Novel Web & Cerita Victim Age Gap Dark Romance

She only wanted to save her future. Instead, she found herself trapped in a marriage with a man who hated her. Aria Thorne accepts a contract marriage with Lucas Sterling to pay off her father’s debt and save her dream of building her own architecture firm. Two years. Just two years, and then they will go back to being strangers. But what if the man who saw her as nothing more than a pawn from the very beginning starts to see Aria differently? What if the woman Lucas loves, Chloe, is hiding a secret capable of destroying the Sterling family? And most dangerously, can Aria survive a marriage that was built without love from the start when the line between pretending and real feelings begins to disappear? Two years. One contract. One loveless marriage. But what if their hearts have plans of their own?

At seventeen, Emma's life was decided by everyone except herself. Raised in a family that believed tradition should never be questioned, she was forced into an arranged marriage before she was old enough to understand what love truly meant. By the time she finally escaped the life she never chose, she had already learned that some memories never stop haunting you. Three years later, Emma is twenty-one, an ordinary college student determined to leave the past where it belongs. Hoping for a fresh start, she joins a dating app under a fake age, convinced that a small lie is easier than explaining the truth. That's where she meets Daniel. Thirty-five, thoughtful, endlessly patient, and claiming to be nothing more than an ordinary office worker, Daniel is unlike anyone Emma has ever known. What begins as late-night conversations soon turns into something neither of them expected—a love built on comfort, trust, and the courage to begin again. But Daniel is hiding more than his true identity. No one knows he was once married. No one knows his wife died years ago. To the world, he has always been a successful bachelor. Only Daniel knows the truth-and he's determined to keep it buried forever. As Emma and Daniel grow closer, the lies they've told—and the truths they've buried—begin to catch up with them. The more they fall in love, the more their carefully guarded worlds begin to unravel. Because some pasts refuse to stay buried. Some secrets are worth killing for. And sometimes, the person who feels safest to love is the one hiding the darkest scars.

I caught my fiancé in my sister's bed three weeks before our wedding. I thought that was the worst thing that could happen to me. I was wrong. When I told my father, he didn't punish my sister. He didn't even ask Maksim to explain himself. He simply looked at me and said, **“The Lykan Alpha needs a bride.”** That was how I became the daughter my family could afford to lose. They sent me north to Hati—the ruthless Alpha everyone fears, the man whose name is whispered like a curse.

They smashed my door at 3 a.m. and gave me one week. Pay my father’s 850-million-dollar debt… or they take my body instead. I ran to my boyfriend. He called me a gold digger and left me crying in his living room. Then his father walked in. I had dated his son for two years and never met this man. Cold. Rich. Dangerous. He offered to clear everything. One condition. Be his personal assistant for a year. Obey every order. Ask nothing. I signed. I thought I was buying my freedom. I didn’t know the contract included nights I wasn’t allowed to say no… and mornings I started asking for more. Now my ex is telling the whole city I sold myself to his father for money. He’s right. I just never expected to want the man who bought me.