Anne Rice

During a weekly meeting, a new intern suddenly swapped the projection. The screen lit up with my attendance records, and all my colleagues’ eyes turned to me. The girl lifted her chin, a mix of arrogance and ignorance in her gaze, then slammed a stack of photos onto the conference table. “Mr. Anderson, I’d like to report her! She’s been using the company car to shuttle her family around, treating company resources like her personal vehicle. This must be dealt with immediately!” The room fell into an eerie silence. I looked at the eager intern, feeling a trace of sympathy. The “company car” she was complaining about was my luxury car. Three years ago, I had lent it to the company for appearances in business settings. Yet, I never charged a cent.

I was the hospital's top surgeon. After three successful surgeries, Medical Affairs decided to reprimand me in front of the whole hospital and canceled my bonus for the month. I argued with the head of Medical Affairs. "I've been working for this place for ten years, and I've always been the first to do everything! I went through five surgeries nonstop last year and had to go through one myself for exhaustion! What did I do to deserve this?" Yes, I was the top surgeon, but the bills were stressing me out, too. My husband had just lost his job, and I had to pay for the car, the mortgage, and our kid's extracurriculars. The burden I had to shoulder wasn't an easy one. So, I was counting on that bonus to get my kid into a basketball club, and now it had been taken away from me. This couldn't be happening! I couldn't believe that they were blaming me for a successful surgery! I was high up in the hierarchy here, so the department head didn't start a fallout right away. Instead, he tried to calm me down. "You drank two bags of IV during the late-night surgery and charged the patients for it. Their family's complaining about unfair fees, and it went viral. We had no choice!" That reminded me. That surgery was a complex one, and it wasn't even supposed to be assigned to me. After all, I'd been working around the operating table for 36 hours prior to that. However, it was the deputy director who came to me and insisted that I take over. I had no choice but to go ahead.

Maria Dominic gave her husband everything—her love, her loyalty, her very soul—only to be discarded like yesterday’s news. Betrayed and abandoned, she never expected the man who would put her back together to be Luca Avancii—her late brother’s best friend, a man as lethal as he is untouchable. Luca never forgot the girl who used to chase after him and Johan, nor did he expect to find her on her knees, begging at another man’s feet. Maria was his. She always had been. And now? He’ll make sure she knows it. What starts as a marriage of convenience quickly becomes something much more dangerous. As Maria fights to heal from her past, she finds herself caught in the crossfire of a world ruled by power, secrets, and an ex-husband who refuses to let go. Luca built his empire with blood and fire, and he will burn the world to the ground before he lets anyone take Maria from him. But as old enemies resurface and the past refuses to stay buried, Maria is faced with an impossible choice: save the man who has become her world, or risk losing him to the deadly game of power that threatens to consume them both. A scorching romance filled with passion, betrayal, and ruthless devotion, this is the story of a woman reclaiming her strength and the man who would tear the world apart for her. WARNING: 18+ THREAD CAREFULLY.

Ici nous sommes en République Démocratique Du Congo dans la province du Nord-Kivu ville de Beni Marianne est une jeune fille âgée de 20 ans dont elle a commencé son calvaire parcours jusqu’à l’âge de 26ans. Elle était une fille orpheline de ses deux parents depuis que sa ville natale a été victime des groupes armées qui leurs aventures étaient de massacrer les citoyens de cette ville, avec comme armes (machette, hanche et marteau...) Etvoilà les parents de Marianne n’ont pu survécu à leur aventure inhumaine et Marianne passant toute son adolescence chez son oncle qui a son tour mourant et Marianne son vrai calvaire a commencé ...

On New Year's Eve, my in-laws, Richard Prescott and Leona Reed, had flown back to have dinner at my place. However, our butler, Rupert Williams, had only prepared two plates of cold lobster rolls even though I had specifically reminded him that Leona was allergic to lobster. Rupert looked at me with his usual stiff expression and said, "Mr. Shaw, I understand that people from your background like to take advantage of situations. Your parents showing up for a free holiday meal doesn't surprise me." He added, "But as Ms. Jaclyn Prescott's most trusted butler, I have a duty to protect the Prescott family assets from being touched by questionable individuals, even if it's just a dinner. That said, I'm not heartless enough to let two elderly people go hungry. "Here are some leftover expired lobster rolls. Your parents can eat them and leave. Ms. Prescott is very busy with work, and I can't have her come home later only to deal with your poor parents." I froze for a moment, then realized he had mistaken Jaclyn's parents for mine. He was deliberately trying to humiliate me like he always did. I was about to explain when Richard and Leona, furious, turned to leave. However, Rupert called for the security guards to block their way. "I can understand that people from rural areas might lack proper manners, but wasting food is still a bad habit. Since the lobster rolls have already been prepared, I insist you finish them before you go."

