Gold Vehind Closed Hands

My boyfriend belonged to the untouchables among the capital's elite, with a family fortune worth tens of billions. To "test" me, he spent seven years never buying me a single gift, never spending a cent on me. Even a stop at a convenience store for condoms had to be split down the middle. Then, my mother fell critically ill. I borrowed from every friend and relative I could, but I was still two thousand short to cover the surgery fees. No matter how much I pleaded, he refused to lend me the money. I arranged my mother's funeral on my own. When I went back to pack my belongings, I accidentally found a list of gifts he had bought for the young woman next door. A private luxury estate. Designer handbags. Jewelry worth hundreds of millions. There was also a voice chat with his friend. "Caleb, is it true Jessica actually humbled herself and begged you for two thousand?" Caleb Brooks let out a low, amused laugh, his tone lazy and indifferent. "Nevaeh wasn't wrong. Anyone who goes around begging over two thousand — what else is she if not a gold digger? "We've only been together seven years and she's already trying to get money out of me." So that was the truth. Seven years of so-called testing, it seemed, had been sparked by nothing more than a few manipulative words from a young woman next door. However, it no longer mattered. The moment my mother passed away, I had already decided to leave him.

The Weight of Gold is a trilogy about what happens after the meet-cute — not the falling, but the building. It follows Eleanor across seven years as she trades inherited splendor for a chosen life: a small house, a workshop full of sawdust and linseed oil, a diner owner who becomes her true north, and a town that becomes her home. But it is also the story of the people pulled into the orbit of a life genuinely lived. A cousin who arrives hollowed-out by the wrong marriage and finds her footing in native plants and honest argument. A mother who mistakes the form of a life for the life itself, and slowly, carefully, begins to dismantle that mistake. A sculptor who needs wood that speaks. A town that goes better for being attended to. At its heart, this is a story about craft — the craft of furniture, of restoration, of building institutions and relationships and selves. About the difference between the shape a life is supposed to take and the shape it wants to take. About a word Daniel uses for bleached wood: ghost — not white, not absent, but elsewhere, waiting for the right conditions to return. Eleanor spends seven years learning that ghost is not an ending. It is the beginning of something better.

A signed contract. A $22 million debt. A beautiful prison built of gold, secrets, and raw obsession.** When Vivian Montgomery’s father plunders his own empire and vanishes, he leaves his daughter to face the executioner. Enter Dominic Vance—Manhattan’s most ruthless venture capitalist, known in the corporate world as "The Executioner." He doesn’t want a payment plan. He wants liquidation. And the only asset left to seize is Vivian herself. Backed into a corner with her family's legacy on the verge of being erased, Vivian is forced to sign a devastating, high-stakes contract. For twelve months, she must play the part of Dominic’s adoring, devoted fiancée to secure a multi-billion-dollar corporate merger. In public, she wears his flawless diamonds and smiles for the paparazzi. But behind closed doors, the rules change. Behind closed doors, she belongs to him completely. As Vivian is pulled into Dominic’s dark, suffocating world, the friction between a forced arrangement and a dangerous, addictive passion begins to boil over. Dominic is fiercely, violently possessive—destroying anyone who dares to look at her, driven by a dark obsession that runs far deeper than a mere business transaction. But a luxury cage is still a cage. Just as the high-friction 18+ heat between them reaches a breathless breaking point, a cryptic note delivered at a high-society gala shatters the illusion: *Your father didn't run. Dominic Vance is lying to you.* Trapped between a burning desire for the man who owns her and a terrifying secret tied to a hidden file in his private safe, Vivian must decide how far she will go to uncover the truth—and whether she can survive the absolute surrender of unlocking the golden cage.

We had agreed to spend the New Year with our own families, but at the last minute, my husband, Drake Murrell, changed his mind and insisted I go back with him this year. I agreed, planning to take this opportunity to finally tell him the truth about who I really was. When we first got married, my parents told me to keep a low profile so that Drake, who came from a single-parent household, wouldn’t feel pressured. So I hid the fact that I was the daughter of the richest family in the capital, the Thorntons. When we returned to his hometown, I specifically bought my mother-in-law, Diana Murrell, a pair of gold bangles. She accepted them with a beaming smile, praising me again and again for being such a thoughtful daughter-in-law. However, the next day, as I passed by the old oak tree at the edge of Willow Creek, I overheard her talking about me with a group of people. "Oh, you have no idea. My daughter-in-law is absolutely ridiculous!" My hand froze midair, still holding my phone, as I instinctively ducked behind a haystack. I heard her continue loudly, "She bought me a pair of gold bangles this year. The moment I touched them, I knew they were fake! I’m telling you, they’re probably those cheap online knockoffs, like the kind that cost next to nothing and start fading the moment you wear them!" I was stunned with anger. She called pure gold fake? Looks like the million-dollar New Year gift I had prepared for her wasn’t necessary anymore.

To break the Gipus Curse, the Green kingdom and Silver kingdom must unite through a marriage. Lives must be sacrificed to redeem others because of this curse. Will the daughter of the last descendant accept the union that is so expected between her and the prince of the Silver kingdom? The obstacles standing between them and the destiny that awaits will determine if the curse be broken. It may take longer than they think. When they think it is over, Silver and Shinja, an event gone well but wrong, leads to their death or travel into the immortal world. They will have to decide between taking their lives and saving their son.

He was about to lean in when I put my fingers on his lips to stop him. He looked at me surprised. I too was surprised over my own actions, not only was I turning down something that I wanted, but I was turning the man that I loved down. I knew that it maybe was a once in a lifetime opportunity. He could regain back his past memory and hate me for loving him. On the other hand, it would be a beginning of a great romance, either ways it felt so wrong to do anything with him in his current condition. "We need to bath okay," I said in a whisper. He took a step backward, his eyes slowly roaming all over my body making me uncomfortable. "You don't remember how to do anything right? I asked stupidly trying to strike a conversation with him. "This is crazy," I whispered to myself hopelessly.