Fire In The Hole Elmore Leonard Novels & Stories

After the young officer Edward Shaw took first place in a high-profile shooting exhibition attended by senior officials, his family adopted a rather peculiar tradition. At the annual family banquet, he would perform a blindfolded shooting. Whichever woman's token his bullet struck was taken as a sign that she would become his fiancée. Determined to marry him, I placed the handkerchief I had carefully chosen as close to him as possible. Yet, for three consecutive years, his shots hit nothing at all. I told myself the handkerchief must have been too light, too easy to miss. So each year, I replaced it with something more refined, more eye-catching than before. That illusion lasted until the night before my eighteenth birthday, when I happened to overhear him speaking with a friend at a reception. "Miss Jasmine's handkerchief is right in front. Even blindfolded, you should be able to hit it. How do you keep missing every year?" Edward swirled his glass, his tone casual. "Tracy's still young. The moment she hears I'm getting engaged, she starts crying. "I promised I'd wait until she's a little older. As for Jasmine, she's waited for me all these years. It's not like she's going anywhere." With that, he casually tossed his glass into a metal bucket in the corner. It rang out with a sharp, hollow clang. I lowered my gaze and thought of my younger sister, only a year younger than me. So it had never been about the token. It was about the person who placed it there. In that case, there was no reason for me to keep holding on. After all, my father had already arranged a marriage for me. Three days later, at that same family banquet, I would be formally engaged.

Lucifron was one of the best friends of Hanna, the daughter of Boris, the Dragon King of the Southern Clan. Emotionless and stoic-faced, his only ambition was to follow in his father\'s footsteps and become the next General of King Boris's troops. An invitation to attend an Alpha title change party coming from his friend Ryan's pack, leads him to leave Dragons Island for the first time in his life and to find his fireheart in one of the guests, Gary, the Red River Pack's Alpha. A dragon and a werewolf was something he didn't think was worthy of a future General, but the attraction of the flame that would complete his heart and knowing that that man would be his only chance for love during his long dragon life, makes him avoid turning his back. Would Gary be able to prove to Lucifron that a werewolf heart could burn bright too? Can a wolf's heart contain the flame that will complete Lucifron's heart? Is he really able to be his firehart?

I accidentally recover my memories. I can't wait to tell my wife, Krystal Merrill, about the good news. But that's when I overhear her conversation with the doctor. "Ms. Merrill, are you sure you want to transform Mr. Stuart into a merman? That surgery only has a 0.01% survival rate. You've already mixed his family's ashes with his medication and made him swallow everything. Even if you're doing this to protect Theo, there's no need to go this far!" Krystal replies icily, "No way! Randy must become a merman! If not, what will happen to Theo? All Theo did was hit and kill Randy's parents by accident! I'm doing this just in case something happens to Theo! "Besides, once Randy becomes a merman, he will be able to fulfill the perverted clients' desires even more!" I can only tremble uncontrollably as I stand at the doorway. I can't believe that the woman I love the most is actually the culprit behind my parents' tragic death as well as my amnesia and disability. Since this is Krystal's choice, I should let her have her way, then.

Orphaned in a border attack and raised by the Crescent Moon Pack, she’s spent her life trying to earn her place—not just as a werewolf, but as one of them. When the powerful Shadowclaw Pack comes to negotiate a tense truce, she meets him—their cold, formidable Alpha. They are fated mates. But he takes one look at her and refuses the bond. She’s from the wrong pack... the one he’s spent his life fighting. And claiming her would mean betraying his own. But the bond doesn’t care about blood feuds, and neither do the growing feelings neither of them can deny.

My name is Elena Valesi Moretti. I'm a Brooklyn mob bride, a pawn in everyone's game. My father Enzo traded me for an alliance. My sister Isabella played the saint while secretly selling our baby sister Sofia to the Bianchi family behind closed doors. And my husband, Dante Moretti—the man with winter in his eyes who whispered “Try to run, I’ll break your legs” on our wedding day—he married me because when I was fifteen years old, I once pointed a gun at him inside a burning building. The only rule in this marriage was simple: stay out of his way. I spent three years breaking it. I sat in on council meetings and memorized every traitor's secret. I stood and watched a man's finger be severed to teach my own brother the price of betrayal. I turned myself into a blade. Then I uncovered the truth—Dante knew everything from the start. He knew my father had planted a mole inside his inner circle. He knew my sister was a trafficker's broker. He knew the woman he married was meant to be disposable from the very beginning. But there's one thing he never accounted for. He didn't marry a lamb. He married a wolf who learned how to draw blood. Now someone is trying to sell my little sister, and I have six weeks to stop it. I'm going to beat this man at every game he ever taught me.

