The Ex Factor
/1/124235/coverbig.jpg?v=f3ebc666ede0f2ce73fe362a2a25fc71)
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.
/0/67794/coverbig.jpg?v=41a4281c86a8748e824babb9466b9d92)
The "Ex" Factor
"Tyler Wills broke my heart and now, he's back to pick up the pieces, but I built walls he can't climb... or can he?" --- Samantha Blake, a rising star in New York's design world, thought she left her broken past behind. But when a big lie messes up her life, she has to face Tyler Wills, the m
/0/85750/coverbig.jpg?v=ff4cf831d1df1869771a81fcca749c03)
The Ex-Factor: A Dish Best Served
The steak knife in my hand felt heavy. For five years, I' d been Chloe' s boyfriend, paying for dinners like this, writing her college papers, driving hours just to see her. I thought it was devotion, love. Tonight, sitting across from her, watching her giggle and feed asparagus to her ex, Chad,
/0/20322/coverbig.jpg?v=bf177f85183d94d6c6375c9b4637b40d)
EX FACTOR
Synopsis Aubree felt betrayed when he found out that her ex-boyfriend Sebastian Dela Rama will marry Samantha Castillo. They didn’t have a proper breakup. He told her to wait for him, and she did. The day she found out that her ex-boyfriend is bound to marry someone else, she met Josh Gavin Inarez
/0/993/coverbig.jpg?v=20171121145659)
Mutual Aid; a factor of evolution
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution is a book by Peter Kropotkin on the subject of mutual aid, written while he was living in exile in England. It was first published by William Heinemann in London in October 1902. The individual chapters had originally been published in 1890–96 as a series of e
/1/101832/coverbig.jpg?v=5c75ad5e01399e43adf512503940b7f7)
The biker's ex returns
Jenna Carter fled Redemption Creek ten years ago, leaving her high school sweetheart Colt Richardson waiting at the altar. Now she returns broke, bruised, and desperate, only to discover Colt has become president of the Devil's Reign MC-the club that destroyed her father's legacy. When her abusive e
/0/44679/coverbig.jpg?v=8c541d0a7903c4ea09e55c0026d0a85b)
The Alpha's Ex-Mate
"When are you going to kill her like you killed her family and pack? She doesn't deserve to be your mate. She's weak and wolf-less." Avery, my mate's former lover, spoke in a bored voice from behind the wide, thick doors. I gasped in shock, covering my mouth to hold back the tears. My mate was resp
/0/62503/coverbig.jpg?v=efcaecc06d37db9f071b2fd4505e28f1)
The Rejected Ex-Wife
June Rivera was divorced by her husband after three years of marriage because he wanted to be with her sister who was pregnant for him. Kicked to the curb with a divorce and rejected by her parents,she struggles to make ends meet and get a job until she saves Luis Ambrose from an accident - the onl
/0/45146/coverbig.jpg?v=2c82ecbcb937bf4e2ebfcdcd5dcaa9ea)
The Supermodel's Ex-Fiancé
(Part I) When Nina is cheated on by her fiance just a few months into their big day, she must make a choice on whether she could overlook his betrayal and continue their relationship or completely let go of him. But when an unexpected pregnancy is thrown into the mix, Justin might just have a reas
/1/124697/coverbig.jpg?v=d3d6806c721cd48d50c577fdd3356dea)
The Ex Wife's Revenge
My ex-husband's mother never hid her contempt for me. She thought money could erase my existence and paid me five million to walk away from her son. "You're beneath my son. Take the money and leave him." She had no idea I was already sick of her cruelty. And even sicker of her spineless son. I accep
/0/26261/coverbig.jpg?v=6e534532e3b60fb6c50e6db08c9233da)
The Billionaires' Ex
Two lovers, one story.... One story, a lot of trouble.... What do you presume when the odds are against them striving to pull them apart. The confusing murder of the daughter of a rich family makes two lovers to cross paths after a long time. Two lovers with intense secrets capable of ruin what the
/0/29306/coverbig.jpg?v=594711ce2ee5379462dc64f04882154d)
The Billionaire's EX
Zale Harris, the inscrutable and powerful CEO of the Harris empire is put in a state of crisis when he was told he had only one year left to live. Determined to have an heir to his empire and fulfil his parents' wish of having a grandchild, he sets out in the search of a bride. But his motives take
/0/18185/coverbig.jpg?v=9a1a87ea35a5184b8efa299f44627ee2)
The billionaires ex wife
A TWIST TO THE NORMAL BILLIONAIRES EX WIFE STORIES. James Saunders is a billionaire. ceo, of one of the biggest companies In the world. married to the beautiful Katherine Saunders. Katherine Saunders was a secretary for her university placement then the budding romance between her and her
/0/47893/coverbig.jpg?v=d041d8163394a382b616c60884ee1402)
'The Billionaire Ex-wife
I sighed a few more times before driving my car away. I don't care about him anymore. but I forgave him a long time ago even though I was very hurt by what he did before. Oh God! I hope our paths never cross again.
