The Apartment

Angelique hasn't seen her dad since birth; she grew up loathing her dad, who abandoned her, molding her into a strong and independent young girl. Angel's single mom raised her, living in a two-room apartment while trying to meet ends. She repays her mom by giving her best in school. Maddox came from a prominent family; his dad is a business tycoon. Despite the wealth they possessed, sadness finds its way to his heart. He is a lonesome boy who chooses to be alone with his trusted friends. Maddox became aloof after the untimely death of her mom until Angel came into his life. Their world collided when Angel got a strange scholarship to study in Maddox's expensive school. They are two worlds apart, yet they find happiness in each other's company and shrug their shoulders at whoever bombarded their friendship. Especially Cassandra, who happened to be interested in Maddox and named Angel as an outcast of their campus. Angel and Maddox surprisingly have too many things in common that falling in love was inevitable. It was a dream come true, like a fairy tale in a movie that they met at the right time they needed someone to shed light on their dark world. Angel gained a lot of haters at school, but Maddox got her back. They shared a genuine relationship until they found out who was behind Angel's scholarship. As if it was not enough, Angel's mom confessed a thing she's been hiding for so long. An event that is bound to change their status, which Cassandra took advantage of. Will Cassandra succeed? Or will Angel and Maddox's love for each other find its way back together?

Edward and I held our engagement party in Las Vegas. Everything seemed perfect—until someone suggested a game of Truth or Dare. One of Edward's female coworkers looked me straight in the eye. "I am pregnant. It is your fiancé's baby." Laughter burst out around us. Everyone thought it was a joke—except Edward. After the trip, we returned home. He looked uneasy. "I'm the father of Juliet's baby," he admitted. "Don't overthink it. We were on a business trip and got too drunk with a client. We accidentally spent the night together. "She is from a British aristocratic family. Reputation matters a lot to her. She will never marry me. She only wants to have the baby and raise it alone." "So what are you saying?" I asked. "I am the father. I have to take responsibility. I will stay in the apartment I rented for her and take care of her pregnancy on weekdays, and come home on weekends. "Our wedding will be delayed. We will get married after the baby is borned." I gave a small smile. So he had it all planned out. He was just here to inform me. He let out a sigh of relief, picked up his Rimowa suitcase, and walked out without looking back. I wiped the tears off my face and began packing away all the memories of our relationship. Suddenly, my phone buzzed. The voice on the other end sounded messy and emotional. "Margot, I freaking love you. Don't marry him. Marry me instead." I froze for a second, then replied, "Okay."

"Shut down for rectification, fined $500,000, plus $300 compensation per customer. That’s the penalty from the Food Safety Bureau. Let’s see if you dare serve us gutter oil again!” Yves Larson, a part-timer at a construction site, sends me a provocative text purposefully, as though he's worried that I don't know what's going on. I just stare at the sign that says "closed for renovation", which is hung on the front door of my eatery. Never would I expect that the budget eatery that I've opened for the sake of the workers will be transformed into a blade that's aimed at me, thanks to the very same workers. That night, I sit in the apartment that my dad has left to me before his death. There, I spend the whole night smoking. Early the next morning, I head over to the bank and withdraw the money left behind by my dad, which is 260 million dollars. Half a month later, my eatery is open for business again. Work resumes at the construction site as well. Yves leads the construction workers to the restaurant at lunch. "I've taught him a good lesson last time. This time, I'm very sure that he won't have the guts to serve us cheap food made of shitty ingredients!" What he doesn't know is that the original eatery is already demolished. In its place stands a luxurious five-star restaurant. I stand in front of the main entrance as I perform a welcoming gesture to the workers. "This is a five-star restaurant that offers a private dining experience to you. The minimum bill for each table is 4000 dollars. You're welcome to dine here."

