A Yale Scholarship For His Lies

I moaned out his name. "Damien, you are not trying hard to get me, yet .." He smirked and whispered to my ears. "I like being hard, Not "trying" hard." When Lila Sinclair's mother is sentenced to life in prison, her world collapses overnight. With nowhere else to go, she is taken in by Sebastian Blackwood, her mother's former lover. A powerful, reserved man who agrees to shelter her under strict conditions. Lila is placed in his household... and into a life she never asked for, sharing a roof with two stepbrothers who change everything. Damien is danger wrapped in charm...intense, controlling, and impossible to ignore. Ethan, on the other hand, is steady, kind, and grounding...the only place she feels safe when everything else feels like it's slipping away. But Lila's situation comes with a hidden clause: her stay in the country is temporary. Within 365 days, her legal protection expires. To remain, she must marry one of the Blackwood heirs. One house. Two brothers. Twelve months of blurred lines, buried secrets, and emotions she was never meant to feel. As desire clashes with safety and passion wars with peace, Lila is forced into a choice that could secure her future...or destroy it completely.

My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family. Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb. When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump. "You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly. To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding. I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded. But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot. When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony. Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number. "You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."

For five years, I was locked away in the freezing royal dungeon, starved and used as a bloody plaything by the kingdom's sadistic Cabinet Minister, Brandt Fischer. He tortured me daily for one twisted reason: I simply looked like someone else. When he visited my cell to casually announce my father's execution and drag a silver dagger across my neck, he expected me to beg. Instead, I laughed, sank my teeth directly into his carotid artery, and was violently thrown against a jagged stone wall to my death. As my skull cracked and my blood stained the moss, I thought about my so-called family. The moment Brandt had demanded me, my father, the Duke, handed me over without a single hesitation to save his own political career. I was nothing but a disposable pawn, left to rot in the dark while the monsters who ruined my life thrived. I died suffocating on my own blood and absolute, destructive vengeance. Then, I opened my eyes. I was lying in my silk-sheeted bed, reborn as my fifteen-year-old self. Today was the exact day Lord Daryl Langley, the God of War, would be ambushed and crippled—the event that allowed Brandt to seize ultimate power. I immediately stole a horse, rode to the palace gates, and threw myself directly in front of Daryl's moving carriage. "I just didn't want to see a hero die like a slaughtered pig." I didn't care if I had to shatter my own ankle to hijack his convoy. This time, I was going to save the general, and he would become the blade I use to slaughter them all.

Briony was devastated when her boyfriend proposed to her best friend in front of her. Not only was she betrayed, but she was also publicly humiliated. Five years later, she became popular after writing her heartbreaking love story into a novel. Her ex-boyfriend was offended. When he condemned her, she swore she would have nothing to do with him anymore. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. Briony accidentally hit a child with her car, who turned out to be the son of Alexander, her ex-boyfriend! As punishment, she was forced to be his nanny until his cast arm healed. What would happen next? Could she endure the torture from the ex who secretly still wanted her?

Genevieve was heavily pregnant, holding the legal papers that would transfer her massive family trust fund to her loving husband, Clinton. But as she approached his study, she heard a familiar giggle. Through the cracked door, she saw her cousin Carolynn sitting on his desk, her skirt hiked up, while Clinton smirked and poured bourbon. "Once she signs those papers, we don't need her anymore," Clinton laughed coldly. "The kidnapping is staged for tomorrow. She and the brat disappear permanently." Genevieve gasped, and he spotted her. When she frantically tried to run, her trusted housekeeper blocked the stairs. Clinton dragged her back, beat her mercilessly, and locked her in a freezing, underground cellar. Denied any medical help, she endured agonizing hours of labor alone in the dark, only to deliver a stillborn child. Clinton then walked in, ruthlessly tossed her dead baby's tiny body into a pile of dirty rags, and brutally strangled her. As her lungs burned and the world faded to black, her heart shattered into a million jagged pieces. She had given him everything. How could they be so monstrous as to murder her and her innocent child just for money? Opening her eyes again, the freezing cellar was gone. She was standing in an emerald silk gown at an elite charity gala—the exact night their original kidnapping plot began, a month before she even announced her pregnancy. This time, the naive socialite was dead, and she was going to make them pay in blood.

When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future. For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me. But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed. Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone. I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back. But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours. When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along. "What's in your pocket, Felicie?" This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands.