First Year Hermione Granger

It was Hana Verlice’s engagement party — but the only thing she could think about was that night six months ago. The night Dante Carter pinned her against the backseat window of his car,cheeks pressed to the glass, her dress lifted to her waists, with his mouth buried between her legs. Now, she was hours away from marrying his older brother. Elijah Osborne Carter — the perfect man, heir to Osborne Pharmaceuticals, and her father’s last hope of saving their crumbling empire. But as she slipped into her designer dress, her mind couldn't stop thinking about the one man she could never have. Dante. The mistake she was supposed to forget. The temptation she swore never to touch again. The younger brother who disappeared after that night and was never supposed to come back. But as she stepped out of her dressing room to join her soon-to-be husband at the party, there he was. Leaning at the foot of the stairs like raw sin. Messy hair. Dark eyes. That cocky mouth that once had her moaning his name in ecstacy. Her pulse quickened as her knees threatened to give out. She tried to breathe. To stay still. But one look at him… and she knew she was in trouble. “What the hell are you doing here?” she whispered, her voice barely holding. He smirked, slow and knowing as his gaze dropped shamelessly to her lips. “Did you miss me, cookie?”

My husband, Kieran, is the heir to the Thompson family. In the three years of our arranged marriage, he has never once touched me. I told myself he was just cold and guarded, that I could find a way into his heart, little by little. Then one day he came home drunk, pinned me to the bed for the first time, and called out his first love's name. "Camilla, all these years... I've thought of you every second of every day..." That was when I knew. All the passion and love he possessed was already spent on another woman. I pushed him away, burned every photo of us, and went to a high-end club in New York full of handsome male models. Nine months later, I walked into the airport with my newborn baby in my arms. Later, Kieran searched the world for me, his eyes bloodshot. He asked in a trembling voice why I never told him I was pregnant, why I wouldn't let him see our baby. I glanced at him and gave a light, breezy smile. "Who said the baby was yours?"

It only takes one unfortunate evening for Amara: she is jobless, she catches her fiancé with her stepsister, and her own father places the blame on her. One too many drinks led to Adrian Cole, a powerful CEO and the greatest rival of her ex-fiancé. Adrian gets to offer to treat her mother when she becomes critically ill, one of those very few moments in Amara's life when she doesn't have enough money for her treatment. He makes her one proposition: Amara must marry him for three years. Jealousy, lies, and an ex trying to return threaten to rip apart their contract marriage. Amara attempts to walk away, but Adrian refuses to let her go. Until the truth comes out. Now she wants her freedom. He wants another chance. And three years may not be enough.

After being in love with Dylan for seven years, I planned to propose to him at his birthday party. But then I overheard him speaking to his friend in Italian: "You like Lydia? I'll give her to you. I'm tired of her anyway. Sarah is better—she's a dancer, young and sexy." He thought I couldn’t understand, but he didn’t know that I had learned Italian for him. I threw away the ring I had designed for him, tore apart the wedding suit I had sewn and left. Our friends were all speculating how long it would take before I came back. Dylan sneered with disdain, "She’s just an orphan with no family. Where could she go without me? Three days at most." But to his surprise, I never returned and found a new home.

During a turf war, I took a bullet for Daniel Wilson. When I woke up in the family hospital after three years in a coma, I discovered that Eva, the showgirl I'd saved from a black market auction, had usurped my place in the Wilson family. My husband Daniel, the family's Underboss, saw that I was awake, and his first words to me were: "The entire underworld recognizes Eva as the woman by my side now. Why did you have to wake up at a time like this?" "Alice and I both love her. She's the one who's been by our side these past three years. And you? You've just been a body in a hospital bed, absent from our lives." "We're through, Sarah." Watching the man I once loved so deeply speak such heartless words, I didn't put up a fight. I simply nodded and gave him what he wanted. But he had no idea the Wilson family was about to burn to the ground.

"I forced my billionaire husband's first love out and then I fell into the abyss. Six years later, he said he had fallen in love with me, but I was no longer attached."

Braving a downpour, I delivered a lavish food order, anticipating the hefty commission and a $100 tip. Laughter suddenly echoed from the villa. Someone started, "He really believes your car crash left you paralyzed? He's hustling deliveries to support you and even pawned his dad's heirloom?" Another said, "What if he discovers you're actually a billionaire heiress, just playing poor? He'd probably break down in tears." Jessica Stark toyed with her wine glass. "Guys like him are wired to serve, especially since he always outshone Mark in our school days. This is his comeuppance." I stood in the relentless rain, a bitter chuckle escaping my lips. Turned out, her two-year charade of paralysis was merely to avenge her childhood sweetheart. Her broken legs, deceased parents, and helpless tears were all meticulously crafted lies. Disillusioned, I dialed my estranged tycoon mother. "You win. I'll go through with the arranged marriage."

Her life is a mess. Her father died from a car accident and her mother went away with another man. She was left in her exploitative and abusive relatives, her aunt and cousin. She is very poor and carries the world. They looked at her like a rag not until she was rescued by the forty-five years old Zillionaire. But little did she know, a rollercoaster twist of a life is waiting for her after she was rescued.

In my previous life, my brother and fiancé teamed up to sabotage my company for the sake of my so-called best friend. After I went bankrupt, they stood beside her watching me collapse in the pouring rain, laughing mockingly at my pathetic state. "Linda Turner, you look as pathetic as a drenched dog!" they sneered. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the project bidding meeting three years earlier. In my previous life, when my company was just starting out, my brother and fiancé had warned me against using the Turner and Peterson family connections. They claimed it wouldn't be fair to others, but then turned around and handed projects to my best friend under various pretexts, just to see her smile. Now that I was back, I watched them secretly manipulating things just like before, giving my projects to my best friend. I finally gave up on them completely. When they found out I was leaving the country, my brother and fiancé set off fireworks all night, celebrating that they'd finally gotten rid of me, the burden. But three years later, at the Trada Corp's bidding meeting, I took the stage as the CEO's wife—and they couldn't hide the redness in their eyes.

Although born into opulence, Hermione Watson Pierce has always felt like a mere pawn in her parents' ruthless game of power. Her voice has been silenced since childhood, her autonomy suffocated by the weight of expectation. Behind the facade of luxury, Hermione has discovered a devastating truth: her life is not her own. As a result, she has learned to suppress her emotions, earning her the reputation as the icy queen of the corporate world. However, when her parents demand she undertake a task that will irreparably alter her future, Hermione decides to seize control of her destiny. That's when Aiden Mendes enters the picture – a charismatic playboy with a reputation for recklessness. But beneath his carefree exterior lies a complex web of scars, forged in the fire of his dysfunctional family. Aiden's coping mechanism is to indulge in the excesses of life, using his charm and good looks to keep people at arm's length. Yet, when he's threatened with disinheritance unless he marries the enigmatic Hermione, Aiden reluctantly agrees. For him, it's a mere contract marriage, a means to an end. But when they meet for the first time, Aiden is blindsided by an unexpected attraction. It's love at first sight, but his notorious reputation precedes him, and Hermione's disdain is palpable. As their contract marriage turns into a battle of wills, Aiden must thaw Hermione's icy heart and prove that there's more to him than meets the eye. But can he convince her to look beyond his reputation and take a chance on love?