It Was Fun While It Lasted

I thought getting a new foster brother would be weird. I didn’t expect him to look like he walked off a Netflix show—blue eyes, tattoos, and the personality of a brick wall. My little brother’s obsessed with him. My parents act like he’s made of glass. Me? I think Carmelo’s hiding something. And I plan to find out what.

After the video exposing my sister Issa Acosta’s plot against me was revealed, my parents and my fiancé, Henry Nolan, stood firmly by my side, making me feel loved and safe. I confidently handed over all the evidence to them, trusting them to handle it. However, they told me that after Issa was kicked out of the house, she died in a sudden car accident, and I believed them. That was until five years into my marriage, when I accidentally saw Issa—the woman who was supposed to be dead. She was holding a little boy, clinging tightly to Henry’s hand. "Henry, if it weren’t for you and my parents, I’m afraid Zoe would’ve thrown me in prison. Thankfully, my parents destroyed the evidence and even opened a jewelry design studio for me. To avoid suspicion, you even sacrificed your own marriage. Thank you for everything in the past five years.” "Think of it as me atoning to Zoe on your behalf. As long as you and Bear are happy, that’s enough for me." So, what I thought was a happy family was nothing more than a giant lie—a scheme concocted by my parents and Henry. My parents, my husband, and Issa were the real family, and I? I was just the fool who had been deceived for five long years. Whether it was family or love, none of it was real, and I don’t want any of it anymore.

One month before my wedding to my boyfriend, he announced he wanted to have a child with his "first love." I refused, but he brought it up every single day. Two weeks before the ceremony, I received a prenatal checkup report. That’s when I discovered his so-called "first love" was already nearly a month pregnant. It turned out he’d never intended to seek my consent at all. In that moment, years of affection evaporated like smoke. So, I canceled the wedding, destroyed every trace of our memories, and on what should have been our wedding day, I walked into a closed-off research lab. From then on, he meant nothing to me.

I was the daughter of a crime boss in Flonio. Initially, I was supposed to reveal my identity during my wedding. But my elder brother told me that someone was targeting me and that I could not expose myself. My fiance also took this chance to take off my wedding gown and help my maid into it. My bodyguard then stole my family token. I trusted them deeply, but when the wedding ceremony started, I saw my maid with one arm around my fiance. Meanwhile, her other hand lingered between my brother’s and bodyguard’s sensitive spots on their bodies. In response to my suspicions, my maid laughed wickedly. Then, she instructed someone to break my limbs. They locked me up in the basement and forced me to watch as they got more and more intimate. In the end, they skinned me alive and broke my bones. Before I breathed my last, they left me to the beasts. When I recalled the misery of my previous life, I broke my maid’s ribs with a few punches. “You can have my fiance, but you don’t deserve my family token!”

For five years of marriage, David was the perfect husband everyone envied. He gave me endless gold cards and pampering, only when mentioning children, his eyes were bone-chillingly cold. Until the day I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and accidentally got pregnant, I broke his lie that had lasted five years: he never traveled on business, but secretly financed a flower shop called “Sylvia” without telling me. The girl in the shop, Emry, had a face identical to my sister‘s, and she stroked her slightly protruding belly, calling him “baby‘s dad” coquettishly. I chose to leave [Three years later] I became the most dazzling new star in Milan‘s architecture world. When we met again, I appeared at a celebrity dinner on the arm of my real brother Eric, with a child beside me who had a pair of eyes exactly like his. This once cold and aloof plutocrat now stopped my car in the rain. He knelt in the mud with red eyes, tugging on the corner of my skirt, and begged humbly, “Alice, please... look at me again.” I just gently brushed the child‘s broken hair from his forehead, without even pausing to glance at him. “Sir, you‘ve mistaken me for someone else. My husband died in that fire three years ago.”

On our tenth wedding anniversary, my husband, Jaxon Wilde, walks through the door with his hundredth new mistress. From my neck, he snaps the necklace that was once our token of love and fastens it around hers. Amid the guests' jeers and mocking laughter, the lady tugs timidly at my gown and murmurs, "Mr. Wilde wants me to wear this dress tonight, Scarlett." It was a dress altered from my wedding gown ten years ago, and I wore it tonight like a fool, hoping he might remember. But now, he wants to strip his wife bare in public and give it to his mistress on the wedding anniversary. Under the weight of everyone's sneers, I look up at him and give him a genuine smile for the first time in a decade. "Let's get divorced, Jaxon."

