Thousand Autumns

When my mother won a million dollars from a lottery ticket, she prepared an envelope for each of her three children. After we opened them, my younger brother and younger sister each found a bank card inside. But from my envelope, two 1-dollar coins clinked onto the floor. Seeing me freeze, a trace of unease flickered across Mother's face. "Cassian," she said hesitantly, "Logan and Sienna suffered a lot growing up because your father passed away so early. So I gave each of them 500 thousand dollars as compensation. "You're the eldest son—like a father to them. Don't fight with them over this, okay?" I glanced down at the faded down jacket I had worn for years, the fabric so worn that it had lost its color. Then, my eyes drifted to my younger brother's limited-edition sneakers and to the designer bag slung over my sister's shoulder. Mother seemed to have forgotten that when Father died, I had only been eight. I smiled faintly. "Alright. I won't fight them for it." Hearing this, Mother let out a long breath of relief. The next second, my voice turned cold. "Then I won't fight for the responsibility of supporting you in your old age either."

The night I found out, I almost fixed it. Almost. My assignment had been changed to Everglades Academy. Two thousand miles south. Swamp territory. Three omegas died there last year. I'd asked Kael to file my school preference. Silver Peak Academy. Together. The way we'd planned since we were twelve, lying in the snow making promises to the stars. Now the screen said Everglades. I called him immediately. He picked up on the second ring, relaxed as always. "Hey." "My assignment," I said. "It says Everglades." "Oh." Not guilt. Recalibration. "Lil came by while I was filing yours. She wanted to play a prank—switched it to Everglades for a laugh." He laughed. Light. Careless. "Deadline's tomorrow night. Just override it yourself. It takes thirty seconds." "If I hadn't checked—" "But you did check." That patience. "Fen. You always check everything. That's why she knew you'd catch it. It was just a joke." Just a joke. So my future was a punchline. My life, someone else's entertainment. I said nothing. I packed my gear. I left for the transport hub on departure day. Kael found me at the platform. His smile was gone. "I told you to override it. You didn't change it back?" "No."

After I won a total of one million dollars from the lottery, I planned to spend four hundred thousand dollars paying off my wife Jocelyn's debts, then buy our son, Sean, the sports models and Lego set he had always wanted. But after waiting and waiting, the only thing I got was a call from my son. "Dad, there's an event at the kindergarten today, so go eat by yourself. Mommy and I will miss you!" I said nothing. Because just half a minute earlier, a screen of bullet comments had suddenly appeared in front of my eyes. "The supporting male lead is just so sad. He's working three jobs to pay off the female lead's debts, and even his stomach is bleeding due to pure exhaustion. Meanwhile, the female lead is out buying the male lead a gold watch!" "But if the supporting male lead doesn't work himself to death, how are the male lead and female lead supposed to end up together?" At first, I did not believe those comments. But just then, my phone buzzed, and a credit card charge alert came in. My stomach dropped. I never would have thought the wife who always seemed to love me so deeply and the son I had worked so hard to raise would lie to me like this. In that case, my ten million lottery winnings had nothing to do with them anymore.

Alessandra Marino, 35, runs New York's most powerful criminal organization from a penthouse forty-two floors above a city she owns. She has built this empire with one purpose: to avenge her father Vittorio, murdered seventeen years ago in a warehouse on Fifth Street when Alessandra was eighteen. She has a scar above her heart from that night — a knife meant for him. She has never once questioned the direction of her war. The night she executes a traitor named Theron, she receives a call from an unknown woman who claims to know why Vittorio really died. The woman is Giuliana Torelli — daughter of the man who pulled the trigger, made to watch as a fourteen-year-old, carrying the truth for seventeen years while waiting for someone ready to hear it. What Giuliana reveals dismantles everything Alessandra believed: Vittorio wasn't killed for his power. He was killed because he was going to go federal — because his wife was pregnant with a second child and he wanted to run, to be ordinary, to give his family a life outside the empire. Thomas Accardi, the man who married Alessandra's mother after Vittorio's death, was the architect of the murder. And Accardi has always known about the second child. Her name is Mara. She is twenty-eight years old, living in Williamsburg, and completely unaware that her entire life is a lie — or that Accardi has just wired a hundred thousand dollars to a fixer named James Sullivan.

"Darling, this ends when you are entirely mine once more. I have a thousand ways of chasing you down. Some of which you won't enjoy." Her sultry, alpha voice makes Abel's body to stiffen. "Fuck off!" Abel hisses in a firm voice. ******* Vanessa Sterling, the beautiful billionaire owner of starlight styles, a fashion brand known to all elite circles, dumps her beautiful husband, Abel Blackwood, for his brother, Cyrus, who is fast becoming a renowned designer. She cruelly tells Abel, "Face it, you're a nobody. Cyrus is a talented designer that can elevate my brand," before handing him divorce papers which he grudgingly signs in shame before disappearing. Three years later, Abel Blackwood resurfaces as the most sought after male model. With his breathtaking, chiseled features and muscular physique, he has become the muse of top designers. Every major fashion house is clamoring to book him for their runway shows. Vanessa is stunned when she sees her ex-husband's beautiful face plastered across billboards and magazine covers. He is no longer the unknown man she once discarded. Many excellent women are chasing after him, including her friends and business rivals. But there isn't a woman on earth that can rival Vannesa's wits or determination Abel Blackwood will become hers again . . . or else...

