Copyright © 2025 by Bookish Dae After a year of enduring her husband Silas's constant, subtle comparisons to his impeccably ambitious and model-esque coworker, Dalia Jackson reaches her breaking point when he dismisses her homemaking as laziness and her voluptuous body as a lack of discipline.

Emerald Sawyer has always been my home. She was the one who saw something in me when everyone else saw a hockey goon who couldn't even read properly. When the world called me stupid, she called me capable. When I had nothing, she sacrificed to give me everything. Now, I'm Hayden "Haymaker" Sawyer-the league's most feared enforcer. My violence goes viral. My fists pay the bills. Every fight, every brutal hit, every autograph, every picture, every deal-I do it all for her. But somewhere along the way, I lost sight of her. I missed the warning signs-the threats, the harassment, the shaming, the strangers who hate her simply for being mine. When she showed me, I told her it didn't matter. It was jealousy. It was nothing. I told her that she was safe. I was wrong. The losses started piling up. The fans raged. My anger grew. My fights became more reckless. My temper snapped, and I said careless words that pushed away my entire world. While I'm smiling for the cameras, my wife was brutally attacked by a fan. While I'm protecting my career, my Emerald was fighting for her life. Every moment I'd ignored her, every time I'd put hockey before her, every careless word I'd ever said-all of it hit me at once. Now I see everything. She's alive, but terrified. She doesn't trust me. She doesn't feel safe with me. She flinches when she sees my jersey. I will never forgive myself. But I cannot give up. I will prove to the only person who ever saw me-the only person who ever loved the real me-that I am still worthy of her. That I can put her first, that I can make things right, that I will fight with everything I am to keep her safe, to bring her back to me. I demand vengeance for my wife, against everyone who ever harmed her-and that includes me. Because Emerald Sawyer is my home, my heart, and my everything. This fight-for her-is the most important fight of my life. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ykD1DIiMtJwouI2choaIJ?si=c70ab896ac4446b8

I will come back and update this description as the story unfolds but this is a story you should go in blind and without spoilers but for now. Some love stories don't begin with a choice. They begin with timing.

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DARK ROMANCE ! Cheating, very twisted, obsessive ML, a lot of trauma... Lizzy's lips tilted up into a self deprecating smile. The divorce papers were filled, his part already darkened by his informations and his signature long dry on the paper. Her own was still fresh. Only twelve hours old. "How long has it been waiting ?" She dared to ask. There was a lot she wouldn't, but this, this she felt like she should know. How long had he been planning on divorcing her ? --- Elizabeth Clark loved her husband. She had found peace in their arranged marriage and as dysfunctional as it seemed, she had cherished her new home with all she had. Dante Giovanni had merely been biding his time, bearing through this hell of a marriage by counting down the seconds until he could get out of it. But when his wife sets him free, he finds out freedom has a bitter taste and that he might have passed by the love of his life. And Lizzy discovers she is more than just a man's daughter or wife, that she deserves more than what she had been given until then and is ready to fight for it.

I knew my best friend since childhood loved me. I knew it. And when I got back from my business trip, I was going to tell him how I felt, especially when he told me he had something exciting to tell me. But it wasn't that he loved me. He'd gotten married while I was on an overseas business trip to my worst enemy.