Contemporary Setting Novels

After eighteen years of being abandoned in a miserable wasteland, my wealthy biological mother suddenly showed up in a Rolls-Royce to bring me back to their Long Island estate. But she didn't come out of love. She only needed my direct bloodline to secure their family trust fund before a board meeting. The moment I stepped into the mansion, my parents and brother demanded I bow down to Charissa—the fake daughter they had raised in my place. Charissa wore my clothes, spent my money, and even used a master key to sneak into my room at 2 AM to dig through my bags. When I caught her, she deliberately played the victim, crying hysterically to my family. My biological father slammed the dining table in fury, threatening to cut me off completely. "If you cannot conform to our standards and maintain our public dignity, you will not see a single dime from this family!" My brother yelled that I was an uneducated, violent savage who belonged in the gutter. They actually thought I was just a desperate, illiterate country girl begging for their table scraps. They thought their pathetic wealth could force me to bend the knee to a parasite whose real father was currently rotting in federal prison. What they didn't know was that I had only come to settle a biological debt. As Abram Davidson—the most powerful billionaire in Manhattan—personally tracked me down to their front steps in his Maybach, my so-called family was about to realize exactly who they had just offended.

They sold me for ten million dollars. One night with a stranger. My father signed the check. My stepmother poured the drug into my cocoa. My stepsister laughed while two men dragged me upstairs. The man who came to me in the dark was burning with fever, black veins crawling up his arm. He asked me only one thing: "Are you sure?" By dawn, he was gone. He never even saw my face. My family rolled me off a cliff into the river below, and went back inside to finish their wine. Five years later. Ryker Thorne, the billionaire captain of the Boston Ironclads, carries an unconscious woman through a hotel lobby. Then he stops cold. A four-year-old boy in an oversized number 19 jersey is hacking the hotel's computer, right under the front desk girl's nose. The boy looks up. Storm-gray eyes meet storm-gray eyes. The same cold stare Ryker sees in his own mirror before every game. "Dex," Ryker says quietly. "Find out everything about that woman." He doesn't know the boy has already hacked the hotel's security cameras and seen his mother being pulled into Suite 808. He doesn't know the boy has just torn his poster off the bedroom wall. "Ryker Thorne," the boy whispers into the dark. "You messed with the wrong family."

My wedding day was supposed to be the start of forever. I was in my custom Vera Wang gown, about to marry Jameson Alvarez and merge our two powerful families. But when his high school sweetheart staged a minor accident, he didn't just leave me at the altar. In front of hundreds of guests, he ripped my wedding dress right off my body, leaving me exposed in my lingerie. He used the shredded silk to cover her shoulders, shielding her from the crowd while I stood there, stripped bare for all to see. Later, he sent a text asking me to "be a good sport" and reschedule. He thought the woman who loved him would simply forgive this ultimate humiliation. But the Alannah who loved him died at that altar. My mind, cold and clear, recalled Section 7.2 of our pre-merger agreement. I picked up my phone and made a call to my legal team. "It's a breach," I said. "Activate the billion-dollar clause. Freeze everything."

For nine years, I poured my soul into proving I was worthy of my wealthy boyfriend, Clayton Wright. I endured his endless, humiliating "tests," sacrificing everything for a place in his world. But at our engagement party, the final test was revealed. He stood by as his ex-girlfriend, Anjelica, framed me for shattering a priceless family heirloom. "You manipulative bitch!" he snarled, slapping me across the face. He then ordered his bodyguard to force me to my knees, grinding them into the sharp, broken fragments of the watch. As I bled on the floor, he pulled out his phone and gave a single command: demolish my childhood home, the last piece I had of my deceased father. He destroyed my past and my dignity, yet minutes later, my phone buzzed with a message from him. "The engagement is just for show. I'll still marry you. You're my destiny." That night, clutching the last of my father's life insurance, I booked a one-way ticket and vanished. He thought he had finally broken his little project, but he had just unleashed a woman with nothing left to lose.

