Bittersweet A Novel

21+ Abinaya Sutedja. Hobinya foya-foya. Cucu semata wayang pengusaha ternama bernama Tomi Sutedja. Tidak mau dijodohkan dengan lelaki pilihan kakeknya, membuat Naya mengikuti saran gila dari temannya. Kakeknya butuh cicit untuk meneruskan perusahaan dan Naya tidak mau terikat hubungan pernikahan. Maka hanya satu solusinya. Mencari lelaki tampan yang mau menghamilinya.

Bagaimana rasanya menjadi seorang janda yang dikejar-kejar cintanya oleh brondong yang memiliki kualitas premium? Inilah yang terjadi kepada Sofie, seorang janda dengan satu putra ini dan juga seorang desainer interior yang bekerja di sebuah perusahaan konsultan berskala internasional. Kembalinya Sofie ke dunia kerja, dikejutkan dengan kehadiran seorang pria yang sempat ditemuinya tanpa sengaja. Pria itu bernama Rakha, yang ditugaskan menjadi asisten Sofie dalam proyek-proyeknya. Kehadiran Rakha, ternyata tidak hanya mempermudah pekerjaannya, tetapi juga kehidupan pribadinya. Tetapi siapa sangka, jika sang asisten ternyata memiliki kehidupan ganda yang sangat berbeda. Ketika di siang hari, Rakha adalah seorang desainer interior maka di malam harinya, ia berubah menjadi seseorang yang sangat berbeda. Sementara, perjalanan Rakha untuk meraih cinta Sofie tidak semudah yang ia inginkan. Hingga terjadi suatu insiden yang membuat Rakha tidak sadarkan diri hingga harus mendapatkan perawatan. Di saat itulah, Sofie mendapatkan sebuah informasi akan siapa sebenarnya Rakha dan apa penyakit yang dideritanya. Rasa sesal karena telah bersikap dingin terhadap Rakha membuat hatinya perlahan luluh. Di saat itulah, Sofie menemukan catatan harian dan kumpulan sketsa milik Rakha, yang menjelaskan penyakit yang dideritanya. Betapa terkejutnya Sofie, setelah membacanya. Rakha yang selama ini ia kenal ternyata bukanlah Rakha yang ia ketahui. Di balik keramahan dan kelembutannya, ternyata ada sosok lain yang memiliki perbedaan karakter seratus delapan puluh derajat. Belum selesai dengan keterkejutannya, kedua orang tua Rakha, membawa Rakha ke London untuk mendapatkan perawatan dan memberikan cek bernilai puluhan ribu dollar untuk Sofie dan juga lima orang pengawal pribadi. Apakah sebenarnya yang disembunyikan Rakha dan siapakah Rakha sebenarnya? Mengapa kedua orangtua Rakha memberikan pengawal-pengawalnya untuk Sofie? Apakah cinta Sofie dan Rakha akan bertemu kembali?

Sea Xaviera Joscelynn memilih kabur dari rumah untuk menghindari sebuah perjodohan. Akibat dari kemauan nya tersebut, semua akses keuangannya fasilitas diblokir Vii terpaksa harus bekerja sebagai karyawan biasa di salah satu perusahaan ternama dikota tersebut untuk menyambung hidup. Karena tak biasa hidup serba kekurangan, muncul sebuah ide gila yang mana dari salah satu temannya bercerita mengenai simpanan untuk merayu CEO perusahaan tempatnya bekerja. Sean Eart Sanders target Vii. Pria dingin,pria yang tak banyak bicara itu menarik perhatiannya sejak pertama kali bertatap muka.Karena tak mau hidup serba pas-pasan, Vii rela menjadi simpanan sang bos demi bertahan hidup."Kamu yang merayuku dan menawarkan tubuh mu Jadi, jangan coba-coba untuk kabur dariku. Semua yang kamu inginkan sudah aku turuti. Jadilah gadis manis yang penurut."Vii benar-benar terjebak dalam hubungan ini. Penawaran Sean terhadap Vii hanya sekedar main main, ternyata Vii beranggapan serius. Sean sebenar nya sudah tau bahwa yang akan di jodohkan dengannya yaitu Vii. Semenjak pertemuan disaat meeting Sean merasakan benih benih cinta. Sean juga belum mengungkapkan kepada Vii bahwa dirinya lah yang akan di jodohkan sama Vii.

"I agree to the divorce," I said as I dialed my mother-in-law's number. "Matteo Bellandi will never agree to divorce me, so you need to arrange a new identity for me. I need to disappear completely. He must never find me." Despite six years of marriage, I never conceived a child. In the Mafia world, how many men remarried for the sake of an heir? Yet Matteo always stood firmly at my side. To have a child, we tried everything—ninety-nine rounds of IVF that resulted in ninety-eight failures. The final pregnancy ended in fetal demise. Matteo held me and said, "Whether we have a child or not, I will always love you." Everyone said he was deeply devoted and that I was fortunate. Even I believed it. I believed it was my body that was defective. I believed I was the one holding him back. Until that day, when I went to the hospital for a follow-up exam. I saw him with my own eyes, pushing a mobile hospital bed into a VIP suite. On the bed lay a young woman named Sienna Vale, who had just given birth, holding a pair of twins—a boy and a girl. The congratulations inside the room were sharp and piercing. They praised his good fortune and Sienna's superior genes. They said the children were born to inherit the Bellandi empire. They mocked my education and my background and said I could not produce a "high-quality" heir. "Who do you think you are, daring to speak about her? My wife is not someone you get to judge. If I hear one more word of disrespect toward my Donna, you'd better weigh the consequences yourself," Matteo rebuked them coldly, preserving my dignity as Donna. In that moment, I finally understood that the marriage I had been so proud of was nothing more than a joke in everyone else's eyes. If that was the case, I would end this love story everyone envied with my own hands.

