Contemporary Setting Novels

Emerson worked grueling twelve-hour shifts just to keep her five-year-old son, Leo, alive. Her only lifeline was her partner Alden, who was willing to give up his wealthy family to protect them. But when Leo's bone marrow completely failed, the doctor delivered a death sentence. The only way to save him was a two-million-dollar treatment, or having another child with his biological father. That father was Finnegan Mcconnell, the ruthless billionaire who had accused Emerson of faking her pregnancy and abandoned her five years ago. Desperate for the medical fees, Emerson submitted her designs to Finnegan's company. Instead of advancing the money, Finnegan tore her portfolio to shreds and trapped her as a prisoner in his estate. To force her complete submission, he systematically destroyed her reality. He framed Alden with federal charges, leaving him facing twenty years in prison. Alden's mother stormed into the pediatric ICU, violently strangling Emerson against the wall. "Beg Finnegan to let my son go! You are a curse!" Even Emerson's own adoptive mother showed up at the hospital, just to publicly mock her dying child. Emerson was suffocating in despair. Finnegan already had a beautiful new wife and a five-year-old daughter—absolute proof he had been cheating while she was pregnant and alone. He had his perfect family. Why did he have to hunt her down and sever every lifeline she had left, just to watch her drown? With her son's heart monitor fading and Alden locked in a cell, her pride finally shattered. Emerson walked into the top-floor executive office and dropped to her knees at the devil's feet, but the desperate mother looking up at him was preparing for a devastating revenge.

For years, Elvera lived as the despised charity case in the cramped Wright household. When she caught her foster sister Donita straddling her fiancé, they didn't even panic. Instead, they loudly framed Elvera for stealing a diamond necklace to justify kicking her out. Her foster parents immediately sided with the cheaters, screaming at her to pack her trash and starve in the gutters. Only her dying foster brother tried to sneak her his medical savings, but the family violently shoved him away, mocking him as a walking corpse. Standing in the freezing Brooklyn wind, Donita and Crockett followed her outside just to laugh. They waved a crisp twenty-dollar bill in her face, mocking her biological family as a bunch of unemployed street thugs. They really thought she was going to freeze to death on the pavement with nothing but a faded backpack. But then a roaring, matte-black supercar pulled up. The man who stepped out wasn't a street thug; he was her real brother, an FBI task force commander. He effortlessly snapped Crockett's shoulder out of its socket, put Elvera in the passenger seat, and drove her straight to a sprawling billionaire estate in the Hamptons. Sitting by the fire in her biological parents' palace, watching them casually display an eight-million-dollar sculpture she had secretly designed, the head butler suddenly walked in. "Sir, the fake heiress has returned from Europe." Elvera took a slow sip of her coffee. The real game was finally about to begin.

Fiona spent three years in a concrete cell, taking the fall for a hit-and-run accident caused by her billionaire husband's mistress. When she finally got out and returned home, she found him throwing a lavish party, with the mistress on his arm wearing a gown Fiona had designed. Even worse, her own seven-year-old son pointed at her in disgust. "Go away, bad woman!" Her husband Cecil threw her out like a stray dog. To force her into submission, he trashed her belongings and cut off the life-saving medical funding for her mentor. Driven to desperation, Fiona snuck back into the mansion to retrieve her late mother's sapphire necklace. But the mistress caught her, ripped her own clothes, and screamed that Fiona was trying to kill her. Cecil didn't even hesitate. He violently shoved Fiona backward. Her head smashed against the sharp edge of a mahogany desk, and blood immediately poured into her eyes. Lying in a pool of her own blood, Fiona watched the man she had sacrificed her freedom for wrap his arms protectively around the woman who ruined her life. He looked at her with pure, murderous disgust, as if she were the monster. But Fiona didn't cry. Instead, a cold smile crept onto her face as her bloody thumb secretly pressed the emergency SOS button on her phone, snapping a clear photo of him standing over her shattered body. "My husband just violently attacked me. I am bleeding from the head. I need help." The police were already on their way. It was time to burn his empire to the ground.

