THE VALENTINE PROPOSAL
Liora Jovan's life shatters the moment she catches her boyfriend cheating, her Valentine proposal ruined. In a reckless act of humiliation and fury, she proposes to a stranger in the lobby... who turns out to be Everett Montague, her ex's billionaire boss. Amused and dangerously charming, Everett offers a fake three-month engagement to serve his own needs-and her revenge.
The rules are clear: no real feelings, separate lives, public affection only. When fake turns into something intoxicatingly real, a buried secret threatens to tear them apart.
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Chapter 3
LIORA
Later that day, I shared my location with Everett because his publicist texted me via Instagram, and that meant I couldn't talk to Everett directly but through his publicist. He sent a car by seven in the night and by that time I'd packed my favourite clothes into two suitcases. The driver came out to meet me and he helped me offload the suitcases in the trunk of the car. He didn't speak to me as he opened the door for me.
The drive to our destination took twenty minutes, and I knew because I was checking the watch every time, anxiety eating up at my insides about the fact that I was going to share the same living quarters with a man I barely knew. We pulled up to a building in the financial district, the skyscraper so tall I couldn't see the end of it. The doorman opened my door before I could reach for the handle.
"Miss Jovan,"he said. "Mr. Montague is expecting you."
Everything inside gleamed of wealth, and I swallowed. I've never been around so many expensive things before. The elevator required a key card to reach the penthouse. The doorman swiped it for me and the doors closed.
I stared at my reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator. I looked exhausted from all the back and forth I had with Flynn on my Instagram. I had set out to block him from all social media platforms, but I couldn't text him again,and that's how we ended up tearing at each other. It hurt so bad, I loved him unequivocally for three years. My makeup was smudged from crying. My hair was a mess. I was about to move in with a billionaire looking like I'd been hit by a truck.
The elevator opened directly into the penthouse. I stepped out and my mouth fell open.
The space was massive. Floor to ceiling windows showed the entire city lit up like stars. It looked like a magazine spread, not a place where people actually lived.
"Miss Jovan."
I jumped. A woman in a gray suit stood at my back, her face stern it scared me.
"I'm Margaret, Mr. Montague's assistant. He's in a meeting but asked me to get you settled."She handed me a leather folder. "This is your contract. Please review and sign."
I opened the folder. The contract was five pages of legal language. I skimmed through it, my heart pounding.
Fifteen thousand dollars deposited monthly into an account in my name. All expenses covered including wardrobe, transportation, and personal needs.
There was a whole section about confidentiality. Another about what happened if either of us wanted to end it early. A clause about social media. Rules about public behavior.
"Do you have a pen?"I asked.
Margaret handed me one. I signed on the last page without reading the rest. What did it matter anyway? I'd already agreed to this insanity.
"Excellent."Margaret took the folder back. "Let me show you to your room."
She led me down a hallway. We passed a huge kitchen, a living room bigger than my entire apartment, a home office, and a gym. Finally she stopped at a door at the end of the hall.
"This is the master guest suite."She opened the door. "You'll have complete privacy. Mr. Montague's room is on the opposite side of the penthouse."
The bedroom was bigger than my old apartment. There was a king sized bed and a walk-in closet. I stared at everything in awe.
"The closet has been stocked with basics in your size,"Margaret said. How did he know my size?. "Mr. Montague will take you shopping tomorrow for anything else you need. Dinner is at seven. Breakfast is at eight. The kitchen is fully stocked, help yourself to anything. Do you have questions?"
There was about a million.I paused for a while before saying... "No."
"Then I'll leave you to settle in."She walked out, closing the door behind her.
I sat on the bed and looked around. I couldn't believe this was my life now. Few hours ago, I nearly proposed to my cheating boyfriend. Now I'm living in a penthouse that belonged to the richest bachelor in the city.
I unpacked my suitcases, which took all of ten minutes since I didn't own much. Then I showered in the giant bathroom and put on pajamas. It was only nine but I was exhausted.
