
Introduction
Clara’s initial doubts spiral into chilling suspicion. Adrian’s late-night absences, his hidden scars, and his strange knowledge of crime details begin to form a terrifying picture she can’t ignore. With the help of a determined private investigator, Clara digs into Adrian’s past—uncovering a trail of vanished women and dangerous secrets. Now, she must face the unthinkable: is her perfect boyfriend a devoted lover… or a cold-blooded killer?
Chapter 1
Clara’s Pov
I used to joke that New York was full of people but not one of them was meant for me. My friends laughed, said I was picky, said I had walls too high for anyone to climb. Maybe they were right. Or maybe, after one too many failed dates, one too many conversations that fizzled out with men who couldn’t remember the difference between your and you’re, I’d stopped believing anyone would ever truly see me.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t hopeless. But hope had turned thin, like watered-down coffee I kept drinking out of habit rather than taste. Every dating app profile blurred into the next: men posing with fish, men wearing sunglasses indoors, men who thought “sarcastic” was a personality. I never deleted the apps, but I also didn’t expect them to change my life.
Then one rainy Thursday, something shifted.
I was standing outside the law office where I worked, holding a broken umbrella that had decided to give up on life halfway through the storm. It was late, the night buzzing with taxis, the streetlights reflected on wet pavement like smeared neon paint. I’d been waiting ten minutes for a cab that never came, debating if I should just give up and trek to the subway, when he appeared.
“Looks like your umbrella lost the will to live,” he said, smiling, one hand tucked casually in his coat pocket as though rain didn’t dare touch him.
I looked up, startled, because New Yorkers didn’t usually talk to strangers on the street—especially not in the rain. But there he was: tall, dark hair damp from the drizzle, eyes that sparkled with an unnerving kind of calm. He carried himself like he belonged in some perfectly orchestrated scene, composed in a way that felt out of place among the soggy chaos of Midtown.
“Yeah, it died a hero’s death,” I said before I could stop myself. My voice sounded lighter than I felt.
His laugh came easily, warm but refined, and for a moment I forgot about the cold rain soaking through my coat. “Here.” He tilted his large black umbrella over me without hesitation. “Share.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking. A strange man approaches me at night and I just step under his umbrella like some cautionary tale waiting to happen. But in that moment, soaked and tired, I felt disarmed. He didn’t look like danger. He looked like one of those people who already had their life figured out. And maybe I wanted to brush shoulders with someone like that, if only for a block or two.
“Thanks,” I said carefully, stepping closer.
“Adrian Wolfe,” he introduced himself, like a handshake in words.
“Clara Hayes.”
“Clara,” he repeated, as though tasting the sound. “Fits you.”
We walked in stride, sharing the shelter of his umbrella. He asked if I worked nearby; I told him about my job as a legal researcher, which usually put people to sleep faster than chamomile tea. But he listened closely, asked follow-up questions, even teased me without crossing any lines. The conversation was light but magnetic.
By the time we reached the subway, I almost forgot how it started. He gestured subtly. “Subway?”
“Yeah.”
“Would’ve guessed you were a cab kind of person,” he teased.
“Not tonight.”
He smiled, steady and deliberate. “Can I give you my number? Just in case your umbrella gives up again.”
I hesitated for maybe half a breath, then handed him my phone. His fingers moved quickly, typing his number in, saving himself as Adrian—with no emojis, no gimmicks. Just clean and direct. When he gave it back, he met my eyes as though to seal it.
“Goodnight, Clara.”
And that was it. He walked off into the rain like a scene from a movie I didn’t know I’d been cast in.
I remember descending the subway stairs that night with something fluttering in me I hadn’t felt for years. It wasn’t love, not even close. It was possibility.
When my phone buzzed later that night, it was a short message.
“Hope your train wasn’t too crowded. —Adrian”
Simple. Unassuming. Somehow perfect.
