Face Smacking

I ran into my boss when I was complaining to my best friend about how he actively made the workplace hostile for me. He fired off a barrage of questions, "Where's the annual report? Where's the script for the speech? I can't believe you have the gall to enjoy a meal when you have a mountain of work to do!" That was it. I slammed the table. "It's due tomorrow! What's the rush? Are you going to hold a funeral for yourself tomorrow?" My boss stormed off in a huff. I asked for the bill, but the waiter came with two. My table came up to 60 dollars, but the other ran up to 3,750. "Your boyfriend said you're paying for both. Cash or credit, miss?" Shawn Goodall put that impossible bill on my tab and called himself my boyfriend? Unbelievable! I called him, utterly incensed. Yet, he had the gall to say, "Get the receipt and claim it from finance." Then, he hung up. The waiter was going to call the cops if I didn't pay up, so I had no choice but to accept this bitter defeat. I was trying to claim the money the next day, but the cops arrested me instead. "Shawn Goodall died at midnight and was found in his house. You're his girlfriend and the last person he met. You're coming with us."

It was supposed to be a routine test tube baby situation, but suddenly everything went wrong. The problem was Master Luke Crawford, the heir to the Crawford empire, mature and composed, cold and domineering. Once he put his mind to it, there was nothing in the world he could not do!She had thought that they would go their completely separate ways after she delivered the children. Five years later, however, the man dragged two adorable babies along and waited for her in front of her dorms, despite everyone watching!Mr. Crawford was cold and emotionless in front of everyone else, but in front of her...

I was once the only younger sister of the Alpha family, and my quadruplet brothers treated me like a princess. But three years ago, they accidentally ran into their “real sister” and I turned out to be the fake one. From being the family's most cherished daughter, I gradually became the target of their bullying under the schemes and traps of the “real” Alpha daughter. After I finally decided to flee from the quadruplets, and from the toxic family, I realized they are my fated mates on my 19th birthday...

It's Family Day at my daughter, Hannah Neel's, preschool, but my wife, Samantha Miller, says she has to work and tells both Hannah and me not to go. Seeing the disappointment on Hannah's face breaks my heart, so I bring her to school anyway. As soon as we step through the gates, I see Samantha. She's holding her childhood friend—Oscar Barnett's—hand, with a little boy clutching her other. The three of them look like a perfect family, laughing and chatting, as if they belong together. When Samantha sees us, her smile fades, and she lets go of Oscar's hand. "Zach, it's not what you think. Oscar's raising his son alone. Today's his fifth birthday, and he just wanted to give him a little taste of a mother's love," she says quickly. I study her for a moment, then kneel and gently take Hannah's hand in mine. "Sweetheart, say hello to the lady."

I was always flying for work, so I left the whole renovation thing to my husband, Daxton Pruitt. This time, my flight got scrapped last minute, so I swung by the house to check in. The second I stepped inside, some woman named Mona Scambley, who claimed she was the designer, chucked a stack of invoices at me. Couples' lingerie display case: $15,000. High-end waterbed: $40,000. One glance at that pile of overpriced tacky nonsense made me nauseous. My brows pulled tight. "Ms. Scambley, this is a private house, not some couples' motel. What is all this?" Her face flipped in a heartbeat. She jabbed a finger at me. "The owner gave those orders. You're just the site supervisor. Disobey me again, and I'll have Mr. Pruitt fire you!" Then she spun around and called Daxton right there. I laughed, cold and low, about to ask what kind of clown show designer he'd hired—until I heard his voice. Gentle. Doting. "This is Mona and my love nest. We'll do whatever we want. Don't like it? Get out." I smiled, snatched the list from Mona, and nodded. "Sure." One week later, that overpriced waterbed showed up—Daxton, very much not smiling.

My junior accidentally broke the most expensive piece of equipment in the lab and asked me to help fix it. I had just started touching the instrument when she suddenly stepped back, tears brimming, and said, "Michelle, I can't take responsibility for this. I really can't afford it." Before I could even process her words, Nicky Hardy—the unattainable crush I had chased for three years—rushed in and shielded her behind him. Then he turned to me with a glare that could freeze fire. "Michelle, don't go too far. You can't expect her to take the fall for you." I stared at him, dumbfounded. "You know full well I was shoved into this research group. I don't understand any of this stuff. How could I do the experiments on my own?" His eyes grew colder, dripping with disdain. "I've been saying it—what can a nepo baby actually accomplish? And now the equipment's ruined, and you still have the nerve to push the blame onto Elizabeth?" I opened my mouth to argue, but then I caught a flicker of triumph across Elizabeth Horwitz's face in Nicky's arms. That was when it clicked. They only knew I got in through connections—they had no idea I'd financed this very equipment myself. They wanted to play their petty power games over a piece of lab equipment worth over ten million? Interesting.

