Loving him is a sin I can't escape
Five years ago, Elena Moretti walked away from Dominic Russo without explanation-leaving him to face the collapse of his father's empire alone.
Now Dominic is no longer the reckless man she once loved. He's a ruthless billionaire CEO with power, influence... and a memory that hasn't forgotten betrayal.
When he acquires the company Elena works for, he offers her a deal she can't refuse: work under him for six months-or watch her family's name be dragged through a financial scandal from the past.
Forced into close proximity, old wounds reopen and buried secrets threaten to surface. But the more time they spend together, the more dangerous the tension becomes.
Because hatred is easier than forgiveness.
And love?
Love is guilty as sin.
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Chapter 1
I hadn't seen Dominic Russo in five years. Not since the night everything fell apart. Not since the night he looked at me like I was a stranger.
Like I was the enemy. And yet there he was-standing at the head of the conference table like he owned the world. Because he did.
The glass walls of the boardroom overlooked the skyline of New York City, all steel and ambition and glittering power. The city suited him now. Hard. Unforgiving. Untouchable. Dominic Russo wasn't the reckless, passionate man I once loved. He was controlled. Precise. Dangerous. His tailored black suit fit him like armor. His dark hair was shorter, sharper. His jaw tighter. His eyes- his eyes no longer softened when they found mine. They hardened.
"Ms. Moretti." My name rolled off his tongue like a challenge. I froze at the doorway of the boardroom, aware that every executive at the table had turned to look at me. "You're late," he said calmly, flipping through a file without glancing up. I wasn't late. I was exactly on time.
He just wanted control. "Traffic," I replied evenly.
A few awkward shifts around the table. Everyone knew who he was. CEO of Russo Enterprises. The man who rebuilt his father's collapsing empire before he turned thirty.
The man who blamed me for its collapse in the first place. His eyes finally lifted. And locked onto mine. Five years vanished in an instant. I remembered his hands tangled in mine. His quiet promises. The way he once said he would burn the world before letting anyone hurt me. Now he looked like he would burn me himself.
"I wasn't aware you still worked in this city," he said.
"I wasn't aware you bought the company I work for," I shot back.
A flicker of irritation crossed his face. Brief. Controlled.
"I acquire what benefits me," he said smoothly. "This firm has potential."
His gaze lingered deliberately.
"Some assets more than others."
Heat crept up my spine.
The meeting continued, numbers and projections bouncing around the room, but I barely heard a word. Dominic's presence consumed the space. Every breath felt heavier. Every second stretched tight. Then he spoke again. "I'll be restructuring management."
My stomach tightened. "And I'll need a personal project lead." The room quieted. His eyes settled on me without hesitation. "I've already selected her." No. Absolutely not. "I decline," I said immediately. The word dropped like glass. Dominic leaned back slightly, studying me with faint amusement.
"You don't get to decline."
"I'm not interested in working under you."
"You signed a contract with this firm," he reminded me. "Which now belongs to me."
There it was.
The power move.
"I'll quit."
A sharp silence fell. Dominic rose slowly from his chair. The air shifted. Heavy. "You'll walk away again," he said softly. "Just like last time."
The accusation hit harder than I expected. "You don't know what happened," I snapped. His jaw flexed. "I know you chose money over me." That was the story he believed. That I took a payout from his father to disappear. That I sold us out.
He didn't know the truth. He didn't know about the threat. Or the document I was forced to sign.
Or how much it cost me to leave.
"You're wrong," I said quietly.
"Then explain it."
I opened my mouth. And closed it. Because I couldn't. Not without exposing a secret that would destroy more than just us. Dominic walked around the table, each step slow and deliberate, until he stood directly in front of me. Too close. Close enough that I could feel the warmth of him.
"You owe me, Elena."
"I owe you nothing."
His hand came down on the table beside my hip, trapping me between him and polished wood. "You left me to take the fall," he murmured. "Investors pulled out. My father nearly lost everything. And you vanished." His voice wasn't loud. But it was sharp enough to cut. "I did what I had to," I whispered. "That's the problem," he said. "You always decide alone." He straightened, stepping back just enough to make his next words land harder. "Here's what's going to happen." My pulse pounded in my ears.
