Direct Bullet

A month before the wedding, my fiancé had an unexpected encounter at an auto repair shop with his ex-girlfriend, the one he had broken up with regretfully. The suppressed emotions quickly spiraled out of control. He took her back to his place to celebrate, from the couch to the balcony, and finally to the bedroom. He told all his friends that this was the best gift life had given him before the wedding. "I may not be able to forget Winona, but Julia's family background is more suitable for me. She'll never know what happened between Winona and me. We're going to get married. She loves me, and I'm the best choice for her." His voice was full of confidence, as though nothing could change his mind. But he was never my top candidate. After a serious illness, I followed my family's wishes and switched to a new groom.

Some people find fortune… while some people find a dying criminal on a random Tuesday. "Is this the part where you kill me?" she asks. “Don’t worry, sweetheart.” He traced her jaw with the blade of the knife. “I’m still mulling it over.” Clover lives a very unlucky life. Getting fired job after job, it’s hard to make ends meet. And as if fate is playing with her, she saves an unconscious man who ends up to be the most dangerous person in town: Phoenix Volkov, the rising don of the underground world. Bad luck got her helping the wrong stranger—worse luck got her accidentally kidnapping a mafia boss. Just like that, their lives became entangled in a mess of bullets and danger.

He was the enemy I was forced to marry. I was the girl raised to destroy him. I was supposed to live a quiet life. Graduate, find a job, stay far away from the shadows of my mother’s past. But then I was taken. Now I’m Mrs. Valerio. Matteo Valerio is cold, dangerous, and untouchable. The heir to a brutal mafia empire built on secrets and blood. He makes it clear: this marriage isn’t love. It’s power. It’s politics. It’s survival. But I didn’t agree to this just to be a pawn. I want answers. About my father’s murder, about the threats still chasing me, about who I really am beneath the name I grew up with. And the closer I get to the truth, the more tangled I become with Matteo himself. Because behind the monster is a man with haunted eyes and a soul that’s been at war for too long. And behind my rage is a heart that was never supposed to feel anything for him. But the past is catching up. Betrayals are rising. And falling in love with your enemy? That’s the most dangerous vow of all.

Raised from an infant in discipline, Reza Kelson has been trained to be a cold-blooded killer. Nothing has stopped him when he's been ordered to an assignment, and nothing probably will. An agent for a secret branch of government, he kills and incinerates anything with the discipline of a sharp knife. But even though he's the best at what he does, tables turn when the government dumps Reza from bureaucracy, albeit with a place to be hidden away in. Now Reza finds himself struggling to integrate into the sleepy town of Lonewood. Raised without any form of love or compassion, he naturally comes off as rude and abrasive, and therefore drawing attention. And with other dumped agents, with some bent on settling scores, the entire situation could not be more risible and outrageous. Not to mention the strange boy, Dane Rochelle, who seems strangely possessive of him, and with Reza balances the life he never should have had.

On New Year's Eve, my older brother, Casper Shaw, attempted to expose me as a fraud and announced that Jenny Ford was the real heiress to the family. He pulled out a paternity test result and threw it in my face. "Open your eyes and take a look! Jenny is the Shaw family's real daughter. You're just a fake who has taken Jenny's place for so many years, yet you still have the nerve to sit here and eat New Year's Eve dinner with us!" Then, he pushed Jenny in front of us, revealing a face that looked exactly like my mom, Theresa. Everyone froze. I lunged for the report, but suddenly, a stream of floating comments rolled past above Jenny's head. [Is the female lead finally going back to her rich family and starting a sweet romance with her fake older brother?] [Not yet. Right now, they still think they're siblings. They only get together later, once the misunderstandings are cleared up.] [Am I the only one who feels bad for the female supporting character? She's the biggest victim in the whole book. She takes all the female lead's hatred that should have gone to her fake brother, and she gets treated as the fake heiress and sent to the Ford family to suffer on top of that.] I looked at Jenny's face and compared it to my own—we almost looked like twins. I checked our ID cards again, confirming that our dates of birth were exactly the same. "Seriously? Ever think that you might be the real impostor here who was switched at birth?"

I was just a student who couldn't afford tuition. For five years, I was also the secret lover of Mafia Don Dante Costello. Publicly, I was his personal art restorer. In private, he spent his nights making me his, holding me close and kissing me breathless. Then his family arranged his engagement. To Isabella Rossi. A princess from a rival family. At their engagement party, Isabella stabbed the back of my hand with a shard of broken glass. He made me apologize. To her. For making a scene. Fighting back tears, I bowed my head to Isabella. When Isabella lost a bet and had to play Russian Roulette—one bullet, six chambers—he made me take her place. My hand shook as I raised the gun to my head. "You saved my life once," I told him. "Now you can have it back." The moment I vanished from his world, the ruthless Mafia Don who had everything under control...completely lost his mind.