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 6
I rubbed my eyes as I woke up. For the first time since my mother died, I dreamed about her.
My mother didn't do anything. She just stood there, smiling broadly and beaming with happiness. The same face she always showed everyone.
I'd never seen her sad before.
She didn't leave as I ran towards her, but somehow I couldn't reach her no matter how hard I pushed my legs.
She didn't try to say anything and ignored me as I screamed until my voice was hoarse and I coughed violently.
I didn't know what the dream meant.
Did my mother really appear in my dreams, or did my subconscious create her? Maybe it was because I looked at the photos in the album and watched the three videos before falling asleep.
"I hope it's really my mother who appears in my dreams. She's begging God to come into my dreams." I nodded.
I believe my mother has been watching over me from heaven all this time. So I was so glad she tried to appear in my dreams, even though she couldn't talk or hug me.
"Ah, they're still here." I picked up the photo album and pink phone from the bed and placed them on the nightstand.
I stretched my arms, my eyes wide. The bed was incredibly comfortable, even though the spacious room made me feel lonely.
I took a cold bath in the bathtub for the first time and lathered myself with the expensive brand of soap. The lather was soft and fragrant.
I soaked for a few minutes, closing my eyes. It felt so peaceful.
When I felt the skin on my fingers wrinkle, I got out of the tub and stood under the shower. I poured the shampoo over my hair and massaged it in.
I sang confidently, imagining myself on a grand stage with thousands of people in attendance.
When I lived with Anna and Gilbert, I was embarrassed to sing in the bathroom because they could hear me.
I was sure no one in the mansion would hear my terrible voice because the bathroom was far from the door.
"My body feels refreshed, like I've just come back to life." I chuckled as I exited the bathroom and headed for the closet.
I still couldn't believe I could use all these facilities whenever I wanted without paying.
However, I hadn't bought a hair dryer. I didn't know why things always broke when I didn't have money.
So I had to wrap my hair in a towel and stand out in the sun until it dried. It actually worked pretty well.
I played with my phone while sitting on the sofa, answering texts from my host parents and my two friends.
"Okay. Time for a house tour." I was curious about what was inside this mansion.
I wore a white short-sleeved shirt and black pants. I was the only woman in the mansion; they were a few years older than I. I didn't feel comfortable exposing myself in front of them.
I walked down dozens of steps, scanning my surroundings. The atmosphere was quiet, and a chill hit me, as if no one lived in this place.
My feet entered the kitchen as my senses picked up a delicious aroma, and I found the chef making breakfast.
I quickly left before he noticed me.
I didn't see Richard. He said he was always in the kitchen. I shrugged.
I stood in the living room with a frown. A sudden feeling of doubt came over me. What if I got lost?
I still didn't dare to text or call Diego, and if I screamed, would anyone hear me?
Finally, I decided to look out into the front yard while drying my hair in the sun.
I pulled the big, imposing door with all my strength. It turned out to be light. Good thing I didn't fall over.
The cool morning air greeted me. The sun was shining brightly. Several people were exercising.
There was nothing but two wooden chairs and a table on the porch. This mansion truly reflected its owner.
I walked to a tree in the left corner, not knowing what it was.
"This tree looks like a palm tree found near the sea and the beach."
I walked around the yard for 30 minutes while listening to music. Walking is excellent for burning fat.
Then I sat on a chair on the porch, breathing heavily. This is the result of not exercising enough.
I wrote down everything I would do today and tomorrow on my phone.
The first thing I had to do was find a job online.
"I need to go shopping, and I also want to bake a cake."
I've got some savings, and my parents give me an allowance. At least I can buy skincare and baking stuff.
Anna suggested I bake a cake for Diego. While I wasn't sure it would be to his taste, I was sure he wouldn't throw it away. He wouldn't hurt my feelings, would he?
I entered the mansion feeling strange and out of place. Hard to believe my life has changed in just four days.
"Dala."
I gasped in surprise and froze at the sound of his deep voice. My neck stiffly turned towards him.
Diego wore a white t-shirt and jeans, while Justin walked beside him. They looked like they had just come from somewhere.
"I want to give you something." Diego stood beside me, his index finger pointing forward, urging me to follow him.
I didn't know if I'd ever get used to him. His mysterious aura made me not want to be around him.
He led me into the family room. It was pretty warm compared to the guest room, perhaps because it wasn't spacious. The lighting was dim, the sofa was dark blue, and an ocean painting stretched across the wall.
I first sat on the leather sofa and was surprised to see Diego sitting on the same sofa.
My heart was beating fast with anxiety. There was nothing wrong with his actions.
"I got you a laptop and a phone." Diego set a large and a small paper bag on the table.
"Thank you so much." I pulled the boxes out of the paper bags.
My laptop and cell phone were still in good condition. I wouldn't know how to repay him if he kept giving me unexpected things like this.
Despite that, I was excited to see my new laptop and cell phone. I turned them on with a bright smile on my face.
"I'm glad you like them," he said.
"I like them." I nodded. "I'll take good care of them." I blinked, catching him smiling briefly. Why was he so embarrassed to show his smile?
"I want to go to the shopping mall and the convenience store," I said. "I have money. Don't worry." I told him I wouldn't use his credit card.
"I'll go with you." I blinked. Had I heard him right? "We'll leave after breakfast," he added.
He didn't see my shocked expression. Not only that, but he didn't care about my opinion, and he decided when we would leave.
I didn't want to go with him, but somehow my mouth wouldn't say it.
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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?