My Best Friend's Uncle....And My Baby Daddy.
Five years ago, Autumn Martin broke the ultimate rule: she fell in love with Eric Kingston-her best friend's uncle and the most powerful man in London.
Their relationship was a beautiful, forbidden secret, but it was doomed from the start.
Fleeing with a secret he was never meant to find out, Autumn left the man she loved behind.
Now, she is back for her best friend's wedding, praying she can survive three days without Eric discovering the truth.
But Eric hasn't forgotten the woman who vanished.
When he catches a glimpse of a child with his own storm-gray eyes, the game changes.
Trapped in the Kingston estate, Autumn must navigate guilt, rekindled passion, and the terrifying reality that Eric Kingston never lets go of what belongs to him.
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Chapter 6
After the fiasco at the rehearsal dinner, I retreated to my room as fast as my legs could carry me. I sat on the edge of the bed, replaying the scenario over and over. The problems of the rich weren't that different from the poor, really-cheating, resentment, and greed-it was just wrapped in more expensive packaging.
I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt Eric's hand on my thigh or heard Eleanor's sharp voice. The house was enormous, but at night, the quietness it exuded was scary. I needed to move. I threw on a silk robe over my nightgown, the chilling air of the hallway making me shiver as I stepped out.
I decided not to visit the balcony where I'd encountered him the night before. Instead, I wandered down to the lower floors, looking for something to distract my mind. I found myself standing before a set of massive double doors. Pushing them open, I was greeted by a magnificent sight. Shelves upon shelves of books rose toward the ceiling, looking exactly like those magical libraries from the movies.
I began browsing through the collection, the scent of old paper and leather calming my nerves. I found a classic novel I liked and took it to an empty reading nook near the back. I just wanted one hour of peace.
"What are you doing?"
I jumped, nearly dropping the book. I turned to see the one person I had been trying to avoid. Eric.
"Mr. Kingston. Good evening," I said, scrambling to stand up. "I thought the library would be vacant. I just wanted to read for a bit. Excuse me, I'll be taking my leave."
"Carry on," he said, dismissing my apology with a wave of his hand. "Don't let me bother you."
He sat in a leather chair across the room, but the sudden awareness of him was overwhelming. He was here, in a room with me, the door closed. The air felt charged with a tension that was almost physical.
"What book is that?" he asked suddenly.
I told him the title, and for a few minutes, we actually had a normal conversation about literature. I could see he was trying to bridge the gap, trying to talk to me like we weren't two people with a from shattered past. I didn't want to reply, but it was better than him getting into my air space again.
"You always did like reading," he said, dropping a glass of scotch onto the side table. "You probably read half the books in my home office while we were together."
The mention of our past made my heart stutter. "Reading sharpens the mind," I said, trying to keep it neutral.
"Why did you leave, Autumn?" he asked, his voice low. "Why did you run?"
"I promised myself not to be the 'other woman,' Eric," I said, finally using his name. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him stand up. He moved slowly, walking toward me until he stepped into the light of my reading lamp.
"I think I should leave. It's getting late," I said, gathering my things and trying to stand.
But Eric was faster. He pressed me back against the reading table, his body a solid wall of heat. "You didn't even give me a chance to choose, did you?" he whispered, his face inches from mine. "You decided to make those selfish decisions all by yourself. You decided for both of us."
"Mr. Kingston, it's all in the past. We are different people now," I argued, my voice trembling.
"Well, I haven't forgotten you. And I sure as hell know you haven't forgotten me," he said, his hand sliding to my lower back, pulling me flush against him.
"Please... somebody could walk in," I whispered, even as my body began to melt against his.
"Why are you still calling me that?" he growled, his lips brushing against my shoulder. "Call me by the name you used when I was ball-deep inside of you."
I gasped as he kissed my shoulder, his voice thick with a raw, primal hunger. "God, you still smell so fucking nice. I wonder if you still feel the same as you did before."
He trailed kisses down my neck, his hands loosening the belt of my robe. My head fell back, a low moan escaping me that I couldn't suppress. He kissed the skin near my breast, whispering that I still tasted the same. I was weak. I was falling.
Then, the library door swung open.
I Separated from him instantly, my face burning with shame. I felt like a teenager caught doing something forbidden. I prayed it was just a maid, but Lady Luck was finished with me for the night. Standing in the doorway was Alexander Hawthorne.
"Pardon me," Hawthorne said, his voice oily. "I thought the library would be empty."
He didn't look embarrassed. In fact, he looked intrigued. His eyes raked over me, and I felt a sudden chill. I realized my robe had been pulled back, exposing my bare shoulder and the lace strap of my nightgown where Eric had loosened it.
I pulled the silk shut, my hands shaking. I had had enough of this night. Without a word to either of them, I walked out of the library, leaving the two powerful men behind. As I hurried back to the Blue Suite, I had to face the bitter truth: I was still weak for Eric. I couldn't resist him, and that made me the most dangerous person in my son's life.
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7.6
She was the heir of a criminal syndicate, bred to command the underworld.
For seven years she loved the wrong man, serving his family and building their fortune. Her payment was betrayal-his affair with her best friend.
During her three-year coma, he hissed, "Don't wake up."
They carried on at her bedside, then plotted her death to steal the company. She woke anyway and shattered them, rattling high society as a mafia heir and lethal fighter who ran the black-market economy.
He begged. She kicked him aside and chose the man who'd waited a decade-the world's top arms dealer. "I'm yours."
8.8
I was the despised adopted daughter of the Sanders family, hiding behind heavy gothic makeup and enduring their daily disgust.
The day my adoptive father died in a severe car crash, my adoptive mother and stepsister didn't even bother to call me.
