Masked Emotions

My mother-in-law gets into an accident and is taken to the emergency room. I call my attorney husband, but he only answers after over 20 missed calls. "What are you on about this time? Gigi has a bit of a problem, and I'm helping her. Stop being unreasonable." I suppress my grievance and say, "Mom's gotten into an accident. Transfer 100 thousand dollars to me." However, he believes Gigi Norris' lies and snarls, "What does your mother getting into an accident have to do with me? Don't even think of getting money from me to provide for your family. Now, leave me alone. I'm busy!" He hangs up, and my mother-in-law dies. Three days later, I see my husband in court. Gigi has been taken to court for driving under the influence, and he's there to defend her. He speaks eloquently and manages to get her off based on a lack of evidence. I lose hope in him and ask him for a divorce once the court is out of session. That's when he panics. "Think about how well my mother treats you! You'll break her heart by divorcing me!" I sneer. I throw the hospital bill and death certificate in his face. The idiot doesn't even know he no longer has a mother!

On my five-year-old son Oliver's birthday, I baked him his favorite allergy-safe cake and he said he wanted my husband's secretary, Rachel, to be his mom. While I worked hard for my husband and son to have a privileged life, they went to an amusement park with Rachel to eat ice cream together. I still worked overtime to treat him when Oliver openly denied that I was his mother in the kindergarten and claimed that Rachel was his "biological mother". I still believe his assurances even after I discovered a photograph of my husband Derek and Rachel from before we met. I thought being Head Healer of Blood Moon Pack meant I could mend any wound, but some betrayals cut too deep for even the strongest magic to heal. As it is, it's time for them to know how much I paid for our perfect little family. It's time for them to pay me back for everything I've given them.

After my husband died in a car accident, I worked tirelessly running a small restaurant to raise my son, Henry. Right before Henry's wedding, I won eight million in the lottery. Thrilled, I decided to sell the restaurant and finally enjoy retirement. So, I called to tell Henry about selling the restaurant, his usually polite fiancée turned hostile. "You're not expecting us to support you, are you? We've barely started working!" She even warned Henry, "If you spend any of our money on your mom, the wedding's off!" Henry argued with her but then reassured me, promising, "You've worked hard enough, Mom. I'll take care of you." Feeling pretty good, I planned to give him two million to start a business. The next day, I got a call saying Henry had been in a serious car accident and urgently needed fifty thousand for surgery. I sent the money immediately, but afterward, Henry vanished. Desperate, I braved a storm to find him in his city, only to walk into a wedding at some fancy hotel. There's Henry, giving a toast and calling another woman "Mom." And, oh, sitting beside her? My "dead" husband from ten years ago.

A little over a month pregnant, I was happily looking forward to my wedding—until my fiance teamed up with my parents and brothers to put me on trial at the Court of Justice. They fabricated charge after charge, hoping to have me executed in the name of the law. If the judge found me guilty, I would be sentenced to death on the spot. Once I was dead, my corneas would be transplanted into my adopted sister, and everything I owned—my assets and insurance—would be claimed by them. Faced with my fiance’s betrayal and my family’s treachery, I fought back. I demanded the judge use the latest medical technology to extract my memories and project them on the big screen, letting the judge and hundreds of public jurors decide my fate. Just as everyone was smugly certain of their victory, the truth revealed by my memories moved the entire courtroom to tears.

“I know you want me in jail, but I want you in my bed.” Every man and woman Ángel meets disappears. Their severed finger arrives first, like a pretty little Christmas gift, wrapped in silk and presented in box filled with silent promises from his stalker. Castle, Mafia heir. Executioner. Obsessed beyond reason. He doesn’t send threats. He sends bodies. Because no one touches what belongs to him. No one tastes what he’s claimed. And if they try? They bleed for it. At sixteen, Ángel Di Cristina lost everything. His father—an FBI agent—was closing in on the Mafia when a brutal massacre left his parents dead. But that night, one masked man went rogue. He killed his own allies, marked Ángel with a scar, and disappeared. For years, Ángel hunted him. And now, he’s closer than ever. But Castle doesn’t play by rules. He never had. What he wanted, he got. He bends Ángel, fills his whole life with the thought of him. He whispers filthy things against his throat while pressing a knife to his pulse. Run? Hide? Fight? Useless. Because Castillo doesn’t just want to own Ángel. He wants to ruin him. And the worst part? Ángel is ready to let him.

Just because I ate one chicken leg more than my brother, my father kicked me out of the house in the middle of a snowstorm. Later on, my father of an archeologist dug up my body. Due to my missing head, he did not recognize me. Even when he saw that the body had the same scars as I did, he did not care. Later on, my mother dug out my heart and showed it to her students. "Today, we will study the heart of someone with congenital heart disease." She once said she would recognize me no matter what I looked like. Mom, now that the only thing left of me is my heart, do you still recognize me?

Destiny is something written in books, a fictitious fantasy. I’ve always believed that what we do today is one step towards our future. We make our own choice, and we decide on who we will be until I met him—Elijah Valentin. He made me question what I know and what I feel. Just his mere presence messed with my head in more ways than one. The push and pull of emotions, the exhilarating feeling every time we crossed paths, and the gut-wrenching agony in my chest when I saw him with someone else. For the first time in my life, I hoped that the fictitious fantasy was real, that he was my destiny. He stirred my life in beautiful chaos, knocked down the ten-foot wall I built around my heart with just the flick of his fingers. But he also showed me how painful it is to want something that I could never have—him. ~~ "You are bound to me, Rory,” he said, eyes glowing like the silver moon above us. His touch flickered fire under my skin, a frizzling electric shock that stirred the desire inside me. “You are my salvation, but I am the hellfire that will burn your life to ashes.” [Mature Content]

I stared at him, wide-eyed, aware of the heat from his body, rolling off in waves. Awareness swept through me, my stomach clenched and wetness flooded my core as I felt his nearness; and I sighed. He gripped a handful of my hair with an oath and brought his mouth down on mine, his hard lips slanting as they claimed my mouth. His heavy, strong body forced me against the wall and I trembled with need and fear… I was rigid for a while, unable to understand what was happening. My body begged me to hold his shoulders, to stroke him, to let go. But my almost Puritanical upbringing made me stay stiff and resistant. Till he sank his teeth into my lower lip and I opened my mouth in a gasp. * When the cynical, jaded Mafia Don Lucien Delano, meets eighteen-year-old, Proserpina Martinez, she falls in love with him without realizing that she is just a plaything for him. By the time she comprehends the reality, it is too late. Pregnant and alone the spirited young woman does something that takes the Don by surprise. She runs away. What happens next? Read it to find out how the stormy, passionate lovers battle their emotions and themselves. *

On my first day of being a newlywed, my father-in-law beat my mother-in-law up because of a dish. I tried to stop my father-in-law out of concern for my mother-in-law's life. However, he scolded me for being rude and claimed out loud that subduing others with force was a family tradition. I was thrilled when I saw that my husband was also itching to have a go at me. Hurrah! I could finally unleash the demon inside me!

A burglar breaks into our home, taking my mother-in-law and me captive. He stabs my mother-in-law's eyes, blinding her. Then, he slices her tongue and strips her, even putting on a live stream to air the whole thing. He claims that he'll auction my mother-in-law's organs if we can't pay the ransom of ten million dollars. The live stream infuriates the Internet, and everyone starts searching for my husband, the city's wealthiest man. No one knows he's on a luxury cruise ship, holding an engagement ceremony with his childhood friend. He snarls, "What a dumb excuse to trick me out of my money! I'll burn the money for them when they're dead!"