Velvet Devil
It's the first look on my wedding day.
I turn... but my husband isn't there.
Instead, I see the stranger who ruined my life.
Here's the story:
Six years ago, I was on the worst first date in history.
A blind date with some jerk who wouldn't take no for an answer.
The handsome stranger swooped in.
Saved me.
And sat down to finish the date.
I thought it was crazy.
But we had insane chemistry.
We got to talking, one thing led to another, we ended up in the restaurant bathroom, and...
You know.
I got pregnant.
He disappeared.
Life: ruined.
I tried to move on.
For six years, I thought I succeeded.
But now, out of nowhere, he's back--on my wedding day, of all days.
Saying things that don't make any sense.
"Your fiancé isn't who you thought he was...
I'm not letting you marry him..."
And, worst of all...
"You're marrying me instead."
Chapters
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Chapter 1
CAMILA
I'm ninety nine percent sure this is the worst date in history.
"You said you studied literature?" Reggie asks in the voice of a man who wasn't aware that women can in fact read. "Isn't that pretty useless? Did you just dream of being a McDonald's cashier, or what?"
Make that one hundred percent sure.
Since we sat down, Reggie's eyes have spent roughly equal time divided between my cleavage and the ass of the girl refreshing our water glasses. I heave a bitter sigh. I shouldn't have listened to Brianna when she told me to go with the little black dress.
I shouldn't have listened to her about the choice of venue, either. This restaurant is fancy, which means the service is slow, which means I'm stuck here for way longer than I'd like with Prince Not-So-Charming. Strike two for my dear sister.
"There are plenty of good jobs out there," I say to Reggie. "Teaching, for one-"
"Yeah, but who in their right mind wants to be a teacher?"
I bristle instantly. "Well, I do."
He laughs out loud. At least he has the decency to realize-a few seconds late, but better late than never-that I'm actually being serious. And also that laughing in the face of someone's hopes and dreams is a pretty dickish thing to do.
I glance at my fingernails and sigh again. Thirty-five bucks plus tip wasted on a manicure for a guy who pronounces "Françoise" the same way you say "Boise, Idaho." My life is a cosmic joke.
"You look really sexy tonight," Reggie says, changing the subject abruptly. He grins with wine-stained teeth. "No, seriously. That dress is, y'know... God fuckin' damn!"
The older woman with the pearl necklace at the next table over snaps a disapproving glance in our direction. I duck her eye contact-and as I do, I catch sight of someone reclining in the corner booth over her shoulder.
Instantly, it's like being hit by a lightning bolt. A head-to-toe jolt of crackling heat.
Even though the man is sitting down, he's obviously tall. And that face-all angular and cruel, with sharp cheekbones like a fashion model, plus a Superman jaw. His suit moves fluidly with his languid motions. It's not hard to tell that the fabric is ludicrously expensive. He has the gleaming watch to match.
I can't look away. That is, until he glances over at me and catches me gawking.
Shit-shit-shit! Turning away a little too fast, I feel like a complete moron. I can only hope that the blush on my cheeks isn't too obvious.
"You okay?" Reggie asks.
"I'm fine!" I screech, way louder than I mean to. Luckily, I'm saved when the waiter comes over with our meals.
He sets the plates down in front of us. I stare down at my squid ink ravioli with no appetite and the strange inkling that someone is watching me.
"Smells great, eh?" Reggie asks, digging into his steak immediately. He saws off a big piece and devours it before I've even picked up my fork, then continues chattering with a mouth full of food.
I take the moment to glance across the restaurant. Partly so I don't have to watch Reggie's molars at work, and partly so I can sneak another surreptitious glance at the man in the booth.
But it doesn't turn out to be so surreptitious after all. A fissure of electricity rushes up my spine when I realize he's still looking over here at me.
His gaze is direct. Unapologetic. Unmerciful.
I turn away with a shudder and try to concentrate on my pasta. Reggie is yammering on about the hardware store he co-owns with his two older brothers. I nod and smile, hoping he doesn't catch onto the fact that I'm not paying the slightest bit of attention.
You're acting like a lovestruck teenage girl, I scold myself. Get it together. The ghost of Susan B. Anthony is probably going to haunt me for the rest of my life for giving up on all my feminist leanings the moment a handsome guy deemed to glance in my general direction.
But what he's doing to me isn't ideological-it's biological. It's bypassing every part of my brain that knows how to think. Talking straight to the heat low in my belly.
