Nyit Manhattan Library Novels & Stories

I took a shortcut through the alley and watched Dante Marchetti put a bullet in a man like it was nothing. He saw my face. That was the end of my normal life. Within an hour I was in the back of his car being driven to an estate I had never seen before with gates that locked from the outside and a wardrobe full of clothes in my exact size waiting like someone had known I was coming before I did. He told me I wasn't a prisoner but a guest. He said people who wanted to find me were considerably worse than him and that his walls were the only thing standing between me and a conversation I wouldn't survive. Maybe he was right. The problem is the longer I stayed the harder it became to remember which one was true. Because the man who caught me in that alley wasn't the only version of him. There was another one that nobody else seemed to get to see. The one who stood alone in his dead mother's library looking tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. The one who had my cat brought to the estate because he heard me crying through a closed door and didn't know what else to do about it. The one who almost smiled when I threw a glass at his head. That version of him was the one I couldn't stop thinking about. I came here as a witness. I stayed as something else entirely. Somewhere between the locked doors, the candlelit dinners and the secrets we started sharing in the dark I stopped wanting to leave. The question was whether a woman like me could survive loving a man like him. I was about to find out.

3.5 Stories in one. She hides behind ugly suits and fake names. He's done trusting women. When they meet in a masked sex club, neither realizes they've been fighting each other across boardroom tables for eighteen months. At Taylor Industries, she's Joy Smith—the frumpy CFO who drowns her curves in shapeless polyester and wearing a wig. At home, she's the forgotten wife of a cheating lawyer who hasn't touched her in so long she's starting to wonder if she's broken. When she finds hot pink lace panties stuffed in her couch cushions...definitely not hers, it's not heartbreak she feels. It's freedom. Grayson Taylor doesn't do relationships anymore. Not after walking in on his actress fiancée with another woman. Now he channels everything into hostile takeovers and board meetings, especially the ones where his overcautious CFO fights him on every goddamn acquisition. Joy Smith is brilliant, infuriating, and funny when he pushes all her buttons. But Honey is tired of being invisible. Tired of never having felt real pleasure. So, when her best friend gives her the details of The Velvet Room—Manhattan's most exclusive masked club—she promises herself just one night. One night to find out if her husband's right, if she really is frigid, or if she's just never been touched by the right hands. She doesn't expect the masked stranger who claims her the second she walks in. Doesn't expect the chemistry that ignites between them, the way he makes her body sing, or the orgasms that leave her shaking. Doesn't expect him to hand her an email address with one command: "Only me. No one else touches you."

A cold corporate contract was supposed to protect his empire. He never expected she would become his only sanctuary. ​Eight years ago,Ryan Hayes was a brilliant, vulnerable university student trying to survive his family’s dark shadow. Then came Vennessa Cole—the fierce, captivating girl who blew into his life, broke through his walls, and then completely destroyed him. Or so he thought. When a brutal betrayal tore them apart, he swore he’d never let anyone close again. He built an ironclad, multi-billion-dollar empire on Wall Street to ensure he would always be the predator, never the prey. ​Now, Ryan is a ruthless tech titan inside a glass fortress, cold and untouchable. But when an aggressive corporate war threatens his legacy,he needs an ironclad strategy fast. He gets a ghost from his past. ​Vennessa Cole is no longer the University girl he left behind; she is the sharp-witted queen of Manhattan crisis management. Forced into close proximity by a high-stakes, fake-relationship contract to protect his assets, Ryan is determined to make her pay for the university betrayal that hardened his heart. He wants answers. He wants control. ​But behind closed doors in his penthouse, the fury between them quickly burns into a fierce, undeniable heat. As the corporate sharks close in, the dark secrets of what actually happened during their college years begin to unravel. Ryan realizes the devastating truth: Vennessa didn't destroy him back then—she protected him. ​With an unexpected pregnancy raising the stakes to life and death, Ryan’s cold facade completely fractures. The man who thought he wanted vengeance realizes he’ll burn the entire city down to keep her safe. Because the girl he spent a decade hating isn't his enemy... she is his ultimate safe haven.

