After being fired from her job as a reporter, Eva Langston returns to San Francisco, only to find her family on the brink of financial ruin. Her once-thriving father now drowns in debt, and his last hope lies in a man she never wanted to see again, Lucian Thorne, her cold, calculating billionaire ex. Lucian agrees to save her father's company, but under one cruel condition: Eva must become his wife. Dragged back into the world of power, manipulation, and unsaid truths, Eva realizes Lucian has his own reasons for dragging her into this nightmare. As old wounds resurface and dark truths are uncovered, Eva must decide- can love survive their shattered past, or will the secrets lurking in both families destroy them for good?
View MoreThe San Francisco fog, usually soft and familiar, felt heavy on Eva Langston's shoulders. It clung to the Golden Gate Bridge, covered the tops of tall buildings, and now, it felt like it was sinking into her bones. Two years. That’s how long it had been since she left this city, chasing truth and justice with a pen name—E.L. Verity. Back then, it felt powerful. Now, it felt like an old costume she'd outgrown.
She stared out of the taxi window, watching familiar streets and recognizing familiar faces. Every turn brought back memories she wasn’t ready for. The little café where she’d first interviewed a whistle-blower. The park bench where she’d spent hours reviewing documents. The street where she’d last seen Lucian Thorne; his face cold, angry, unforgiving.
“Almost there, miss,” the driver mumbled, snapping her back to the moment.
Her stomach twisted. Home. The word felt wrong in her mouth. Home meant facing her father, Henry Langston, and everything she’d tried to run from. She’d pictured returning as a successful journalist, someone who had made it. Instead, she was coming back broke, disgraced, holding a cardboard box of her things.
The taxi stopped. The house in front of her used to be warm and full of life. Now, it looked tired. The paint was chipped, the garden wild and untended. It didn’t feel like the place she grew up in. It felt like a house barely hanging on.
Her father opened the door. His loud, joyful voice was gone. Instead, he smiled weakly. His strong shoulders looked smaller somehow, his face older, worn down by stress.
“Eva, my girl,” he said, pulling her into a tight hug. But it didn’t feel like a welcome. It felt like he was holding on for dear life.
“Dad, what’s going on?” she asked as she stepped inside. The house felt too quiet. No smell of her mom’s cooking. No background noise from the TV. It felt like a ghost of what it used to be.
He sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Come in. Sit down. We need to talk.”
What followed felt like slow torture. Her father explained how everything had fallen apart. He’d made risky business decisions, hoping to recover from a major client pulling out. He took loans, mortgaged everything and now Langston Innovations was drowning in debt. Bankruptcy was right around the corner.
Eva sat there, stunned. The scandal she’d tried to expose the one that got her fired and blacklisted suddenly felt like a sick joke. While she was trying to fight for what was right, her own family was collapsing, and she had no idea.
“I… I don’t get it, Dad,” she whispered. “How did it get this bad? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked down, ashamed. “Pride. And stupidity. I really thought I could fix it. I tried, Eva. I went to banks, investors... No one wants to help.”
Silence filled the room. In the distance, a siren wailed. Eva felt completely helpless. She had nothing. No job, no savings, no power to fix any of this.
Then her father cleared his throat nervously. “There’s… one last chance. A long shot. But maybe…”
She looked at him, her gut tightening.
“I reached out to Lucian Thorne.”
The name hit her like a punch. Lucian Thorne. Her ex. The cold, ruthless billionaire who once held her heart and then crushed it when he thought she betrayed him. The man she promised never to see again.
“Lucian? Are you serious?” Her voice was sharp. “Dad, you know what happened between us.”
Henry winced. “He’s the only one who can help. And he’s willing to…but there’s a catch.”
Eva already knew. She could feel it coming.
“He wants you to marry him.”
The room spun. The fog outside seemed to close in. Marry Lucian? The man who hated her? Who didn’t believe in her? It felt like some kind of twisted nightmare.
“No,” she whispered. “No, Dad. I can’t. You can’t ask me to do that.”
