Kill Your Darlings

Isabelle couldn’t stop drinking as the music pounded through the club. She was trying to drown out the image of her best friend, Aurora, who was pregnant with her fiancé’s child, on what should have been Isabelle’s engagement night. But fate had other plans. When an employee calls in sick, Isabelle volunteers to fill in, unaware she is about to walk straight into the arms of Don Miller—the club’s most powerful and dangerous client. He was ruthless, commanding, and known for treating women as playthings. Don doesn’t believe in love… until Isabelle. One glance, one reckless touch, and something shifts. She stirs a hunger in him he thought he’d buried forever. And when he learns what broke her, Don makes Isabelle an indecent offer: He promises to mend her shattered heart and destroy everyone who betrayed her—if she surrenders to him completely. Two broken souls. One dark deal. Isabelle is about to learn that submission might just be the sweetest form of revenge. What begins as a dangerous bargain soon spirals into something deeper, darker, and far more intoxicating than either expected. Maybe love isn’t always gentle. Sometimes it’s an obsession. Sometimes it’s surrender. And sometimes… it’s the most exquisite kind of ruin.

“I agreed to treat him before I knew I was meant to kill him.” Dr. Cecilia Vale is a therapist, who has spent years learning how to fix broken minds, not destroy them. But when a powerful socialite offers her a job that could rebuild her ruined career and drag her out of a life she can barely survive. She accepts without asking too many questions. Her newest patient is Jude Martinez. A man feared by many, understood by none. Cold, and dangerously perceptive, Jude is not the kind of man who trusts easily. Yet, within the quiet walls of their therapy sessions, he begins to reveal fragments of himself that no one else has ever seen. And Cecilia finds herself drawn in, despite every instinct warning her to stay away. Because behind the smiles, deep conversations, and chemistry-filled banter, they exchange, there is a truth she cannot escape. Jude’s wife did not hire her to help him. She hired her to kill him. With a poison that leaves no trace and a contract she cannot break, Cecilia is forced to choose between her survival and her conscience. But as the lines between duty and desire begin to blur, the man she was meant to destroy becomes the one person she cannot bear to lose. And in a world built on power, betrayal, and blood, love is not just dangerous. It is fatal.

He promised to protect him from a killer. He never said he was one. When journalist Ian Parker witnesses a brutal murder, he should have been the killer's next victim. Instead, he wakes up in the hospital, saved by Zhedya Hunter…a brilliant forensic pathologist, a reclusive CEO, and a man with chilling grey eyes that feel hauntingly familiar. Charismatic and dangerously possessive, Zhedya offers Ian shelter in his opulent penthouse, a gilded cage where every comfort is a chain. As Zhedya's obsession deepens, Ian's career skyrockets, with damning evidence against the city's most wanted criminals mysteriously falling into his hands. But each exclusive story comes with a price: a fractured memory, a drugged haze, and a growing pile of bodies connected to anyone who threatens their twisted paradise. Now, Ian is trapped in a nightmare of luxury and lies, unraveling a truth more terrifying than any headline: his savior is a predator, his sanctuary is a crime scene, and the man who claims to love him is the most prolific murderer he will ever interview. Learning how to love a murderer is easy. Surviving him is the real story.

They were never supposed to be real. Mira Chen has one rule: never lose. Not at debate. Not at life. So when she catches her boyfriend cheating with her best friend, she doesn't cry, instead she plans. The perfect revenge? Fake-date Sebastian Kessler, her arrogant, chaotic academic rival, and make Ethan watch. Seb has his own reasons. He needs the Covington Scholarship, the same one Mira is fighting for. And if pretending to love his worst enemy gets him closer to victory? He'll play the part. Even if she looks at him like he's a mistake she keeps wanting to make. Their contract is simple: public appearances, no feelings, end it when the scholarship is decided. But late-night debates turn into confessions. Accidental touches linger. Arguments become foreplay. And when the scholarship committee announces that only one of them can win and the loser must leave the debate team forever, Mira and Seb realize the truth. They were never acting. Now they must choose: destroy each other for a prize… or risk everything for a love that was never part of the plan.

His eyes locked on mine wide and wild, he moved towards me and put his hand on my shoulder, lessening the distance between us. I could feel the tension in my own body, the effort of not giving in at that moment, of not letting him pull me against him. Not letting myself take that one chance, however formidable and absurd and unwise, and kissing him the way I had thought, I would never in my life. I had never wanted like this before. I understood him, smiled a little when he smiled. I saw through the defenses he put up to what was underneath. There was no Eric James Winslet more real than the one I saw in his eyes when I looked up at him. "You can close your eyes," He whispered in my ear. My eyes fluttered shut, his mouth came down on mine. And that was it. All the self-control I had exerted over the weeks went by. My arms came up around his neck and he pulled me against him. His hands flattened against my back. I was up on the tips of my toes, kissing him as fiercely as I could. I didn't know what I should have done or said next if it would have been something I could never have pretended away or taken back, but I heard a soft hiss of laughter. ************* Eric James Winslet a ruthless businessman who has already completed 27 yrs of his life being the king of his territory. Scarlett Miller, a business administration student; with the spice of fashion designing. Want to know how their lives get entangled with hatred, possession, & love. A heartbreaking story that will keep you at the edge. Are you ready to be on this journey? Purva Narang (Your author)

> “Stay still, Little Thorn… I want to taste you slowly.” His voice was velvet and ruin. His mouth, a weapon. And I—fool that I was—leaned closer. Before death wore a suit and called itself a lover, I used to believe in beauty. Before the blood. Before the runes. Before I painted the image that killed my parents—I believed my art could save me. Now I know better. I was just weeks from graduating when the painting came to me like a fever. I didn’t choose it. I didn’t plan it. My hands moved, possessed, dragging symbols I’d never seen and a face I’d never forgotten—his. Eyes red as wine. A crown pierced with thorns. And a girl in the center… me. Offering herself. I signed it with a mark I didn’t recognize. I sold it to a stranger. And days later, my parents were dead—no wounds, no reason, just... gone. The police said stress. I say fate. Now I’m being hunted by a world I didn’t know existed. Vampires with ancient courts and older grudges. Symbols that whisper in my blood. And Lucien D’Aragon—the vampire who says I summoned him with my brushstroke. That I belong to him. He says I’m his prophecy. His ruin. His Little Thorn. But I’m not just prey. Something is waking in me. Something hungry. Something I was never meant to survive. If I give in, I lose everything. If I fight, I might finally learn the truth. About my art. About my bloodline. About what really happened that night. And why he keeps whispering that I was painted for ruin... but made for him.