Stock Up Again Crossword Clue Novels & Stories

“Who the hell changed the screw tolerance by 0.007 mm?” “I did. Is there a problem?” Kimmy Zabel, our department’s “good-luck charm” and full-time slacktivist, did not even look up from her compact mirror, where she was carefully applying lip gloss. “It just didn’t look right, so I tweaked it. Do you really have to yell at me?” The production line had been running on the wrong spec for twenty-four hours. I hit the emergency stop. Keeping my voice steady took some effort. “These parts no longer meet export standards. If we miss tomorrow’s shipment, even a month of overtime wouldn’t cover the penalties.” “It’s one tiny number. You’re being so dramatic!” Kimmy snapped her makeup case shut. “Anyway, it’s New Year’s Eve. I’ve got a date. I’m not staying here to suffer with you people.” Before she even reached the door, I gestured to the staff to pull the shutters down. “For precision components like these, one number translates into a million-dollar loss. You can take these defective units and explain them to the regulators.”

In the Corvona underworld, there is one unspoken rule. When a Don keeps a new woman by his side for three consecutive months, the Donna must personally remove the signet ring symbolizing her power and place it on the new woman's finger before the entire family. When my husband, Luca, the Don of the Bellini family, announced he would take Mia alone on a three-month business trip, the entire Corvona underworld waited for me to have a meltdown. I had been with Luca Bellini for seven years. I followed him everywhere, refusing to leave his side. I would even wake up in the middle of the night to touch him, needing to know he was there to feel secure. They were all aware of my clinginess and were betting I would never let go. But when Mia extended her hand to me, her voice dripping with saccharine, I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly removed the signet ring engraved with the family crest and slid it onto her ring finger. Luca, lounging in the leather chair at the head of the table, swirled the whiskey in his glass, satisfaction gleaming in his cold blue eyes. "Elara, you've finally learned your place." I lowered my gaze to my bare finger, saying nothing in return. What Luca didn't know was that a month ago, I had recovered all seven years of my lost memories. I wasn't some street orphan at all, but the long-lost Principessa of the Rossi family, the most powerful of the Old World families. In three days, my brother's armed convoy would roll into Corvona to take me home.

My wife, Rosalie Lockwood, locks me up in a villa located in the suburbs for three days because I've forgotten to feed her first love's dog once. Unfortunately, the villa somehow gets set on fire. I call Rosalie for help and beg her to tell me where she's hidden the key. But she merely replies lightly, "Today is Caleb's birthday. Don't think about ruining this big day for us! Once Caleb's mood lightens up after we're done celebrating his birthday, I'll let you out." I try to save myself, but the water supply in the villa is already cut off. Soon, the signal goes out, too. I can only watch as I get surrounded by the ruthless inferno. Eventually, everything in the villa is reduced to ashes. Even when I'm burned to nothing but bones, help still never comes for me…

Fiona had been nothing but a prude in the office, her wild and happening days left far behind for her to feed herself and her sister. But one night to loosen up and have some fun leads to her doing the unthinkable, sleeping with her scary and enigmatic boss. And now suddenly, he is obsessed with her.

My name is Clara Kelly. I was born in Brooklyn, into an Irish-American cop’s family. My father spent his whole career walking a beat out of the 84th Precinct. My mother volunteered at the parish. I was the first girl on our block to get into Columbia Law. The year I graduated, I was volunteering at a charity gala. I picked up the wrong glass of wine and ended up dumping it down the front of a man’s Brioni suit. That man was Adrian Francesco Moretti. Fourth-generation Don of the Moretti Family of New York, and one of the five families of Cosa Nostra. He chased me for four years. I said no six times. The seventh time, he stood outside my law firm in the rain until three-fifteen in the morning. I married him. Two decades in, he’d handed me the keys to the entire Moretti Family. In our world they called me “the Irish Donna,” a woman with no Italian blood who somehow held the seat. Childless by choice, the two of us. Famously in love. Until that Wednesday afternoon, when my college roommate of twenty years, my best friend Vivian Sinclair, walked into my living room with a five-year-old boy. She said the boy was Adrian’s son. She said that five years ago, she’d taken a used condom out of the wastebasket in my upstairs master bedroom, kept it frozen for three years, and done IVF. She said she was the real mother of the Moretti heir. She was the real Donna Moretti. “Be smart. Pack your bags and walk out. You might even get to keep your life.” “You’re barren. The Moretti Family doesn’t need you.” I looked at the woman I’d called my best friend for half my adult life. I didn’t say a word. She thought she was holding the winning card. What she didn’t know was that she’d just stepped onto a board Adrian and I had been laying for twenty years. I needed exactly one sentence to shatter every piece of the Donna fantasy she’d spent five years building.

