Chapter: 9:00PrescottAt 8:52 a.m., I sat at my desk and watched the clock.My phone lay face up beside the keyboard. The photo of Aurora sat in my inbox like a loaded gun.I hadn't slept, I hadn't eaten. I'd spent all of Sunday in the security office, tracing logins until the numbers blurred. We found nothing. Whoever took that footage knew how to hide.Now all I had was a deadline.Withdraw your objection by Monday at 9 a.m.It would be so easy one email. One signature. Marcus would delete the photo and smile, and we'd all pretend this never happened.I opened the Hale review draft. My objection sat on page one, in bold. Three paragraphs explaining why the partnership put Zane Enterprises at risk. Aurora had helped me write every line.I closed the file.Never.My phone buzzed. A text from Aurora, sent from the third floor.Whatever you decide, I'm with you. Even if it costs us everything.My chest ached. She had no idea how close she was to being right.I typed back: It won't cost me you, I pro
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-15
Chapter: Through the wallAuroraElena didn't say anything for a long time.The silence in that study felt like it had weight. Like it was pressing on my chest."Elena," Dominic said again. "Answer me."She finally looked at him. Her eyes were wet, but her voice came out steady."Yes. I knew."My stomach dropped to the floor."How long?""Two days."“Two dats”. Dominic repeated it like he hadn't heard right. "And you said nothing.""I was going to.""When?""I gave them until Friday to tell you themselves."Prescott's head snapped toward her. "You told us that?""I told Aurora," Elena said quietly. "At lunch."Dominic turned slowly toward me. His eyes were cold now, not furious worse, Hurt."And you agreed to that. You sat at my table, ate my food, and let me hunt through my own house for a thief.""I didn't know about the photo," I whispered. "I swear. I only found out yesterday.""But you knew about the rest."I couldn't answer. My
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-12
Chapter: Not yetPrescott I waited for the explosion. I knew my father. I knew the vein that jumped in his neck, the way his voice dropped before he ruined someone. I had braced for it my whole life. It never came. Dominic just sat there, looking at the photo, then at our hands. We were still holding on. "Let go of her," he said. I didn't. "Prescott." "No." Something flickered across his face. Not anger. Something older and more tired. "I'm not going to hurt her," he said. "Let go. I need to think." Aurora's fingers slid out of mine. Her hand dropped to her lap. Without hers, my palm felt cold. Dad stood and walked to the window. He kept his back to us for a long time. The room was so quiet I could hear Aurora swallow. "You're angry," I said. "Say it." “Of course i’m angry.” "Then say it." "Not yet." He turned around. His eyes were red at the edges. "I'm angry at you. I'm angry at myself. And I'll deal with both
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-09
Chapter: SaturdayAurora I didn't sleep. At 5 a.m., I gave up and sat on the edge of my bed, staring at my hands. Today. By tonight, everything would be different. Maybe better. Probably worse. At seven, my phone buzzed. *Prescott:* Ready? *Me:* No. *Prescott:* Same. I'll be at the foot of the stairs at ten. *Me:* Dad's study? *Prescott:* Yes. And Aurora? *Me:* Yes? *Prescott:* Whatever happens, don't let go of my hand. I pressed the phone to my chest and closed my eyes. Last night, Prescott had told me about the login. D. Zane. I had barely breathed. "Your father exported that footage?" "Or someone used his account." "Which one is it?" "I don't know." His jaw had been tight. "That's what scares me." I'd gone to bed with that sentence in my head. It was still there now. At 9:55, I walked down the hall in the plainest dress I owned. My legs felt weak. Elena's door was shut. I wondered if she was standin
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-09
Chapter: The photo Prescott The email came at 12:14 p.m. No subject line. No message. Just a sender I knew too well, and one attachment. I opened it. It was a hallway. Dark and grainy shot from above. A timestamp sat in the corner. 4:52 a.m. A woman stepped out of a bedroom. with a sleel shirt, mesdy hair. One hand on the doorknob, pulling it closed behind her. Aurora It was my door. Under the photo, Marcus had typed one line. Nice house. Withdraw your objection to the Hale review by Monday at 9 a.m., or this goes to your father and every director on the board. My ears started ringing. I read it again. Then a third time, like the words might change. Someone had a camera on my hallway, Someone had watched her leave my room. I grabbed my phone and called Aurora. It rang twice and went to voicemail. I sent a text. Then another, my hands were shaking so hard I had to retype it. *Call me. Right now.* *It's Marcus.* Then I
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-07
Chapter: Just usAurora Elena picked a tiny restaurant on a side street. The kind of place nobody from Dominic's world would ever walk into. That scared me more than anything. She was already at a corner table. Her water sat untouched. Her hands were folded so tightly her knuckles had gone white. "Sit," she said. I sat. My legs felt like paper. "Mom, what's going on?" "Two nights ago I woke up at one in the morning." My heart stopped. "I heard your door open. Then I heard his." "Mom..." "I lay there in the dark, listening to my daughter's footsteps cross that hall." Her voice didn't shake. That made it worse. "Then I heard them come back. At ten to five." I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. All the lies I had practiced in the mirror turned to dust. "Don't lie to me, Aurora," she said softly. "Please. Not you." My eyes burned. "We didn't plan it." "How long?" "A while." "Before the wedding? After?" "After." I
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-07

REBORN AS THE FAT GIRL THEY HATED
Daisy Reed gave up everything for Seth Ford her career, her ambition, her sense of self to become the perfect wife. On their third anniversary, she comes home early and finds him with her stepsister Beth. In the confrontation that follows, cornered on the stairs, she’s shoved. She doesn’t survive the fall.