I come from an old-money family. My grandfather's will was ironclad: whoever gets an Ivy League acceptance letter unlocks 25% of a massive trust fund and a seat on the family board. Out of four siblings, I was the only one who stood a chance. Every night, my mother Victoria carefully made me a cup of "organic brain-boosting matcha." My twin sister Chloe and younger brother Mason never got that privilege. The night before the December SAT—the last chance for Regular Decision Ivy scores—Victoria handed me my green matcha as usual. The next day, my mind went completely blank during the test. I blacked out. I missed that application season. Meanwhile, Chloe—who spent her time at yacht parties and couldn't read an equation—miraculously got an offer from UPenn and sailed right onto the board. The second year, right before the test, my snobby cousin Brianna reached for my matcha. Victoria slapped her hand away and screamed: "Don't touch Ava's things!" That exam, I got severe stomach cramps and was rushed to the ER by ambulance. I had to drop out again. And Brianna—who only cared about designer bags—somehow got into Cornell and took her board seat. The whole family popped champagne in our Upper East Side penthouse. I became the laughingstock of Manhattan's elite, having missed two application seasons in a row. Why did my body crash like clockwork, right at the final, life-changing SAT? Prepping for the third time, I took no chances. For three days before the test, I ate only gluten-free detox meals controlled by a private nutritionist. But the night before the big test, Victoria smiled and brought me that familiar cup of green matcha.

My adoptive parents' long-lost daughter came back. She's a wellness influencer. She eats from crystal bowls she "cleansed." Sleeps with a white noise machine. She will only ride in a custom, climate-controlled car. That's not all. She filled our family's Manhattan law firm with Himalayan salt lamps and energy crystals. The espresso in the conference room? Replaced with gluten-free, organic dandelion root tea. "The energy here is so murky," she'd say. "We need to cleanse the world with love and light!" My guilt-ridden parents gave her everything she wanted. Even my fiancé told me, "Ava, you stole twenty years of her Upper East Side life. Can't you cut her some slack?" The day of the final hearing for our firm's biggest case, the entire court had to wait for her to finish her "emotional cleansing meditation." The judge was furious. I stood up. Delivered a flawless closing argument. I won our client $500 million and secured the future of the firm. But at the party, she had a drunken breakdown, fell into the pool, and drowned. My parents and my fiancé blamed me for everything. "You always have to win, don't you? It was a simple, open-and-shut case. You couldn't even let her have that?" They had me committed to a psychiatric hospital. They destroyed my law license and my reputation. They even had me injected with a fatal overdose of sedatives. I died full of hate. The next time I opened my eyes, I was back. Back to the day she was crying on her Instagram Live, begging for the case. This time, I walked straight into our rival's law firm. This "sure-win" case? I'm going to make you lose everything.

In my previous life, I practically dragged my useless childhood sweetheart to Harvard with me. My academic record was top-notch, and I spent three years tutoring him. I asked my father to donate a library to Harvard University, ensuring that they would extend an additional offer of admission to Felix. Finally—when he rejected the offer in favor of taking a gap year to go work in Australia with the girl he was infatuated with—I raised such a massive scene that I ultimately forced him to go to Harvard with me. After graduation, we got married. The natural ending. He built a tech empire and made me the wife of the richest man in the country. One regret. He died too young. Didn't leave me a single word at the end. Just went. And I — I inherited his billions, and lived comfortably all the way to eighty-eight. But when I died, I saw his soul. His eyes were blood-red. "You forced me onto this path. You took me from the only woman I ever loved. I died with regret. Pray we never meet again in the next life." ...What the fuck? He'd been in that much pain? And I was the only one — happily riding it out? Captions drifted across my vision. [Lmao — how thick is this side character's skin?] [Male lead dies young in agony, she breezes through to 88 as the richest widow in the country.] [The girl he actually loved was the one who flunked her SATs and ran off backpacking, hello???] [They both died young, missed each other, and the side character had the time of her life.] Even I felt bad. When I opened my eyes, I was back — standing in that basement he'd sworn would be his life of freedom, on the day he was supposed to reject his Harvard offer. This time, I am not stopping him from going to Australia.

Dr. Elara Vance's life is defined by exhaustion, crushing student loans, and grueling 30-hour residency shifts. Her passion for medicine is her singular focus until the brutal, careless discovery of her boyfriend Daniel’s long-running affair shatters her foundation. Seeking oblivion, she allows her best friend to drag her into Manhattan's elite world, where she collides with Liam Sterling, the notoriously private and ruthlessly efficient tech CEO. ​Their intense, desperate one-night stand is a blur of emotional destruction, a mistake Elara vows to bury. But weeks later, fate delivers an impossible complication: she is pregnant with the tech mogul's child. ​Liam, a master of cold, transactional risk management, moves swiftly to contain the scandal. He ambushes Elara with the "White Coat Contract," an impersonal legal offer promising immediate, full payment of her crippling medical school debt and complete financial security. But his protection comes with a crushing price: Elara must resign or significantly scale back her demanding residency. This requirement threatens to extinguish the medical career she bled for, forcing her to choose between stability and her identity. ​Forced into this high-stakes arrangement, Elara enters Liam's sterile, controlled world, furious at the man who views her life’s work as a liability. Yet, their forced proximity blurs the sharp lines of the contract. She brings chaos and warmth to his ordered life, and he, in turn, sees the fierce dedication that transcends her financial profile. With her professional life precariously balanced, Elara must decide if Liam’s love is worth the risk of losing her identity, and he must decide if his obsession with control is worth losing the only person who has ever truly challenged the sterile efficiency of his world.

