Battle For The Title And Mate
While My Husband Cheated, I Married His Powerful Brother
To help her husband build his business empire, Veyra worked two jobs, skipped meals, and sacrificed everything she had. When her mother desperately needed life-saving treatment, she couldn't even scrape together the money. Then, on a New Year's Eve flight, fate seated her beside her husband's mistress. That's when she discovered the cruel truth. Her husband had secretly amassed millions long ago. The wedding ring that belonged to Veyra now glittered on another woman's finger. The $500,000 that could have saved her mother's life had been spent instead on luxury gifts and pocket money for his lover. She lost her baby. She lost her mother. And finally, she lost every illusion about the man she'd loved for years. After leaving the airport, Veyra walked into a bar, kissed the most dangerous-looking stranger she could find, and spent one reckless night in his arms. By sunrise, she disappeared without leaving so much as her name. She thought it was nothing more than a farewell to her broken past. She was wrong. The stranger was Dorian-the most powerful, mysterious billionaire in the business world. Meanwhile, her cheating husband finally realized what he had thrown away. He begged on his knees, signed a postnuptial agreement worth billions, and swore he would give up everything if she would come back. But just as Veyra began plotting to reclaim everything that had been stolen from her, a mysterious car accident brought Dorian back into her life. Only then did she learn the truth. He wasn't a stranger at all. He was her ex-husband's older stepbrother. Now two powerful men are fighting for the same woman-one consumed by regret, the other determined to make her his. Sorry, cheating ex... I choose your brother.
Chapter 1 First Class Betrayal
Caspian had been working overtime through the entire New Year holiday. Veyra Solenne decided she would surprise him. She'd fly out, knock on his hotel door, watch his tired face crack into a smile.
Only business class seats were left. Although she felt bad about the ticket price, she thought it was worth it.
She sat there for a full minute, unable to figure out how to lower the tray table.
The woman beside her - polished, bored, gorgeous in the particular way that costs money - let out a short laugh.
"Never flown business before?"
Veyra managed an awkward smile. "Sorry. You must run a company or something. You've got that air about you."
"Me? No." The woman waved a manicured hand. "But my benefactor does. If I'm not in business class, he sends a private jet."
"A benefactor," Veyra said. "Those must be hard to come by."
"Not really." The woman's mouth curved. "I'm his subordinate. I keep making expensive mistakes at work. He scolds me until I cry, and then-" she smiled, letting the sentence finish itself.
A small chill moved down Veyra's spine, though she couldn't have said why. "Funny," she said slowly. "My husband has a colleague like that too. Always making mistakes."
"You're married?" The woman's eyes swept over her, cataloguing. "His wife's about your age, actually."
She examined her nails.
"He says he got tired of her ages ago. Says touching her feels stale. Less interesting than watching me flip my hair."
Veyra's stomach turned, quietly, the way it does before you know why.
"I told him I wanted to see him over the holiday," the woman went on, pleased with herself. "So he told his wife he had to work."
That was when Veyra saw it. The ring on the woman's finger. A diamond, cut exactly like the wedding band she had lost two years ago.
She went still.
Caspian is an ordinary employee, she thought. So, calm down. Similar rings don't mean anything.
Her eyes fixed on the ring.
"That's a wedding band," Veyra said, her voice coming out strange to her own ears. "Did you marry him?"
"This?" The woman - Xiomara, she introduced herself, admiring the stone as it caught the cabin light - "I made him take it from his wife."
The air went out of Veyra's lungs.
"I wasn't trying to make trouble for her, honestly," Xiomara said. "But on my birthday she had a miscarriage and dragged him to the hospital. I spent it alone."
Veyra's hand drifted, without her permission, to her stomach.
The memory came back whole and freezing: black ice on the walk home from the market, a fall she hadn't seen coming, three months along, and then nothing but blood on frozen concrete. Caspian at her bedside for three days straight, not sleeping. Waking to find her ring gone along with the child.
It's okay, he'd said, voice breaking. We'll have another baby. I'll make you a new ring.
Don't, she'd told him. They're doing layoffs. Save the money. When you make it, get me one then.
She had believed, at the time, that this was a small and noble sacrifice. She had not known she was negotiating away her own ring to a woman she hadn't met yet.
"So he gave you his wife's ring," Veyra said carefully.