/0/75932/coverbig.jpg?v=f11cd92631ce041060cfe1761ba79e63)
The Scorned Ex Wife
In my previous life, I was married to Liam Hoods for good three years, yet all I could get in return were a great loathing from him, a betrayal of my love, and ingratitude towards all I had done for him. To end it all, he further connived with Sage Thatcher to ultimately end my life in a hospital.
/0/76890/coverbig.jpg?v=47980fabbf1affee70fd3fb26226a75e)
The Fierce Ex Wife
Celeste Sterling was once the picture of the perfect wife-until her husband, Damien Blackwood, shattered her heart with infidelity. Four years after their bitter divorce, Celeste returns to New York, stronger, smarter, and determined to take back what's rightfully hers, the Blackwood Group, the comp
/0/78780/coverbig.jpg?v=d2712a982b8061fca44441e08c005a2f)
The Billionaire's Ex Fiancée
Maria,a beautiful lady and a nurse by profession, faced rejection by her Billionaire Fiance Henry for returning home late after a busy working day. Jude, Henry's cousin had set his plan of deceiving Henry and accomplished it by taking Maria as his Fiancée and preparing to marry her. Henry has woken
/0/78292/coverbig.jpg?v=c5d17d57d1f06f1d6d5f528044833b26)
The Ex-Luna's Revenge
"I am Alora Printer, Luna of the SilverClaw Pack and I demand you release me now!" I started, and those thick slashed brows raised in amusement. "Now, isn't that a delight? A Luna, caught in my rusty little cage with ugly metallic shackles around your fancy royal hands. Should we be afraid, Your Hig
/0/38929/coverbig.jpg?v=03b34cc8165b92094fd496de452ef7fd)
The Ex-wife Revenge
"The same day that Elizabeth found out that a life starts to grow inside her, Charles asked her to sign papers she never thought that she would ever receive. "Ellie, sign this," Charles said and put down the envelope he was holding on top of the glass table. "What is that?" She asked while looking
/0/37454/coverbig.jpg?v=f7bda3e17980aed67cd58df8fb413f68)
The Billionaire's Ex-Lover
After five years of leaving Seattle and her normal life with her ex-lover. She comes back with her child, but not as the Kathleen anyone knew before, but as a good businesswoman. After going to a dinner party and accidentally meeting her ex-lover, her love for him re-kindled and she seem to go on a
/0/73994/coverbig.jpg?v=19a96b0f4bdbefcc596e0b3aa1d8ecd6)
The Billionaire's Ex-girlfriend
Eudora is a single mom raising her seven-year-old daughter, who has a serious heart condition. Her daughter's health is taking a turn for the worse, and Eudora is at her wit's end. She decides to become a nightclub hostess to pay for her daughter's medical bills. But Eudora never imagined her first