Cynthia saved a dying billionaire on a train with a single silver needle, accidentally leaving her broken bracelet behind. Her greedy cousin claimed the bracelet and the credit. Cynthia didn't care. To stop her cruel aunt from pulling the plug on her uncle's life support, she cornered the paranoid billionaire, Dominic Church, into a thirty-day fake engagement. But Dominic was convinced she was a manipulative gold-digger. When his own grandmother secretly laced his mansion with aphrodisiacs to force them together, Dominic's paranoia snapped. He pinned Cynthia against the wall, his eyes filled with absolute disgust. "If you were the last woman on earth, I would cut off my own hands before I touched you." Ignoring her desperate explanations, he coldly ordered his massive bodyguard to throw her into the freezing outdoor pool. The icy water instantly triggered Cynthia's horrific childhood trauma of a deadly plane crash. Her lungs seized. As she sank into the dark depths, thrashing and suffocating, she couldn't understand why the man whose life she had saved was now ruthlessly taking hers. It wasn't until Dominic saw the security footage proving her absolute innocence that his paranoid delusions shattered. Trembling, he dropped to his knees beside her lifeless, blue body. But when Cynthia finally opened her eyes, the thirty-day contract was dead, and she was ready to make him pay.

Allison was hiding in a dusty small-town garage, working as a mechanic to suppress the lethal, experimental serum freezing her veins. But a call from her estranged, wealthy father shattered her peace. He threatened to permanently freeze her dead mother's trust fund if she didn't return to the family estate immediately. That trust fund held the only key to the truth behind her past and her survival. When she stepped into the sprawling mansion in her faded hoodie, her family treated her like a stray dog. Her stepmother mocked her cheap clothes, and her half-brother called her a piece of trash. Her father tossed a vocational school enrollment form at her, telling her to learn to sew so they could marry her off to anyone desperate enough. Her perfect, porcelain-doll stepsister Gwyneth even deliberately smashed a glass of boiling milk against her own leg. "Why did you push me?!" Gwyneth screamed, crying tears of fake terror to frame Allison. "You vicious bitch! You're just as sick as your mother!" her father roared, raising his hand to strike her. They looked at her with absolute disgust, thinking she was just a stupid, uncultured hick they could easily manipulate and destroy. They had no idea that the girl standing before them was a lethal operative who already possessed all their offshore tax ledgers and darkest secrets. Allison easily caught her father's wrist mid-air, her grip like a steel vice. "I'm not going to a trade school," she whispered coldly, ripping the form into pieces. "I am going to Crestwood Academy." It was time to take back everything that belonged to her, with interest.

For nine years, Arianna was the loyal girlfriend and lead engineer who built Gregory's tech company from the ground up. But coming home early from a business trip, she overheard him laughing with his friends about how he would never marry her. "Arianna is useful. She's convenient for my physical needs. That's all it is." He was just using her while waiting for his untouchable stepsister to get a divorce. The betrayal didn't stop there. Days later, she caught him buying Cartier diamonds for a twenty-two-year-old intern. When she secretly checked his phone that night, the truth was even uglier. Gregory wasn't just cheating; he was plotting corporate sabotage. He planned to steal the proprietary code she had poured her life into, kick her out of the company without a dime, and hand her executive title to his mistress. Nine years of blind devotion and endless sacrifices were nothing but a cruel, calculated joke. She had excused his emotional distance for years, never realizing he was intentionally draining her dry while keeping his soul loyal to another woman. But instead of breaking down, the weak, devoted Arianna died in the dark. She quietly locked her core engine code in a biometric safe, hired an elite private investigator, and put on her sharpest suit. It was time to burn his empire to the ground.

