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 4
That morning, I had breakfast with Anna and Gilbert. I didn't know when we would eat together again.
"Are you sure you've brought everything you need? Don't leave anything behind." Anna stared at the medium-sized white suitcase.
"We checked that suitcase twenty minutes ago, Anna." I reminded Anna.
"I've brought everything I need, including this Hello Kitty. I can't sleep without it." I grinned widely as I took the doll out of my backpack and hugged it tightly.
The doll was a gift from my mother when I was 7. At least she celebrated my birthday with a cake she made before she died. The doll would always be by my side until I died.
I put the doll back into my backpack, worried I would leave it behind.
"Take care of yourself, Daniella. Don't be afraid of anyone, and always do good as much as possible." Gilbert said, smiling, his eyes showing sadness.
"It will always be in my memory." I smiled widely with a warm heart.
"Daniella!"
I smiled brightly and ran out of the house.
I hugged Gabriella and Clara for a long time because we didn't know when to see each other again.
"If you get a boyfriend, tell us!" Clara said, teasing me.
"Why do you hope so much that I have a boyfriend?" I snorted.
"We should video call often!" Gabriella gripped my hand as if she didn't want us to be separated.
"Of course!" I nodded.
A black car entered my yard. Diego and Justin got out of their car. They dressed in formal outfits. The difference was that Diego wore sunglasses, whereas Justin wore white eyeglasses.
My heart rate increased every time Diego took a step closer to me. Nervousness hit me after I realized that he was picking me up to live with him.
"Are you ready, Daniella?" Diego stood two steps in front of me without taking off his glasses.
I didn't see his hazel eyes, which always stared sharply, but he had an intimidating aura.
"Yes, I'm ready." I nodded.
"Where's your suitcase?" Diego asked.
"Oh, wait a minute." I entered the house and found Anna and Gilbert holding hands in the living room. Trying to be strong, I said, "Diego has come to pick me up."
They nodded and escorted me to the porch. Gilbert handed my suitcase to Justin. Justin hurriedly put the white suitcase in the garage.
I hugged them.
I felt very emotional, and my eyes were watery, but I was still able to control my tears.
Anna turned her face away from me when she could no longer hold back her tears.
I waved my hand and looked at them to ensure they were all stored in my brain before I got into the black car.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out.
I opened my eyes when I felt calm.
I didn't let my head turn back as the car left my house.
I looked to my right, surprised to find Diego sitting beside me.
I leaned back stiffly. The car was luxurious, and the seats were soft, but I felt uncomfortable.
I had never sat in a car with strangers before.
I stared out the window to calm my pounding heart.
We arrived at the airport. I was getting nervous and excited. It was my first time on a plane!
I frowned as two tall, muscular men in tight black shirts and sunglasses approached us.
"They're my bodyguards," Diego told me. "They're Axton and Oscar."
"Hi, I'm Daniella." I smiled at them. They just nodded. They were as scary as their boss.
"Oh, you haven't introduced me to your driver yet." I looked back; a man in a gray shirt stood beside Justin.
"He's Brian," Diego said.
"Hi, Daniella." Brian smiled at me.
He seemed as friendly as Justin. "Hi, Brian."
After a brief introduction, we went through a security check.
I wondered as I realized we were going down a different path than the rest of the crowd.
Where were we really going?
I was astonished as we went up the stairs to Diego's white private jet one by one.
I admired the private jet's lavish interior.
I had to pinch my hand to convince myself I wasn't dreaming.
I sat near the window. The chair was as soft as a sofa.
My smile disappeared, replaced by a confused face. Diego chose to sit in front of me despite the many empty seats.
I watched closely as the flight attendant demonstrated the safety procedures.
I held the armrest tightly as the plane took off and prayed that we would arrive safely at our destination.
I wanted to explore the private jet so much, but then I realized I was the only woman on the plane.
Suddenly, fear crept into my mind. What if Diego was a bad guy?
I was overthinking.
I read a novel on my phone or looked out the window the entire way.
I glanced at Diego a few times with an uncomfortable feeling.
Diego was staring at the laptop on the coffee table, but I felt he was watching me.
I held my breath unconsciously when our eyes met.
I lowered my head with my heart beating strangely. Diego didn't take his eyes off me as if he wanted me to catch him red-handed.
Diego made me not want to look anywhere else but my phone.
An hour later, Diego asked me out for lunch.
The dining room had eight seats. I chose a seat by the window, away from Justin, Brian, Axton, and Oscar, but unexpectedly, Diego sat across from me.
The delicious food lowered my suspicions and my guard against Diego. I ate a lot, trying not to be distracted by Diego's stares.
"Where do you want to go to college?"
My heart jumped, not expecting him to talk to me after eating.
"I've been looking into it, but I haven't decided where I want to go to college. But I do know I don't want to go to Harvard."
Diego nodded. "What do you want to major in?"
"I want to major in business," I replied.
"Why did you choose business?"
"I want to be like you," I replied.
"What do you mean you want to be like me?" Diego raised an eyebrow as he poured himself a glass of wine and stared straight at me.
"I don't know what business I want to do, but I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to have a lot of money."
"Good motivation," Diego said. "What do you know about business?"
"I've worked at my adoptive parents' coffee shop since I was little. It's not easy to retain and attract customers. We must always innovate and take risks so we don't lose out to other coffee shops," I said excitedly.
"I like the concept of your adoptive parents' coffee shop." Diego nodded twice. "Cold milk coffee is my favorite."
My eyes expanded. The next second, I stared at him with curiosity. "Have you ever been to my adoptive parents' coffee shop?"
Diego stared at me for a long time, allowing the stillness to settle between us, and I got even more intrigued. "We're about to land."
Why did he ignore my question?
After Diego said that, the pilot announced that the private jet was about to land.
"How many hours is our flight?" I asked him.
"Six hours."
I looked down sadly. For six hours, I just sat in my chair and went to the dining room.
We got off the private jet. I hoped someday I could ride it again.
A white car picked us up. I sat next to Diego.
I watched the street. Boston wasn't much different than Portland.
The white car pulled into a block. I admired all the houses we passed. They looked like palaces.
My heart stopped when the white car stopped in front of a magnificent, classic-style mansion like the previous houses.
I exited the car and stared at the white house in disbelief. I felt like I had entered a fairy tale.
"I'll show you your room, Dala."
His deep voice penetrated my consciousness; all the hairs on my neck stood up as I felt his warm breath touch my ear, and that peculiar feeling returned to my chest every time he called me that.
Why was he standing behind me?
I took a step before turning to face him. His crooked smile made my back shiver as if a cold wind had suddenly blown in the middle of summer.
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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?