Lan Diao
10 Published Stories
Lan Diao's Books and Stories
Waking Up Married To The Cruel CEO
Modern I woke up in a cold, unfamiliar bedroom with a splitting headache, zero memories of the last five years, and my body covered in bruises.
The man lying beside me was Kasper Avery, the ruthless billionaire I remembered as my sister's fiancé.
But he coldly informed me that we had been married for five years, and the four-year-old girl calling me "Mommy" was our daughter.
He looked at me with pure, unadulterated disgust. He forced me to swallow birth control pills, made me work as his lowly secretary, and when I tried to resign, he threatened to bankrupt my family's business to keep me on a tight leash.
Desperate for the truth, I searched the internet, only to find an old article showing my sister had actually married Kasper's brother.
My entire reality was a twisted lie orchestrated by everyone I knew.
Why was I married to a monster who clearly hated me? Why was my daughter given my maiden name instead of his?
Suffocating in this glittering cage, I secretly called an outsider whose name I found in a file, praying he was the lifeline to my past.
"Who is this?"
Kasper's icy voice suddenly echoed through the line.
He had intercepted the call in real-time. Staring at my bugged phone, I realized I wasn't just a wife, but a prisoner in a digital panopticon-and if I wanted to escape, I had to tear his empire down from the inside. Reborn To Save My Coldhearted Billionaire Fiancé
Modern Chloe floated above her own casket, a silent ghost watching her opulent Hollywood funeral.
But when the mourners left, her weeping best friend Sabrina wiped away her fake tears and smiled.
"I finally won," Sabrina whispered to Chloe's cold face.
She confessed to orchestrating everything. She had paid for the acid attack that ruined Chloe's career, and she was the one who pushed Chloe off that fatal rooftop.
Sabrina bragged about stealing Chloe's fame, her movie roles, and her fiancé, Adrian.
Suddenly, the chapel doors burst open.
Adrian strode in, his eyes feral. The cold, distant fiancé Chloe thought never cared about her had already uncovered Sabrina's entire conspiracy.
He didn't hand her to the police. He dragged Sabrina into the basement and brutally mutilated her to avenge Chloe.
Then, Adrian walked back to Chloe's casket, his confident stride completely broken.
"A world without you is not a world I want to live in," he whispered.
He pulled out a gun, pressed it to his temple, and pulled the trigger.
Chloe's soul shattered with agonizing regret. She had been so blind to Sabrina's venom and Adrian's profound love, driving the only man who truly cared for her to his death.
Opening her eyes again, the sharp smell of antiseptic hit her.
She was strapped to an operating table, staring at a blinding surgical lamp.
She was reborn, back on the exact day Sabrina planned to permanently ruin her face. Reborn To Claim My Billionaire Enemy
Romance When I woke up on the muddy bank of the freezing river, I unlocked a brutal, unfiltered preview of my actual future.
For the past six months, I had been the town's ultimate joke, chasing after a city boy who looked at me like a diseased insect. Everyone thought I jumped into the river because he rejected me.
But the nightmare didn't stop there. In the future I foresaw, my entire family was destroyed. My eldest brother was handcuffed and dragged into a squad car. My second brother died in a pool of blood on the asphalt. My parents passed away from sheer grief and humiliation, and our farm was foreclosed.
Meanwhile, Bart Hawkins—my family's sworn enemy, the boy everyone accused of pushing me, but who actually jumped in to save my life—became a billionaire tech mogul. I ended up starving to death in a damp, moldy basement, completely alone.
I finally understood that I was just a pathetic, tragic side character meant to drag my family into hell. My own sister-in-law, Felicie, had been stealing our food and money, laughing at my misery behind my back.
But right now, my mother was still alive, my brothers were safe, and the farm was ours.
When Felicie walked into my bedroom, playing the devoted sister-in-law with a bowl of clear, meatless broth while a stolen roasted chicken thigh leaked grease through her apron pocket, I didn't play along.
"What's in your pocket, Felicie?"
This time, I was going to tear that horrific future apart with my bare hands. My Mad King's Love, Forever Mine
Werewolf For a thousand years, the Vora beastmen have been cursed by a madness-a burning sickness in their blood that only one thing can soothe: the legendary 'Blood-Blessed,' a human female whose very scent is a living cure.