"He didn't want to, at first. Said he'd buy me something better." Xiomara tilted her hand, watching the light slide across the diamond. "But that old thing acts so superior just for being his wife. If I don't put her in her place, she'll think she owns the world."
"When a woman lets herself get that pathetic," Xiomara added, almost kindly, "there's really no saving her."
Veyra's fingers found the hem of her sleeve and held on. "If he spends this much on you, he must be paying her a fortune to keep quiet."
Xiomara laughed, bright and careless, and leaned in close enough that her perfume became a wall.
"Here's the funny part," she whispered. "That pathetic woman doesn't even know he runs a company."
---
"Why keep it from her?" Veyra asked. Something in her was still hoping - stupidly, stubbornly - that there was an explanation that didn't end where she thought it did.
"Because what's the point?" Xiomara turned her nails toward the window light. "She already spent her best years slaving beside him while he built everything. If you were a man and you finally made it, would you keep spending on a wife who's already worn out? Money doesn't buy back anyone's youth."
Veyra caught her own reflection in the cabin glass - hollow-cheeked, shadowed under the eyes, ten years of scraping by written into her skin. She used to look better than this. She used to look like Xiomara.
"You know, sis, you've still got some looks left," Xiomara said, studying her with the clinical warmth of someone appraising livestock. "A little cosmetic work wouldn't hurt. Your husband hasn't been that interested lately, has he?"
Veyra said nothing.
"My benefactor gives me half a million a month just for living expenses," Xiomara added, unprompted, unbothered. "Procedures are separate."
"How long," Veyra made herself ask, "has this been going on?"
"Since June twelfth, last year." Xiomara checked her nails again, already bored of the question.
Veyra's grip on her own sleeve went white-knuckled.
June twelfth. The day her mother had needed five hundred thousand dollars for surgery she never got. Caspian had begged everyone he knew and come back with three hundred fifty thousand - everything I have, he'd told her, weeping, and she had believed him, had scraped together eighty thousand more herself and still watched her mother die eighty thousand short of enough.
I'm sorry, he'd said into her hair. I'm worthless. I couldn't even save your mother.
She had wiped his tears instead of her own. You gave everything you had. That's enough. Just wait a little longer, she'd told him, and he'd gripped her hand like a man drowning and sworn they wouldn't suffer forever.
He'd had the other hundred and fifty thousand the whole time.
"Funny thing," Xiomara said, watching her now with real interest. "That woman's mother needed exactly five hundred thousand that same month."
Veyra looked at her and said nothing at all.
Xiomara winked. "He was going to pay it. Originally."
"You took it," Veyra said. "For an allowance."
"Please, he's got plenty more where that came from. I just told him - once her mother's dead, that woman has no family left. Nowhere to go. If he ever gets caught keeping me, she won't dare make a scene." Xiomara smiled, cat-content. "I wanted a Chanel piece that month. Five hundred thousand, as it happens."
"Aren't you afraid she'll find out?"
"I'm smarter than that." Xiomara stretched, satisfied. "It was my idea - tell his wife he'd scraped together everything, let her think he gave his all. She'd be too grateful, too guilty over the shortfall, to ever look for someone else in the picture."
Then, almost as an afterthought, she added the last piece.
"The annoying part is, the only reason he finally agreed to do it was so that if I ever got found out, his precious wife wouldn't leave him." She snorted. "Tch. Some women have all the luck."
The slap landed before Veyra had decided to throw it.
"What is wrong with you?" Xiomara shrieked, hand flying to her cheek.
THE BATTLE FOR YOUR HEART
"Hello , Nicholas" Eight years ago, Nicholas Chesterfield had made a wrong decision of choosing his father's attention and acceptance over Amelia and her father. He lost Amelia in the process and he regretted it ever since. Now as the CEO and partner in NW International, he needs to finalize a pr
The Tussle (battle for the throne)
A new king is decided in the most unusual way. Fate and perhaps the deities chooses Adrian to ascend the throne but Amir feels entitled and seeks to rule The Amok empire by any means possible. Upon the king’s Demise, Amir attempts a revolt and is stopped by the queen and her weapon of war - Ariel
Lustful Desires: Battle For Alpha
“Never! Never, Alex. I'll never allow you to be the Alpha again. Not over this Pack.” I swore as a drop of tears wet my cheek. “We can rule over them, over all the Packs in the States and beyond, don't you want that?” “Of course, I want that. I want to rule people, but not against their will.”
