The Woman In The Dunes

Some lies steal fortunes. Others steal a lifetime. Six years ago, Cassian Vega lost the only woman he ever loved. On the night Isla Marquez disappeared, her car plunged from Raven Bridge into the river below. No body was ever recovered, but time buried the questions everyone eventually stopped asking. Everyone except Cassian. Every year, on the anniversary of her disappearance, he returns to Blackwater Pier, not because he believes she'll come back, but because something about that night has never made sense. Then, someone leaves a photograph beside him. A woman standing alone at another waterfront. A woman who looks exactly like Isla. On the back are four handwritten words. Nothing was washed away. Suddenly, the past Cassian has spent six years trying to survive begins to unravel. The woman he loved wasn't running from him. She was running toward a truth someone else had spent a lifetime trying to bury. Because Isla Marquez was never meant to disappear. She was stolen long before she ever vanished. Now, buried lies, forgotten identities, and a decades-old conspiracy are drawing them back together. But the greatest mystery isn't whether Isla survived. It's why the woman who loved him disappeared without ever saying goodbye.

He married her to bury a crime. She married him to burn it all down. Trained to seduce and destroy, she enters the marriage as a weapon. But in their snowbound mountain estate, secrets ignite-and lust turns dangerous. As passion blurs the lines between love and betrayal, they'll both learn the deadliest lies are the ones they tell themselves.

Emperor Dijon's decision to bring in the stray woman from the streets of his newly conquered kingdom is as baffling to his Generals as it is to him. He intends for the whole experience to be a mere entertainment, a distraction from the many travails of his campaign through the desert but the little woman turns out to be a spit fire, one that he finds difficult to handle, yet she intrigues him. She fascinates him as much as she infuriates him, yet there is something even she cannot see, he recognizes the hunger in her eyes, the urge to destroy, conquer. They might have more in common than she actually thinks.

THE ABANDONED WIFE Today is our third wedding anniversary. Dinner is ready… but he never came home. Our union was never built on love—just a misunderstanding. Three years, no child, a mother-in-law who never accepted me, a distant husband, and yet… I still love him. Three days ago, I found out I was pregnant. Tonight, I was hoping to tell him the news. But a notification shattered everything: a photo of him, kissing my sister. I recognized the place. I grabbed my keys. I came back alone. I spent the night crying. In the next room, they made love. And I, curled up on a sofa, hit rock bottom. In the morning, his mother woke me with a bucket of ice water. She screamed that I was no longer her daughter-in-law, that I had no place here anymore. So I left soaked, humiliated, shattered. But in my pocket, there is a crumpled piece of paper. A stranger's first name. A gaze that fell on me, last night. The only one that truly saw me. Maybe this is where it all begins.

While celebrating our tenth year anniversary, my boyfriend, Archie Cullen, and I are caught in a sandstorm warning on the grasslands. Instead of staying with me, he leaves me behind to save the equipment in the tent. Having worked with Archie for years, I know he cares about his work more than anything. The storm rattles the gear, and a falling saddle strikes me, leaving me in too much pain to go after him. I could only pray through the night for us and for our work. When I finally return to the studio, I find my most important camera lens and hard drive destroyed. Meanwhile, he's carefully wiping down Sharon Thatcher's walkie-talkie, looking relieved. "Thank goodness we weren't in the worst-hit area. I did everything I could and managed to save the work Sharon and I had poured our hearts into. "She comes from a renowned family of artists and has a great degree. I'm very confident about this competition." Archie is always full of praise for her. Whenever the two of them talk about art and filmmaking, I can barely get a single word in. I look down at my injured left arm. "What about me? What about everything I poured my heart into?" I ask Archie. He looks up at me in confusion. "You're angry over a broken hard drive? Everything you shoot looks about the same anyway. Just shoot it again. "Besides, you're fine, aren't you?" Suddenly, I have nothing left to say. I look up and hold back my tears. So in his mind, what they create is real art, something worth risking everything for, even if it means leaving me in danger. If that's how it is, I'll enter the film competition on my own. From now on, my work will never carry his name again.