"What's your name?" He asked, making the managers go shut at once. They followed his gaze and it landed on Mallory. Mallory felt her soul being pierced. Did he just ask for her name? Her Wilder didn't even know her name? "Uh... her name is..." "Let her speak for herself, Arlo" Wilder raised his hand at his cousin who zipped up at once. Then, reluctantly, Mallory muttered: "I'm Mallory Harrington." Wilder said nothing, his gaze on her unreadable. Then, she asked. "Don't you... remember me?" "Am I... supposed to know you?" Wilder asked with an unfeigned doubt. This broke Mallory even more. How can her Wilder not recognize her? Her next breath came raggedly, she had to drop her teary gaze to the floor. "How can you not remember me?" She winced. "We were..." ********** What happens when Mallory goes to work one morning and discovers the new CEO who was the soon-to-be heir to one of the richest companies in the world was her ex-husband who had been missing for seven years? How does she tell him she used to be married to him before he went missing? How does she tell him she was still very much in love with him and wanted him back in her life, even if there was someone else? How does she tell him she had twins at home that looked like him? How does she tell him any of these when he couldn't recognize her and acted very cold towards her? What happened to her Wilder?

In the silver Moon Pack, Elara was an Omega who was wolfless. She was a servant who slept in the dirt, and a debt-child used as a footstool by the Alpha’s family. She spent her life waiting for her destined mate to save her. But when Kaelen finally looked her in the eye, he rejected her as his mate publicly. “I, Kaelen of Silver-Moon, reject Elara as my mate. A true Alpha needs a Luna who is strong, not a slave.” Left to die in the freezing rain, Elara thinks her story is over. Out of the darkness come four men who look like gods and move like predators. They are the Vane brothers, the most powerful Alpha bloodline in the world. They have been hunting for their lost sister, Elara, for two decades. Caspian, the Ruthless CEO, Julian, the Brilliant Surgeon. Silas, the Lethal Lawyer. Dante, the Mafia King. They promised to burn the world down for her. They promised she would never be hungry, lonely, or unloved again. But as Elara’s true power awakens–a silver energy that humbles even the strongest Alphas–a dark secret emerges from the Vane family’s past. Her brothers saved her from the Silver Moon Pack, but they might be hiding the truth about her past. And in the shadows, a twin she never knew existed is coming to reclaim the throne.

Charlie Sinclair married me to punish me. He had a reason. He believed it. He never asked me a single question about it in three years. He never looked at my face for three years either. Then the woman he had been waiting for came home, and he handed me the divorce papers without looking up. He never knew I left that house carrying a secret. Two of them. I came back five years later with an empire he does not know I built, and two children he does not know are his. Yesterday he saw me at JFK. For the first time in eight years, he looked. He knelt down and handed my daughter her ball, and he did not know whose eyes were looking back at him. Too late, Mr. Sinclair. I am no longer the wife you could not see.

Axel, handsome, smart, with a secret that hasn't been revealed yet, a secret that could clear up that mess of conflicting feelings that he was just having, that made him feel bad of what he felt for HER. Was it possible to have such strong feelings for someone who was connected to you by blood? But was she? She was the only person who helped him, who got him out of his crisis, who calmed his head when he started thinking too much. Emma was his sleeping pill, and the heartbeat that made his heart live. Ali never let her feelings control her, she didn't want to get hurt, and she never would let anyone get inside that part of her and hurt her. But there was him, Miles, there had always been only him, and he had tried so hard that by now she had become accustomed to his presence, to have him in her bed, but what would have happened if Miles had found something better? Someone who could give him what Ali never did in all those years? Would Alison have understood how important he really was to him or let him fly away from her? Liam had eyes always and only for one person, but that person never looked at him, her attention was focused on someone else, and Liam had done nothing but remain silent, let that love consume him silently until he met her, Ellen. She was everything a man could want in a woman, she consumed him, turned him around in her hands. But what would have happened if that love, that little flash of light had returned when he least expected it? If he had awakened in him that something he thought was lost forever? Who would have chosen Liam?

“Come back to me, Ivy,” the man whom she used to love with all her heart said. “No, no,” Ivy shook her head and backed away from him. Her body trembled as fear consumed her whole being. He was the reason her baby was gone! He was the reason for all her suffering! ---------------------------- Ivy thought she was the luckiest woman in the world - she was married to the man of her dream. But that was just her illusion. On the day she received her pregnancy report, she found her husband in bed with his best friend. Before she had the chance to tell him about her pregnancy, she was forced to divorce and her family was driven to bankruptcy by that one man she loved. Since then, her life went south. She married a governor in another country whom everyone thought was a gentleman. Everyone envied her, but no one knew he was a sadist who loved to abuse her. Five years later, the man she used to love met her by chance and begged her to come back. But would she be able to give her heart again, when all she felt toward him was fear and hatred? Knowing that he was the sole reason her life had turned to be what it was today with endless suffering? Cover art by Rainygraphic.