bitter almonds

In the world of the elite Hebert family, whispers abound about Elsa Hebert, their adopted daughter, harboring an unrequited love for Mr. Frank. To his disdain, Mr. Frank went as far as imprisoning her for five long years, shattered by her affection. When Mr. Frank finally tied the knot, it was expected that his bride would be someone else. Yet, to everyone's astonishment, the woman with a criminal past, Elsa Hebert, stood before him at the altar. Anticipating his cruel retaliation, onlookers eagerly awaited the humiliation of this audacious woman. But fate had other plans. On the fateful wedding day, the bride vanished into thin air, leaving Mr. Frank seething with anger. Determined to bring her back, he dispatched his men to retrieve her. When he captured Elsa, a storm raged in his eyes as he pinned her beneath him. His voice dripped with intensity as he posed the ultimate question, "Will you marry me or face the consequences?"

Teela married King Heavenly because she loved him, but life in the Heavenly household was anything but euphoric. Lettie, her hard-as-nails mother-in-law, treats her like an unpaid servant. The family treats her like an outsider. King treats her like a shadow, transparent and forgettable. When Lettie presses Teela to prove her value to the family or get out, Teela has a decision to make. But she’s not leaving without a fight. King Heavenly rules Heavenly Industries with an iron fist, but he leaves his home life to his mother to manage, and that includes the management of his boring little wife. Teela has never complained. She’s never done anything interesting, for that matter. She’s just one more responsibility in a long line of responsibilities that King shoulders on a daily basis, and that is exactly how he treats her — as a responsibility that he’s delegated to his mother. Suddenly Teela steps out of the shadows and into a fight with him and his whole family, and King is baffled by the ruthless actions of his now daring wife. He’d always heard that vengeance is a dish best served cold, but Teela is coming in hot!

''Wait... something's not right?!'' Song Xia walked over to the mirror and her eyes-widened, who was the one looking back in the mirror? ''Who are you?! Where did my face go?!'' She changed a lot! At the age of 20, Song Xia faced a lot of problems in her life. She was forced to marry a rich CEO who had a mistress in his company. She only found out that she was cheated on that night, her best friend had fooled her, her ex-boyfriend was going to marry her best friend, and so on. She drank too much and drove her car that very night. Alas, she got into a car accident and was in a coma for more than 1 year. Now, she has returned as Tang Xuan (ALICE) who looks completely different from the 'ugly' Song Xia in the past. She'll finally get the revenge she was longing for 2 years! [Little Drama] Alice: [How have you been, Dear Fans?] Fans: [Totally fine, how about you?] Alice: [*Sob* I'm getting bullied by my brother! Someone help me!] Fans: [Who is this brother?! Tell us his address! We'll get our weapons ready!] Tang Yan: "..." Hey, hey, where's the justice? Weren't you the one who bullied me by playing a prank on me?? --- Song Xia: I have great fashion sense, okay you lazy and slacking doctor! Tang Yan: *Scoff* You call that fashion sense?! You totally look like an orange! Ellen: *Sigh* Yet my girl won't stop shopping with that guy while using my card.. [The book cover is not mine. Credits to the owner.]

Courtney Valdez runs a small, cozy coffee shop built on warmth, routine, and the quiet comfort of everyday life. After growing up with abandonment and emotional scars she never fully healed from, she learned one rule: don’t rely on people who might leave. Renz Cortez is the opposite. A powerful CEO known for his cold precision and emotional detachment, Renz lives a life built on control, efficiency, and distance. Feelings are liabilities. Attachment is weakness. Love is unnecessary. Their worlds collide when Renz unexpectedly walks into Courtney’s café and orders something as simple—and as revealing—as a black coffee. What starts as brief, sharp exchanges quickly turns into a strange routine: he keeps coming back, and she keeps serving him more than just coffee. But comfort becomes complication. As their encounters grow more frequent, Courtney begins to see cracks in Renz’s composed exterior, while Renz finds himself drawn to the one place—and one person—that disrupts everything he believes about control. Their connection deepens slowly, quietly, dangerously. However, the past refuses to stay silent. Renz’s former lover, Bianca, returns, reopening old wounds and forcing unresolved emotions into the present. At the same time, Renz is pulled deeper into his corporate world, where expectations and obligations threaten to erase everything personal he has begun to feel. Courtney, already guarded by years of emotional fear, starts to question whether she is becoming just another temporary part of someone’s life—or something more that was never meant to last. As misunderstandings build and emotional distance grows, both are forced to confront painful truths: * Love is not always soft. * Timing is not always kind. * And sometimes, the person who stays longest is the one who leaves first. When Renz finally pulls away, believing it’s the only way to protect them both, Courtney is left with silence, unanswered feelings, and a heart caught between wanting to forget—and wanting him back. Because some loves are bitter before they are sweet. And some are worth breaking for—before they are rebuilt.