To the world, I was Mrs. Ward—the untouchable queen beside the mafia king of New York, Elias Ward. But I knew my husband never loved me. His heart had always belonged to Harper Dinah. His nephew’s wife. And after that nephew conveniently died, Elias brought her into our mansion, “I just want to take better care of her,” he’d said. And his version of “care” was where he’d throw a man out of a party for daring to flirt with Harper and got her pregnant. Elias likes to praise me in public like I was the perfect wife to him. And I was. I helped build his empire. I was the one who smiled and played nice. I made his casino shine while he hid Harper away like she was something sacred. Because of all that praising, one of his enemies set his sights on me. They took me. Sent Elias a message soaked in blood and threats: Back off. Leave New York. Or your pretty wife dies. Of course, Elias didn’t choose to back off.. “Just wait,” he said over the phone, “They won’t hurt you, Noa. You’re leverage. Just hold on until Harper gives birth. Then I’ll come for you.” Eight months of being held in a filthy hole, starved, beaten, degraded. The gang leader raped me over and over again. And still, Elias never came. Finally, I escaped when they were all drunk. Went home, only find my twins sleeping in the maid’s room, eating scraps while Elias was too busy hosting a party for his newborn. I didn’t confront him, just packed my babies and disappear.

She was a powerhouse—brilliant, driven, and unstoppable—until the day her world shattered in the delivery room. Told her baby had died at birth, she buried her grief beneath ambition and success, building an empire while silently mourning the child she never got to hold. What she never knew was the truth: her husband had betrayed her in the cruelest way imaginable, fleeing with his mistress and the newborn daughter he claimed was lost. Years later, a business expansion leads her to a quiet, close-knit town far from her high-rise life. There, among tree-lined streets and familiar faces, she meets a commanding, magnetic man whose strength matches her own—but whose integrity and warmth begin to crack the walls around her heart. As their connection deepens, unsettling coincidences surface, pulling her toward a past she was never meant to uncover. The revelation is devastating and undeniable: her daughter is alive, growing up in this very town, raised by the husband who abandoned her and the woman who stole her life. Forced to confront betrayal, buried grief, and a motherhood stolen from her, she must decide how far she’s willing to go for the truth—and for her child. In a town where secrets never stay hidden, she faces a choice between vengeance and forgiveness, between the life she built and the love she never knew she could still claim. This is a story of resilience, second chances, and discovering that sometimes, what was lost can still be found.

Violet Ashford had it all—a loving husband, a happy family, and the perfect life. Until everything shattered. Abandoned by her husband Christian, who left her for none other than her own sister, Violet’s world crumbled. Pregnant and heartbroken, she faced betrayal from everyone she trusted, including her own family. The grief was too much, and in a cruel twist of fate, she lost the child she carried. Devastated and alone, Violet’s sorrow soon turned to rage. She vowed to make Christian and his entire family pay for what they did. But just as she begins to unravel their carefully guarded lives, a shocking revelation emerges—a secret whispered by a young doctor with ties to her late father. A secret that could change everything. In a world of lies, betrayal, and vengeance, Violet’s quest for justice takes her down a dark and dangerous path. But will uncovering the truth heal her shattered heart, or destroy her entirely?

Aurelia Blackwood rules her world with precision. As the formidable CEO of Blackwood Global, she believes power is safest when it is controlled, emotions negotiated, and attachments temporary. Love has no place in her life—only desire, on her terms. So when a quiet, attentive man slips into her orbit after a chance encounter, she doesn’t resist. He becomes her indulgence. Her secret. Her sugar boy. He is everything she allows herself to want—present when summoned, patient, observant, willing to give without demanding permanence. With Aurelia, he learns her rhythms, her silences, her need for dominance and certainty. She keeps him close but contained, convinced she holds every string. What Aurelia doesn’t realize is that he was never accidental. As months pass, control blurs into attachment. She starts looking for him when she’s tired. Trusting him with fragments of herself she never intended to share. Falling—slowly, unwillingly—for the one man who never tried to own her. Then the truth fractures everything. He is not just a man with ambition. He is not just someone else’s partner. He is tied to her greatest corporate rival—and he has been gathering information from the inside, feeding secrets that could dismantle the empire she built with blood, discipline, and sacrifice. Betrayal cuts deeper when it wears the face of devotion. Now Aurelia stands at a crossroads she never prepared for. Expose him and destroy the man who made her feel seen—or protect him and risk losing everything she’s ever fought for. Revenge promises safety. Love promises ruin. In a world where power is currency and intimacy is leverage, Her Sugar Boy Was a Rival is a dark, obsessive romance about dominance, deception, and the most dangerous choice of all: When the enemy knows your body, your secrets, and your heart