"You will work as my personal project lead for six months."
"No."
"If you refuse," he continued calmly, "I'll release the financial audit from five years ago."
Cold flooded my veins.
That audit. The discrepancies. The deal his father forced me into. "If that becomes public," Dominic added quietly, "your father's name will be attached to it." Low. Cruel. Strategic. "You wouldn't drag my family into this." His expression didn't change. "You dragged mine."
The room felt suffocating. Six months. Six months working directly under the man who thought I betrayed him. Six months pretending I didn't still feel something when he looked at me.
"Well?" he pressed. I swallowed my pride. "For six months," I said stiffly. A slow, victorious smile curved his mouth. "Good." I turned to leave before my hands betrayed their shaking.
"Oh, and Elena?"
I paused.
"For the sake of appearances... you'll be attending all public events with me." My stomach dropped. "What events?" His voice lowered."Starting with the engagement gala next week." Engagement. The word echoed painfully.
"You're getting married?"
"No."
He stepped closer again.
"But you'll be my date."
"That's insane."
"Is it?"
His eyes darkened. "Or are you afraid of what people will remember when they see us together again?" Five years ago, we were everywhere. Five years ago- I was wearing his ring. My fingers curled slowly. He leaned in just enough for his words to brush against my skin.
"Don't worry, Elena," he murmured.
"This time..."
His gaze dropped to my lips before rising again.
"...I won't be the one who falls in love."
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8.4
Hazel Dawson has a crazy past, she's called the wealthiest billionaire a crazy bastard to his face without knowing.
When the company she's working for suddenly gets sold to the youngest but ruthless businessman in the city- Xavier Steele- known for his crazy unpredictable ways, Hazel has no choice but to bear it and accept his overbearing requests as his secretary.
But one night, when Xavier gets wounded after saving Hazel from an armed gunman,Hazel learns that her Boss might not be all that he looks like on the surface.
In a two confined offices located at the top of the building separate from several workers, Roses bloom but thorns follow.
Just when love seems within reach, Hazel is accused of stealing confidential contracts. With whispers of betrayal, a haunting past, and a string of murders circling the company, Hazel must clear her name-and her heart.
Can Hazel prove that she did not steal the company's contracts for personal gain?
Will Xavier look past his nagging belief of the wealthy belong together and go back to his ex?
And with the increasing murders that keep getting tied to the company as the common denominator, what does this evil-doer hiding in the shadows aim to achieve?
7.4
Evelina Barrett was the legitimate daughter, yet she was framed for a disgusting sex scandal, expelled from the Ivy League, and locked out of her late mother's massive trust fund.
While she was thrown out to rot on the streets with a jagged, hideous red scar covering half her face, her father and step-family were throwing a lavish charity gala to celebrate her total ruin.
They laughed as they officially published her disownment notice in the Times to cut her off forever.
"Without the school halo, that ugly freak will be begging on the streets by tomorrow," her sister Aspen sneered.
Her stepmother Annabella toasted to taking out the trash, perfectly happy to steal Evelina's inheritance while ignoring the fact that Evelina knew exactly how they had murdered her mother.
For years, Evelina had been locked in a dark basement, abused by bodyguards, and treated worse than a stray dog.
Why should she, the true heir, suffer in the gutter while the leeches who destroyed her life enjoyed the wealth that rightfully belonged to her?
She refused to be their victim anymore.
Washing away her fake scar to reveal her true, breathtaking face, Evelina blackmailed New York's most lethal billionaire into marriage to secure the ultimate shield.
Then, she put on a black mourning dress, ordered a dark web ghost crew, and climbed into a heavy semi-truck.
At exactly 6:00 PM, she smashed through the iron gates of her family's elegant gala, delivering three pure black coffins directly to the lawn.
8.3
Three years into marriage, Rachael gave her all to Xander, even secretly using her newfound heiress fortune to save his struggling company.
