The Billionaire's Strong Desire
Daniella Harris never imagined her life would change dramatically after graduating high school.
Diego Johnstone, her forgotten stepbrother, reappears surprisingly-paying off her adoptive parents' debt and taking her away.
Unbeknownst to Daniella, Diego wanted her for himself, even if it meant going against his own family.
But their relationship was fraught with obstacles. When Daniella's family planned her marriage, Diego found himself trapped in a matchmaking situation he didn't want, and they had to decide whether to give up on fate or fight for each other.
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Chapter 1
My two friends and I sat in Clara's backyard, celebrating our graduation with chicken wings and soda. We laughed and joked around while playing Monopoly.
Our school didn't have a prom night, and we were the unpopular kids, so we hadn't been invited to any fancy parties at our classmates' houses.
"We graduated from high school. We're not kids anymore. We're going to face the real world," Gabriella said wisely.
"Yeah, you're right." Clara nodded. "I used to be impatient to graduate high school, but now I want to be a kid again."
"Hey, we haven't done anything yet. We're starting our new lives tomorrow. Why do you want to give up now?" I gave Clara a disapproving look.
Clara grinned. "I'm sad because I'm the only one going to college."
We were lost in our thoughts as we watched the sunset.
Gabriella and I walked home. Our houses were on the same block.
Starting tomorrow, I will focus on earning money to help my adoptive parents.
"Why haven't you paid off your debt this month? We're tired of coming to your house every month!"
"Are you happy that we come to your house every month, huh?"
"We'll pay if we have the money. Why should we delay paying the debt and interest?"
I stood in front of my house with my shoulders slumped. The dim light on the porch helped me see my parents and the two debt collectors.
They had ruined my graduation day. Besides, why did those two men come at night?
I gasped. I reflexively ran as fast as possible when the man with the dragon tattoo on his right hand took Anna's favorite hibiscus flower pot.
I saved the flower pot before the man threw it.
Breathless, I hugged the flower pot tightly while staring at the two debt collectors in annoyance.
"Daniella." Gilbert and Anna approached me. They were glad that I came home safe and sound.
Anna took the hibiscus flower pot from my arms and placed it on the floor.
"Good evening, Daniella." The two men smiled broadly, looking disgusting.
"Your daughter is beautiful," said the man with the dragon tattoo. "I want to take her as my hostage."
"That sounds good," said the man with the snake tattoo on his left hand.
I shuddered and swallowed hard.
"Please give us time. Just three months. I promise I will pay off all the debts and interest." I said with determination in my heart. I was confident that I would get a job soon.
"We almost got fired because of you!"
I gasped in surprise when the man with the dragon tattoo pulled my hand. Luckily, my parents spontaneously hugged me tightly.
I kicked the man's leg. I immediately regretted my actions when the man grimaced and stared at me angrily.
"I'll report you two to the police!" Gilbert growled.
"Oh, will the police respond to you?" The two debt collectors laughed mockingly at us.
Gilbert clenched his fists with his jaw clenched. Anna calmed him down.
Suddenly, a black car entered the yard, surprising and distracting us.
Two tall, muscular men exited the car and walked firmly and calmly towards us.
"How much do they owe and interest?"
It was a man's voice with hazel eyes, a sharp gaze, and black hairstyles with pomade.
He wore a long-sleeved white shirt that fit his body so I could see the muscles on his chest and arms and black pants. He put the black suit on his shoulders.
Who was he? He was cool, handsome, and had a mature look.
"Tell my assistant." His voice was deep and full of command.
A man wearing glasses who was standing next to him approached the two debt collectors.
His assistant was also handsome. They seemed to be the same age, but his assistant respected him as his boss.
"Hey, hold on." Gilbert stood between the two debt collectors and the hazel-eyed man's assistant.
"Who are you? I've never seen you before. Why do you suddenly want to pay off all my debts?" Gilbert asked with a suspicious look at the hazel-eyed man.
"Hey, are you stupid?" The dragon-tattooed man pushed Gilbert until he fell to the floor.
