Bing Caratozzolo

For five years, I was the perfect, silent fiancée to the most feared Underboss in the Cosa Nostra. On the eve of our wedding, I opened his sacred syndicate ledger and found a painstakingly detailed log of my best friend, Serena. He tracked the exact phases of her menstrual cycle and her preferred brand of imported painkillers. Yet just last month, when I was doubled over on the bathroom floor in agony, he refused to go to the pharmacy for me. "An Underboss does not run mundane errands," he had told me with flat, incurious eyes. He bought Serena a twelve-thousand-dollar blood-red gown, forced me into a cheap off-the-rack slip, and demanded she stand right between us at the altar. Worse, I discovered they were plotting to drain my parents' entire life savings to fund a money-laundering front for his illicit gambling operations. I had endured his coldness and emotional neglect, believing his severe mafia code applied to everyone. I never imagined he reserved every last measure of his humanity and warmth for the woman who was supposed to be my maid of honor. Looking at his handwriting, the blindfold finally fell from my eyes. I calmly photographed the damning pages, wired my parents' money to a secure offshore account, and sent a new directive to our wedding planner. If he wanted to give my best friend my place, I would make sure the entire underworld was there to witness it.

My sister and I are twins. In a big fire, my sister died. My parents actually made me marry the prince instead of my sister. After marrying him, he asked me, "Why did you disappoint him, not fulfilling his wish to climb onto the dragon bed, only able to marry him, do you regret it?" He treated me as if I had betrayed his sister, humiliating me step by step...

On the eve of my dream wedding, everything seemed perfect with my charming fiancé, Ethan Blackwood. Our partnership was built on mutual respect and shared ambitions, or so I believed. Then, his mother raised a toast to Chloe Hayes, the "dead" childhood friend Ethan rarely spoke of, the girl who supposedly died saving him. The next day, as I walked down the aisle, all eyes were on me, but Ethan' s were fixed on the church doors. A stunning woman stood there, frail but firm, her voice echoing, "Ethan? I came back for you." My groom' s face went white. He whispered, "Chloe?" In front of the city's most influential people, Ethan stumbled towards her, pulling her into a desperate hug, completely forgetting I existed. My white silk dress turned into a humiliating shroud as cameras flashed, capturing my public discarding. He finally looked at me, with no love, no apology, just annoyance. "Olivia," he stammered, "I… I' m sorry. I don' t know what' s happening." His attention quickly returned to Chloe, whom he shielded, calling her "fragile" and leaving me abandoned at the altar. The headlines screamed: "Billionaire Groom Abandons Bride at Altar for Ghost of Dead Girlfriend!" My parents, concerned only about stock prices and reputation, told me to "handle this" and "not look weak." I watched as articles about Chloe' s death vanished from the internet, Ethan already controlling the narrative to protect her. Alone in my hotel suite, I wondered, who was I without him? I was just the woman publicly discarded. That night, my phone rang. It was him. "Liv, are you okay?" he asked, but then Chloe' s voice cut in, dripping false innocence, "Oh, Ethan, tell her I' m so, so sorry." My rage finally boiled over. "Get her off the phone, Ethan!" He defended her, spoke of his guilt, then offered to "compensate" me. I laughed, a bitter sound. "You think this is about money?" I was a placeholder. The moment his ghost became flesh, I was disposable. He pressured me, "Liv, please, just try to be reasonable." I gave him an ultimatum: "You tell her to leave. You come back here and explain yourself to me, alone." Chloe wailed in the background, "Oh, Ethan, she hates me!" His voice hardened, blaming me, "Do you hear that, Olivia? Is that what you want? To be this cruel?" I hung up, the phone clattering to the floor. He was still in love with her. I was the third person in a two-person story. With cold resolve, I pulled off my engagement ring and threw it out the window. Then, I called my agent. "Book my flight. I want to leave tomorrow."

