"But all these scars, they will always remind you of the beast that I am." He said with a faint voice, caressing the scars on her face. "Not when they can be turned into beautiful scars." Her response echoed with confusion and incredulity to him. How could all the pain he had inflicted on her turn into something good? A broken and desperate depressed Billionaire, and the poorest of all naive girl who just lost everything in a blink of an eye, and her mother just traded her like a piece of trash. They are to be bound together by a contract as husband and wife for just five months. Everything seems to be under control, until one night of total madness that complicates everything. She had done and sacrificed so much for him, asking nothing in return or ever complaining. In return, he asked for one night to treat her like the loving wife she was supposed to be. One night they surrendered and lost their souls to each other, marking the beginning of their unquenchable thirsts for each other. In the short run, a bond is formed. What happens if the two of them break the major rule of the contract? Who will bear the blame? What's the punishment for such an offense? Nobody wants to let the other go. Can they forget about the contract and embrace what they feel for each other? But what happens when his real love returns? His crush. His first love. The one he once went insane for. She doesn't return empty-handed. She is seven months pregnant with the son he thought she lost. What will he do? Wait... His passionate nights with his contract wife bore fruits too. She is expecting his child. Will he marry both of them, or who will he choose?
White ceiling, blue themed room. I blink a couple of times.
"I am alive." I murmur to myself.
The last thing I remember is falling at the middle of the road after a car hit me. I thought that was the end of me and my miserable life, but it seems my time is not up yet. I don't know whether to be happy about that or not, though.
Wait...where am I?
This sure is not a hospital bed. This heavy duty mattress, how many inches is it anyway? And this expensive white bed, I think it's what they call king or queen size? Did I wake up in paradise or am I in the after life? My head hurts, but I pull myself up and sit up, leaning backwards to support my bandaged head. I am glad I don't have fractured bones, but a side of my hip hurts, alongside my bandaged head and arm.
The door opens, which is quite a distance from the bed because this room is enough to accommodate five more beds of the same size. A man walks in. Adorable height, medium size body with finest jaws. This is a bit confusing now. If I got into an accident, wasn't I supposed to wake up in a hospital or in my house? Who is this, cold rich-stinking guy? His eyes are cold enough to command anybody to submit to whatever sin he may summon, and I bet his voice would hold such demeanor too. His stand and composure speaks confidence and authority. Where am I again?
"Who are you?" I ask as he walks to stand beside me, giving me the honor of breathing in his richly sweet seductive scent. I have never smelled something as sweet as this, that is why the butterflies in my stomach are aroused.
"Your husband!" His voice is as I expected - icy, cold, but sweet.
I swallow hard!
First, I have never had a boyfriend, let a lone a husband. Second, even if I was to be married, it would definitely not be to this fine rich god here. I can not fit in his world, and he can't stoop so low to my own. We are like water and paraffin, or two parallel roads, better yet, heaven and earth. Thanks to that expensive joke he just pulled there, I am smiling bitterly. My husband my left foot!
"How long have I been dead?" I ask, looking into his dark brown eyes.
"What?"
"Yeah! If I am married, that means I am in the after life. I did not have a boyfriend, not to talk of being married before I got into that accident." I say, looking to this beautiful but confusing stranger.
How can he say I am his wife?
"I am not a bad person. I just did what I had to do. What I felt was right." He speaks, his cold tone of voice as calm and soft as it can ever be, presumably.
"What do you mean?" I ask as he pulls out an envelope from the drawer beside the bed and hands it to me. "What's in it?" I ask, without showing any interest of accepting it. This rich people are annoyingly weird.
"Check it."
I kick the blue duvet aside and get out of bed, grabbing the envelope from him and slightly limping to the table near the window. I empty the contents of the envelope on the table, and the first thing that catches my attention made my heart skip several beats.
My mother's ID? What is happening here? Did something bad happen to my mother?
"Why do you have my mother's ID? Where is she? Is she alright?" I rant nonstop to the stranger. My heart feels so heavy all of a sudden. "Tell me she is okay."
"Relax. Your mother is perfectly fine. I just kept that as part of the agreement until you wake up so that I can confirm that she really is your mother." A calming explanation, but more confusing.
"She is my mother." The shock on his face, huh! I smell a rat here. What just happened in the few hours I was unconscious? I am starting to tremble. Man! I hope she didn't screw you too! Yack! "Why? What did she do? And why am I here? Who are you and what is this place? What about the agreement you are talking about?" If rantung eas a person... Tessa Angeline would be that person.
"Everything is well explained in that contract."
"Cont... what?" I query.