For three years, I lived in pitch-black darkness, relying entirely on the gentle promises of my fiancé, Cory. But on the morning my vision miraculously returned, I pried open his locked desk drawer and found our marriage certificate stamped with bright red ink: VOID. Right underneath was a gold-embossed wedding invitation for today. The groom was Cory, and the bride was Chasity Owen. I rushed to the hotel, hiding behind my dark sunglasses and white cane, only to watch them share a passionate kiss by the champagne fountain. Chasity cornered me in the bridal dressing room, grabbing my chin and mocking me for being a blind idiot. "You were just a cheap shield he used to stall his family's marriage arrangements. Now that he has his trust fund, a defective piece of trash like you isn't needed anymore." Cory even froze my credit cards, boasting to his assistant that without his charity, I would be crawling back on my knees begging in three days. To make matters worse, my adoptive parents threatened me, forcing me to marry a notoriously violent, bipolar billionaire in Manhattan just to spare their precious biological daughter. Every sweet word Cory had ever whispered was a sickening joke. They all thought I was just a helpless, blind pawn, completely at their mercy. But they had no idea my eyes were fully healed. I calmly severed the hidden seams of Chasity's couture gown, dropped Cory's cheap ring down a sewer grate, and turned my back on them all. Instead of running away, I walked straight into the armored SUV of that terrifying billionaire, ready to play the game by my own rules.

Fiona stayed awake for three straight nights restoring an antique watch to surprise her fiancé, Kevon, for his birthday. But standing outside his VIP club room, she froze when she heard his voice bleeding through the cracked door. "Marriage to her is just a PR stunt. The Baxter family needs a clean, obedient poster girl for the board. That's it." He openly mocked her to his friends, claiming she willingly handed over her jewelry design patents as the price of admission to marry into his wealthy family. Worse, he confessed his true love for his personal assistant, Kayla. He completely twisted the truth of a past mugging, painting his mistress as a hero and Fiona as a jealous coward. For three years, he had used Fiona's brilliance to build his company's new line, while secretly taking Kayla to hotels and parading her in Fiona's stolen designs. Three months of bleeding fingers for his custom gift. Dozens of cancelled dinners. It was all a pathetic joke. Her loyalty and her life's work were nothing but stepping stones for an arrogant heir who thought his money could buy her dignity. The crushing grief in her chest instantly evaporated, replaced by a sheet of absolute ice. She dropped the velvet gift box into an antique vase and kicked the heavy mahogany doors wide open. It was time to strip his company of every single patent she secretly owned and burn his pathetic life to the ground.

My husband's affair pushed me into the arms of his partner, Cole. For three years, he was the perfect, doting husband. I thought I had finally found my happy ending. Then I overheard a phone call and my world collapsed. Our marriage was a lie. I was just a pawn, a tool to keep me docile while his true love secured my ex-husband. He had me brutally beaten, forced me to abort our child, and publicly stripped me in front of hundreds of his colleagues. His final act of cruelty was forcing me to give blood to save the woman who destroyed me, leaving me for dead on the hospital floor. But he made one fatal mistake: he trusted the wrong person to handle our marriage papers. Three years later, I returned as the new Chief Liaison Officer for the International Police. And the first faces I saw at my welcome conference were his and my ex-husband's.

My wedding was tomorrow. I was a crisis counselor who had finally found peace with my loving fiancé, Dexter, and my best friend, Barbara. A late-night call about a forced marriage led me to a hotel penthouse, where I found them naked in bed together. It was all a cruel, three-year "savior game." They were bored heirs, and I was their project. They destroyed my career, caused me to lose our baby, and put my mother in the hospital. They forced me to be a bridesmaid at their wedding-the one that should have been mine. In front of hundreds of guests, they exposed my traumatic past and then tried to marry me off to a drunken stranger as a joke. As I stood there, broken, a text from Barbara arrived. "Your mother saw the livestream. She had a heart attack. She's not going to make it." With nothing left, I ran to the 20th-floor window and jumped. They thought they had erased me. But my death was just the beginning.

