Marian Tee – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read

Marian Tee – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.books2020.com Sun, 12 Jul 2026 16:12:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 http://www.books2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png Marian Tee – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.books2020.com 32 32 Belong to Me – East Coast Mafia Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/belong-to-me-east-coast-mafia-read-online-marian-tee Sun, 12 Jul 2026 16:12:12 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/belong-to-me-east-coast-mafia-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Mafia Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)

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He’d rather break her heart than lose his.

In Cruel Love, Bratva billionaire Anton Almazov decides to teach young paralegal Daisy Fletcher a lesson. There’s nothing he despises more than dishonesty, and he’s ruthless in his desire to punish and claim her in equal measure. By the time he realizes Daisy is not what he thought she was…it’s too late. He’s already destroyed her, heart, body, and soul.

In Close Enough to Kiss, Mia Robertson has decided she’s waited long enough. Since she was sixteen, she’s been in love with her billionaire guardian Alexei Almazov, and she doesn’t care if he also happens to be the most dangerous man in Monaco. But just when she dreams of forever…Alexei walks away and acts like that one stolen kiss between them never happened.

Note: Both books are standalone romances previously published under my pen name Martha Ruthie

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Chapter 1

DAISY

The coffee is on my blouse before I make it through the doors.

Not a tasteful splash. Not something I can dab at with a napkin and pretend never happened. A full, committed spill, the lid popping clean off my travel mug as I trip on the marble step outside Keyes, Inc., and now there’s a river of medium-roast running from my collarbone to my waistband, and the glass doors are several feet away, and through them I can see women in silk and heels crossing a lobby that costs more than my parents’ house.

I'm seven minutes late on my second day of work.

The doors are heavy. They swing inward on some kind of hydraulic system that makes them feel like they’re judging you, and inside, the lobby of Keyes, Inc. smells like gardenia and money. White marble floors. Recessed lighting that turns everyone’s skin golden. A reception desk made of something dark and polished that might be ebony or might be the physical manifestation of my inadequacy.

“Fletch!”

Aunt Kaye crosses the lobby like she was born on marble. Her heels make no sound. Her hair is pinned in something architectural, blonde and immaculate, and her suit is the colour of graphite, and she is smiling at me with the specific warmth of a woman who once let me eat frosting straight from the can at Thanksgiving and now signs paycheques with a title under her name.

“Let me see.” She takes my shoulders, turns me, assesses the coffee damage. Her mouth presses together. “We’ll fix it. Come on.”

She steers me past the reception desk, past three women who track our movement with the polished disinterest of cats evaluating a mouse, and into a washroom that has actual hand towels. Cloth ones. In a dispenser.

“Dab, don’t rub,” Kaye tells me, handing me a towel. “The blouse is a loss, but the jacket will cover it. You brought the navy jacket?”

“It’s at my desk.”

“Good girl.” She leans against the counter and crosses her arms. In the washroom mirror, we are two versions of the same gene pool: her jaw, my jaw. Her blue eyes, my blue eyes. But hers come with fifteen years of Monaco and whatever it is that turns a woman from Boise into someone who moves through marble lobbies without making a sound. “How was the apartment last night? Did you find the grocery store I mentioned?”

“Found it. Bought pasta. Burned the pasta.”

She laughs. It’s a real one, head back and teeth showing, and for a second she’s just Aunt Kaye again, the one who drove me to the airport in Boise with the windows down and Promise me you’ll call every Sunday on her lips.

“You’ll find your feet,” she tells me. “Everyone does. The first week is survival. After that, it’s instinct.”

I nod. I dab. The coffee stain isn’t coming out.

KEYES, INC. OCCUPIES the top four floors of a building on Avenue de Grande Bretagne, and everything about it is designed to make you feel like you’ve wandered into someone else’s life. The conference rooms have glass walls. The partners’ offices have views of the harbour. There are fresh flowers on every surfaceand the women who carry files down the corridor do it like other people carry champagne flutes: with their wrists turned out, fingers long, as if the file itself is an accessory.

I carry mine pressed against my chest like a shield.

Blythe finds me at ten-fifteen.

She’s the other new paralegal. Or not new, exactly. She’s been here less than a year. But she’s the one Kaye assigned to “show me the ropes,” which so far has meant a tour of the copier room, a list of partners’ names I will never remember, and a single, devastating sentence delivered over the copier while it hummed: “The dress code is technically business professional, but everyone here is auditioning for something.”

Today she’s wearing a pencil skirt and a blouse that probably cost what I pay in rent. Her dark hair is blown out straight and her eyeliner could cut glass.

“You have coffee on your—”

“I know.”

“Jacket.”

“Wearing it.”

She tips her chin toward my desk. “Kaye wants the Marchetti files colour-tabbed by end of day. Red for litigation, blue for compliance, green for correspondence. You know how to tab?”

I pull open my desk drawer. Inside: a bag of adhesive tabs I brought from Idaho, sorted by colour, each strip pre-cut to the same length. Blythe bends down. Her eyebrows go up.

“You brought your own tabs.”

“The ones in the supply room are too wide.”

Something crosses her face. Not amusement, not quite. Something closer to recalibration. She straightens. “End of day,” she repeats, and turns on one impossible heel and is gone.

BY THURSDAY I HAVE a system.

Tabs: red litigation, blue compliance, green correspondence, yellow for anything that doesn’t fit the first three categories but feels important. I’ve added sub-tabs: small white ones that flag pages with signatures, dates, or dollar amounts. Every file on my desk is squared, spines aligned, a colour-coded map of someone’s legal life that I can navigate in the dark.

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Advertisement The Rancher’s Fake Fiancee – Billionaires of Evergreen Texas Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/the-ranchers-fake-fiancee-billionaires-of-evergreen-texas-read-online-marian-tee Sun, 12 Jul 2026 16:12:10 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/the-ranchers-fake-fiancee-billionaires-of-evergreen-texas-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 24637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 123(@200wpm)___ 99(@250wpm)___ 82(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >26

He hired me to play his fiancée for a week. Neither of us planned on the part where it stopped being pretend.
I’m forty years old, broke, and the kind of woman nobody looks at twice.
And I’d made my peace with that. Really!
Then billionaire Loukas Karalis summons me to his ranch with an offer I’m too desperate to refuse.
“I’m about to offer you the only thing in the world you want,” he tells me with a smile as annoying as it’s seductive. “Of course I can ruin it.”
And the offer: one week, one ring, and one glamorous train across Texas where I’m to smile and cling and make every last investor believe I’m madly in love with a man I hate.
Easy.
Except the coldest man in Texas keeps forgetting to be cold when it’s only me. And the longer I wear his ring, the harder it gets to remember I’m only borrowing it.
I swore I’d never be a fool for a man again.
He swore love was a bad investment.

