Share

The Empire I Chose Over Love
The Empire I Chose Over Love
Author: Jasmine Flower

Chapter 1

Author: Jasmine Flower
Serena was still crying.

“Nora, I swear I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed, her voice trembling between broken breaths. “I only had too much to drink. I don’t even know how Lucas and I…”

Before she could finish, she grabbed the small fruit knife from the room-service tray.

A few people gasped.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, pressing the dull edge near her wrist. “I betrayed my own sister. I don’t deserve to live.”

I had barely come back to myself when Lucas Arden crossed the suite.

“I’ll marry you.”

His voice was calm.

Serena froze.

I turned to look at him.

His eyes were different from the last time.

In my previous life, Lucas had stood in the corner for a long time, silent and reluctant, before finally giving in. This time, he did not hesitate at all.

My heart sank.

He remembered too.

“Lucas…” Serena stared at him, stunned.

“You don’t have to do this.” Lucas gently took the knife from her hand and set it on the table. “I’ll marry you. I owe you that much.”

For two seconds, the hotel suite went silent.

Then a cold voice came from the hallway.

“You owe her?”

Graham West stepped out from around the corner, his expression dark. He walked to Serena’s other side and looked straight at Lucas.

“I’m the one engaged to Serena,” he said. “If you want to marry her, shouldn’t you ask me first?”

Lucas frowned. “Graham, this has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me?” Graham gave a short laugh. “Our engagement was announced to half of New York last month. You show up in her suite this morning, and now you’re offering to marry her. How exactly is that none of my business?”

Lucas’s face hardened.

“The engagement can be called off.”

“That isn’t your decision.”

The two men stood facing each other with Serena between them, pale and trembling as if she were the only victim in the room.

That was when I understood.

Graham remembered too.

In my last life, he had married me after the engagement switch. We spent five years under the same roof, cold and resentful, barely more than strangers.

He rarely looked at me unless he was drunk.

Whenever he was, he would sit alone in his study, staring at Serena’s photograph like a man mourning the life he should have had.

After Serena died, he lost control and went after Lucas. Later, when I fell from the rooftop at my own birthday party, both of them stood at my grave and cried about making it up to me in the next life.

Now the next life had come.

And here they were, fighting over Serena again.

“Serena,” Graham said, lowering his voice as he looked at her. “Our engagement is still in place. You choose.”

Lucas looked at her too, his tone just as firm.

“Serena, I’ll marry you. I mean it.”
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App

Latest chapter

  • The Empire I Chose Over Love   Chapter 10

    Within twenty-four hours, the press reception was everywhere.The photos and documents were redacted, but that did not make the headlines kinder.Serena Shaw’s Perfect Image Collapses at AsterDx EventAffair, Fraud, and Family Betrayal Inside the Shaw ScandalDid Serena Shaw Steal Her Sister’s Company and Her Research?The story stayed online for days. Every gossip account, finance blog, and industry newsletter had its own version.My parents took Serena back to the Shaw house and kept her out of sight. My mother called twice. I did not answer. Then she sent a voice message, angry and humiliated, saying people at the club were whispering, my father had stopped taking calls, and the Shaw name had become a joke.I deleted it halfway through.I had work to do.With Vivian’s legal team applying pressure and the evidence from Plan B already in motion, the transfer documents were frozen, challenged, and reversed faster than anyone expected. Serena’s claim collapsed. Lucas’s media threats bec

  • The Empire I Chose Over Love   Chapter 9

    Callum Hale arrived when the room had already fallen into chaos.He came in through a side entrance in a charcoal suit, his hair perfect and his expression still carrying the irritation of a man pulled away from a meeting he thought mattered. Then he saw the screen, and the impatience disappeared.His own face was still there, frozen beside Serena’s.Vivian did not give him time to recover. She walked toward him, removed her wedding ring, and dropped it into his champagne glass.The sound was small, but everyone heard it.“Callum,” she said, her voice cutting through the cameras and whispers, “my attorneys filed this morning.”His face shifted from shock to panic, then to calculation. He looked around the ballroom, taking in the reporters, the phones, the investors, and the society wives watching with open hunger, and in that instant he made his choice.He turned toward Serena.“She pursued me,” he said sharply. “She knew exactly what she was doing. She came after me for access, money,

