GloryLily

* Blurb: He picked up his call, "Hello Wilfred, this is unlike you, what's going on?" Eduardo asked. "Sir, Cindy is in the hospital, you need to come immediately." "What happened?... In which hospital?" Eduardo asked. Eduardo knew something wasn't right, Mr Wilfred can't just call him, if it was a minor issue. "Okay, I'll be there soon." Eduardo disconnected immediately he told him the name of the hospital and rushed out of the meeting hall. All the managers looked at him surprised, such an important meeting and he left like that. Reaching the hospital, he rushed to the ward where the doctor always keep any members of his family. He entered the ward and went closer to the bed, the moment he held her hand, Cindy opened her eyes. "Eduardo..." She whispered. "Who did this to you?" Eduardo asked coldly. "Ouch!..." Cindy sighed in pain to distract him. "Sorry... Does it hurt much?" Eduardo asked. "Hmm... It does hurt." Cindy answered. 'Oh my... What will I tell him?... No no... Cindy be careful of what to say.' She thought and twined her fingers with his. "Cindy who did this to you?" He asked the second time. "Huh?" Cindy asked with an opened eyes. "Cindy... You heard me." Eduardo said. "Erm... It was an accident, I... I tried to place my hand on the balcony, and my hands slipped off." Cindy explained. "Cindy, I told you to take care of yourself but no, you would never do that..." He finger-combed his hair and walked out of the ward angrily. On his way to the Doctor's office, he met Mara. "Mara..." Eduardo called out. "Oh... You're already here, sir, sorry for what happened, the Doctor said she would be fine." Mara said and Eduardo nodded. "Sir, there's something very important you've to know... Your house is not safe for Cindy." Mr Eduardo looked up at her, "What do you mean by that?" He asked gently. "Sir, I know it's gonna sound like crazy but I am really sorry I have to say it... Your mother was the one who pushed her down from the balcony." "What!... Mara, did you know the implication of what you just said... How can you say such a thing?" He asked. "I am sorry, sir, but that's the truth," Mara answered him politely. "Are you sure of what you just told said?" Eduardo asked. "Very sure, sir," Mara answered and then he went back to the ward very angry. He wanted to confirm if what Mara said was the truth, so he sat down beside Cindy, took her hand in his own and locked his eyes into hers, doing that he said, "Cindy... Why are you trying to hide the truth, huh?" Hearing his question, Cindy looked up at him surprisingly. "Cindy... Why did you lie to me... was it mother who did this to you?..."

The Wellington beef sat cold on the mahogany table, a graying monument to three years of wasted devotion. It was my birthday and our anniversary, but my husband, Hamilton McKee, didn't even look at the gift I’d spent months knitting. "Our marriage is a transaction," he said, his voice cutting like a scalpel. "Stop trying to make it a romance novel. I just need you to stop existing in my space for five minutes." Then his phone buzzed with a call from Cuba, the ex-girlfriend he never truly left. His cold mask shattered into frantic concern, a look he had never once given me. "I'm coming," he whispered to her, sprinting for the door without a backward glance at the wife he was leaving behind. I chased him into the freezing Boston night, only to be swarmed by predatory paparazzi. As Hamilton’s Maybach roared away, a heavy camera bag slammed into my shoulder. I slipped on the black ice, my skull hitting a granite gate pillar with a sickening crack. Warm blood trickled down my neck, and as the world tilted, the fog in my brain finally cleared. I wasn't the penniless orphan from Southie he thought I was. Images of sterile operating rooms, complex sutures, and a billion-dollar inheritance flooded back—along with the memory of the car wreck three years ago where I was the one who pulled Hamilton from the flames, not Cuba. How could I have spent three years begging for scraps of affection from a man who didn't even recognize his own savior? Why did I let a fraud steal my life while I played the role of a submissive shadow? When I woke up in the hospital, the trembling girl was gone. I ripped the IV from my arm and stared at the man who had come back only to demand I stay out of his way. I didn't cry. I didn't beg. I simply handed him a piece of paper with one word written in the sharp, confident script of a woman who owned half the city: DIVORCE. "Sign it, Hamilton," I said, my voice like ice. "Because by tomorrow, I’m not just leaving you—I’m taking the McKee empire with me."

To revenge herself on her unfaithful fiancé Kevin, Isidora hides her striking beauty behind a plain disguise, and targets his uncle - the most formidable man Kevin fears. After one reckless night, Isidora leaves cash as payment and says lightly, "You were good last night." She tries to leave quietly, but is pulled into his arms. "You think you can walk away after this?" he says, his tone low and possessive. Cedrick is a feared, untouchable titan on Wall Street - elegant, aloof, and completely uninterested in women. Not even the most beautiful socialites in the city can catch his eye. When gossip spreads that he was seen pressing a woman against a wall and kissing her fiercely, no one believes it. When the rumors name Isidora, the crowd scoffs. He rejects even the most beautiful women, so why would he notice a plain girl like her? All doubt disappears when they see the dignified Cedrick drop to one knee to help Isidora with her shoe, pleading softly for just one kiss. When Kevin finally sees Isidora's true beauty and begs for forgiveness. But Cedrick kicks him out at once, slams a marriage certificate on the table, and says sharply. "Call her Aunt."

Kenzie, the former leader of the Aegis Alliance, opened her eyes to find herself reincarnated as a freezing, abandoned infant in a wet cardboard box. She was rescued from the rain by Devin Ayers, a ruthless billionaire, and rushed to a private hospital, but a deadly threat was already waiting for her. The ER doctor, Desiree Dillon, approached her with a syringe. Through a sudden burst of telepathy, Kenzie read the doctor's dark thoughts. Desiree wasn't trying to cure her fever. She deliberately ignored the safe dosage, drawing a lethal amount of Diazepam to permanently silence the crying baby and disguise it as sudden infant death. "This will make it all go away," Desiree smiled gently, the needle glinting as it moved inches from Kenzie's arm. Trapped in a weak, paralyzed three-month-old body, Kenzie couldn't run, fight, or even speak. She could only watch the poison inch closer. How could she survive death only to be assassinated in a hospital bed by a corrupt doctor? She used to command armies. The sheer injustice and terror of dying completely helpless in this tiny body ignited a blinding rage inside her. Refusing to be a victim again, Kenzie pushed her newborn brain to its absolute limit and unleashed a desperate telepathic scream directly into the billionaire's mind. "Poison! She's trying to kill me!" Devin, who had been looking away, suddenly froze, his icy gray eyes locking onto the doctor's wrist.

For ten years, I was the perfect, obedient wife to my wealthy husband, managing his severe OCD and hosting flawless high-society parties. But on our tenth anniversary, when I brought him his special hangover soup, I caught him sleeping with my younger sister in our master bedroom. Instead of panicking, he coldly handed me divorce papers with zero assets. He told me I was just a "placeholder" until my sister finished her degree and was ready to take my spot. Desperate, I called my mother for help, only to find out she had known about their affair for years. "You don't have Jana's drive or her looks. You clean house and you cook. That's not a wife, that's a domestic." My own mother sneered at me, telling me to walk away quietly because our family needed his financial support. They kicked me out of the penthouse with nothing but a suitcase, laughing that a woman who hadn't worked in a decade would end up begging on the streets. I bled for this family for ten years, only to be thrown away like garbage when my sister wanted my life. But they didn't know that while I was playing the boring housewife, I had secretly earned a Cordon Bleu diploma, a Cornell nutrition certification, and a Columbia master's degree. Using a hidden photo to blackmail a property out of him, I packed my elite credentials and landed a $300,000-a-year job managing a billionaire's estate. When my ex-husband drunkenly called days later demanding I come back to serve him, I calmly hit block.

The freezing rain lashed against my face as I clung to the iron gates of the Hendrix estate, begging for a chance to prove I didn't kill my best friend. I had come here for mercy, but the man I had secretly loved for years had a different plan. He didn't want to hear my truth; he wanted to see me broken. As the sun rose, the estate manager delivered the final blow. He shoved Emery’s phone into my face, showing a forged text message that framed me for her death, then turned his back as the gates slammed shut. My own family didn't offer a lifeline, either. When the police came for me, my parents didn't fight for my innocence; they chose to disown me to save their bank accounts from Alfredo’s wrath. I was thrown into Rikers Island, stripped of my dignity, and subjected to years of calculated, brutal torture paid for by the man who once held my heart. How could the person I loved turn my life into a private slaughterhouse based on a lie? After three years of hell, I walked out of those prison gates with nothing but a scarred body and a hollow soul. The woman who loved Alfredo Hendrix died in that cell. Now, I’m back in the city where it all began, and I’m done hiding.

