Novel & Cerita The Paris Apartment

“Oh my darling Uncle”. I said while hugging him as he was backing me. “Uncle?”. A different voice asked and it seems to come from the person I'm hugging. He turned around with me in his arms and I stared into his eyes. Dark eyes. Uncle Max's eyes are blue, like mine. I let go of him immediately like I had been burned and blushed furiously. “Uhm, sorry. I thought you… were my uncle”. I told him. A chuckle brought my attention back to his handsome face. “Hello cutie, why do you think your uncle is here?” He said, his voice sending shivers down my body. *** Happiness Matthews, a 19-year-old college freshman, thought she had everything figured out when she left her small Texas town for the bright lights of California. But after a dangerous security guard targets her in her new apartment, she has to move in with Mason, her uncle's friend, who she met two years ago at his wedding. Mason, a man in his thirties still haunted by the woman who left him at the altar two years ago, never expected to share his home with his best friend’s niece. At first, their living arrangement seems like a temporary inconvenience—but the longer they stay under the same roof, the harder it becomes to ignore the magnetic tension building between them. As the lines between family and desire blur, Happiness finds herself drawn to the man who carries both charm and a painful past. But with every passing day, the unspoken rules become more difficult to follow, and a dangerous truth about Mason’s past threatens to tear them both apart. In a story where forbidden attraction and unresolved heartbreak collide, Happy must choose between loyalty, family, love, and her own future—before the stakes get even higher

At 10:00 pm sharp, a food deliveryman wearing a cap knocks on the door of Unit 502. "Excuse me, are you the one who ordered delivery?" Unit 502 is an apartment that's rented out to multiple people. There are three rooms here altogether. The one opening the door is my roommate, William Yates. He has his headphones on and is currently immersed in a game. So, he waves a hand impatiently. "It wasn't me." The deliveryman wastes no time in pulling out a machete. Immediately, he slashes William's throat in one fluid motion. Next, the deliveryman opens the door leading to another bedroom while holding the takeout. "Did you order delivery?" That room belongs to a gym trainer named Leon Holton. He's obviously taken aback by the deliveryman's presence. "Nope. Who are—" The deliveryman doesn't give Leon a chance to finish his question. He reacts by plunging the machete into Leon's heart. When I'm done with my shower, I open the bathroom door to see large puddles of blood on the floor as well as the deliveryman, who's wielding a machete. "They weren't the ones who ordered delivery. Did you do it?" Scared out of my wits, I subconsciously shake my head. "It's not me! I don't know anything—" Before I can finish speaking, the deliveryman hacks me to death. When I open my eyes again, I've gone back five minutes in time before I get murdered in cold blood. Almost immediately, I rush out of the bathroom, only to see the alarmed expressions plastered all over William's and Leon's faces. That's when I'm certain that everyone has gotten reborn. Suddenly, the doorbell rings loudly. A suppressed masculine voice echoes afterward. "Excuse me, are you the one who ordered delivery?"

Helen Sinclair walked out of a penthouse with nothing but a bag she'd packed four months before she needed it. No note. No explanation. Just a text — I can't do this anymore — and she left. She had married Alexander Sinclair because her father's company was drowning and the Sinclair name was the only life raft available. Nobody told her that. She figured it out herself, eighteen months too late, sitting on a cold bathroom floor with a positive pregnancy test while her husband's voice carried through the wall on another call that mattered more than she did. So she left. Three years later she is Helen Carter, living in Boston. Small apartment, a plant named Gerald, a job she earned herself. A quiet life entirely hers. She is also fourteen weeks pregnant with a child Alexander doesn't know exists. Then Julian Cross calls. He knows you're in Boston. He's coming himself. Alexander arrives with no team, no lawyers, no plan — which is so unlike him it frightens her. He says he just needed to see she was okay. She almost believes him. Then his eyes drop to her stomach and she watches him understand everything without a single word. What follows is a collision neither of them is prepared for. Alexander, who has never chased anything, now refuses to leave. Helen, who rebuilt herself from nothing, refuses to be pulled back. Julian Cross is realizing he has feelings for the woman his employer never deserved. And Nina Sinclair is about to blow everything open before Helen gets to decide anything herself. This is not a story about a woman who gets rescued. It's about one who makes the man who lost her prove he's worth finding again — on her terms, or not at all.