Over the next week, messages became conversations. Conversations became calls. By the time he asked me to dinner, we’d built a rhythm that felt both natural and strangely intense. He was everything the others weren’t: thoughtful, respectful, attentive. He noticed the little things—my tendency to tap my pen when I was anxious, the way I always checked my watch twice before leaving. On our second date he brought a book I’d once mentioned offhand as my favorite, saying he wanted to “understand me better.”
No one had ever done that before.
Of course, my friends were thrilled. Renee, my roommate, practically performed a celebratory dance in the kitchen when I told her. She insisted on scrolling through his pictures he’d shared with me: Adrian smiling under a cascade of city lights, candid ones of him sketching building designs, a clean apartment that looked like something out of a magazine.
“He’s almost too perfect,” Renee said with a grin. “Don’t mess this up, Hayes. This could be the one.”
I laughed it off, but the words pierced deeper than she knew. The one. I’d long stopped believing in the concept. Still, when Adrian brushed a rain-soaked strand of my hair behind my ear on our fourth date, I let myself wonder.
Yet in the silence of my bedroom at night came the doubts I couldn’t voice. How did someone like him, polished, ambitious, magnetic, end up interested in someone like me? Why didn’t he talk much about his past, despite being curious about mine? Why did his stories sometimes… shift? Tiny details, nothing glaring, but just enough to snag in my mind.
One night, curled comfortably against him after dinner at his place, I noticed a scar etched faintly down the side of his hand. It looked old, the kind that could only come from something violent.
“What happened?” I asked lightly, tracing it with my finger.
Adrian glanced at his hand as though just realizing it was there, then shrugged with a smile. “I don’t remember. Old accident.”
Then he kissed me, like that small answer didn’t matter, as if the way he pulled me close was enough to erase questions.
For a while, it was.
Until the morning headlines shattered the city.
Woman Found Dead in Chelsea Apartment. Police Suspect Serial Killer Targeting Single Women.
I froze at the photo of the victim. Thirty-something, brunette, professional. She looked a little like me.
And that night, when Adrian showed up at my door with takeout and flowers, smiling like the world hadn’t changed at all, I couldn’t stop staring at his hands.
That scar. That careless shrug. That secret he’d hidden so smoothly.
My gut whispered what my heart refused to believe: What if the man I’d just fallen for was the very monster the city was hunting?
Last Chapters
#50 Chapter 50 – The Last Key
Last Updated: 1/3/2026#49 Chapter 49 – The Fall
Last Updated: 1/3/2026#48 Chapter 48 – The Shift
Last Updated: 12/6/2025#47 Chapter 47 – First Line Again
Last Updated: 12/6/2025#46 Chapter 46 – The Blank Chapter
Last Updated: 11/22/2025#45 Chapter 45 – The Real Author
Last Updated: 11/22/2025#44 Chapter 44 – Rainfall
Last Updated: 11/12/2025#43 Chapter 43 – The Boundary
Last Updated: 11/12/2025#42 Chapter 42 – The Other Clara
Last Updated: 11/8/2025#41 Chapter 41 – The Line
Last Updated: 11/8/2025
You Might Like 😍
After the Affair: Falling into a Billionaire's Arms
On my birthday, he took her on vacation. On our anniversary, he brought her to our home and made love to her in our bed...
Heartbroken, I tricked him into signing divorce papers.
George remained unconcerned, convinced I would never leave him.
His deceptions continued until the day the divorce was finalized. I threw the papers in his face: "George Capulet, from this moment on, get out of my life!"
Only then did panic flood his eyes as he begged me to stay.
When his calls bombarded my phone later that night, it wasn't me who answered, but my new boyfriend Julian.
"Don't you know," Julian chuckled into the receiver, "that a proper ex-boyfriend should be as quiet as the dead?"
George seethed through gritted teeth: "Put her on the phone!"
"I'm afraid that's impossible."
Julian dropped a gentle kiss on my sleeping form nestled against him. "She's exhausted. She just fell asleep."
Omega Bound
Thane Knight is the alpha of the Midnight Pack of the La Plata Mountain Range, the largest wolf shifter pack in the world. He is an alpha by day and hunts the shifter trafficking ring with his group of mercenaries by night. His hunt for vengeance leads to one raid that changes his life.