It's strangely thrilling. Oddly unsettling.
And very, very annoying.
"Cami?"
I turn to Reggie. I don't like the fact that he's used the pet name my sister and her family call me by. It feels way too intimate and familiar coming from him. But I'm too focused on finishing this dinner as quickly as possible to bother offering a correction.
"Sorry. What was that again?"
He sets his fork down with an irritated clank. "Is something distracting you?" he asks. "It's pretty rude to ignore your date, you know."
"No, sorry, nothing," I reply quickly. "Just... tired."
"Oh?"
"I had a couple of job interviews I was preparing for." Which is not exactly a lie. "And I was up late last night." Also not exactly a lie. Although "late" in this instance just means "late for me," which means 9:05 instead of 9:00 on the dot.
"Job interviews, huh?" he asks. "Cool. Anyway, like I was saying, I..."
I retreat beneath the surface of a perpetual smile-and-nod. "Putting my screensaver on," as Brianna calls it. It's easier that way, and Reggie doesn't need much input from me to keep prattling on.
"You know, I've always thought you were hot as hell," he says, burping to punctuate his attempt at a compliment. "Real fuckin' smokeshow. Girl like you needs a guy like me. Self-made businessman, you know? A go-getter. And I'm pretty good in the sack, too."
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. It's at least the dozenth time tonight he's mentioned how "self-made" he is. Although I'm pretty sure he inherited the hardware store from his dad.
Before I can figure out how to wriggle my way out of this particular conversational impasse, Reggie looks up and snaps his fingers for the waiter. When no one notices him in the zero-point-two seconds he's willing to wait, he raises his hand to his lip and whistles.
"Hey!" I hiss, mortified at his behavior. "You can't whistle."
He looks positively dumbfounded that I seem to have a problem with it. "Why?"
"It's rude!"
"Rude?" Reggie repeats, as though I'm speaking a foreign language. "Nah, babe, it's friendly. You just aren't used to guys taking you to nice places like this."
I slink down in my seat, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. Maybe if I scrunch my eyes closed really hard, I'll turn invisible. Worth a shot, at least.
"You can clear our plates, hon," Reggie orders the waiter when she comes to our tableside. "And get us the dessert menus."
"Actually, that's not necessary," I say quickly, giving the waiter an apologetic smile. Please don't hate me, I'm saying to her with my eyes. I want this to be over just as badly as you do. "Just the bill, please."
"What?" Reggie asks. "C'mon, party's just getting started!"
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7.1
I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York.
To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen.
But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table.
It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test.
"Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture."
I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking.
He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago.
He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy.
He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go.
He was wrong.
I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don.
And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy.
I wanted to erase him.
I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built.
Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa."
It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul.
On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial.
When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth.
He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife.
Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.
9.0
Ashlyn was supposed to be just a fragile college student, selling her rare blood to a vicious crime syndicate enforcer to keep his dying sister alive.
But the dynamic shattered when Alex returned from a two-month disappearance. He stepped into the penthouse covered in dirt and blood, sporting a horrific, jagged knife wound slashed completely across his face.
Knowing exactly how to exploit his insecurities, Ashlyn played the role of the terrified victim to perfection. She screamed, pushed against his chest, and called him a terrifying monster. Humiliated and enraged by her blatant disgust, Alex violently smashed a marble table and kicked her out. He forced her out into a freezing, torrential rainstorm without a coat, vowing to kill her if she ever showed her face again.
What the ruthless enforcer didn't know was that her pathetic, trembling tears were a flawless, calculated lie. She wasn't a helpless, greedy girl. She was a cold-blooded corporate mastermind hiding from a family of elite assassins. She desperately needed his impenetrable penthouse fortress to stay alive, and she knew the only way to secure her place wasn't to ask for it, but to make him beg for her return.
Three days later, his sister's organs began to fail, and the hospital's blood bank ran dry.
"I'll pay you whatever you want. Just get here."
Listening to the desperate, broken voice of the monster over her burner phone, Ashlyn smiled coldly in the dark. The trap had snapped shut, and he had just handed her all the power.
9.7
Blurb: She signed the divorce papers. He never signed away his obsession.
Veronica Stanford was the perfect wife-devoted, patient, and hopelessly in love. But when her billionaire husband, Jason Harper, trades her in for her treacherous best friend, Rhea, Veronica's world shatters. Broken and betrayed, she drowns her sorrows in a bar, only to be saved by a dangerously alluring stranger with emerald-green eyes and a lethal reputation: Monte "Four" Zagcanni, the ruthless heir to a mafia empire.
