Nobela ni Amber GW

She married him because of a contract. He married her because she was convenient. To the world, Alice Neighley is the perfect wife—graceful, obedient, invisible. Married to a powerful heir, she lives in a luxurious cage built on indifference and silence. Her husband never touches her heart, never defends her position, and never hides the truth: she was never the woman he wanted. When his first love returns, Alice becomes a placeholder—easy to replace, easier to discard. Even worse, the betrayal doesn’t come only from her husband, but from the people she once called family. But Alice is done begging for love. As the contract nears its end, secrets surface, loyalties shatter, and the woman everyone underestimated begins to wake up. She will walk away from the marriage they thought defined her—and from the man who believed she would never leave. What they don’t know is this: Alice is no longer the wife he never wanted. She is the one he will never get back.

“Give me the baby! You’re worthless—you don’t deserve to be a mother!” My step-sister had used a prosthetic belly to fake her pregnancy for nine months to force Adam Kastner, the young master of the most powerful Kastner family, into marriage. Now she needed a baby to present to the family to secure the marriage. She was after my child since I was eight-months pregnant. Unlike her fake nine-months belly, mine was real and it even hurt to tie a shoelace while carrying my child in my womb for so many months. My father, blinded by greed, stood by as they injected me with labor-inducing drugs—and even tried to sell me off to a fifty-year-old monster to settle a debt. On that rainy night of desperate escape, I stumbled into a limited-edition luxury car and met David Summer. He was the most dangerous man in the city—and the true mastermind behind that ridiculous marriage scam. To survive, I risked everything to expose my stepsister’s lies, never imagining that gamble would cost me my whole life. After that night, he tossed a contract at me. “Be my wife, and I’ll make sure you and the child live.” I thought it was just a transaction—each of us getting what we needed. But little by little, I found myself falling into his trap of tenderness. Until he trapped me in his arms, lowered his head, and bit my earlobe, his voice hoarse like embers burning low: “Baby… I want another kiss.”

After five years of marriage, Melody finally realized—she had never truly married anyone. The marriage certificate was forged. Her husband, Adam, was legally wed to her best friend, Lily. And Melody? She had been the most innocent pawn in a meticulously crafted deception. The betrayals didn’t stop there. Her supposed infertility was a lie, and the child she had poured her love into raising was, in fact, Adam and Lily’s biological son. Five years of devotion—through their eyes, she had served only three purposes: a free housekeeper, a cheap business partner, and a disposable pawn. She had believed in love. That, above all, was her greatest folly. Yet Melody didn’t break. She didn’t cry, and she didn’t beg. Instead, she turned her gaze to the man who struck fear into the entire business world—Kiel Summers. Rumor had it he was ruthless, even deadly, and that any woman who became his companion ended up either dead or insane. Still, she walked into his office—and struck a deal. She offered him dignity; he offered her protection. Each got what they needed, with no promises of love. A cold, enigmatic man in a world full of danger. A clear-eyed, independent woman, scarred by betrayal yet still capable of kindness. Two broken souls, sharing the same fortress, bound by a single contract.

Back then, Alice was framed by her stepsister and had a one-night stand with a strange man. When they met again three years later, she was a single mother and a urologist, and he was David, a billionaire with sexual dysfunction who couldn’t get an erection. She said, “Go lie on the treatment bed and take off your pants, including your underwear.” He stood up, unbuttoned his Tom Ford suit, and casually threw it on a chair. Then, he walked to the bedside with those long legs that would go on a runway, and slowly undid his belt, each movement carrying a kind of silent threat. “If you can‘t cure me, be prepared to be completely blackballed in the American medical circle. Don‘t even think about holding a scalpel in California for the rest of your life.” When she examined him, the change under him was astonishingly fast, like a sudden Flash fire, burning away the wasteland he had maintained for three years. His breathing instantly became heavy, and the bottom of his eyes was stained with a scarlet mixture of shock and madness. “Who the hell are you?” His voice was incredibly hoarse.