I woke up from surgery, reaching for my phone to tell my secret boyfriend of two years, NHL star Jared, that I was okay. Instead, a TMZ headline exploded across my screen: Jared was publicly engaged to my stepsister, Christy. The man who hid me in the shadows for two years to "protect his career" was now proudly showing her off to the world. When I called my mother for comfort, she just scoffed at my pain. "Jared needs a powerful family. What can you offer him besides an empty name?" She then blackmailed me with my late father's trust fund, forcing me to marry Jared's biggest rival, Beckham Waller, to secure a business deal. To make matters worse, Jared publicly denied we were ever together, and I later caught him and Christy naked, defiling my late father's bed. I had given Jared my heart and secretly built the core algorithms for his company's success. My own mother treated me like a worthless commodity to be sold, letting my stepsister steal my life. I couldn't understand how the people closest to me could be so heartless. But they made a fatal miscalculation. Marrying the untouchable Beckham Waller gave me the legal right to take back my inheritance. "Get out of my house!" I dumped a pitcher of ice water on the cheating couple, kicked my mother's family out of the estate, and calmly told my security team to burn the bed. My revenge had just begun.

I endured my boyfriend Derik's terrible temper for four years just to repay a childhood debt to his wealthy family. But after a grueling twelve-hour surgery, I came home to find him in our bed with a desperate socialite model. Instead of apologizing, he sneered that she could actually help him climb the social ladder. He told me that as long as I behaved and kept handling his messy chores, I could still live there on his family's charity. The model mocked me from the pillows. "Everyone knows you're pathetic for Derik. You'll be crying and begging to come back tomorrow." Four years of walking on eggshells were replaced like cheap furniture, making my chest feel completely hollow. I realized I was nothing but a free housekeeping tool to a narcissistic loser who lived off his trust fund. But I wasn't going to cry or beg. I pulled out a bank wire receipt for exactly one hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars and slammed it against his bare chest. "Four years of room and board, principal plus interest. We are completely even." I packed my bags and walked out into the freezing rain for good. Little did Derik know, the bleeding fugitive I would save in a dive bar later that night was his legendary, untouchable billionaire uncle.

Following twenty years away from home, Cathleen returned expecting family, but all she received was contempt. Her parents sneered, "You may share our blood, but someone as exceptional as your sister is the only one fit to be our daughter." Her brother scoffed, "Ashley is my only sister. Get out of here, you country bumpkin!" Her so-called sister put on a sugary smile. "You won't mind if I borrow your fiancé, will you?" Cathleen stayed unshaken and walked into a contract marriage with Matthew, who believed he had married a useless woman. Then her masks fell one by one-divine doctor, underground boxing queen, elite hacker, phantom racer, AI genius, and powerful heiress. Even the comics his sister adored, and the only voice that could ever lull him to sleep, belonged to her. Matthew pinned her wrists down, his dark gaze locking onto her. "Just how many secrets are you keeping from me?" Cathleen flipped his hold, her smile calm. "The contract ends tomorrow. Remember to get the divorce." He grinned, "Absolutely not. Not now, not ever."

I sold three years of my life to a billionaire to save my mother. I was his pretend fiancée, a stand-in for his ex, counting down the days until the contract ended and we could finally be free. But just as we were about to escape, his real girlfriend returned and publicly accused me of faking a pregnancy to trap him. My fiancé, Drake, didn't hesitate. He called me a disgusting gold-digger and threatened to pull my mother's medical funding to force me into an abortion. The shock of his cruelty sent my mother into cardiac arrest. She died right there in the hospital. They demanded I abort a child that could never exist, a lie built to destroy me. But they didn't know my secret. After my mother' s death, I finally told him the truth that shattered his world: I was born without a uterus. And with her last letter in my hand, I walked away from him forever.

Marrying Theron Draix in a few days was a life long dream come true. For seventeen years, I'd loved him, revolving my life around him, and in just three days, we should be married. "Let's break up. I won't be attending the wedding," he said. My life shattered in that instant. Finding out he was in love with my adopted sister was worse. They had played me and controlled my emotions. At the end, Mireya had killed me. If I was given a second chance, I would never love Theron and never trust Mireya.

