In the arms of two sins
His tie hung loose, his eyes darker than sin. The scent of whiskey lingered on his breath as he leaned closer.
"Tell me to stop," he murmured, the words brushing against my skin like a dare.
"You're drunk," I said, staring into those grey eyes as my heartbeat filled the silence.
He smiled faintly, his gaze trailing from my hair until it fell on my lips.
"Drunk," he whispered, his thumb grazing my mouth as if testing how soft it was, "but not blind. You want this as much as I do."
After her husband's mysterious death, Mara Lawson becomes the center of a scandal threatening to destroy the powerful Lawson empire. Elias Lawson, her late husband's twin, is everything she should resist-dangerous, magnetic, and forbidden. David Hale, her ex-lover, the man who walked away once and now wants forgiveness... and another chance.
Between the man who broke her and the one who could ruin her, Mara is caught in a web of passion, guilt, and secrets that could shatter them all.
Because in the Lawson world, love is never pure-it's just another sin waiting to be punished.
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Chapter 2
"Sit, son. Breakfast is ready."
Camille motioned toward the chair beside her just as the maids moved quickly, setting dishes on the long mahogany table; toast, eggs, tea, fruit I couldn't touch.
I sat opposite him, still unsure how to breathe in the same space with the man I had sinned with.
"Thank you," he said simply, taking the seat. His voice carried quiet authority, the kind that silenced a room without effort.
Camille smiled, pleased. "You arrived late last night. Too tired to attend Andrea's engagement party. I would have loved to see you there."
"I had other matters to attend," he replied.
Harmless words, but my stomach twisted. Other matters.
Does he remember? He sounds like he doesn't. Or maybe he just hides it well.
"By the way..." Elias turned to Andrea. "Congratulations on your big day."
Andrea tossed her hair, feeding David with an exaggerated sweetness. "Thank you. My fiancé and I appreciate it."
David's eyes darted to me, awkward, guilty. I immediately looked down at my plate.
Camille poured Elias a cup of tea. "We'll have to talk about the company today."
He nodded. "I just came from there. You don't have to worry about it."
My fork slipped from my hand, clattering softly. Camille didn't notice.
Elias did. His gaze flicked toward me, too fast, like he had been watching me without looking at me.
When he spoke again, his voice was steady, almost casual. "Mara will be joining me at the company."
I froze. "Excuse me?"
He didn't even glance my way this time. "You'll be my co-CEO. You'll work with me."
Camille lifted her head, surprised. "That's sudden, isn't it? She's still...."
"She's Philip's wife," he said evenly. "Her presence stabilizes the board."
My chest tightened. "I never agreed to..."
"It isn't a request," he cut in. His tone was smooth, unraised, but final. "You start next week. I'll have your schedule sent to you."
My mouth went dry. "You can't just decide that"
"I can," he said softly. "And I have."
Silence swept across the table.
Camille sighed, folding her napkin. "He's right, dear. It's... what Philip would have wanted. For appearances, if nothing else."
Appearances.
That's all I'd ever been to this family. A ring. A headline. A placeholder.
Elias stood and pushed his chair back. "We're done here."
He left without a glance.
Andrea didn't wait a second after Elias left.
"Why are you acting like you don't want that position, Mara?" she snapped.
"What do you mean?" I asked, genuinely confused.
She only sighed, annoyed, and walked away.
Camille stood next.
"Mother... please tell him I don't want that position. I don't want any of it."
She didn't even flinch.
"Remember where you are, Mara. You don't get to call me 'mother' here."
Then she left too.
I pushed my plate away. The food suddenly tasted like ash.
Halfway out the door, David's voice caught me.
"Is that how they've been treating you?"
I didn't look back. I kept walking.
I went to my room and sat on the edge of the bed, staring into nothing.
What kind of man was Elias Lawson?
How foolish of me to think he was nicer than Philip.
I groaned into my palms. I already hate him.
My phone rang-Clara.
"Baby girl," she burst out, "before you vanish again, I'm reminding you, your appointment is exactly one week from now. Don't stand me up. I will disown you."
A tiny laugh escaped me. "I won't."
"You'd better not. You've been skipping too many follow-ups."
"I know... I'll come. I promise."
A week later, I kept that promise.
The hospital smelled of antiseptic and cold air. I headed straight to Clara's office. She stood at the end of the hallway with a file in hand, one eyebrow raised.
"Mara Lawson," she said with mock sternness. "Look who finally decided not to run from her own body."
I rolled my eyes and hugged her. "I'm here, aren't I?"
"Yes, under emotional blackmail." She pulled back, studying my face. "You look tired again."
"I live in a house full of people who want me gone. Tired is my brand now."
She looped her arm through mine. "And I heard about David's engagement. I swear he's doing that out of spite."
"I don't want to talk about that."
"Fine. Let's check you before you faint on my floor. I just cleaned it."
I laughed softly and followed her inside. She shut the door and dropped the serious-doctor act.
"Okay," she said, flipping my file open. "First, your test results."
My pulse picked up. "Good or bad?"
"Both," she admitted. "You're healing, but slowly. Hormones still adjusting. Your uterus is still sensitive. You have internal inflammation."