She wakes up five years earlier, twenty-three years old, on the morning of a choice she made without thinking twice the first time. This time, she thinks twice. She turns down the job Seth wants her to take. She keeps the strategy and analytics career she once buried for him. And when Seth’s biggest rival, Harvey Carlos, offers her a position at Carlos Holdings, she takes it not for revenge, not yet, just to never be small again.
She doesn’t know Harvey has secrets of his own: he loved her in silence for years, said nothing, and died in a reckless accident the night he learned she was gone. He doesn’t know why the new hire unsettles him so completely, or why grief he’s never earned keeps surfacing when she’s near.
As Daisy rebuilds herself into someone Seth can no longer control and Beth can no longer overshadow, old resentments curdle into open war. Beth, desperate to reclaim the spotlight, makes a play for Harvey and is publicly, humiliatingly rejected, a wound that pushes her and Seth toward something far more dangerous than gossip.
Somewhere between boardrooms and unspoken history, Daisy and Harvey are drawn together despite everything working against it. But the truth neither of them has said aloud that they’ve both already died once for this is coming, and it will force them to decide if a love that’s already cost one life is worth risking.
Baca
Chapter: The question askedDaisy's POVThe whispers started at the elevator.Two women from accounting stopped talking the second I stepped in. One stared at my shoes the other stared at my hips. Then they both studied the floor numbers like they'd never seen numbers before.I kept my chin up and it off on the fifth floor. By nine, someone had printed a photo and left it on the break room table. Me in the red dress. Harvey's hand on my waist. Someone had drawn a little dollar sign over my stomach in pen.I folded it in half and put it in my bag."Reed." Priya stood in her office doorway, arms crossed. "In here."She shut the door behind me."Is it true?"My mouth went dry. Yes was the lie I'd agreed to in a car last night. "Yes."She studied me for a long moment. "Okay. Then hear this from someone who likes you. Marcus is telling people you slept your way onto Carlos's arm and onto this job."The words hit low in my stomach. "I got this j
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-10-12
Chapter: The CityHarvey’s POVBy morning the lie had already grown legs.My phone was a stack of messages I had expected and one I had not. The expected ones came from people who measured closeness in access: partners who wanted confirmation, a journalist who wanted a quote, two board-adjacent names who wanted to know if Daisy Reed was a serious attachment or a night’s miscalculation.The unexpected one was from my father, I got a text Richard Carlos: My office now and do not bring a speech.I dressed without rushing. Speeches were for men who still thought he could be managed with polish. I had told the entire ballroom I was dating Daisy. I had put my hand on her waist in front of Seth Ford there was no version of this morning that ended with my father calling it a rumor and moving on.At eight twenty-seven I walked into his office.He did not look up from the tablet on his desk. A photograph filled the screen Dais
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-29
Chapter: The TermsDaisy’s POVThe car stopped in front of my building and neither of us moved.Harvey’s question was still in the air. Do we have an agreement? Rain tapped the roof the red dress felt heavier now that there was no ballroom left to justify it. I didn’t want him to take back the words in front of Seth. But that was just was survival. This is a fake relationship with rules and I can still remember his hands around my waist.I had died for a man who called possession love. I was not going to sign my second life over because another man spoke well in a crisis.“If I say yes,” I said, “it is not because you rescued me.”Harvey’s gaze held mine. “I know.”“Neither does it mean I trust you.”A pause. “I know that too.”“Then hear me.” I kept my voice level, the way I kept numbers level when they tried to lie. “We appear together when it is necessary and support the story. You do not make plans for my life, You don’t speak for me again un
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-27