What does me getting hit by a car and waking up in a strange house with a strange person got to do with a freaking contract? It would have been self explanatory if I woke up in a police cell, for mistakenly being accused of intentionally getting myself hit by a car so that I can demand for some compensation. I would also have understood it if I woke up in a mental hospital, because I am sure I looked like a crazy on the road yesterday. But here? What can explain all these?
"Please, read it and understand every clause in it. It is important. Your.. mother signed her part. But it's entirely your decision to agree to sign yours."
Whoa! I have a very bad feeling. What did you do mother? Why do I feel hurt already even without knowing what this damn contract is all about?
"You know what Mr? My head is aching so much and my vision is a bit blurry due to the pain. I may not be able to see well." I lie. The pain is not even severe in my head. It is in my heart where the real pain is. I am so scared of what is in this contract. My mother has always had bad intentions for me, and I don't know the intensity of her hatred. I know she can't sign me off for anything good. "I suppose you know the contents in this contract. Tell me what it says. Explain it bit by bit and in the most simplest way possible. What did you and my mother sign me up for?" I look straight into his ice eyes, and he does not even blink as he does me the honor of giving me the shock of my life. No, actually, the heartbreak of my life!
"It's a contract stating that you will be officially my wife for five months. I am paying you a hundred million for the five months you will stay with me." Period.
The sky must be turning red for the very first time, that is why even the air I am breathing right now is not the the normal oxygen. This one is suffocating. It's choking me.
Someone bring me back to earth, because I doubt it's where all these nonsense is happening. Since when did people's lives had a price tag on them? Who at this era has such a huge amount of money to just give it away like that? And who at this age and era buys a wife?
What? Doesn't he know how to court a woman? From his looks and the amount he is to cough, he must be freaking stinking rich. So why can't he find a woman to marry? Is he a shape shifting serprnt that no woman can stand? Wait, who brought about this absurd idea to begin with?
"Who between you two came up with this fucking idea?" I ask, my eyes maintaining their stare at him, and him being as icy as he looks, he doesn't blink still.
"I did."
Well, at least it wasn't my mother. Now I feel relieved, and the air is fresh again. But did she have to agree? That alone hurts, but it's less painful than...
"Your mother proposed a different kind of deal first." Shit! Wait, double that shit!
"What did she propose?" I shoot at him.
"Are you sure you want...."
"Yes." I cut him off. "What kind of deal did my mother propose to you?"
"Just a million for your life. She wanted me to take you as whatever I wanted, for just a million!" Everything stands still, and I forget how to breathe for a minute. What..the..hell?
One drop. Two drops. Three drops. I have two streams of rivers flowing with tears down my two chubby cheeks.
What?
I had a feeling this was going to hurt, but I didn't know it would be this much. I have gone through so much pain - the pain of her hatred, the pain of her insults, the pain of her slaps, the pain of always being on loosing end. Everything has been painful for me in general. But this pain surpasses every other pain I have felt before. Even all of my pains mixed together can not equal this one.
My mother sold me off to a stranger? And just for a mere one million? She was busy trading me like some filthy object while I lay unconscious on the hospital bed? I am sure she didn't even care to find out who this man is. I was lying unconscious on the hospital bed and all she was thinking about was how to get rid of me? What did I ever do to this woman?
Trading me like mare garbage is the last straw. She doesn't want me? She wants me out of her life? I am also tired of her. I am done hoping and wishing she will change. I am freaking done trying to be a good daughter that I will never be to her. This is the highlight of all your hatred towards me mother! I am so done crying for you. I am done caring for you. Today, you have given me enough reason to do what's best for you and me.
I wipe away the tears, and look at this stranger. I don't think I have words for him right now. What my mother has done is the only thing ringing in my head right now. I take the pen from his shirt, and he is shocked at that, but I don't care. I open the contract, but he grabs my hand.
"Hey! If you don't want go through with it, I won't force you. You still have the chance to back down. I will pay your mother what she asked so she won't cause trouble."
"Don't they say that parents, especially mothers, always know what is best for their children? This is what my mother thinks is best for me. I am an adult, and I have no objections whatsoever. I am righting her decision. I want this!"
"You are angry."
"I am sober. I want this, so let me." He let go of my hand unwillingly, and I sign on the spaces left for me. I close the contract and put it back in the envelope, returning the pen where I took it from. I hand him the envelope. "When can I get the first half?"
"By today evening." He says.
"Good. I will go see my mother the day after tomorrow. Is that alright?"
"Sure. No problem." He says.
"I need some rest."
"Go ahead. The doctor will be coming to check on your wounds later on in the day."
I nod my head, and walk to bed, while he makes his way to the door.
"Wait, my husband." I call before he can walk out, and he turns around. "What should I call you?"
"Jerol O'Brian McCall. Call me Jerol from now on, Mrs. McCall." I nod my head, and he walks out, closing the door behind him.
