The Curben Hotel Novels & Stories

Five years ago, I was his life and I thought we would be the end game until Rosalin, his new assistant, seeped into our life. It began with urgent late night meetings. Our dinner conversations, once filled with shared secrets and soft laughter, were replaced by the rhythmic tapping of his thumbs against his phone. He stopped looking at me across the table, his gaze permanently fixed on the glowing screen as he replied to her "emergency" texts. When I’d walk into his office, the air would turn brittle. He’d stop talking mid-sentence, Rosalin leaning over his shoulder with a look that wasn't professional. But the breaking point was when he left me waiting for six hours on our anniversary Gala to celebrate Rosaline’s birthday. “We got occupied with something, Victoria.” He said, “Rosaline has brought cake for you. It was her birthday as well.” Just then a notification came into my phone. It was Rosaline’s post. She had posted a picture minutes before entering the gala. She was sitting in a seven-star hotel, the one I asked Jayden to book for our Anniversary but he refused after saying it was full. She had been cutting her birthday cake surrounded by red candles’ flames and a pair of hands had cupped hers. Jayden’s hands. He had ghosted our Anniversary Gala to celebrate Rosaline’s birthday! That was when I realised, I had no future with this man. I will disappear from his world, taking his child with me.

After writing an essay about the future I wanted, I made a desperate appeal to my parents, just as Aaron Wade was likely doing in the hall of a business his family owned. The appeal lasted two days. Our demand was simple: annul the engagement between us. Others might have found this confusing, but I knew exactly why it mattered. In my previous life, I married Aaron and gave him everything. I devoted my career to him and stood at the peak of his business empire. He repaid me by forcing me to take the fall for Rebecca, a so-called heiress. I was arrested and sent to prison. "Had you not forced us into an engagement the moment you got into Iale University, I would have ended up with her instead," he sneered. "You owe her this, Bernadette. It's time you paid up." Even my own parents joined in. "You robbed Becky of what she deserves. Think of this as your divine retribution!" They had supported the engagement back then. Rage overwhelmed me and triggered a cardiac arrest. I died on the spot. While my body lay cold in the morgue, Aaron and Rebecca held a lavish wedding at a five-star hotel to celebrate their union. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day I had written about the future I wanted. Now I knew what that future looked like. It had none of these people in it. This time, I would live for myself.

School had just dismissed us for the exam-break when my roommate begged me not to leave her alone in the dorm. She said she was scared and wanted to come home with me. Out of kindness, I brought her back with me. I had no idea that the very first night, she would sneak into my brother's room, and by the next morning, she was screaming that he had assaulted her. Because of that, my brother missed the exam, and his reputation was ruined. When the school board found out, they expelled him. No other school would take him in. To keep me from getting involved in this mess at school, my parents had no choice but to let that roommate live with us. After that, she treated our home like her personal hotel: never lifting a finger, demanding that my parents wait on her every night, and even having them wash her feet. My brother dropped out and took up work at an illegal factory just to support her spending. Then one day, a machine crushed him at that factory. My parents, already exhausted and heartbroken, fell gravely ill and passed away soon after. I was consumed by hatred. In the end, I dragged the roommate who destroyed my family down into the flames with me. Even as I died, I still couldn't understand. What kind of bitter grudge did her family have against mine for her to ruin us like that? But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day she asked to come home with me…

