured me daily for one twisted reason: I simply looked like someone else.
When he visited my cell to casually announce my father's execution and drag a silver dagger across my neck, he expected me to beg.
Instead, I laughed, sank my teeth directly into his carotid artery, and was violently thrown against a jagged stone wall to my death.
As my skull cracked and my blood stained the moss, I thought about my so-called family. The moment Brandt had demanded me, my father, the Duke, handed me over without a single hesitation to save his own political career.
I was nothing but a disposable pawn, left to rot in the dark while the monsters who ruined my life thrived.
I died suffocating on my own blood and absolute, destructive vengeance.
Then, I opened my eyes.
I was lying in my silk-sheeted bed, reborn as my fifteen-year-old self.
Today was the exact day Lord Daryl Langley, the God of War, would be ambushed and crippled—the event that allowed Brandt to seize ultimate power.
I immediately stole a horse, rode to the palace gates, and threw myself directly in front of Daryl's moving carriage.
"I just didn't want to see a hero die like a slaughtered pig."
I didn't care if I had to shatter my own ankle to hijack his convoy. This time, I was going to save the general, and he would become the blade I use to slaughter them all.
7.2
Elara Vex had everything-a flawless ice core, the title of prodigy, and a place at the pinnacle of the High Tower. But in one brutal night, it was all ripped away. Her mentor tore the core from her chest. Her fiancé drove a sword through her back. Her own sister smiled as she bled out on the cold marble floor.
When Elara wakes, she's years in the past, mere hours before her core is scheduled to be stolen. This time, she won't be anyone's sacrificial lamb. She shatters her own core with forbidden blood magic and forges something far more terrifying in its place-a bottomless, ravenous Chaos Core that devours magic itself.
Now, branded a worthless cripple and cast into the deadly Abyss, Elara is pulled from the darkness by the outcasts of Elysium Academy-a school for heretics, psychopaths, and everything the Tower despises. Under the tutelage of a reclusive principal who knew her murdered mother, Elara will master her forbidden power and uncover the Tower's darkest secrets.
When the Five Academies Ranking Tournament arrives, Seraphina Vex stands in the arena, draped in white saintess robes, ready to claim ultimate glory. She doesn't know that a ghost from her past has clawed her way back from hell. She doesn't know that Elara is coming-and this time, the prodigal sister isn't asking for mercy. She's bringing chaos.
7.4
In a city where data is power and truth is a weapon, some secrets are worth killing for.
Mara Quinn is a ghost in the system, an underground journalist known only as Cipher, feared by corporations and hunted by those with everything to lose. When she breaches a classified network inside Axiom Industries, she uncovers something no one was meant to see: ORACLE, a predictive AI capable of shaping human behavior on a global scale.
She expects retaliation. She doesn't expect Kael Draven.
Cold, brilliant, and untouchable, Kael is the architect behind Axiom's empire, and a man who doesn't make threats he can't execute. Instead of silencing Mara, he offers her a choice: work under his watch, or disappear from existence entirely. Trapped inside his glass fortress known as The Spire, Mara is pulled deeper into a world of surveillance, manipulation, and power plays that stretch far beyond anything she imagined.
But ORACLE isn't just a tool, it's already been used. Governments have fallen. Empires have shifted. And someone else is pulling the strings.
As a rival syndicate closes in and a hidden war erupts across the city, Mara and Kael are forced into an uneasy alliance, one built on intellect, suspicion, and a dangerous, undeniable pull neither of them can ignore.
Because in a world where every move is predicted...
the only thing more dangerous than control is feeling.
And the system is already watching.
8.9
Ava Kidd just wanted to escape her abusive stepmother when she got drunk at a high-end club and stumbled into the wrong hotel room.
She woke up the next morning in a luxury penthouse, lying naked next to a terrifyingly handsome man covered in her scratch marks.
Recalling rumors of the hotel's secret underground concierge, she immediately assumed she had accidentally slept with an elite male escort.
Desperate to settle the bill, she offered him her only debit card with a pathetic $1,800.
But the man, who was actually Garrison Terry, the ruthless billionaire CEO, was deeply insulted by the cheap plastic.
He trapped her against the bed, coldly demanding a half-million-dollar service fee.
When Ava frantically offered her dead mother's tarnished locket as collateral, he cruelly dismissed it as worthless junk.
Ava was humiliated, her heart pounding with absolute terror.
She didn't understand why this arrogant gigolo was acting like a deranged extortionist, demanding a fortune from a broke girl who had clearly made a mistake.
Furious and refusing to cower, she sneaked out, put on his oversized designer shirt, and aggressively ate his $800 truffle breakfast.
Having no money left, she grabbed her cheap red lipstick, wrote a defiant IOU on his expensive linen napkin, and fled the hotel.
She thought she had escaped a criminal, but upstairs, the billionaire traced her lipstick-stained name with a predatory smile.
"Ava Kidd, I will absolutely find you."
9.3
Are you tired of every hockey romance turning into pure erotica by chapter ten?
We are going back to basics.
This is about the tension. The secrets. The stolen glances across a crowded campus, the brush of a bare hand in a freezing ice rink, and the dangerous boy who would burn the world down just to keep her safe.
Caroline Reed is invisible by choice. As a pre-law student fighting to maintain a flawless 4.50 GPA, she hides in the shadows of the university athletics department. She analyzes sports compliance data just to keep her scholarship intact. Her life is perfectly ordered and perfectly safe.
Leo Kincaid is the untouchable hockey captain. He is ruthless on the ice and completely guarded off it. Everyone thinks he is just another arrogant, golden boy athlete.
But the numbers do not lie. When Caroline reviews the latest game footage, she finds a terrifying statistical pattern. Leo is intentionally taking penalties and throwing specific plays.
When she confronts him in the dead of night at the empty arena, she expects a confession of greed. Instead, she uncovers a dangerous underground betting ring that is blackmailing him. By speaking up, Caroline has just put a massive target on her own back.
Now, the only way Leo can protect her is to pull her directly into his spotlight. He forces her into his daily life under the guise of needing a personal academic manager. Suddenly, the invisible girl is everywhere he is. He watches her constantly. He fiercely dictates who she talks to. And in the quiet, frozen moments between the chaos, Caroline begins to realize that the brutal captain is the safest place she could ever be.