When Jax Wilder pins Nova Ellis against a frat house wall on a full moon night, he tells himself it means nothing. By sunrise he proves it — calling her worthless in front of his laughing teammates, banning her from his world like she was something he'd accidentally tracked in from outside. What he doesn't know: she's already carrying his sons. For three years, Nova builds a life out of nothing. Two jobs. A tiny apartment with glow stars on the ceiling. Twin boys with their father's jaw and her unbreakable spine, raised on love and stubbornness and the quiet ferocity of a woman who stopped waiting to be rescued somewhere around month two. She doesn't need Jax Wilder. She doesn't need anyone. She has everything she built and she built it herself. Then the Alpha King walks into her charity gala. Jax has spent three years believing she was dead — dragged away by rogue wolves the night she finally told him the truth, the night he was too cowardly to hear it. He's been carrying that like a wound ever since, ruling the United Packs with everything he has except the one thing that mattered. When he catches her scent across a crowded ballroom and turns to find two little boys wearing his face, looking back at him like they already know who he is — his entire world restructures itself around a single fact. He threw away the wrong woman. Some alphas build thrones. Some women discover, only after losing everything, that they were the foundation the whole time. And some rejections come with a cost — three years of compound interest, two future kings, and a Luna Queen bloodline eight hundred years old that makes his crown look like a recent development.

Abigail Hale was nothing when billionaire Dominic Blackwood found her. She was broke, and desperate for survival and what began as a quiet arrangement turned into something neither of them expected: a connection so deep it felt fated. Like they were written in the stars, like they were meant to be together. He became her protector, her obsession, the man who made her believe she mattered. Then he betrayed her. To protect his empire and secure a political marriage, Dominic rejected Abigail publicly and framed her as a gold digger, and destroyed her reputation in one calculated move. She lost her job, her home, and her dignity, while he married another woman and pretended she never existed. He didn't go looking for her, no apologies just silence for years. He was wrong about everything. Years later, Abigail returns stronger, colder, and unrecognizable. She works at a mid-level position in a company she doesn't know is part of Dominic's shadow empire. But she's not just surviving anymore she has been planning, watching and waiting for the perfect moment to destroy everything he built because she knows secrets about the Blackwood empire that could burn it to ash. The moment Dominic sees her again, something inside him wakes up and the obsession returns again violent and possessive, the qualities that made her fall when they met. But there's something different about her now, something he can't place. She's not afraid anymore, not the scared waitress he helped out of the slums. She looks him in the eye and speaks with power now and even uses indirect insults. He starts buying everything around her including her apartment building, her workplace and every piece of her new life. He thinks he's trapping her but he doesn't realize she wants to be found.

"Strip for me," he commanded, his ice-blue eyes devouring her. "Tonight, I take what's mine." I thought I knew betrayal when I caught my fiancé's balls-deep in another woman. I thought I'd hit rock bottom when that woman turned out to be my TWIN SISTER. But the real knife in my back? He was her boyfriend first. For eight months, she fed him every secret about me—my fears, my dreams, my insecurities—so he could seduce me, make me fall in love, and destroy me when it hurt the most. Why? Because she's always hated that I'm successful. That I'm respected. That people love me for who I am, not what I look like. So there I was—promoted, engaged, happy—walking into my fiancé's apartment to celebrate... only to find him f*cking my sister against the wall while she smirked at me over his shoulder. "Surprise, sister. He was always mine." I should've gone home. I should've cried. Should've been the victim they wanted me to be. Instead, I walked into the most exclusive bar in New York and caught the attention of the most dangerous man in the city. Dante Ashford. Billionaire. My ex-fiancé's boss. Sex personified. And currently getting pleasured by a beautiful blonde in the VIP lounge—while staring directly at ME. He said my name while another woman's mouth was on him. Then he dismissed her with one cold word: "Leave." When I demanded to know how he knew who I was, he smiled like the devil making a deal. "I know everything about you. Your cheating fiancé and backstabbing sister. I know exactly how to make them pay." His offer was simple: Marry me. Destroy them. I'll give you power, wealth, and revenge. My response shocked us both: "I'll marry you. But first... take my virginity. Tonight."

