Too Late For His Desperate Proposal

For seventeen years, I loved my best friend, Holden King. I was the quiet girl who always had a bandage for his scraped knees, secretly believing we were meant to be. But he shattered my world with six words: "She's my sister. That's all." He fell for the cruel and glamorous Fabiola, even taking her to our secret meadow. Her jealousy was a poison. She faked a pregnancy to trap him, then hired a man to attack me in an alley. The trauma ruptured an aneurysm in my brain, and I went blind. Through it all, Holden defended her. He refused to believe she was capable of such evil, choosing the monster he'd known for months over the girl he'd known his whole life. My savior, a kind doctor named Jace, offered me a future, and we planned a fake wedding to give my terrified parents hope. But as I stood blind at the altar, Holden crashed the ceremony. He fell to his knees, a diamond ring in his hand. "I love you, Chloe," he cried. "Marry me."

Chapters

Chapter 5

Chloe Waller POV:

A few nights later, I was walking home from a late study session at the library, the strap of my portfolio digging into my shoulder. As I passed the city' s most exclusive jewelry district, a flash of movement in a brightly lit storefront caught my eye. I stopped dead in my tracks.

It was Holden and Fabiola. They were in Cartier, standing at a private viewing counter, looking at rings.

Fabiola held up her hand, a massive diamond winking on her finger. She was beaming, turning her hand this way and that, admiring the sparkle. "Put it on for me, Holden," she cooed, sliding the ring off and handing it to him.

Holden took the ring and, with a tender smile that twisted my insides into a painful knot, he slid it onto her finger. He did it without a single ounce of hesitation, his movements full of a gentle reverence I had never seen from him before.

My heart didn' t just break. It plummeted into a dark, bottomless abyss.

For seven years, I had loved him. Seven years of quiet devotion, of unwavering support, of secret, hopeless pining. And it had all been erased by six months. My seven years couldn' t compete with her six months.

Fabiola' s gaze flickered towards the window and our eyes met. Her smile tightened, and a flash of pure venom crossed her face before being replaced by a mask of saccharine sweetness.

She quickly grabbed Holden' s arm, preventing him from turning around. "Oh, baby, we should get a little something for Chloe, too," she said loudly, her voice dripping with fake generosity. "As a thank you for being such a supportive friend."

Holden, oblivious, beamed. "That' s a great idea, Fab."

His easy agreement was another twist of the knife. Fabiola' s mood soured instantly. She made a quick excuse and dragged Holden out of the store, her grip on his arm like a vice. Before he could spot me, she pulled me into the dark, narrow alleyway beside the shop.

"We' re picking out our engagement ring," she hissed, her face inches from mine, her sweet facade completely gone. "We' re getting engaged."

The portfolio I was holding slipped from my numb fingers, crashing to the ground. The sound echoed in the sudden silence.

"You' re… getting engaged?" I whispered, the words feeling like sandpaper in my throat.

She nodded, a cruel, triumphant smile spreading across her face. "Yes. And you can be my maid of honor, if you want. A front-row seat to our happiness."

My vision started to tunnel. The edges went dark and fuzzy, and a dull, heavy throbbing began behind my eyes.

"Congratulations," I choked out, the words automatic, meaningless.

I watched them walk away, hand in hand, disappearing into the twilight. I stood in that alley for a long time, the cold seeping into my bones, my legs numb and tingling.

The world had gone quiet. The city sounds faded into a dull roar.

A scuffling sound from the far end of the alley broke the silence. A man stumbled out of the shadows, reeking of stale beer and muttering curses under his breath.

My heart lurried. I tried to move, to run, but my legs felt like they were filled with cement. I stumbled and fell to my knees.

"Well, well, what have we here?" the man slurred, his eyes, dark and predatory, fixing on me. He took a staggering step closer.

Panic, cold and sharp, finally cut through my stupor. I scrambled backwards, my hands scraping against the rough pavement.

"Get away from me!" I cried.

He lunged, his grimy hand clamping over my mouth, his other arm wrapping around my waist like a band of steel. He started dragging me deeper into the darkness.

"You' re a pretty little thing," he rasped, his foul breath hot against my ear. "Just be a good girl and no one gets hurt."

Terror gave me a surge of strength. I bit down on his hand, hard. He roared in pain, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second. It was all I needed. I wriggled free and ran.

I didn' t get far. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back with brutal force. My vision exploded in a shower of white stars, and then everything went black.

As my consciousness faded, a single, hazy thought flickered through the darkness. A figure. A man' s silhouette, running towards the mouth of the alley.

"Hey! Get away from her!" a voice yelled.

Then, there was only silence.

