LOVE PAINTED IN LIES
9 / 10.0
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Prologue
Some stories begin with love.
Some begin with war.
But theirs began with a promise, one whispered under the fading glow of a streetlamp, sealed with youthful dreams and a future full of light. Neither of them knew how quickly love could twist into something darker... or how far a wounded heart could go just to feel whole again.
This is not a tale
LOVE PAINTED IN LIES Chapter 1
Eliana discovered love the year she least expected it, in a season where the sun seemed to shine brighter and school corridors felt like endless possibilities. She was the type who lived in colours and brushstrokes, whose fingers were often stained with paint, who stayed after class to perfect her canvases while others rushed home. Everyone knew her as the girl who aimed high scholarship aspirations, art competitions waiting to be won, a future she guarded fiercely. Romance, she believed, was a distraction for people who had time to fall apart and piece themselves back together, she didn't think she was one of them.
Then Adrian came.
He transferred from another city mid-term tall, quiet, with that kind of presence that entered a room gently yet confidently. People noticed him instantly, but he wasn't loud or showy. He smiled rarely, but when he did, it reached his eyes softly, like a secret shared with the world. His first week was a blur of introductions. Girls whispered about him, boys tried to befriend him, teachers praised his smart answers. Eliana barely paid attention until the day fate decided to intervene.
It was a Tuesday, the kind with lazy heat pressing down on the school like a heavy blanket. Students gathered under trees during break, escaping the sun. Eliana sat alone sketching a distant church tower, lost in the rhythm of pencil strokes. She didn't notice someone approach until a shadow fell across her page.
"Your drawing's so detailed. You did that in one break?" a voice asked.
She looked up Adrian.
Her heart skipped, not romantically, but from surprise. She wasn't used to attention, especially from people everyone else admired.
"Yes," she replied, tucking a braid behind her ear. "It keeps me calm."
He smiled slightly. "Mind if I watch?"
Most people stared at her art like an exhibit, but he watched her, curious about the person behind the pencil. It felt different. He sat beside her, careful not to intrude, and asked questions about shading, perspective, her favourite paint medium. Not small talk. Real interest.
Break ended too soon, and they walked to class together. That was the beginning.
Days passed, and they found themselves paired for a history project. At first, it was just work research meetings in the library, exchanging notebooks, drafting timelines. But school projects have a way of creating moments. Their conversations stretched beyond history dates into life stories. Adrian confessed he loved music, especially acoustic guitar, though he never performed publicly. His mother wanted him to study medicine, his father pushed for engineering, but he wasn't sure what he wanted. Eliana spoke about art like breathing, about the colours that reflected her moods. They were different, yet something connected quietly, curiosity, respect, and slowly, comfort.
One rainy afternoon they stayed back in school to finish the final slides. Thunder echoed outside, and everyone rushed home, but electricity flickered and went out. They remained, trapped, their project only half-done. Instead of panicking, they sat near the window, watching raindrops race down the glass.
"It sounds strange," Adrian said, voice soft under the storm's rhythm, "but rain makes me feel less alone."
Eliana nodded. "It makes everything slow enough to feel."
He looked at her as if her words painted something only he understood.
That moment lingered, warm and quiet.
By the time the rain lightened, something unspoken had formed between them. They walked under his jacket, sharing its cover from the drizzle. Their hands brushed accidentally no confession, no dramatic music, nothing like movies, just two hearts learning to beat near each other.
Soon they were inseparable. Others noticed. Their classmates teased gently "Eliana and Adrian, the creative duo," "History couple," "Art and music." She blushed at jokes, but a part of her felt proud, chosen even. For someone who thought love was a distraction, she began to look forward to school more than ever. Study sessions turned into long conversations. Messages at night stretched until sleep stole one of them away mid-reply. They exchanged playlists, photos of paintings and sunsets, poems found online. Eliana felt her chest bloom with warmth she did not know how to name.
One evening, as they walked home from a debate event, the street was washed with golden dusk. Children played nearby, a football bouncing across the road. Eliana laughed at a joke he made a sound light and free. Adrian paused, watching her in a way she didn't notice until silence replaced his laughter.
"Eliana," he said, voice steady but gentle, "I think I'm falling for you."
The world seemed to still. Cars passed, wind rustled leaves, but her heart grew loud. She'd never been confessed to before. She looked at him, his eyes holding sincerity like an open book.
"But we're young," she whispered.
"I know," he replied. "But feelings don't wait for age."
She didn't answer at first. Love felt like a cliff thrilling, terrifying. Yet something inside her stepped forward. She smiled faintly.
"I think... I'm falling too."
No kiss. No dramatic embrace. Just two hearts realizing they had become each other's safe space.
Their relationship blossomed. They sat together in class, shared meals during break, competed playfully over grades. On weekends, they walked through markets and parks, sometimes silent, sometimes laughing endlessly. Adrian played guitar for her once shy fingers trembling but his voice was soft and beautiful. She painted him a small portrait, one he said he'd keep forever. They made promises to support each other's dreams, to stay honest, to never let misunderstandings break what they had.
Love was simple. Pure. Like a sunrise before the clouds form.
Eliana didn't know then that the brightest sun casts the darkest shadows. She didn't know that love can be tested, stretched, or shattered. At that time, she believed forever was easy just two hearts and a promise.
If someone told her betrayal waited just beyond the horizon, she might have laughed and said their bond was too strong.
But life writes its own chapters.
And this was only the beginning.