"Mrs. McCall." I murmur to myself as I get under the blue duvet again.
Mrs. McCall, it is. For five months.
I spent years cleaning up a man. We were in love, or should I better say, I was in love, because in the end, that is what that shit felt. After all that I did for him, he heartlessly broke my heart. Found him in bed with our wedding planner two weeks to our wedding. And he had the balls to take pleasure in my pains. I almost became a murderer that night. Almost killed a man. I put the very first stain on my family's spotless name. My father could not take it. He distanced himself from me and stood a safe distance to watch the whole world raise against me. But in all this difficult and trying moment, one thing remained my solace and my beacon of all the good vibes that I yearned for - Joe Fredrick Montana. My stepbrother. And before we knew it, the connection bloomed into something we both never anticipated. It is wrong, yet so strong! It is forbidden, yet irresistible. For a while, none of us seemed to care about the consequences of our steamy undercover affairs, until something that threatens to tear everything between us and beyond happens. This, is our story!
Her grave sin was her spellbinding allure that blurred the blood-tie line for him, and his grave mistake was obsessing over a girl he was supposed to exterminate. The vicious King of Evil, the one who didn't have a heart, now finds himself trapped between vengeance, and the irresistible burning desires for the only remaining enemy he has left - and she, oblivious of the abysm of the evil he exudes, is determined to liberate herself from the cage of the monster at all costs. But her desires are inconceivable. Absurd! invalid dreams- or so did everyone thought, until things started taking a turn. What transpires when the vicious heartless monster finds himself at the feet of his culprit? What more miseries await Ella when the truth of her connection with the monster and the mystery besieging her get revealed?
Betrayed by her fiance and her family, Ellie thought, for a fleeting moment, that being tied down to a ghost she had never known was the only option. But that was until a wild thought banged her head. "Run, Ellie!" Her mind screamed. The heart is always right, they say, and at that point in her life, Ellie had no one to trust but her shattered heart. She ran into a new city, and as if fate had chosen to compensate her for all the sufferings she had gone through, she crashed with someone who swept her off her feet on their very first encounter. But months later, a call came through from home: "Ellie, my child. You need to come ASAP! Your father has been seriously ill. Your father needs you now more than ever." The voice of her nanny echoed through the line. The following morning, Ellie was once again packing her bags and saying goodbye to the love she had found. Finding her father on his sick bed and with a swam of doctors surrounding him broke Ellie's heart into a million pieces. And then came her father's plea in his sick bed. "My dear, I am giving you a choice out of this, but on one condition: that you have to meet your betrothed even just this once. Whatever you decide after that, I, your father, will respect your decision." This was what Ellie had always wished for, but given the situation, she knew she could not upset her father. She had to concede. But the moment her supposed ghost betrothed walked in, Ellie realized one thing: she had never known the face of betrayal until that particular moment!
“You are a cold-blooded psycho! Get your filthy-blood-stained hands off me!” Through clenched teeth, Irma shrieked as she battled to liberate herself from the man's barbarous hold. His eyes were a refulgent inferno. They held an insidious fire of lust as they thrived deeper into her debilitated ones. "How flattering!” The man sneered, and Irma froze. A ripple of both ice and fire skint in her nerves at the man’s vexatious riposte. Before she could amass any little bravery left in her, the man spoke again in a hoarse tremor, erupting a chill down her spinal tube. “But if you don't watch your sweet-dirty-mouth, you snoopy, pesky brat, my third leg will shut it for you! Or maybe," he wavered, and fixed his dangerous lascivious gazes on hers, gently stroking her hair as if petting his sweet wild pet, “Is that what you want, huh, little kitten?” A freelance journalist, flaming with ardent desires to unveil the secrets behind the series of mysterious disappearances happening in the city. Her hunch points her to the dark underworld of the mafia, and unfortunately, she crashes into LUCCA DE’MATTHEW - the other name for terror! Their encounter will evoke a catastrophe that only they can solve. But how, if their mere beingness is a menace to each other?
She got pregnant by the man she loved, but he left her. To protect the image of their family, Ayana Salma De’Mario was grounded and hidden like a bad omen, together with her child. Five years later, she knows only the walls of her room, her sweet five-year-old girl, her paintings, the young student she is teaching, and this mysterious ghost lover whom she has never met. But a tragedy strikes their family empire. In need of a savior, her family decided to trade the black sheep of the family to save their company. And in the picture enters the cold-hearted Adam Stone De'Leon, the most notorious heartbreaker the city has ever had. A proud womanizer who parades his sins as if they are crowns. But the moment he meets Ayana, something changes—something that leaves his walls in shambles. His heart starts beating for Ayana in ways he never imagined. He would go to any extreme to have her. Can she really resist him, or will she also make it to the list of uncountable women he has knacked and tossed aside like trash?
