Cherreads

Married for Shares, Divorced for Love

umarlittii
"We were supposed to be a business deal. Nothing more." Olivia Grant spent five years married to Sebastian Cross and never felt more alone. Their marriage was supposed to be simple. She had her family's fashion empire falling apart. He needed her shares to complete his tech acquisition. They signed the papers in his lawyer's office and called it love to keep investors happy. It worked. The merger saved both companies. Stock prices climbed. Everyone celebrated their romance. But behind closed doors, Sebastian treated her like a contract he was obligated to fulfill. Polite. Distant. Cold. He never wanted her. He just wanted her name on legal documents. So when Sebastian asked for the divorce after five years, Olivia signed without hesitation. She told herself she was relieved. She told everyone it was mutual. She told her therapist she was over it. She was lying to herself. Three months after the divorce papers were finalized, everything crashes. Sebastian's tech company faces a crisis. A major client pulls out. His stock is tanking. Olivia's fashion empire is hit by scandal when her ex-partner releases private photos, accusing her of stealing design concepts. Overnight, both their companies are bleeding money. That's when Sebastian appears at her office door with a proposal she never saw coming. "I need you to come back," he says. Not to his life. Not to his bed. To his company. As a temporary business partner to navigate the crisis together. The same woman he divorced is the only person he trusts to fix this mess. Olivia should say no. Everything inside her screams to refuse. But her company is dying, and Sebastian is offering a lifeline disguised as another contract. She doesn't know that during their five years of marriage, Sebastian fell completely in love with her. That he pushed her away because loving someone in his world made them a target. That he divorced her to protect her from the dangerous people he was entangled with. And she definitely doesn't know that asking her to work with him again is destroying him piece by piece. As they're forced into close quarters to save both companies, old memories surface. Moments she thought meant nothing. Conversations she thought were empty turn out to have been him asking her to stay. The distance she interpreted as rejection was actually fear. Sebastian has to choose between protecting his secret or losing her forever. Olivia has to decide if loving him again is worth the risk of being broken a second time. And when a public betrayal forces everything into the open, they both discover that sometimes the biggest business failure leads to the greatest personal success.
Latest Updates

#000000

Elian Voss makes things look perfect on screens. In 2240, that means designing the digital layer woven into the fabric of reality itself, the invisible architecture that makes an interplanetary civilization feel livable, feel *human*. He is exceptional at his job. He is forgettable everywhere else. Then one morning, without warning, the color black stops existing. Not darkness. Not shadow. Not the concept of absence. The color itself. Every screen across Earth and its eleven inhabited stations throws the same silent error. `#000000` returns null. Scientists dedicate entire processing networks to finding an answer. Governments convene. Religions overflow. The world collectively screams into a void that no longer has a color. Elian stares at his code and thinks it looks *edited.* Not broken. Not corrupted. Clean. Like a single line was removed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and didn't feel the need to leave a note. So he starts digging. Not out of heroism. Simply because he is the kind of man who cannot leave a bug alone at 3 AM. What he finds will not restore the color. It will not save anything. It will only show one exhausted programmer, in a civilization that can navigate asteroid belts and simulate ecosystems, exactly how mistaken they have been about who is doing the navigating. The color doesn't come back. Elian closes the file. Opens a new one. Gets back to work. "Some bugs were never meant to be fixed. Some were meant to be delivered." #000000 is a sci-fi story with 3 books Book 1: The color of what we built Book 2: The color of where we're going Book 3: The color of what comes next The story itself questions the human fragility that no matter how advance humanity progressed, a single instance can change everything humans knew, their foundation and the way of how humanity perceive life.
ToastedBeans · 8.5k Views

Starting in Terra as Ryougi Shiki

Death came swiftly. A truck, a moment of impact, then nothing. What came after was unexpected. A god, bored and seeking entertainment, offered three wishes and a new world to explore. The choice seemed simple at the time. Ryougi Shiki's template, complete with the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception that see the end of all things. A gacha system rewarding interference with fate through random legendary weapons. And time, endless time, to grow strong enough to survive. Then came Terra. A world of mobile cities fleeing natural disasters. Of crystalline infection that grants power while slowly killing its hosts. Of conflicts between the infected and those who fear them, violence born from desperation on both sides. I arrived knowing nothing. No context, no preparation, just the ability to see death lines on everything and a tanto at my hip. The first days taught hard lessons. That strength alone means nothing without understanding. That people die easily when you know exactly where to cut. That some threats operate on scales beyond mortal comprehension. Then I met Rhodes Island. A pharmaceutical company fighting an impossible war against disease and prejudice. Operators who wielded power with purpose rather than abandon. And a mysterious Doctor who recognized what I was the moment we met. They revealed truths I hadn't considered. That Terra had changed, its timeline fractured by the arrival of others like us. That a goddess calling herself the Lion King conquered an entire nation in three days with divine authority blazing. That more entities from impossible places were appearing, each with their own agendas and power. But simple survival was never the goal. Terra bleeds. The infected suffer systemic oppression. Reunion fights with terrorism born from justified rage. Nations prepare for wars that will kill millions. And somewhere above it all, a goddess prepares continental conquest while treating mortal life as irrelevant to divine purpose. The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception show me how everything ends. Lines traced across reality itself, revealing mortality in all things. Even gods can die if you know where to cut. The question is whether I can grow strong enough, fast enough, to reach those lines before Terra drowns in violence. This is the story of an assassin learning to protect instead of kill. Of gamers coordinating impossible operations with incomplete information. Of a world caught between conflicts it understands and forces it doesn't. The god wanted entertainment. They're going to get a show they'll never forget. Because I didn't come to Terra to watch it burn. I came to see if fiction made real can be saved by someone who shouldn't exist. And I have all the time in the world to find out. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is my own AU so don't be surprised if there are characters in a different place at a different time than the actual plot after all in this story, there is no real, no script. They all have their own plans. Their own goals. But in front of the God's sandbox? All is equal.
ToastedBeans · 76.4k Views