We Bought A Zoo

I didn't buy her out of kindness. Sophia Reeves came with a price tag — her father's debt, cleared in full. She became my wife on paper, a calculated move in a game of power and business. Nothing more. I built my empire by keeping emotions out of every equation. I never lose control. I never let anyone close enough to matter. But Sophia refused to follow my rules. She didn't bow to my money. She didn't flinch at my coldness. Every wall I built, she saw straight through — not because she was trying to break me, but because she was simply everything I never knew I was missing. I thought owning her legally meant I had the upper hand. I was wrong. The night she walked out with her head held high and nothing but the clothes on her back, I realized the truth I'd spent months denying: Somewhere between the contracts and the cold silences — she hadn't just taken pieces of my carefully guarded heart. She had taken all of it. And I would burn everything I built to get her back.

After spending the past month working overtime and burning the midnight oil every day, I finally closed a business deal that's worth 50 million dollars before the company's annual dinner. My boss, William Lewis, begins giving away the end-of-the-year bonuses with a wide smile on his face. "The finance director helped our company save three million dollars worth of taxes. He will receive a villa by the river as a gift." "The head of IT led the team and solved various difficult problems. He shall receive 200 thousand dollars in cash." "Lily Lane, the receptionist, has always shown a great attitude whenever she greets the clients. She shall receive a Hermes bag." When it's my turn, I wipe the sweat off my palms before accepting my bonus. But upon opening the giftbox, I see three entrance tickets to the local zoo instead. "You must be sick of receiving commissions all the time as the sales director. Why don't you take advantage of this holiday to spend some quality time with your family?" On the way home, I dial a number. "Mr. Skylar, there's a problem with the 50-million-dollar contract. Let's discuss it later."

At the underground auction house, tonight's grand finale was billed as a 'premium wolf pet'. Inside the cage, a male wolf knelt with a bite-prevention muzzle locked around his neck. He was clearly a prisoner, yet his eyes held no trace of submission when he lifted his head. Instead, he looked like he was judging every single person in the room. His gaze cut through the crowd and locked onto me. My heart stuttered as excitement flooded my system. I finally knew what true attraction felt like. A well-dressed man in the front row raised his paddle. "$100 million." Gasps erupted across the venue. It was an astronomical opening bid. I smiled and slowly raised my paddle too. My voice brought the hall to dead silence. "$500 million."

As Zayla Scott, my husband's first love, pushes me down the stairs, he's in the kitchen, thoughtfully making her a warm drink. When she sees I survived, she hires someone to assault me and has me thrown into the bear enclosure at the zoo. It's only after the bears tore me apart that my husband finally remembers I exist. "All I did was refuse to take time off to pay my respects to your mother with you. How could you be so cruel, Joey? You're a zookeeper—it's your job! Why would you force Zayla, who's pregnant, to care for savage creatures? "Get over here and give Zayla a blood transfusion right now, or I'll dig up your mother's grave myself!" He doesn't know that all that's left of me is my broken body.

I was sold for only five hundred thousand dollars. In a single night, I lost my home, my freedom and the man I thought I loved. I never imagined the stepmother who raised me would betray me so cruelly—or that my life would be handed over to the coldest, most dangerous man in New York. Damien Hawthorne. Former special forces commander. Billionaire. A man carved from scars and darkness. His presence alone terrifies people. His heart is colder than ice. Broken. Damaged. Cruel to the world around him… and seemingly to me most of all. A contract marriage. An unbreakable agreement. One shared bedroom. And rules that cannot be broken. Every day, I endure his suffocating coldness. Every night, I catch glimpses of the scars he hides… and the pain he refuses to confess. I hated him. Resented him. Tried to escape him. But no matter how hard I fought it, my heart began betraying me for the man I was forced to marry. What I never expected… was for him to start feeling the same way. Slowly. Reluctantly. Dangerously. So can a marriage built on a transaction turn into the deepest kind of love? Or will falling for the beast become the greatest mistake of my life?

Natalie Grimaldi has always been a fighter. Rebellious, sharp-tongued, and unwilling to break under pressure, she’s spent most of her life enduring the cruelty of her uncle, Gideon Grimaldi , a greedy man who raised her only to use her as a pawn. When Gideon announces that she’s to marry Viktor Roman, a Russian billionaire twice her age, in exchange for a debt settlement, Natalie is furious, broken and frustrated. On the day of the wedding something unexpected happens she is claimed in a contract marriage by California's most feared Italian Mafia family, LORENZO DE LUCA. She finds herself being sold twice!! Lorenzo doesn't know her name, doesn't care about her except his own gains(the real reason he bought her) but something in her fire, her refusal to bow, stirred something long buried in him. He buys her for something much more deeper —nothing more. But Natalie refuses to break. Even as he claims her body, her life, she hides her heart, planning escape, revenge, and freedom. But the longer she remains under Lorenzo's roof, the more she begins to see cracks in his stone facade: his silence, his shadows, his haunting grief and most of all HIS SECRET. The real reason he bought her. And against every wall she’s built, Natalie begins to feel the tug of something she vowed never to give him—sympathy. Maybe even more. As Natalie secretly builds her own power, forging connections and learning the dark truths behind Lorenzo's empire, she must face the hardest question of all: Can she destroy the man who bought her, if he’s the first one who ever saw her? Or will she fall for the devil who was never meant to love?