Sleep didn't come. I lay in the massive bed staring at the ceiling, my mind racing. What would happen at dinner tomorrow? What would Everett's parents think of me? Who was this Diella woman?
At midnight I gave up. I left the bedroom and wandered through the penthouse. Everything was dark and quiet. I found the kitchen and opened the fridge looking for water.
"Can't sleep?"
I spun around, startled. Everett stood in the doorway wearing pajama pants and nothing else. My eyes strayed from his face, down to his 6 packs that gleamed with sweat --- it seemed like he was doing a night workout --- and to the v curve of his torso that tucked into the pajama pants. If I could squint a bit more, I could see the highlights of his muscular cock. I stared before I could stop myself, my tongue salivating.
He coughed and my eyes snapped back to him. The stare on his face told me that he knew I was undressing him with my eyes.
"Sorry,"I said, my face heating up. "I was just getting water." When I looked at the glass fridge, I could see that my face had turned tomato red.
He chuckled lightly. "It's okay. I have that effect on women." He stepped further into the room, and nodded to the cabinet above the sink. He walked past me and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He poured himself a glass and leaned against the counter.
I got my water and stood there awkwardly. Should I go back to my room? Stay and make conversation? This was weird.
"You signed the contract,"Everett said.
"Yes."
"It was so soon, I didn't expect it. It should take you five days to read and understand all the classes in it. Well...except you didn't read it."
"Why does a fake engagement have to sound so complicated?."I took a sip of water.
He drank his whiskey. "My mother called. She wants to meet you."
My heart rate picked up. "When?"
"Tomorrow night. The driver would take you to their house." He looked at me. "She's excited and would ask a lot of questions. You have to be prepared. You have to sound like you are madly in love with me."
"That, I can do. As long as she's not a scary woman."
He sighed.
"Also, Diella Ashford will be there."
That name, it sounded familiar. "The woman they want you to marry?"
His jaw tightened. "They invited her before I could stop them."
My stomach dropped. "So I'm meeting your parents and your supposed to be fiancée on the same night?"
"Welcome to my world."He drained his glass. "Diella knows about our engagement. My mother told her. She's not happy."
"Great." I set my water down. "This is going to be a disaster."
"Probably."Everett refilled his glass. "Why did you stay with Flynn for three years?"
The question caught me off guard. "What?"
"You're smart. You had to know he was using you."His gray eyes met mine. "So why stay?"
I looked down at my hands. "I thought if I supported him enough, put him first, eventually he'd do the same for me. That's how relationships work, right? You give and eventually you get back."
"That's not how it works."Everett's voice was quiet. "You give and they take. Then they take more, until there's nothing left of you."
I looked up at him, the pain in his voice made me a bit surprised.
"My parents."He swirled the whiskey in his glass. "My father gave everything to my mother. His time, his attention, his entire life. She took it all and still left him, destroying him in the divorce. He's never recovered."
He looked at me. "You deserved someone who put you first from the beginning, not someone who made you earn basic respect."
The words hit me deep. "Yeah. I guess I did."
Everett stepped closer. We were only a few feet apart now.
"We should establish boundaries,"he said. His hand came up, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. His thumb brushed my cheek. "This is fake. We need to remember that."
My breath caught. "Right. Fake."
But neither of us moved away. His thumb was still on my cheek. My heart was hammering.
His phone buzzed on the counter. The moment shattered. Everett stepped back and grabbed his phone. His expression changed as he read the screen.
"What is it?"I asked.
"Diella."His jaw clenched. "She wants to have coffee tomorrow morning. Before the dinner."
My stomach dropped. "Why?"
"She wants to meet her competition."
"I'm not going,"I said immediately.
"She's been trying to marry me since we were teenagers. She's not going to let you go without a fight."He set his phone down. "Meet her. Let her say whatever she needs to say. Then come to dinner tomorrow and show her it doesn't matter."
"This is insane." I scoffed, shaking my head.