The day before our engagement, Stellan Graves came shopping with me, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. I bought a chili dog from a street stall and held it up to his mouth only for him to swat it out of my hand, sending it flying to the ground. Fury flashed across his face as he snapped, "Ivy Stein, the Graves family needs a woman who can actually show her face in public. Stop buying cheap trash like this. You're embarrassing me. How do you expect my parents to accept you like this?" I picked up the food in humiliation, threw it into the trash, and nodded meekly for the sake of our four years together in college. "As you wish." … However, the very next day, he switched his fiancee to Amelia Lane. "Ivy, Amelia tried to kill herself just to marry me. She's in the hospital now. Once she's stable again, I'll come back and marry you." Four years later, he showed up at my tiny apartment with a diamond ring in hand. "Ivy, Amelia has already agreed to divorce me. We can finally be together. I told you before—once Amelia lets go of her obsession with me and stops hurting herself, I'll come and marry you." I frowned at Stellan's so-called heartfelt expression. I must have had terrible luck that day. Who'd have thought I'd run into this wacko when I'd come back to my place on a whim?! "Move," I demanded, shoving him out the door. "You're blocking the way. I need to pick up my kid from school."

Maya Reyes is twenty-six, quietly resilient, and out of options. When she takes a live-in nanny position for a Manhattan billionaire, she expects a difficult employer and a lonely child. She gets both, but she also gets Ethan Cole. Ethan lost his wife eighteen months ago and has been managing the grief the only way he knows how: by controlling everything around him. His apartment is spotless, his rules are laminated, his daughter Lily is the only crack in the armour he has built around his life, and it is through Lily that Maya begins to see the man underneath. What follows is not a dramatic love story, it is a quiet one. He carries her to her room when she falls asleep on the floor, he heats her soup when she hasn't eaten. He holds her hand in a dark car and lets go like it never happened. She cooks for him, confronts him, tells him truths no one else will, and slowly without either of them naming it, they become the most important person in each other's lives. But grief doesn't move in straight lines. When Ethan's fear gets the better of him, he tries to restore the distance, and nearly loses the one thing that has made him want to come back to life. It will take a four-year-old's unfiltered honesty, a letter Maya writes from the floor of her room, and a man finally choosing to stop running, for both of them to find their way to the other side of it. When Winter Blooms is a story about what love looks like before anyone admits it exists, and what it costs to let it.

Liam and I have been together for five years. We were supposed to become mates in a month. I have been planning our honeymoon because in these five years, we have never left this city. So I prepared a $100,000 trip in advance as a mating gift for Liam. When I mentioned it to him, before I even finished my words, he interrupted me impatiently, “Who asked you to plan it? For our honeymoon, I will only give you a budget of $50. We’ll just go somewhere nearby for a night.” That night, I found out he had transferred his $1 million hunting competition bonus to his childhood friend Stella, letting her use it to buy an apartment of her own. He got really mad at me, when he saw the receipt for the $100,000 I had prepaid for the honeymoon. “Who gave you the right to spend our future money on a trip?” Liam’s parents also yelled at me, “You are just a useless Omega! You can’t even shift into a werewolf form, unlike Stella, you are not good enough for our son.” But every single cent was earned by myself from my herb business. I broke up with him without any hesitation. Liam stole that trip from me and went on it with Stella instead. Seven years later, we ran into each other at the Alpha’s castle. Liam was about to become a Warrior of the pack. Meanwhile, I was on my knees, searching for something on the floor. “Mia, you broke up with me over a $50 honeymoon fund back then. Now, you are working as a maid? You’re in this mess because of your own choices.” In fact, I was looking for my pup’s favorite toy. It had rolled under one of the tables earlier. “Is that so? Don’t you even know who the Luna of this castle is?”

Ember never meant to make a king. She was just trying to survive her heat without embarrassing herself in front of the massive, infuriatingly calm wolf living in the loft next door. Ember has spent most of her life keeping people at a distance. She’s stubborn, private, and perfectly happy suffering through things alone—including the inconvenient attraction she’s been pretending not to feel toward Ghost. Ghost notices everything. He notices when Ember skips meals. When she hasn’t slept. When she’s pretending she doesn’t need help. Calm, steady, and impossible to shake, he’s the kind of man who doesn’t push—but also doesn’t leave. Which becomes a problem when a violent storm destroys half of Ember’s apartment and Ghost is the one who drags her out of the wreckage. Suddenly the fiercely independent she-wolf who hates relying on anyone is stuck living next door to the one man she’s been trying not to want. Then Ember’s heat hits. What starts as proximity and stubborn attraction turns into something neither of them expected when their bond snaps fully into place—awakening a long-buried bloodline Ember never knew she carried. For generations, wolves like her were known as Kingmakers—rare mates capable of exposing corruption and keeping pack leadership honest. Twenty years ago, someone tried to wipe them out. Now Ember’s power has awakened. And the quiet city she and Ghost call home—long governed by careful politics instead of true pack leadership—is about to change. Because Ghost never wanted to be an Alpha. But Ember’s bloodline has a habit of exposing exactly the kind of wolf who should be. And Ember might have just made a king.