During my three-year secretive relationship with my boss, Zane Bender, we used 999 condoms. Before Zane dated me, he'd go through 20 partners per month. After he started dating me, he only bedded me and me only. He promised me that he'd give me a surprise on my birthday. I thought it was going to be a grand proposal. But the moment the clock struck 12, Zane called me. "Cassidy, buy a pack of condoms and deliver it to the 31st floor of Mavelon Hotel right now. Remember, I want the extra thin ones." At that moment, I couldn't believe my ears. Before I could react, Zane completely lost his patience. He urged, "Stop standing around! Hurry up and get over here! Lily and I are in the mood right now!" Lily Hubbard was the charming secretary who recently joined the company. My complexion turned pale instantly. "You're sleeping with her, Zane? Then… Then who am I to you?" Zane fell silent for a while. Then, he let out a soft chuckle. "You? You're just a bedwarmer who can help alleviate my urges. That's all." It turned out that the so-called surprise wasn't a proposal. It was just me fantasizing about a relationship that never existed in the first place. The pink bubbles of love and romance finally popped on my 25th birthday. After that, a car accident completely changed everything in my life. When I meet Zane again, he realizes that he can no longer win back the heart of his "pet".

I used to be a top ballet dancer. The year I was diagnosed with a spinal hemangioma, my boyfriend Julian Blackwood said, "Wherever you go, I go." We'd been together three years. He walked beside me as I went, step by step, from the most luminous dancer on that stage to a woman in a wheelchair. Every time the nerve pain hit and I collapsed, he was the one who lifted me off the floor. Every round of electrostim and acupuncture, he sat in the corridor outside the therapy room and waited for me to come out. Before I got sick, he promised me—the night I finished my final performance of Swan Lake, we'd sign the marriage license. He'd bought tickets for that show three months in advance. I never stood on that stage again. And the marriage license never came up. Until the morning I noticed the collar of his white dress shirt carried a smudge of lipstick that wasn't mine. I heard him on the balcony. A woman's voice on the other end. "Mr. Blackwood, you left your jacket at the hotel last night. I'll bring it over." I stared at that smear of red, and something in me snapped. I laughed. "Send me to Westbrook. The locked-down rehab facility. I don't want to drag you down anymore." Something flickered in his eyes—a brief, animal panic. Then he nodded. He thought I meant rest. He didn't know I'd already signed the papers to donate my body to science. I was going there to die.

Her husband killed her for her inheritance. Reborn three years before her death, she refuses to be the obedient, "useless" wife she once was. For three years, Ahtisa lived as a submissive wife to Adrian Vale, enduring his coldness and his mother's bitter humiliations. She gave up her career as a police officer and her identity just to support his ambitions. But on the night of their anniversary, the illusion shattered. She caught Adrian in a hotel room with Isabella the very girl Ahtisa had saved from the streets. Instead of showing remorse, Adrian struck her down, leaving her to bleed out on the floor while they gloated over stealing her late father’s forty-billion-dollar fortune. As her vision faded, only one man arrived to save her: Lucien Blackwell, the ruthless billionaire she had once personally arrested because of her husband's lies. With her last breath, she vowed to make them pay. Waking up three years in the past, the docile wife is gone. Back in the interrogation room on the day of her greatest mistake, Ahtisa refuses to arrest Lucien. Instead, she offers him a dangerous pact: Power for revenge. When Adrian arrives at the reading of her father's will, expecting her to blindly sign over her fortune, Ahtisa tears the contract to pieces in front of his greedy eyes. "I won't be transferring a single dime. And I am filing for divorce." Adrian begs for a second chance. But she is already untouchable with the city's most feared man guarding her from the shadows.

On the night Keyla Tamara was supposed to marry Adrian Churchill, she found him with another woman. Broken, furious, and trapped inside a hotel controlled by his powerful family, Keyla ran before the Churchills could turn her into the scandal. Then she entered the wrong suite. Inside was Draxler Roman Churchill, Adrian’s ruthless older brother, the man everyone feared, and the one person Keyla should never have touched. One forbidden night was supposed to be revenge. By morning, she disappeared with his black cufflink in her hand and left only a torn piece of her wedding veil behind. Five years later, Keyla returns for a funeral with a little boy beside her. Leon Tamara is quiet, cold-eyed, and too observant for a child. He does not trust strangers. He does not like rich men. And when Draxler sees him, the truth hits harder than any confession. Leo is his son. Now Adrian wants Keyla destroyed. Vivienne wants to bury the past before it exposes her. Eleanor Churchill wants the hidden heir under her control, and Draxler wants the family he never knew he had already lost. But Keyla is no longer the humiliated bride who ran. She is a mother who built a life from the wreckage they left behind. She survived without the Churchill name, without their money, and without Draxler’s protection. So if Draxler wants a place beside her and Leo, he cannot demand it as a father, buy it as a billionaire, or claim it as a Churchill. He has to earn it.

