The Locked Door

After my older sister Rachelle came home from dialysis, the atmosphere at home was suffocating. She curled up on the couch, thin as a rail. She was nagging me hard and telling me not to tire myself out too much at work. Dad was by the door smoking. To get money to treat Rachelle’s condition, he had sold our old house and land. Dirty and muddied, my fiance, who had always viewed Rachelle as a sister of his own, brought home his week’s salary. They all lamented how unfair life was to already poor and suffering people who had to suffer even more. I looked at myself in the mirror with my bleeding nose and flushed away the report with my acute leukemia diagnosis. During dinner, Dad suddenly said, “Ryleigh, Rachelle needs a kidney. You’re healthy and young. You might be a match.” I looked at Rachelle’s pleading eyes and coldly put my cutlery down. “I won’t do it. I’ll be a cripple with one less kidney. How am I supposed to find someone to marry then?” Dad slapped me hard, even as my fiance called me ungrateful. I slammed the door shut as I left. I looked for the nearest room to the hospital to rent so that I could wait it out until I died. The room I found was only five blocks away from the organ donation center.

"Gabrielle" I shouted and she cut me off. "I own your body, your mind, and your soul. Do you understand? Get back to your desk right this moment and I'll forgive what you just said" she ordered, and I knew some men who would have cowered at that threatening tone, but not me. I was flattered that she was dead set on having me, but her threats were all empty. "No, I won't, and I am done with this Gabrielle. Nothing you say or do is going to change my mind" I turned away from her and made to open the door when I heard a familiar click behind me. I whipped around to face her, cautiously taking a step back as my eyes took in the gun in her hand that was aimed directly at my head. My heart skipped in my chest. Now there was clear evidence that she was indeed connected with the Mafias. If she killed me, there was a pretty chance my body would never be found, but then, April could follow it up, and with her dedication, she'd find something. The chances were slim tho. Would she shoot me or not? Her eyes looked dead, decided, but there was also fear lurking within their grey depth, she didn't want to shoot. I called her bluff, pushing the door open. She pulled the trigger. ****** A forbidden love story between a Mafia Don and an undercover cop... A. Dangerous. Love.

Her name is Ruby, a girl with a mysterious background...one who was captured right from childhood and locked up in a facility. She is naive yet swift in everything she does, capturing not one but the attention of the two most feared Alphas in Asteroy! Both brothers could kill to protect one another until she came about. What happens when both brothers fall in love with her at the same time? Will they relinquish their love for her because of their Twin bond? What happens when Ruby discovers that one of the twins is her mate? That's right, one of them, not the two whom she likes!

Sabrina is disappointed and heartbroken when she catches her fiance Kyler and her best friend, Charlotte engaged in a 'love workout' on his bed. As if that were not enough, her stepsister tricked her into the woods where she pushed her off a cliff and left her for dead. Surviving and reaching home, she's disowned by her father with accusations of being a slut and selling company secrets to their rival. Locked out of her home in the cold rain, she decides to get wasted at a hotel bar— a decision that would fetch her twins and a gorgeous CEO.

After my sister's appendectomy left her without both kidneys, I took a scalpel and held an entire hospital hostage. I locked twelve doctors and three patients in the morgue, announcing to the world they'd all been infected with HIV. With only three hours until the treatment window closed, the doctors, trembling and begging, swore that they knew nothing. I started a live stream, flashing a blood-stained scalpel. "You have three hours to find my sister's kidneys." I didn't care if they were already inside someone else.

I was locked in a fridge for 40 days while the uncensored photos of me spread like wildfire across the internet. In the face of the salacious rumors about me, my mother reacted by reposting them. Then, she turned to warn my sister, "Look at how disgusting the entertainment industry is. Don't join it, alright? Stay home and inherit your sister's assets instead. My dearest daughter must be innocent and pure, unlike her." She forgot. She forgot I only joined this 'disgusting' industry to pay for her cancer treatment.

To protect my boyfriend, Nico, the illegitimate son of our allies, the Moretti family, from their internal power struggles, I agreed to leave New York with him. But on the eve of my adoptive father, the Don of the Falcone family, signing our transfer orders, he backed out. Through the hidden door of the cigar lounge, I heard his right-hand man tease him: "So you really kept up that act for three months just to get rid of the princess?" "But she's your childhood sweetheart. You really have the heart to some miserable fishing village in the Baltics all by herself?" Nico's voice was nonchalant. "It's just an outpost across the pond. How far can it be?" "Scarlett is too controlling. If I don't get her out of the picture, how am I supposed to get any breathing room? Besides, I need to put Chloe at ease." I stood behind that hidden door for a long time that night, my grip on the doorknob tightening until my knuckles were white, before I finally let go. I turned and walked away, pulling out my tablet to change my flight plan. I changed the destination from the official plan of that desolate Baltic outpost to a seat at the High Table in Sicily, which is the absolute center of old-world Mafia power. Everyone seemed to have forgotten. I am the princess of the Falcone family. And he is nothing but filth from the gutter. We were never a match.

One week after moving into my new home, my neighbor, Penny Halpern, suddenly knocks on my door and claims that my son, Benedict Geller, has been spying on her daughter, Monica Ritter, when the latter is bathing. "I saw everything with my own eyes! Every day, he'd cling to the windowsill and spy on me when I'm bathing! He even took pictures of me with a camera! "I'm so scared! Who knows what he's doing with those pictures? That boy really is disgusting!" Penny and Monica threaten me to call the police on Benedict if I don't pay them soon. Feeling rather puzzled, I just kick them out of my apartment. Unexpectedly, Penny summons all the neighbors in the residential area over to my place the next day. They all gather outside my door and begin insulting us at the top of their lungs. "Hey, pervert! Get out here and apologize to the victim!" "Take that perverted son of yours and leave this place! We want peace to be returned to our neighborhood!" When I tune the neighbors out, they begin smashing everything they can see at my front door. So, I can only call the police. When the police arrive, I bring Benedict out of the apartment before taking his sunglasses off. "Officer, I'd like to ask just how can my son spy on others, in this case?"

(De Bonnevie Series #1) Athena de Bonnevie is from the wealthy and prominent French family in Cebu. Despite being wealthy, she stays down to earth and reachable. And as she keeps going around being friendly to everyone, she meets this undeniably gorgeous best friend of her twin brother that she never knew existed. And as time passes by, she slowly unlocks the door to the secrets of this oh-so-hot guy named Ares. But by the time the news came to her that he died, her whole world tore apart. Or so she thought.

The notorious hacker of the Underworld Misha, who kills more gracefully than the reaper himself, enters into a contractual marriage with Chicago's most dangerous man, Lord of the Crime world Killian Alvarez. Misha can break any cyber lock, and no door in the underworld is beyond Killian's reach. They form a lethal team, but in order to destroy their enemies, they reach an unlikely agreement. The penalty for betrayal in this marriage contract is death, and trust in this world has a cost. Desire was not planned, but it happened anyway. Could two of the most ruthless criminals in the underworld survive falling in love?