Chapter: Convenient lieHarvey’s POVThe car door shut and the noise of the ballroom died like someone had cut a wire.Daisy sat in the opposite corner of the back seat, crimson silk pooled around her, the slit fallen open showing off her thick smooth thighs. She had not looked at me since we left the steps. She had not moved away either. That was the only reason I had not already apologized for the hand I put on her waist in front of half the city’s money.I had told them we were dating.And I had not asked her first.The driver pulled into traffic. Rain streaked the glass. For three blocks I let the silence stand, because didn’t want to say anything too soon. Her eyes came to me, dark and unreadable. “You told them we were dating.”“Yes I didn’t like the things they were saying and I saw an opportunity”.“You didn’t ask”.“Yes, I’m sorry.”She seems so different from the Daisy I knew and was no longer the intimated woman I once knew. “Seth will not stop,” I said. “Neither will Beth. What they did in t
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-24
Chapter: NamesDaisy’s POVThey cut through the crowd like they owned the marble.Seth first. Navy suit. That familiar smile already dying on his mouth. Beth on his arm in silver, bright and sharp, the same look she had worn in another life when she watched me bleed on a foyer floor.Harvey’s shoulder shifted half an inch in front of me. Not enough to make a scene. Enough that I felt it.“Daisy.” Seth’s voice was pleasant the way a blade is pleasant before it moves. “What are you doing here?”People nearby had already begun to give looks and act like they’re not listening. I felt the attention gather anyway, warm and hungry.“Working,” I said.His gaze flicked to Harvey, then back to me, and something ugly settled in it. “With Harvey Carlos of all people.”Harvey did not speak. He did not have to the quiet of him was its own answer.Seth laughed once, short, disbelieving. “You disappear on me. You take some little office job. And a week later you’re walking into this room on his arm.” His eyes dro
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-24
Chapter: Turned headsThe Room That TurnedHarvey’s POVI had prepared myself for Daisy Reed in work clothes.But I had not prepared myself for this.She stepped out of the car in the crimson dress and the whole entrance seemed to lose its sound. Off-the-shoulder silk. A slit that cut up one full thigh like a dare. Hair swept up, mouth painted the same red as the dress, body held with a stillness that was not apology. For a second I forgot how to breathe in a way that would have embarrassed me if I had been capable of feeling anything except the hit of her.I had sent the dress because I refused to let her walk into that room in something chosen to make her smaller. I had not sent it expecting her to wear it like a verdict.She did.Her name left my mouth before I had decided to speak it. Daisy, low, careful The only word that had ever felt dangerous in my mouth.She told me I had sent a dress. I told her she had chosen to wear it. When she said it fit, I almost answered with the truth.I know because I ha
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-24

HIS FORBIDDEN MASTERPIECE
Damien Voss has spent his entire life fulfilling a role he never chose: heir to an empire, dutiful son, fiancé to Anastasia Brooke since they were fifteen. Their engagement was never about love it was a merger sealed in a childhood promise between two ruthless families but it works. They respect each other, understand each other, and keep up appearances well enough that no one has ever thought to question it. It’s enough, or it was, until an artist named Lucas Carter walks into their lives to paint their engagement portrait and walks out of a bathroom door at exactly the wrong or right moment.
What begins as an accident becomes an obsession neither man can outrun. Damien buries his attraction under anger and denial. But desire has a way of resurfacing anyway, and when the two finally give in, Damien claims Lucas fully. stolen evenings, a version of himself he’s never let anyone see. As the affair deepens, Anastasia begins to notice the distance long before she has proof of why.
With the engagement party closing in, Damien is forced to face what he’s spent his whole life avoiding: he doesn’t want the wedding, the arrangement, or the life that was chosen for him before he was old enough to have an opinion. But unraveling fifteen years of promises between two powerful families was never going to be simple and when the truth comes out, it won’t just break hearts. It will ignite a war between empires, threaten to destroy both families’ fortunes, and force Damien to decide what kind of man he’s willing to become.
A story of forbidden desire, dynastic betrayal, and the cost of choosing yourself when everyone else has already decided who you’re supposed to be.