But the closer we get to the end of the deal, the harder I find it to let go. I’m so tempted to ask him the one thing I swore I never would…until the night it all falls apart, and I finally hear what he’s been telling me all along. Loukas doesn’t do love, and he never will. I was just too busy falling to listen.

Note: A slow-burn, later-in-life, fake-engagement, enemies-to-lovers romance. No cheating. HEA guaranteed

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Chapter One

OKAY. SO HERE’S A THING I know about myself: I’m not a woman who gets into strange trucks.

I want that on the record before I tell you what I did, which is get into a strange truck.

In my defense, it was a very large truck, and it belonged to a man named Loukas Karalis, and eighteen years ago Loukas Karalis stood up in a lecture hall full of people and announced that no one alive could ever love me. So really, getting into the truck was an act of tremendous personal growth. Most women would’ve set it on fire.

The ranch hand who came to fetch me couldn’t have been more than nineteen. He tipped his hat and called me ma’am and told me, going pink, that Mr. Karalis was expecting me for lunch and was, and I’m quoting this poor sunburned child word for word, “not real comfortable waiting.”

Not real comfortable waiting. As though waiting were a thing that happened to other people, as though Loukas Karalis had ever once stood on a platform in his life and watched a train pull out without him on it.

I should’ve said no. I had a whole speech ready, and it was a good speech.

I got in the truck.

Look, I’ll explain. You’re going to need context, otherwise this just sounds like I’ve got no spine, and I’ve got loads of spine, I’ve got an excellent spine, ask anyone.

Eighteen years ago I was twenty-one and idealistic and taking a business ethics class purely to fill a requirement, and a smug second-year named Loukas Karalis stood up and argued that marriage was a financial merger and anyone who married for love was, in his exact words, subsidizing their own poverty with feelings. I argued the opposite. For ninety minutes. The professor was delighted. I thought I’d won.

Then, while everyone was packing up, Loukas leaned across the aisle and told me, very pleasantly, that he finally understood why I’d never been seen with anyone, since no one alive could fall in love with a shrew.

So I told him I finally understood why all his girlfriends were rumored to be on retainer, the only way to keep a woman near him being to pay her by the hour.

And then we didn’t speak for eighteen years, which suited me fine. Great. Perfect. Couldn’t have planned it better.

I’ve thought about him approximately once a day for those eighteen years though, and speaking of things I keep to myself, that’s the real reason I got in the truck, and it’s nothing to do with old grudges.

It’s everything to do with the four red notices currently fanned out under a magnet shaped like a roadrunner. Electricity. Water. The feed supplier who’s stopped, very politely, returning my calls. And the big one, property tax, the number that wakes me at three in the morning and sits on my chest like something with talons.

I run a raptor sanctuary out in the Hill Country. Forty acres of recovering hawks and owls and one extravagantly resentful red kite named Sergeant, who’s hated me personally and by name for six years. There’s a flight enclosure with a north wall that won’t survive another winter. There’s an education program for school groups who pay nothing, on purpose, the entire point being that they pay nothing.

And there’s, under all of it, a low permanent hum of money-terror that I wear like a second, itchier skin.

In about six weeks, barring a miracle I can’t afford and can’t quite let myself imagine, I’m going to lose every bit of it.

So when the richest man in South Texas sends a truck to my gate, I do the math.

The math is humiliating. The math wins.

So I’m off to see the wizard. I mean the wicked. I mean an old college friend. Yes. Let’s go with that.

I brace myself on the long drive in for a glass tower, something cold and tall and pleased with itself, the architectural version of that lecture-hall smirk. What I get, when the truck crests a rise and the land opens up the way it does out here, all at once and bigger than seems strictly necessary, is a ranch.

A working one, and I know the difference. I’ve spent my whole adult life learning to read a piece of land the way other women read a room. This isn’t a rich man’s stage set with a rented longhorn for atmosphere. The fences are tight and honest. The stock tanks sit where the water actually wants to go.

Out past the barns a red-tailed hawk’s riding a thermal in slow professional circles, not wasting a single wingbeat, and I feel myself go quiet inside the way I only ever go around the birds, and for one disloyal second I forget I’m here to grovel to a man I hate and just watch her ride.

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Advertisement Give In to Me – East Coast Mafia Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/give-in-to-me-east-coast-mafia-read-online-marian-tee Sun, 12 Jul 2026 16:11:32 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/give-in-to-me-east-coast-mafia-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Insta-Love, Mafia Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >78

She asked him to prom. He showed up with her sister.

In Come Back to Me, Katy had just turned eighteen when she met billionaire Julian Ventura. He looked at her then like she was the answer to a question he never wanted to ask.
A year had to pass before their first kiss. But it only took one lie from the person she trusted most to tear them apart.
In Come Here, 20-year-old Nebra farm girl Elsa Lively sat in the third row for two years, drawing circles and pretending she wasn’t in love with her professor.
For those same two years, billionaire Luciano Salvatore pretended he didn’t notice. It was how he stayed civilized. It was how he kept her alive.
Because Luciano was a very dangerous man…and the day Elsa figured out why, the line he’d held for two years was the first thing to break.

Note: Both books are standalone romances previously published under my pen name Martha Ruthie

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Chapter 1

DIONNE SAID HIS NAME like it was nothing.

“Julian, this is my sister Katy. Katy, Julian Ventura. We were at school together.”

They were standing on the terrace at Haven Country Club, the jacaranda throwing purple shadows across the stone, and Dionne had one hand on Katy’s shoulder, casual, sisterly, already turning back to her iced tea. It was Katy’s eighteenth birthday. Dionne had picked her up that morning in the black Audi that smelled like leather and the good perfume and had said I’m taking you to lunch, my treat, somewhere special. Haven Country Club, where a cobb salad cost more than Katy’s weekly grocery budget and the members wore watches that could pay off Amy’s medical debt. It was the nicest thing Dionne had ever done for her, and Katy had spent the first twenty minutes just trying not to touch anything.

Then Dionne spotted an old university friend crossing the terrace and waved him over, and the whole thing was supposed to be a nothing introduction, ten seconds of social choreography between courses.

