Empty Smiles

Ever since my CEO husband returned from his business trip, he's been acting strange. His hugs are stiff, and his kisses are empty. Even when we're intimate, something just feels off. When I ask him why, he just smiles and says he's tired from work. But everything falls into place the moment I see his first love stepping out of his Maybach, her body covered in hickeys. That's when I finally give up. I don't argue or cry. I just smile… and tear up the 99th love coupon. Once, he wrote me a hundred love letters. On our wedding day, we made a promise—those letters would become 100 love coupons. As long as there were coupons left, I'd grant him anything he asked. Over the four years of our marriage, every time he left me for his first love, he'd cash in one. But what he doesn't know is that there are only two left.

Lila only wanted to fit in for this one night and this one party. So she had one fake boyfriend to keep her from feeling invisible in a sea of confident smiles and perfect couples. It was supposed to be simple until her fake date ditched her under the blinding strobe lights, leaving her stranded and humiliated in the middle of the hockey team’s Freshers Welcome Party. But humiliation took an unexpected turn when Ethan, her best friend’s brother, and worse, her brother’s best friend stepped in to save her. That moment should have been the start of something new. Instead, it became the beginning of everything she never saw coming. Because while her heart recognized something in his eyes, his stayed shuttered, cold and unreachable. And just when she thought she was ready to forget, the fake boyfriend returns, this time, asking for something real. Between two hearts that shouldn’t collide and a past that refuses to stay buried, Lila must choose: follow the safety of what she knows, or risk everything for what she can’t seem to let go of?

For eight years, I was the ghost in Lorenzo Valenti's empire. By day, I was his executive assistant, the engine of his criminal enterprise. By night, I was the most submissive bird in his gilded cage, and the nameless body in his bed. I loved him with a devotion that bordered on madness, a foolish flame I'd nurtured since I was a scholarship student pulled into his orbit. I believed my quiet love could one day melt the ice around his heart. I was wrong. The day his unforgettable first love, Isabella, returned, the man I knew vanished. The rare smiles once reserved for me were now all for her. My presence by his side was erased, replaced by hers. Even when she framed me, he believed her without hesitation. He chose her, again and again. I submitted my resignation. He signed it without looking. He thought I'd crawl back, broken and begging. He was wrong. While he was busy playing house with his "cuore mio", I was quietly packing away my life, preparing to vanish from his world forever.

Have you ever pain so raw it feels like your hear is being dragged out of your heart? The type that breaks into pieces you could never find because they are lost to the wind of scorn and shame. Cassandra carries her pain like a weight on her shoulder everyday despite her smiles and jokes, too young to remember what it felt like to have parents before she lost hers to an accident her grandparents do not like talking about she is trying to find the little good life has in store for her. But she is given a brutal awakening when the one person she thought would bring her much needed happiness tosses her aside. So Cassandra runs away from it all, she runs far enough to never feel the despair looming behind her. And she runs into the arms of Ray, handsome, cocky, but caring, considerate, and loving. Cassandra is about to find out love works without the mate ties and build bonds with the most unlikely people. Cassandra is about to find the love acceptance she always yearned for in the most unlikely place.

For the hundredth time, my dad hints at us that he really wants to become a grandfather during New Year Eve's dinner. Lydia Cooper, my wife who has insisted on living a childless life for the past decade, just smiles before placing more food on his plate. After dinner, she ducks out to the balcony and murmurs into her phone, "Be good, now. Mommy will visit you a few days later." I can feel my blood running cold in my veins as I stand in the living room with a glass of water. As I approach Lydia, I do my best to keep my voice light and teasing. "I just heard you say the word 'mommy.' Do you have an illegitimate child out there somewhere?" Lydia rubs her nose, her tone now awkward. "You might be hearing things. It was just my friend's child…" My heart plunges into my stomach pit at her words. I've been in love with Lydia for ten years. It's only natural that I know how she acts whenever she's lying.