Baca
Chapter: DecisionsThe forty-eight hours Anastasia had given them began like any other morning after catastrophe quiet, heavy, and already fraying at the edges.Damien woke first. The city outside Lucas’s windows was still gray with early light, the kind that made everything look unfinished. Lucas slept on his stomach, one arm flung across Damien’s chest, dark hair messy against the pillow. There were faint bruises on his hips from the night before, marks Damien had left while fucking him against the glass. The memory stirred low in his gut, but the weight of Anastasia’s revelation pressed harder.She had known. For years. She had hired the photographer. She had let the scandal burn just enough to create leverage, then offered them a way out that smelled like both salvation and another kind of trap.Damien carefully extracted himself and walked naked into the kitchen. He made coffee the way Lucas preferred it strong, bla
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-29
Chapter: DecisionsThe forty-eight hours Anastasia had given them began like any other morning after catastrophe quiet, heavy, and already fraying at the edges.Damien woke first. The city outside Lucas’s windows was still gray with early light, the kind that made everything look unfinished. Lucas slept on his stomach, one arm flung across Damien’s chest, dark hair messy against the pillow. There were faint bruises on his hips from the night before, marks Damien had left while fucking him against the glass. The memory stirred low in his gut, but the weight of Anastasia’s revelation pressed harder.She had known. For years. She had hired the photographer. She had let the scandal burn just enough to create leverage, then offered them a way out that smelled like both salvation and another kind of trap.Damien carefully extracted himself and walked naked into the kitchen. He made coffee the way Lucas preferred it strong, bla
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-29
Chapter: Anastasia’s GambitAnastasia Brooke stood on the rooftop terrace of her family’s penthouse, the city glittering below like scattered diamonds. The wind tugged at her silk robe as she scrolled through the latest headlines on her tablet. Her statement had done exactly what she intended humiliated Damien publicly, tanked Voss stock further, and painted her as the tragic, dignified victim.But victory tasted bitter.She had loved him once. Not romantically, not the way fairytales promised, but with the steady loyalty of two people raised to merge empires. She had suspected for years that Damien preferred men she had simply chosen not to care, as long as he was discreet. The arrangement had suited her too freedom behind closed doors, status in public, and a future secured.Until the photos made her a joke.Her phone buzzed. Victor.“Daughter. The new contracts are nearly severed One more push and Voss will be begging.””Good,” she rep
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-29
Chapter: ReckoningMorning light sliced through the half-closed blinds of Lucas’s apartment, striping the tangled sheets. Damien woke first, chest tight, arm still slung possessively over Lucas’s waist. For one quiet moment it felt almost normal until his phone started vibrating nonstop on the nightstand. He silenced it, but the damage was already done. The screen lit up with alerts. Anastasia Brooke’s Devastating Statement Rocks Voss Empire “Fifteen Years of Lies” – Brooke Heiress Releases New Evidence Voss Stocks Plunge 11% on Scandal Damien closed his eyes. The half-finished portrait stared at him from across the room, his own painted eyes watching judgmentally. Lucas stirred beside him. “You should go,” he murmured, voice rough from sleep and everything they’d done the night before. “Before someone sees your car outside.” “I’m not leaving.” Damien rolled over him, pinning Lucas’s wrists gently to the mattress. The position was familiar now, comforting in its intimacy. “Not yet.” Lucas’s bre
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-21
Chapter: FracturesDamien stood motionless in his father’s office long after Victor Brooke had stormed out. The silence pressed against his skin like a second atmosphere. His father’s final words still echoed off the mahogany panels.Then you’d better hope you’re prepared to lose everything to keep him.He couldn’t say anything for himself.. What was there to say? “Yes”? “No”? Both felt like lies.His phone vibrated again. Lucas’s name didn’t appear only another string of missed calls from PR, from lawyers, from numbers he didn’t recognize. He scrolled past them until he reached Lucas’s contact and hit call for the fifth time that day. Straight to voicemail. Again.“Fuck,” Damien whispered, dragging a hand through his hair.Across town, Anastasia Brooke sat in the sunlit conservatory of her family’s estate, legs crossed, gaze steady on the laptop screen. The photos were already everywhere. Grainy, invasive, but unmistakable. She had forwarded the original file to a trusted contact an hour ago with a s
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-18
Chapter: What the camera sawAnastasia didn’t have to wonder too much as the truth found her.A file of photos landed in her inbox three days after she’d confronted Damien about the missed dinners, taken from across the street, but unmistakable. Damien, at the door of a the penthouse. Beside him, was Lucas it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see how suspicious they were holding hands… Anastasia couldn’t believe her eyes, then she flipped to the next picture and she saw them kissing. She stared at it a long time. Then she drove there herself.She didn’t call ahead. Didn’t plan what she’d say. The doorman, who’d waved her through a hundred times for a hundred reasons, let her up without question, and she let herself in with the emergency code Damien had given her years ago some old habit of trust that hadn’t caught up yet to what she already knew.They weren’t expecting anyone. That much was obvious when she opened the door to see them in bed stark naked, Damien on Lucas kissing him while stroking his dick. She
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-17