At the wedding, I recognized at a glance that the masked man standing before me, Howard Larson, was an impostor. Despite this, I went through with the ceremony as though nothing were amiss. In my previous life, I exposed the fake groom in front of everyone. Left with no choice, Howard reluctantly returned and completed the wedding with me. That very night, his childhood sweetheart swallowed sleeping pills and jumped from a building, taking her own life. When my fiancé heard the news, he showed no hint of sadness. Instead, he cursed her, saying she deserved to die. After the wedding, Howard and I seemed as loving as ever. I even used my family's money to pull his company back from the brink of collapse. However, on our first wedding anniversary, my husband personally bound me to a helicopter while I was pregnant. There was no warmth left in his eyes. "If you hadn't forced me to come back and marry you that day, Joyce would still be alive.” "Why should you get to live so happily? I want you to feel the pain she felt when she died." He shoved me from an altitude of ten thousand meters. I was utterly destroyed. This time, I pretended not to notice the deception and completed the wedding with the fake groom. I wanted to see for myself how, without the Smith family's support, he intended to save the already crumbling Larson Group.

The night before my wedding, I was in a terrible car accident. I fell into a coma, and my body was broken and bruised. While I lay unconscious, my fiancé called off the engagement and married his childhood sweetheart instead. My mother went to demand justice on my behalf—but never made it back. She died in a sudden, brutal accident along the way. In that moment of chaos, it was my childhood friend who stepped in. He knelt on one knee outside the hospital with a wedding gift of a hundred thousand dollars and quietly handled my mother's funeral. I was wheeled into surgery. I lived, but was left with a permanent disability. And still, he promised to stay by my side, for life. I was deeply moved. We got married. But five years later, I overheard him talking to his secretary. "Mr. Davidson, you arranged for someone to hit your wife with a car, just so Lucy could marry the one she loved. Aren't you afraid she'll find out?" "For Lucy, there's nothing I wouldn't do. I've already given Ruby the rest of my life. Isn't that enough?" I covered my mouth, holding back a sob. Only then did I realize—the marriage I believed in had been a lie all along. So be it. I'll disappear and let him be with the woman he truly loves.

“Thirty minutes for 10 thousand dollars.” That was the deal. Julian Valentino is the “Holy Billionaire,” an ice-cold CEO who views love as a liability. After a brutal Valentine’s Day betrayal, he didn’t just swear off women…. he chose a path of strict celibacy, vowing to keep his body as untouchable as his empire. For years, he has been a saint in a world of sinners, until he is anonymously drugged in his own hotel. With his control now crumbling and his body on fire, he turns to the only woman who can quench the flame: THALIA. Popularly known as "Tee" in elite lounges, she is a high-end sex worker who doesn’t believe in fairytales love and only lives for the bag to fund the search for her lost identity. What she expects to be an easy paycheck turns into a nightmare when a city-wide murder triggers a 48-hour security lockdown. Now trapped with a possessive, drug-fevered billionaire, thirty minutes of service becomes two days of raw heat and secret whispers. But when the doors finally open, Julian doesn't want to let her go. He wants a new deal... a new contract to buy her time and be her exclusive client. And that is when it dawns on Thalia that she has walked into a trap. Behind the closed doors, another contract was waiting. She isn’t just a worker anymore… with the outside contract? She’s now the very weapon sent to destroy the Valentino empire. CONTENT WARNING: This story is strongly 18+

Celeste is a happy-go-lucky girl. A simple, pretty, and 'boring' girl. She is in her 2nd year of college when her life became disarray. Her almost perfect life, crushed down. It all started when she met this guy who has an algid deep set of eyes, thick eyebrows, and long eyelashes named Karl Galileo. The first time she met him, he pissed her off, and that's the reason why she hated him. But along the way, she did not notice that she's slowly falling, falling in love with this man. Everything was so magical, a butterfly in her tummy, that enchanting music she's hearing every time they are together but destiny plays a nasty trick. After a long run, a long battle, a thousand heartbreaks, she decided to stop their afflictive love story. The story she always believes that will end in happy ever after just ended melancholic. She believes that Karl will be her knight in shining armor but no, Karl became stranger to her. A stranger who has a lot of painful, happy, and unforgettable memories with her. After the chase and run, chase and escape, chase and hide, chase and let go moment, she finally made up her mind, she gave up. This is not your ordinary story because this is the story of betrayal, pain, suffering and yet the character still chooses to stood up and continue living their lives. This story will slapped you the truth that you are the only one who is making your hurt bleed.

Aurora, an outcast omega with no wolf and no mate, is despised by her pack and mocked by her family. Her only desire is to belong, but instead of love, she faces hatred. Her life takes a dark turn when the Moon Goddess mates her to Kale, the arrogant and ruthless son of the Alpha. On their fated night, Kale rejects her after trying to take advantage of her. This shattered her heart and she flew for life when Kael sent werewolf to kill her. Fleeing for her life, Aurora crosses into forbidden vampire lands and is cornered. Just as death seems inevitable, she is rescued by Draven, the Vampire King. A powerful, cold ruler with no mate for over a thousand years, Draven feels an unexpected pull toward Aurora. Against vampire tradition and centuries of animosity between their species, he claims her as his mate, offering her safety and a chance at love. But peace comes at a cost. Aurora's hidden power, linked to her mysterious lineage, sparks tension between werewolves and vampires. The truth of her heritage exposes lies told by her pack, revealing that she is far more dangerous than anyone imagined. As both sides seek to destroy her, Aurora must navigate a world full of betrayal and war. With Draven by her side, she has the chance to rise and become a queen, feared and revered. But with enemies around every corner, will love be enough to protect her, or will the power within her bring about her downfall