“Eva, please,” he begged, his voice cracking. “He’s already prepared everything. If we say no… we lose the house, the company…everything. Your future, too.”
Future. The word felt meaningless now. What kind of future came with chains?
The next day felt unreal. Her meeting with Lucian was set in his office a glass and steel tower in the heart of the financial district. Eva dressed in her sharpest clothes. It wasn’t about impressing him. It was armor.
His office was huge and cold. The windows showed off the city below, as if he owned it. Lucian sat behind a massive desk in a dark suit, calm and unreadable. He didn’t even offer a handshake. Just a nod.
“Miss Langston,” he said. His deep voice was cool and distant. “Thanks for coming.”
“Let’s just get to it, Lucian,” Eva replied, trying to keep her voice steady. “What are your terms?”
He leaned back, calm and confident. “As your father explained, I’ll invest in Langston Innovations, clear the debt, and stabilize the company. In exchange, you become my wife.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice rising. “Why me? Is this some kind of revenge?”
Something flickered in his eyes maybe amusement but it vanished quickly. “Revenge is messy. I don’t have time for that. This benefits both of us.”
“Benefits?” she repeated, almost laughing. “You’re forcing me to marry you. How is that a benefit for me?”
“You get to save your family’s legacy. You’ll have access to resources most people can only dream of. And I need a wife. A stable public image. You’re convenient. And… compliant.”
The word cut deep. Compliant. As if she were a tool. A thing.
“And what about the past?” she asked. “You still think I betrayed you. You think I leaked information. Is this your way of punishing me?”
His jaw clenched. “The past doesn’t matter. What matters is now. The deal is simple say yes, and your family is saved. Say no, and they lose everything. It’s your choice.”
He sounded like a stranger. The warmth, the passion from their past gone. He looked at her like a business deal, not a person.
Eva turned to the window. The city looked both close and far away. She saw her father’s tired face in her mind. The broken home. She had nothing to fight back with. No way out.
Her throat tightened. “Fine,” she said softly. “I’ll marry you. But don’t expect me to be compliant. And don’t think I’ve forgotten how little you think of me.”
Lucian gave a small nod, as if her answer had always been yes. “Good. My lawyer will contact you. We’ll make the wedding private. Public announcement to follow.”
He turned back to his computer like she was already out of sight, out of mind. Eva stood slowly. Her legs felt heavy. Her heart even heavier.
She had just sold her freedom, her heart, her future… to the man who broke her. And outside, the fog thickened, curling around the city like a warning she could no longer ignore.
It started with a silence that didn’t feel right, like the air itself was waiting for something awful. Then the city lights flickered and went out. Darkness poured over everything, thick and full of dread. Thorne Tower, once a bright symbol above the city, turned into nothing more than a dark outline.Then came the sound of alarms, they were sharp, loud, and urgent echoing through every floor. The building went into lockdown. Margaret had made her move. The Maestro had come for Ari.But this wasn’t just a physical attack. It was a well-planned, layered assault. She was hitting them from all sides; hacking their systems, jamming their signals, shaking their sense of safety. Lights flickered. Communications dropped. Elevators stopped working. Even the backup systems were under pressure. Margaret had turned the building into a war zone.“They're in!” Marcus shouted over the comms. His voice was full of tension. “Multiple breaches! Floors 27 through 31 are hot! Internal systems compromise
Lucian turned the penthouse into a fortress. The once-luxurious space of glass and steel now felt more like a bunker, built to hold back the madness that was slowly closing in. He worked with quiet urgency, driven by a deep, almost primal need to protect Ari. No detail was too small. Marcus brought in the best, an elite team of security professionals who installed biometric scanners, reinforced doors, and surveillance systems more advanced than most military bases. Every corner was watched. Every weak spot reinforced. Ari was never alone. Trained eyes followed her everywhere, silent but alert.Eva was terrified, but she didn’t freeze. She turned her fear into purpose. She worked side-by-side with Izzy, going over every possible hole in their security. She tried to think like Margaret, to see through her eyes. “She won’t just attack,” Eva said, pointing at a blueprint spread across the table. “She’ll twist things. She’ll get into Ari’s head. We need to prepare for fear, for lies not ju
