Midnight Novels & Stories

After I remarry my wife, Vivian Crowell, I decide to rent her out to other men. When her male best friend, Elliot Everhart, summons her away from me, I no longer kick up a fuss about it. Instead, I charge Vivian by the hour. The rent is 10 thousand dollars per hour during the day, whereas it'll be 20 thousand dollars per hour at night. If it's a holiday, all prices will be tripled. After running my new business for three months, I now have an additional 20 million dollars in my account. Although Vivian has promised to pick out my suit for the banquet with me, Elliot calls her and complains about how he's nicked his finger with a knife when he was cutting vegetables. I don't even bother raising my head as I hand my bank account number over to Vivian. One midnight, I suddenly suffer from a fever. When Vivian is driving me to the hospital, Elliot calls her and claims that he can't sleep due to discomfort caused by his intoxication. I merely pull out my umbrella fluently and tell Vivian to drop me off at the junction ahead. Upon noticing her hesitation, I just smile at her. "Don't forget to transfer the payment to me." On the day our son, Victor Carrington, is going for his regular follow-up appointment, Elliot calls Vivian once again. "Eleanor wants to go to the amusement park. It'll only be fun when we have a woman to accompany us there." After Vivian ends the call, she turns around and is about to crouch down to explain everything to Victor when she sees him mimicking my actions by sticking out his hand at her. "It's fine, Mommy. You can just pay us. But today's rate is the triple kind."

At midnight, Marvin Cooper throws a confession form at my face. The sharp edge of the paper cuts the corner of my eye, and bright red blood begins to seep out. He barks, "Alyssa hit someone with her car. You have a similar build to her. Go to the police station and take the blame." His tone leaves no room for argument, as if he is casually asking me to make him a late-night snack. His first love, Alyssa Evans, hides behind him and tugs pitifully at his sleeve. "But Marvin, if Ms. Huston goes to jail, who's going to make the nourishing soup for you?" Marvin lets out a disdainful snort and looks at me with contempt. "She's just a piece of trash from an orphanage. She should be honored to take the blame for you. Without me, she wouldn't even be able to feed herself. Other than obeying me, what choice does she have?" I wipe the blood from the corner of my eye and look at the man for whom I have spent three years as an unpaid housekeeper and a living blood bank. To treat his stomach condition, I burn my hands countless times cooking for him. I become so anemic that I easily collapse because I've been donating my blood to Alyssa. Marvin is certain that I love him with all my heart, and that I can only cling to him for the rest of my life. I don't cry. I simply take off the cheap apron I'm wearing and say, "You don't need to throw me out. I'll leave on my own." Taking out my phone, I dial a number I have blocked for three years. "I've had my fun. Send a helicopter to pick me up tomorrow. It's time for me to go home and take over the family business."

When I'm pulling an overnight shift at midnight, I receive a text from my boyfriend of five years, Robert Howell. "I've already ended the rental agreement on our previous apartment. I'm sending you our new address now." After glancing at the address, realization dawns on me immediately. "Is this because of Daisy again?" Daisy Baldwin is the so-called delicate yet strong-willed young woman, whom Robert has mentioned to me. This is our third time moving apartments in just half a year. We've moved from a high-end apartment located in the boisterous city all the way to a residential area in the rural slums. All this… just so Robert can get closer to Daisy. I must have exposed Robert's true intentions, for he sounds quite humiliated and furious. "Can you stop being so petty? Dee Dee was stalked after she got off her overtime shift! You're a woman as well; how is it that you don't have any trace of empathy for her?" As I look out the window and see the night sky, I feel a wave of exhaustion hitting me all of a sudden. Honestly, I don't remember how many times Robert and I have argued over Daisy. At first, I was enraged and aggrieved. Now, I'm just speechless. "I can't be bothered to waste my breath on you. I'm going to pick Dee Dee up from work now." Robert ends the call before I can respond. The thing is, Robert has never asked me if I wanted to move right from the start. He also never asks me if I need a ride home since it's already this late at night. That's why I drop my signature on the overseas assignment agreement that has been left on my desk for a week without consulting Robert at all.

Some wounds don't bleed where anyone can see them. Sera Voss walked into her mate's study one night carrying the most important secret of her life. She walked out carrying it still. Because before she could open her mouth — before she could find the words for the two pink lines sitting on her bathroom sink, for the tiny heartbeat growing quietly beneath her ribs — Kael Drayden, Alpha of the Ashveil Pack, looked at her across his desk with decided eyes and spoke the words that unmade everything. *I reject you, Sera Voss, as my destined mate.* She felt the bond snap like a spine breaking. She felt the hollow it left — cold and sudden and enormous — open up beneath her ribs where warmth used to live. And she pressed her hand flat against her stomach, and she said nothing. Because he didn't deserve to know. Because her daughter deserved better than growing up in the shadow of a man who chose someone else before she had even drawn her first breath. Because some decisions, once made, cannot be unmade — and Sera Voss was done waiting for people to choose her. She left that night with one bag, one secret, and nothing else. --- She built a life from scratch in a town where nobody knew her name. A diner. A small warm room above a bakery. A landlady named Donna who never asked questions and always made extra food. A routine that kept the grief from swallowing her whole in the quiet hours after midnight when the bond's absence felt loudest and the room felt smallest and she pressed both hands against her growing stomach and talked to her daughter like she was the only person left in the world. Because right then, she was.

