Addicted to His Bitter Rival
In the glittering corporate empire of Apple City, power is everything—and no rivalry burns hotter than the one between billionaire CEOs Kael Virex and Lucian Thorne. For years, their names have defined corporate warfare: hostile takeovers, ruined deals, and a relentless battle for dominance where neither man is willing to lose.
When Thorne Dynamics suddenly collapses, Kael finally claims the victory he has chased for years. Lucian loses his company, his fortune, and his reputation overnight, leaving Kael convinced that his greatest rival has finally fallen. But when Kael summons Lucian and offers him a humiliating ultimatum, Lucian accepts far too easily—awakening suspicions Kael cannot ignore.
What begins as a cruel display of control quickly turns dangerous when one reckless demand pulls them into a night neither can forget. Kael expected submission. Instead, he finds himself drawn deeper into an obsession he can no longer deny, while Lucian remains calm, unreadable, and far from defeated.
As tension turns into a volatile attraction, Kael uncovers a hidden conspiracy behind Lucian’s downfall. His own trusted CFO, Adrian Kross, working with the secretive Helix Circle, has manipulated both empires for a larger takeover—and Kael is next.
Forced into an uneasy alliance, Kael and Lucian must fight side by side against enemies hidden behind wealth, betrayal, and power. But in a city where control means survival, the greatest risk may not be losing their empires
It may be losing their hearts to the one person they were meant to destroy
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Chapter: Chapter 25Lucian was quiet for a moment. The particular quiet of someone absorbing a small thing that was not actually small. "Alright.""Though," Kael said, "the wall above the shelving could take one thing. If you wanted it."Lucian looked at the wall. "One thing.""Something you actually want there. Not decoration."Lucian thought about it for the rest of the afternoon. Kael let him think and went back to his own work, the ongoing complexity of the restructure, which was in its final stages but still required daily attention. They worked in their separate rooms and came together in the kitchen at six when Kael made dinner because it was his week to cook and Lucian's to choose, which was a division that had emerged without discussion and suited both of them.Lucian chose simply. He always did. Something with pasta that Kael had made before and made well.Over dinner Lucian said, "A map."Kael looked at him."Above the shelf. A specific map." He looked at his plate. "There's one I've been look
최신 업데이트: 2026-05-17
Chapter: Chapter 24The office took two weekends to build properly.Not because it was complicated. Because Lucian had opinions about it that he expressed with the same precision he brought to everything, and Kael had opinions that differed from his on several specific points, and the process of reconciling those opinions was slower and more interesting than either of them had anticipated.The first weekend they moved furniture and disagreed about the desk.Lucian wanted it facing the wall. Kael thought this was wrong and said so. Lucian explained, with complete patience, that facing the wall removed visual distraction and allowed for deeper focus. Kael pointed out that the windows were on the adjacent wall and facing away from them defeated the entire purpose of building the office around them. Lucian looked at the window. Looked at the wall. Looked at the window again.The desk faced the window."You could have just said I was right," Kael said."I could have," Lucian agreed, and moved on to the questi
최신 업데이트: 2026-05-17
Chapter: Chapter 23Kael drove. Lucian didn't argue about it, which was its own kind of progress. He sat in the passenger seat with his phone in his hand and didn't look at it, which meant he was thinking about something he hadn't said yet.The hotel was in the financial district. Understated from the outside, the kind of place that communicated expense through what it didn't do rather than what it did. No unnecessary signage. A doorman who recognized Lucian and didn't react to Kael's presence, which meant he was well trained or had been briefed, and Kael suspected the latter."How much did you bring," Kael said in the elevator."Not much.""You said that already.""It's still true."The room was on the fourteenth floor. Lucian opened it and Kael followed him in and understood immediately what not much meant to a man who had been living out of controlled necessity for eleven weeks.Two bags. A garment rack with perhaps two weeks of clothes. A laptop case and a secondary hard drive. A single shelf of book
