Novels by Clara’s Pen

OLIVIA’S POV The phone rang twice before he answered.“Miss Bennett,” Jaden’s calm voice came through the line. “Have you finally made a decision?”My fingers tightened around the phone immediately.The hospital hallway suddenly felt colder than before. Nurses walked past me with quiet footsteps while the smell of antiseptic filled the air again, making my stomach twist.I closed my eyes briefly.“Yes,” I whispered.Silence followed for half a second.“Yes what?”I swallowed hard.“Yes… I’ve made my decision.”Another pause.Not shocked. Not relieved. Just calm.“Are you certain?” he asked.The question annoyed me more than it should have. Maybe because certainty was the one thing I didn’t have anymore.I glanced through the small glass window of my father’s hospital room. He was still asleep, looking weak beneath the pale sheets.The image alone answered the question for me.“No,” I said honestly. “But I don’t have time to be uncertain.”That finally earned silence from him.A deepe

OLIVIA’S POVI should have gone home to rest.That was what Shay had been texting me all morning. Go home. Sleep. You can’t pour from an empty cup. All the things people say when they don’t know what else to offer.But I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t sit in that quiet apartment with Adrian’s ghost still living in every corner of it. So I went back to the only place that made sense.The hospital.I smelled the familiar cold of the hallway before I even reached the ward. That sharp bitter scent that had started feeling more like home than anywhere else lately. I turned the corner toward my father’s room and stopped.The door was wide open.Three nurses moved quickly inside. A doctor I hadn’t seen before was already at my father’s bedside, speaking in low urgent tones while someone adjusted the monitor. The steady beeping I had grown used to was faster now. Uneven.“Excuse me” I stepped forward.A nurse turned and held her hand up firmly. “Please wait outside.”“That’s my father”“Miss,

OLIVIA’S POV“So let me understand this correctly.” My voice came out quieter than I intended. “If I agree to marry you, you will pay off every single debt. All of it?”Jaden looked at me the way someone looks at a question they have already answered.“Not only that.” He leaned back in his chair, one hand resting casually on the table. “You will move into my home. You will have staff. Everything you need will be handled. No chasing bills. No hospital deadlines. No more sitting in that chair watching your father get worse while you count coins that are never enough.”He said it all so evenly. No performance. No warmth either. Just facts laid out in a row like he was reading from a report.“All you have to do,” he continued, “is sign the documents.”I looked down at the file sitting open in front of me.The pages were clean and precise. Every clause typed neatly in black ink like this was the most normal thing in the world. Like men asking strangers to marry them over champagne every si

OLIVIA’S POVI didn’t sleep that night.Not even close.I sat in that hospital chair with my phone face up on my lap, staring at the messages like they were going to disappear if I looked away long enough. The words kept replaying in my head over and over again. He knew my father’s name. He knew the hospital. He knew the room number. He knew things that nobody should have known unless they had been watching me for a while.That thought alone made my skin crawl.I looked up at my father. He was asleep, chest rising and falling slowly beneath the thin hospital blanket. He looked so small in that bed. So fragile. This was not the same man who used to pull me onto his back and run through the yard just to hear me laugh. This was not the man who stayed up all night whenever I had a fever, pressing a cold cloth to my forehead and singing off-key until I fell asleep.He looked like he was fading.And I was sitting here with nothing. No money. No plan. Just an anonymous number on my screen an

Olivia’s POVSleep never came properly.Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Adrian standing at the altar again with his hand wrapped around another woman’s waist while everyone around them smiled like they were witnessing some beautiful love story instead of the public destruction of mine.By three in the morning, I gave up trying. The uncomfortable hospital chair creaked softly beneath me as I sat up and rubbed my face tiredly. My neck ached, my eyes burned, and my head felt unbearably heavy.Dad was still asleep. The steady beeping of the monitor beside him filled the room while rain tapped softly against the window outside.I stared at him quietly. He looked exhausted even in his sleep. Weak and smaller somehow. And every time I looked at him, all I could think about was the doctor’s voice repeating the same number inside my head.Fifty thousand dollars.Fifty thousand.It sounded impossible no matter how many times I replayed it. My phone screen lit up suddenly beside me.A notif

JADEN’S POVThe city always looked different from the top floor. Very clean and quiet. Like all the filth and desperation below couldn’t quite reach the glass walls of my office.I stood beside the window with one hand tucked into my pocket while the other lazily swirled the whiskey in my glass, my attention fixed on the massive screen mounted across the room.The wedding clip replayed again, again and again. Adrian Cross smiled for the cameras like a man who had just conquered the world.Beside him stood Elena Langford, glowing beneath the flashes of expensive cameras and media attention, every inch the perfect rich man’s bride.The internet was obsessed already. Business blogs called it the union of the year. Investors called it strategic.The public called it romantic. I called it predictable.A humorless smile tugged briefly at my lips before disappearing just as quickly.Adrian had always been ambitious, but the problem with ambitious men was that they eventually confused greed