For two years, I endured agonizing chemo for my leukemia, believing my struggling family was sacrificing everything to save me. But right before my surgery, I overheard my brother and mother whispering outside the door. I didn't have cancer. My family, who were actually billionaires in the Syndicate, had been secretly poisoning me. They needed me weak and dying so my betrothal to the supreme Don could be transferred to their newly found biological daughter. "Once the betrothal is transferred, I will find the best specialists to cure Clara," my brother said coldly. But they didn't know I had already made my choice. Thinking my treatments were starving them, I had just swallowed a vial of lethal, untraceable poison in the bathroom. I died in excruciating agony on the operating table before they even made the first cut. When the surgeon announced I had committed suicide, my family's world completely shattered. My brother found my blood-stained suicide note and the meager cash I had saved to buy them gifts. "We murdered our own daughter," my father sobbed. My mother went completely insane, clutching my rotting corpse, while my brother slit his own wrists in a desperate attempt to feel my pain. They kneeled before my grave, weeping and begging the heavens to let them protect me in the next life. Floating above them as a ghost, I watched their absolute despair with a numb heart. I harbored no hatred, but I knew one thing for certain. In the next life, we will be nothing but strangers.

Cecile jolted awake from months of prescription haze, only to realize she was trapped in a live reality show designed to destroy her. Her billionaire husband had orchestrated the broadcast to publicly humiliate her and elevate his own PR image. He ordered her to follow a degrading script. What was worse, her five-year-old son, Damien, was genuinely terrified of her. When an empty wine bottle rolled across the floor, the tiny boy instantly threw his arms over his head, bracing for a hit. The production crew shoved microphones into the trembling child's face, trying to trigger his trauma for ratings. The live chat cursed Cecile as a toxic abuser. The show's golden girl maliciously tried to poach Damien on camera to prove Cecile was an unfit mother. The crew even rigged the game, forcing Cecile and her son into a freezing, rotting mud shack with a collapsed roof. They were all just waiting for her to break down and beg. "A toxic woman like you doesn't deserve to be a mother." The crew read the hateful comments aloud, expecting a hysterical meltdown. The realization that she had been manipulated into destroying her own child hit Cecile like a physical blow. How could a father subject his own son to this public cruelty? The weak, easily manipulated Cecile was dead. She threw the PR script away, rolled up her sleeves, and picked up a rusted hammer. This time, she would protect her son and tear down anyone who stood in her way.

On my eighteenth birthday, I expected to find my Fated Mate. Instead, I found my executioner. I shifted for the first time, but my wolf was small and frail. Marcus, the future Alpha and the man I had secretly loved, looked down at me not with adoration, but with cold, clinical disgust. "A weak, scrawny Omega," he sneered, his voice echoing across the silent clearing. "You have no muscle. Your bloodline is nothing." He didn't just reject me; he humiliated me. "I, Marcus, reject you as my mate." The bond snapped, shattering my bones and my spirit. He banished me to the human city, leaving me to die in a freezing alleyway like unwanted refuse. For weeks, I lay in the mud, my body ravaged by fever and the agony of a severed soul tie. I accepted that I was worthless, a mistake made by the Moon Goddess. But just as the darkness threatened to swallow me whole, a pair of strong arms lifted me from the dirt. A stranger with eyes like obsidian fed me his blood and whispered a truth that changed everything. "You are not weak, Ellie," he growled, his power vibrating against my skin. "You are a White Wolf." I wasn't a runt. I was a legend. Now, fully healed and radiating power, I am returning to the pack that threw me away. Marcus is about to marry another, but when he sees me, he won't be looking at a reject. He will be looking at the biggest mistake of his life.

I was the daughter of a wealthy tycoon, deeply in love with my fiancé, Conrad. But on our wedding day, he arrested my father. My ten-year relationship was a lie. He was an FBI agent, and my best friend, Bonny, was his accomplice. The betrayal shattered me. I was forced into electroshock therapy, which erased my talent for architectural design-the one thing that was truly mine. My life fell apart. After a failed suicide attempt, I was saved by a kind stranger and my father's last words. I rebuilt my life from the ashes, becoming a successful photographer. Years later, Conrad reappeared, full of fake regret, begging for a second chance. I looked at the man who had destroyed me and compared him to a cat that had once bitten me. "I forgave you," I told him, "but I will never trust you again." My friend Corey, acting as my fake husband, defended my honor by punching Conrad in the face. Eventually, Conrad's career imploded due to a scandal involving Bonny. He was ruined. As for me? I was in Paris, my photography career soaring, when I picked up a sketchbook. Miraculously, the lines flowed. My gift was returning. I was finally in control of my own story.