In the third year that I've been diagnosed with late-stage bone cancer, Xenia Jensen, the ex-girlfriend whom I have "abandoned" back then, barges into my rented apartment with the rest of her team that she leads as a police captain. Every day, I have to rely on large amounts of morphine just so I can force myself to stand like a regular human being. I can only twitch violently as I try to grab a pill bottle on the table, my skin completely riddled with needle marks. Xenia chuckles icily as she savors how pathetic I look. "Oh? It's been seven years since we last met, and yet I never thought you'd stoop so low as to become a drug addict. "Where did your gusto to get a better, richer girlfriend go? I can't believe you're willing to humiliate yourself just for some so-called medicine!" As soon as Xenia's words fall, I point at the pill bottle with a trembling finger. "Please, officer… Can you please give me my medicine?" Xenia chortles in response. She picks up the bottle before walking toward the bathroom, soon flushing it down the toilet. "You want your medicine? Go ask the peeps at the rehab for it! It seems both your heart and your body are rotten to the core after you left me for another woman!" I'm in so much pain that I'm convulsing violently right now. "Oh… Then… Am I going to die?" I curl up on the floor, hoping to tide over the latest wave of pain by using the method my doctor has taught me. But Xenia merely gazes at me coldly from the side. In fact, she starts recording me, saying that she wants to make me a living negative example.

I am Eliana Torre, the Consigliere for the Caputo Famiglia. In Deyork, a city controlled by the mafia, everyone calls me Ice Lady. They say I am the first love of many MadeMen, that I clawed my way out of the slums with sheer ability, and am just one step away from the Don of the Caputo Famiglia, Lorenzo Caputo. Only I know that for the past three years, all my hard work and persistence have been just for one goal. I want to be promoted to Senior Consigliere so that I can be worthy of Lorenzo, who is my secret boyfriend. I believe we are in love. We share so many private moments of tenderness, like the late-night embraces in the apartment, the warm breakfast that suddenly appears on my desk, and the way he quietly protects me at business dinners. Until one day, my private photos spread throughout the entire company. I go to Lorenzo for help, but outside his office, I overhear a conversation. "Lorenzo, you casually send out Eliana's intimate photos, and all her efforts over the years are wasted. She can't compete with Fiore for Senior Consigliere anymore. "But I don't get it. Eliana is so beautiful. Even if you are not attracted to her, why do you keep having your brother sleep with her in your place?" It turns out that from the very beginning, Lorenzo is with me only to pave the way for my rival, Fiore Marotta. Even the intimate moments at night are carried out by his younger brother, Vincenzo Caputo, in his place. Tears run down my face. I wipe them away and unlock my phone to buy a ticket to Grayland. Then, I start drafting my resignation letter. I will never, ever return to this city full of deception.

I thought my life was sorted. I have a sweet fiancé Marcus, a cozy apartment and my wedding Pinterest board on lock. As The classic good girl, I saved myself for marriage, never gave anyone trouble and always made safe choices. That was until I met Marcus’ dad Victor. He is tall, suave and deliciously charming. Everything about him turns me on without trying. Just one handshake and my body lit up like fireworks. I panicked and told myself it was hormones. I avoided him like a plague and even gave Marcus my virginity few months to our wedding but it didn’t work. One girls’ night and one weird-tasting drink, I find myself in his bed begging like I’d lost my mind while he ruins me for his son. Now I dream him every night while Marcus snores beside me like nothing’s changed. He has no idea I’m picturing his father when he touches me and that it’s his dad’s name I’m biting back when I come. I tell myself in the mirror every morning:
“Stop! You’re not this person.” But the second we’re in the same room? My willpower cracks. This isn’t cute at all. It’s messy, embarrassing and terrifying.
 The safest choice feels lonelier every day and the dangerous one feels like I’m finally breathing. What am I to do when the person I’m supposed to marry isn’t the one setting my body on fire and the one who is happens to be the last man I’m allowed to want? How long can I keep this affair hidden from Marcus when the wedding is so close and Victor is determined to have not just my body?