In Sicily, destiny passes by when you are a child, often announced by a dream. A dream that must be told, precisely, to your mother, before the day breaks and the first light of dawn erases its memory. If the dream is good, your mother will give you a piece of bread to eat immediately, to make that dream come true. If the dream is bad, your mother will make you spit on the ground three times, to dispel the ominous premonition. Belinda's destiny announced itself one day when she was just a child. She had not yet learned to read or write, yet she began to write poems, to create rhymes. They were very long poems, full of images and words that she herself struggled to understand. She wrote them on every piece of paper she found: on the back of receipts, on old school notebooks. She drew shapes and symbols that only she could decipher. She was a singular child, she had a strong personality and spoke a lot, "tutto d'un fiato" (all in one breath), and her hair, red like fire, reflected her fiery and impulsive character. But she was also a dreamer and loved to look at the stars at night and lie down in the grass to watch the clouds chasing each other in the sky, imagining they were animals or people. One day she showed her poems to her mother, Caterina. Her mother, usually busy with a thousand chores, stopped to listen to her. Caterina was a practical and rational woman, not at all inclined to listen to dreams or strange stories. She was always focused on facts, on work, on caring for her family and her two children. She spent her days between the sewing machine, creating beautiful clothes, and the kitchen, where she prepared delicious dishes for everyone. Yet, that day, she listened to Belinda intently, with a serious face. Perhaps she sensed in her daughter's poems the same power, the same "current" that flowed within her own mother, Belinda's grandmother, the "mavara" (witch) who guarded the ancient secrets of the earth. Caterina listened to the words, then looked at her daughter and said: “A mamma non si cunta u distinu!” (You don't tell destiny to Mom!). She looked at Belinda with eyes full of fear, then hugged her tightly and told her not to show those papers to anyone, and above all, not to tell anyone what she felt, not even her best friend. Not even her father, who, if he had found out, would have made a scene and then, like the good Christian he was, would have taken her to exorcise the devil. Belinda had not understood much, but she knew that those words of her mother were a warning, a sign that she should hide those secrets well, far from the eyes of others. And so she did. For many years, Belinda kept those poems, those images, those symbols, locked away in her heart, silencing that inner voice, that powerful call that tried to emerge from her soul, like a river in flood. She tried to live a normal life, a life like that of other girls, but that force, that "current," that invisible river, continued to flow within her. It was destiny, and destiny cannot be stopped.

