首頁 / Romance / Don’t Make Me Love You / RETURN OF THE GHOST

分享

Don’t Make Me Love You
Don’t Make Me Love You
作者: Ada Ada

RETURN OF THE GHOST

作者: Ada Ada
last update publish date: 2025-08-27 07:30:04

Lily’s POV

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Calderm City. The local time is 9:45 a.m. Please remain seated until the seatbelt sign is switched off.”

The hostess’s voice came through the speakers, and everyone around me started moving, unbuckling seatbelts and reaching for their bags. I sat still for a moment, staring at the seat in front of me. My chest felt tight, reminding me that this was it. I was really back.

When the light finally went off, I got up slowly, clutching my latest Louis Vuitton handbag close to me. The people around me looked normal, tired parents with kids, businesspeople scrolling through their phones, tourists carrying neck pillows. Nobody knew that for me, this wasn’t just another flight. This was me walking back into the past I had been running from for five years.

Stepping out of the plane, the rush of air from the jet bridge hit me. My heart thudded harder. Calderm City. The city where I had once been happy. The city where I had lost everything. The city where I had died, at least in the eyes of the world.

I kept my sunglasses on as I walked through the airport lobby, heading toward the exit. Nobody gave me a second glance the way they used to. No one rushed up to me for a selfie. No one shouted my name from afar. No one whispered about how pretty I looked. And to sum it all up, none of my family stood waiting at the exit doors to welcome me like they always did whenever I returned from a vacation.

The only person standing there, wearing a wide smile, was Charles, my assistant. He was dressed in an all-black suit, his tuxedo collar pulled tightly around his neck. It made me want to laugh, but the heaviness in my chest was stronger than anything else.

“Welcome back, Ma’am,” he said softly, holding the car door wide open for me. “C’mon in.”

The way he held the door reminded me of my father. My father would stand there smiling, while my mother, Clara… my elder sister, and Damian, my sister’s fiancé, sat in the car waiting to squeeze me tightly, away from the paparazzi. They would hold me, plant kisses on me, and shower me with gifts.

I stood there for a while, my eyes fixed on the car as I fought back tears that no one could see under my dark shades. They weren’t there anymore. It had been five years, but the wound still felt as fresh as yesterday.

I forced a smile and stepped into the car. “Thank you,” I said, my voice coming out as a whisper without me realizing it.

Charles shut the door gently and moved to the front. The chauffeur started the engine, and we zoomed off.

“Where are we headed?” I asked casually, scrolling through the latest press news about Adrian Atelier. Adrian’s company. He had just received an award as the Couture Designer of the Season. My blood boiled as my finger traced around his picture on the screen.

That man. Adrian. The man who wiped the joy off my face. The man who turned me into a loner and an orphan. He was the reason I had returned to this city. I came back to show him why he should never have crossed the Graysons. I would make sure what was coming for him would reach him fast. I needed him on his knees, begging for mercy. But mercy wasn’t part of my plan.

“We’re heading to the penthouse, ma’am,” Charles replied, pulling me back to reality. It was one of the properties I had built from scratch while I was away.

“I want to visit my family house,” I said, shoving my phone into my bag.

Charles hesitated before speaking. “Ma’am… the house was demolished a year ago. Right now, it’s farmland.”

“What?” My brows shot up as I met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “What did you just say?”

“Adrian Hastings bought it. It’s now a field used for growing cotton, wool, silk, and flax for fabric production.”

My chest tightened. Adrian had the nerve to buy my father’s land, yet Charles sometimes asked me if I was sure he was behind the massacre of my family five years ago. At this point, I was supposed to be in tears, but none came. The only thing pressing down on me was vengeance.

“I prefer to stay at the mansion,” I said finally. Without delay, the chauffeur made a turn. A few minutes later, we arrived at the mansion.

The butler ushered me in, and the housekeepers gave me a warm welcome before returning to their duties. There were five of them, plus the butler, six in total. That was when I realized they needed to be transferred or even laid off. If I approached Adrian while living as a flashy rich woman, things could go wrong. I needed to stay low-key.

“Have them laid off or transferred to the penthouse or the company,” I ordered. “I’ll be in my room. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

Charles nodded and left.