Ari Thorne wasn’t just a little girl anymore. She was the key. The living key. This truth hit Lucian like a punch to the gut. The one thing that could unlock the full power of the quantum reactor. And suddenly, everything made sense and it made him sick.He sat in the secure conference room, but it no longer felt secure. It felt tight, like the walls were closing in. His chest was heavy. The kind of heavy that came from heartbreak, guilt, and fear, all at once.He buried his face in his hands. His strong shoulders trembled with the weight of it all. “Ari,” he whispered, his voice cracked and broken. “My God. All this time… I blamed Eva. I fought Derek. I was so focused on the past… and it was always this. My family’s twisted legacy. My grandfather’s obsession with genetics. I never saw it coming. I never realized… she was the target all along.”He lifted his face slowly. His eyes, usually sharp and in control, were now full of pain as he looked at Eva. “This is my fault. All of it.”E
The soft hum of the private jet filled the cabin, calm and steady, so different from the chaos they’d left behind in the Alps. Eva and Lucian sat side by side, still catching their breath. Their bodies were finally slowing down, but their minds were racing. The horror of what they’d discovered hadn’t left them. Not even close.Back at Thorne Capital, Izzy’s voice came through the comms, full of energy and nerves. She had already started digging through the data drive they’d recovered from Finch’s hideout.“Guys,” she said, her voice crackling with emotion, “this is huge. Finch’s theory about the ‘living key’ is real. And it’s unbelievably detailed. He believed the quantum field could be influenced by a specific human genetic sequence. Not just thoughts or emotions, but something biological. Like a person whose body gives off a natural signal. A living antenna.”Lucian’s face tightened. “You mean... a person. A real, living person could control the field?”“Exactly,” Izzy replied. “And
The icy wind howled through the mountains, cutting through their coats and biting at their skin. It was a sharp change from the warm, sticky air they’d left behind on the Pacific coast. Lucian, Eva, and Marcus moved quickly and quietly across the snowy path, their breath rising in white clouds as they climbed higher into the Alps. Every step had been carefully planned. They knew Margaret’s surveillance reached far, so this mission had to be perfect.Their plane had touched down at a quiet, hidden airstrip hours earlier. From there, they had driven rough, all-terrain vehicles through narrow, frozen mountain roads. It was a long, tense journey. The weather was brutal. The paths were barely roads at all, it was just icy tracks hugging the side of cliffs. But the real danger wasn’t the cold or the steep drop-offs. It was the fear that someone might be watching.Lucian’s security team picked up small signs. Strange heat signatures from hidden cameras. Old footprints in places no hiker shou
Eva had always trusted her gut. Years of chasing stories, digging through lies, had sharpened her instincts. This time, they led her to a name that had almost been erased from history…..Dr. Alistair Finch.He wasn’t just another scientist. Finch had once been one of the brightest minds in quantum research. He was brilliant, yes, but also difficult. In the early days, before Vance built the Syndicate, Finch had been his partner. Back when their wild theories were laughed at, not feared. But where Vance leaned into control and dominance, Finch had taken a different path, he took the path that explored how living beings might interact with the quantum world.Izzy dug deeper into Finch’s background, pulling scraps of information from forgotten databases. She found that Finch had vanished from public life years ago, shortly after a very ugly fight with Vance. The last trace of him was from a research facility buried deep in the European Alps.“Finch,” Lucian said under his breath, eyes nar
Welcome to GoodNovel world of fiction. If you like this novel, or you are an idealist hoping to explore a perfect world, and also want to become an original novel author online to increase income, you can join our family to read or create various types of books, such as romance novel, epic reading, werewolf novel, fantasy novel, history novel and so on. If you are a reader, high quality novels can be selected here. If you are an author, you can obtain more inspiration from others to create more brilliant works, what's more, your works on our platform will catch more attention and win more admiration from readers.
Comments