Within a Hollow Heart - Chapter 57: Volume 2, : "Beneath Fraying Stars"

She gave up her dream of shining on the ballerina stage —for him.She sacrificed her self-respect —for him.She forgot her true identity —for him.But even after all that, she couldn’t compare to the woman who held Ryan’s heart.Arwen Quinn, heiress of prestigious Quinn family, realized too late that no matter what she did, she would never win Ryan’s love. The future that awaited her was a life trapped in endless misery of a loveless marriage.So, decisively, she ends their relationship and walks away. What she didn’t expect was that in breaking free from Ryan, she had opened the door for Aiden to enter her life — a chance that he had been waiting for.Aiden Winslow, an enigmatic CEO isn’t just mysterious —he is determined, and won’t allow to take Arwen away from him again.____Excerpt:Aiden narrowed his eyes, “Are you sure about this?”“If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t have asked,” Arwen replied coolly. “Stop dawdling. If you’re unwilling, I’ll find someone else who can get the marriage certificates today.”His expression darkened as he pulled her close. “Once offered to me, it’s mine alone.”Unfazed, Arwen asked, “So, do you accept? If yes, we’ll get the certificates now.”“On one condition,” he said. “I don’t do contract marriages. The woman I marry will be the woman I share my bed with. If you agree, then we’ll—”“Not a problem. Let’s go,” Arwen said without letting him finish, pulling him into the Civil Marriage Bureau.

After his wife's affair and the discovery that his child belongs to another man, Li Feng is cast out into the rainy night.Since fate won't allow him to live an ordinary life, he resolves to live an extraordinary one.“How many roads must a man walk down, before they call him a man” --- < Blowing in The Wind > Bob Dylan

She was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy family—abandoned by her father, oppressed by his legal wife, and humiliated by the so-called sister. She watched her mother perish in a raging fire and was thrown into the flames herself.Her name was Janice. And she died in that fire.Ten years later, under a new identity and the name “Janet,” she survives in silence. Forced by her stepmother to marry a wealthy heir rumored to be “paralyzed and disabled,” she becomes entangled in a vicious struggle of family betrayal and ruthless power games.With cold eyes, she watches the hypocrites who once trampled her into the mud—one by one, they will become prey on her road to revenge.Her wheelchair-bound “husband” Philip, the feuding brothers Charles and August… But what she didn't expect was that the boy who once quietly handed her a handkerchief all those years ago would become the most unpredictable piece in her game of fate.She has returned—not for hatred, but to personally end the past that was once crushed beneath their feet.