Four is everything Jason isn't-dark, dangerous, and devastatingly protective. When Veronica discovers she's pregnant with Jason's child, she strikes a deal with Four: a fake marriage to shield her from scandal. But what starts as a cold arrangement ignites into a passion neither can resist.
Jason, realizing his mistake too late, wants Veronica back-along with the son he never knew existed. But Four isn't a man who surrenders what's his. And Veronica? She's done being the meek wife.
Betrayal runs deep. Revenge burns hotter.
As secrets unravel-her father's bloody past, Rhea's twisted obsession, and Jason's deadly lies-Veronica must decide: trust the man who destroyed her once, or surrender to the devil who might destroy her forever.
One wants her back. The other wants her forever.
9.0
"You and your baby are mine whether you want it or not."
Renata Neroni's life was shattered the moment she discovered her boyfriend and stepsister's betrayal. In a rare lapse of judgment fueled by grief and alcohol, she spent a single, anonymous night with a stranger, unaware that she had just surrendered herself to Domenico Veronesi, the most formidable figure in the global underworld.
That night left Renata with more than just a memory; she was pregnant with the heir to a mafia empire.
As her father, desperate to free himself from the debts, prepares to marry her off to a man nearly his own age, Renata finds herself trapped. Her only escape arrives in the form of Domenico himself. Asserting his claim, he interrupts the arrangement and brings Renata to his secluded estate.
Within the fortified walls of the Veronesi estate, the man known for his cold, merciless exterior reveals a singular obsession: the protection of Renata and their unborn child.
However, Domenico's readiness to provide is met with a wall of ice.
Despite his efforts to provide for her, Renata's resentment initially hardens into a wall of silence.
To her, Domenico is simply another powerful man attempting to control her fate. However, as she is forced to navigate the inner workings of his life within the mafia world, she begins to see the man behind the fearsome reputation.
Renata discovers the deeper layers of Domenico, a loyalty and a hidden vulnerability regarding their child, and the fear that once defined her begins to dissolve.
7.3
While I was pregnant, my husband held a party downstairs for another woman's son.
Through a hidden mental link, I overheard my husband, Don Dante Rossi, tell his consigliere he was going to publicly reject me tomorrow. He planned to make his mistress, Serena, his new mate.
An act forbidden by ancient law while I carried his heir.
Later, Serena cornered me, her smile venomous. When Dante appeared, she shrieked, clawing her own arm and blaming me for the attack.
Dante didn't even look at me. He snarled a command that froze my body and stole my voice, ordering me from his sight as he cradled her.
He moved her and her son into our master suite. I was demoted to the guest room at the end of the hall.
Passing her open door, I saw him rocking her baby, humming the lullaby my own mother used to sing to me.
I heard him promise her, "Soon, my love. I'll sever the bond and give you the life you deserve."
The love I felt for him, the power I'd hidden for four years to protect his fragile ego, all turned to ice.
He thought I was a weak, powerless wife he could discard. He was about to find out that the woman he betrayed was Alessia De Luca, princess of the most powerful family on the continent.
And I was finally going home.
9.1
I woke up strapped to a freezing operating table, a gaping hole crudely sutured over my heart.
Joi Rocha, my supposed guardian, stood nearby holding a glowing vial that contained my freshly extracted Phoenix gene sequence.
"Don't blame me, sweetheart. Gayla's body is just too weak. She needs this sequence more than you do."
In my past life, I endured years of illegal biological harvests for this family. My fiancé Brennon watched with cold eyes as they ripped the gene from my chest, while the elite academy students filmed and mocked my bleeding, broken body. They stripped me of my status, drained every drop of my worth, and left me to die in a freezing tomb just so their precious fake daughter could thrive.
Until my dying breath, I didn't understand. I had given them my absolute loyalty, so why was I treated like disposable medical waste? Why did my life mean absolutely nothing to them?
But opening my eyes again, I realized I had returned to the exact day they stole my core.
This time, I didn't cry or beg. I stared dead into Joi's eyes and smiled.
I detonated the residual energy in my chest to incinerate Gayla's stolen sequence, faked my own flatline, and injected myself with a hidden dark matter drive to completely rewrite my DNA.
If they wanted to play God with my life, I was going to burn their entire world to ash.