I was working a catering gig under a fake name at the Pierre Hotel, desperately trying to stay invisible after my father’s high-profile financial fraud ruined our lives. Everything shattered when Silas Thorne handed me a glass of drugged champagne and cornered me in a locked restroom, his slurred voice demanding I "thank him properly" as he kicked in the door. To escape a fate worse than death, I lunged across a hundred-meter drop onto the balcony of the city’s most feared billionaire, Everet Adams. But the nightmare didn't end there. When I finally crawled back to my family’s cramped apartment, my father wasn't relieved to see me alive; he was furious I had "ruined the deal." He held my mother’s last gold locket over a flame, threatening to melt it unless I returned to Silas to finish what he started. My stepmother stood by, screaming that my body was the only currency we had left to pay the rent. I stared at the man who raised me, realizing he had orchestrated my assault just to secure bail money for my brother. To my own flesh and blood, I wasn't a daughter—I was a commodity, a piece of meat to be traded to the highest bidder. When Everet Adams tracked me down and offered me a way out, it came with a two-hundred-page marriage contract and a cold demand for an heir. I looked at the live feed of my brother being cornered in a prison yard and picked up the pen. "I'll sign," I told him, stepping out of my father’s shadow and into a gilded cage. As the elevator doors opened to a wall of paparazzi cameras, I leaned into Everet’s cold embrace. The world saw a fairy tale, but I knew the truth—I had just sold my soul to the only monster capable of protecting me from my own blood.

On the night of our luxurious Las Vegas honeymoon, I thought I was the happiest bride alive. Then his phone lit up with a text from a woman named Jessica. "Last night was incredible, Alex. I'm so proud of you for finally getting rid of her." I dug into his phone and discovered they had been together for months, and his mother had been helping them hide it. Less than 72 hours after our wedding, Alex staged a minor car crash and faked amnesia. Lying in the hospital bed with Jessica holding his hand, he looked right at me. "I'm sorry... who are you? Do I know you?" His family used this pathetic farce to frame me as the villain, driving me out of the hospital. By the time I got back to San Francisco, they had changed the locks and dumped my belongings on the street like garbage. I had poured my heart into building a perfect life with him, only to realize I was just a pawn in their cruel, collective joke. The betrayal and public humiliation were suffocating. But I didn't give them the satisfaction of a hysterical scene. I gathered my evidence and filed for an annulment, legally erasing our marriage as if it never happened. Then, I adopted a pseudonym and became the city's most powerful event planner. When Alex was forced to hire me to plan his new wedding with Jessica, I smiled and took the contract.

Arielle barely survived a terrifying plane crash. Trembling and soaked in rain, she rushed back to her penthouse, desperately needing her husband's embrace. But when she opened the heavy door, she found a pair of cheap pink stilettos in the foyer. Her billionaire husband, Julian, was intimately drinking bourbon with the new network intern on their living room sofa. Instead of asking if she was hurt, Julian glared at her wet clothes with disgust. "You are ruining the imported Persian rug. Your tardiness embarrassed me." Arielle soon discovered the horrifying truth. The airline had called Julian when her private jet was plunging toward the earth. He knew she was facing imminent death, but he chose to ignore it for a routine board meeting. Worse, he spent that very evening flirting with his mistress in their home. When Arielle confronted him, he threw a black Amex card at her to buy her silence. He even abused his power as CEO to replace her veteran prime-time anchor with the intern. Looking at the man who once promised to protect her above all else, Arielle felt a freezing numbness spread through her chest. How could the man she loved for seven years become a cold-blooded stranger who didn't even care if she lived or died? The last thread of her love completely snapped. Arielle threw his credit card into the trash, signed the divorce papers demanding sole custody of their son, and walked out of his empire for good.

