Novel-novel oleh Preshy Vee

~ Seraphina ~ My hand was still on the handle of the door, the metal cool against my palm, but the heat in the room was suffocating. I had spent twenty-seven years being the girl who didn't make trouble, the woman who followed the script, and the wife who pretended not to notice the lipstick on the collars. Now, I was in Room 402, and the man standing by the window was the physical manifestation of my first real sin. "You’re early," he said. His voice didn't sound like a call boy's. It wasn't oily or overly sweet. It was deep, textured like expensive bourbon, and carried a weight that made the air in the suite feel thin. He didn't turn around immediately, and that small mercy allowed me to breathe. "I didn't want to be late," I managed to say. My voice was a thimble-full of sound. I hated how small I felt in my own rebellion. "Close the door, Seraphina." I flinched. The sound of my name in his mouth felt like a brand. I hadn't given him my name in the request. I hadn't g

~ Lucien ~ "The notification just hit the secure server, sir. It’s a direct inquiry for 'L'." Marcus didn’t look up from his tablet. He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of my office, his silhouette sharp against the city’s glowing grid. I didn’t need to ask who it was. The timing was too perfect, the air in the room suddenly too heavy. "Is it her?" I asked, my voice grating against the quiet. "The IP address is routed through a boutique hotel downtown. One owned by the Vale family holdings," Marcus confirmed. He turned the screen toward me. "The request is specific. Tonight. 9:00 PM. Room 402. The message is short: *Bring nothing but yourself.*" I stared at the black square on my own monitor—my own profile. I had built this identity to move through the world of the elite like a ghost, a tool for gathering the kind of leverage that balanced sheets couldn't provide. I had used it a dozen times to dismantle men just as arrogant as Adrian Vale. But this felt different. "S

~ Seraphina ~The morning after the gala didn't bring the usual headache or the crushing weight of regret. Instead, I felt a strange, humming clarity. Adrian had left for the office before the sun was up, leaving a note on the kitchen island that simply said: "Late meeting. Don’t wait up"I crumpled the paper and tossed it into the trash. He was likely with her—the woman in my grandmother’s emeralds.I sat at my desk in the library, the light of my laptop reflecting in my eyes. I wasn't going to cry, and I wasn't going to hide. Adrian had handed me the keys to the cage, and I was going to see exactly how far the perimeter went. He expected me to be "discreet," which in his mind meant doing nothing at all. He thought my virtue was a fixed point. He was wrong.I opened a private browser window. My fingers were steady. This wasn't an act of desperation; it was an act of precision. If I was going to play the game of an open marriage, I was going to hire a professional. I didn't want a me

~ Lucien ~"The debt isn't just financial, Marcus. It's moral. And those are the debts that carry the highest interest rates."I didn't look up from the three monitors glowing in the darkened expanse of my study. The screens were a waterfall of red—Adrian Vale's financial hemorrhage. Behind me, I heard the soft click of a tablet as Marcus, my head of security and most trusted confidant, updated the ledgers."He's leveraged the Vale estate against the new development in the harbor," Marcus noted. "If that project stalls for even forty-eight hours, the banks will trigger a margin call that will strip him to the bone.""It won't just stall," I said. "I'm going to make it evaporate. But a man like Adrian doesn't suffer when he loses money. To truly break him, you have to take the things he considers his birthright."I paused, the image of Seraphina from the gala flashing in my mind. The way she had stood by that pillar, her throat bare while her husband draped her family heirlooms over a

~ Seraphina ~"How much did she cost, Adrian?"The words cut through the heavy, suffocating silence of our penthouse like a razor through silk. We had just stepped through the front door, the click of the lock sounding like a gavel. Adrian was already unbuttoning his tuxedo jacket. He stopped, his back to me."I don't have the energy for your moods, Seraphina," he said, his voice dropping into that bored, clipped accent he used when he wanted to remind me I was beneath his notice. "It was a long night. We raised three million. Be grateful for the success and go to bed.""The necklace," I said, my voice rising. "My grandmother's emeralds. I saw them on her neck tonight. I saw you touching them. I saw you touching her."He turned then, and the look in his eyes wasn't guilt. It was annoyance. He tossed his jacket onto the Italian leather sofa and stepped toward me."It was a gift, Sera. Don't be dramatic," he sneered. "You never wear the damn thing anyway. It was sitting in a box gather

~ Lucien Blackwood ~ The Corinthian Hotel was a monument to excess, a gilded cage where the city's most dangerous predators wore silk ties and drank vintage scotch. I stood in the deep shadows of the mezzanine gallery, leaning my elbows against the cold stone railing. From up here, the gala looked like a choreographed dance of lies.I adjusted the cuff of my black dress shirt, feeling the familiar weight of the watch on my wrist. Below me, Adrian Vale was holding court. He was loud, expansive, and entirely too comfortable in his skin. He didn't know that his empire was a house of cards, and I was the wind.My gaze drifted away from Vale's bloated ego and snagged on a flash of pale silk near a marble pillar.She stood perfectly still, a stark contrast to the frantic social climbing happening around her. She was beautiful, but it was a quiet, haunting kind of beauty that felt out of place in this room of loud diamonds and louder voices.She was performing a role, moving through the cro