Fancy Dinner Adalah

At the Mercer family's annual dinner, I accidentally wore a couture gown that belonged to Lucian's late wife. The eight-year-old boy I had raised myself, in front of every key member of the Family, threw a glass of expensive red wine all over my pure white dress. He just stood there, his cold, condescending expression a mirror of his father's. "Don't think you can become the mistress of this house just by dressing like my Mamma." "I swear, when I'm old enough to take over the family business, I'll make you disappear for good!" The cold liquid soaked through the fabric, clinging to my skin. But I felt nothing. My heart had frozen solid the moment I signed my life away eight years ago. I looked at the child I had raised as my own for eight years. There was no anger. The faintest smile touched my lips. I leaned down and whispered in his ear, "You won't have to wait that long, my little lion. I'm leaving, and it will be very soon."

For the hundredth time, my dad hints at us that he really wants to become a grandfather during New Year Eve's dinner. Lydia Cooper, my wife who has insisted on living a childless life for the past decade, just smiles before placing more food on his plate. After dinner, she ducks out to the balcony and murmurs into her phone, "Be good, now. Mommy will visit you a few days later." I can feel my blood running cold in my veins as I stand in the living room with a glass of water. As I approach Lydia, I do my best to keep my voice light and teasing. "I just heard you say the word 'mommy.' Do you have an illegitimate child out there somewhere?" Lydia rubs her nose, her tone now awkward. "You might be hearing things. It was just my friend's child…" My heart plunges into my stomach pit at her words. I've been in love with Lydia for ten years. It's only natural that I know how she acts whenever she's lying.

I had been married to Natasha Bates for ten years, and not once did she ever join me for our family's Independence Day cookout. This year, on the night before the celebration, I finally gathered the courage to ask if she wanted to come. She scoffed and said, "What are you, stuck in the past? Who even celebrates the Fourth with a family dinner anymore?" Yet that very evening, I saw a social media post of Natasha with her male best friend, Stanley Rogers. They were quite intimate in the picture, and the caption read: [True happiness is celebrating Independence Day with your bestie!] I commented back: [Hope you two lovebirds make it official soon.] Stanley did not hold back. He messaged me a bunch of intimate photos of the two of them. Then, he added, [You're just a leech living off his wife. What right do you have to question anything about Nattie?] Everyone always thought I was a gold-digger living off Natasha's success. However, they all forgot that I was the sole major shareholder of the company. This time, I’m done staying silent.

ASTRID SAGE Everyone calls me naive and innocent, and in every way, I am. When I took a fancy in peering at FREDERICK SALVATORE each time he stopped by the orphanage to drop off his donation, it was just out of mere curiosity. I find him fascinating and alluring, like a piece of art. But when I get kidnapped and put up for auction, he's in the crowd of the deadliest people I've ever seen. He put the craziest bid on me and I get to find out that his name isn't FREDRICK SALVATORE. He's the notorious EAGAN KING and this is his world. Now I understand why he has that unexplainable dark aura around him. Is it possible to find him less fascinating now that I know what he's truly like? EAGAN KING A monster. A killer. A sociopath. A greedy-ass bastard. The devil. Everyone has different names for me, and they're right. I'm all of that and more. I wanna own this hell and rule these bastards. I wanna own LOVE ISLAND CITY. But to own it, I have to kill the real owner. Seven families are topping the hierarchy. I've killed three, I'm left with four. I attend this auction event to figure out the weaknesses of my next target. And then there she is, looking very virgin-ish and fucking innocent, standing on the auction ground with fear in her eyes. Bidding her was not part of my plan. But I'll be fucked up if I let these motherfuckers have her. (Warning: this is a dark romance, not for the faint-hearted. Read at your own risk and please, no criticisms.)

At the Davenport family dinner, I arrive wearing the same dress Tucker Davenport's true love once wore. His face darkens immediately. He glares at me coldly and orders that my dress be burned on the spot. "Damn it, Willow, can't you show a little self-awareness? Shelby might be too naive to notice, but there's no way I'm letting you appear like this in front of her." The intense heat rushes toward me as the flames consume the fabric. A sharp, burning pain shoots between my legs, crashing over me like a tidal wave. The pain drags me under, but I suddenly jolt awake, barely able to gasp a plea for mercy. Tucker doesn't spare me a glance. He simply turns away to help Shelby cut the cake. Days later, he finally remembers I exist. "As long as you behave and don't bother Shelby again, you'll still be Mrs. Davenport." I stare at the burns on my legs as my tears dry up. I refuse to beg any longer. I'm done being Mrs. Davenport.