Katy glanced up.

He was tall. Dark-haired. He had blue eyes, which shouldn’t have mattered. Katy had seen blue eyes before, on boys at school and actors on screens and the old man who ran the laundromat on Fig and who always saved her a dryer. Blue eyes were blue eyes. She knew this. She was eighteen years old today, as of seven that morning, and sensible about most things, and she knew that the color of a person’s eyes wasn’t a reason for the floor to tilt.

But his eyes weren’t the blue she knew. They were the blue at the center of a gas flame, hot and pale and ringed with something darker, and when they settled on her face, she felt every nerve in her body stand up and pay attention.

He regarded her for one second.

Maybe two.

And then his whole face went taut.

It was fast. If she’d blinked she would have missed it, but she didn’t blink, because her body had locked into place the moment his eyes met hers and blinking was no longer a function her nervous system was willing to perform. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth. It stayed there for a beat too long, then tracked lower, to her throat, to the collar of her dress, and came back up. When his eyes met hers again, they were darker. The pale blue had gone hot, the pupils blown wide, and the expression on his face was something she’d never seen directed at her before, something she didn’t have a name for because she was eighteen and had never been assessed like she was the answer to a question a man hadn’t wanted to ask.

It lasted less than two seconds. Then his expression shuttered, so fast it was like a door slamming. In its place was a face so neutral it could have been carved from the terrace stone.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. Low voice. Unhurried. Perfectly composed, as if nothing had just happened behind his eyes.

But something had.

Katy had caught it.

“Hi,” she managed.

That was it.

Hi.

One syllable.

She was a person who said hi to people she liked and sorry to people she bumped into and once went an entire school dance without speaking to anyone because the music was loud and she didn’t know where to put her hands. She wasn’t the girl who had a good line ready. She wasn’t the girl who had any line ready. She was the girl who stood there with her heart slamming against her ribs and a feeling blooming inside her chest like a flower opening too fast, petals everywhere, no way to close it back up.

He nodded at Dionne and moved on. His shoulders cut a straight line through the terrace crowd, and Katy followed his path until he disappeared, then sat down and picked up her fork and put it down again because her hand wouldn’t hold still.

It wasn’t just her hand. It was also the heat. It was sitting in a wrought-iron chair on a terrace in Los Angeles on the day she turned eighteen, absorbing the absence where a man had just been standing, and feeling warmth spread across her skin, a phantom trace left by his attention. She touched her throat where his eyes had lingered. The skin there felt the same as always. It didn’t feel the same at all.

Dionne was talking about a case at work. Something about a deposition. Katy said mmhmm and wow and that’s insane at what she hoped were the right intervals and tasted nothing of the birthday lunch her sister had paid for and couldn’t stop studying the spot on the terrace where he’d been standing and thought, with the calm, clear certainty of a girl who had never been calm or clear about anything: I’ve found him.

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Advertisement Hold On to Me – East Coast Mafia Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/hold-on-to-me-east-coast-mafia-read-online-marian-tee Sun, 12 Jul 2026 16:11:31 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/hold-on-to-me-east-coast-mafia-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Insta-Love, Mafia, Suspense Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >97

In Captivated, Ciana Reyes was twenty-four the first time she poured champagne for Andrei Almazov at forty thousand feet…and spent the entire flight pretending not to notice the scar, the silence, or the way he watched her. She didn’t know then that her airline would be his before the month was out. She didn’t know about the promise he’d made to a dying man through prison glass.

His one duty was to keep her safe. But because she made it impossible for Andrei to keep his word…he did the only thing left. He made sure she saw him with someone else.

In Caressed, young, starry-eyed masseuse Star Thornton spent every Thursday evening with Artem Almazov, the unsmiling billionaire who owned the cruise ship she worked on. Her hands would find his scars, and his body told her things his mouth never would. But just as her heart became his…Artem walked away like she had never touched him at all.

Note: Both books are standalone romances previously published under my pen name Martha Ruthie. These books are spin-offs of the Monaco Bratva series

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Captivated

Chapter 1

THE CHAMPAGNE WAS A 2011 Blanc de Blancs, and Ciana Reyes poured it the way she poured everything: without a wasted motion, with the kind of control that came from four years of serving first class at thirty-nine thousand feet and a lifetime of refusing to let her hands betray her.

They were betraying her now.

Not visibly. No passenger in cabin would have noticed the micro-tremor in her wrist as she tilted the bottle over the first flute. She caught it before the pour wobbled, locked her elbow, and let the wine fall in a clean, golden arc. But she knew. Her body had become aware of his presence before her eyes confirmed it, the way a compass needle swings north before the traveler has any idea which direction she’s facing.

Seat 1A. Third time in three weeks.

She set the flute on her tray without looking up. Moved to 1B, which was empty, as it always was when he flew. He bought both seats. She had noticed that the first time and told herself it was a business preference, the way some men needed silence the way others needed scotch. By the second time, she had stopped pretending she wasn’t cataloguing his habits.

He never reclined. He never slept. He never asked for anything beyond what was offered, and he declined half of that. He wore dark suits that fit him the way armour fit, not for beauty, but for containment. He was enormous in the way certain men were enormous: not just tall but dense with stillness, as though his body had been designed for a kind of violence he had chosen, very deliberately, to hold in reserve.

And the scar. A pale silver seam that ran from his left temple to the hinge of his jaw, pulling the skin taut over the cheekbone in a way that should have been disfiguring but wasn’t. It changed his face, made it more dangerous and impossible to look away from.

Ciana looked away.

She delivered the flute to 1A. "Your champagne, sir."

He took it without touching her fingers. He was meticulous about that, his hand always arriving a breath before or after hers, maintaining a margin of air between his skin and hers that felt less like courtesy and more like a perimeter. She had started to think of it as the exclusion zone. Two centimetres of nothing that somehow weighed more than any hand that had ever actually touched her.

“Thank you.” Low. Accented. Russian, she thought, though it had been sanded down by years of something else. French, maybe. The vowels sat differently in his mouth than they would in a native speaker’s.

She nodded. Smiled. Cabin-professional, eyes-neutral, the expression she had perfected at twenty and now wore like a second uniform. She retreated to the galley.

Raven Burnett was already there, leaning against the beverage cart with her arms crossed and one eyebrow doing the thing it did when she had an observation she was going to deliver whether Ciana wanted it or not.

"Three weeks," Raven said.

"Don’t."

