Azibabari

Mari Santos has never broken a rule in her life. Then one night, a coworker's dare sends the hotel housekeeper into an "empty" penthouse, and she finds a stranger awake in the dark, a man too tired to pretend. They talk until dawn. She stays the night. By morning, he's gone, the wall safe is empty, and two million dollars has disappeared. Worse, the stranger is Adrian Castellane, the most feared mafia don in Philadelphia, and the hotel cameras show her walking in with a master key. Her little brother, the valet who propped open the door, has vanished. Adrian gives Mari four weeks to bring her brother back, and until then she works in his mansion as his housekeeper. She has no way out, and the one man who could protect her is the one who wants her punished. But the man who couldn't sleep for years starts sleeping when she's near. And Mari remembers a sweet smell of peppermint, a silver ring, and a whispered word in the dark. Someone close to Adrian planned that night. Now Mari must prove it before the family decides her fate, and before the secret she's keeping becomes impossible to hide.

Ten years ago, Nadia Whitlock's father testified against the Varga crime family. Ten years of funerals later, a treaty ends the war with one condition: Nadia must marry Elias Varga, the cold, ruthless heir who has sworn to make her family pay. On their wedding day, he whispers it in her ear: "I married you to watch your family burn." Locked inside his mansion with rules, guards, and a study she is forbidden to enter, Nadia expects to be a prisoner. Then, as a forensic accountant, she opens an old ledger and finds numbers that don't add up, and handwriting that isn't her father's. Someone framed her family. Someone inside the house knows she knows. And someone left a note on her pillow: Say nothing. Not even to him. As poison appears at the dinner table and a storm traps them in one bedroom, Nadia and Elias are forced to choose between the families who raised them and the truth that could free them both.

I didn't mean to call my boss. I definitely didn't mean to leave a seven-minute voicemail of dirty secrets about him. Working for Ruslan Oryolov is the job from hell. The man is impossible-demanding, arrogant, and way too gorgeous for his own good. After eighteen months of fetching his coffee and swallowing my pride, all I wanted was one night of stress relief. But the billionaire CEO of Bane Corporation isn't just a boss from hell. He's the head of the Oryolov Bratva-and now that he's heard every secret I never meant to share, he's decided to claim me. His contract. His rules. His protection for my three orphaned nieces and nephews-the only reason I'm signing my life away to a man I should fear. He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now he wants my soul.

Catherine loved Marco with all her heart. Until she discovered that he had betrayed her with her own sister. Instead of defending Catherine, her family blamed her for standing in the way of their happiness. To them, she was nothing more than an unwanted daughter who had ruined the love story between Marco and the sister they had always favored. So Catherine gave them exactly what they wanted. She gave up Marco. She gave up the family that had never truly seen her as one of their own. Just when she thought her life couldn't get any worse, her parents sold her for twenty thousand dollars to an old, ugly man who had already been married once. Catherine thought her life was over. Then a stranger appeared and offered her a way out. His name was Lorenzo. He offered Catherine a contract marriage. He needed a wife. She needed protection. It seemed like a simple arrangement, and Catherine never expected it to change her life forever.Because she didn't know who Lorenzo really was. To the world, Lorenzo was a ruthless billionaire and the heir to one of the country's most powerful business empires. Behind closed doors, he was far more dangerous. He was the heir to a Mafia dynasty, a man who controlled an empire built on blood, fear, and absolute power. When Lorenzo offered Catherine a marriage of convenience, she accepted without hesitation. He needed a wife. She needed protection. Neither of them wanted love. At least, that was what they told themselves. But after Catherine became Mrs. Romano, Lorenzo's rules began to change. He wanted to know where she went, who she spoke to, and which man dared look at her for too long. The more Catherine tried to keep their marriage strictly business, the more possessive Lorenzo became. He no longer wanted a temporary wife. He wanted Catherine completely. Then Marco finally realized he had made the biggest mistake of his life and came back for her. He expected Catherine to still be the woman who waited for him, forgave him, and accepted whatever affection he was willing to offer. But Catherine was no longer that woman. The daughter her family discarded had become the wife of the most dangerous man in the underworld. And Lorenzo Romano would burn the world down before he let anyone take his wife away.

