Triple C

They say you can't have it all. I'm about to prove them wrong-or destroy myself trying. When my struggling mother married billionaire Richard Stone, I thought I was gaining a family. Instead, I found three stepbrothers who became my obsession, my downfall, and my salvation. Dominic, the eldest, cold and commanding, who kisses me like he's claiming his kingdom and looks at me like I'm the only thing he can't control. Julian, the charming playboy who hides a vulnerable soul beneath his perfect smile, making me feel like I'm the only woman he's ever truly seen. Asher, the brooding artist who paints me like I'm his muse and touches me like I'm his masterpiece, seeing parts of my soul I didn't know existed. They're forbidden. They're dangerous. They're everything I shouldn't want. But when I discover my father didn't die by suicide that he was murdered by the very man who now calls himself my stepfather, these three powerful men becomes my unlikely allies. First it was a forbidden attraction, now it's an arrangement that defies every rule. The rules are simple: I'll give each of them a chance. I'll take everything they offer. And in the end, I'll have to make the hardest decision of my life: Choose one of them. Choose all of them. Or choose myself.

Chapter 1 The blindfold slipped over my eyes, and the world went black just as his deep voice brushed my ear. "Relax, little spy. Let us show you what The Veil really is." My heart slammed against my ribs. The masked party in the Brooklyn warehouse had been loud with moans and music only seconds ago. Now everything narrowed to the heat of three bodies surrounding me in the private room. Strong hands guided me backward until my thighs hit the edge of a leather bench. Fingers-long and confident-traced my collarbone, then dipped lower, brushing the swell of my breasts through the thin black dress. I sucked in a sharp breath as cool ice suddenly pressed against my neck, melting instantly against my flushed skin. A second set of hands slid up my thighs, pushing the hem of my dress higher, exposing lace panties already damp with traitorous arousal. "Who are you?" I whispered, even as my nipples tightened painfully. The man behind me chuckled low, the sound vibrating through my chest. "Tonight, we're the ones asking questions." The ice trailed down between my breasts, leaving a wet path that made me shiver. Then warm lips replaced it, sucking gently on the sensitive skin just above my bra. A soft moan escaped me before I could stop it. My hands were gently pulled behind my back and secured with something soft-silk, maybe. The restraint wasn't tight, but it sent a rush of heat straight to my core. Another hand-rougher, more commanding-cupped my ass and squeezed. "So responsive already," the voice murmured, approval thick in his tone. "Good girl." The praise hit me like a drug. My knees weakened. I hated how much I loved it. The ice moved lower, circling my navel, then lower still until it pressed against the lace covering my clit. I gasped, hips jerking forward involuntarily. The cold burned deliciously against my swollen flesh. Fingers hooked into my panties, pulling them aside. Hot breath ghosted over my exposed pussy right before a warm tongue replaced the ice, licking one slow, torturous stripe from entrance to clit. "Oh fuck-" My head fell back against a hard chest. Strong arms wrapped around me from behind, holding me upright as the tongue between my legs circled faster, sucking lightly. Pleasure coiled tight in my belly. My thighs trembled. I was supposed to be gathering evidence, not melting under their touch. But God, the way they played my body-like they already knew every secret I'd never told anyone-made my mind spin. The man behind me pinched my nipple through my dress, rolling it between his fingers. "Let go, beautiful. We've got you." I came hard, sudden and shocking, a cry tearing from my throat as waves of pleasure crashed through me. My legs gave out completely, but they caught me, holding me between their bodies as I shook. The blindfold stayed on. My breathing was ragged. Then a calm, authoritative voice cut through the haze. "Take it off." The silk was removed. Three devastatingly handsome men stood before me-tall, powerful, radiating raw dominance. The one with icy blue eyes and sharp features stared at me like he could see straight into my soul. The playful one with warm brown eyes and a dangerous smirk licked his lips slowly. The third, broad-shouldered and intense, watched me with barely restrained hunger. The blue-eyed man tilted his head. "Your real name isn't Elena Voss, is it... Nova Kane?" My stomach dropped. They knew. Before I could speak, the door to the private room clicked shut behind us. The blue-eyed man stepped closer, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "We have a proposal for you, little journalist. One that involves a 90-day contract... and your complete surrender." My pulse thundered in my ears as his fingers brushed my still-sensitive clit, making me jolt. "Or we can ruin your career right now."

I've been hiding my face from the world for seven years. He's been hiding his heart for just as long. When Grammy-winning musician Dante Rivers offers me $150,000 to be his fake girlfriend for six months, I should say no. I'm Veil-the anonymous digital artist with millions of fans and a face no one has ever seen. I don't do cameras. I don't do crowds. And I definitely don't do fake relationships with devastatingly private men whose studio walls are covered in my artwork. But my father's last dream is slipping away-and this contract is the only way to save it. The rules are simple: No real feelings. No crossed boundaries. No falling for Dante Rivers. Except nothing about him is simple. Not the way he shields me from paparazzi like I matter. Not the way his music sounds like secrets meant only for me. Not the way he looks at me like he sees through every wall I've built. What he doesn't know is that I'm already part of his life. I'm the anonymous artist behind his album covers. The one he's trusted with his most private thoughts. The ghost he's been searching for without ever meeting. And now I'm falling for him twice- once as the girl in his guesthouse and once as the mystery he doesn't know he's already holding. When the truth comes out, it won't just break the contract. It might break us.