On our seventh anniversary, the Capo dei Capi lit up the New York skyline with drones spelling my name, swearing on his life that I was his only Queen. Moments later, he abandoned me on the dock to rush to his mistress—my own sister, Sophia. Sophia sent me a photo of him kissing her belly with the caption: "He finally has a real woman. It's a boy." Lucien wanted an heir above all else. I was just the placeholder; she was the vessel. I didn't scream. I didn't confront him. I simply initiated Ghost Protocol. I left the wedding ring, signed the divorce papers, and erased Eleonora Marino from existence. By the time Lucien found the DNA test proving Sophia’s baby wasn't his—that he had betrayed his loyal wife for a lie—I was already gone. He executed my sister in a rage and spent his fortune burning down the world to find me. Six months later, he bought the high-security Swiss lab where I was hiding, forcing his way back into my life. He stood before me, gaunt and desperate. "I killed her, Nora. She paid for what she did to us. Come home." I looked at the man I had once worshipped. "Infidelity is a choice, Lucien. But murder? That is who you are." "We are enemies now."

For eight years, I thought I had succeeded in my mission to save Mark Johnson, a "high-value target with self-destructive tendencies," as the System called him. I was his fixer, his anchor, the stable force that pulled him from the brink, transforming him into a successful, confident husband. My mission, it seemed, was complete. But peace, I learned, was a language Mark never truly wanted to master. His craving for chaos reawakened with the return of Emily Carter, his old flame. I smelled her perfume on him at 2 a.m., then heard him arranging for her to stay in our home under the pretense of her being his cousin, shattering the world I had built. I confronted him, not with tears or accusations, but with cold, hard facts-the perfume, the late nights, the fingerprint security he' d never deleted for her. He looked ashamed, but still had the audacity to suggest Emily was "fragile" and "needed him," as if his betrayal was a mere inconvenience. Then, the true horror: he suggested, with earnest eyes, that I should "accept her." "Can' t you just… accept her? We could make this work. The three of us." The sheer audacity, the monstrous lack of respect, turned my love into pure revulsion. In that moment, the last ember of affection died. I looked at the man I had dedicated my life to, the "project" I had poured my soul into, and finally felt nothing but a vast, cold emptiness. I picked up my phone. "<System, I need to know my options.>" A white-hot rage, pure and clean, burned through my heartbreak, cauterizing the wound. I accepted the Exit Protocol, ready to forfeit everything to sever ties with this man and this life.

My mother' s voice cut through the party noise. "If it wasn't for my sacrifice, how could Kyle be so successful today?" She was openly boasting that she' d given my college fund to my cousin, Kyle. I stood hidden in the shadows, my hands shaking. Years of scholarships, working dead-end jobs, meticulously saving every penny for my Ivy League dream-all gone. "Ethan was never going to amount to much anyway," my aunt, her sister, added with a sneer. "Look at him now. A dead-end job, a miserable wife." My parents had enabled it all three years ago, when I'd been eighteen, acceptance letter in hand. "There's a family emergency," my mother had said. "Kyle has an amazing opportunity to study in Europe, and they're a little short." A little short for his tuition, but my entire life' s savings for my own education was apparently disposable. Now, Kyle swaggered through the party, designer suit, wealthy wife, a life that should have been mine. And I, Ethan? I was trapped in a mind-numbing warehouse job, just paying the bills for a small apartment I shared with a wife I didn' t love and a daughter who deserved so much more. "Ethan just doesn't have the drive," I heard my mother tell a neighbor. "He's lazy. Not like Kyle." The words hit me like physical blows. My vision blurred. The anniversary cake I bought with my overtime pay, a small gesture of connection, slipped from my numb fingers. It crashed to the floor. "Ethan! What is wrong with you?" my mother shrieked, rushing over, not to me, but to the mess. "You clumsy idiot! You've ruined everything!" My father followed, his face a mask of disappointment. "Can't you do anything right?" They stood there, judging me. My aunt and Kyle smirked. Later, my last twenty dollars, a fruit basket, rejected. "We don't need this cheap junk," my father said, not even looking at me. "Go make yourself useful. Your aunt needs another drink." That night, listening to them celebrate the man who stole my future, something inside me finally broke. The buried resentment ignited. It wasn't just about the money. It was about my life. And I was going to take it back.