"Three weeks, Ci. Same seat. Same flight. Same look on his face like he’s running long division in his head and you’re the remainder that won’t resolve."

Ciana pulled a bottle of still water from the drawer and cracked the seal. "He’s a frequent flyer. We’ve several."

“We’ve several who fly this route. We don’t have several who watch you like you’re a problem they’re trying to solve.” Raven uncrossed her arms and reached for a packet of shortbread, tearing it open with her teeth. “I’m not saying it’s sinister. I’m saying it’s something. And you—” She pointed the shortbread at Ciana. “—are pretending it’s nothing because the alternative would require you to have a feeling, and we both know how you’re about those.”

"I’ve feelings."

"Name one."

"Irritation. With you. Right now."

Raven grinned, wide, unrepentant, the kind of smile that had gotten her out of trouble and into it in roughly equal measure since they’d met in training four years ago. She was Ciana’s closest friend, which wasn’t the same thing as saying they were alike. Raven had opinions the way weather systems had wind: constantly, forcefully, and with no regard for whether you’d brought an umbrella. She dated with cheerful recklessness, had a tattoo she’d gotten in Lisbon that she refused to explain, and kept a running spreadsheet of every airline she intended to fly for before she turned thirty. She wasn’t, in any meaningful sense, a safe harbour. She was a dare. Ciana loved her for it, mostly because Raven never once tried to be anything else.

"His hands," Raven said, quieter now.

Ciana stilled. "What about them?"

"You were looking at his hands when you poured. Not at the glass. At his hands."

That was true, and Ciana hated that it was true, and she hated even more that Raven had seen it. His hands were... she didn’t have the right word. Large, obviously. Scarred across the knuckles the way hands got scarred when they’d met hard surfaces repeatedly and without gloves. But what had stopped her, what had made her pour go unsteady for a fraction of a second, was the way he held the champagne flute. Delicately. With a precision that didn’t match the rest of him, as though the glass were something he could break without noticing and he had decided, with great private discipline, not to.

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Advertisement Keep Me – East Coast Mafia Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/keep-me-east-coast-mafia-read-online-marian-tee Sun, 12 Jul 2026 16:11:29 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/keep-me-east-coast-mafia-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Insta-Love, Mafia Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 51733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 172(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >52

She was too young to be his bride. Now she’s the only woman he’ll ever fight to keep…

For the first time ever, HER OVERPROTECTIVE FIANCÉ and HER BRUTAL FIRST LOVE are published in one book.
“I’ll never let you go,” my mafia billionaire fiancé once told me.
I was only fifteen when Giancarlo Marchetti, Boston’s most feared mafia heir, saved me from becoming a madman’s bride by claiming me as his own.
Years later, he storms back into my life, more dangerous than ever, and furious that I might belong to someone else.
He doesn’t care what I want.
He only cares that I was his

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Eight Years Ago

Ropes

IT TAKES MORE EFFORT than I assumed, but I eventually manage to rip the cord off the lampstand.

Am I really going to do this?

I start yanking the cord from both ends.

Seems okay...

But can it hold my weight long enough until I die?

Only one fucking way to find out.

Tears burn my eyes even as I force myself to get moving.

It's not like I have a fucking choice.

I climb up the sink, and it gets harder and harder to fight back my tears.

It's better this way.

Because they made it so fucking clear, even with all of their faces covered, and none of them saying a single word—-

You know it is.

The way they had smirked and high-fived each other said it all.

And I'd rather die than let them have their way.

I tie the cord around my neck, and my tears finally start falling.

Fuck you, assholes.

I loop the cord around the beam.

Tighten the one around my neck until my lungs begin to struggle.

It's the cue I'm both dreading and waiting for.

Just think of it as flying.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Fly. I'm just going to fly. That's all.

I step off the counter.

Bang!

But I'm too late.

No. Fuck. No.

Instead of flying, I hear the bedroom door crash open, and a whirlpool of despair threatens to swallow me up.

No!

It's the sound of hell knocking on my door, and a scream rips out of my throat when someone grabs my legs.

Nooooooooooooooo!

I'm screaming and kicking as fear eats me alive from within.

NO! NO! NO!

I feel myself slowly losing my mind.

Please, please, please.

The cord around my neck loosens, and I start clawing whatever I can reach.

Can't anyone please help me?

Someone starts speaking, but my mind has already started to disintegrate.

I don't want this.

My body grows heavy, and my knees start to fold.

Please.

I know I'm about to lose consciousness, and I just know—-

Please, somebody, please.

When I wake up, I'll no longer be who I was.

Can't somebody help me?

I can't seem to stop begging even though I know no one's there to rescue me.

Please.

And yet...

Please.

I could've sworn someone heard my heart crying out.

Please.

And answered me with the words I had dreamt of my entire life.

"Sei al sicuro."

You're safe now.

Cages

DON'T OPEN YOUR EYES.

It's the first thing that pops into my mind when I regain consciousness.

Don't move.

Because I can sense someone staring at me even with my eyes still closed.

Don't panic.

But my heart is an idiot like always, and it starts racing uncontrollably.

Am I...okay?

I know the word is lame as fuck, but it's all I can handle right now.

I just want to know if I'm...okay.

So, let's see...

I'm still fully clothed, for one.

And from what I've read, the part between my legs is supposed to hurt.

If I'm not okay, that is.

But I think...I am.

Right?

Because if I'm wrong, then I should feel differently.

I'd know...right?

If I'm not...okay?

"I know you're awake."

FUCK.

It takes everything in me to stay abso-fucking-lutely still and not open my eyes. The voice may have sounded gentle and distinctly female, but who gives a shit? I bet people said the same thing about the Countess of Bath just before she had their bodies drained of blood.

"You have no reason to believe me yet, but you're safe with us."

Yeah right.

"Signor Marchetti—-"

Did she just say 'Marchetti'?

"It's no use to keep pretending you're asleep when your heart rate just spiked up."

Fuck.

The truth in her words is a hard pill to swallow, but I still feel nauseous like hell as I slowly force my eyes open.

Fuck.

Why is everything spinning?

"It's alright. Just take deep breaths."

The other woman's words make me feel like a fucking baby, and I hate it.

But with the world around me still spinning, it's not like I have a choice.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

I do as she says even when I feel stupid, and after a few more tries, the spinning eventually slows down, and my head gradually stops throbbing as well.

"Better?"

It takes another dose of courage to make myself turn towards the voice.