My breath caught. "So I'm not okay."
"You're healing," she corrected. "But you're not Superwoman. No stress. No lifting. And Mara no sexual activity. None."
I groaned. "You sound like my mother."
"I sound like someone who doesn't want you bleeding on my table."
I tried to joke, but guilt pressed against my chest. Clara saw it instantly.
"What aren't you telling me?"
I looked away.
"Oh no," she said. "Start talking."
My fingers twisted. "Clara... something happened."
"When?"
"Where?"
"Why do you look guilty?" She piled questions like bullets.
I swallowed. "I slept with someone."
She blinked. "Okay. It happens. But who?"
I whispered, "At the engagement party."
Her jaw dropped. "Mara! Don't tell me it was David".
"No," I cut in. "I wouldn't let that happen. It was... someone else."
She narrowed her eyes. "Who?"
I hesitated. "It turns out... he's Philip's brother."
She froze completely.
"Mara. No. No, you didn't."
"I was drunk. I swear, I wasn't in my right mind."
"And your body wasn't healed!" she nearly shrieked. "Do you have a death wish?"
"I didn't know," I whispered. "Clara, I wasn't thinking."
Then her voice softened, serious.
"Mara. No one can ever know. Not Andrea. Not Camille. Not David. No one in that house."
"I know."
"I mean it." Her voice trembled. "For your safety, your peace, your reputation, stay away from him. Whatever happened that night, it ends there."
A lump formed in my throat. "Am I... a bad person?"
She squeezed my hand. "No you were lonely, hurting, and fate screwed you over. But now you have to protect yourself."
She exhaled softly, her tone shifting. "And you need to keep it a secret, Mara. Completely. Just like no one knows you're even here today."
I frowned, and she caught it immediately, her eyes softening.
"I know what you're thinking," she added. "And I'll say it again, it wasn't your fault that you lost Philip's baby. Your pregnancy was dangerous from the start. One day you'll explain it to them, but for now... let them believe it was a miscarriage. You don't owe anyone your pain, Mara. You've been through enough."
My throat tightened. "What would I do without you, Clara? I love you so much. God really blessed me with a best friend and a doctor in one."
She squeezed my hands gently. "I'm here anytime. Always."
When I returned to the mansion, it was late.
My stomach growled, so I slipped into the kitchen for a fruit.
The room was quiet. I sliced an apple, leaning against the counter, the dull ache in my abdomen pulsing.
I turned to grab a cup
and froze.
David stood at the doorway, hands in his pockets.
"I didn't know you were back."
How does he know I left?
"I live here," I said, avoiding his eyes.
He nodded, glancing around. "You look... tired."
"I could say the same."
The silence stretched-awkward, heavy. It's our first real conversation since the breakup.
"I heard about Philip," he said finally. "I'm sorry."
"Thank you," I whispered.
He took a small step forward. "I wanted to reach out sooner. But... it didn't feel right."
"No. It wouldn't have."
He watched me with a softened expression-familiar, almost kind.
"You deserve better than this place, Mara."
Our eyes met, and for a moment, something in his eyes softened. Familiar. Painful. Almost kind.
"Baby, I'm back. I've been looking everywhere for you!"
Andrea's voice shattered the moment as she strode into the kitchen.
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7.6
On Christmas eve, I had prepared a surprise gift for my boyfriend of five years, but I was surprised instead... He had been seeing another woman. Worse still, I walked in on him, banging her.
Broken, I left in the middle of the night, but what I didn't know was that I would run into a scary creature that night that changed my life forever.
Alpha Kael... The man whom even his presence carries a strong intimidating aura, yet pulls me in. The man who makes me feel safe, yet torments me.
Watch him burn the world for me...
9.3
Chandler was the secret wife of Avery Osborn, a powerful media heir who kept their marriage hidden to avoid the scandal of her illegitimate birth.
After catching him openly flirting with a rival at a gala, Avery mocked her low status and told her she was nothing without his money.
Instead of crying, Chandler immediately signed a zero-payout divorce agreement, left her wedding ring on his glass table, and walked out.
To numb the pain of her shattered life, she went to a notorious underground club.
Drugged by a bartender, she lost her mind and ended up having a wild night with a handsome stranger she mistook for a high-end male escort.
Panicking the next morning, Chandler transferred her entire life savings of $50,000 to the man to buy his silence, then fled to her corporate job.
But at the afternoon executive meeting, her blood ran cold.
The man she had paid off was standing at the head of the boardroom table. He wasn't a gigolo. He was Brennan George, the ruthless new COO of her company.
Cornering her in the women's restroom, Brennan held up a printed copy of her $50,000 wire transfer.
"Wiring a massive sum of cash to your direct superior after a night together is classified as commercial bribery and solicitation," he whispered dangerously.
Chandler was terrified, realizing she had handed him the exact evidence needed to destroy her career and sue her into bankruptcy.
"Marry me," Brennan demanded coldly. "It's the only way to make this HR problem disappear."
8.5
🔞Explicit Content🔞
"Suck my c^ck, Rosabella. That's all you're good at. A hopeless orphan can only dream of luxury. Keep your filthy mouth out of my affair...use it only to make me cum."