For ten years, I poured my heart into Ethan Scott. My father, a New York media tycoon, had groomed Ethan to inherit his empire and marry me, his only daughter. I was hopelessly devoted, convinced he was my forever. That belief shattered today. I walked in on Ethan revealing his true plan to an intern, Maria: he' d marry me for control, then discard me and take over my family' s empire with her. My decade of love was just a stepping stone. Later that evening, as my father asked me to choose a husband from Ethan and two others, Maria' s calculated lie from years ago-the one that made them brand me a cruel heiress-boiled to the surface. Ethan, Andrew, and Brian still believed her, their contempt a constant reminder. They saw me as the prize, but I was just a pawn to them. Why did they believe Maria so blindly? How could they be so utterly wrong about me, and so righteously cruel? How could my deep love turn into such a brutal, calculated betrayal? Then, at my 21st birthday gala, Andrew slapped me across the face, Maria dramatically burst in, framing me for attempted murder, and Ethan publicly shamed me in front of New York' s elite. They thought they had won. They thought they had annihilated me. But they were about to witness a different kind of coronation.

Sarah Miller, with her uncanny gift of foresight, was a sensation. Her "Sarah Sees" livestream, broadcast from her humble Vermont farmhouse, brought comfort and answers to thousands. She was a rising star, a rare and authentic voice in the world of online spiritual guidance. But then, out of nowhere, an old childhood acquaintance, Jessica Evans, appeared. "Mystic Jess," she called herself, launching a strikingly similar channel. Whispers of Sarah being a "copycat" began, subtly fueled by Jessica and an influential local figure, Alex Peterson. The online comments turned vicious, branding Sarah a "fraud" and "liar." Her followers evaporated, her income vanished. The local community, once supportive, grew cold, and the stress bled into her family's life. Then came the vandalism, spray-painted threats, culminating in a confrontation that tragically led to her father's fatal heart attack. I watched my family shatter, my life ruined, all by someone who seemed to mimic my every move, even my private thoughts, always one step ahead. How could Jessica know what I was about to say or do before I even did it? My own gift, once so clear, became a dark, confusing static whenever I tried to foresee anything about Jessica or my grim future. It made no sense. Crushed by grief and public scorn, wishing for an end to it all, I closed my eyes. A snap, a void, then a gasp. I opened them to find sunlight streaming through my old bedroom window, my laptop waiting-showing the exact date I launched my first livestream. I was back. And I wouldn't let it happen again.

The federal courtroom buzzed, a low hum under the harsh fluorescent lights, as my fiancée Chloe begged me to sign a plea bargain for corporate espionage. This exact scene, these same tear-streaked pleas were painfully familiar. I'd lived this nightmare once before, framed by Chloe and her lover Derek, condemned to a brutal prison where I was left infertile, slowly dying alone in a cold cell. But this time, I was reborn, remembering every agonizing memory, every betrayal, burned into my mind. I feigned compliance, signing what sealed my supposed guilt, my heart a brewing storm under a calm facade. Chloe, dripping with false sympathy, celebrated, convinced Derek's narrative of my villainy would protect him as she took over my life, discarding my belongings and claiming our home as hers. She then imprisoned me in the building's damp basement, where she confessed the horrifying truth: she had systematically poisoned me for years to ensure my infertility, then brutally whipped me, counting each lash. The searing pain of the blows, the cold calculation in her eyes, mixed with the shock of realizing her long-term, meticulously planned evil, threatened to break me. How could someone I loved mete out such depravity? Yet, beneath the agony, a burning resolve tempered my spirit. Then, just as I was dragged back to court, battered and broken, seemingly destined for ruin, the doors burst open. Olivia Hayes, CEO of the company I supposedly betrayed, the woman from my true past, strode in, radiating icy power. She not only unilaterally withdrew all charges but then, to the utter shock of everyone, knelt before me and asked: "Ethan, this lifetime, will you marry me?" She remembered. And this time, armed with a second chance, our perfect revenge was just beginning.

My parents were murdered, our family bakery destroyed, and my fiancé walked out. That’s when Detective David Carter, his brother, swooped in like a hero. He promised justice and protection, then proposed. Five years later, I was pregnant, building a new life with him, certain I was finally safe. But that safety shattered one night. I overheard David’s hushed confession: he was obsessively in love with Veronica Hayes—my parents’ killer. He’d married *me* to protect *her*, to keep me quiet, a mere pawn in his twisted game. My entire life, even our unborn child, was a monstrous lie designed to shield a murderer. The betrayal burned deeper than any wound. At his family’s dinner, Veronica brazenly confessed to the killings, taunting me with a chilling detail. I slapped her in a desperate rage. My husband, David, violently shoved *me* aside, his fury reserved for me, not her. I fell, the pain unbearable, losing our baby in a bloody haze. His family cast me out like trash. Abandoned, violated, and gutted by grief, I was just another casualty in his sick obsession across two families. How could the man who promised to protect me be the architect of my deepest agony? How could his love for another destroy everything, even his own child? With nothing left to lose, I engineered my own disappearance, vanished, and then strategically unleashed every piece of evidence hidden by my supposed savior. The truth, now exposed, would finally bury them all.