I secured the lifeline investment for my fiancé's company and went to his office to surprise him. Instead, I caught Preston sleeping with his top actress—the woman he publicly claimed as his stepsister. Through the cracked door, I heard him call me his "scarred, ugly bitch shield" to hide their sickening affair. I didn't cry. I hacked the live broadcast of the Star Awards and played their sex tape to two thousand people. But that night, drunk and reeling from the agonizing nerve pain in my facial scar, I stumbled into the wrong hotel penthouse. I was pinned down by a drugged billionaire, Josephus Hodges. The next morning, he left me a million-dollar check and a Plan B pill. When he later tracked me down to offer a cold, calculated fake marriage just to absorb Preston's ruined empire, I threw the contract at his chest and told him to go to hell. But when I got home and looked in the mirror, the chronic, burning torture in my scar was completely gone. His touch during that terrifying night had somehow cured the agony that had ruined my life. I had just declared war on the only man on earth who could heal me. Just then, my ruined ex-fiancé called, begging me to save him with a PR press conference. "I'll do it, but I control the venue." I booked it at Josephus's heavily guarded hotel. I was going to slaughter my ex on live television, and force the apex predator to look at me again.

Alcohol and heartbreak are definitely not a good combo.Too bad I learnt that a little too late. I'm Tessa Beckett and I painfully got dumped by my boyfriend of three years.That led me to getting drunk at a bar and having a one-night stand with a stranger.Before he would see me as a slut the next day,I paid him for the sex and deeply insulted his ability to please me. But this stranger turned out to be my new boss!

For seven years, I was the perfect wife to Denny Sanford and the brilliant CTO who built the core technology of his billion-dollar empire. But at my brother-in-law's memorial service, I hid behind a velvet curtain in the study and caught my husband passionately kissing the grieving widow, Brittany. They weren't just having an affair. Brittany was pregnant with Denny's child. "Once the paternity test confirms the baby is a Sanford heir, we control everything," she whispered. "Christa is brilliant with data, but clueless with people. She's completely harmless," Denny sneered, dismissing me as a convenient tool. My world shattered. Under his protection, Brittany had already stolen the credit and millions of dollars in consulting fees for my patents. To maintain his perfect facade, Denny even abandoned our six-year-old daughter's championship to hold his mistress's hand through a fake hospital visit. I had sacrificed my days and nights to build his company, only to realize my entire marriage was a calculated lie designed to fund his second family. He thought my scientific detachment made me blind, stupid, and weak. Harmless? I smiled coldly in the dark, backed up every server log proving my intellectual property, and messaged the most ruthless divorce attorney in New York. If he wanted to build his future on stolen data, I would show him exactly how a scientist dismantles a flawed experiment.

Being second best is practically in my DNA. My sister got the love, the attention, the spotlight. And now, even her damn fiancé. Technically, Rhys Granger was my fiancé now-billionaire, devastatingly hot, and a walking Wall Street wet dream. My parents shoved me into the engagement after Catherine disappeared, and honestly? I didn't mind. I'd crushed on Rhys for years. This was my chance, right? My turn to be the chosen one? Wrong. One night, he slapped me. Over a mug. A stupid, chipped, ugly mug my sister gave him years ago. That's when it hit me-he didn't love me. He didn't even see me. I was just a warm-bodied placeholder for the woman he actually wanted. And apparently, I wasn't even worth as much as a glorified coffee cup. So I slapped him right back, dumped his ass, and prepared for disaster-my parents losing their minds, Rhys throwing a billionaire tantrum, his terrifying family plotting my untimely demise. Obviously, I needed alcohol. A lot of alcohol. Enter him. Tall, dangerous, unfairly hot. The kind of man who makes you want to sin just by existing. I'd met him only once before, and that night, he just happened to be at the same bar as my drunk, self-pitying self. So I did the only logical thing: I dragged him into a hotel room and ripped off his clothes. It was reckless. It was stupid. It was completely ill-advised. But it was also: Best. Sex. Of. My. Life. And, as it turned out, the best decision I'd ever made. Because my one-night stand isn't just some random guy. He's richer than Rhys, more powerful than my entire family, and definitely more dangerous than I should be playing with. And now, he's not letting me go.

My mother called me a defective product and insisted I marry Preston Finch, a man who treated our first date like a corporate merger. During our lunch, Preston demanded I clean his car like a servant, his arrogance snapping the last thread of my patience. I threw my iced coffee right into his lap, sending the cafe into a stunned silence as he screamed insults about my background and the cost of his designer pants. My mother didn't care about the abuse; she only cared that I had lost a "catch," calling me an embarrassment and threatening my future while my flower shop faced imminent foreclosure. Trapped by debt and my family’s relentless cruelty, I felt like a drowning woman with nowhere left to turn. Just as I hit rock bottom, Connor Powers—my brother's old roommate—stepped in, his icy gaze promising a brutal end to my misery. "Let's get married," he said, offering a cold, calculated contract that would shield me from my family forever. I signed the papers, unaware that I had just tethered my life to a man whose world was far more dangerous than I could have ever imagined.