최신 업데이트: 2026-05-16
Chapter: Chapter 22The restructure took eleven weeks.Kael had said months and he'd meant it, but Lucian worked the way he did everything, with a precision that compressed timelines without appearing to rush them. He found the load-bearing points in the legal architecture the way Kael found them in acquisitions, identified what needed to move first and moved it, and the rest followed in the shape it was supposed to.They worked well together.That was the thing neither of them had said out loud and both of them had noticed.Not without friction. Lucian held information longer than was useful and Kael pushed back on it every time, and occasionally the pushing back became something louder than a boardroom should contain. He made decisions alone when he should have consulted and then presented them as considerations rather than conclusions, which Kael saw through immediately and said so. Lucian, for his part, had opinions about the pace of certain things that differed from Kael's and expressed them with a
최신 업데이트: 2026-05-15
Chapter: Chapter 21Kael didn't message him. He had enough to manage and Lucian was not someone who needed checking on.At eleven thirty Adrian called.Kael stared at the name on the screen for a long moment.Then picked up."Adrian."Silence for a second. Then, "You knew."Not an accusation. Something flatter than that. The voice of someone who had arrived at a conclusion after a long time of not wanting to reach it."Yes," Kael said."How long.""Long enough.""He came to you.""Yes."Another silence. Longer. Kael let it exist without filling it. He had nothing to perform for Adrian anymore."I built something real," Adrian said quietly. "Underneath everything else, the actual work was real.""Some of it," Kael said."Most of it.""Adrian." Kael kept his voice even. "The mechanisms you used don't become legitimate because the outcome had legitimate elements. You know that.""I know that," Adrian said. Quieter still. Not arguing. Just saying it back, the way people repeated true things they hadn't fully
최신 업데이트: 2026-05-15
Chapter: Chapter 20Kael woke at six to the sound of someone already awake.Not loud. Just present. The particular quality of an apartment that had another person in it, small sounds that wouldn't have registered if he'd been alone. A cabinet. Water running briefly. The specific silence of someone moving carefully in an unfamiliar space.He lay still for a moment and listened.Then he got up.Lucian was in the kitchen when Kael came out. He had found the coffee, which said something about him, and was standing at the counter reading something on his phone with the focused stillness of someone who had been awake for a while.He looked up when Kael appeared."It broke at two," Lucian said. "All three outlets simultaneously."Kael moved to the counter and looked at his own phone. Seventeen missed calls. Forty-something messages. News alerts stacked behind them like a collapsed wall.He read the top three alerts and set the phone down."Adrian," he said."His legal team issued a statement at four. Denial." L
최신 업데이트: 2026-05-15
Crossdressing For The Emperor
Lioren “Lio” Veylan has always survived by wit, lies, and instinct, scraping by on the fringes of Kaldor Kingdom. One stormy night, he discovers a gravely injured stranger and, desperate to protect himself, pretends to be a girl—Liora—to earn the man’s trust and care. But this stranger is no ordinary man: he is Emperor Kaelric Valen Drazor, the feared “Iron Emperor,” presumed dead after a violent coup.
When Kaelric regains his memory, Lio’s carefully constructed lie threatens to unravel entirely. Forced into a marriage under the guise of nobility, he must navigate a treacherous court filled with scheming nobles, deadly threats, and Kaelric’s icy, calculating gaze. Every step is a test, every word a risk—yet the bond they forged in secrecy remains unbroken.