Continue to next part

After years of loyalty, a woman is left devastated when her gangster husband betrays her trust. Refusing to remain a victim in his violent world, she makes the daring choice to walk away from the marriage and his criminal empire. However, severing ties with a powerful mafia figure is dangerous. As she fights for her freedom, she must navigate a web of lies and lethal threats to reclaim her life from the man she once loved and trusted.

Action Mafia Romance

8.5

After I fell to another alpha, my ex kidnapped me

8.5

I, Alice Stone, navigate a tangled web of love and betrayal with Victor Voss, whose affection for Rose Wyndham shatters my heart. After discovering his hidden devotion to her and enduring his controlling ways, I vow to mate the South pack alpha to sever ties with my sire. Victor's obsessive attempts to reclaim me-including kidnapping and manipulation-only fuel my resolve. When a dramatic escape leads to his injury, I find clarity. Finally, I wed Quentin Morgan, freeing myself from Victor's shadow......

Action Romance Werewolf

8.9

Arderemos en lo prohibido

8.9

In the shadow of a brutal underworld war, a dangerous attraction ignites between two souls from rival factions. As the mafia’s grip tightens, they must navigate a landscape of betrayal and lethal secrets. Every stolen moment risks total destruction, forcing them to choose between their deep-rooted loyalties and a forbidden desire that could burn their worlds down. In this high-stakes game of power, survival and passion collide with explosive consequences.

Action Mafia Romance

7.3

I Married my Ex-husband's Rival

7.3

I helped Erick's beloved escape to Whyae. That very night, he kidnapped my parents, holding their lives hostage to find her. Erick pressed a button on the remote, and the screen showed my parents separately tied up and suspended from a plane. "Crack!" At Erick's command, a bodyguard fired a shot at the rope, and I could see the rope was about to snap.

Action Modern Romance

8.0

Into The Rival's Arms: The Decoy's Escape

8.0

I stood behind the velvet curtain, clutching a positive pregnancy test, waiting for the perfect moment to tell Dante our family was growing. Instead, I heard him laugh. "She is not the bride," Dante told his Consigliere, swirling his fifty-year-old scotch. "She is the bulletproof vest I wear until it is safe for Sofia to enter the city. When the bullets stop flying, we throw the vest in the trash." My world shattered. When Sofia arrived that night, she didn't just take my place; she boiled my beloved cat for dinner. Dante didn't defend me. He told me to clean up the mess or face punishment. To prove his devotion to her, he had his men drag me to "The Pit"—an underground fight club. I was thrown into a cage with a starving Doberman. I looked up at the VIP box, begging the man I loved to save me. Instead, Dante pressed the intercom button, his voice booming over the speakers. "One million dollars on the dog," he said. "She won't last three minutes." He covered Sofia's eyes to protect her innocence while the beast tore the flesh from my arm. That night, Elena Vance died in the dirt. One year later, the grieving Dante Moretti attended a gala for a mysterious new artist in New York. He dropped his champagne glass when he saw me on stage, alive, wearing a dress that revealed my ruined, scarred arm. "I didn't leave you, Dante," I said into the microphone, my voice cold as ice. "You killed me. And now, I'm here to collect my winnings."

Action Modern Romance

8.5

The Billionaire's Secret Twins: Her Revenge

8.5

I was four months pregnant, weighing over two hundred pounds, and my heart was failing from experimental treatments forced on me as a child. My doctor looked at me with clinical detachment and told me I was in a death sentence: if I kept the baby, I would die, and if I tried to remove it, I would die. Desperate for a lifeline, I called my father, Francis Acosta, to tell him I was sick and pregnant. I expected a father's love, but all I got was a cold, sharp blade of a voice. "Then do it quietly," he said. "Don't embarrass Candi. Her debutante ball is coming up." He didn't just reject me; he erased me. My trust fund was frozen, and I was told I was no longer an Acosta. My fiancé, Auston, had already discarded me, calling me a "bloated whale" while he looked for a thinner, wealthier replacement. I left New York on a Greyhound bus, weeping into a bag of chips, a broken woman the world considered a mistake. I couldn't understand how my own father could tell me to die "quietly" just to save face for a party. I didn't know why I had been a lab rat for my family’s pharmaceutical ambitions, or how they could sleep at night while I was left to rot in the gray drizzle of the city. Five years later, the doors of JFK International Airport slid open. I stepped onto the marble floor in red-soled stilettos, my body lean, lethal, and carved from years of blood and sweat. I wasn't the "whale" anymore; I was a ghost coming back to haunt them. With my daughter by my side and a medical reputation that terrified the global elite, I was ready to dismantle the Acosta empire piece by piece. "Tell Francis to wash his neck," I whispered to the skyline. "I'm home."

Action Billionaire Modern

Too Late For His Desperate Proposal

Chapter 5

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