When a virus wiped out nearly all females, their desperate hunt for this mythical girl turned into a brutal conquest. They crushed our fallen human kingdoms, reducing us to breathing meat under their cruel "Livestock Codex."
To save my little sister from being branded for their elite breeding auction, I took her place in the male-only death draft.
Disguised as a boy, I was thrown into a pitch-black labyrinth, a living sacrifice meant to feed their ultimate nightmare: the feral, half-dragon Mad King.
He tore our steel cage apart like wet paper. I pressed my back against the freezing wall, watching in horror as he slaughtered the screaming men around me.
He ripped the filthy coat from my body, exposing my true gender. As his crimson eyes locked onto my throat and he opened his jaws for the kill, my rage burned away my fear.
I was a pureblood heiress of a dead empire, but I would not die cowering like an animal. I gripped a shard of glass, ready to aim for his eye.
But as he lunged, the glass sliced my palm. The moment my blood hit the air, the legend became my reality. The sweet, intoxicating scent that flooded the dark wasn't just my pheromones-it was the living cure.
The terrifying, apocalyptic tyrant froze mid-strike. He dropped his massive body to his knees, his fangs retracting as he gently, desperately licked my bleeding hand.
His chaotic red eyes darkened with an absolute, world-ending obsession as he pulled my fragile body against his burning chest.
"Mine."
I was meant to be his final meal. They called me the Blood-Blessed. He called me his Queen. From Broken Fiancée To Corporate Queen
Modern I walked into the hospital wing to find my fiancé, Derrick, holding his pregnant high-school sweetheart.
His plan was sickening: he would publicly claim her baby to save her from scandal, while our child, the one I was secretly carrying, would be hidden away-a shameful 'accident'.
He locked me in a damp guesthouse as his mother called me a whore and my unborn child a bastard.
But the true cost of his weakness came when she dragged me to a clinic and forced an abortion, killing my seven-month-old baby while Derrick was away caring for his other family.
Six months later, I returned.
Backed by a powerful new family, I walked into the Bradford Corporation's boardroom to face them all.
Derrick looked at me like he'd seen a ghost, not realizing I was there to take his entire empire.
I signed the papers that made me his boss and smiled for the cameras.
"The old Ava is dead," I whispered. "Long live the queen." My Stolen Life, Their Bitter Downfall
Modern I was Aurora Sterling, a talented physician who, to protect my fragile stepsister Clara, took the fall for financial fraud and went to prison.
I served one year. My family, my fiancé Julian Thorne, they all promised me it was temporary, that they would wait for me, that they would take care of everything. They said Clara needed me to do this.
A year later, I walked out of the prison gates not to the embrace of my family, but to cold, empty air. They hadn't come. They were all at a party, celebrating Clara's birthday—celebrating her new place as the sole Sterling heiress, the new woman at Julian's side.
The lie shattered in that instant. The "sister" I had sacrificed everything to protect had, in my absence, stolen my life. Julian, the man who had sworn he loved me, had fallen into her carefully woven trap of "fragility," his favoritism becoming the sharpest knife twisted in my back.
They thought I was weak. They thought I would once again yield for the sake of so-called "family."
They were about to find out just how fatally wrong they were. A Pawn, A Son, A Forced Marriage
Modern Two years ago, my fiancé, Connor, tossed the only life jacket to his mistress, Ilene, and watched me drown. I was pregnant with his child.
He found me living a quiet life as a fisherman's wife on a remote island, dragged me back to his world, and revealed a shocking truth: our son, the one I thought I'd lost, was alive. He had been raised by them all along.
Connor divorced Ilene and tried to force me into marriage, using our son as a pawn. But the boy he'd raised was a stranger, twisted by his father's cruelty, calling me a "bad woman."
That's when I knew I had to destroy them.
I returned to the island, not as a victim, but as Ayla Garcia, the island chief's long-lost daughter.
"Connor Foster," my father roared, his voice echoing through the hall, "you dared to touch my daughter? Get out of my sight, now!"