  • The Empire I Chose Over Love   Chapter 8

    The screen moved to the next file.This one was different. Not a hotel lobby, not a payment trail, not another timestamped elevator shot. It was a cropped still from a private residence camera, redacted by attorneys but unmistakable in what mattered.On the nightstand behind Serena sat a framed wedding photograph.Callum Hale and his wife, Vivian Kane.Callum Hale.Real estate heir. Media darling. Husband to one of the most powerful women in Manhattan.And very much not Lucas Arden.Reporters surged forward. Cameras flashed so quickly the ballroom looked lit by lightning.Serena backed up, her heel crunching over broken glass.I looked at her and thought of my last life.Back then, everyone said Serena had died in a car accident. Lucas mourned her for years. Graham fought him at my birthday party because he believed Lucas had failed her.No one knew the truth.After I came back, I spent months digging: travel records, shell accounts, gallery invitations, hotel reservations, unexplained

  • The Empire I Chose Over Love   Chapter 7

    Three days after Serena announced she had “taken over” AsterDx, before the injunction could fully unwind the fraudulent transfer, she held a press reception at the Glasshouse downtown.She chose the kind of venue made for cameras: floor-to-ceiling windows, skyline views, white flowers on every table, and a step-and-repeat wall covered with the AsterDx logo.Serena stood in the center of it all in an ivory designer suit, a diamond tennis bracelet flashing at her wrist as reporters crowded around her.“Ms. Shaw, what’s your plan for AsterDx moving forward?”Serena smiled softly, humble and polished.“I only want to protect what my sister built,” she said. “Nora has been under a great deal of stress lately. Until she’s well enough to return, I’ll help steady the company and work with the team on our next steps.”I stood behind the ballroom doors and nearly laughed.She had stolen my company and called it protection.Another reporter raised his voice. “What about the allegations that Nora

  • The Empire I Chose Over Love   Chapter 6

    I spent two weeks in the hospital.Bruised ribs. A sprained wrist. Dehydration. Nothing the doctors could not document, photograph, and attach to a legal file.The morning I was discharged, I did not go home.I went back to the same Midtown tower where Mercer Compliance had locked me in a conference room and forced through the transfer request.Only this time, the room belonged to me.Graham arrived at ten.He came with one lawyer and Daniel Pierce behind him. The moment he saw me standing at the end of the glass table, his expression changed.“Nora.”I did not answer.My attorney placed a folder in front of him. My chief of staff stood beside the screen. On it were the things his people had thought I was too hurt to notice.WBC-HC-77.Westbridge Capital’s internal filing code.The transfer package built around my prenup.The call log from the security contractor to Daniel Pierce.The emergency authorization request they had forced through my company portal.Graham’s lawyer went pale b

  • The Empire I Chose Over Love   Chapter 5

    Graham did not come back on our wedding night.His assistant called a little after midnight and said an emergency had come up at the fund. He would be staying at the office.I said, “Fine,” and hung up.Then I went to sleep.His absence meant nothing to me.The next morning, I was on my way to AsterDx when an unknown number called.“Mrs. West?” a woman said. “This is Mercer Compliance. We handle emergency regulatory filings for several hospital networks. There’s an issue involving the Shaw statement online, and your signature is required before the pilot sites can proceed.”Serena’s post had already dragged regulators into the comments. If a hospital partner was nervous, I needed to know.“Send me the address,” I said.Twenty minutes later, my driver stopped outside a private office tower in Midtown.A woman with a visitor badge met me in the lobby. She wore a navy suit, carried a tablet, and spoke with the careful politeness of someone trained never to answer extra questions.“This wa

More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status