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Chapter: Chapter 31 : Carl’s POVShe looked at me like you look at something you weren’t expecting to see, but it didn’t scare you. She was just taking it in, trying to figure out what it was. Her eyes moved from my face to Lio’s, and then back to mine. In the moment before she spoke, smiled, or did anything, I noticed her face was open. No fear, no pretending. Just a person seeing what was there and reacting honestly.Then she smiled.It wasn’t a smile that tried too hard, the kind that shows all the right things because someone learned that’s what a smile should do. This was simpler. It just appeared, moving across her face like something that had been waiting for the right moment to show itself. And when it did, it was so real that something inside my chest did a little jump. I decided not to think too hard about it right then.I looked back at Lio, who was standing next to me, holding our bags in both hands. His face was set in that way it gets when he’s decided to act like
최신 업데이트: 2026-06-16
Chapter: Chapter 30 : Carl’s POVThat night, after Pell had left, I felt a familiar quietness, like I was carrying something heavy with no place to put it down.Lio had said his piece that afternoon. It made sense, and I agreed with him, really. There was no real argument against it. She hadn’t been there. I didn’t know her name. I’d seen her just once and had made up so much in my mind. It’s like when you’re ready to feel something, and the world gives you even the smallest reason to do so.I understood all of that. I’d already thought all of it through by myself.But knowing something doesn’t make the feeling stop. I still thought about her. I kept picturing her in my mind, like turning a smooth stone over and over, feeling its shape, noticing its weight. The way she moved. How she was so lost in what she was doing that the sounds of the whole market seemed to fade away. I’ve always found that kind of deep focus very interesting. And apparently, seeing it in a stranger for jus
최신 업데이트: 2026-06-15
Chapter: Chapter 29 : Lioren’s POVI was glad she hadn’t been there.I knew how that sounded. I wasn’t proud of it. But standing at the market, watching Carl look up and down the rows of stalls with that focused, patient look he gets when he’s set on finding something, I felt a tightness in my chest loosen when it became clear she wasn’t coming. That loosening felt like relief, and the relief felt like something I needed to look at honestly, then put in a box and close the lid.So I put it in the box. And I closed the lid.When we got home, I sat in the main room while Carl moved around the kitchen doing pointless things. I thought about how to handle this without embarrassing either of us. I had already tried staying quiet about it, and the quiet wasn’t working. The silence had just given me two days of watching Carl not talk about her, while clearly thinking about her all the time. And now he had made me walk through the whole market twice, looking for a woman we had seen for only about a minute at a vegetable stall.
최신 업데이트: 2026-06-14
Chapter: Chapter 28 : Carl’s POVLio never mentioned her again. Not that night, not the next morning, not while we ate breakfast together, and not during the long hours of the afternoon when we sat outside, watching the road with nothing better to do than talk. He just acted as if nothing had happened at the market, as if he hadn’t seen me walk toward that empty stall and stand there like a man who had just heard some bad news. He went on with his days as usual, talking about work, food, the park, and whether the roof over the back room needed fixing. The girl was never part of any of it. Which was strange. Because Lio, when he truly didn’t care about something, usually said so. He had no problem ignoring things that didn’t matter to him. He was always direct. So, his silence about this particular thing was louder to me than any words could have been. I didn’t say any of this to him. I just noticed it, tucked it away in my mind, and let the days go by. But two days passed, and I still couldn’t stop thinking
최신 업데이트: 2026-06-14
Chapter: Chapter 27 : Carl’s POVLio was still talking about the park when we got home.Honestly, I expected it. When something gets him excited, he really gets into it, thinking about it from every angle and saying everything there is to say. It’s one of the things that makes him easy to be around. His enthusiasm is real and he’s not ashamed of it. He doesn’t pretend to be interested; he just is.“Every week,” he said, dropping onto his mat and kicking his shoes off. “We’re going every week. No matter what, we’ll make time for it.”“We’ll make time for it,” I said.“You say that now.”“I mean it now. It’s a park, Lio. It’s not going anywhere.”He pointed at me. “Neither are we, and that’s my point. We live here. We should actually live here, not just work, sleep, and eat. The park is part of that.”I couldn’t disagree with his thinking. I didn’t really want to. He was right; we had been sticking to a small area since we arrived – the house, t
최신 업데이트: 2026-06-02
Chapter: Chapter 26 : Carl’s POVThe next morning, I woke up earlier because Lioren wouldn't stop coughing.It was the kind of cough that wakes you up before you're fully awake, pulling you from sleep before you're ready. I lay still for a moment, hoping it would pass. But it didn't. Then I heard Lio moving uncomfortably on his sleeping mat, so I sat up.The light coming through the window was still dim, not yet sure what kind of day it would be. I got up and went to Lio's side of the room. He was lying with his knees pulled up a little, his forehead wrinkled, and his breathing uneven."Lio."He opened his eyes and looked at me, trying hard to pretend he was okay. "I'm fine," he said right away. That told me he wasn't fine at all, because people who are really fine don't feel the need to say it before you even ask.I crouched beside him and put the back of my hand on his forehead. He was hot. More than hot, actually. He felt like he had a fever."You h
최신 업데이트: 2026-06-01
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