I dropped onto my bed with a heavy sigh. As much as this city carried memories of my family, I hated being here. I couldn’t wait to serve Adrian from the same plate he had fed me with.

Pulling out my phone again, I scrolled through Adrian’s company page. I searched for vacancies and, luckily, found an opening for a Data Analyst. It wasn’t the role I wanted, I needed something that would put me closer to him but for now, it was enough. Hopefully, I’d get hired and strike from there.

For the past five years, I had worked my way to the top. At twenty-two, I had five degrees, a globally recognized financial company, and valuable assets and properties to my name. All of it was built with one purpose: to rise high enough to be in Adrian’s circle so my revenge would be smooth.

I murmured to myself, “Five years of focusing only on my goals. Five years of depriving myself of fun or even love. Five years of grieving my parents. Five years of watching my sister get violated and shot in front of me. Five years of becoming a new person. Five years of…”

Sleep took me mid-sentence.

The next thing I knew, I was back in our house. Everyone was present for my seventeenth birthday, everyone except Damian, who hadn’t arrived yet. Cakes had been cut, wines popped, and laughter filled the room. Then something else popped, my father’s head, blown apart as assassins stormed in.

My mother fought when they tried to violate her, but they twisted the gun on her, and the bullet took her life. Clara and I screamed in agony, thinking it was over, until they yanked Clara toward them. They took turns with her while I begged and cried. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, they shot her dead.

They were going to kill me too, but my breath stopped on its own, and darkness covered me instantly. They must have thought I died of shock, because they left. But before they did, I heard them whisper a name, Adrian Hastings. I didn’t know why his name was in their mouths, but I knew one thing: he had been my father’s best friend before a fallout turned deadly. From that day onwards…

I jolted awake to the sound of my phone ringing. Grabbing it, I saw an unknown number, but the call ended before I could pick up. A message notification followed.

It was an interview invite from Adrian Atelier.

A slow smile spread across my face.

The universe was finally on my side.

在 APP 繼續免費閱讀本書
掃碼下載 APP

最新章節

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   Smoke

    Adrian’s POV FLASHBACK…dated January 8th, 2020“Is everything ready tonight?” I questioned.The guy on the other end of the phone answered. “Yes, sir.”“Good.” I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “You move in with your boys immediately after the trigger is pulled.”“Yes, sir.”I gritted my teeth, tapping the cigarette between my fingers against the ashtray on the table beside me, my eyes narrowed on the skyscraper a few kilometers away from where I stood.“I want no mistakes tonight,” I said, and hung up.Years of friendship and partnership were about to end tonight, and I felt no remorse. He’d brought this on himself. He should have known better than to try to play smart with me. I had gone out of my way to make sure every business deal we pulled through actually pulled through, while he sat back and watched, playing the role of a godfather who did nothing but take credit. He had never once treated me as an equal, even though I had more experience and more sense than he did.

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   Held Back

    Lily’s POV I never knew facing Adrian at work would be this nerve-wracking. Fuck, I had done a lot of work holding myself together today, keeping myself under control without blowing my cover.I had planned to make that meeting go against him. And still, my heart skipped a beat the second he walked into the boardroom, ruining every plan I’d made before I’d even opened my mouth. It was getting harder to tell where the mission ended and the wanting began.I wasn’t here for fun. I had to keep reminding myself of that lately, more than I used to. I had tons of men at my feet back in the States as a self-made twenty-two-year-old billionaire whom I could have chosen from if it ever had anything to do with fun.I scoffed as I threw a few work things into my bag, getting ready to leave for the day. It was 4:30 pm, the longest I had ever stayed in his proximity. I usually hated spending this much time here, especially with him always in sight, intentionally and unintentionally trying to get m

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   Trapped

    Adrian’s POV But before I could properly stand and get to her, Wilson already grabbed her by her waist, helping her up.My fingers curled into fists, as I narrowed my eyes at him.“Ms. Nolan, you were the one who brought CMG to the table in the first place. Can you walk us through how the original terms were agreed upon, and whether you had any indication this change was coming?”Lily didn’t flinch. There was absolutely no trace of someone who had almost broken her back a few minutes ago. She set her pen down like she’d been expecting the question the entire meeting. “The original terms were eight months, five percent interest, standard for a deal of this size. I negotiated that personally with their team before it ever reached this table. I wasn’t given any advance notice about the change to three months. I found out the same way the rest of you did.”“And you have no relationship with anyone at CMG that might explain this?” Hayward asked, his tone edging toward accusation.“None be

