Chapter 1
To force me into breaking off our engagement, my fiancé orchestrated my father’s company’s downfall, driving it to bankruptcy and leaving him drowning in millions of dollars of debt.
The shock made my father collapsed from a heart attack and was rushed into emergency care.
Desperate and out of options, I knelt before my fiancé, tears streaming down my face, begging him to help cover my father’s surgery costs. But he only looked down at me with cold indifference.
Then, just as all hope seemed lost, Atlas Whitmore, my childhood best friend, returned from abroad.
Without hesitation, Atlas pulled every string necessary to get my father the best medical care. He stayed with me through endless nights, never leaving my side, offering quiet reassurances when my world was crumbling.
But a week later, my father suffered another sudden attack.
As his life slipped away, Atlas knelt by his bedside, his voice trembling with emotion as he made a solemn vow–he would marry me and take care of me for the rest of his life, so my father could leave this world without worry.
After the funeral, hollow and broken, I finally severed all ties with my fiancé.
Instead, I chose Atlas.
For five years, I thought I had found peace, that I had been saved from my grief.
Until one night, I stumbled upon a conversation that shattered everything.
“You really outplayed me on this one. Got Celeste to walk away willingly, like the clingy fool she is. But tell me–what do you think she’d do if she found out it was you who destoryed her father? Will she’d want to kill you?”
My fingers hesitated on the polished brass handle of the private lounge door.
Inside, laughter rang out, low and mocking.
“You really had her fooled,” my ex–fiancé, Nathaniel, drawled, amusement dripping from his voice. “Celeste trusted you like a brother, loved you unconditionally. I bet it never even crossed her mind that the man who destroyed her father was you.”
My breath caught in my throat.
A second voice, hoarse with alcohol and anger, responded. It was Atlas.
“I took the blame for you because of Ivy,” he bit out, his words laced with something bitter. “I never cared for Celeste even though, but I’m not a monster. I’d never go as far as pushing her father to his death.”
A sharp clink echoed as glass met wood, the sound edged with suppressed fury. Then came Atlas’s voice again, low and seething.
Seven Years of Love. Seven Minutes
粒粒
Chapter 1
“I owe her. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. The only reason I helped you back then was for Ivy’s sake. But if you ever hurt her, if you ever so much as make her cry, I swear to God, I’ll end you.”
Nathaniel laughed, a slow, taunting sound.
“Such devotion,” he mused. “But it’s too bad she met me first. You should focus on protecting your dear Celeste… after all, you killed her father. Be careful, Atlas. The dead have a way of coming back to haunt you.”
*Crash.” The unmistakable sound of glass shattering against the door jolted me back to my senses.
I turned on my heel and walked away, my heart pounding like a war drum.
Downstairs, the bar was dimly lit, the air thick with the scent of liquor and smoke. My hands trembled as I reached for a glass, lifting it to my lips.
The moment the alcohol burned down my throat, tears welled in my eyes. I never drank. But tonight, I needed something–anything–to drown out the words replaying in my mind.
It wasn’t Nathaniel who ruined my father.
It was Atlas–the man I had spent five years sharing a bed with, waking up next to, trusting with the fragile remains of my heart.
And one week after my father’s first attack, he must have said something, done something, to trigger the second.
No wonder my father’s eyes had been locked onto him in those final moments. The look I had thought was gratitude–relief that I would be taken care of–wasn’t that at all.
It was rage.
And I had been too blind, too trusting, to see it. The love, the warmth, the marriage I thought was my salvation…
It had never been love at all. It was guilt. A hollow, meaningless compensation.
A sharp laugh tore from my throat, but it sounded foreign to my own ears. The taste of alcohol turned to ashes on my tongue, my stomach churning with something ugly and consuming.
I was still staring blankly at my empty glass when warm arms wrapped around me from behind.
Atlas.
His embrace was firm but uncharacteristically hesitant, as if sensing the shift in me. His breath, tinged with whiskey, fanned against my neck as he murmured, voice thick with intoxication.
“Celeste… you’ve been gone too long. I missed you.” His lips ghosted over my hair, his arms tightening around my waist. “Let’s go home, love. I need you. I love you. So much… always…”
For five years, I had believed these words.
Atlas was never an expressive man, but every time he was drunk, he would whisper these confessions into my skin.
Seven Years of Love. Seven Minutes
Chapter 1
His friends always said a drunk man’s words were his truest thoughts.
And I had believed him. But now?
Now, all I could feel was how utterly ridiculous it all was.
My face betrayed nothing as I gently pried his arms away and helped him into the car.
He slumped against me, his head resting on my lap, his breathing slow and even. His brows, always slightly furrowed, finally eased in sleep, as if he had found some fleeting peace.
Then, just as I reached to adjust his coat, his lips parted, and a name fell from them.
“Ivy… Ivy… why didn’t you choose me?”
Ivy Monroe. The woman who had stolen my fiancé. The woman who had been Atlas’s first love.