Anna and I panicked. We approached Gilbert and helped him up.
"Hey, why are you so rude!" I shouted at the dragon-tattooed man.
"You should be happy someone will help you pay your mounting debts!" The dragon-tattooed man snapped at us with veins bulging on his neck.
"Do you want us to take your daughter?" The snake-tattooed man grinned widely.
"You're crazy." Gilbert wanted to slap the two men, but he didn't.
Without us realizing it, the hazel-eyed man's assistant had completed his task of paying off our debt and interest.
"Your debt is paid," the dragon-tattooed man said, displaying the money transfer on his phone. His expression had lost its irritation and arrogance.
"We'll return to your house if you owe us again." The two debt collectors chuckled.
They left us with happy faces, but I realized that they didn't dare glance at the hazel-eyed man.
My parents and I were silent for a few seconds. We couldn't believe what had happened, making us unable to feel happy.
I scanned the hazel-eyed man from head to toe.
I didn't understand. Why did this man suddenly appear and pay off our debt?
Gilbert turned his attention back to the two men. "Who are you? What do you want from us? Just say it."
I held my breath as I made eye contact with the hazel-eyed man. He was staring at me intently.
He seemed angry, making me confused and wondering if I had done something wrong.
"I'm Daniella's stepbrother," the hazel-eyed man said, handing me a paper bag.
I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. Stepbrother? No. That was impossible.
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9.7
For three years, I played the role of a devoted, naive wife to billionaire Conrad Whitney. I hid my true identity and foolishly believed in our fairy tale.
Then he handed me a harsh divorce agreement, ordering me to sign and walk away with absolutely nothing. He was leaving me to marry Cindy, the fragile woman he claimed had saved him from a fire.
He expected me to cry and beg. Instead, he watched coldly as Cindy and her family illegally transferred my father's trust fund. When I confronted them at the hospital, Conrad shielded her, calling me a greedy, toxic viper. He mocked me, completely blind to the fact that Cindy was a fraud. He truly believed I was just a pathetic, useless housewife who would be utterly destroyed without his money and status.
I looked at the man I had actually dragged out of that burning debris with my own soot-covered hands. My trauma, my sacrifices, and my love had all been reduced to a joke by his sheer arrogance and a few fake tears from a manipulative liar.
I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly signed the papers, drugged his wine, and left a crumpled one-dollar bill on his unconscious chest with a sticky note mocking his terrible service.
Then, I picked up my encrypted phone. It was time for the world's top surgeon, Dr. Hades, to return, and for Conrad to finally see the god he had just thrown away.
9.0
For a whole year, April believed her billionaire husband, Bartholomew, abandoned her in Europe the day after their arranged wedding. She hated him so much she drunkenly prayed for his death at a club.
But he suddenly returned that very night, catching her red-handed. Instead of a divorce, he trapped her, threatening to bankrupt her bloodsucking family unless she moved into his penthouse to play the devoted wife.
Forced to comply, she attended a dinner with her toxic family. Her stepmother deliberately served her lobster—knowing April had a fatal allergy.
"Eat up, darling. I know hospital food is dreadful."
When April refused and exposed their massive gambling debts, her furious father raised his hand to strike her across the face.
But it was Bartholomew, the ruthless tyrant she despised, who caught her father's arm and snapped his wrist.
"If you ever try to touch my wife again, I will erase your family by sunrise."
April was completely stunned. Why was he defending her with such murderous rage? And why did he keep a cheap paper airplane she had made at age six preserved under a glass dome in his study?
The answer came that night. When Bartholomew stepped out of the shower, April saw the massive, jagged surgical scar sliced directly over his heart. He hadn't run away; he had been fighting for his life on an operating table. Staring at the man who had silently survived just to come back to her, April made her choice. She was going to uncover the truth behind his surgery and their past.
7.2
Hope worked eighty-hour weeks on Wall Street, enduring daily humiliation from her boss just to be her mother's golden ticket out of poverty.
But when a severe kidney infection left her bleeding and collapsing in the middle of a boardroom presentation, her boss didn't call an ambulance.