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   No Reaction

    Adrian’s POV I woke up before the alarm went off, and for a moment I just lay there staring at the ceiling. My body felt heavy in a way sleep is supposed to fix and hadn’t. My jaw was still sore. I pressed two fingers against it, testing it the way you test a bruise you already know is there, and then I got up before I could think about it any longer.I skipped the gym, which never happens. But this morning I didn’t have it in me to pretend I could focus on anything physical when my head was already this loud.My chef, Tessa, was in the kitchen when I came down, plating eggs and toast with coffee, the way she did most mornings. She looked up and must have seen something on my face, because she paused with the pan still in her hand.“You didn’t sleep well,” she remarked. It wasn’t a question. She had a habit of speaking to me more casually than every other domestic staff in my house, probably because she was just two years younger than me and of course, had made a move on me in the pa

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   Still Standing There

    Lily’s POV He held my wrist tightly enough that it began to hurt, but I couldn’t bring myself to react, not with Adrian and Charles still in sight. Tonight really did go south. I’d called Adrian because I strangely felt safe around him, and admitting that scared me more than that figure outside my window ever did. I never planned for any of this to happen. Everything was messier now than it already was. And what made it worse was that I now had no choice but to decide what to do about this pregnancy, here and now. Under a fucking pressure. Damian pulled me toward the couch, not hard enough to hurt me, but enough that I could tell how angry he was. “Lily, what’s going on?” he demanded. “I think you meant, ‘I’m sorry for not taking your calls,’” I said, calm and angry at once. He pulled his phone from his pocket, scrolling through it quickly. After a few seconds, his shoulders relaxed as he put it back in his pocket. “I missed those calls. I had no idea you were trying to reac

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   What He Didn’t Know

    Adrian’s POV I was too stunned to ignore the trickle of blood at the corner of my lip, my mind too crowded with everything happening at once. Did she say boyfriend? Damian Cole, Lily Nolan’s boyfriend? No wonder she was in that picture with her, with the mansion strikingly visible. I had begun wondering how she got to live in such a place. I took a look at them once again. I didn’t know what to think, or how to react. I was almost losing it, though what right did I have to? It wasn’t like we’d had a defined relationship from the start. All we’d had was a one-night stand, one we hadn’t even been able to look at each other about since. I never knew this part of her existed, right as I was starting to let myself feel something for her. Now I felt like shit, standing there in front of both of them. I took a few steps back, running my fingers through my hair, trying hard to hold onto my composure. No way was I letting either of them, especially Damian, see how much this affected m

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   DAMIAN’S RETURN

    Lily’s POVI was walking down the company’s lobby, heading toward the logistics department, when I stumbled upon a chaotic scene. People were scattered everywhere. Some stood with their phones raised, recording, while others whispered quickly, passing gossip like it was fresh bread from the oven.

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   The Enemy’s Pull

    Lily’s POV“Sir…” I whispered, but he didn’t let me finish. His lips crashed against mine again, harder this time, and his hands slid under my dress. My back hit the cold wall of the stall, and I shivered from the way he was touching me.He spun me around and bent me over, my palms landing on the w

  • Don’t Make Me Love You    A DANGEROUS PROXIMITY

    Lily’s POV Three Weeks Later “Are you sure about this, ma’am?” Charles asked for what felt like the millionth time today. I walked out of my room, heading downstairs in my red pump heels that matched my fitted black corporate dress that showed off my figures. My fingers brushed through my long

  • Don’t Make Me Love You   Aftermath

    Lily’s POVI woke up to beeping sounds I could not make out. My eyes felt too heavy to open all at once, but I forced them apart slowly and looked around. Strange faces I had never seen moved to and fro at every corner of the room. The air smelled of antiseptic and medicine. That smell gave me a sm

更多章節
探索並免費閱讀 優質小說
GoodNovel APP 免費暢讀海量優秀小說,下載喜歡的書籍,隨時隨地閱讀。
在 APP 免費閱讀書籍
掃碼在 APP 閱讀
DMCA.com Protection Status