The Chosen Title
Melody Johnson is a 19 year old girl with a ready manuscript for her first book. The only thing missing is a basic storyline with a suitable title. Ok, you got her. She is an aspiring writer who needs some inspiration to write something that touches not only the readers' credit card, but their heart
With the Battle Fleet
Excerpt from With the Battle Fleet: Cruise of the Sixteen Battleships of the United States Atlantic Fleet From Hampton Roads to the Golden Gate, December, 1907 May, 1908 Arrived Possession Bar, Chile, January 31, 1908; sailed February 1, 1908; knots; time, 9 days. Arrived Punta Arenas, Chile, Fe
The Battle of Life
Curl up with this heartwarming tale of redemption from the master of the happy ending, Charles Dickens. A great read at Christmas-time or whenever you could use some uplifting lighter fare, The Battle of Life is a fast-paced tale that you'll finish with a smile on your face and renewed faith in the
BATTLE OF THE CRONOVERSE.
In the infinite expanse of the verse's, a cataclysmic war rages on the Reveiverse-one that threatens to unravel the very fabric of reality. Nielan, the indomitable Head Ruler of the War Faction, seeks to overthrow Krelious, the Supreme Sovereign of All, igniting a conflict so vast it consumes galaxi
THE BATTLE OF AOHORN
War is coming....The elves , mages and mystical creatures are all allied against their common enemy....HERAGON
The Battle Ground
The Shelf2Life American Civil War Collection is a unique and exciting collection of pre-1923 titles focusing on the American Civil War and the people and events surrounding it. From memoirs and biographies of notable military figures to firsthand accounts of famous battles and in-depth discussions
Game of Alpha; Battle for Supremacy
In a world ruled by blood and betrayal, James carries a dark secret, he is the last surviving heir of a slaughtered clan, hidden behind the stolen face of his enemy. Sent to infiltrate the ruthless Bloodthorn Clan that murdered his family, James is determined to tear them apart from within. But ven
TITLE: THE BILLIONAIRE HEIRESS' SECRET BARGAIN
Sloane Elizabeth Prescott isn't just a CEO; she's a fortress of ambition and designer silk, the untouchable queen of a Texas oil and tech empire. Her world is one of private jets and boardroom coups, until the one man who can see through her facade storms back into her life. Rhett Kingman, a venture
The Alpha's Slave and Mate
Maddie brain a Twenty years old lady with a sin as white as jade and beautiful deep blue eyes and a full red lips had lost her father before she was born and her mother remarried and later died when she was Fourteen years old,left with her step father Harold who beat and maltreated her until he fina
THE WEREWOLF AND VAMPIRE'S MATE
A werewolf. A seer. A vampire. Imagine you are just trying to get through high school and next thing you know, you are mated to not one but two creatures you didn't think existed. Now, you are stuck between two men who hate each other but love you. Aurora is forced into their world not onl
The Rejected And Sacrificed Mate
"I Arthur Carter reject you and caught all bonds with you." Those words chattered Selina as she was thrown into the cave even before realising it. She was sacrificed as their annual vessel two days after she got married after realising that her destined mate was her husband's younger brother. Wha
The Killer and Her Mate
"Since you have already agreed to the deal you must know that being my personal killer would mean that you have to listen to everything that I tell you to do. There will be punishments if you fail to follow this," he said, mirth swimming in his eyes taking Vevina by surprise. She wasn't prepared for
The Silent Battle
Gallatin wearily lowered the creel from his shoulders and dropped it by his rod at the foot of a tree. He knew that he was lost—had known it, in fact, for an hour or more, but with the certainty that there was no way out until morning, perhaps not even then, came a feeling of relief, and with
BATTLING FOR HIS MATE
"Wait for me" "Selena! Wait for me" Zack Fidelis shouted running after her in the woods but she shrugged it off, running speedily not wanting to give him a listening ear. Zack, who knew this, ran after her the more, knowing the gender running ahead of him would soon be tried. Selena looked bac
Mate for an Alpha
This story is not about your regular mate-bound werewolf but how a human girl in a werewolf pack rose from a mere human statue to a super Alpha Luna. In a pack, she was despised by those who were supposed to support and care for her. --- Aries was not going to take the verdict of their pack Alph