In my previous life, my three sons told me they wanted to set up a Family Bond Fund for me. Each of them would deposit three thousand dollars every month. I cried with gratitude, truly believing that decades of sacrifice had finally paid off. One of them even said, "Mom, you've given us so much. It's our turn to take care of you now." However, eight years later, I was told I have uremia. That was when I discover that the bank card, which supposedly held the fund, couldn't even cover the dialysis deposit. Soon after, my eldest son video-called me. He said he wanted to buy a better apartment in a good school district. He was short of 150 thousand dollars for the down payment and asked if I could lend it to him first. My second son came to the hospital with his wife and daughter. He didn't ask about my condition at all. Instead, he kept showing off his daughter's piano competition trophy, hinting that he needed 50 thousand dollars to enroll her in a prestigious international piano program. My youngest son was even more straightforward. He said he had his eye on a limited-edition pair of sneakers and wanted me to pay 30 thousand dollars for them as a birthday gift. The moment they realized the bank account didn't have enough money, their faces fell. "We each put in three thousand dollars every month. Over eight years, that's at least eight hundred thousand dollars. Mom, are you hiding the money from us?" To force me to reveal my savings, they took turns pressuring me, switching between sweet talk and threats. They even told relatives that I had dementia and had been scammed out of my money. Unable to take it anymore, I yanked out my IV late one night and walked out of the hospital, only to be hit by a car, dying instantly. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the day of my hospital checkup.

I was in a car accident while saving my brothers. However, instead of gratitude, they urged the doctors to amputate my legs. "Carol, we're sorry," they said through tears. "We're useless… but don't worry. Even if we have to sell our blood or our kidneys, we'll make sure you're taken care of." Right after surgery, they abandoned me in a shabby apartment. Blood seeped through the sheets as they looked at me with teary eyes—then left in a hurry, claiming they needed to earn money for my treatment. I did not want to drag them down anymore. Enduring the pain, I crawled to the rooftop of a tall building, planning to end my life. That's when I saw it—inside a luxury hotel, a grand celebration was taking place. My brothers were there doting on another girl. She was eating an extravagant cake I had never even dreamed of, wearing a designer princess gown worth a fortune, sparkling with jewels. Everyone called her the Smith family's one and only princess. They had even hired a world-class symphony orchestra to play Happy Birthday just for her. While I lay bleeding in a dingy apartment, they would not spend a few dollars on bandages for me. I watched as my eldest brother gently fed her cake, his eyes full of tenderness. "Jasmine, only you deserve to be our one and only little sister." The second brother placed a tiara on her head with care. "Even for the smallest birthday, we won't let you suffer a single moment of disappointment." The third knelt to help her into a pair of crystal shoes. "Jasmine, you're our most precious darling." Then, standing on the stage, Jasmine held up the black credit card they had gifted her and smiled sweetly. "Brothers," she said, "Carol lost her legs saving you. Maybe you should go see how she's doing?" My eldest brother let out a mocking laugh. "She's not worth it. Now that she's crippled, she'll never be able to compete with you again. She got what she deserved."

Leon Vincent, the shark of Warren Street, is the one who raised me. Twelve years ago, a fire tore through the orphanage and took everything from me. He was the one who pulled me out of the flames and gave me a second chance at life. To repay him, we make a weird deal—a 99-debt contract. I have to either obey him or be abandoned 99 times. After that, the debt will be cleared. Every time he goes on a date with some high-society socialite, he'll toss another insanely expensive piece of jewelry into my safe. In just two short years after turning 18, I've accumulated 96 diamonds in my safe, each one marking the 96 times he's cast me aside. One day, his fiancee, Elena Harrington, sends me a provocative email. "Dearest Isabelle, Leon and I are finalizing the wedding invitations. Do you think velvet with gold foil or matte leather would be more elegant? The ceremony's early next month. Can't wait to see you there! Love, Elena." Right after that, Leon calls, asking me to pack his bags for the summit in Parienne tomorrow. I simply send the wedding gift I've prepared in advance—a seven-figure emerald necklace—straight to his darling Elena without any words. That night, Leon returns to the apartment and finds out what I've done. He praises me for being considerate. Late into the night, he pulls me into his arms with rare tenderness. Nothing is left between us; no clothes, no holding back. He whispers that he wants to give me a special kind of reward, one that only I can carry. Somehow, Elena discovers my pregnancy. She stands on the balcony of Vincent Estate, screaming like her life depends on it. "Leon, I'm begging you! Don't let her have that baby! If you do, I'll jump!" The cold and proud Leon begs me, for the first time, to get rid of the baby. Everyone at the party awaits my breakdown, but I just smile softly and nod. "Alright. I will." He whispers in my ear, "Our marriage is just a business arrangement. I don't even like her. Once we're divorced, I'll give you another baby." What he fails to realize is that it was never in my plans to keep this one. There are only three more times left before I pay off this life debt from when he pulled me out of that fire all those years ago. After the 99th time, I board a ship bound for Azara to join a medical research mission. From that moment on, my life will be mine alone to live for.