“I want you to be mine, Andrea.” A gasp leaves my mouth. “W-what did you say?” “I want to offer you the life you’re pretending to have. I can clear your family’s debt in one call and pay for your brother’s treatment while you live the life you’ve been faking.” “I don’t understand… why me?” “You walked into a room full of people who would have devoured you and almost held it together perfectly,” he says. “I find that interesting.” Andrea Vale is drowning in debt and secrets, living a life she can’t afford for a family she can’t save. Tristan Hale sees through her in seconds and offers her everything she has ever needed, but at a cost she cannot ignore. One year in his world, under his rules, in his bed. No love, no promises, no future. But what happens when pretending starts to feel real, when survival turns into desire, and when the man who was never meant to keep her becomes the one she cannot walk away from?

On the night before the wedding, my fiancé’s female best friend, Marisol Vance, sent me a set of photos. In the photos, she wore the custom haute couture wedding gown I had commissioned, leaning into Lucian Drake’s arms, with a caption meant to provoke me: [Borrowing your groom and your dress for a moment—after all, Lucian said I look better in this than you do.] Soon after, my social feed was flooded with their so-called wedding photos. In the images, the two of them staged a mock kiss, the caption reading: [More than friends, not quite lovers. If we had been born ten years earlier, there would have been no place for anyone else.] I held up the photos and confronted Lucian, yet he played his game indifferently, then tossed his phone aside, his face full of impatience. “I told you, it was just for fun—a way to commemorate our youth. Can you stop acting like a shrew? She was just diagnosed with depression. What’s wrong with me comforting her?” Looking at his self-righteous expression, I smiled. “Fine. Since your bond is so unbreakable, I won’t play the villain.” That very night, I drafted a withdrawal agreement and halted the arrangements I had been making with a top-tier overseas medical team for his mother. “The wedding is off. Don’t expect me to keep patching up your bankrupt company, and don’t expect me to save your mother either. “Your youth is precious—I hope you can afford to pay the price to keep it so.”

Cincinnati Roxanne Lopez isn't the reserved type, she's a firecracker who flies off the handle in the mere snap of a manicured finger. Her identity and dignity being the most precious thing to her, Cincinnati holds a secret that pays most of her bills and kept it within her very own sealed lips. She was an entrepreneur but of goods more perishable and delightful. Storm, on the very brink of losing it all to fifteen of his board members, employs her help and expertise in bringing the offenders down thereby rattling another skeleton from her past. Fifteen bandits, over a handful of cities, the splatter of blood, money and sex. Delve into the story of Cin and Storm.

BLURB Mira, a poor farm girl, felt she was cursed because of the events that happened in her life after her land, the only property left to her by her late father, was forcefully taken 4 years ago. She’s left with nothing to cater for her sick little sister, and is forced to tend to the horses of the same man who took her land and that made her hate him, with everything in her. Jackson, who ran from the flames of an internet scandal against his company in search of answers and solitude, was instead carried away by Mira’s beauty, charm and confidence, and he decided to change her world while being the ruler of it. What happens when a spark is ignited between them? Mira, who loathed her landlord because he was a constant reminder of her lost property, due to unfairness, and Jackson, who only loved power and control.

Dante Matino Cruz is a delivery rider, sweating day and night just to keep food on the table and medicine for his ailing mother. Life is hard, but his pride is harder—no shortcuts, no handouts, no selling himself for money. Celestine Isla Navarro is a CEO who thrives in a world where hesitation means weakness. She’s used to buying what she wants and bending people to her will. But the day she crosses paths with Dante—sun-bronzed, stubborn, and infuriatingly unyielding—something inside her shifts. Her first proposition is reckless: a single night, no strings attached. Dante’s answer? Not for sale. But fate doesn’t end with one rejection. Celestine offers him something else: a job. A dangerous but well-paid position as her personal bodyguard. The money could save his mother, even secure work for his childhood friend, Liza. It’s everything he’s been breaking his back for—served on a silver platter. Now Dante faces a brutal choice: swallow his pride to protect his family, or stand firm against a woman who never takes “no” for an answer. What begins as a battle of wills turns into a dangerous, slow-burning game of temptation. Pride versus desire. Fire against fire. And in this game, someone will surrender. The question is—who will break first?