He thought he could ruin my life, but he never realized he was trespassing in my kingdom. When Love Became A Transaction
Modern The phone rang, a sharp, unwelcome sound cutting through the quiet of my office. It was Olivia, my wife.
A smile touched my lips. Six months pregnant, a miracle after years of heartbreak.
"Hey, honey. Everything okay? Did you pick out a color for the nursery yet? I' m still team blue."
Then, silence. A heavy, dead-air kind of quiet.
Her voice, when it came, was a ghost: "Ethan… can you come to the hospital?"
My heart stopped. My mind raced through a thousand terrible possibilities, but none prepared me for the sight of her in the surgical waiting room, her face pale, her belly-our baby-gone.
"I had an abortion, Ethan." Her words shattered my world.
"He was bad luck," she said simply, as if explaining the weather. Then she pointed towards the ICU. "Liam is in here. He was in a car accident."
Liam. Her college sweetheart. The ghost in our marriage.
"The baby… he was too perfect. All our good luck went to him. I had to get rid of the bad luck. I had to save him." Her twisted logic was terrifying.
I stumbled home to find my mother humming happily in the nursery, folding a tiny blue onesie. The room was a testament to a dream now destroyed.
"She lost him," I managed to tell her, a desperate lie to shield her from the grotesque truth. But she sensed it.
The pain of our son' s death, coupled with Olivia's betrayal, hit my mother hard. Her doctor called it "broken heart syndrome."
Then came the call from Olivia's doctor. "It's highly unlikely Olivia will be able to conceive again. The damage is permanent."
That night, I discovered our joint savings account, tens of thousands of dollars, completely drained. Funneled to Liam's experimental medical clinic.
I found Olivia at his bedside, peeling an apple for him. "It wasn't a problem," she said, "It was a sacrifice. For you. For us."
"Good girl," he replied. "Once I'm out of here… Miller will be out of the picture."
My son's death wasn't a tragic act of madness. It was a transaction. And I had been played for a fool from the very beginning.
Liam called me, arrogant and triumphant. "You were just a placeholder."
"You're too selfish!" Olivia shrieked, when I confronted her.
Her words, so twisted and absurd, snapped the last thread of any feeling I had for her. "I want a divorce, Olivia."
I hung up, then blocked both their numbers. The decision was made. The war had just begun. Engagement Party Nightmare
Romance My engagement party at the Plaza Hotel was supposed to be my fairy tale. I was Emily White, soon to be Mrs. Jack Anderson, Wall Street’s golden boy, feeling like a princess in my dream gown.
Then, the giant screen, meant for our loving slideshow, flickered. A grainy video played: me, years ago, utterly wasted at a frat party, completely out of control. A collective gasp ripped through the ballroom.
Jack’s face turned from white to furious red. He snatched the mic, bellowing, "This engagement is OFF!" He ripped the diamond ring from my finger, brutally shoving it onto my maid of honor, Sophia’s, hand. "Sophia, at least you have some class." Laughter rippled through the guests as my parents sobbed. My world shattered along with the champagne flute in my numb fingers.
Just as I stood frozen in humiliation, the main doors burst open. Marcus "King" Corleone, the city's whispered-about power, Sophia's "guardian," emerged from the shadows. Silence fell. He stopped the video, took a mic, and his voice, soft yet chilling, commanded everyone to leave.
Only my parents, Jack, Sophia, and I remained. Then, he approached me. “I’ll offer you a contract, Emily. A marriage. To me.” Marry a rumored monster? He gestured to Sophia, who was preening with my ring. My career, my future, my reputation—all gone. Despair washed over me. What choice did I have? I whispered, "Yes." You might like
His Unwanted Wife, The Hidden Genius
Qing Cheng I flew back to New York on my twenty-fifth birthday, carrying vintage gold cufflinks I spent weeks finding for my billionaire husband, Declan.
But when I walked into our townhouse, I found him throwing a massive victory party with Sloane, a glamorous socialite, standing by his side as the proud hostess.
"Don't cause a scene. Go upstairs."
Declan coldly dismissed me in front of his guests.
Even Poppy, the rookie player whose shattered ankle I had painstakingly rebuilt, rolled her eyes and ignored me to suck up to Sloane.