He slammed his hand on the table, publicly accused her of popping pills like a junkie, and threw her out of the building.
Dragging her agonizing, feverish body back home, Hope desperately needed a mother's comfort.
Instead, the moment her mother heard she had lost her six-figure job, the woman's face contorted with pure rage.
She didn't care that Hope's kidneys were failing; she grabbed a heavy glass ashtray and hurled it directly at Hope's head.
"You threw away a six-figure job? You threw away our ticket out of this dump?!"
The glass shattered against the wall, slicing Hope's bare leg open.
For twenty-nine years, Hope had sacrificed her health, her dignity, and her sanity to be the perfect daughter.
She didn't understand why her life was only worth the paycheck she brought home, or why her own mother would rather see her dead than unemployed.
Looking at the blood dripping down her calf, the guilt that had chained her for a lifetime suddenly vanished.
She pulled out her phone and hit send on a brutally honest resignation email to her toxic boss.
Then, she opened a text from the intimidating, billionaire doctor who had treated her at the clinic—the only man who had ever told her she was a fighter.
She packed her bags and walked out the door.
This time, she was going to live for herself.
9.1
The Billionaire's Blood Debt
Two empires. One scorched-earth debt. No mercy.
Elara Vance was never supposed to be more than a pawn-the brilliant architect daughter of a man who traded souls for power. But when the world's financial foundations crumble, she finds herself signed over to the one man capable of burning her father's legacy to the ground: Dante Moretti.
Dante is no savior. He is the "Lion of the Underground," a billionaire predator fueled by a decades-old vendetta. He didn't just buy Elara's freedom; he bought her life, her loyalty, and her every breath. In his obsidian tower, the lines between prisoner and queen blur in a fever dream of high-stakes espionage and raw, primal obsession.
As they hunt a shadowy global cabal from the neon streets of London to the ancient ruins of Greece, Elara discovers that the only thing more dangerous than Dante's enemies is the "disgusting" heat of his touch. In a world where every secret is a weapon and every kiss is a betrayal, she must decide: will she dismantle the system that caged her, or become the ultimate weapon for the man who owns her soul?
The debt is blood. The price is total surrender.
8.5
I was four months pregnant, weighing over two hundred pounds, and my heart was failing from experimental treatments forced on me as a child. My doctor looked at me with clinical detachment and told me I was in a death sentence: if I kept the baby, I would die, and if I tried to remove it, I would die.
Desperate for a lifeline, I called my father, Francis Acosta, to tell him I was sick and pregnant. I expected a father's love, but all I got was a cold, sharp blade of a voice.
"Then do it quietly," he said. "Don't embarrass Candi. Her debutante ball is coming up."
He didn't just reject me; he erased me. My trust fund was frozen, and I was told I was no longer an Acosta. My fiancé, Auston, had already discarded me, calling me a "bloated whale" while he looked for a thinner, wealthier replacement. I left New York on a Greyhound bus, weeping into a bag of chips, a broken woman the world considered a mistake.
I couldn't understand how my own father could tell me to die "quietly" just to save face for a party. I didn't know why I had been a lab rat for my family’s pharmaceutical ambitions, or how they could sleep at night while I was left to rot in the gray drizzle of the city.
Five years later, the doors of JFK International Airport slid open. I stepped onto the marble floor in red-soled stilettos, my body lean, lethal, and carved from years of blood and sweat. I wasn't the "whale" anymore; I was a ghost coming back to haunt them.
With my daughter by my side and a medical reputation that terrified the global elite, I was ready to dismantle the Acosta empire piece by piece.
"Tell Francis to wash his neck," I whispered to the skyline. "I'm home."
8.1
Lucy Taylor never expected to be loved when she agreed to billionaire CEO, William Ashcroft, in place of her step sister to save her family's reputation. But as she gets to know him, she finds out he's completely different from the man she thought he was. As they grew closer, they realize they're in love. But what happens when trouble lurks around the corner? With a greedy stepsister and a maniac rival on their ends? Will they be able to survive or will their relationship crash under the weight of problems coming their way?