“Jadi gimana, kamu mau gak jadi pacarku?” Sayangnya, ucapan itu bukanlah untukku. Sang pelaku adalah Kyohei, temanku sejak kecil. Ia menembak Minami, teman kelas kami di lorong sepi sekolah. Aku tak mengerti apa yang terjadi kali ini, karena dari sudut pandangku jelas-jelas kami sempat bertatapan tadi. Kenapa aku merasa seakan ia sengaja menunggu kehadiranku ya..

At the banquet hall, I refuse to let my adopted twin pups eat the walnut cake. Ivana Lamont—the childhood sweetheart of my mate, Luther Hardwick—chokes up dramatically. She cries accusingly, "Yara, they may not be yours biologically, but you can't abuse them! Why won't you even let them have a slice of cake?" I'm just about to explain that the twins are allergic to nuts, but they point at me and complain in aggrieved voices. "Mommy often doesn't give us food. We never have enough to eat!" With that, I'm unceremoniously driven out of the banquet hall by the host. When I go to look for my mate to talk about it, I accidentally overhear his conversation with a friend. "Alpha Luther, it's been eight years. Are you still not going to mark Yara?" "There's no rush. I'll wait until the kids are a little older. We love each other very much, so it's fine even if I don't mark her." His friend responds disapprovingly, "You've been hiding from her that the twins are actually your and Ivana's pups. Aren't you afraid she may leave in anger if she finds out?" Luther shakes his head and replies with certainty, "She won't. Yara is an orphan, so she has no family. If she leaves me, where else can she go?" The ugly truth causes me to freeze on the spot. It turns out the pups I've loved for eight years were born to my mate and another she-wolf. What I thought was a happy life is nothing but a cold, heartless deception! I touch my belly, thinking of the pup I just conceived. My tears fall like a relentless downpour. In the shadows, I say inaudibly, "You're wrong, Luther. In fact, I found my birth parents three days ago. I just haven't had the chance to tell you. But it doesn't matter now because you don't need to know about that anymore." I have Luther sign the mate bond dissolution agreement before finalizing my withdrawal from the Sharp Teeth pack. Two days later, I give both my mate and the pups to Ivana. With the pup that Luther has never known or laid his eyes on, I disappear from his world forever.

The two childhood sweethearts swear that they'll marry no one but me, but they stand by as my dog of ten years gets killed in a car accident. I cradle the dog's mangled body, but no tears fall. Dante Battaglia stares at me in disgust and asks, "Why did you bring it home? Don't you know Anna's allergic to it?" Dario Battaglia immediately rushes over to snatch away the body in my arms. "This is a damned jinx. Get rid of it!" The Battaglia siblings and I are childhood friends. Dante became the Don, and Dario the Consigliere. I'm the precious princess in the two brothers' eyes, but everything changes with Anna's arrival. After burying the dog myself, I reply to the email inviting me to join an international classified project. The email reads, "Ms. Julia Costanza, we'd like to know if you're willing to participate in this institute's ten-year-long classified project. Upon joining, your personal information will be sealed for a decade, and you will be prohibited from contacting the outside world." I replied, "Yes, I agree."

Waking up hungover next to my arch-nemesis – the city's most notorious fuckboy? Worst. Morning. Ever. I handled the walk of shame with icy dignity, but fate had a bigger curveball: one month later, two pink lines. My baby. My rules. His involvement? Zero. My flawless plan hit a snag when morning sickness ambushed me in the office restroom. He walked in. His eyes locked onto my still-flat stomach, darkening with something dangerous. Before I could blink, he had me pinned against the cold tile wall. "Who's the father?" he growled. I met his glare with a frosty smirk. "Wouldn't you like to know? Definitely not you." Then it happened: a hot tear hit my neck. His voice cracked, raw and desperate. "Don't... don't leave me. Please." Me: ...Dude. Seriously? THIS IS YOURS!

My mate, Carter, sent me to a werewolf prison for four years. On the day I was released, he arrived holding the hand of his pregnant mistress. “This is what your parents owe me.” “From today on, you’ll take care of Amelia.” I nodded obediently. She made me pick roses with my bare hands. Made me plant a hundred pots under the scorching sun. Made me scrub my allergic, ulcerated skin with alcohol. And I did everything she asked. Until the day they brought me back to my old home. The house was gone. In its place stretched an endless rose garden. And my only sister— had become nothing but a box of ashes. That was the moment I understood. I survived not to atone. I survived to take revenge.

When Eric Sutton—my charming CEO husband—found out I handed a million-dollar project to his assistant Vivien Cheney, he figured his three months of radio silence had finally broken me. Suddenly, he's all, "Let's go to Iceland for our honeymoon!" Vivien heard and threw a fit. Threatened to quit. Classic. Eric, who treated her like royalty, freaked out. After three days of begging, he bailed on the trip—said it was for "work"—then handed her my ticket. Later, he shrugged it off. "Romance's petty. Work comes first. You're my wife. You get it, right?" Right. I just stared at Vivien's new post: a couples selfie—cheek to cheek, hands shaped like a heart. I didn't say a word. Just nodded. Eric thought I was finally playing the role: calm, supportive, mature. Promised an even better honeymoon when he got back. Too bad I'd already quit. Too bad he'd already signed the divorce papers. We were done.