Chapter 2 Kissable Lips

She loved him until she lost herself. Now, behind locked doors and shattered glass, she must learn to breathe again. When she first met Lloyd, he was magnetic and intoxicating. The kind of man who turned every head when he entered a room, who spoke in promises sweet enough to taste. With him, she felt chosen, cherished, and safe. But safety was an illusion, and love became a weapon. And slowly, piece by piece, he dismantled her until nothing of the woman she once was remained. Now institutionalized after a breakdown, she begins to piece together the brutal truth of what really happened in the shadows of their love story. Memories sting like open wounds: the manipulation disguised as tenderness, the apologies that blurred into threats, the desperate hope that tomorrow he'd be the man she fell for again. Yet beneath the grief and the shame, a quiet rebellion stirs, a vow to reclaim her voice, her freedom, and her life. Because this is not just a story of how she fell apart. It is a story of how she rises. Haunting, raw, and achingly intimate, Boys like him peels back the glittering mask of a toxic love affair to reveal the kind of darkness that hides in plain sight, and the unbreakable strength it takes to escape it.

On the anniversary of her son's death, Audrey stood in the freezing cemetery for two hours, waiting for her husband. Instead, his best friend showed up, claiming her husband was tied up with their daughter's emergency. But on her way home, Audrey caught sight of her husband, their daughter Willow, and another woman walking together. She followed them to a luxury apartment that perfectly replicated her and her husband's humble first home. Through a crack in the door, she watched her husband passionately kiss the woman. She watched his best friend hand the mistress expensive gifts. And she watched her own daughter happily eat cake and say, "Thank you, Mommy Kelsey." When Audrey returned to her empty mansion, her daughter threw a massive tantrum, screaming that she wished Kelsey was her real mom. The cruelest part was realizing the mistress was using Audrey's joint credit card to buy Willow's affection. Her husband, her daughter, and her trusted friend had formed a flawless circle of betrayal. They were playing a happy family while she mourned her dead child alone. She had signed a brutal prenuptial agreement giving up everything for love, only to be treated like a pathetic joke. But they didn't know the quiet, accommodating housewife was actually the hidden heir to the thirty-billion-dollar Carlisle empire. Audrey left her diamond ring on the counter alongside a divorce settlement, activated her inheritance, and walked out. "First step," she told her proxy. "We bleed his stock dry, and we dismantle his legacy piece by piece."

SYNOPSIS Reborn on the night her life shattered, Cleopatra has a second chance, a chance to rewrite her fate. Armed with the truths of her past, she will unmask lies, punish traitors, reclaim what was stolen, and fight to save the love she never knew she couldn't live without. As she steps back into a world tangled in deception, manipulation, and long-buried sins, every choice carries weight. At the center of her reckoning is Calvin, the cold, brilliant CEO she once rejected, the man she loved without realizing it. Haunted by a past left unfinished, Cleopatra must decide: can she win back the heart she shattered before it's too late? But revenge is a dangerous game, and desire is an even deadlier temptation. Caught between Calvin's manipulation, buried truths, and her own forbidden longing, Cleopatra faces an impossible choice: surrender to love, or burn everything and everyone who betrayed her to ashes. The question is not how far she'll go but what she's willing to sacrifice, and whether returning to the modeling world that destroyed her family is worth the price of her soul.

I was eight months pregnant, waiting on the sofa for my billionaire husband to come home. But when the heavy oak doors opened, Cayden threw a fake DNA test on the glass table, showing a zero percent probability of paternity. He accused me of carrying another man's bastard. I cried and begged, swearing I was framed by his childhood friend, Carmella. He didn't listen. Instead, he ordered his massive bodyguards to pin me down while a private doctor forced an abortion pill down my throat. "The Merritt family does not raise bastards. Get rid of it." He forced me to sign divorce papers and ordered his men to throw me out into the freezing storm. Before I was dragged away, I desperately told him the truth: I was the anonymous donor who gave him a kidney to save his life three years ago. He just sneered, saying Carmella had the surgical scar to prove she was the donor, and kicked me out to die. Lying in the freezing rain, vomiting up the half-dissolved poison to save my baby, I didn't understand how the man I loved could be so completely blind. How could he let that woman steal my kidney, my marriage, and murder his own flesh and blood? Five years later, I returned to New York not as his pathetic discarded wife, but as a top-tier medical fixer for the global elite. And my genius five-year-old son has already infiltrated his mansion, ready to tear his empire apart from the inside.

I endured years of humiliation and forced sedatives from my billionaire husband's family, hoping my quiet obedience would eventually win his heart. When I finally discovered I was pregnant, I thought the child would be our anchor. But when I rushed to his office to tell him, I found his untouchable first love sitting in his chair, rubbing her own swollen belly. She smiled and whispered that she was the one who orchestrated the car crash that left my adoptive mother in a vegetative state. When I lunged at her in a blind rage, my husband shielded her and shoved me backward with brutal force. My spine slammed against a marble table, and blood pooled at my feet. "Kingston, please! I'm pregnant too!" I sobbed, clutching my stomach. He just looked down at me with profound disgust. "I had a vasectomy five years ago," he hissed, condemning me as a cheating whore before ordering his men to lock me up and forcibly abort the child. I had never touched another man. I couldn't understand how the man I loved could order the murder of his own flesh and blood without a second thought. To save myself, I stole his prized Aston Martin and drove it off a bridge into the freezing Atlantic, letting his pathetic, obedient wife drown in the wreckage. Five years later, I returned to New York as a powerful European executive, ready to burn his empire to the ground.

Arletta Lee was dragged out of rural Pennsylvania to be a sacrificial bride for the comatose billionaire heir, Josue Mcconnell. The moment she stepped into the massive estate, she became the prime target of a vicious, greedy family. Josue's stepmother and half-brother viewed her as cheap trash. They didn't just want her gone; they wanted Josue dead. Kyler broke into her room at night reeking of bourbon, and later sneaked into the medical wing with a lethal synthetic neurotoxin aimed right at Josue's IV line. His jealous cousin even tried to permanently disfigure her face with a thermos of boiling water. "She's just a cheap good-luck charm the old man bought. We can throw her out with the trash whenever we want." They relentlessly bullied her, thinking she was just a helpless, terrified country girl who would quietly take the blame for their murder plot. But what the arrogant Mcconnell family didn't know was that her pathetic, trembling demeanor was entirely manufactured. They thought they had trapped a frightened rabbit in a den of wolves. In reality, Arletta was a brilliant underground surgeon. Using ancient neural acupuncture hidden in a simple wooden hairpin, she flawlessly turned their traps against them, locking Kyler away and winning the ruthless patriarch's absolute protection. As the supposedly brain-dead billionaire finally twitched and locked his fingers in an iron grip around her hand, Arletta smiled coldly. It was time to wake him up and let him tear this rotten family apart.