Dorine Koestler

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.

I spent three years playing the role of the perfect, invisible wife to Dillard Bentley, the billionaire heir of Manhattan. While he graced the tabloids with socialites, I stayed in the shadows of our penthouse, waiting for a man who treated me like a piece of furniture. One rainy night, the facade finally shattered. Dillard came home smelling of another woman’s perfume, and I handed him the divorce papers he never expected. But before the ink could dry, a violent pain ripped through me during a family lunch, and I collapsed in a pool of blood on the pristine marble floor. While I was being rushed to the hospital, Dillard’s mother dismissed my agony as a manipulative trick, and Dillard chose to believe her. He didn't follow the ambulance; he went to a gala to protect his mistress instead. I woke up in a cold emergency room only to be told I had lost the baby I didn't even know I was carrying. Because of the toxic "vitamins" his mother had been force-feeding me, my blood wouldn't clot, and I had to undergo surgery without a single drop of anesthesia. I bit down on a leather strap, feeling every agonizing scrape as they cleared the remains of my child, while my husband laughed at my pain over the phone. "Stop the drama, Erica. Tell her the divorce terms are non-negotiable. I'm busy." He hung up, leaving me to scream in silence. I realized then that the man I had once loved was the same man who let his family poison me. The "vitamins" weren't supplements; they were a death sentence for my unborn child, and he didn't even care enough to show up. Dillard thinks he’s divorcing a penniless nobody, but he’s about to find out that the world-renowned medical genius he’s desperate to recruit is the wife he left to bleed alone. I walked out of that hospital, threw my wedding ring in the trash, and reclaimed my true identity. Dr. N is coming to the global summit, and I’m not there to save the Bentley empire—I’m there to burn it to the ground.

My mother had been dead for four years, and my father, the Alpha of our pack, was now a hollow shell controlled by his new wife, Marley. I was a ghost in my own home, watching from the shadows as they celebrated a wedding that felt more like my execution. During the reception, Marley cornered me and demanded my mother's last heirloom-a blood-red ruby-to pay off her family's secret gambling debts. When I refused, her guards pinned me down, and in the struggle, the ancient stone hit the marble floor and shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. Framed for grand larceny by my own stepmother, I fled to a dive bar and sought refuge with Caleb Sterling, a rival Alpha who radiated power and danger. We spent a night of soul-shattering passion that I was certain was our mate bond, but the next morning, he tossed an envelope of cash at me and called me a high-end escort. When the police arrived to arrest me, he simply stepped aside and watched them drag me away in handcuffs, cold and indifferent to my screams. "Do what you have to do," he had told the officers, his eyes devoid of any warmth. I was a fugitive, stripped of my title, and discovered I was carrying Caleb's child-a baby cursed by his bloodline to never survive the womb. I couldn't understand why my father had abandoned me to a monster, or why the man I was destined for had sold me out just to save his own reputation. After a brutal ambush that left my only friend in a burning wreck, I stood at the border of the forbidden North. I clutched the jagged shards of my mother's ruby and looked the Northern Warlord in the eye, ready to trigger a war that would burn my father's legacy to the ground.

After seven years together, I told my boyfriend, Jaxon, I was pregnant. I thought it was the beginning of our forever. Instead, I found him at my prenatal clinic, comforting his secret, pregnant wife. He called our life a lie, a "business arrangement." His family beat me, humiliated me, and locked me in a dusty attic with rats for a month, leaving me to starve while he took his wife to her appointments. He promised me a future, a family, but chose to protect her and abandon our child. I was just an inconvenience to be discarded. So when they finally dragged me to the hospital, I made a choice. I waited for him to arrive after the procedure, his face full of fake concern. He saw the blood-stained sheets and his face crumbled. "What... what have you done?" he stammered. I smiled, my voice as cold and empty as my womb. "I got rid of it, Jaxon. I aborted your baby."

For 986 nights, my marriage bed had not been my own. My husband, Corbett Ewing, heir to a New York real estate empire, was haunted by a ghost, and that ghost' s sister, Ivana, was my tormentor. Every night, she' d scratch at our door, claiming nightmares, and Corbett would let her in, laying a spare duvet for her in our master bedroom. One night, Ivana shrieked, pointing at me, "She tried to kill me! She snuck in while I was sleeping and choked me!" Corbett, without a second thought, yelled at me, "Jenna! What did you do?" He didn' t even look at me for my side of the story. Later, he tried to apologize with a macaron, my favorite pistachio. But it was filled with almond paste, to which I was deathly allergic. As my throat closed up and my vision tunneled, Ivana shrieked again, claiming a panic attack over online comments. Corbett, faced with my dying gasps and her fake hysterics, chose her. He carried her away, leaving me alone to save myself. He never came back to the hospital. He sent his assistant to discharge me. When I returned home, he tried to appease me, but then asked me to give my father' s last gift, my perfume organ, to Ivana for her "design studio." I refused, but he took it anyway. The next morning, Ivana "accidentally" shattered a bottle of my father' s custom scent, the last physical piece of him I had. I looked at Corbett, my hands bleeding, my heart shattered. He pulled Ivana behind him, shielding her from me, his voice cold, "That' s enough, Jenna. You' re hysterical. You' re upsetting Ivana." In that moment, the last shred of hope died. I was done. I accepted an offer to be a head perfumer in France, renewed my passport, and planned my escape.