God Vanished. Twenty-five years ago, the world changed. Gates appeared across the Earth. Monsters poured through them, and humanity awakened powers it never knew existed. Xavier Reed was one of the unlucky ones. Born with strange crimson eyes and abandoned as a child, he grew up believing weakness was simply his fate. With no talent or power, he became an E-Rank dungeon porter, the disposable man hunters left behind. Until one dungeon changed everything. Abandoned to die by the very people he trusted, Xavier watched the portal close before him as a monster tore through his body. He should have died. Instead, something awakened. [Host Located.] [Welcome back, Xavier Reed.] A mysterious System has chosen him. But this is no ordinary System. It doesn't simply hand out quests or demand that he become stronger. It watches. It judges. It remembers?... As Xavier climbs from the bottom, he begins to uncover secrets hidden behind the Gates. Something is wrong with the world. Why has Heaven fallen silent? Why is the Underworld moving? And why was Xavier chosen? The answers may be connected to a truth far more terrifying than the monsters beyond the Gates. Humanity may have already lost this war.

They say you can't have it all. I'm about to prove them wrong-or destroy myself trying. When my struggling mother married billionaire Richard Stone, I thought I was gaining a family. Instead, I found three stepbrothers who became my obsession, my downfall, and my salvation. Dominic, the eldest, cold and commanding, who kisses me like he's claiming his kingdom and looks at me like I'm the only thing he can't control. Julian, the charming playboy who hides a vulnerable soul beneath his perfect smile, making me feel like I'm the only woman he's ever truly seen. Asher, the brooding artist who paints me like I'm his muse and touches me like I'm his masterpiece, seeing parts of my soul I didn't know existed. They're forbidden. They're dangerous. They're everything I shouldn't want. But when I discover my father didn't die by suicide that he was murdered by the very man who now calls himself my stepfather, these three powerful men becomes my unlikely allies. First it was a forbidden attraction, now it's an arrangement that defies every rule. The rules are simple: I'll give each of them a chance. I'll take everything they offer. And in the end, I'll have to make the hardest decision of my life: Choose one of them. Choose all of them. Or choose myself.

My boyfriend, Jefferson, convinced me to give up my Yale scholarship for him. He was my secret, my escape from the shame of my mother's past, and I threw away my future for our love. Then, at a gala, he publicly announced his engagement to Aubrey Carroll-the girl who made my high school years a living hell. He trapped me in his mansion, forcing me to become her personal servant. She tortured me daily, culminating in her brutally killing our dog, Charlie, with a garden trowel. When her friends arrived, they joined in, stripping me half-naked and live-streaming my panic attack for the world to see. The man who once promised to protect me watched as they destroyed me. But as I lay bleeding out on the floor, it wasn't an ambulance that arrived. It was the private security of Alexzander Stevens-my estranged, billionaire grandfather. He revealed I was his sole heiress, and now, we were going to make them pay for every last tear.

On the day of my marriage alliance, I arrived at the Crown Prince's manor as his legitimate betrothed. But to them, I was just the "wolfless" trash of a fallen family. Instead of opening the gates, they welcomed me by throwing a poisoned, rotting dog corpse right at my carriage. My own maid conspired with the Prince's mistress to frame me for carrying a pure silver dagger—a crime of treason in our werewolf kingdom. Even after I exposed their lies and proved my innocence, the Crown Prince didn't care. To please his weeping mistress, he ordered his enforcer to whip me thirty times until my back was shredded. "Since you love making people suffer on the cold stones so much, go down there and reflect on your sins in hell!" He dragged me by the throat and shoved me down a steep flight of jagged stone stairs, leaving me to bleed out in the freezing dirt. To them, a powerless freak without an inner wolf was just a pawn to be tortured and discarded. They thought I would crawl and beg for mercy before dying in agony. But they didn't know the original Brynn was already dead. Reborn into this frail body, I am a modern master of poisons. As I wiped the blood from my lips, I clutched a vial of medicine given to me by the kingdom's most terrifying, secretly powerful Alpha. I survived the night, and now, I will drag them all straight to hell.