Tropes:
Touch her and die/Slow burn romance/Fated Mates/Found family twist/Close circle betrayal/Cinnamon roll for only her/Traumatized heroine/Rare wolf/Hidden powers/Knotting/Nesting/Heats/Luna/Attempted assassination
Accardi
“I thought you said you were done chasing me?” Gen mocked.
“I am done chasing you.”
Before she could formulate a witty remark, Matteo threw her down. She landed hard on her back atop his dining room table. She tried to sit up when she noticed what he was doing. His hands were working on his belt. It came free of his pants with a violent yank. She collapsed back on her elbows, her mouth gaping open at the display. His face was a mask of sheer determination, his eyes were a dark gold swimming with heat and desire. His hands wrapped around her thighs and pulled her to the edge of the table. He glided his fingers up her thighs and hooked several around the inside of her panties. His knuckles brushed her dripping sex.
“You’re soaking wet, Genevieve. Tell me, was it me that made you this way or him?” his voice told her to be careful with her answer. His knuckles slid down through her folds and she threw her head back as she moaned. “Weakness?”
“You…” she breathed.
Genevieve loses a bet she can’t afford to pay. In a compromise, she agrees to convince any man her opponent chooses to go home with her that night. What she doesn’t realize when her sister’s friend points out the brooding man sitting alone at the bar, is that man won’t be okay with just one night with her. No, Matteo Accardi, Don of one of the largest gangs in New York City doesn’t do one night stands. Not with her anyway.
The Prison Project
Can love tame the untouchable? Or will it only fuel the fire and cause chaos amongst the inmates?
Fresh out of high school and suffocating in her dead-end hometown, Margot longs for her escape. Her reckless best friend, Cara, thinks she's found the perfect way out for them both - The Prisoner Project - a controversial program offering a life-changing sum of money in exchange for time spent with maximum-security inmates.
Without hesitation, Cara rushes to sign them up.
Their reward? A one-way ticket into the depths of a prison ruled by gang leaders, mob bosses, and men the guards wouldn't even dare to cross...
At the centre of it all, meets Coban Santorelli - a man colder than ice, darker than midnight, and as deadly as the fire that fuels his inner rage. He knows that the project may very well be his only ticket to freedom - his only ticket to revenge on the one who managed to lock him up and so he must prove that he can learn to love…
Will Margot be the lucky one chosen to help reform him?
Will Coban be capable of bringing something to the table other than just sex?
What starts off as denial may very well grow in to obsession which could then fester in to becoming true love…
A temperamental romance novel.
From Substitute To Queen
Heartbroken, Sable discovered Darrell having sex with his ex in their bed, while secretly transferring hundreds of thousands to support that woman.
Even worse was overhearing Darrell laugh to his friends: "She's useful—obedient, doesn't cause trouble, handles housework, and I can fuck her whenever I need relief. She's basically a live-in maid with benefits." He made crude thrusting gestures, sending his friends into laughter.
In despair, Sable left, reclaimed her true identity, and married her childhood neighbor—Lycan King Caelan, nine years her senior and her fated mate. Now Darrell desperately tries to win her back. How will her revenge unfold?
From substitute to queen—her revenge has just begun!
The mafia princess return
I Slapped My Fiancé—Then Married His Billionaire Nemesis
Technically, Rhys Granger was my fiancé now—billionaire, devastatingly hot, and a walking Wall Street wet dream. My parents shoved me into the engagement after Catherine disappeared, and honestly? I didn’t mind. I’d crushed on Rhys for years. This was my chance, right? My turn to be the chosen one?
Wrong.
One night, he slapped me. Over a mug. A stupid, chipped, ugly mug my sister gave him years ago. That’s when it hit me—he didn’t love me. He didn’t even see me. I was just a warm-bodied placeholder for the woman he actually wanted. And apparently, I wasn’t even worth as much as a glorified coffee cup.
So I slapped him right back, dumped his ass, and prepared for disaster—my parents losing their minds, Rhys throwing a billionaire tantrum, his terrifying family plotting my untimely demise.