For seven years, my CEO girlfriend never once came home with me to see my parents. She told me that she hated social obligations, and that she didn't want to deal with the gossip and hassle that came with meeting my parents and relatives. Even in daily life, she treated me with cold professionalism, never spending any anniversaries with me in favor of working overtime. I'd always thought that it was just a simple matter of her being too rational and prideful, and I was fine with slowly teaching her how to nurture a relationship. That was, until Thanksgiving arrived. Once again, she stressed that holidays were just a capitalistic norm, and that she was going to work overtime instead of coming home with me. By chance, however, I accidentally stumbled upon my intern's social media. Inside a private room at a five-star hotel, he and his family sat at a table as my girlfriend sat beside him, carefully serving him food. [Yo, my boss secretly brought my parents into the city for Thanksgiving, and even gave me gifts! She told me that I was worth special gestures, too. Where can you even find a boss this romantic? My parents even told me to marry her as soon as I could! LOL!] So she knew better than anyone how to make people feel cherished. I just wasn't worth any of it. I commented: [How romantic.] Then, I messaged my girlfriend. [Let's break up.]

"They say there's a fine line between love and madness but for you, I don't have one." My sister was supposed to marry him and I wasn’t supposed to sleep with him. Rhea Bennett has always been the outsider in her own family, overlooked, unwanted, never chosen. Until one reckless night changes everything. After meeting a dark, magnetic stranger at a hotel bar, Rhea gives in to a pull she can’t resist. One sinful night in his arms leaves her breathless… Until she comes home for family dinner and finds him standing there. Darnell Donovan. Her sister’s billionaire fiancé. Darnell was supposed to be part of a business arrangement, nothing more. But from the moment he touched Rhea, everything changed. Now he can’t stay away. When Darnell offers Rhea an internship at his company, temptation becomes impossible to escape. Every stolen glance, every forbidden touch drags them deeper into betrayal. Rhea knows she should run. She should hate him. Instead, she’s falling for the one man she can never have. But Darnell doesn’t care about right or wrong. He doesn’t care who gets hurt. He only knows one thing, he wants her. And his obsession doesn’t ask permission. As desire turns dangerous, Rhea must decide if loving the man engaged to her sister is worth destroying her family. Because her sister may wear his ring… But Rhea owns his obsession.

“Are you going to kill me?” Shawn whispered. Owen’s fingers slid up his throat, squeezing lightly as he backed him against the wall. “If I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t still be talking.” Shawn swallowed hard. “Then what do you want?” His mouth curved, giving him that dangerous rugged smile. “I’m deciding.” *** That morning, Shawn only wanted to finish his shift, collect his pay, and get back to the real problems waiting for him outside the hotel: tuition he couldn’t afford, a mother dying in a hospital bed, and a younger sister who still believed he could fix everything. Then he walked into the wrong suite. There was blood on white sheets. Fangs buried deep in a dying man’s throat. Crimson eyes meeting his across the room. The creature should have killed him. But no, it didn't. It let him run. Now it’s everywhere. In his dreams, his space and in his thoughts. Watching him. Waiting… And just when he thinks the nightmare can’t follow him into daylight, he learns. The vampire has a name. Owen Rothwell de Valemont, as old as history. And he’s Shawn’s new boss. Owen doesn’t chase him. He doesn’t threaten. He simply moves closer, adjusting the world around Shawn until escape becomes impossible. And Shawn, fear should drive him away. Instead it turns into something darker. Something harder to resist.