After divorcing my cheating husband, I thought I had found my savior in his powerful business partner, Cole. For three years, he pampered me like a queen, building a perfect, golden cage of devotion. But on the day I happily discovered I was pregnant, I overheard him talking to my ex-husband's mistress. "Elinor is just a convenient tool. If she gets pregnant, I'll fake a paternity test and annul the marriage so she leaves with nothing." My entire marriage was a meticulously crafted lie to secure his position and protect the woman he truly cared about. Before I could quietly escape, Cole orchestrated a brutal attack. I was dragged into a dark alley, beaten until my ribs fractured, and my unborn child was violently ripped away from me. As I lay bleeding out in the freezing rain, my heart shattered into dust. I didn't understand how the man who kissed me every morning could coldly order his thugs to beat me to death just to appease his real lover. They left me there to rot, thinking they had finally erased the naive fool who got in their way. Three years later, the world still believes Elinor Marsh died in a tragic car accident. But when Cole and his elite circle attend a high-profile Interpol reception, they don't expect the new Chief Liaison Officer to step onto the stage. I am Helena Fu now, and I have returned to burn their empire to the ground.

My family's empire went bankrupt overnight, and my father was dying in the ICU. To save him, I had to walk into the penthouse of Wall Street's most ruthless billionaire, Gerard Boyle, and beg for a bailout. But Gerard didn't just want my company's shares as collateral. He demanded I take off my engagement ring and sign a suffocating prenuptial agreement to become his society wife. Meanwhile, my fiancé of three years, Jerrad, vanished the second our stock plummeted. When he finally showed up as my family estate was being foreclosed, it wasn't to save me. "All you need to do is sign over your voting rights to me." He wanted to steal my father's legacy for pennies on the dollar while playing the white knight. When I publicly exposed his betrayal and threw the diamond ring at his chest, he threatened to ruin me. I lost everything, even having to abandon my lifelong Juilliard fellowship to find cheap corporate gigs just to survive. I thought selling my freedom into a terrifying, cold marriage with Gerard would at least guarantee my father's survival. But then the doctor delivered a crushing blow: my father needed a sudden half-million-dollar experimental surgery to live. It was a massive out-of-pocket cost completely excluded from Gerard's ironclad contract. Why was I being pushed into a corner with absolutely no way out? Looking at my frail father through the ICU glass, I knew that begging my new billionaire husband for this money meant surrendering my soul entirely. I wiped my tears, turned my back on the ward, and silently vowed to raise the money myself, even if it killed me.

For years, Elenora lived as the pathetic, loyal shadow of the Montgomery family, desperately craving a single glance from the billionaire heir, Donovan. That blind devotion shattered the day Delphine Vance's luxury SUV slammed into Elenora's four-year-old daughter, Poppy. Elenora knelt in a pool of blood on the asphalt, screaming for help as Delphine stood by the wreckage with a chilling smirk. When Donovan frantically sprinted onto the scene, Elenora thought they were saved. Instead, he ran right past the dying child to wrap his arms around the completely uninjured Delphine. Elenora grabbed the hem of Donovan's trousers, begging him to save her little girl. "Please. Save her. Save Poppy." He shoved her away so hard she sprawled into the shattered glass, slicing her palms open as she listened to Poppy take her last, gurgling breath. With no one to mourn her daughter, a hollow Elenora walked into the freezing Atlantic Ocean, clutching a tiny white urn until the dark water swallowed her whole. As the saltwater flooded her lungs, her sorrow morphed into a suffocating, violent hatred. Why did she waste her life groveling for a monster who stepped over her dying child? But the afterlife never came. Elenora gasped, her eyes snapping open in her old servant's quarters to find her hands unscarred. She looked at the date on her phone and realized she was seventeen again, five years before the crash. Tearing up the diaries of her past obsession, her eyes turned as cold as the ocean. This time, she wouldn't be their prey; she was going to build her own empire and make them pay.