I, Mike Evans, died young from endless work, a fool who gave everything to build a future. But then, as my soul drifted, I watched my supposed devoted wife, Jessica, calmly discard my ashes, her face devoid of grief. Moments later, she was in *our* bed with Chad Peterson, my best friend, laughing, truly laughing. My son, Kevin, the one I poured every dime into for his surgical career, walked in and called Chad, "Dad." My entire fortune, built brick by painful brick, was now theirs to exploit. Jessica’s "girls’ trips" and Kevin’s "specialized training" were just cover stories for their years-long affair. This sickening truth, this profound betrayal, ripped through me with a pain far more searing than death itself. My life, my sacrifices, had fueled their illicit happiness, making me nothing more than a convenient workhorse to be discarded. How could I have been so monumentally, tragically blind to such a colossal lie? Then, an unexpected jolt, a blinding flash, and I gasped, choking on lake water. I was back, years in the past, at the exact moment I was supposed to "save" Jessica from drowning. The very incident that launched my miserable first life of servitude. But this time, things would be different. This time, the game would change.

I spent five years laundering my family's wealth and buying military-grade weapons to crown my husband, Alistair, the Don of the Chicago Mafia. But the night before his coronation, he drove an Italian stiletto into my stomach. He sneered that a Don needed a true Mafia Queen, and that was always meant to be his "fragile" friend, Kylie. As I bled out on the Persian rug, he revealed the sickening truth. The night I was found in a rival Irish boss's bed two years ago wasn't a setup by our enemies. Alistair had ordered his own mother and sister to drug and frame me. He just needed me terrified enough to sign over my merchant trust fund to prove my loyalty. My entire marriage, my sacrifices, and my stolen wealth were just stepping stones for him and his mistress. I had bled for him and won him the city, only to be slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb so he could hand my empire to another woman. Before the flames I started consumed us both, I swore I'd drag his entire family to hell. Opening my eyes again, the suffocating smoke was gone, replaced by the scent of lavender and the bitter taste of chloral hydrate. I was back on the exact night of the frame-up two years ago. Outside the door, my sister-in-law was whispering, waiting for the Irish boss to arrive so they could ruin me. This time, I was going to make sure she was the one in that bed.

"I object to this marriage!" These words shattered Kaitlyn Peterson and threw her into an abyss that she couldn't escape from. To save her late father's reputation and business, Kaitlyn grants her stepmother her greatest heart desire to leave the man she loves for the ruthless Mafia Lord. Pledged to be his bride for 365 days, Kaitlyn seeks revenge on everyone who tore her apart from the man she is destined to spend the rest of her life with, and that includes her stepmother, stepsister, and of course, the Mafia Lord. But the question is; Will she survive him for 365 days? Will she be able to tame the ruthless king of the underworld? Can she destroy him and go back to the man she loves?

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.

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.

On our first wedding anniversary, my husband walked out the door. Not for business. For her. I left the divorce papers on the table, my wedding ring next to his untouched champagne, and I disappeared into the night. For a year, I watched Dominic Rossi—the ruthless Underboss of the New York syndicate—drop everything the moment his phone buzzed with another crisis from Sophia. A panic attack. A sleepless night. A lie. I was his wife, the woman he’d promised to cherish, but I was never his priority. So I chose myself. Now he’s tearing the city apart trying to find me. But I’m already gone—building a new life with a job that’s mine, an apartment that’s mine, and a name that doesn’t belong to him. The girl who waited in that penthouse is dead. The woman who walked out isn’t looking back. When Dominic finally corners me, I see the cracks in his armor. He says he’s sorry. He says he loves me. He says he finally understands. But some words are too late, and some promises can’t be fixed. He made me guess for a year. Now it’s his turn to wonder if I’ll ever come back. A heart-wrenching, standalone mafia romance about a woman who refused to be second choice, and the man who learned too late what he’d lost.