Instead, while his body was still warm, my mother filed a multi-million dollar life insurance claim.
"I am not feeding a useless freak for another day. Pack your trash and get out."
She kicked me out into the freezing rain, but that wasn't the worst of it.
My stepsister Cornelia stole my greatest secret. Five years ago, I saved the life of Fidel Vaughan, a ruthless billionaire heir, from a burning estate.
Cornelia claimed my identity, accepted a million-dollar reward, and secured a marriage proposal from him, burning my only proof to ashes.
They thought I was just a helpless, pathetic high schooler they could discard and replace.
But when I hacked the police files, I discovered my father's crash wasn't an accident. It was a targeted hit, and the Vaughan Group had hijacked the traffic cameras to cover it up.
I washed off the ugly black makeup, shedding the disguise of a pathetic outcast.
I am Spectre, the world's most elusive hacker and underground doctor.
I intercepted the billionaire heir's heavily armed convoy in the dead of night. They thought they could steal my life and murder my father, but now, I hold the needle that controls Fidel Vaughan's sanity, and I will make them all pay.
7.9
I hid my terminal stomach cancer diagnosis, hoping to spend my last six months with my husband, Gerard.
But the moment I stepped into our penthouse, he threw a divorce agreement at my feet.
"We are ending this marriage. Kena is waiting for me."
He said his first love had returned, and he had no time to play games with me anymore.
Over the next few days, he watched me vomit violently, coldly accusing me of faking a pregnancy to secure a massive payout.
When his own grandfather suffered a massive heart attack upon discovering his public affair, we rushed the old man to the emergency room.
But Gerard didn't stay for the surgery.
Kena showed up in a wheelchair, crying about a mild chest pain, and he immediately turned his back on his dying grandfather and me to comfort her.
I had loved this man in secret for thirteen years.
I even saved him from a rival's drug trap just nights ago, giving my failing body to him in a dark hotel room to protect his reputation.
Yet, to him, I was nothing but a greedy, calculating transaction standing in the way of his true love.
Watching him walk away to hold another woman while the surgery light flashed red, the thirteen years of desperate love inside me finally shattered.
I calmly wiped his grandfather's blood from my hands and turned around.
This time, I will sign the papers and disappear from his life forever.
8.8
My little boy died on the operating table during a minor, routine surgery.
That exact same night, my billionaire husband bought out the Hudson River for a massive, million-dollar fireworks show.
It wasn't to mourn our child. It was to celebrate his first love's son being discharged from the hospital.
When I confronted him with our son's death certificate, he sneered and accused me of hiding the boy to get his attention.
He held his mistress in our home, watched her fake a panic attack, and threatened to bankrupt my family if I didn't get on my knees and apologize to her.
But the most horrifying truth came from a terrified hospital nurse.
My son's anesthesia was deliberately kept low during the procedure to keep his tissue viable to save the mistress's child.
He was awake and in agonizing pain while his own father planned a grand celebration for another man's son.
I couldn't understand how a father could be so completely heartless.
How could he sacrifice his own flesh and blood just to please a woman who constantly manipulated him?
Looking at the ashes on my son's favorite toy, my paralyzing grief evaporated, replaced by a cold, unyielding rage.
I arranged my little boy's funeral alone in the freezing rain, left my wedding ring on the counter, and walked straight into the private hotel suite of my husband's most ruthless business rival.
"Let's take him down," I said.
8.0
I pointed a gun at my husband and made him sign our divorce papers.
He thought I was too soft to survive without him, he had no idea of the rebel he created. I was about to become his worst nightmare.
Dante Caruso taught me two things: how to love a monster, and how to become one. When I discovered he murdered my family for power, I carefully planned my exit and transformation into the heiress I was meant to be. I transformed from an innocent bride to his worst nightmare, I spent two years building an empire on the ashes of the girl he thought he knew.
Now I'm back. Not as Bella Russo, the wife he's been desperately searching for. But as a force shaking the underworld, the enemy that is systematically destroying everything he built.
He wants his wife back.
I want him buried.
Now the real question is what will be his decision, when he discovers the enemy that is destroying his empire and the woman he's lost are the same person.
8.3
I was a ghost in the rafters of Sotheby’s, five floors above the most expensive pavement in New York, clutching a ten-million-dollar ledger hidden inside a drop of blood-red agate. I had the perfect exit planned, but I didn't count on Harding Bishop, a security predator who could track a shadow through a rainstorm.
When the exits were sealed and the tactical teams started swarming, I made a split-second choice to survive. I stepped out of the shadows and looked into the eyes of a billionaire socialite searching for her missing daughter, whispering a single, broken word: "Mom?"
Just like that, I wasn't a thief anymore; I was Cassandra Sterling, the heiress who had been gone for five years. But the homecoming was a nightmare. My new "sister" promised to send me back to the gutter, my "father" held a gold-plated pistol to my knee the moment the limo doors closed, and the family patriarch tried to strike me down with his cane just for breathing his air.
Every second was a high-wire act. I had to play the part of a traumatized victim while a ten-million-dollar stone was literally sewn into the raw, bleeding wound on my shoulder. If I moved wrong, I’d bleed out; if I spoke wrong, I’d be buried in the backyard of the Hamptons estate.
Harding Bishop didn't believe a word of it. He moved into the room next to mine, watching my every breath and checking my hands for gun calluses under the guise of protection. He thinks he’s the warden and I’m his prisoner, but he’s about to find out that a cornered rat is the most dangerous thing in the house.
"Sleep tight, Vesper," he whispered as he locked my door, using my real name for the first time.
He thinks he’s won, but he has no idea that I’m already reaching for the Agate hidden under my pillow, ready to burn his empire to the ground.