******
Bella Hale has known suffering her entire life. Orphaned at sixteen, she survives on scraps and desperation. She does whatever it takes not to starve with only little dignity intact.
She envies the rich-people who seem immune to hardship and pain. Yet she promised herself that if she ever got her hands on one of them, she would never let go. She was done suffering.
Lucian Rodriguez is everything she should despise.
A cold, selfish, ruthless billionaire with little conscience and no mercy...
a man who knows how to smile for the world while keeping his darkness well hidden.
Their worlds collide when Lucian's four-month-old daughter goes missing... and Bella finds her.
Lucian offers no gratitude...and Bella refuses to let the opportunity slip. She demands compensation. Not just money, but security. A lifetime guarantee that she will never be poor again. In return, she will do whatever he wants. Her body. Her life. He can have it all.
Bella is taken into his world-strictly as a deal.
What she doesn't realize is that when you make a deal with the devil, you should never expect it to be fair.
And she will learn too late that being poor was far better than belonging to Lucian Rodriguez.
A deal turns into obsession.
Survival into desire.
Desire into Hate.
Hate into Love.
That love and commitment becomes the biggest and worst mistake.
Will Bella's desperate deal destroy her?
Or Will she become Lucian's destruction?
9.1
When she's preparing dinner for him, he's out there dating;
When she's drinking with men to get a business deal for him, he is announcing to be single for the price of his stock;
When she drags herself to the hospital in high fever, he's at the same hospital, taking care of his ex girl friend.
She loved him for ten years. She did everything for him and gave him everything she had. She thought their love can never die, yet it did.
She doesn't hate him. She's just tired.
She turns and left him, only to see that there was a firm chest that has been waiting for her all this time. She is also the one adored in another man's eyes, and when she finally gets a taste of being loved, she realize--
He has never loved her.
That day he gets back home, only to be shocked that the woman who has always been there for him was gone.
Regret taking over him as he chases after her, only to see another man saying the scared oath on the alter with their hands holding together.
That was when he realized--
The innocent girl who loved him, the most precious treasure that he as ever got in his life, is gone.
He lost the best thing that has ever been his.
Two broken hearts. One fake marriage. A thousand buried secrets.
Eva thought love would be enough to keep them together. Ten years loving Stephan. Five years married to him. And one tragic accident that shattered everything they ever were, she's left with a stranger wearing her husband's face.
Until the day she finally walks away.
And that's when she meets Micah, her ex-husband's enemy, the man who once set her marriage on fire just by existing.
He proposes to her a dangerous deal: a one-year marriage that will make Stephan regret ever letting her go.
But what starts as a game to wound her ex soon spirals into something raw, tender, and terrifyingly real.
Only, Micah isn't what he seems. Behind his easy smile are secrets she was never meant to find, secrets that could destroy them both.
And when the truth comes out, love might not be enough to save anyone.
When the lies unravel... will her heart choose forgiveness - or freedom?
7.3
Seraphina's late mother's business of housing seniors is now in control of her wicked stepfather, Silas Creed. With her loved ones under his hostile care, she is eager to obey his demands to keep them safe. Including acting as a spy in the Thorne Corporation for intel that will dismantle his rival's empire.
But, entangling herself with the stoic, brooding, and infamous billionaire, Jaxon Thorne, throws a wrench in her plan. Intrigued by his ruthless desire for her and knowing lies being his arch enemy, the threat of her stepfather becomes vague in her mind. With Seraphina deeply involved with Thorne, she risks far more than she had expected.
Love. Loyalty. And lives.
9.3
I walked into my apartment dripping wet from the rain, only to hear a guttural moan coming from the bedroom. I told myself it was just the TV, but my shaking hands could barely fit the key into the lock.
When the door swung open, I saw a pair of red stilettos on the floor and my fiancé's favorite silk tie discarded like trash. I pushed the bedroom door open to find Javon in our bed with another woman, the sheets I had just washed two days ago tangled around them.
Instead of apologizing, Javon looked at me with a sneer and barked, "You don't know how to knock?" He claimed he paid the bills, even though I worked double shifts just to keep the lights on while he chased a promotion he'd never get.
When I slapped him, he didn't show remorse-he called me a "stupid bitch" and lunged at me with a look of pure malice. My life was a total wreck; my fiancé was a cheater, and my grandmother was about to be kicked out of her nursing home because I was forty dollars short of the payment.
I felt like I was falling off a cliff with no one to catch me. Why was the man I loved treating me like a cockroach in my own home? Just as Javon moved to strike me, a shadow fell over the room. A man in an expensive black trench coat stood in the doorway, his presence sucking the oxygen out of the room.
It was Carmine Wilkinson, a man I had never met but whose terrifying calm made my heart stop. He didn't look at the trash on the bed; he only looked at me. He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief and asked one simple, brutal question.
"Do you want revenge?"
I nodded, desperate for any lifeline in the middle of my imploding world. He didn't offer me a shoulder to cry on; he looked me in the eye and gave me an ultimatum that would change my life forever.
"Good. Get your ID. We're going to City Hall."