I spent three excruciating years building an underworld empire for Cassius, only for him to give the ultimate symbol of his protection to a fragile girl named Serena on the very day he proposed to me. My biological brother Julian, my protector Enzo, and my ally Lucian all followed suit, prioritizing Serena's fake tears over my life. They forced me into a lethal bone marrow extraction to save her. When I welcomed the agony—using it to trigger my system's extraction protocol, my only way home to the real world—they violently aborted the procedure. They accused me of twisted manipulation and locked me in a high-security medical prison. There, they handed my care over to Serena, who tortured me in secret, calibrating my pain to hover just below the medical alarms. "You will live," she whispered, "so that you may watch them choose me—until the act itself becomes a prayer." I didn't understand. Why was my physical agony never enough to make them stop, yet a single tear from Serena became their absolute law? Why wouldn't they just let me die so I could go home? Then I saw my real brother Arthur, exhausted by my hospital bed, through the system feed—and I realized I couldn't die. Not yet. I wiped all emotion from my face and calmly signed the papers for their live public reconciliation broadcast. Before I leave this world for good, I will tear Serena's perfect facade to pieces.

What would you do if you walked in on your husband cheating? I'll tell you what I did: Ran out the door with nothing but the clothes on my back. A month later, I'm broke, jobless, almost homeless. But then, while filling in as a waitress at a fancy restaurant, I trip and land in the lap of a gorgeous stranger. One thing leads to another and we end up hooking up. Afterwards, he leaves. That's the end of that... right? WRONG. Because the next day, my temp agency sets me up for a job t hat seems too good to be true. But when I arrive for the interview, my jaw drops. It's the stranger. Turns out he's rich. Like, very rich. And powerful. Like, very powerful. And here's his offer: "Live in my house.Be my wife.Have my baby." Needless to say, I start to freak out. I stand up and stammer, "Um, I'll have to get back to you..." And he replies: "You're misunderstanding.It wasn't a question. You're not going anywhere."

I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella. Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark. But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved. Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies. When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel. While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest. The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella. He ordered my father to punish me. I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth. That night, the love in my heart finally died. On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape—the only proof that I was Seven. Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney. By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.

Tomorrow was my wedding day to Jason Brennan, the heir to a powerful Mafia family. My family, the Falcones, had even taken in an orphaned girl, Elena, treating her like my own sister. But in my nightmare of a past life, I choked on my own blood, poisoned by the arsenic Elena slipped into my food every day. As I lay agonizingly close to death, Jason stood over me with a cold laugh, holding Elena in his arms. "We just needed the Falcone wealth, Bella. And the docks." Then came the gunfire. I was forced to watch them slaughter my father and my brother, tearing my family out by the roots. After my death, Elena even spread vicious rumors that I was a barren spinster, twisting their foul betrayal into a tragic tale of noble sacrifice to completely destroy my legacy. The metallic tang of my own blood was so real I could still taste the ash. I didn't understand why the girl my family sheltered for eight years would repay our charity with such venom. And I understood even less how the man who swore to love me could orchestrate my brutal murder without a shred of hesitation. Bolting upright in bed, drenched in cold sweat, I realized I had returned to the night before my wedding. This time, I wouldn't just cancel the engagement. I would hand their treason directly to the Mafia's most terrifying Enforcer, and watch them burn.

For two years, my world was circumscribed by the biometric lock on our penthouse and silent prayers for my husband, Vincenzo, the most feared Underboss of the Cosa Nostra. But when he finally returned from a brutal three-week smuggling route, he tossed me a cheap five-dollar tourist scarf, while his ex-lover Camilla flaunted the flawless pearl necklace he had just bought her. He abandoned me with a bleeding hand to rush to her side, ignored my severe medical emergencies to comfort her over trivialities, and publicly humiliated me at a Syndicate banquet by seating her in my rightful place at the head of the table. Camilla cornered me in the powder room, her fragile victim facade dropping instantly as she smirked at my reflection. "The thing a powerful man fears most isn't a wife who screams. It's a useless one who refuses to bow out gracefully." I endured his blatant disrespect and broken Omertà, wondering why my unwavering loyalty meant nothing compared to the manipulative tears of a woman who was actively leaking his classified safehouse coordinates. I didn't understand why he treated his sacred vows like garbage, eagerly feeding her Syndicate intel just to play the big, strong hero while leaving me to face cartel death threats entirely alone. But I was done being the neglected mafia wife waiting in the shadows. I calmly activated the covert audio recording device hidden inside my designer clutch. It was time to present this irrefutable evidence to the Don's Tribunal, strip my husband of his title, and build my own empire.