"You keep saying that."Everett's lips twitched. "But you're still here. If you go, I wouldn't stop you."
I thought about my tiny apartment, my minimum wage job, waking up everyday knowing that Flynn and Sage were still together.
"I'm staying,"I said finally, slamming the glass on the table.
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7.6
After an exhausting fourteen-hour flight, Katia returned to her Upper East Side penthouse, expecting the quiet comfort of the life she had built.
Instead, she found a pair of familiar red stilettos in the foyer and her fiancé, Caleb, tangled in their bedsheets with his twenty-two-year-old assistant.
She didn't scream or cry. She simply took off her three-carat engagement ring, threw it at his bare chest, and demanded he buy out her half of the penthouse by Friday.
Seeking to numb the sickening disgust, she got blackout drunk and crashed at a luxury hotel, accidentally stumbling into the wrong suite.
Thinking the imposing man inside was a high-end escort hired by her friend, she threw him over her shoulder and spent a wild night with him.
The next morning, she left five thousand dollars on his nightstand with a lipstick-stained note.
"Good Job."
For six years, she had funded Caleb's dreams and built his startup from the ground up, only to be treated like a lifeless ATM.
With ruthless precision, she spent the next two months systematically bankrupting his company, cutting off his venture capital, and erasing his life's work.
She felt no heartbreak, only a cold, calculating need to cleanse herself of his betrayal.
But when Katia finally returned to corporate headquarters to co-lead a massive merger, she literally crashed into the new Vice President.
Strong arms caught her waist, and the sharp scent of cedarwood and whiskey hit her like a freight train.
"You came back," Jackson whispered, his eyes burning as he stared at the woman who had treated him like a cheap gigolo.
9.5
On the day she discovers she is pregnant, Amara is handed divorce papers by the man she loved for three years. Betrayed by her husband and her best friend, she walks away with nothing-except the secret growing inside her.
But what Ethan Cole doesn't know is that the woman he abandoned is not weak... and not alone.
When Amara returns as a powerful heiress, no longer the woman he could control, Ethan begins to regret everything. But as secrets unravel and the truth about her pregnancy comes closer to light, one question remains-
When he finally finds out the child is his... will it already be too late?
8.4
Cari Butler woke up in a damp, smelly dorm room, realizing she had transmigrated into the body of a disgraced fake daughter who had just been kicked out of a wealthy family.
Before she could even process her reality, the real daughter's friends kicked her door open to mock her, flaunting a custom Tiffany necklace that supposedly cost a mere eighty cents.
Cari thought they were crazy, until she saw the news: a top Manhattan mansion had just sold for a record-breaking $3,500.
The entire world's currency value had shrunk by ten thousand times!
This meant the original owner's bank balance of $854,000 gave Cari the purchasing power of eight and a half billion dollars.
But a mysterious system froze her funds, forcing her to work demeaning gig jobs to unlock the money bit by bit.
While working as a hotel server for twenty cents a day, she caught her ex-boyfriend kissing up to the real daughter, mocking Cari for being a desperate beggar.
Even her snobby roommates laughed at her, claiming she couldn't afford a ten-cent iPhone.
What truly angered Cari wasn't the humiliation, but receiving a five-cent transfer from her poor biological brother, who was starving himself just to keep her fed.
Yet, the system strictly forbade her from giving her unlocked billions directly to her family.
Looking at the restrictive system and the arrogant elites who thought they owned the city, Cari's eyes turned icy cold.
"If I can't just hand them the cash,"
Cari sneered, pulling out her phone to outright buy the luxury hotel and fire everyone who wronged her.
"Then I will just buy the entire world and place it at their feet."
9.3
Ginny was chained to a concrete pillar in an abandoned warehouse, bleeding and betrayed by the two people she trusted most.
Her fiancé, Brant, and her adopted sister, Coretta, had just slashed her face open. Brant coldly admitted she was nothing but a disposable key to a vault, right before he tossed a lighter onto the gasoline-soaked floor.