My name is Maya Chen, and I have seven months to stop being the only single senior at Lincoln High. Everyone else posts prom dates, couple hoodies, and first kiss stories. I post nothing. I watch from the sidelines while my friends plan futures in pairs and my mom asks when I will bring someone home. So I make a rule. Get a boyfriend before 18. No exceptions. I build a plan to survive the pressure. Date smart. Date safe. Date anyone who checks the boxes and gets me to my birthday without shame. The plan falls apart the second Cole Evans shows up. He is my brother’s best friend, holds a detention record that scares teachers, and wears a smirk that mocks every rule I wrote. He was never my type. He drives a rusted truck, smells like gasoline, and calls out my bad taste in boys. But he also finds me crying in the bathroom at Homecoming, teaches me to drive stick at midnight, and looks at me like I am not a task to finish. Now I am 18, my plan is broken, and the whole school saw me kiss the guy I swore I would never want. I thought I needed a boyfriend to fix my life. I need him. CHARACTERIZATIONS MAYA CHEN Role: Female Lead Appearance: Straight black hair she cuts herself, small scar on her eyebrow, lives in oversized hoodies and worn Converse. Aim: To stop being the only single person in her friend group before she turns 18. Personality: Sarcastic, organized, loyal, hides insecurity behind a planner. Flaw: Ties worth to relationship status because of peer pressure. Special Note: Uses control and rules to avoid feeling left behind. Hidden Truth: Believes if she does not get a boyfriend now, she never will

For our graduation trip, the three of us traveled to Iceland to watch the aurora borealis. During the trek, my best friend Chloe Bennett’s scarf was swept away by the howling wind. Without a second thought, my boyfriend Valen Vance stripped off his own heavy scarf and wrapped her up tight in it. Turning to me, he said, “Hurry up and help Chloe fetch it. You know that’s her favorite scarf.” I braved the biting, freezing wind alone, chasing it for a long time. By the time I finally retrieved the scarf and turned around, the northern lights had already vanished from the sky—and Valen and Chloe were no longer where I left them. My phone buzzed with a text from him: “You were taking too long. Chloe is afraid of the cold, so I brought her back to the hotel first.” Stranded in a foreign country, I stood at the crossroad for six grueling hours, waving down over twenty passing cars. Finally, someone took pity on me and gave me a ride. When I stumbled back into the hotel well past midnight, shivering and entirely frozen to the bone, I found them curled up under a thick blanket, huddled close together as they looked over the photos they had taken that day. They were laughing and chatting about photography and the northern lights—a conversation I was permanently locked out of. Noticing me, Valen merely frowned. “What took you so long? I made a mug of hot tea for you over there. Go warm yourself up.” I wrapped my numb fingers around the mug. The tea inside had gone ice-cold hours ago. At that moment, an overwhelming wave of exhaustion settled deep into my chest. Fine, then. I booked the earliest flight out, canceled the rest of our hotel reservations, and decided right then to leave. The northern lights I spent a lifetime chasing were never meant for me. There was no need to chase them anymore.

“Relax. It was meaningless. It didn’t mean a thing.” Three years. That’s how long Lena Carter loved Evan Brooks—three years of loyalty, late nights, and believing she was building a future with him. Until she finds him in a hotel suite bathroom, hands braced against marble, whispering excuses while her cousin—and closest friend—fixes her lipstick in the mirror. All this happens during Lena’s promotion celebration. Lena should be home, crying into cheap wine and shattered dreams. Instead, she’s stranded on a quiet Los Angeles street at midnight, phone dead, heels in hand, with a group of drunk men circling closer than comfort allows. Then a black luxury sedan pulls up. The man who steps out wears a tailored suit, calm eyes, and an authority that makes the street go silent. Mason Hart. Billionaire. Tech CEO. And—unknown to him—the elusive owner of the company where Lena works as an executive assistant two floors below the C-suite. He offers her a ride. She hesitates. She takes it. That single decision rewrites her life. Mason doesn’t mix business with emotions. He doesn’t date employees. And he definitely doesn’t rescue strangers with haunted eyes. But Lena’s quiet strength, the way she refuses pity, the way pain sharpens her instead of breaking her—it gets under his skin. Lena just wants to forget the man who betrayed her. Mason offers distraction. Protection. Desire without promises. But Evan refuses to let go, spreading lies and suddenly desperate to “fix things.” Her cousin is determined to destroy what little Lena has left. And the closer Lena grows to the powerful CEO who signs her company’s paychecks, the more dangerous her heart becomes. Because falling for a billionaire who doesn’t believe in love might hurt worse than betrayal.

