Copy X Megaman Zero Novels & Stories

Six Secrets. One Devastating Truth. Zero Escape. One heartbroken night. One reckless stranger. One decision that changed everything. Three years ago, Sloane Carter walked into a Chicago bar to forget the man who destroyed her. She walked out carrying a secret that would define the rest of her life — six of them, actually. Because the devastatingly handsome stranger she gave herself to that night didn't just break through her walls. He left her with sextuplets she's been raising alone, loving fiercely, and hiding from the world ever since. She never got his name. She never needed to. Until now. When a desperate job search lands Sloane inside PIERCE Tower — Chicago's most powerful corporation — she comes face to face with the one man she never thought she'd see again. Declan Pierce. Billionaire. CEO. Ruthless. Magnetic. And the father of her six children, who have his jaw, his eyes, and absolutely no idea he exists. Now Sloane is trapped — forty-two floors up, steps from his office, dodging his questions, outrunning his memory, and fighting a pull between them that three years and six babies haven't dulled one single degree. Declan Pierce didn't build an empire by missing details. And the more time she spends in his orbit, the more she can feel him circling the truth — patient, dangerous, inevitable. She has one rule: he cannot find out. He has one certainty: he's seen her before. And somewhere between the boardroom power plays, the jealous relatives, and six toddlers who look exactly like their father — the clock is running out on the biggest secret in Chicago. Because Declan Pierce never loses. And he's already decided that Sloane Carter is something he's not willing to let go. The only question is what happens when he finds out why.

Jason Collier was an RV vlogger with over ten million followers. He was also my fiancé. He spent more than half the year in Northreach, a remote stretch out west with empty desert highways and snowcapped mountains. He said the backcountry had zero signal, so going MIA for two weeks was totally normal. I bought it. To bankroll his road trip across Radenska, I mortgaged the apartment we were supposed to live in after the wedding. I helped pay for the RV build, his crew, and the channel that made him famous. He promised once the trip blew up, he'd come home and marry me. So every day, I checked the weather, scared he'd get buried in a blizzard, flip the RV, or die alone out there. Then a local travel creator named Mabel Jibb dropped a new video. Jason was standing on top of a sixteen-thousand-foot mountain, using the satellite phone I'd bought him to livestream the sunrise over the snow-covered peaks for her. Mabel whined that she was cold. Jason turned the camera away right away and spent the next half hour babying her. That same day, I came down with acute appendicitis. The pain hit so hard, I dropped to my knees outside the ER. I sent him ninety-nine messages. He ignored every single one. Turns out, the backcountry never killed his signal. Just mine. From that day on, I stopped mailing him freeze-dried meals. Stopped paying the RV loan. Stopped taking his collection calls. And stopped sending him three safety reminders a day. Not long after, a towing company stopped his RV at a rest stop. That finally got him to call. "Why'd you stop making the RV payments?" No hello. No asking how I was. I snapped a picture of the collection notice and termination agreement and sent them over. "Because starting tomorrow, the RV, the channel, and your ten million followers aren't my problem anymore."

I am a firefighter. A beam crashes onto me in the middle of a burning building. At the same time, my oxygen is about to run out. I writhe and struggle as much as I can to reach for my backup oxygen canister, only to feel my fingers brushing over a bottle of water instead. When I turn around, I see my wife, Leah Sawyer, giving the last backup oxygen canister to her new mentee, Roderick Wyndham. I begin calling out to her via a walkie-talkie. "Leah, I'm being pinned down right now, and my oxygen's running out! Where is the oxygen canister?" As Leah shields Roderick behind her, she replies impatiently, "I've already given it to Roderick. It's his first time inside a burning building, so he's frightened. Having an extra canister on him gives him a sense of security. "You're already a veteran firefighter, so you can just think up a way to resolve your situation. Don't go around wasting precious resources." I can feel thick smoke infiltrating my lungs at that moment. Feelings of asphyxiation soon overwhelm me. "My leg is broken, so I can't move at all! Without oxygen, I won't be able to hold out till I get rescued!" But Leah merely chortles in response. "Stop playing the pity card! Every time we're out on a mission, you're always the cowardly one who's terrified of dying! You have zero sense of dedication at all! I shouldn't have let you join the firefighting squad, to begin with! "What's the use of you clinging to the equipment? Giving it to the newbies is the best way of maximizing its value!" I can only smile bitterly in response. Using what's left of my strength, I switch to a public channel and begin reporting to the command center. "For the record, Captain Leah Sawyer deliberately tampered with the essential rescue equipment in order to protect Roderick Wyndham, causing me, a fellow firefighter, to be trapped in a deadly situation. "I hereby request the immediate activation of the Firefighter Emergency Evacuation Act. Also, I formally charge Leah with gross negligence and attempted homicide."