Hilda Michaela has been in love with her crush Edwilson Autore ever since she was a child. When an unexpected nightstand between the two led to a pregnancy, their families arranged for them to marry. Even though Wilson was against their union, Hilda devoted her life to him, hoping that he would love her back. Years passed, yet Wilson was the same. He became even colder when Hilda mysteriously lost the pregnancy exactly after a month of their marriage. This infuriates him even the more and only viewed their union as a trap. One day, he thrust divorce papers into her face when she least expected. "I've been thinking about this for a while, let's go our separate ways" he bellowed. Years later, when their paths cross, yearning reflected in his eyes as he pleaded, "Hilda.. Can you take me in again?" Hilda let out a loud empty laugh before she gazed at him with zero emotions and sneered, " I would love to take you in darling but the last I checked, i didn't own a daycare."

"I am not the ghost you are looking for." Three years ago, the timid and pushed-aside Lorna disappeared into the icy depths of the river, leaving behind a family that loathed her and a fiancé, Ezekiel, whose heart was as cold as the water that took her. Now, a woman named Vespera has arrived in City F. She is the new "Miracle" lead of the most anticipated thriller series in the country. She is sharp, brilliant, and possesses a terrifyingly beautiful grace that commands every room. When Ezekiel sees her, his frozen world shatters. The resemblance is haunting, the pull is magnetic, and he becomes obsessed with proving that the woman in the emerald silk is the girl he lost. But the evidence says otherwise. Vespera has no scars. Her medical records come from a different continent. Her past is documented, her family is accounted for, and most importantly, she looks at Ezekiel with the polite, empty eyes of a complete stranger. As Ezekiel descends into a spiral of obsession, trying to reclaim a past that may not exist, Vespera begins her "Script." Is she a ghost seeking vengeance, or a stranger playing a deadly game? In the world of acting, the greatest performance is the one where the lead actress forgets who she used to be.

Akana is a lowly desert nomad, while Sidastir Den Raffiben is the Elven king Eiter Kingdom. Eiter, a once full of life kingdom is now, nothing but the ghost of its past. The story begins with a marriage contract between two people; one who cannot feel cold, and the other is an Ice mage. They say it's pure fate. Together they set out on their path to Virtus Scolaris, the most prestigious institution in all of the Nine Kingdoms. Slowly throughout their time there, the couple nurtures an unbreakable bond. Akana is far from welcomed at the school. He was considered barbaric and should not move among the civilized races of the Nine Kingdoms. However, everything changes when Akana loses his way back to his chambers and stumbles across an empty cold alley. The situation becomes toxic when a violent incident reveals Akana's hidden abilities and brings light to his people's darkest secret. A story in a world where monsters walk amongst humans, the truth is rarely pure and never simple, and to face the truth raw is to face the ugliness of our being. In a world where the price for love is losing your own existence, where you stand one moment away from flipping the switch, what would you choose?

To save his childhood sweetheart suffering from a congenital heart condition, my mate Ethan—the storm pack’s Alpha—forced me to remove my heart to be given to his beloved. "Don't worry, you are the rarest white wolf with the strongest healing ability. I have prepared an artificial heart for you, and you will be fine." Ethan said. I tried to explain to my mate Ethan that my healing ability has become very poor in the past year, so that transplanting my heart would kill me. My mate snarled at me with disgust, "Selene is so gravely ill, and here you are, jealous and fighting for attention! She saved my life when I was suffering from silver poisoning a year ago! You won't die anyway, so why can't you help her?" Under the mandatory order of my mate, I was sent to the pack healer for the heart transplant. He didn’t know that I was the one who had exchanged my rare white wolf's healing ability with a witch to save him from silver poisoning. In the end, with my healing abilities gone, I died miserably in a forgotten corner of the empty healer's cabin.

"I'll leave the decision-making to our children. Girls, do you want 100 million dollars, or your mother?" On the day our parents get divorced, Mom looks at us with tears in her eyes. My older sister, Camila Walker, kneels before Mom while looking very emotional. "I want to stick with you, Mom! I don't want money—I just want you!" As she looks at me, she smiles confidently, as though she's won something. In my previous life, Camila didn't hesitate to choose Dad, who had inherited 100 million dollars. But he lost all of his fortune to gambling to the point that he had to sell Camila just to pay off his debts. Left without a choice, she was forced to take her own life. As for me, I chose to be with Mom, only to find out that the "poor security guard" she had married turned out to be the richest CEO in the city. Thanks to the marriage, I became the spoiled and pampered heiress whom the entire city envied. Camila thinks she's stolen my good luck. Little does she know that I died in my previous life as well.