~SLOW UPDATES~ "Let's enjoy ourselves tonight...” * Verona thought she was going to have a great night with the guy she met at the nightclub on her twentieth birthday. Who would have thought, amid their passionate lust in a hotel room, that the man suddenly vomited blood and died? Frightened, Verona left the body right away and asked her parents for help. To keep her out of trouble, Verona's parents send her to a reputable campus in a small town. But again fate surprised her because, in that city, Verona met the man who she thought was dead! * Lev always makes love to naïve young women because they were easy to fool and make them easy to prey on. But that night misfortune befell him for the first time when the woman who was supposed to be his dinner made him die and he almost lose his life. After escaping death, Lev vows to kill the woman if they meet again. His oath came true sooner than expected, because the woman came to the small town where he lived, and even went to the same college as him!

It was not until after I married Bennett that I found out he had a clingy little childhood friend who loved to play the victim. On the very first day of our marriage, at dinner, I simply asked Bennett to pass me a bite of food. She immediately exploded. "Holly, you're disgusting! Bennett already used those utensils, and you seriously asked him to serve you food? What, don't you have hands?" I froze, completely blindsided. Before I could even react, Bennett put down his spoon and went straight to her, wrapping her in his arms like she was the one who had been wronged. Then he turned to me and said I should just get my own food from now on. However, honestly, wasn't it normal for a husband to serve his wife a bite? What was so outrageous about that? I barely got a word out before Bennett shut me down in a low, firm voice. "That's final. If Rosie doesn't like it, then we're not doing it. End of discussion."

The girl, from a middle-class background, used to work as a maid for a very wealthy family — the second or third richest in the country. While working there, she had a quiet relationship with the family’s second son, but it didn’t last because he was insecure and kept their love a secret. They broke it off. Later, she left that job to find herself and ended up working at a new company, where the CEO secretly fell in love with her. After a dinner together, she became pregnant, and although she didn’t love him, she agreed to marry him after her mother’s persuasion. The rich ex-boyfriend (the second son) finds out she married another CEO. He’s angry, not just because she moved on, but because he believes this CEO is using her to get back at him. But what he doesn’t know is… the CEO actually truly loves her. So now she’s trapped in a love triangle: A marriage she didn’t choose out of love A man from her past who never gave her the respect she deserved And her own heart, caught in between.

Ericka Matthews has been in love with her roommate for two years. The problem? Dominic Anderson made her sign a contract when she moved in: no romance allowed, or she's out. She's respected that boundary, hidden her feelings, and watched him from across the breakfast table every morning without letting on. Then Dominic kisses her. And immediately tells her not to kiss him back. Heartbroken and humiliated, Ericka decides to disappear. She has a backup plan, savings, and an apartment lined up. She'll be gone before he even notices. But when she collapses on campus and ends up in the hospital, Dominic is forced to confront what losing her actually means. The contract gets torn up. Confessions are made. And it turns out their mothers have been running a secret spy network dedicated to getting them together for three years. Now they just have to survive Sunday dinner with both families and Aunt Linda's unopened Christmas presents. A contemporary romance about two idiots who wasted three years pretending to be "just roommates," the meddling families who saw right through them, and the kiss that finally broke all the rules.

Our Black Friday sales broke ten million. I allocated a budget of $100,000 and told my deputy to organize a celebration dinner for the team. However, after the party ended, everyone in the team looked at me in disdain. I only realized the reason when I heard their complaints in the break room one day. “Ms. Heaton is such a cheapskate. We made ten million in sales, and she treated us with a $3.99 budget takeout for the celebration.” “Seriously, I heard from Ms. Reiser that Ms. Heaton kept the money for herself! She just didn’t want to spend it on us.” My assistant even showed me a post circulating online, accusing me of exploiting employees and lining my own pockets. I summoned my deputy manager, Casey Reiser, to my office. She fell to her knees in tears and confessed everything. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Heaton! My daughter needed emergency heart surgery. In a moment of weakness, I misused the funds!” However, I had clearly seen her daughter sign up for a dance class just yesterday! Since everyone was so quick to judge without knowing the truth, I would retract the team’s monthly budget of one million then!