After he touched her
AFTER HE TOUCHED HER
Brayen Mallen, thirty-three, the CEO and heir of the noble Mallen family.
A man who once lived gently, lovingly until he shattered the day his wife, Vallen Zickline, a commoner he married against his entire family’s will, died in a tragic accident while carrying their two-month pregnancy.
For three years, Brayen lived inside Vallen’s shadow traumatized, angry, unstable, unable to function like a normal human being.
Until the Mallen family forced him into a marriage with the Cruze family’s daughter for business interests.
Brayen rejected it completely, even going so far as to visit the Cruze residence himself to cancel the engagement.
But fearing Stella, their eldest daughter, would be unable to handle his volatile temperament, the Cruze family quietly replaced her with the younger daughter:
Chiella Cruze the girl who had lived her entire life as nothing more than her sister’s shadow, always blamed, always dismissed, never loved by the parents who raised her.
The marriage could not be undone;
the business stakes were simply too enormous.
And fate was cruel to Chiella.
Already broken in her own home, she now had to face Brayen a man drowning in trauma and rage.
Her days were filled with humiliation, emotional violence, and cruelty she never understood.
The only person who saw Chiella’s wounds was Lian Shao, Brayen’s closest friend.
Quietly, Lian protected her helped her became the only warmth in her suffocating world.
And without realizing it, Chiella’s heart began to tremble toward him.
But when Chiella finally left for real, that was the moment Brayen understood
His heart had changed.
And the only woman who now occupied it… was Chiella.
Too late.
Chiella had left with a pregnancy Brayen never knew about.
For years, Brayen searched for her carrying regret like a haunting shadow only to slowly learn that Chiella had been abused since childhood… and he, her own husband, had repeated the same cruelty.
Until one day, he found her.
Living under a new identity.
Raising their five-year-old twins.
And beside her stood Lian Shao
the man who once tried to protect her.
The man who almost replaced him.
And the most shocking truth of all
Chiella was never a Cruze by blood.
She was the missing daughter of a powerful noble family, hidden away since childhood.
Now Brayen must fight everything:
the great noble family,
Lian Shao,
Chiella herself,
his own past,
and the man he once was
to reclaim his wife and children before he loses them forever.
Explanation of the Novel “After He Touched Her”
So here’s the thing… “After He Touched Her” is the kind of story that moves slowly.
It doesn’t throw the biggest conflict in the first two chapters.
The pacing is meant to build atmosphere, to peel back each character’s emotional wounds, and to show little by little why they’ve become such damaged people.
Brayen isn’t the kind of main character readers will instantly like.
He’s thirty-three, a widower, carrying the trauma of losing his first wife and their unborn child. The wound is deep, so deep he basically lived like a walking corpse for three years. That’s why when his family forced him to remarry, he resisted with everything he had. He simply wasn’t ready.
Then comes Chiella.
Not the first choice, not even a real choice just the “replacement” for her sister, who was pulled out because the Cruze family feared Stella couldn’t survive Brayen’s temperament. Chiella is the kind of character who has been suffering long before the story even begins. She lived under her sister’s shadow, never valued, never loved. So when she’s sent into this business marriage, it feels like being thrown into a lion’s den.
And Brayen really does treat her terribly at the start—
not out of inherent cruelty, but because he’s drowning in his past.
He’s traumatized, angry, grieving… and he unleashes all of that on the wrong person.
What hurts most is this: Chiella was already shattered at home, and entering the Mallen f