For thirty years, Javen and I were inseparable childhood sweethearts, and for the last three, we were the perfect engaged power couple. But at our engagement celebration, hiding behind a velvet curtain, I overheard him telling his best man that our entire relationship was a corporate sham to protect his real girlfriend, Keely. He laughed, calling my lifelong devotion a "convenient crush" that kept his strict parents off his back. Worse, the horrifying truth about my car crash three years ago was soon revealed. Javen didn't just lose control of the wheel. He deliberately swerved to avoid hitting Keely, who had run into the road during a jealous tantrum. The impact crushed my side of the car, killed our unborn baby, and left me permanently infertile. He sacrificed our child to protect his mistress, then played the devoted fiancé while I grieved in the hospital. I had given him thirty years of unwavering love, only to be treated as a disposable human shield. How could the man who wiped my tears be the same monster who orchestrated my absolute destruction? I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly projected their secret texts and videos onto the ballroom screen, publicly broke off the engagement, and walked out into the night. It was time to build my own jewelry empire, and I was going to let his powerful older brother help me burn Javen's world to the ground.

On the day she was meant to marry, Madison uncovered her boyfriend's betrayal-five years of love reduced to a mere placeholder for another woman. She walked away without hesitation, determined to start over. But with a looming condition to marry before twenty-five or lose her inheritance completely, she had no choice but to accept a blind date. Fate played a cruel joke when she approached the wrong man, ending up married to her ex's greatest rival, the most formidable figure in town. Madison thought it was just a convenient arrangement. He thought otherwise-because from the start, he never planned to let her go.

For eight years, I was the perfect, devoted partner to billionaire Andrew Blackburn. But outside his VIP lounge, I overheard the cold truth. "Katharine is just a PR shield," Andrew told his friends, laughing. "Alida is too fragile for the tabloids. Once the trust fund is secure, I'll make the prenup so draconian she'll run for the hills." Days later at a gala, Alida intentionally tripped me. As a thousand-pound steel chandelier plummeted toward us, Andrew's instincts took over. He lunged forward to shield Alida, violently shoving me backward to clear their path. He pushed me directly under the falling glass. Razor-sharp crystal shards exploded into my flesh. As I lay bleeding out on the marble floor, gasping for air, Andrew scooped up the completely unharmed Alida and carried her away. He didn't look back at me. Not even once. Later in the hospital, Alida deliberately tore at my IV needle. When my friend tried to stop her, Andrew stormed in, blindly defending his mistress. He shoved me so hard my weak body tumbled over the terrace ledge, plunging into a freezing fountain and ripping my fresh stitches wide open. Lying in the bloody water, looking up at the man I had loved for almost a decade, my heart turned to solid ice. When I woke up, I didn't cry, and I didn't beg for justice. I called the most ruthless liquidation lawyer in New York and signed a total Asset Stripping Agreement. Then, I booked a one-way flight to Paris, leaving behind a snapped wedding ring and a two-word note. "We're even."

I was dragged back to the wealthy Hayes family years after they threw me out like garbage. The matriarch ordered me to take my sister's place and marry Alaric Montgomery, a ruthless CEO rumored to be on his deathbed. "If you refuse, I will have your mother's grave dug up by tomorrow morning." They wanted to use me as a superstitious blood sacrifice so their precious golden child wouldn't have to become a young widow. My stepmother and sister mocked my cheap clothes and sprayed toxic chemicals in my face, treating me like a disposable pawn meant to die quietly in the Montgomery estate. But while they were laughing, I hacked into the top-tier medical network and discovered the truth. Alaric wasn't dying of a terminal illness; he was suffering from a highly lethal neurotoxin. Worse, I found out the Montgomery family was deeply involved in the orchestrated car crash that murdered my mother, and they were currently hunting down her sacred healing pendant. My family thinks I am just a weak, illiterate country bumpkin who will cry and accept her miserable fate. They have no idea that I am actually "The Surgeon," the legendary underground doctor that Alaric is burning billions of dollars to find. Wearing my faded hoodie and worn combat boots, I calmly stepped into the Montgomery family's fleet of Rolls-Royces. They think they are sending a helpless lamb to the slaughter. They don't realize they just invited an apex predator into the lion's den.