Hiding in the shadows, I heard the maids gossiping that everyone thought Sloane was the future Mrs. Hartford.
To make matters worse, I discovered Sloane had stolen my anonymous, groundbreaking medical algorithm and was planning to present it as her own.
First my husband, then the girl I mentored like family, and now the scientific foundation I had built with my own hands.
Declan even texted me to cancel our birthday breakfast without a single apology, treating me like an annoying afterthought.
My tears vanished, replaced by a freezing clarity.
I signed the divorce papers, leaving them on his desk with zero demands for his money.
Then I packed my bags, booked a one-way ticket to Boston, and prepared to destroy them on the global stage. Flash Marriage to the Tycoon, I'm Spoiled Rotten
Hollow Echo Cast out by an "elite" family and mocked by high society, Elena shocked everyone by marrying the most powerful man in town.
They assumed it was a temporary arrangement-after all, he had said, "The agreement is for two years. After that, we're done."
Yet after the wedding, he refused to let her go. "Elena, you can't leave me."
As he doted on her, rumors shattered one by one. A renowned painter, top hacker, and tech mastermind-her true identities stunned the world.
When a luxury empire announced their lost heiress, all eyes turned to her. "Why did she look exactly like Elena?" The Unwanted Wife Is A Zillionaire
Reilly Mcardle For seven years, I played the perfect, hidden wife to billionaire August Chambers while working quietly as an ER nurse.
Three days before our marriage contract expired, he stormed into my emergency room carrying a bleeding woman. It was Allena, his cousin's fiancée.
She had suffered a ruptured corpus luteum from their violent, aggressive sex. Instead of hiding his affair, August ordered me to clear the floor and threw a massive check at my face to buy my silence. Later, his friends trapped me in a VIP club. When a waiter tripped, August violently shoved me aside just to protect Allena from a spilled cup of coffee. I crashed into a glass table, a sharp edge slicing deep into my arm.
"Apologize to her, and I'll have my driver take you to the hospital."
As my blood soaked into the white rug, he stood over me, demanding I get on my knees for his mistress. He didn't know I had faked a miscarriage five years ago to secretly raise our daughter far away from his cruelty. He also didn't know the money he flaunted was pocket change compared to my hidden AI tech empire.
I calmly tied a tourniquet around my bleeding arm with my teeth and wiped my blood directly over his heart onto his custom suit.
"I'm done with you."
The submissive nurse was dead, and it was time to let him burn in the ruins of his own lies. The Rejected Jinx Is A Billionaire Heiress
Lucy Cartwright For eighteen years, I was the Tucker family's adopted punching bag, while their biological daughter, Jessica, was treated like royalty.
The moment I graduated college, they kicked me out. Brenda Tucker sneered, calling me a jinx who was bankrupting their company.
But I knew the truth. They were erasing me to ensure I wouldn't ruin Jessica's chances of seducing Beckett Sinclair, a billionaire hockey heir, at an upcoming high-society banquet.
She threw a fifty-thousand-dollar check at my feet like I was a beggar, ordering me to never claim I knew them.
My adoptive father, who had ruined his own company with terrible investments, actually grabbed my arm and demanded I beg the Sinclairs for a bailout on my way out.
When I refused, they cursed me, screaming that I was destined to rot in some backwater town forever.
I walked into the cold New York night with my two scuffed suitcases, feeling completely hollow. I thought I was just a discarded orphan, thrown away by the only family I had ever known.
But then, an older man pulled up to the corner. He handed me a faded photograph of a woman who looked exactly like me.
"Miss Chloe, I am here to take you home."
That was how I found out I wasn't an abandoned orphan. I was maliciously switched at birth, and my real parents-the billionaire owners of the New York Monarchs-had been searching for me for twenty-two years. Jilted Heiress: Marrying The Untouchable Tycoon
Piao Guo Allison Montgomery was waiting at the airport when an audio alert from her parked Range Rover flashed on her phone.
Assuming it was a break-in, she checked the live dashcam feed, only to see her fiancé, Finn, and her younger sister, Cheyanne, passionately making out in the backseat.
"Tell me I'm better than her," Cheyanne whispered. "Tell me I'm better than Allison."
"You are," Finn gasped. "God, you are."