Oh.

I expected someone in her thirties, but instead, I found a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl seated next to my bed. I'm guessing she's just a few years older. Maybe 20 or 21 to my fifteen. But either way, who gives a shit? She's a stranger to me still, and that's enough reason for me not to trust her.

We stare at each other, and impatience eventually gets the better of me.

"Who are you?" I ask in a guarded tone.

Her lips curve in a smile, and she looks even more angelic than she already does.

Not buying it.

"Will you believe me if I say I'm simply someone who wants to help?"

"Only if you'll tell me what you're hoping to get in exchange."

"And if I say I have nothing to gain?"

"Then no. I don't believe you just want to help me," I answer flatly, but the words only cause her blue eyes to twinkle.

Cray, I think right away.

No doubt about it: this girl isn't in her right mind.

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >52

Advertisement Falling for My Ex-Boyfriend’s Billionaire Uncle Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/falling-for-my-ex-boyfriends-billionaire-uncle-read-online-marian-tee Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:51:35 +0000 https://www.books2020.com/falling-for-my-ex-boyfriends-billionaire-uncle-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Insta-Love Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 26246 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 131(@200wpm)___ 105(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >27

Kyara’s billionaire boss wants to steal her heart…while her ex-boyfriend wants to destroy her.

For three years, Lyrius Havington has held his possessiveness and jealousy in check. But when he finally pulls her into his arms for a kiss that makes both of them forget everything…why is she pushing him away? Why is she still choosing that boy over him?
For three years, Kyara has been a faithful girlfriend to Cyrus…only to find out he’s a liar, a cheat, and now—a blackmailer?
Come when I call…or I’ll burn your boss’s life to the ground

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Three Years Ago

Lyrius

Short red hair. A lovely face that somehow reminds me of a green-eyed kitten, only this one wears oval-framed glasses, a buttoned-up blouse, and a pencil skirt that modestly ends a few inches below her knees.

There’s something old-fashioned about her, which some may even see as prudish.

But for me she’s prim and perfect, and that’s what doesn’t make sense at all.

She’s the exact opposite of the kind of woman I usually date, so why can’t I take my eyes off her?

“Sir?”

My assistant’s voice yanks me back to reality, and I swiftly turn my attention back to her. “What is it?”

She looks at me suspiciously, but I only gaze back at her impassively, knowing that if I say a word, it would just let the older woman know she’s rattled me. Her intuition is the main reason why I hired her over everyone else—

“Is there someone among the trainees you recognize? Or someone you believe would be a good fit for your office?”

But it’s also the worst thing about having her as an assistant, with how she makes it impossible for me to lie to myself.

I force myself to look back at the training room, where over a hundred applicants are hard at work answering test after test in hopes of working for our company. While the room’s two-way windows allow us to observe from the outside without being seen ourselves, I’m conscious of how my assistant is closely paying attention to where I look as I let my gaze sweep over the room one last time.

And truthfully, I am tempted.

I’ve never been the type to leave things to chance nor have I ever shied away from taking control if I see the slightest opening to dominate. What I want, I pursue relentlessly. But because I’ve also never been the type to mix business with pleasure—

You know better, Havington.

My gaze sweeps past the girl that catches my eye without pause, and my expression remains impassive when I look back at my assistant. “My decision remains the same,” I tell her. “You’re the one who has to train her. So pick whoever you think is best.”

“If you say so, Mr. Havington.” Lara’s gaze has turned thoughtful as she says this, and I wonder if this is something her Army husband has taught her. She’s making me feel defensive even though I know I haven’t done anything wrong.

I’m a man before I’m anyone’s boss, and a girl’s caught my eye.

I’m doing my duty by keeping my interest to myself and letting Lara do the picking.

So why the heck do I still feel like my world’s about to turn upside-down?

Kyara

Once, there were 128. Went down to 44. And then there’s us, the remaining ten college graduates who were officially given job offers by Wallace International, and I...I think I have to bite my lip really hard because I can’t possibly squee.

The envelope H.R. slides across the table is fancy. Like, really fancy. I’m not sure what it’s made of—something sturdier than plain paper, but something more expensive than cardboard? Should I know what this is, just to fit in?

To-do #2 Know your paper types.

But anyway, what’s inside is what matters the most, and...oh?

Aside from the usual details about compensation, a rule book for employees, a separate glossy brochure of the company history, the thing that matters the most has been reduced to...four digits?

I’m supposed to work for 7003?

Someone whistles beside me, the sound making me look up, and...double oh.

It’s Cyrus, the first-placer in our group of ten because he scored the highest marks on all the tests and interviews in our application period, which were the most grueling three months of my life. But, like, in a good way. As in, you get to learn something new every day, and anyway, I know I’m digressing.

The point is, Cyrus, who’s blond, attractive, and just so well-dressed at all times that a part of me is just dying to ask him for style advice—he and I never really had a chance to talk in the past three months, and that’s why—

“That’s rare,” Cyrus remarks.

I forget all about the oddness of him suddenly being friendly at his words. “You know what it means then?” Because I’m honestly stumped. What does 7003 have to do with my being accepted for a job?

My question makes him smile for some reason, and while I know all of the girls in our training batch think he’s cute and all—

His smile is really refreshing because it’s not the kind of smile you’d ever get from the usual sexual predators and drunks that my mom loves to date. Cyrus’s is a good, harmless smile, and so I allow myself to smile back. It just feels good to be in the company of a normal guy, you know?

“It’s a Wallace International thing,” Cyrus continues, leaning closer like he’s letting me in on something. “When you get hired, you get the room number, and then you try to find your way there without asking.”

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >27

Advertisement The Mafia Husband’s Last Chance – A Billionaire Breaks My Heart Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/the-mafia-husbands-last-chance-a-billionaire-breaks-my-heart-read-online-marian-tee Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:51:01 +0000 https://www.books2020.com/the-mafia-husbands-last-chance-a-billionaire-breaks-my-heart-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Mafia Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 25827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >26

Eighteen years ago, he broke her heart on their wedding night. Now he’s back. And he’s not asking.

Juniper Lake was twenty-four when she walked into a Lake Como bridal suite and found her husband in bed with another woman. She left Italy that same night. She buried his name. And for the past eighteen years, she’s told everyone—including herself — that she’s fine.

And more importantly, she doesn’t let herself think of him.

Until one Monday night, she comes home and finds him on her couch, speaking in an Italian accent she’s never heard him use.

Ciao, moglie mia.