But the truth shattered her—her marriage certificate was fake, and his "childhood friend" was his real wife all along.
When she confronted him, he shrugged her off with, "She's just a friend."
Enough was enough. Rachael went back to her real family, soared in her career, and married Xander's rival.
When Xander begged for another chance, her new husband pulled her close, flashing their marriage certificate.
"She's already married—to me."
7.0
For three years, Breanna gave up her brilliant career as a top-tier perfumer to be the perfect housewife for her billionaire husband, Hartwell.
But when he finally returned from a three-month business trip to Paris, he didn't even glance at the dinner she had carefully prepared. Instead, he threw a divorce agreement on the table.
He gave her thirty days to move out and offered a ridiculously low settlement. When she cried and asked if there was someone else, he looked at her with absolute disgust.
"You used to smell like ambition and possibility. Now you smell like cooking oil and the desperation of a woman who has nothing outside her husband. You're a trap."
He threatened to bury her in legal fees if she didn't sign. Heartbroken and confused, Breanna forced his assistant to reveal what really happened in Paris. The truth was humiliating. Hartwell had been spending all his time with a twenty-six-year-old genius perfumer—a girl who was the exact mirror image of who Breanna used to be before she sacrificed everything for him.
He didn't just want a new woman. He wanted a younger, untainted replacement of her past self.
Wiping away her tears, Breanna's grief instantly hardened into cold, calculated rage. She tore up his insulting settlement and prepared to fight back, completely unaware that her cruel husband was currently hiding in a hotel room, coughing up blood, deliberately playing the villain to force her to survive his impending death.
8.3
I spent three months in Zurich securing banking rights for my family's pack. I couldn't wait to give my five-year-old daughter, Lily, the rare Starlight Moonstone Beast I’d bought to soothe her shifting pains.
But before I landed, I saw a photo online: my husband's "distant nephew" was playing with that very toy in my living room.
I rushed to the Pack Academy, only to find a teacher raising a riding crop laced with wolfsbane against my child.
Instead of protecting us, my husband, Austyn, stepped out with a woman wearing my furs and my grandmother’s emerald necklace.
He told the gathered crowd I was a mental patient having a delusion.
He hugged his mistress and announced she was the true Luna, claiming our marriage was a mistake and publicly rejecting our bond.
For five years, I had suppressed my Supreme Alpha aura to let him feel powerful, funding his lifestyle and building his reputation.
In return, he brainwashed my pack, abused my daughter, and tried to cast me out as a beggar in my own queendom.
He thought he had won because he believed his own lies about my weakness.
But when his illegitimate son threw a rock that drew blood from my daughter’s face, my patience snapped.
I stopped suppressing my scent, and my eyes turned molten gold.
"This is not a dispute, Austyn. This is an execution."
7.4
My husband stood by the window of his Manhattan office, his silhouette cutting through the storm like a blade. He didn't even look at me as he tossed the divorce papers onto the desk, his voice a cold baritone. "Sign it," Isaiah commanded, "or your brother’s dialysis treatment ends today."
He believed the lie that I had pushed his pregnant mistress down a flight of stairs in a jealous rage. To save my dying brother, I signed the confession and accepted the role of a murderer, trading my freedom for a life of disgrace.
At the funeral, Isaiah forced me to crawl on my knees through the freezing mud to the grave while a mob of mourners spat on me and cursed my name. When I went to prison, his influence followed me into the showers, where inmates told me the King wanted me to "remember my crime" before they used rusty shears to hack off my finger.
Five years later, I was a ghost living in a damp basement with the son Isaiah never knew I had, hiding my mangled hand under a leather glove. When he eventually tracked us down, he didn't show mercy; he tore my son from my arms, calling me an unfit monster and swearing I would rot in a cage.
I couldn't understand how the man I once loved could look at my broken body and see only a criminal, never realizing that every scar I carried was a gift from his own hatred.
As he walked away with my child, I swallowed a bottle of pills to end the nightmare, leaving Isaiah to rip the glove from my hand and discover the mangled truth just as my eyes finally closed.