Obviously, I needed alcohol. A lot of alcohol.
Enter him.
Tall, dangerous, unfairly hot. The kind of man who makes you want to sin just by existing. I’d met him only once before, and that night, he just happened to be at the same bar as my drunk, self-pitying self. So I did the only logical thing: I dragged him into a hotel room and ripped off his clothes.
It was reckless. It was stupid. It was completely ill-advised.
But it was also: Best. Sex. Of. My. Life.
And, as it turned out, the best decision I’d ever made.
Because my one-night stand isn’t just some random guy. He’s richer than Rhys, more powerful than my entire family, and definitely more dangerous than I should be playing with.
And now, he’s not letting me go.
The War God Alpha's Arranged Bride
Yet Alexander made his decision clear to the world: “Evelyn is the only woman I will ever marry.”
Invisible To Her Bully
My Possessive Alpha Twins For Mate
My drunk stepfather remained indifferent, his weight suffocating, making it hard to breathe as my heart raced.
Suddenly, the door slammed open, and two figures burst in.
"Get off her!" a deafening roar echoed.
I didn't expect the twin brothers who'd bullied me at school to come charging in like gods to save me.
After my grandmother passed, I had to move in with my mom and stepdad, who treated me like a servant. I prayed every day for my 18th birthday to come, so l could leave and escape this broken home.
However, on my first day at my new school, l encountered the legendary twins everyone feared.
To make matters worse, the Moon Goddess revealed they were both my mates!
After helping me out with my stepdad, my twin mate cornered me, played with my hair, and whispered possessively, "You belong to us, our little mate..."
Rise of the Banished She-Wolf
That roar stole my eighteenth birthday and shattered my world. My first shift should have been glory—blood turned blessing into shame. By dawn they'd branded me "cursed": cast out by my pack, abandoned by family, stripped of my nature. My father didn't defend me—he sent me to a forsaken island where wolfless outcasts were forged into weapons, forced to kill each other until only one could leave.
On that island I learned the darkest edges of humanity and how to bury terror in bone. Countless times I wanted to surrender—dive into the waves and never surface—but the accusing faces that haunted my dreams pushed me back toward something colder than survival: revenge. I escaped, and for three years I hid among humans, collecting secrets, learning to move like a shadow, sharpening patience into precision—becoming a blade.
Then, under a full moon, I touched a bleeding stranger—and my wolf returned with a violence that made me whole. Who was he? Why could he wake what I'd thought dead?
One thing I know: now is the time.
I have waited three years for this. I will make everyone who destroyed me pay—and take back everything that was stolen from me.
Falling for my boyfriend's Navy brother
"What is wrong with me?
Why does being near him make my skin feel too tight, like I’m wearing a sweater two sizes too small?
It’s just newness, I tell myself firmly.
He’s my boyfirend’s brother.
This is Tyler’s family.
I’m not going to let one cold stare undo that.
**
As a ballet dancer, My life looks perfect—scholarship, starring role, sweet boyfriend Tyler. Until Tyler shows his true colors and his older brother, Asher, comes home.
Asher is a Navy veteran with battle scars and zero patience. He calls me "princess" like it's an insult. I can't stand him.
When My ankle injury forces her to recover at the family lake house, I‘m stuck with both brothers. What starts as mutual hatred slowly turns into something forbidden.
I'm falling for my boyfriend's brother.
**
I hate girls like her.
Entitled.
Delicate.
And still—
Still.
The image of her standing in the doorway, clutching her cardigan tighter around her narrow shoulders, trying to smile through the awkwardness, won’t leave me.
Neither does the memory of Tyler. Leaving her here without a second thought.
I shouldn’t care.
I don’t care.
It’s not my problem if Tyler’s an idiot.
It’s not my business if some spoiled little princess has to walk home in the dark.
I’m not here to rescue anyone.
Especially not her.
Especially not someone like her.
She’s not my problem.
And I’ll make damn sure she never becomes one.
But when my eyes fell on her lips, I wanted her to be mine.