Allison Montgomery was waiting at the airport when an audio alert from her parked Range Rover flashed on her phone. Assuming it was a break-in, she checked the live dashcam feed, only to see her fiancé, Finn, and her younger sister, Cheyanne, passionately making out in the backseat. "Tell me I'm better than her," Cheyanne whispered. "Tell me I'm better than Allison." "You are," Finn gasped. "God, you are." When Allison confronted her family with the video, she expected justice. Instead, her uncle and mother fiercely defended the cheaters. They blamed Allison's "cold and frigid" nature for pushing Finn away, victim-blaming her in front of the entire household staff. To protect their corporate alliance, her uncle ruthlessly announced that the engagement would be transferred to Cheyanne, and threatened to strip Allison of her inheritance. Stripped of her fiancé, her family, and her dignity, Allison realized her pristine twenty-year life was a complete lie. The people who were supposed to love her were actively protecting her abusers, leaving her utterly isolated and burning with a cold, protective rage. Refusing to be their victim, Allison targeted Finn's ruthless, billionaire uncle, Adam Kensington, proposing a fake marriage to secure the capital needed to crush her family. But when the notoriously untouchable Wall Street phantom not only accepted her proposal, but demanded she immediately move into his penthouse to raise his secret daughter, Allison realized she had just sold her soul to the devil.

For four years, I played the part of the perfect, pathetic wife to my billionaire husband, Damian Nunez. Bleeding from a gunshot wound I took to secure a multi-billion-dollar deal for his company, I dragged myself to our penthouse, ready to finally end the charade.

Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town. They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done." Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me." As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world. When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?"

For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse. Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée. She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm. "Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital." As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire. I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit. "I'm done with you." The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies.

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

Imagine this. Your husband carries another woman out of a burning building. He doesn't recognize you. You're just the doctor. You're nobody. Same night, you find out you're not nobody. You're a secret billionaire heiress. Your real family has been searching for you for twenty-five years. You sign the divorce papers. He thinks you'll come back. One week later, you show up to the biggest gala of the year. White dress. Diamond earrings. On the arm of a man richer, hotter, and ten times more powerful than your ex. Your ex-husband's face when he sees you? Priceless. His mistress's face when she gets escorted out by security? Even better. And the new man? He's been waiting for you his entire life. He doesn't play games. He doesn't have a mistress. He just looks at you like you're the only woman in the room. This is not a love story about a girl waiting for a boy to choose her. This is a love story about a girl who chose herself. And then got everything she ever deserved.

Isabel returned to her penthouse after a grueling seventeen-hour flight, only to be greeted by the cloying scent of another woman's perfume. Her husband of three years, Darius, sat waiting with divorce papers. He wanted to marry his mistress, Dove, and offered Isabel a measly one million dollars, treating her like a greedy charity case from the Rust Belt who should just take the payout and vanish. But Isabel didn't want his pity. She demanded the four percent equity stake in his family's company that she rightfully owned—a stake worth 1.5 billion dollars. When she revealed this, the wealthy family turned vicious. They refused to acknowledge that she had secretly saved their empire from bankruptcy years ago. Instead, Darius and Dove orchestrated a brutal public execution. They ambushed her at a top law firm, spreading malicious lies that her investment money was stolen from a Ponzi scheme. They even hired a fake victim to scream at her in the lobby, successfully terrifying Isabel's lawyer into dropping her case on the spot. She had quietly rescued their entire legacy, yet they were willing to frame her as a criminal and destroy her life just to keep her rightful billions. As Darius and his mistress gloated over her absolute ruin, the most ruthless and feared lawyer in New York suddenly stepped in front of Isabel, his voice cutting through the dead silence. "Your case, I'll take it."

For three years, Allison poured herself into marriage, caring for Henry and their home while he gave her nothing but silence. When his first love returned, he handed her divorce papers and cast her aside. Heartbroken, Allison walked away and reclaimed the brilliant life she had buried-becoming a famed jewelry designer, restoration master, and mysterious healer. Only then did everyone learn Henry's unwanted wife was a hidden genius. Late one night, he called, begging for another chance. Before she could answer, a male voice spoke. "Allison, who's that?" Allison answered aloofly, "Just a scammer."

For three quiet, patient years, Christina kept house, only to be coldly discarded by the man she once trusted. Instead, he paraded a new lover, making her the punchline of every town joke. Liberated, she honed her long-ignored gifts, astonishing the town with triumph after gleaming triumph. Upon discovering she'd been a treasure all along, her ex-husband's regret drove him to pursue her. "Honey, let's get back together!" With a cold smirk, Christina spat, "Fuck off." A silken-suited mogul slipped an arm around her waist. "She's married to me now. Guards, get him the hell out of here!"

After six years together, Joslyn was abandoned before her wedding when her boyfriend chose his first love over her. Then came an unexpected proposal-from Connor, her ex-boyfriend's adoptive father. "Marry me. You'll get everything you want-and you can get back at him." The deal came with its perks: a lavish monthly allowance, abundant resources at her fingertips, a husband who was practically never home, and the sheer pleasure of rubbing her new status in her ex-boyfriend's face. But the distant husband she expected turned possessive instead. While her ex begged publicly for another chance, Connor pulled her into his arms. "Say that again, and you'll be out of the family forever." Only later did Joslyn discover the truth-Connor had spent six years planning to make her his. Believing it was only a beneficial deal, Joslyn agreed. Constant traveling? A complete lie. And the promise that they'd each live their own lives? Another carefully spun deception. On their wedding night, he had her pinned beneath him, his kisses stealing her breath. And night after night, he kept coming home-utterly fixated on her.