That’s when she knows.

He was never the husband she thought he was.

In fact, she never knew him at all.

Nicolo Sestini is Italian. Mafia. Once a missing heir, now back to reclaim his life after defeating his most dangerous enemy. He’s also the husband Juniper didn’t know she still had.

Nicolo doesn’t apologize for the wedding night. Doesn’t explain where he’s been. He just tells her she’s still his wife.

And that he’s taking her back.

Whether she’s willing or not.

A fast-paced, emotionally devastating marriage-in-crisis mafia romance with an unforgivable husband, eighteen years of secrets, and a wife who doesn’t know yet that she’s about to be his again. Standalone with HEA. Tissues recommended

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Prologue

I THINK THE DRESS IS fine.

The dress is silk, and it’s the color of champagne and Odessa picked it out for me at the boutique three days ago. It zips up the side, and it has four tiny silk-covered buttons at the shoulder that I’m wondering if my husband (aaah! Am I really married?) will take the time to slowly unbutton, or is he the type who’s going to just rip my dress off—

What in the world are you thinking, Juniper Lake?

I mean, Juniper Lake Simons!

What in the world are you thinking, Mrs. Simons?

My hands fly up to cover my face in embarrassment even though I know it’s only me, myself, and I who have witnessed the shameful direction of my thoughts.

A laugh makes me peep through the slits of space between my fingers, and I see Odessa looking at me knowingly.

Eep.

“Just go, will you? Before you start embarrassing me, too.”

A half-wail, half-laugh escapes me. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I can’t believe...” I can’t even finish the thought. I’m blushing anew, and Odessa starts blushing, too, when she sees my reddened cheeks.

Peas in the same pod, the two of us. These days, the fact that we’re still virgins in our mid-twenties isn’t something to be proud of, but it’s just how we are.

“Seriously, June—” Odessa starts pushing me towards the door. “You shouldn’t keep your bridegroom waiting.”

“I know, I know, but—” I just have to turn around and give my best friend a tight hug. If not for her keeping me company last night, I don’t think I could’ve slept a wink. “Thank you,” I say feelingly. “Thank you for coming to my wedding.”

Odessa hugs me back. “You know I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Now, for the last time—go.” She pushes me out into the hallway, and I can only laugh when the door to the suite we shared last night slams behind me.

I guess that’s that, then.

As the hallways from both ends meet at the elevator lobby, there’s a terrace on one side that overlooks Lake Como. It’s the most beautiful scenery, but it was even more beautiful earlier, with the sun setting behind us while the mayor pronounced us husband and wife.

The elevator doors open, and I tap the scanner with the card to the penthouse suite. The light turns green, the doors close, and then it’s the most exciting countdown ever, as I watch the floor number on the screen change.

Four. Five. Six.

I feel giddy and restless, unable to believe that after just six months of dating, Nate and I are married. As in...I’m no longer Juniper Lake, but Mrs. Nate Simons. Forever. I’m sure other people will think things are moving too fast, especially since I also had to quit my job for this, and prepare for a life abroad because of Nate’s work. But that’s just how love is, right? Where your love goes, you go, too.

I look at my wedding ring, and a helpless smile touches my lips. Wife. I’m a wife. And not just anyone’s wife, but I’m the wife of the only man I’ll love in this life.

The doors finally open, and it’s when I step out, and the quiet grandness of the penthouse suite envelops me—

It’s at that moment I start feeling something’s wrong.

But I push the thought away as soon as it pops up.

Bridal jitters, I tell myself. That’s all there is to it, and bridal jitters are very, very normal.

All the lights are out, leaving only the silvery sheen of moonlight to guide my way. A part of me is wondering why there isn’t any sign of champagne and flowers, or the signature chocolates that this hotel is supposedly known for. Everywhere I look, all I see is the standard suite and nothing that says this...this is the room where love blooms between newlyweds.

Then again...

Maybe this is really just how it is with rich people and their expensive hotel suites? Maybe everything I’m expecting is too crass for their tastes?

Yes, I think that’s it.

I’m a middle-class kind of girl, so this is all new to me, but it doesn’t mean something’s wrong. I’m just being silly, and I’m letting my bridal jitters turn me into Little Mrs. Paranoid.

Just think of Nate, I urge myself.

Tonight is all about Nate and you.

One foot forward, another one follows.

Husband and wife. That’s it.

My hand starts shaking as I reach for the knob. I’m not sure why that is, but I tell myself it’s okay as the door slowly swings open. In just a matter of seconds, what I’d see, and who I’ll find—that’s what will make all of my fears, doubts, and bridal jitters go away.

But instead, I end up asking myself—

Is this the wrong room? The wrong floor? Or even the wrong dimension?

I’m ready to believe anything and everything, but how can I when that’s his wedding ring on the bedside table, and I know I can’t be mistaken because I was the one who chose it. For him. For the man who just swore to love me and only me...until death do us part.

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >26

Advertisement Falling for My Ex-Husband’s Billionaire Boss Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/falling-for-my-ex-husbands-billionaire-boss-read-online-marian-tee Wed, 20 May 2026 17:50:49 +0000 https://www.books2020.com/falling-for-my-ex-husbands-billionaire-boss-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Erotic, Insta-Love Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 25544 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 128(@200wpm)___ 102(@250wpm)___ 85(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >26

She’s forty-two, twenty years married, and one closed door away from losing everything she thought was hers.

Their weekend getaway was supposed to be a trip they’d never forget. And that’s exactly what happens…when Nicole finds her husband in bed with a girl almost half his age.
She walks out in a daze…and straight into the arms of Chase Everford. Tall, good-looking, and British. He’s also her husband’s billionaire boss, and now, her knight in shining armor.

An emotional, fast-paced, microdrama-length marriage-in-crisis romance. Wronged wife. No cheating by the leads. Intense chemistry, feel-good billionaire romance. HEA guaranteed

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Chapter One

A CLOSED DOOR.

That says everything when you're a married man, your assistant happens to be young and nubile, and now those two people who should never be alone are inside a room.

And the door's closed.

For one moment, I'm just so tempted to just walk away. Because clichés are clichés for a reason, and right now all I'm thinking is—

What I don't know won't hurt me, so why can't I? Why shouldn't I just walk away? Our marriage isn't perfect, but we've been together since college. What are people going to say if things are exactly as I feared?

So just walk away, walk away, walk away—

And yet my legs are moving at the same time I'm thinking of walking away.

