Hotel Abu Dhabi

At three in the morning, I stare at the unknown transaction record on my phone screen, my fingertips turning cold. The record is for a payment of 2980 dollars, made for an executive suite at the Wisteria. The time of payment was 8:00 pm last night. My husband, Tristan Griffin, is a detective. He was on the night shift last night. I clutch my phone, my knuckles turning white as I text Tristan, "I just saw your credit card bill for a hotel stay last night. What's up with that?" His reply is instant. "Our team had to work overtime at the last minute, so they put us up at the hotel. I forgot to tell you about it." I scan the text and sputter. The Wisteria is located in the western region of the city, which is on the other end from where his squad is stationed. I don't press him for more details and click on the bank app on my phone. Having found the vendor's address through the payment record, I sent it to my best friend, Rowena Sheffield, who works as a private detective. She replies instantly with an "OK" emoji and follows up with, "Give me a second. I'll find out everything you want in a jiffy!"

“Marry me.” “You don’t even know my name.” “I will as soon as you agree to marry me.” * * * Hana Kent has lived all her life with one rule continuously enforced by her father. Don’t fall in love. If she forgets, Baba is there to remind her. She must and cannot fall in love with another person because she’s betrothed. And as soon as she turns twenty-five, she will leave for her husband’s house. One rainy evening leads her into the arms of a stranger, who not only protects her from the rain, but the men following her. It was supposed to be an innocent kiss to get her out of an impossible situation. But once her lips connect with that of the handsome Calvin McKenna, she realises she’s a lost cause. Calvin knows better than to kiss strangers. But when the pretty damsel in distress rushes up to kiss him, begging him to play along, he’s more than happy to do so. After the kiss, he takes her to his hotel to clean up. He expects gratitude, maybe even her name, but what he doesn’t expect is to wake up to an empty bed the following day.

It started with the most annoying encounter at the mall. One glance at him, she wished she never crossed paths with him again, He wished so too. Not until fate brought them back again. At her father's party. Something about her pulled him slowly and deeply without warning. He tried to shrug it off but he couldn't. Then one night, Alex had too many drinks and Alice is to meet her friend at the hotel when she walked into the room where he is...and they crossed a line they aren't meant to. During the act, he made it clear: He never wanted kids. She nodded, not until her test results came back positive. Years later, their paths cross again. He sees a little boy with his hair type....and he demands to know who he is. But the man beside her, Chris Wales, holds secrets darker than anyone suspected. Secrets that tie him to her blood in the most twisted way. Can a child mend what fate once broke? Or will secrets tear them apart once more? Or will secrets, lies, and a mother’s manipulations tear them apart once more?

My marriage to Bryan wasn’t perfect, but it was never bad enough for me to want him dead. Yet when he was brutally murdered in a hotel room, every finger pointed at me. His family accused me. The world believed them I spent months behind bars for a crime I didn’t commit. My empire crumbled. My only child now sees me as a murderer. I was bullied, broken, and forgotten until Damon stepped back into my life. Damon, my ex-lover, is now fighting to clear my name. He has one goal: to set me free. But he has another theory, one more shocking than the accusation itself, My Husband could be faking his death to make me suffer and start a new life with his mistress . Freedom didn’t make life easier. Outside those prison walls, I’m paying for my husband’s mistakes while battling for custody of my son, his family took everything from me but what if i turned everything around in my favour? And the question haunting me remains: Or how long was my supposed dead husband going to keep hiding?

My wedding starts at 12:00 pm on the dot. There are 58 tables, each table costing 8888 dollars. 120 bottles of premium liquor have been opened. 300 packs of top-tier cigarettes are unsealed. At 2:30 pm, all the guests have left the scene, leaving nothing but a huge mess behind. That's when a server hands me the bill. "It'll be 510 thousand dollars, miss." I'm left gobsmacked. "I'm a wedding guest, not the organizer." The groom is Charlie Humboldt, my ex-boyfriend. At the moment, he takes his pregnant bride, Sasha Fitch, by the hand while sneering at me. "Since you're here, you might as well foot the bill. Think of it as your way of compensating for my youth." Charlie's mother, Melissa Carlton, moves to block the door. "If you're not paying the bill, then you can forget about leaving. No one wants you anyway, so you might as well stay here and pay off your debt by working as a dishwasher!" As I stare at the shameless family, I dig out my phone quietly. What they don't know is that this five-star hotel is a gift from my dad to me.