She was all alone, wallowing in divine grief and lamenting her losses. She had nothing to call her own, and all her wounds had refused to heal. She yearned for just one thing now—to disconnect from the cruel world. In the darkness, she closed her eyes, hoping to awaken in a place of tranquility—in heaven, surrounded by the beautiful souls she had lost. But to her bewilder, she found herself in bed the next morning with someone she would never have anticipated seeing again, especially in the darkest moment of her life—Liam Morgan Adams. Her ex. And he came with his own overflowing bucket of surprisal and sorrows that, for reasons best known to him, only Lynn could help him carry. "Bear me a child, Lynn. The price is yours to name.” He spoke, and everything in Lynn froze. A child! Her head spun some degrees, and when it settled, she squinted as the raw memories of her past pains surged in, fused with the memories of what they once had. And his constant, desperate plea left her between a rock and a hard place. Can she do this? Can this be her redemption? And Liam, why would a filthy, married billionaire ask for a child out of wedlock? And why Lynn, of all people?
Lucille was one of the most skilled female assassins, and on the previous night, she embarked on a top-secret mission. However, the mission's details were leaked, leading to her untimely demise at the hands of a traitorous companion. She never discovered the identity of the person who betrayed her before her death. But by some miracle, she was granted a new life, and was reborn as a girl with the same name. Determined to uncover the truth and seek revenge for her family, Lucille seized her second chance at life. She planned to avenge her loved ones. However, her plans were complicated by Joseph, an apparently frail man who was actually skilled in martial arts. And he seemed to fall for her deeply, now this newfound knowledge only added to the complications of Lucille's revenge plan...
Five years ago, he upped and left his wife without informing her. He had always felt unworthy. As a result, he decided to go and become a better man. It took him five whole years of daily hard work. When he was satisfied, he returned as a powerful and honorable man. He intended to start a family with his wife. But he got back to meet the greatest shocker of his life. He actually had a daughter!
As a simple assistant, messaging the CEO in the dead of night to request shares of adult films was a bold move. Bethany, unsurprisingly, didn't receive any films. However, the CEO responded that, while he had no films to share, he could offer a live demonstration. After a night filled with passion, Bethany was certain she'd lose her job. But instead, her boss proposed, "Marry me. Please consider it." "Mr. Bates, you're kidding me, right?"
It was a big day for Camilla. She looked forward to marrying her handsome groom. Unfortunately, he abandoned her at the altar. He never showed up throughout the wedding. She was made a laughingstock in front of all the guests. In a fit of rage, she went and slept with a strange man on her wedding night. It was supposed to be a one-night stand. To her dismay, the man refused to let her be. He pestered her like she had stolen his heart on that night. Camilla didn't know what to do. Should she give him a chance? Or just stay away from men?
For seven years, Jillian pursued Bryan with unyielding passion, but he remained distant, his emotions tightly sealed. Disheartened, she left for overseas after graduating from college. Three years later, Jillian, now a successful attorney, sat provocatively on the lap of Bryan's competitor. She flashed Bryan a playful smile and taunted, "What's wrong, Bryan? Are you impotent?" Bryan's restraint shattered in an instant. In a swift motion, he scooped her up and tossed her onto the bed. The next morning, as Bryan woke up, Jillian flashed a mischievous smile. "Let's keep things casual, okay?"
Renea was trying the wedding dress, when suddenly the man rushed in the dressing room and held her neck tightly... “Bitch! Are you still trying to pretend innocent!” Jasper said as he tightened his grip on her neck and choked her harder. Then he used his other hand and took out the phone from his suit pocket and played the video of two people having sex in front of Renea… However, what was even more shocking, was that the woman in the video was, Renea Morris, however, the man in the video was not Jasper. Renea struggled to take a phone away from Jasper’s hand and tried to explain, “Jasper, it was not what you think… I… I can…” Jasper looked at Renea with his eyes full of disgust, as he said, “Let’s call of the wedding. I can’t marry a woman like you.” After saying that Jasper walked out of the shop Renea chase after Jasper... But then she sees Jasper passionately kissing her sister Kailey. And she hears everything, that her sleeping with strange men was all a plan of the vipers of the last two days, and that their goal was to get out of this stupid marriage. Even her adopted parents were also involved in this matter... They all do this with her because of the inheritance left by her grandfather... Renea heart was filled with anger and she wanted to expose their true colors to the public... However before she could do anything, Kailey had pushed her in front of the car and she got killed... However, when Renea open her eyes, she found herself sitting in the car with Kailey... She realized that she was reborn and went at the time when everything started... Renea looked at the people who had hurt her in her previous life and her lips curled up in a cold smile... She was back... However, this time... she was back for revenge...