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 5
Everything in the mansion looked expensive, making me afraid to touch it.
I felt awkward walking on the marble floor.
The crystal chandelier in the spacious living room was beautiful.
I pinched my cheeks secretly. I wasn't dreaming.
Diego and I climbed the stairs to my room.
Who would have believed a girl like me could fly on a private jet and live in a lavish mansion?
I really got lucky.
"This is my office. Don't come in without knocking," Diego said, pointing to a dark brown mahogany door.
"Okay." I nodded with a confused face. I had no reason to enter his office.
We stopped in front of a room with a light brown mahogany door.
"This is your room." Diego opened the door for me and invited me in.
I strolled, my heart beating very fast.
My eyes couldn't blink. My room was so beautiful and elegant!
If I hadn't remembered Diego was behind me, I would have screamed and jumped up and down like a kangaroo.
"Do you like your room?"
Diego's voice jolted me out of my happiness. I wasn't used to his voice.
"Just tell me what you don't like. I'll throw it out and replace it with something you like." Diego was still standing in the doorway.
He said that as if money wasn't something that was that important to him.
"I like my room," I said firmly.
"Thank you so much for giving me this room." I smiled broadly and sincerely at him.
"I promise to keep my room clean and take good care of the things here," I said earnestly.
I blinked. I wasn't sure, but I thought I saw Diego smile for a second.
"Come to the dining room for dinner," Diego said.
"Okay." I nodded.
"My room is on your right," Diego said before closing the door.
I reflexively raced to the door and turned the handle. The door was unlocked.
I gave a sigh of relief. I had been overly paranoid.
"Miss Harris."
I was surprised when an old man with white hair wearing a black butler's outfit stood in front of me before the door closed.
"What's wrong?"
"Here's your suitcase." He handed me my white suitcase.
"Oh, my, I forgot about it." I took it quickly, feeling strange getting help from someone else. "Thank you very much, sir–"
"I'm Ronald." Ronald smiled politely at me. "Tell me anything you need. I'm always in the kitchen."
"Okay, Ronald." I nodded. "Just call me Daniella."
"Okay, Daniella." Ronald nodded. "Excuse me."
I never had a maid. I was used to doing everything by myself. I didn't think I would ever ask Ronald for help.
I put my clothes in the walk-in closet. There were still many empty closets. I thought I would only have a closet with two doors.
The walk-in closet would still have space if I brought all my clothes.
I walked around my room. I felt like I was in a five-star hotel.
"Do I really live here without having to pay rent?"
I lay down to feel the softness and comfort of the queen-sized bed.
I took out my phone. I got a lot of messages and calls from Anna, Gilbert, Gabriella, and Clara.
I told Anna, Gilbert, and Gabriella about Diego's luxurious private jet and his mansion, which looked like a castle in a fairy tale.
[You didn't tell me you had a handsome, dashing stepbrother.] It was a message from Clara. She asked me a different question.
[I already told you I didn't know I had a stepbrother, didn't I?] I replied to Clara's message.
I smiled as I looked at the photo frame of me and my mother that I had placed on the nightstand.
"Mom, I have a new life now. I hope you are not disappointed in me for leaving Anna and Albert, who have been very good to us. Don't worry, I will not forget them."
My mother never appeared in my dreams. Those photos and videos would help me not to forget my mother.
"Daniella, it's time for dinner."
"Yes. I am coming." I walked quickly to the door, surprised to find Ronald waiting for me. I followed him because I didn't know where the dining room was.
I was stunned when I arrived at the dining room. A beautiful chandelier and a long dining table with lots of food.
I held my breath when I made eye contact with Diego. He was already sitting there.
I sat across from him because, while I felt uncomfortable with his stare, it would be impolite to sit at the head of the table.
We ate dinner in silence. No one spoke. I was grateful to my mother for teaching me table manners before she died.
I glanced toward the kitchen, and my eyes widened when I saw a male chef standing in front of the stove. No wonder the food was delicious and beautiful.
"Could I have a few minutes of your time, please?" I asked Diego after we finished eating and before he left the dining room.
"Yes. Go ahead." Diego focused his attention on me, making me nervous and hesitant momentarily.
"Do you live here? I saw online that your family and businesses are in New York."
"This is one of my homes. I come here when I want to get away from New York."
I rounded my mouth and nodded. "Will I meet your family? Maybe your father?"
"No." Diego shook his head, leaning back in his chair and clenching his jaw. "I have a bad relationship with them."
"So they don't know about me being here?"
Diego nodded.
I felt happy and surprised simultaneously, but at least I was relieved that I wouldn't have to see them.
"I want to work part-time."
"For what?"
"Of course, to earn money."
"I can give you whatever money you want."
"I want-" My eyes widened as Diego handed me a credit card.
Did he think I would accept everything he gave me?
"Buy whatever you want."
"I can't." I shook my head. "You paid for my college. I live in your mansion, and I get delicious food."
I prefer earning my own money, so I didn't want to owe him too much.
"Just keep that card. You might need it." Diego said coldly on his face.
I snorted. "I'll just keep it in my wallet," I said in annoyance.
"Are you done talking?" Diego asked.
"So, will you let me work part-time?" I begged him.
"I don't know what I will do until college starts," I said in a bored tone.
"Just work in one place," Diego replied.
"Okay, thanks." I was so happy.
Then I looked at him seriously because I wanted to ask him something sensitive, and I didn't know if this was the right time.
"Do you know who my biological father is? My mom never told me." I said gloomily.
"If she didn't tell you, then she didn't want you to know," Diego said.
"Do you know?"
"No." Diego shook his head.
"Then do you know why my mom and your dad divorced?" I asked, my heart racing as I waited for his answer.
"They didn't."
My heart stopped beating for a few seconds. It couldn't be. All my life, all I knew was that my mother and his father were divorced.
"Then why did my mom take me with her to Portland?"
Diego looked at me like he was arguing with himself, and then his phone rang.
"I have to take this call." Diego stood up. "You better focus on yourself."
I watched Diego leave with curiosity growing in my chest. If my mom and his dad didn't get divorced, then what really happened?
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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?