When Allison confronted her family with the video, she expected justice.
Instead, her uncle and mother fiercely defended the cheaters.
They blamed Allison's "cold and frigid" nature for pushing Finn away, victim-blaming her in front of the entire household staff.
To protect their corporate alliance, her uncle ruthlessly announced that the engagement would be transferred to Cheyanne, and threatened to strip Allison of her inheritance.
Stripped of her fiancé, her family, and her dignity, Allison realized her pristine twenty-year life was a complete lie.
The people who were supposed to love her were actively protecting her abusers, leaving her utterly isolated and burning with a cold, protective rage.
Refusing to be their victim, Allison targeted Finn's ruthless, billionaire uncle, Adam Kensington, proposing a fake marriage to secure the capital needed to crush her family.
But when the notoriously untouchable Wall Street phantom not only accepted her proposal, but demanded she immediately move into his penthouse to raise his secret daughter, Allison realized she had just sold her soul to the devil. Betrayed Bride: Marrying The Ice Tyrant
Valeria On our third engagement anniversary, I bought my fiancé the watch he had wanted for months.
But my phone's location tracker led me to a secluded overlook, where I caught him rocking his car with another woman.
The woman in the passenger seat was my stepsister, Sienna.
When I exposed their affair, my adoptive parents didn't comfort me.
Instead, they called to scream at me for ruining the family's reputation.
They even rewrote history, claiming Sienna was the one who saved my fiancé from drowning six years ago, and I had stolen her credit.
Carter shamelessly agreed with their lies.
"She's been quietly supporting me all this time... I misunderstood."
I was disowned, thrown out into the freezing rain, and my adoptive father threatened to use his corporate empire to crush my small bakery.
I finally understood that to them, I was just a temporary placeholder, a stepping stone for Sienna to take everything I cherished whenever she pleased.
I refused to let them destroy me.
To protect my bakery and tear down their hypocritical lives, I walked into the penthouse of New York's most ruthless billionaire to propose a fake PR relationship.
But he slid a two-year marriage contract across the table instead.
Before I could fully process marrying a man I barely knew, a little blonde girl ran into the room and tugged at my dress.
"Are you my new mommy?" 
/1/125483/coverorgin.jpg?v=9082f934e9887834ea4a26fa5ebf986f&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/120723/coverorgin.jpg?v=2d34d77694dbf78504fd0c882b1032ca&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/115866/coverorgin.jpg?v=a9370078dc8ccb74852b6c57420b230d&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/114377/coverorgin.jpg?v=aaef70a1f5d7e96638e0076caf4b005a&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/104073/coverorgin.jpg?v=4d85db99a825638df70c57cf909551c2&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/103282/coverorgin.jpg?v=d26a684e7947ebc08d44cd0d896a760a&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/99383/coverorgin.jpg?v=05762784debc6d42575a94b69db64e36&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/85359/coverorgin.jpg?v=d87831e528813fcd048240b3fdb9c962&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/80367/coverorgin.jpg?v=3c5af8273d69e10dec1e294b1e5c375e&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/18732/coverorgin.jpg?v=a44398844948ac79bd28bb4583bcf6ff&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/127579/coverorgin.jpg?v=2ea34f2e2c2f3053a637d5acfe2fbf25&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/112008/coverorgin.jpg?v=2b0abcab944971bf058c4d3da02bb538&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/126405/coverorgin.jpg?v=9927fffe64e35704bef6967a90b00afb&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/129392/coverorgin.jpg?v=f15ee8635efbe08f21e9bff3fcbf8ffa&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/128535/coverorgin.jpg?v=37f9ad5e1420d23b4c6c03da422081e0&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/113362/coverorgin.jpg?v=5efb20621f255e262e29bdba5df38f3b&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/128979/coverorgin.jpg?v=5bf4e279145ddbf553c5a9ad20bbd40e&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/116591/coverorgin.jpg?v=d4d7816fdc6be84bc120aedc3892ebd5&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/124574/coverorgin.jpg?v=7c151a66e01d6b62d2d807115e2e1230&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/125302/coverorgin.jpg?v=be568e5403aea3d772380fafb20dcf3a&imageMogr2/format/webp)