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LOVE PAINTED IN LIES of Contents
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8.0
When gifted cellist Vivienne Aurel inherits her late father's catastrophic $4.2 million debt, she expects to lose everything. She doesn't expect the debt to be bought by Caspian Vane, the most feared private equity magnate in New York. Caspian doesn't want to ruin her; he wants her to work exclusively for him as the artistic director of his new cultural foundation for eighteen months. Forced into his world under a binding agreement, Vivienne prepares to fight against a cold, transactional cage. But as the intense, quiet proximity between them begins to blur the lines of their contract, she discovers a terrifying truth: the man who now owns her future has been watching her from the shadows long before she ever knew his name.
8.0
On the night of their third wedding anniversary, Ashley was ready to reveal a secret to her husband-
She was pregnant.
But moments after their passionate intimacy, her Alpha coldly delivered the blow-he wanted a divorce.
His fated mate had returned.
Stripped of her wolf spirit, abandoned by the pack, and carrying his child, Ashley was cast aside like a disposable Omega.
Just as she prepared to leave alone-
The boy she had once rejected had now risen as the most formidable Alpha King. The possessive hunger in his gaze sent shivers through her-did she dare face him? Was this vengeance, or something more? But did she even have a choice?
7.2
Genevieve woke up choking on her own blood, a fatal gash tearing through her abdomen. The memories of a primitive world crashed into her mind—she had transmigrated into the body of a sadistic beastman Mistress.
But the five powerful beastmen "mates" standing over her hadn't come to her rescue. They had come to watch their tormentor die.
"We should just leave her," Kameron sneered coldly. "The scavengers will clean up the mess."
Gilberto spat in disgust, while Angelo, a silver-scaled snake-man, trembled in pure terror at the sight of her. The original owner had whipped them, humiliated them, and driven another mate to suicide. Now, they were letting her bleed out in the mud, their eyes filled with undisguised loathing and satisfaction.
She was a top-tier apocalyptic survival expert, yet here she was, paying the ultimate price for a stranger's monstrous sins. It was a bitter, unacceptable irony to die helplessly in the dirt while her supposed protectors waited for her corpse to rot.
She refused to accept this ending.
Forcing a chaotic surge of energy through their shared Biological Link, she brought all five men to their knees in agonizing pain, commanding them to carry her back. In the dark cave, without a single scream, she plunged her bare hands into a fire and brutally cauterized her own gaping wound with searing ash. As the beastmen stared in horrified awe at the unbreakable soul now occupying the tyrant's body, Genevieve wiped the blood from her face and began to rewrite her fate.
7.4
I single-handedly saved my family's corporate empire from a hostile takeover, securing our market share for the next decade.
But my grandfather didn't see me as a hero. He saw me as a flawed piece of inventory.
To calm the board and fix the reputation I supposedly ruined, he forced me into an arranged marriage, auctioning me off to the highest bidder.
Desperate, I turned to my childhood friend, Egnacio, the only person who ever promised to protect me.
But instead of saving me, he publicly humiliated me. He used my desperation as a networking opportunity, pitching my arranged marriage as a business deal to a ruthless private equity king named Dexter Mathews.
Later that night, I caught Egnacio holding my cruel cousin in his arms.
"What man wants to be with a woman who looks at you like she's planning a hostile takeover?"
Hearing him mock my pain shattered the last bit of hope I had.
I realized I was never family to them. I was just a sharp knife, used to cut down their enemies and then traded for cash before I got dull.
The heartbreak vanished, replaced by a cold, violent rage.
I didn't break, and I didn't run.
Instead, I got into the back of Dexter Mathews's car. He had watched my family tear me apart, but he didn't see a broken pawn. He saw a queen.
And together, we were going to burn their entire empire to the ground.
9.7
Darcie Miller survives elite St. Jude's Academy on sarcasm and invisibility, steering clear of golden quarterback Charles Sterling-her most ruthless tormentor. But when her father's bankruptcy hands everything to the Sterling family, Darcie faces a humiliating ultimatum: move into Charles's mansion as his live-in "academic handler" to keep him eligible for graduation.
Now the girl who despises him holds his future in her hands, and the boy who shattered her reputation might be the only one who truly sees her. In a world of cold marble and buried secrets, hate is about to catch fire-and obsession could burn them both.
9.3
On her wedding night at The Plaza Hotel, Clara went looking for her husband.
Instead, she found him in the dimly lit parking garage, passionately pinning down her bridesmaid.
She couldn't even scream or expose them. Just hours before the ceremony, Julian had tricked her into signing away her twenty percent shares of their co-founded company, leaving her completely penniless and unable to pay her grandmother's life-saving medical bills.
Fleeing in absolute despair, a sudden hotel blackout plunged her into a second nightmare. She was dragged into a pitch-black room and brutally violated by a heavily drugged stranger.
When a shattered Clara returned to the office to audit the books and reclaim her power, Julian demoted her to a dusty desk by the trash cans.
He flaunted his mistress in the executive suite and deliberately sent Clara into a horrifying trap. He arranged for vicious clients to drug and assault her, demanding high-definition blackmail photos so he could divorce her with absolutely nothing.
"Since you want to play rough, you can service Mr. Petrocelli tonight," the thug sneered, locking the VIP room door.
Clara was pushed to the brink of hell. Why was the man she devoted three years of her life to trying to destroy her so completely? And why did the freezing cedarwood scent of the stranger who ruined her in the dark perfectly match Conrad Vance, the ruthless CEO and Julian's untouchable uncle?
Rather than let Julian win, Clara smashed a glass bottle, held the jagged edge to her own throat to force the men back, and threw herself off the second-floor balcony into the freezing night.
But the bone-crushing impact never came. A massive figure shot out from the shadows and caught her, and her brutal counterattack finally began.