As Ginny burned alive in the roaring inferno, the heavy iron doors were violently smashed open. Bedford Parks—the notoriously ruthless, germaphobic "monster" of Silicon Valley whom Ginny had always feared—charged straight into the flames. Ignoring the blistering heat, he shielded her charred body with his own. A massive steel beam collapsed, snapping his spine.
"I love you."
He coughed up blood, whispering his final words against her blackened skin before dying to protect her.
Hovering as a ghost, Ginny's soul screamed in agonizing realization. She had spent her life terrified of Bedford, yet he was the only one who truly loved her, while her supposed family laughed at her gruesome murder.
Suddenly, a blinding white light swallowed the warehouse.
Ginny gasped for air, opening her eyes to find herself sitting in the back of a luxury Maybach. She was eighteen again, wearing the humiliating clown makeup Coretta had tricked her into wearing on the day she was brought back to the wealthy Steele estate.
Ginny stared at her reflection, her dark eyes turning cold and sharp.
This time, she would tear her betrayers apart piece by piece, and she would protect her "monster."
9.5
Janet woke up gasping, the phantom fire of a deadly explosion still scorching her lungs. She had been reborn three years in the past, on the exact day her mother forced her into a marriage contract with Gaylord Bradford, a paralyzed and severely disfigured billionaire.
Before she could even process her second chance, her cousin Kandy kicked the bedroom door open, flaunting a massive diamond ring. Kandy, who had also been reborn, smugly announced she had stolen Janet's Wall Street golden boy fiancé, Jax Adler.
"You're going to marry that paralyzed monster," Kandy spat, gloating that she would build a billionaire dynasty with Jax while Janet wiped drool off a rotting corpse. Kandy expected Janet to have a complete mental collapse, completely unaware that Gaylord's own medical team was secretly injecting him with lethal neurotoxins to finish him off.
But Janet only felt a cold, clinical pity. Kandy's "prophetic" memories were a polluted lie. Jax was actually sterile and dying of irreversible kidney failure, while Gaylord wasn't a dying freak—he was a dormant god whose body was merely in a high-dimensional hibernation. Why would Janet mourn losing a doomed fraud?
Leaving her delusional cousin behind, Janet packed her bags and headed straight to Gaylord's maximum-security military cell. She physically tackled his corrupt doctor, drove three bio-electric silver needles into the crippled king's spine to awaken his deadened nerves, and looked him dead in his glacial blue eye.
"Sign the marriage contract," Janet whispered. "I will make you walk again, and we will take back everything."
9.2
I was a broke freelance copywriter, tortured for three sleepless nights by an impossible corporate client.
Needing to vent, I typed out a wild, highly inappropriate rant mocking the brand's stiff heritage.
But in my exhausted, sleep-deprived blur, I accidentally sent the massive block of text to the wrong chat.
The recipient wasn't my friend. It was Emerson Beard, the elite, ruthless brand consultant I was supposed to desperately network with.
I waited for the professional execution, terrified of the massive five-figure penalty fee hanging over my head.
Instead, he didn't block me. He critiqued my unhinged draft.
He saved my career through late-night, encrypted phone calls, his deep, commanding voice becoming my only lifeline.
But when I heard a woman with a sultry French accent knocking on his hotel door during our call, my ugly jealousy flared.
I yelled at him and hung up, completely humiliating myself.
I thought I was just a pathetic, annoying workaholic interrupting his romantic getaway.
But he texted back to clarify he was entirely single, and in the process, realized I was actually twenty-five, not a fresh-out-of-school teenager like he had assumed.
The cold, distant mentor instantly vanished.
In his place was a man radiating a raw, aggressive, and predatory energy that bled right through the screen.
"Texting is too inefficient. The full integration requires face-to-face communication."
He dropped a location pin for an ultra-exclusive Manhattan club, demanding I meet him to save my contract.
Wearing a desperately bought emerald silk dress, I pushed open the heavy oak door, stepping right into the trap of a man who had just taken off his leash.