"Bella? You mean that wolfless piece of shit? I'm just fooling around with her. I don't need her. She's useless. She's poor. She feeds on me more than I ever feed on her and worst of it, she won't even spread her legs. What the fuck do I need from a trashy woman like her?" *********** Bella Montagu, adoptive daughter of Luna Cora and Alpha Grey has her heart shattered by her five years boyfriend on the day of graduation. Out of anger, she rejects him, together with her wolf and returns to the pack only for her father, Alpha Grey to cast her out and imprison her, saying he never liked her and she was of no use to him from the start. With the help of Luna Cora, the only woman who has ever loved her, she escapes only for fate to play a cruel thing in her face, in the name of Kai Marlakey, the alpha of the Ashwood pack. With a broken heart and a man mourning the loss of his poor mate, would things ever work out between them? Would Bella be able to find her real identity? And what if she's not as cursed as she has always believed? What exactly does fate have in store for Bella and why does it keep tampering with her? Find out in this sweet romance.

All because of Leo Cullen’s words, I gave up a place at a top-tier university in Ceres and stayed behind to retake the entrance exams with him—three times. By the fourth year, a girl arrived at our cram school, and Leo forgot the promise we made. He started skipping class, picking fights, smoking—doing everything but studying. One day, I stood at the school gate, blocking his path with a textbook in hand as he tried to ditch class. He smirked, unimpressed, and blew a bubble with his gum, letting it stick to the ends of my hair. “Naomi…,” he began, “who still cares about studying these days?” So I stopped caring and avoided him entirely. When he fooled around in the classroom, I went to the library. When he played basketball, I sat in a quiet corner with my books. Even when I craved noodles from my favorite shop, I’d scan the room first to make sure he wasn’t there. “Are you avoiding me, Naomi?” he asked later, his face in a frown. I shook my head. “Why would you think that?”

The first day I return to the country, my future mother-in-law, Sophia Damer, smacks a check against my face and says, "Here's five million dollars. Leave my son alone. The Simpsons cannot accept a gold-digging nobody like you!" Before I can even explain myself, the young woman in a white dress hiding behind her says, "Please don't do this, Sophia. If this young lady treats Jay well enough, I don't mind caring for him with her, too." I chuckle. So, Sophia and Crystal Richmond, my half-sister, think that I'm the evil mistress who tried stealing her man away from her, when Jayson Simpson was my boyfriend the entire time. And yet, Crystal still thinks that she's the legitimate one instead. However, seeing that Crystal still doesn't know who I really am, I pick up the check without even looking at it and stuff it into her V-neck dress. "Nice acting. Here's your reward." Then, I take out a black card and fling it onto the table. "Here's ten million dollars, lady. Tell your son to stay away from me and stop bothering me. I find him disgusting! "Oh, and by the way," I say, pointing at Crystal, who is still being shielded behind Sophia's body. "Might I remind you that this young woman you're protecting is just the bastard kid my dad brought home last year. "If you're thinking of using her to get close to the Richmonds, I'm afraid that you're barking up the wrong tree!"

The day she was forced by her parents to give up the man she loved to her own sister, Charlotte Dean realized her life had returned to its cruel beginning. After a fatal accident that left Nathan in a coma, she stood by him for two years, at the hospital until he woke up. Nathan Mills was once her refuge, her promise. “I will always love and protect you.” He’d once said. “Nothing will come between us.” But when he finally woke up, the first face he saw wasn't not hers. “Oh, thank goodness you’re awake, Mr. Mills,” Her mother cried. Then her expression hardened. “Charlotte? That useless girl ran off with another man just a day after you were admitted.” Her parents and her sister took everything Charlie ever shared with him at that instant. And he believed them. From that moment, Charlotte’s world collapsed piece by piece. When the truth finally came to light, Charlotte was gone. Filled with regrets and fear, Nathan was ready to give up his life to find her.