I was three days away from marrying the Underboss of the Fazio crime family when I unlocked his burner phone. The screen glowed toxic bright in the dark next to my sleeping fiancé. A message from a contact saved as 'Little Trouble' read: "She is just a statue, Dante. Come back to bed." Attached was a photo of a woman lying in the sheets of his private office, wearing his shirt. My heart didn't break; it simply stopped. For eight years, I believed Dante was the hero who pulled me from a burning opera house. I played the perfect, loyal Mafia Princess for him. But heroes don't give their mistresses rare pink diamonds while giving their fiancées cubic zirconia replicas. He didn't just cheat. He humiliated me. He defended his mistress over his own soldiers in public. He even abandoned me on the side of the road on my birthday because she faked a pregnancy emergency. He thought I was weak. He thought I would accept the fake ring and the disrespect because I was just a political pawn. He was wrong. I didn't cry. Tears are for women who have options. I had a strategy. I walked into the bathroom and dialed a number I hadn't dared to call in a decade. "Speak," a voice like gravel growled on the other end. Lorenzo Moretti. The Capo of the rival family. The man my father called the Devil. "The wedding is off," I whispered, staring at my reflection. "I want an alliance with you, Enzo. And I want the Fazio family burned to the ground."

She went to lose her virginity to her boyfriend... But woke up in his father's bed. Now, Isabella is trapped between two dangerous men- one who thinks he owns her... and one who refuses to let her go. Secrets. Desire. Betrayal. And a Mafia King who never shares what's his.

On my wedding day, my father sold me to the Chicago Outfit to pay his debts. I was supposed to marry Alex Moreno, the heir to the city's most powerful crime family. But he couldn't even be bothered to show up. As I stood alone at the altar, humiliated, my best friend delivered the final blow. Alex hadn't just stood me up; he had run off to California with his mistress. The whispers in the cathedral turned me into a joke. I was damaged goods, the rejected bride. His family knew the whole time and let me take the public fall, offering me his cousins as pathetic replacements-a brute who hated me or a coward who couldn't protect me. The humiliation burned away my fear, leaving only cold rage. My life was already over, so I decided to set the whole game on fire myself. The marriage pact only said a Carlson had to marry a Moreno; it never said which one. With nothing left to lose, I looked past the pathetic boys they offered. I chose the one man they never expected. I chose his father, the Don himself.

"Once she's finally dead, I want you to take me - right there, in that outlaw President's own bed... promise me, Blaze." Lying in a freezing pool of my own blood, I watched the man I had loved for three years flirt shamelessly with my cousin. Meanwhile, my so-called "best friend" greedily stripped the wedding ring off my bleeding finger. "Take her. Have your fun with her, just don't let that pretty face go to waste," the scumbag sneered, kicking me aside. As a group of tattooed thugs approached with sickening, lustful grins, I was swallowed by absolute, shivering despair. Just as I prepared to bite my own tongue to end it all-a deafening engine roar shattered the night. My husband, the ruthless MC President Axel, the "monster" I had spent my life trying to escape, charged into the hellfire covered in blood. He used his massive frame to shield me from every bullet. With his dying breath, his normally cold eyes held nothing but desperate, humble tenderness. "Don't be afraid... I love you..." When I opened my eyes, I was reborn a year before our fatal fallout. To completely sever ties with the cheating scumbag, I secretly liquidated all my designer assets, transferring the funds into an untraceable offshore account. But the financial report was handed straight to Axel. He forcefully cornered me against the wall, his eyes swirling with a devastating mix of soul-crushing heartbreak and violent obsession as he ruthlessly bit my lip. "Chloe, even if you run to the ends of the earth, I will drag you back in chains!" he growled, his voice hoarse and his eyes red. "But from tonight on... until I see your lover's corpse with my own eyes, don't you ever try to touch me again." I wrapped my arms tightly around his solid waist from behind, my small hands slipping under his half-open leather jacket to trace the hard lines of his tense abs. Feeling his massive body instantly freeze into stone, I stood on my toes and whispered breathily against his ear: "Okay. But before you kill him... hubby, don't you want to come back to bed and fulfill your duties as my husband first?"

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

While I was pregnant, my husband held a party downstairs for another woman's son. Through a hidden mental link, I overheard my husband, Don Dante Rossi, tell his consigliere he was going to publicly reject me tomorrow. He planned to make his mistress, Serena, his new mate. An act forbidden by ancient law while I carried his heir. Later, Serena cornered me, her smile venomous. When Dante appeared, she shrieked, clawing her own arm and blaming me for the attack. Dante didn't even look at me. He snarled a command that froze my body and stole my voice, ordering me from his sight as he cradled her. He moved her and her son into our master suite. I was demoted to the guest room at the end of the hall. Passing her open door, I saw him rocking her baby, humming the lullaby my own mother used to sing to me. I heard him promise her, "Soon, my love. I'll sever the bond and give you the life you deserve." The love I felt for him, the power I'd hidden for four years to protect his fragile ego, all turned to ice. He thought I was a weak, powerless wife he could discard. He was about to find out that the woman he betrayed was Alessia De Luca, princess of the most powerful family on the continent. And I was finally going home.

My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement. To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia. It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping. But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished. She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug. She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago. The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash. Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name. She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant. I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead. I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye. "Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you." Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth. "Prove it," he growled. I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip.

For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."