Yvette Matthews had a great early childhood. She had loving parents that has given her a great life. Her father was a 5-star master chef while her mother was a well known patissier in the culinary world. Her life was great but all of that changed when her parents got into a car accident and died. Yvette was orphaned at a tender age of six years old. In her parent’s wake, a middle aged man with his ten year old son came. He told Yvette that he was her parents’ friend from college and was willing to adopt Yvette. Her having no next of kin and rather than her going into foster care, the adults in the foster agency agreed after checking the man’s background. It was known that the middle aged man was the CEO of a large 5-star hotel and restaurant group that not only operated in the country but around the world. Yvette lived a life as a princess being doted by her stepfather and stepbrother. Even though she lived a life full of luxury, she stayed humble and studied hard to be a good chef and patissier like her parents. She loved her new family, and she harbored romantic feelings with her stepbrother, Joseph Hamilton. Something she kept a secret since she knew her feelings cannot be reciprocated. But all of that changed when her stepfather died of old age. When the lawyer of his stepfather read his last will leaving seventy percent of his fortune to Yvette including the rights to the Hamilton hotels. This shocked many especially her stepbrother, Joseph, since he was only left with thirty percent. But there was a clause in the will, that Jospeh could be the CEO if he marries Yvette and they produce an heir. Her life started to turn gray since Joseph was forced to leave his current girlfriend whom Yvette knew he loved so much and marry her to get the CEO title. Joseph’s kindness and pampering turned into hate and disgust. He became cold and aloof, coming home late and going to work early in the morning. Yvette’s only solace was the son she bore with Joseph on their wedding night. She poured all of her love to her little son. But fate was cruel to her once again when she found out that Joseph was seeing his ex-girlfriend once again. Hearing from someone that they were meeting in a hotel room, she mustered the courage to confront them. Yvette saw the ex-girlfriend in the hotel room wearing sexy lingerie. They got in the heated argument. “Seph does bot love you.” The ex-girlfriend said. “He just married you to get the position that should be rightfully his!” She shouted. “Do you not think I know that?!” Shouted Yvette. “But he is still married to me!” The two were pulling each other’s hair in the hotel balcony which is located at the 43rd floor. They both went over the railed in the heat of the moment and they were holding for dear life. “Dianne!” Joseph voice was heard inside the hotel room. “S-Seph!” The ex-girlfriend shouted. “Help me!” “Dianne!” Joseph was alarmed to see her hanging on the balcony. “Yvette? Why are you here?!” He sounded surprised. “H-Help me.” Yvette cried. “Hold on! I am going to get you out.” Joseph said but he pulled his ex-girlfriend first and took off his coat to put on to her. Yvette’s heart was crushed. She knew in that time that who Joseph really loved was Dianne and not her. This erased all of her hope on being loved and had let go. She felt her body falling for a long time. Yvette’s body felt light and she thought that she had now thrown all of her guilt and the burden in the loveless relationship. She wished that in her next life, she would not have this kind of love once again. But then she opened her eyes once again, to the day when the lawyer would read her stepfather’s last will. “I will changed my fate.” Yvette thought. “In this life, I will not be drowned in a loveless marriage with my stepbrother.”

"Caden Fernando Miller. Hot, notorious and the most famous bad boy of Crestmont High. Attention seekers flirt with him. Idiots fight with him. The ones who are rewarded with a piece of sense, they stay away from him. If you fight with him, you know you'll lose soon. Hot tempered, mysterious and those oh-so hot looks. That's enough for a girl to fall head over heels for him. If only he cared to give a shit about them. Not to forget, he is also the youngest gang leader in New York city with his cruel ways and deadly secrets. Skylar Anderson. She's not a nerd. Or a cheerleader. All she cares about is her family, her best friend, chocolate cupcakes filled with heavenly nutella, and her sleep. Really. She lives a normal and carefree life, trying her best not to flunk Physics. Until she receives a letter in her mailbox......and that normal, carefree life goes right above the clouds."

Seorang pegawai biasa yang tinggal di tempat perkampungan dekat kota, tiba-tiba saja di lamar oleh Presiden direktur tempat dia bekerja. Sontak Yun Hao Nan terkejut. Dia hanya wanita biasa yang hidup hanya mengandalkan kerja keras untuk menghidupi ke 2 adiknya. Bagaimana kisah mereka bisa terajut? Dan apa yang membuat Presiden memilih Hao Nan untuk menjadi pendamping hidupnya? Kisah antara konflik hati yang menghubungkan masa lalu dengan sebuah pernikahan demi menghapus kenangan yang teramat pahit.

In the glittering halls of royalty, power is often born from betrayal, and love can be a dangerous luxury. Gray Montclair, a woman forged by hardship and haunted by secrets, must navigate a treacherous world where family is both her greatest strength and her deepest wound. When the return of a long-lost loved one threatens to unravel the fragile peace between two kingdoms, Gray is thrust into the center of a storm that will test the bonds of loyalty, love, and forgiveness. With her enemies lurking in the shadows and her past refusing to let her go, Gray must decide how far she is willing to go to protect those she loves—even if it means confronting the bitter truth of her own bloodline. Amid whispers of betrayal, the clash of ambition, and the weight of a crown that was never meant to be hers, Gray discovers that the greatest battles are often fought within the heart.

King Bardulf needs a queen. His kingdom also needs resources his icy lands don't have. His solution is to go to Asaya and win the hand of the beautiful princess, only to arrive and fall in love with another. Philippa is a servant girl. She lives a luxurious life with the castle members as babysitter to the princess. Her life is turned upside-down however when she is attacked brutally for a job she does well at. Philippa realizes later that the king who was supposed to marry the princess has taken her instead. Thrust into a world only spoken of in legends, she learns to accept life anew, while a force threatens to break her heart, spirit, and soul.