And instead of leaving I'm walking closer and closer, and the next thing I know I'm reaching for the knob, and it's actually cooperating with me, turning silently in my fingers like it wants me to see the evidence with my own eyes.

The door slowly opens. One stealthy inch at a time until I finally see...shapes.

Under the covers.

That's all I can allow myself to think.

Two shapes moving simultaneously in a dance that's as old as time, and just as hideous because these two shapes weren't supposed to be together behind a closed door.

These two shapes weren't bound by matrimony, weren't forged by a relationship that spanned decades. And yet the sounds they're making right now...

In the same bed that I woke up from this morning—

I turn away.

My legs have stopped shaking for some reason.

They're not shaking. They're just standing there. Holding me up like nothing's happened. Like the world hasn't just—

Stop.

Don't think.

Just walk.

And as I slowly descend, I hear...one of the shapes, yes, that's how I should think of them for now.

Shapes.

Just shapes.

Shapes, shapes, shapes.

And one of those shapes, the younger one, she's noticed the door slightly ajar—

"Has that always been opened?"

Her tone is so innocent and young. How is that possible when she's under the covers with a shape that's not hers?

"Ignore it," the older shape groans. "Come back—"

"I'm serious, Mr. Big."

Did she just—

Did she seriously—

"Please check it for me?"

A loud sigh.

"Alright, anything for my tiny."

Oh, how cute.

Mr. Big and his tiny. I don't think we were that cute even when we first started dating back in college.

Maybe that's why...he's in there with her right now and not me?

Maybe that's why I'm out here pretending my legs aren't shaking when they so obviously are?

Don't.

Don't go down that road.

Not yet.

I'm walking. That's the only job I have right now. To walk. Like I've walked down a hundred hallways exactly like this one for him, in heels I picked because he liked them, in dresses I picked because he liked them, smiling at concierges and bellmen and the wives of the other men who matter, because that's the job I signed up for at twenty-two.

I tossed my dreams all out of the window because he asked me to, and I believed that was what it meant to be a good wife.

That was all I wanted.

To be a good wife, and...and...just stop thinking, Nicole!

I look around desperately.

The walls.

Okay, the walls then.

I focus on them. The walls are...cream-colored. And...and the carpet underneath my heels is a solid color of gray and luxuriously thick. Very neutral and chic. Just like the rest of this hotel. And all the other guests, even the two shapes under—

"Nicole?"

The sound of my name on his lips is like having cold, hard reality slap me, and I just start running.

"Nicole, wait—"

I feel like laughing and crying. He sounds panicked. That's all I hear. Panic. Because I guess...that's all he cares about.

Him and her.

But not me...his wife, and I...I...I have to run.

Because his footsteps are getting louder, and so I keep running and running while telling myself, Don’t.

Don’t think and just run.

All I have to do is just keep running until I outrun reality and—

BAM!

I’ve bumped into someone else, and he's...I feel like I've seen him before, but I can't remember where. And right now, it doesn't really matter—

"Nicole, dammit!"

Because that...that shape is still calling my name out, and now he actually sounds resentful?

The way he’s acting, it’s as if I’m an inconvenience. And being hysterical and mean. It’s as if he hasn’t just been in bed with another—

“Sir!”

That’s Sandy exclaiming the word, and since I know I’m not someone he’d call that, I look up, and—

Why does this man seem familiar?

“S-Sir, I’m sorry, this is a misunderstanding.”

Sandy is actually stuttering behind me, but he also sounds like he’s coming closer and closer, and I...I just panic. I look up at the stranger who’s still holding my elbow like he thinks my knees will give out at any moment. And maybe...maybe he’s right. Because the moment I hear Sandy bite out my name like he’s dying to punish me—

“P-Please.”

The word stumbles out like the broken plea that it is.

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >26

Advertisement The Rancher Kissed the Wrong Girl – Billionaires of Evergreen Texas Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/the-rancher-kissed-the-wrong-girl-billionaires-of-evergreen-texas-read-online-marian-tee Wed, 13 May 2026 18:55:04 +0000 https://www.books2020.com/the-rancher-kissed-the-wrong-girl-billionaires-of-evergreen-texas-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Angst, Billionaire, Insta-Love Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 34243 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 171(@200wpm)___ 137(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >34

Once upon a time, there was this idiot who didn't believe in happy-ever-afters. So she pretended to kiss a frog to make a prince jealous. She was hoping it would make the prince claim her, but instead he walked away.

That idiot...was not me.

Well, okay, it was me, and the prince isn't actually a prince, but like, a billionaire who’s princely?

Anyway, the point is, God's given me a chance to un-idiot myself, and now that Arkane Young is back in my life—

I muster the courage to wear my heart on my sleeve, letting him know I'm just an ordinary girl standing in front of a not-so-ordinary rancher, asking him to love her.

...

News flash #1: it didn't work—

Because news flash #2: there's another girl standing in front of the same boy, asking him to love her, too

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Part One

Her by JVKE

Chapter One

MOM: Jose wants me to go to Mexico with him and I just HAD to say yes lol. But dont worry I already made arrangements for the summer ok?

Huh.

That’s new. The only times my mom makes plans in advance are when she asks me what I want for dinner, and it’s usually a choice between two types of leftovers.

I sit up straighter on my bed and scroll down, already bracing myself. The dorm room is quiet around me. Unusually so, since Cami left yesterday with two rolling suitcases and a boyfriend who drove up from New York in a Porsche to collect her. Which means I’m alone for the first time all semester in a room that is approximately 80% Cami, 15% communal, and 5% me.

It’s not hard to tell which 5% is mine. My side of the room is a narrow strip of bed, desk, and closet, the closet being a plywood box with a metal rod that wobbles every time you hang anything on it. The only personal touch is a laundry schedule I printed out during orientation week and stuck to the wall with a single piece of tape that’s been slowly losing its grip since October.

Cami’s side, on the other hand, looks like a boutique had a baby with a Pinterest board. Shopping bags from stores I’ve never set foot in are stacked three deep beside her dresser. Her vanity mirror is framed with photos of her and various boyfriends, all of whom are terribly rich and even more terribly good-looking. She also cheerfully admits to cycling through them with the efficiency of someone who treats dating the way most people treat subscription services. Some are just good for a three-day deal, to be revisited only when they offer something hot and new.

