Short Story By Nick Joaquin

By day, he's Chicago's most powerful billionaire. By night, he's the city's most dangerous protector. Elena Moretti has spent years fighting for the forgotten—rescuing at-risk youth from the violence that claimed her brother's life. She doesn't trust wealth, power, or the men who wield them. So when enigmatic billionaire Dante Salvatore walks into her struggling community center with a check that could change everything, she knows there's a catch. Men like him don't save neighborhoods out of the goodness of their hearts. But Elena doesn't know Dante's secret: by night, he becomes The Sentinel, a masked vigilante dismantling the criminal empire that murdered his sister. As their worlds collide and attraction ignites between them, Elena begins investigating the vigilante whose methods both terrify and fascinate her—never suspecting the man she's falling for and the man she's hunting are one and the same. When a ruthless crime syndicate discovers The Sentinel's identity, Elena becomes the bait in a deadly trap. Dante must risk everything to save her, but when Elena uncovers the truth about the man behind the mask, she's forced to decide: Can she love someone who lives in shadows? And can a man who's spent years seeking vengeance ever truly step into the light? In a pulse-pounding tale of passion, danger, and redemption, two wounded souls discover that the most dangerous risk isn't fighting for justice—it's fighting for love.

She thought she could endure a loveless marriage to repay her family’s debt—but she didn’t count on the cost of her heart. Once the proud daughter of a wealthy businessman, ELENA BRADFORD watched her life crumble when her father’s betrayal left her and her mother drowning in debt. Desperate to protect her family, she reluctantly agreed to a marriage contract with her father’s former business partner’s reckless son, ADRIAN HAWTHORNE—a man who once loved her during their university days but now only mocks her fall from grace. Trapped in a cold marriage filled with scorn and humiliation, Elena finds herself suffocating under the weight of Adrian’s cruelty. But everything changes at a high-profile dinner when she locks eyes with the one person she never thought she’d see again—LUCAS EVERHART, her childhood best friend, who once confessed his love before vanishing from her life. Now a powerful CEO, Lucas is stunned to see the woman he loved trapped in a toxic marriage. Learning of her misery, he vows to free her from the chains of her past—even if it means clashing with Adrian who refuses to let her go. As old feelings reignite and secrets unravel, Elena must decide: will she fight for the love she once believed in, or will her past mistakes keep her from the future she deserves?

For eighteen years, Cara devoted herself to Caleb—the wolf she thought was her future. She trained beside him, fought for him, and sacrificed everything for him. But when Caleb finally had the chance to claim her, he rejected her… . Left with no choice, Cara returns to the Shadow Wood Pack, the place she once escaped from. She expects to be treated as an outsider, to live quietly in the background. What she doesn’t expect is for fate to play one last cruel trick on her. Liam Wilson—ruthless, powerful, and feared by many—is her mate. Cara is prepared for rejection all over again. She’s not the kind of mate an Alpha like Liam would want. But instead of pushing her away, Liam does the unthinkable. He claims her.

Maximilian Loxley is a ruthless billionaire, haunted by his past. Ada Turner is the maid who stepped into his mansion with a secret plan to destroy him. But the closer she gets to his guarded heart, the harder it becomes to untangle revenge from desire. As lies unravel and truths emerge, they’ll have to choose—let their dark secrets consume them or risk everything for the love they never saw coming.

LUNA: My entire life, I believed I was a simple human with a desire to assist shifters at the hospital where I work. But I could never have foreseen what fate had in store for me the moment I laid eyes on Blazes. For anyone of us. As soon as our worlds collided, all we could see was each other, and our destinies were soon intertwined by a curse that revealed my true identity. Mated to two shifters, it is up to us to break the curse placed on their pack before their demise is written in stone. BLAZE: With every male born into my pack, I can feel my grip on reality slipping, and I know that time is running out. As the future Alpha, it is my responsibility to track down the witch who has caused all of our sufferings and compel her to either break the curse or accept death. It was not part of the mission to find my mate, but it turns out that she is the only one who can save us, and she quickly becomes my addiction… My every desire… Mine. We are bound by our curse. And our passion will only lead us to the sweetest, sharpest edge of obsession, beyond our limits. SAFFRON: I can see how Blaze regards our mate, and I refuse to kiss the ground she walks on as he does. My body aches for her, I cannot deny it. Unfortunately for me, my wolf is loyal to the point of willing self-destruction to protect her. And when the time comes for us to fulfill our destinies and break the curse... Will I be able to succumb to my temptation and then turn it off like a dripping faucet once the ritual is over?

He inherited billions… but not the family name. Noah Quinn was just a broke mechanic—until a dead billionaire claimed him as his son and left him everything. Now thrust into a world of boardroom sharks and backstabbing heirs, he’s got one rule: trust no one. Especially not Lena Vale—the billionaire’s ice-cold stepdaughter who wants him out, humiliated, or dead. But secrets don’t stay buried forever. And in this empire of lies, power isn’t given… It’s taken.

Elena Hart is a genius scientist mired in debt and can't even afford her mother's life-saving surgery. Her rescuer can only be one man: Dominic Blackwood, a ruthless billionaire who doesn't believe in love but needs a wife for some mysterious reason that Elena can't fathom. When he offers to marry her for a relaxed, contractual wedding in exchange for paying off her debts, she signs on. What begins as a bargain slowly becomes something more when both of them begin questioning one another's faith, battling foes, and fighting emotions they had not expected. However, love's journey is not one to be taken lightly. With lies revealed, the foes closing in, and open wounds biting back, they must decide if love can conquer any pact.

Zara Adigun never believed in fairy tales especially not the kind that involved arrogant billionaires and cold, calculated marriages. But when her father fell ill and her family is drowning in debt, she agrees to a one-year marriage contract with the most powerful and emotionally detached bachelor in Lagos (Dami Adeyemi). The deal is to pretend to be the perfect couple in public, live together under strict conditions that she must comply with, and leave when the contract ends with no strings and no emotions attached. But Dami’s icy rules begin to melt as Zara’s fire draws out the man he’s buried deep beneath his grief and guilt. The closer they get, the harder it becomes to stick to the rules, until secrets from the past threaten to destroy everything they were nurturing. Jide Adeyemi—Dami’s estranged brother and Zara’s first love came into the picture to reignite old flames and dark family secrets, Zara finds herself caught in a dangerous love triangle where trust is fragile, and the truth is a weapon. Now, she must decide: 1. To follow the terms of the contract. 2. Run back to the man who once broke her heart, or 3. Fight for a love that was never meant to happen. When hearts are bound by fate, will love survive the truth?

They ruined her, taking away the only thing she cared most about and now she was going to take revenge, she was going to destroy them all, crumble them from the inside and triumph over their destruction, while she watch them beg for mercy before drawing their last breath. It's payback time and no one will be left untouched, not even her mate.

When rising interior designer Valeria Mendoza took a job as an executive assistant at Herrera & Sons, the last thing she expected was to accidentally marry her cold, infuriatingly handsome boss. After a chaotic mix-up with legal paperwork during a corporate event, Valeria finds herself legally bound to Alejandro Herrera, the guarded CEO who doesn’t believe in love but desperately needs a wife to close a multimillion-dollar deal. What starts as a reluctant agreement to "keep up appearances" quickly turns into a tangled web of stolen glances, sizzling tension, and midnight confessions. As the lines blur between fake and real, Valeria must hide the biggest secret of all — her true identity as the daughter of a billionaire family she left behind. But in a world where business and love don’t mix, what happens when the truth comes out? Will Alejandro see her as a liar... or the woman he’s been designing a future with all along?