A hacker has stolen the encryption keys and hacked through the data firewall at the bank my fiancee, Nancy Cost, and I work at. Chester Gardner, the intern Nancy has hired, insists on using a program he made to track down the hacker. But in doing so, the bank's clients lost 200 billion dollars' worth of assets. I do everything in my power to put the system on emergency maintenance so that I can retrieve the lost assets. Chester ends up getting punished by the bank. He also gets blacklisted by the entire industry. Nancy tries to plead for him, only to be stopped by me. "Pleading for Chester is equivalent to committing career suicide! You won't be able to stay in the finance industry if you do that!" Unable to withstand the torment any longer, Chester chooses to jump off the building. Before he dies, he sends Nancy an accusatory text for not defending him. But Nancy doesn't care about the text at all. Instead, she showers me with more care and love. We end up getting married. I do everything I can to elevate Nancy to the position of a finance powerhouse as her core technical support. But the day she attains her status is the day she frames me for hacking into the bank's system and stealing hundreds of millions' worth of assets. As a result, I get thrown behind bars and tortured till I die. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Chester presents the self-made program to track down the lost assets. This time, I choose to sit by and watch. What they don't know is that the richest man in Cantfield, Felix Watch, is the one who has lost his assets. Those who made him lose money in the past are all rotting in hell now.

Our company was having a team building event in the Huka Islands, where every employee would get their own room. As I prepared to check in, my colleague from the same department, Yvonne Caruso, suddenly snatched my ID from my hand. "The rooms are full. The rest of you should find another hotel." I did not say anything much but took my ID back to hand it to the employee working behind the front desk. "One room, please. Thank you." However, Yvonne pushed me away viciously and berated me, "I told you to get lost. Are you deaf?!" I was not prepared for it, and I hit the corner of the front desk hard. I felt a sharp pain in my waist and immediately lost my temper. Yvonne was infuriated when I pushed her back, and she roared at me, "How dare you push me! My dad is the real boss behind this company. He's the Don of the Carusos. Cross me and you won't even see it coming when you die!" I was taken aback and broke out with laughter a second later. The Don of the Carusos, Ian Caruso, was my father. Why did I have no idea that he had another daughter apart from me?

My Alpha series book 3 (Standalone) "You tried to fucking kill your own mate! What the hell's wrong with you?" he growled harshly, but I refused to cower as I spoke coldly, masking my fear of him and refusing to let him know how terrified of him I really am. "You killed my brother, brother trumps mate" "Your brother had it coming" he snarled. "That's what you want to believe? Fine. I guess that means I have it coming now too. Go ahead, tear out my heart, it's already dead anyway" I said genuinely, meaning every word because death's rather merciful compared to what he's capable of doing to me as punishment for trying to kill him. There're things a lot worse and scarier than death, believe me I'd know because I've already lived them and I do not wish on experiencing them again especially by him, my mate. My heart's dead but he's the only one capable of bringing it back to life only to obliterate it into pieces. "Oh no, I spent a fortune buying you even though you're not worth a dime. You owe me a lot of money, mate. I'm going to make that dead, cold heart of yours mine and I'm going to enjoy the hell out of shattering it while you're still alive" he promised darkly as his hand tightened around my neck. I couldn't say anything back, I saw the hellfire he plans to burn me in through his eyes and there was nothing I could do or say to save myself from it, from him. "You're my slave now, you do everything I ask you to do without objections or face the consequences of disobeying. Start praying slave, you're going to need it especially if you don't tame that smart mouth of yours"

On the night she was meant to be claimed, Eira Thorn was publicly rejected by her fated mate and banished without reason. Left broken and alone, she ventures into cursed lands no wolf dares cross—and disappears. But fate has other plans. Waking in a forbidden territory ruled by magic and shadows, Eira finds herself hunted for a power she doesn’t understand, haunted by a mark that shouldn’t exist, and torn between the Alpha who betrayed her, the Beta who would die for her, and the ruler of a kingdom that shouldn’t be real. A dark force stirs beneath the surface of their world. And at the center of it all… is her.

Aiko hasn't been to famous places. But she was drawn into the unknown one. Her desire is to escape the decaying darkness. Only she is bound to be devoured by her own flames. Her only solace is that she isn't alone. The new guy in school crossed beyond the lights with her.