"Ivy, you are not good enough for my family. You just seem to be getting more difficult with each passing day, and frankly speaking, you're not useful to me anymore," Leon said, standing in front of her in his half-naked state. ___ When Ivy discovered her fiancé in a hotel room with her cousin, her world came crashing down. They had been planning to get married in the coming months, but he clearly no longer cared. They say patience is rewarded, but in Ivy's case, the opposite seemed true. She had endured his physical, mental, and verbal abuse, hoping he would change, but she was clearly mistaken. Sleeping with her cousin was the final straw, and Ivy decided to walk away. However, when she realized he had taken all of her money and even taken out debt in her name, she found herself facing a race against time to pay off these debts. "Be my surrogate, and you won't have to worry about the loans anymore!" her creditor pleaded. Left with no other choice, Ivy agreed to be his surrogate. But what would happen when he brought in his donor, only for her to discover that it was Leon, her ex-boyfriend?

"You were never her, Aria. You were just... there." Jason's words echo in my head as I stand in the back of the church, watching him mourn another woman on her sister's wedding day. Isabelle. The perfect dead girlfriend. The ghost I've been competing with for three years. I thought I could be enough. I thought love could grow where grief once lived. But when I find the evidence, when I see the hotel receipts, the text messages, the photos of Jason with Isabelle's sister Violet, I realize the truth. I was never the love story. I was the intermission. What I don't know yet is that nothing about my marriage was real. Not Jason's cruelty. Not Violet's affair. Not the stranger's rescue. They've all been playing a game, and I'm the prize they're willing to destroy each other for. When the truth comes out, when I discover why Isabelle really died and who's been pulling the strings, I'll have to decide: Do I let them destroy me, or do I burn their whole world down?

After my best friend, Amber Stone, gets addicted to gambling, she excitedly tells me that she wants to take me to Las Gavas on a trip all of a sudden. "I just won a huge sum of money! I'll treat you to a night in a grand, luxurious hotel there!" But after the plane lands on the tarmac, Amber leads me into a private room tucked away in the depths of a casino. "The truth is, the casino's boss is looking for a woman with a crescent-shaped birthmark. If she's found, all debts will be cleared on the spot. "Don't you have one on your belly? I saw it when you were taking a shower in the past! I'm so sorry, bestie, but I really don't want to die!" While I get pinned on the couch by four men, I suddenly notice a child's doodle being hung on the wall. It was a doodle I had drawn for my father before I got kidnapped. He viewed it as his treasure and told me that he'd cherish it forever. I perk up immediately at the sight. A sneer appears on my face soon enough. Oh, Amber… You definitely have won this time. Unfortunately for you, you won't gain anything.

I had been dating Andy Lawson for five years. He had gone bankrupt, and during the worst of it, we had to sleep in parks and scavenge leftovers for food. After a hundred days of that life, I was just going to the blackmarket to sell some blood for money when someone sent me a video. [Surprise.] It was a livestream site, set up for rich kids to prank the common folk—and a video of me was pinned to the top. My finger trembling, I tapped on it and saw myself hidden in a corner of a park, munching on leftovers to nourish my frail body. On the split video, Andy was reclining against the armchair of a five-star hotel and savoring his gourmet menu. "Oh, this is amazing! All Andy has to do is say that he's sick, and she's selling her blood for him!" "On the sixteenth prank, she fell into the ocean… And on the fifteenth, she was sent flying in a car crash! Why is she so hard to kill?" "Well, Andy already made it clear that if she survives until the end, he will marry her and swear off women!" "One month to go! Will she die from the pranks, or marry into the Lawson family with pomp and circumstance?" "I'm betting fifty mil that she dies tragically! Hahaha!"

Attending a high school reunion, I rode my motorcycle to the venue. By the time I arrived at the Moon Valley Hotel, most of my former classmates were already there. Everyone seemed to be doing well for themselves. The parking lot was filled with luxury cars belonging to high-ranking pack members. There was even a Rolls Royce that belonged to the son of an Alpha. As I dismounted from my motorcycle, a former male classmate I barely remembered looked at me with disdain. "Well, well, if it isn't our former class president. Still riding a basic bike like an omega, I see." During dinner, everyone was fawning over the Alpha's son while completely ignoring me in the corner. Only Derek, our former class monitor and now a beta, sat beside me with a sympathetic look. "Don't worry about it. Even though you're still just an omega like your parents, I'm sure one day you'll rise up in the pack rankings." I couldn't help but smirk, whispering under my breath: "This isn't just any motorcycle. It's the Royal Guard's official vehicle."