Manhattan was doing that thing again twinkling like it had all the answers, when really it just had expensive lighting. Alexander Knight leaned against the glass wall of his penthouse, seventy-five floors up, watching the city hum below him. Bourbon in one hand (mostly untouched), phone in the other. The merger docs stared back at him from the screen, but the part that actually kept him up at night wasn’t the billions on the line. It was the fine print from the Japanese investors: “Family stability preferred.” Translation: get a wife, look settled, or watch the whole deal slip away. He exhaled, fogging the window for a second before it cleared. His assistant had already sent over a neat little list of “suitable” women—discreet, polished, zero drama. Women who understood arrangements. He hadn’t even opened the attachments. Because something about the whole thing felt… hollow. His gaze drifted down, past the grid of lights, to the tiny café on the corner. Golden glow spilling onto the sidewalk, handwritten sign in the window: Local Artist Pop-Up – One Night Only. A woman stood in front of a canvas, head tilted, paint-smudged shirt slipping off one shoulder. She was talking to someone out of view, laughing softly, then stepped back to study her work like it had personally offended her. She glanced up—straight toward his building, straight at him somehow, even though there was no way she could see him up here. But for a split second, their eyes locked across the impossible distance. But right then, with the whole damn city glittering between them, he had this ridiculous, unshakable thought: She’s the one I’m going to ask. And hell help them both when she says yes.

“If you don’t come back within thirty minutes, I’ll replace my groom, Jackson.” On the other end of the call, Jackson Langham only laughed. To him, Ava Celeste’s threat sounded ridiculous. After all, for the past seven years, Ava had always stayed. Always forgiven him. Always waited for him. Jackson was far too certain that she would never leave. But that day was different. Standing in the middle of a luxurious ballroom filled with conglomerate families, Manhattan media, and elite guests, Ava finally realized one bitter truth: she had never truly been Jackson’s priority. Not even on their wedding day. Even then, he still chose to leave with another woman. And for the first time after seven years of loving someone unconditionally, Ava stopped waiting. Just as everyone assumed the wedding would end as the biggest scandal in Langham family history, a man suddenly stepped forward and extended his hand toward Ava in front of the entire ballroom. Maverick Langham. Jackson’s uncle. The cold, rigid man who had always remained in the shadows of the Langham family. “I may not be able to give you love,” he said quietly, his deep voice steady amidst the chaos surrounding them, “but at least I can save your dignity today. So… will you marry me?” Without hesitation, Ava said yes. That impulsive decision changed everything. In a single night, Ava went from being Jackson’s future wife to becoming his aunt instead. Jackson was forced to watch the woman he had neglected for years slowly fall into another man’s arms. Jackson had every intention of winning Ava back. And he had no plans to let her go so easily. But could he really do it… now that Ava had finally discovered what true love actually meant?  

He is the man her father wants erased. She is the only woman who can bring him to his knees. In neon-soaked New York City, power isn’t inherited—it’s stolen. Twenty-three-year-old Ava Moretti was born into one of Manhattan’s most feared real-estate dynasties, raised to preserve its empire—not question it. Invisible, controlled, untouchable… until she slips into an illegal underground auction hidden beneath a luxury skyscraper. That’s where she meets him. Damian Kade—ruthless tech billionaire, the “Silicon King,” and her family’s greatest enemy. A man who doesn’t lose, doesn’t beg, and doesn’t spare mercy. When a violent deal spirals into chaos, Damian drags her into the shadows and kisses her—hard, commanding, forbidden—just to keep her alive. He doesn’t know she’s a Moretti. She doesn’t know he’s the man her father has spent a decade trying to destroy. What begins as a secret client arrangement quickly turns into obsession. In public, they are enemies whose names should never be spoken in the same room. In private, they are ruin—ripped silk, bruised lips, and truths neither of them were ever meant to survive. “I should walk away from you,” Damian whispers against her skin. “But I don’t believe in should.” But love in their world is never safe. When an attack on Ava’s family is traced back to Kade Industries, she’s forced into an impossible choice: expose the man she loves… or protect him and risk watching her entire bloodline burn. He is the empire her father wants destroyed. She is the key to his downfall. In a city built on betrayal and blood, love is the most dangerous crime of all. How far will you go for the one person you were never meant to survive?