Promises Forgotten
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.
Promises Forgotten
Zachary Anderson, CEO and billionaire from the outside looks as though he has everything. A super model fiancés, money, and looks. One thing he hasn’t been able to achieve was happiness. An accident three years ago had him missing six months but nothing seemingly important happened and only deals wi
Wicked Promises
When Isadora Langston survives an assassination attempt, she is sent into hiding under the protection of the one man her father warned her about-Luciano Moretti. He's ice and gunpowder, the dark prince of a crime empire that thrives in blood. She's America's golden girl, groomed for perfection and p
Frozen Promises
Allison Palmer had just wrapped up her world tour when the media announced her pregnancy. Paparazzi snapped photos of her husband Braydon Saunders heading to the hospital for a prenatal checkup with some mysterious woman. Everyone assumed that woman was Allison. After all, Braydon's love fo
To Our Pinky Promises
Alexander West and Emily Waterhouse were once inseparable. They were the best of friends. Through thick and thin, they'd stick together, they said. Fast forward 4 years later, and no one, except the few people that were around during their middle school days, even knew the friendship Emily cherishe
Pixelated Promises, Shattered Dreams
For seven years, I poured my soul into "Pixelated Promises," a game that was meant to be the living embodiment of my love story with Liam. I envisioned it as the grand finale, the pixelated masterpiece that would finally lead to his proposal. But at the biggest gaming convention of the year, my wo
His unfailing promises
He made a promise to her! When was it? A hundred years ago? Vampires live for so long so a hundred years was probably not that long. But he waited tirelessly like it was an eternity. Each second felt like decades passing. And all this was so he could meet her again and fulfil the promise he made
MOONLIGHT PROMISES
In the ancient kingdom of Axum, a dark, ancient curse demands blood and sacrifice to maintain balance. Two souls, Carina-a courageous commoner with a poetic heart-and Prince Zayn-born into a legacy of royal duty and burdened by family secrets-find their lives inexplicably intertwined when an ancien
Forgotten Obsession
There is a grand design in everything. Fate is life’s architect and we are the engineers who complete and execute fate’s vision. The once perfect design of Natalia Abrera’s life turned flawed when her fiancé, Sebastian Dominic disappeared on the eve of their wedding. Three years later, she found
The Forgotten
The Forgotten tells the saga of a woman who discovers she is an elf when she awakens without memories in an unknown world, of intense magic. Now it only remains for the Forgotten to follow her instincts to find out where she came from and why she is there.
Love Contract: Secrets and Promises
Clara Martins swore to never depend on anyone again. After her grandmother's death, she dedicated herself body and soul to the small bakery she inherited in downtown São Paulo, the only legacy of a family tormented by debt. But when an unexpected betrayal threatens to close its doors forever, Clara
Filthy Promises - A Mafia Romance
I'm in love with my boss. He doesn't even know I exist. ... Until today. My name is Rowan St. Clair. For five years, I've tried to pretend I'm not head over heels for a man I can never Vincent Akopov-gorgeous, ruthless, and completely out of my league. But one fateful errand changes everything. W
FORGOTTEN FLING
Jane lost both of her parents at a very tender age, since which her life has been filled with sorrow. She lived with her father's younger sister, who treated her like a slave. Despite all of this, Jane remained a responsible and decent girl. As time went on, she was able to save up some mone
Shattered Vases, Broken Promises
The silence in the sprawling mansion was a physical weight, pressing down on me as I hunched over my drafting table. They called me Liam' s wife, but I was merely the ghost in his machine, designing award-winning architecture he took full credit for. My mother-in-law, Eleanor, swept in, her venomous
Broken Promises, Unbreakable Will
I poured my heart and genius into building InnovateTech, a billion-dollar empire, and into building Liam, the man I loved, my co-founder and fiancé. Then my cousin, Sarah, came weeping to my door, seeking refuge, and shattered everything. I walked into our penthouse, planning a surprise anniversar
Shattered Promises, New Beginnings
My fiancé, Liam, and my brother, Ethan, both fell for the same woman, Chloe. One day, Liam was the man I was going to marry. The next, he looked at me like a stranger. At our engagement party, Liam was an hour late. Then, a picture surfaced of him and Chloe eloping. My world crashed down. To make
The Prince's Broken Promises
Our love was a rebel song, forbidden by the Devereaux family's rigid rules. I was Ella, a blues singer from Bourbon Street, and he was Beau, the Prince of Prytania, who swore his heart was irrevocably mine. He chose me, even when his powerful family threatened to disinherit him. "It's you and me,
Rogue Promises: His Forbidden Mate
"The thing they don't understand about us, Emmalee, is that we're bound by more than fate-we're bound by fire, by scars that only recognize each other, and by a love that rages against all reason. We are the storm no one can control. I am yours, and you are mine, in a way that no law, no enemy, or f
His forgotten Luna
The blue moon pack was once a happy pack. Alpha Maddox having his rogue wolf Luna by his side which he hated and later loved was a happy thing. A blessing to him as he thanks the moon goddess for giving him such a blessing. But the blue moon pack was later shattered. Shattered by human Hunter whos
Billionaire's forgotten Bride
Trapped in a loveless marriage, Isabella Cruz thought she could survive Alejandro Santiago's cold indifference. But when he hands her divorce papers and tells her his first love is returning, her heart shatters. Pregnant with his child and unwilling to beg for love, Isabella walks away, determined t
The Forgotten Luna.
"Forgotten or not, you will always be my Luna..." –Killian Grant With the help of a witch friend, Laura managed to take her own life. The night that she died, she met him... her mate. Too bad she would vanish in the history of their pack the moment after her death, and she will also forget him in he