Cami’s clothes take up not just her closet but half of mine. No beef, though; she very cheerfully offered to pay rent for additional space after seeing what little I had, and I was just as cheerful in accepting. We may be polar opposites, my roommate and I, but our friendship is also proof that honesty when negotiating is everything.

Everything that I know about Cami is something she’s admitted herself. My mom, she’s just as honest. But whereas Cami’s comes off as charmingly self-aware, my mom’s version of being true to one’s self is the kind that forces everyone around her to be the adult—and her own kids are no exception.

Case in point: this message of hers that has me taking deep, calm breaths with every line I read.

Mom: I texted Icelle—

Oh God, here we go again.

Mom: and she said you can totally stay with her fam for the summer!! You guys can just ride back together when school starts. It’s going to be SO fun!!!

Three exclamation marks. My mother only uses three exclamation marks when she’s already mentally on the plane to wherever her latest boyfriend is taking her and she needs me to not make a fuss about being left behind.

I lower my phone to my lap and stare at the wall across from me. There’s a hairline crack that runs from the ceiling down to the light switch, and I’ve been tracing it with my eyes since freshman orientation, imagining it as a tiny fault line that will one day split the building in half and swallow this room and everything in it, which, in my case, would amount to one suitcase’s worth of stuff and a laundry schedule. Cami’s side would probably survive. Her faux-fur throw alone has enough structural integrity to shield a small village.

Why do I even try? Why try making friends when there’s always my own mother to scare them all away? And the worst thing about it is that she never sees anything wrong in what she does. Like the time she called Daphne to ask if we were friends, and when Daphne said yes, she then asked with zero shame if Daphne could ask her mom to pay for our rent because—

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >34

Advertisement The Sicilian Billionaire’s Accidental Wife Read Online Marian Tee http://www.books2020.com/the-sicilian-billionaires-accidental-wife-read-online-marian-tee Fri, 03 Apr 2026 23:15:37 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/the-sicilian-billionaires-accidental-wife-read-online-marian-tee Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Insta-Love Authors: Marian Tee Advertisement

Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 44860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >49

An innocent woman who almost loses her life. A billionaire who doesn’t believe in love. And a well-meaning deception that traps them both in a proxy marriage they can’t escape from.
Surviving a three-year coma has given twenty-two-year-old Chelsea Regis the courage to surrender everything to her gorgeous, powerful husband—even though he’s never once said he loves her.
To curb his growing obsession with his wife, Olivio Cannizzaro ruthlessly turns his unplanned marriage into a business solution.
But when the truth comes out, and everything falls apart, it’s the Sicilian billionaire who’s driven to despair, realizing too late that he’s already thrown away the best thing in his life.

Note: A marriage-of-convenience billionaire romance. HEA guaranteed, tissues required

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Prologue

CHELSEA CHECKED HER smartwatch.

How strange.

She gazed at the numbers, but they didn’t change. Her heart was still able to beat normally even when a single conversation had just broken it into pieces.

Her gaze turned to her stepmother’s retreating back, but tears blurred everything before she could make sense of it. Francesca was already through the cafe door, not rushing, not looking back. The way a person left when they’d done what they came to do, and the aftermath was someone else’s problem.

The cafe kept going around her. Someone laughed at the table behind her. A barista called out a name. The trailing plants above the counter swayed in the draft from the door, and Chelsea sat there with her hands wrapped around a chamomile tea that had gone cold, and her fingers were trembling so badly that the liquid inside the cup was making small, concentric circles.

She’d seen those circles before.

In the bath. This morning. When her husband’s hands had moved through her hair and the water had rippled—

Stop it, Chels.

This morning was a different world, and so it no longer felt right to remember that time. When she had woken up in his arms this morning, and he had kissed her forehead, and she had kissed him back...

When she had stood in the foyer in his stolen t-shirt and already counting the minutes before they could be together again...

That world was gone.

And it might never even have been real.

But now though...

This world she was living in now...hurt.

And it hurt even more when her phone buzzed, and a part of her just wanted to hide and pretend and lie to herself. But this world had somehow turned her into a masochist, and she ended up looking anyway.

Olivio.

He was texting her...like usual. And honestly, she’d been like everyone else in the past, thinking that a billionaire like Olivio Cannizzaro would think of texting as beneath him. People should be the one calling and sending him messages, not the other way around.

And yet...in the nine days they’d been married, Olivio had texted her.

All the time.

And she used to think (foolishly, she realized now) his texts were proof that she was important. But now, oh God...

How is your day, tesoro?

The preview on the screen was enough to show the entirety of his message, and every word just...hurt. It wasn’t so long ago that this message would’ve made Chelsea bite her lip in an effort to keep her lips from forming another silly little smile. It wasn’t so long ago that she would’ve been quick to text him back, shyly but eagerly, because it meant so much to know that her very busy husband remembered her and wanted to know about her day.

But now, though...

The message was a blur like the rest of her surroundings, the tears making it impossible to see everything clearly with her eyes while the pain made it impossible for her heart to understand anything.

Her hands were shaking so badly it took a while before she could even dig her phone out of her purse, and it took three painful attempts to even scroll through her contacts just to find Edgar’s name and hit the Call button.

So far, blinking rapidly had kept the tears at bay, but she knew it was only a matter of time. She knew it was painfully inevitable, and that sooner or later...

Is this really happening, God?

Can't this just be a dream?

Please.

Edgar answered on the second ring, his voice gruff and warm at the same time. “Perfect timing, child. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this foundation—”

“I’m s-sorry, but c-can I ask you a question first?” She’d already cut him off before she realized what she was doing, and the guilt was terrible and instant.

This isn't me. So why am I doing it?

She had never cut someone off, but here she was, doing exactly that, and all because she got her heart broken?

“What’s wrong, Chelsea?”

The concern in the older man’s tone only made her feel more ashamed.

I don't want to be like this, God. I don't want to change, I don't want to start hurting people just because someone hurt me first.

Her fingers tightened around her phone, and she found herself choking out an apology. “I’m sorry for cutting you off.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I know you, child. Tell me what’s wrong. What do you want to ask?”

Her gaze strayed to her smartwatch. How strange, she thought again. The numbers were still within the normal range even as the pain kept growing. Her throat tightened, and she had to swallow hard several times before she could finally manage to ask—

“Do you k-know anything about the Marquez deal? Is it...is it t-true that he only stayed married to me to close it?”

The question gave birth to the most awful silence, and it just made her hurt more and more because she knew how Edgar’s mind worked, and so that awful, awful silence was an answer in itself.

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