Anissa is the perfect, lifeless wife of powerful D.C. politician Julian Sinclair. She endures this suffocating marriage solely to protect the vital funding for her Navajo tribe. But after sneaking out for a brief moment of freedom, she returns to find herself viciously framed. Julian's favorite mistress, Cecily, faked a severe allergic reaction and accused Anissa of poisoning her dessert. Julian violently grabs Anissa's arm, his eyes burning with cold fury. "I will trigger the punitive clauses in our prenuptial agreement." That single threat would instantly cut off her people's survival money. To bury the PR scandal, the family matriarch forces Anissa to swallow her pride. Under the mocking eyes of the household staff, Anissa is forced to fall to her knees beside the mistress's lounge, presenting a massive Cartier diamond bracelet to beg for forgiveness. "Please forgive me for the kitchen mix-up. I am so sorry." A camera flash captures her ultimate humiliation, yet Julian still glares at her defeated posture with inexplicable disgust. Anissa's heart burns with deep, suffocating rage. Why must she be a prisoner to this cruel family? And who was the deadly man she met in the alley tonight? The stranger who effortlessly overpowered her bodyguard and spoke of Arizona sandstorms, triggering blinding flashes of a past she can't remember. Grinding her teeth as she walks away from the suite, Anissa makes a silent vow. She will call that mysterious man, uncover her stolen memories, and tear this gilded cage apart.

Less than two hours after Brooklyn pushed a baby out of her body, her husband walked into the VIP delivery room. But he didn't come to hold their newborn. Instead, his assistant tossed a thick stack of papers and a ten-million-dollar check onto her trembling legs. It was a divorce settlement. Baron looked down at her pale, exhausted face with pure, clinical detachment. "Agnes is back. I needed a wife to secure my company shares, and you needed a roof over your head. The transaction is over." He didn't even glance at the crying infant in the incubator. He just checked his luxury watch, complained about being late for a board meeting, and walked out. Minutes later, the head nurse barged in, her eyes dripping with contempt. She announced that Baron had revoked Brooklyn's VIP privileges and ordered her to move to the general ward immediately. Brooklyn stared at the ceiling, her core muscles screaming in agony from the delivery. Her three years of total devotion, their marriage, and their child were nothing but a cheap, insulting joke to him. In his eyes, she was just a pathetic, poor girl who could be easily bought off and thrown away like trash. The last ember of love in her heart turned to ash, replaced by a terrifying coldness. She calmly ripped the ten-million-dollar check into tiny pieces. Then, she ripped out her IV needle, picked up a heavily encrypted phone she hadn't used in three years, and dialed a number. "I need the chief legal counsel and the tactical security team at Mount Sinai Hospital in exactly thirty minutes." It was time for the real billionaire heiress of Beverly Hills to go home.

A sharp pain pulled me from the darkness. I opened my eyes to see my husband, Graves, smiling as he introduced his new "intern," Alex. Her cheap handbag couldn't hide the dark hickey on her neck. Looking at them, the cold, sharp memory of my death flooded my mind. In my previous life, my protégé sold me out, and Graves watched coldly as our company crumbled, leading to my fatal heart attack. Back then, when he brought Alex home, I screamed and threw things, starting my long nightmare of humiliation. I endured her lavish birthday party in my own home, watching him gift her the exact sports car he said was "too extravagant" for me. I even miscarried our child due to the stress of his constant affairs. He held my hand in the hospital, swearing he would change. But he lied, eventually orchestrating a hostile takeover that literally killed me. I had built his entire empire from the ground up, acting as the brilliant strategist behind the curtain. I couldn't understand how the man I loved could be such a ruthless monster, discarding me for a cheap mistress and stripping away everything I owned. The date on the nightstand confirmed it: I had traveled back in time to the exact day it all started. A strange calm washed over me. "Of course, the poor thing," I said evenly. "We should take care of her." Then, I pulled out the divorce papers. This time, I won't just walk away. I will become the ghost that tears his kingdom down.

