Unscramble Quietly

After being reborn, I stayed away from my husband every chance I got. He told me to be a housewife after college, but I secretly applied for graduate school. He would give his first love money to help her, but I quietly kept the money away. He said he was ready to marry me, but I ran away instead. In my past life, his first love and I had babies at the same time. However, he secretly switched them. My real child died when she was born. So, I ended up raising their child and helping him succeed. When we were old, they pushed me off a mountain so that they could be together. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the year I graduated.

During the holiday, my six-year-old son received his cleft-lip surgery. He wore a mask and sat quietly in our family bookstore, engrossed in a picture book. A young man came in, pinching his nose dramatically as he swaggered up to the manager. "Why did you let someone with an infectious disease in here?" he demanded loudly. "Get them out!" The manager winced. "Sir, I'm sorry, but I don't have the authority to remove other customers." Undeterred, the man marched up to me. "Be wise and get out of here. My girlfriend is Imogen Slater, CEO of the Slater Group. You don't want to mess with me." I froze in stunned silence. Imogen despised all men except me, and this guy claimed she was his girlfriend.

My wife, Rochelle Willoughby, went on a business trip for five months. When I picked her up at the airport, she showed up with her true love instead. I noticed her baby bump and was about to ask some questions, but she shoved me away like I was some disgusting piece of trash. "Don't touch me with your grubby hands. I'm pregnant with Samuel's baby. If you hurt it somehow, I'll kill you!" Then, she gently held Samuel Riverson's hand. "You must be exhausted. Let's go home." She left me at the airport without so much as a glance. I saw them off and quietly rubbed the part Rochelle shoved. Then, I contacted my divorce lawyer. Ten years. This marriage finally came to an end.

My boyfriend Julian is a chess grandmaster, a genius. At sixteen, he became the youngest grandmaster in North American history. I gave him ten years of my life, but a ring was never on the table. But when he reached the pinnacle of his career and won the Grand Slam, he still refused to break the pact he'd made with his family about his career. "According to my plan, I'm not considering marriage or any other form of long-term commitment until all my goals are achieved." I didn't argue with him. I quietly packed his luggage for the World Championship and wished him the best. He had no idea that at the very moment he was lifting the championship trophy with the world watching, I was dragging my failing body to sign my own name on a euthanasia consent form.

“Madea’s life has been defined by loyalty, sacrifice, and quiet endurance. Married to Jason out of obligation to his dying mother, she has silently endured a loveless marriage for nearly five years. When Jason declares he wants a divorce to be with his first love, Monalisa, Madea refuses to leave without reclaiming her dignity. She demands a sixty-day “real marriage” to honor her promise to Jason’s mother and to assert her own agency. As the countdown begins, secrets, schemes, and hidden desires surface. Jason navigates his love for Monalisa while honoring a strange clause in his marriage contract, and Madea quietly plots her own path to reclaim power and respect. In a high-stakes emotional game, alliances shift, hearts break, and no one is truly in control.

Every year, the village had to choose a girl of age to become the Blossom Bride. The girl who was chosen would be sent into the cave as the village god’s wife. She would spend the entire night with him. If she came out alive, she would be honored for the rest of her life as a village elder. Any child she bore was said to be blessed, destined for a life of effortless fortune. If she died, the village would simply wait for the next year, when another Blossom Bride would be chosen. The blessing of the Blossom Bride was believed to pass on to her parents and elders as well. However, no one wanted to be chosen. To escape the ritual, families quietly left the village, one after another. I was the only one who volunteered. I had a lust problem, and I had always wondered what it would feel like to be with a god.

Eleven years ago, Leilani Amara Vaughn danced her last ballet the night her rival fell to her death and the world branded her a killer. Now she’s free, but freedom feels like a cruel joke. Every path she takes is already blocked. Every chance at redemption quietly erased by unseen hands. Until one man offers her salvation—Declan Patridge Powerful. Untouchable. Cold as the empire he built. He gives her a job in his home, a roof over her head… and chains she can’t see. He says it’s mercy. She feels it’s punishment. But what begins as vengeance soon burns into something neither of them can name. Because beneath the hatred, the lies, and the silence, beats a truth dangerous enough to destroy them both.

She escaped hell. He built an empire in darkness. Elara Hayes was once shattered by the people who claimed to love her. Now she lives quietly, hiding behind survival and silence, believing she is too broken for desire, too damaged for love. Lucien Blackwood is a billionaire who fears nothing except weakness. Power, control, and desire define his world. He does not save women. He does not fall in love. Until her. Elara’s quiet strength awakens something dangerous inside him. He wants to protect her. He wants to possess her. And he wants her in ways that terrify them both. As secrets unravel and the past comes hunting, Elara must choose whether to trust the man who sees her scars and still wants her. And Lucien must face his darkest truth. Sometimes, the most dangerous desire is not possession. It is love.

I merely brought up the wedding decorations, and my fiancé's first love ran out of the room in tears. Ian Murray slapped me so hard I fell to the ground. His face twisted in fury, teeth clenched with hatred. "Daphne, are you that desperate to get married? Afraid no one else will want you, so you're clinging to me, forcing me into it? Our wedding next week is postponed!" I held my face, but not even a ripple stirred in my heart. This made the eighth time he'd postponed it. I had been waiting for him since I was twenty-eight. Now, in my early thirties, I was still getting nowhere closer to being married. So this time, I quietly packed my things and chose to leave. Maybe this marriage didn't need to happen after all.

When I went to the hospital for a checkup to see if my fourth IVF attempt had succeeded, I saw Daniel Cooper, who was supposed to be on a business trip. He was carefully supporting a young, beautiful woman as they walked out of the obstetrics and gynecology department. Her belly was unmistakably round, and she looked like she was ready to give birth at any moment. Daniel froze for just a second before stepping in front of her, shielding her from me. He explained, "Abby, the Cooper family needs an heir to carry on the lineage. Once the baby is born, everything will go back to the way it was." I heard the certainty in his words. So I smiled, nodded, and quietly tucked my test results away as he stared at me in surprise. On the day she gave birth, I left the divorce papers on the kitchen table and walked out of his life for good.