MasukOn the day of her wedding, Elena Hart was humiliated before the world, rejected at the altar by the man she was to get married to. One moment she was a bride, the next, a scandal. But fate had a crueler twist waiting. To save her family from ruin, Elena is forced into an arranged marriage with Alexander King, the ruthless billionaire known for his icy heart and dangerous empire. He doesn’t believe in love. She doesn’t believe in second chances. Their marriage is nothing but a contract, signed in bitterness and silence. Yet every clash between them sparks fire. Every stolen glance chips away at his armor. And every secret she uncovers pulls her deeper into a world of power, betrayal, and a man who might destroy her, or become the one person who saves her.
Lihat lebih banyakThe sound of siren tore through the mansion just after dusk. I was halfway down the corridor when Mrs. Alder rushed past me, her face pale, one trembling hand clutching her chest.“Mrs. King,” she whispered. “It’s Isabella.”My heart dropped.“What happened?” I asked, already moving.She hesitated, eyes darting toward the main hall where voices had begun to rise — security, staff, panic.“There’s been… an incident.” She said finally.The word incident barely registered before I was running.The foyer was chaos, guards speaking urgently into radios, a doctor kneeling on the marble floor, Alexander standing rigid nearby like a man carved from stone and rage.And Isabella…She was sitting on the settee, wrapped in a blanket, her hair disheveled, her face bruised. Not broken — not ruined — but unmistakably hurt.I froze.For all the venom she had poured into my life, for all the ways she had tried to diminish me, the sight of her like that made my stomach twist violently.Alexander’s head
I returned to the mansion just after dusk.The sky was a deep bruised blue, the kind that made everything feel heavier than it should. I thought I’d have a few quiet minutes to myself, time to breathe, to let Audrey’s words settle, to remind myself that I still existed outside contracts and expectations.I was wrong.Alexander was waiting in the living room.He was standing when I stepped inside the living room..His jacket was off, sleeves rolled up, phone in his hand like he’d set it down and picked it up a dozen times already. He looked composed, but I knew better by now. That stillness meant control, the kind he used when something had irritated him deeply.His eyes lifted the moment I stepped inside.“Where were you?”I stopped just past the doorway, my bag still on my shoulder.“I went out,” I said evenly.“I noticed,” he replied. “You left without informing anyone. Without informing me.”The emphasis wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.It carried weight.I took a breath, refusi
Audrey called on a quiet afternoon, her name lighting up my phone like a reminder of a life that once felt simple.“Dinner,” she said without preamble. “No excuses. Somewhere public, somewhere with good wine, and somewhere far away from brooding billionaires.”I smiled despite myself.“Deal.”We met at a small restaurant tucked between boutiques and bookstores — warm lighting, linen tablecloths, the kind of place that smelled like garlic and normalcy. The kind of place where no one expected anything from me except to order dessert.Audrey was already there when I arrived, waving enthusiastically like we were still twenty and late for class.She stood and hugged me hard.“I missed you,” she said into my hair.“I missed you too,” I admitted.Once we were seated, menus forgotten, Audrey leaned back with a satisfied sigh.“Okay,” she said. “You survived the gala. You survived being married to one of the most powerful men in the country. Now it’s my turn to talk.”She took a sip of wine, e
It's been two days after the gala, the mansion felt like a living thing with a pulse I could hear but not locate. Every hallway hummed with an awareness I couldn’t shake, a kind of watchful silence that pressed against my skin.Maybe it was the aftershock of the night, of Alexander’s eyes on me, of Audrey’s pointed questions, of Isabella’s simmering glare whenever she thought I wasn’t looking.Or maybe it was simply the feeling that something had shifted, delicately but unmistakably, between Alexander and me.I’d been replaying moments in my mind:his hand steady at my waist,the way he pulled me closer when another man approached,the softness — softness, of all things — in his voice when he asked if I was tired.Two days later, the memory still left my chest tight.But that wasn’t the only thing weighing on me.Because Isabella had grown quieter.And in this house, Isabella’s silence was far more dangerous than her insults.I found myself sitting on the veranda with a book I wasn’t






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