Chandler was the secret wife of Avery Osborn, a powerful media heir who kept their marriage hidden to avoid the scandal of her illegitimate birth. After catching him openly flirting with a rival at a gala, Avery mocked her low status and told her she was nothing without his money. Instead of crying, Chandler immediately signed a zero-payout divorce agreement, left her wedding ring on his glass table, and walked out. To numb the pain of her shattered life, she went to a notorious underground club. Drugged by a bartender, she lost her mind and ended up having a wild night with a handsome stranger she mistook for a high-end male escort. Panicking the next morning, Chandler transferred her entire life savings of $50,000 to the man to buy his silence, then fled to her corporate job. But at the afternoon executive meeting, her blood ran cold. The man she had paid off was standing at the head of the boardroom table. He wasn't a gigolo. He was Brennan George, the ruthless new COO of her company. Cornering her in the women's restroom, Brennan held up a printed copy of her $50,000 wire transfer. "Wiring a massive sum of cash to your direct superior after a night together is classified as commercial bribery and solicitation," he whispered dangerously. Chandler was terrified, realizing she had handed him the exact evidence needed to destroy her career and sue her into bankruptcy. "Marry me," Brennan demanded coldly. "It's the only way to make this HR problem disappear."

"Sign the scrolls and get out, Lucian. You've claimed your new prize, so leave me my dignity and this den." I was the perfect Luna, the silent backbone of the Graves Mafia empire, until my fated mate traded our bond for my own sister's betrayal. Now, the Alpha of the Graves bloodline has cast me aside for a pregnant heir, leaving me with nothing but a shattered heart and a laptop full of his darkest secrets. But a discarded wolf is the most dangerous predator in the modern underworld. To dismantle his legacy, I've struck a deal with the devil himself-Rowan Ashcroft, the ice-hockey titan and lethal Mafia Enforcer who stalks Lucian's nightmares. In this world of high-stakes sports and lupine brutality, our alliance is forged in heat and fueled by a thirst for ruin. He wants the Graves territory; I want their heads. In this game of wolves and war, only one Alpha will be left standing. Tags: Modern Werewolf, Mafia Romance, Revenge, Fated Mates, Secret Baby, Hockey Romance.

I worked unpaid overtime for six months to secure a massive corporate deal, desperately needing the bonus to pay for my grandmother's heart medication. But the new lead director turned out to be my ex-boyfriend, Julian. The first thing he did was strip me of my title and give my position to his new intern girlfriend, Poppy. He publicly humiliated me, stranded me on a deserted highway, and ultimately got me fired. Meanwhile, my gambling father brought violent loan sharks to my frail grandmother's apartment. They kicked the coffee table and grabbed my father by the collar. "If we don't get two hundred thousand dollars by Friday, we'll take the deed and throw this old lady out onto the freezing street." But the most crushing blow wasn't the massive debt or losing my livelihood. It was Poppy slipping up in the office lobby, bragging that she and Julian had been dating for four years. Julian and I broke up exactly three years ago. He had been sleeping with her in our bed for a full year while we were still together, yet he was the one treating me like absolute garbage. Looking at my crying grandmother, my grief burned away, leaving only cold, hard fury. I pulled out my cracked phone and called a high-end real estate agent. It was time to sell the luxury Upper East Side condo Julian had gifted me, pay off the debt, and erase him from my life forever.

I was locked in a freezing, bleach-scented asylum basement, my vocal cords ruined and my face chemically melted. My step-sister Seraphina and my ex-lover Ethan walked in, but they didn't come to save me. Seraphina forced a mirror to my face so I could see my own disfigured reflection. "Your shares have been transferred to me," she whispered with a sickening smile. Then she revealed the horrifying truth: she and her mother had orchestrated my mother's death and suffocated my beloved grandfather to steal his inheritance. When I lunged at her in pure agony, Ethan shielded her and delivered a brutal kick to my ribs. He grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head against the solid concrete wall with all his might. As my vision swam with dark spots, I couldn't understand why my own father had sold me out to protect his wealth. Why did the man I once loved treat me like a diseased rat while he fed on my family's corpses? With my dying breath, I mentally cursed them to the deepest pits of hell. Opening my eyes again, the blinding light of a crystal chandelier stabbed my pupils. I was standing at my eighteenth birthday gala, unscarred and whole. Seraphina was smiling sweetly, handing me a diamond-encrusted watch secretly implanted with a military-grade GPS tracker. This time, blood would pay for blood.