Not If I Save You First

Mina Mendoza never expected her quiet life to end with a blood-soaked stranger collapsing in her bar. Luciano is older, dangerous, and carries the kind of power she knows better than to get close to. One night of helping him turns into a war she never meant to step into, and the mafia world she avoided pulls her in with no way out. But the worst part is not Luciano. It is the man standing behind him. Frankie, Luciano’s younger brother, is Mina’s first love, the boy she lost and never honestly forgot. Now he is caught between loyalty to his brother and the feelings he buried years ago. Mina is trapped between the man who crashed into her life like a storm and the man who still owns a piece of her heart. As danger closes in, Mina must choose whom she trusts, whom she loves, and whom she is willing to risk everything for. Saving Luciano changed her world. Loving either brother might destroy it. ~SNEAK PEEK~ His voice dropped, low and possessive. “Fine. One kiss, then we wait.” I told him I didn’t care. “I want you now.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “Once we start, there is no going back.” I nodded, and something shifted in his eyes. He leaned me back on the bed, hands braced beside me. “Are you sure?” “If I weren’t sure, we wouldn’t be here.” His kiss was deep, powerful, slow, stealing my breath. I arched into him as his mouth traced my jaw and throat, heat racing through me. “I need you,” I whispered, and everything changed.

The moment I discover I'm pregnant, Courtney Smith, the leukemia patient I saved three years ago, turns up on my doorstep once again. She claims that her leukemia has relapsed again, so she wants me to abort my baby in order to save her life again. But I'm pregnant with my deceased police husband's baby. So, I tell her that I can only donate my bone marrow to her once I've given birth to my baby. After hearing my answer, not only do Courtney and her family not feel any gratitude toward me, but they also berate me for not helping them out till the end. "You can still have another baby once you lose this one! But if your pregnancy affects my illness in any way, will you be able to take responsibility over this?" Then, the Smiths abduct me to a shady hospital, where they forcibly put me through an abortion and remove my bone marrow. While their operation is a success, my baby and I end up dying on the surgical table. As they gaze at our corpses, the Smiths' faces are plastered with icy expressions. "Don't blame us for what we did. If you were the one with leukemia, we'd still make Court donate her bone marrow to you. One's life is determined by fate. If you can't survive, that just means you're fated to die." When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the timeframe three days before Courtney finds out about her leukemia relapse.

After being accepted into Doctors Without Borders, I handed over the position of Chief at the capital’s hospital to Elaine Brown. My best friend frowned at me. "You’re destroying any chance of a future with Jeffrey if you go.” I gave him a faint smile. "I'm just returning him to the woman he's always had in his heart." In my previous life, Jeffrey Carter and I were the infamous bickering couple everyone in our circle knew to avoid. He resented me for refusing to replace Elaine when she applied to join Doctors Without Borders. She later caught an infection and died on the job. I resented him for his hypocrisy. If he loved Elaine so much, why did he agree to my parents' demands to care for me for the rest of our lives? We spent seven years of marriage together, yet the best we ever wished for each other was a miserable death. However, amid the gunfire and chaos on the battlefield, he used his last ounce of strength to shield me completely when his heart was pierced by a bullet. "I've arranged for someone to meet you. Once the sweep ends, run. You must survive!" he whispered, his voice fading. "I'll protect you fully in this life… and in the next, we’ll never meet. "Elaine, I'm doing this for you." However, the bomb dropped from above gave us no chance to escape, and we were both annihilated. When I opened my eyes, I had returned to the eve of our wedding. Jeffrey… In this life, I would fulfill your wish.

When the yacht begins to sink, Penelope Griffith chooses me to fill the last vacant spot on the lifeboat. I'm saved, but Arthur Johnson drowns before the second lifeboat reaches him. He disappears into the ocean, leaving only a corpse behind. Penelope pretends not to care and still marries me. Yet, she proceeds to trample all over me during our five years of marriage, blaming me for Arthur's death. When I can't take it anymore and ask for a divorce, she chooses to end both our lives. The next time I open my eyes, I realize that I've been transported back in time to the day of the yacht accident. I decide to forfeit my chance of survival this time, letting the man Penelope loves the most take my place.

Nadia Reeves has one rule: If someone is dying, you help them. She should have broken it. Because the man she dragged back from death was Kane Volkov — a name powerful enough to make dangerous people disappear overnight. Now Nadia is trapped inside a world that watches too closely, asks too many questions, and doesn't believe in coincidences. Especially not Kane. He says keeping her close is for her protection. But the longer Nadia stays around him, the more she realizes something far worse than his enemies is hiding beneath Kane's attention: Suspicion. And when old secrets about her father begin surfacing, Nadia starts to wonder if saving Kane Volkov was ever an accident at all. Because in Kane's world, people don't get close without a reason. And the most dangerous thing about Kane Volkov isn't what he might do to her. It's how badly she wants him to stop looking at her like she's the enemy.

"Can someone Save Me?" Lilie De Vega always asks that to herself after all the doubts, self-hatred, fear, and sorrow that she had been holding for a long time. For her, no one will save her, no one will listen to all the hatred and doubts that the world has given to her. No one will ever help her to find the light that she had been looking for a long time because, for her, she's a mess and worthless. Not until the man named Lucas Nixon Montiero, came and saved her. Also to prove that she's worth it and a beautiful mess. Book