Synopsis of The Vans International Billionaire Julian Vance is a hyper-focused, notoriously paranoid tech billionaire weeks away from launching an autonomous shipping empire that will redefine global logistics. Driven by the ghost of his father’s financial ruin, Julian trusts no one and relies strictly on cold, hard logic. But when a catastrophic routing error threatens to tank his company’s imminent IPO, he leaves a chaotic, failed algorithm scrawled across his penthouse office glass wall in a fit of midnight rage. By morning, the multi-billion-dollar mathematical bottleneck has been flawlessly solved by an anonymous outsider who left behind a sarcastic sticky note. The mathematical savior is Maya Lin, a fiercely independent young woman working two exhausting jobs—grocery cashier by day and night-shift commercial janitor by night—to fund her younger brother’s critical cerebral palsy treatments. Guided by an intuitive, self-taught mind for numbers, Maya simply couldn't look past the broken syntax. When Julian discovers the breach on security footage, his lifelong paranoia flares. Convinced Maya is a highly trained corporate spy sent by his bitterest rival, he decides to keep his enemy close. He pulls her out of the shadows, forcing her into a high-stakes, 24/7 role as his personal executive assistant. Trapped in a world of intense corporate deadlines and forced proximity, the firewall between them crumbles. Maya handles Julian’s high-pressure lifestyle with unvarnished honesty, even anchoring him through a severe panic attack, while Julian discovers the raw brilliance and desperate family sacrifices behind her defensive exterior. But when a real, devastating cyberattack leaks the proprietary code, the engineered evidence frames Maya. To claim a future together, Julian must choose between the ruthless, defensive logic that built his empire or calculating the ultimate wildcard: trusting the woman who rewrote his entire life.

On my birthday, my wife, Iris Lockwood, has ordered a few workers to carry a dust-covered second-hand air conditioner home as my birthday present. She points at the air conditioner while gushing excitedly, "This is a big brand, you know! It might look dirty on the outside, but the insides are brand new! "Remember, we're scrimping all the pennies we can get in order to move into a penthouse in the future. That way, we'll be able to live comfortably as a family of three!" I'm very understanding toward Iris, seeing as it's very difficult to earn money nowadays. So, I endure the pain that's flaring from an old hip injury I've sustained during my early days as a manual laborer as I crouch on the floor and clean the air conditioner for two long hours. But as soon as it's turned on, chemical powder sprays from it, soon filling the whole apartment. Because of that, our three-year-old son, Flynn Holt, goes into shock immediately from the severe allergy. With red-rimmed eyes, I yell at Iris to take Flynn to the hospital. But she quickly leaves after taking a phone call. "Crap, my biggest client is met with a car accident! I need to deal with it right away! You can flag down a cab and take Flynn to the hospital on your own!" That midnight, I head over to Quantum Heights, which is known as the most luxurious residence in the city, after receiving a phone call regarding the wrong address. In the corridor, I see Iris embracing a young man. She has nothing but love and affection for him. "There's no need to save money, you know. Young men at your age love new and branded goods, don't you?" Right… To Iris, a useless husband like me who didn't have an educational background only deserved to use second-hand things. But even the most saintly man will revolt one day once his patience is worn out. Besides, I've been faking my nice, understanding personality all along.

I was eight months pregnant when my water broke—the same day as the birthday of my husband’s adopted son. To keep my child from being born on the same day as his adopted son, he forced me to wait until after midnight. He refused to take me to the hospital and locked me in the basement. Adrian Shaw looked down at me. His eyes were dark and hostile. “Elena, you're really good at picking the timing, huh? Of all days, you had to go into labor on Evan’s birthday.” I begged him to take me to the hospital. A trace of disappointment flashed across his eyes, and his voice turned cold. “You’re still trying to lie to me? I asked a doctor. Even if your water breaks, you don’t give birth right away. Some women don’t deliver for three days. “All this scheming is just to secure your position as Mrs. Shaw, so your child can compete with Evan for his birthday and his place. You've really thought this through.” I took a deep breath as despair washed over me. “The baby I’m carrying is yours too! Adrian, I’m begging you. Please, for the child’s sake, save her. As long as the baby is safe, I promise I’ll never show up in front of you again.” His expression darkened. He bent down, grabbed my chin, and replied harshly, “Don’t play games with me. “As long as you stay here quietly until after midnight, I’ll take you to the hospital. Once the baby’s born, you can finally use the child to secure your place and truly marry into the Shaw family.” Later, when my contractions grew unbearable and I cried out in pain, he found me too noisy and took Evan and his mother out to celebrate instead. By the time he remembered me and asked whether I had a boy or a girl, his secretary’s face paled. “Mrs. Shaw is… gone.”