For eight years, I was the girlfriend of New York's most untouchable billionaire, Dean Lee. To the public, we were a fairy tale: the brilliant, cold CEO who was utterly devoted to me, a simple artist he had plucked from obscurity. He built a fortress of luxury and safety around me. But it was all a lie. On our anniversary, I overheard him with another woman. He called me a "decoy," a "shield" he used to absorb the threats and scrutiny meant for his real love, Karina. His mask came off. He allowed Karina to humiliate me publicly, destroy my dead mother’s heirloom, and then, as punishment, had me force-fed soup made from my beloved cat. His final "lesson" was to throw me into an underground fight club. As I lay beaten and bleeding on the canvas, I saw him in the VIP booth, watching with bored detachment as Karina laughed beside him. The eight years of protection weren't love; they were just maintenance on his human shield. On the verge of death, I was rescued by his biggest rival, Brennen Finley. With my last breath, I gave him the secrets that would bring Dean's empire to its knees. In exchange, I asked for just one thing. "Make Hayley York disappear," I whispered. "Help me die."

On my wedding night, my new husband, Jameson, was blackout drunk. My best friend of twenty years, Caren, texted me practical advice: give him honey water and let him sleep it off. But just as he quieted down, he pulled me close, his breath hot on my neck. "I love you so, so much, Caren," he whispered. Then I saw it. A tattoo I'd never seen before, a single letter 'C' inked directly over his heart. The next morning, my birthday, Caren showed up with a cake, her smile as sweet as poison. After one bite, my throat began to close. Peanuts. She knew I was deathly allergic. As I gasped for air, Jameson's first instinct wasn't to help me, but to defend her. He stood between us, his face a mask of fury. "What is your problem with her?" he demanded, blind to the fact that his wife was suffocating in front of him. I stumbled, trying to reach my EpiPen, but he grabbed my arm, yanking me back. "You are going to apologize to Caren right now!" With the last of my strength, I slapped him across the face. "I'm pregnant," I rasped. "And I can't breathe."

Another wave of pain hit me, a familiar, gut-wrenching cramp. I was bleeding again. This was the tenth time. Each time it happened, my husband, Liam Stone, would bring a woman home. A woman who looked exactly like his first love. Tonight was no different. He stood in our bedroom doorway, a woman by his side he introduced as Maya, flatly stating, "She' ll be staying with us for a while." His eyes never met mine; they were solely on her. Then, his words like stones, he commanded, "You' ll be serving us." I pushed myself up, the fresh bloodstain on the mattress a grim testament to my latest loss. My body ached, my world felt numb, yet the familiar routine played out as I fetched the wine. I returned to find them on my bed, Liam kissing her, a scene I had been forced to witness nine times before. A single drop of red wine accidentally splashed onto Maya' s pristine white dress. She gasped, theatrically exclaiming, "My dress! It' s ruined! This is a limited edition!" Liam' s face turned to thunder. He grabbed my hair, yanking my head back. "You clumsy bitch," he snarled, then pulled out his phone. He started a live broadcast, aiming the camera at my face, then at Maya' s stained dress, and finally, the blood on the bed. "Look at her," he boomed to the world. "This is my wife, Chloe Miller. She can' t even do a simple task without messing it up." Then, he shoved my face closer to Maya' s dress, barking, "Lick it clean." My blood ran cold. "Liam, please," I begged, humiliation clawing at my throat. "Don' t do this." "Lick it," he repeated, his voice menacing. "Or I' ll find other ways to make you pay. Maybe you' d prefer to serve more than just one of my guests tonight?" His threat hung in the air, vile and real. I closed my eyes and leaned forward, the taste of wine and cheap perfume filling my mouth. He laughed, a harsh, grating sound, then released my hair, and I collapsed. "Get out," he spat. "And don' t come back in here tonight." I crawled out, another sharp pain tearing through my abdomen, warm blood gushing between my legs. He left me in the yard, naked, bleeding onto the cold, damp grass. Ten miscarriages. Each time, a new woman, a new cruelty. Lying there, under the cold moon, clarity dawned. This would never end. He would only ever destroy me. As the last warmth left my body, a new resolve settled in. It was time to see Arthur Stone. My "good fortune" was broken; I couldn't give Liam a child. I was done. I had to leave. Arthur, his face etched with mirroring grief, agreed to help me. But before I could escape, Maya found it-the small, simple urn holding the ashes of my nine miscarried children. Liam, ever her protector, kicked me into unconsciousness. I awoke to a new horror: a video compilation of my most private moments with him, twisted clips set to mocking music, broadcast for the world to see. He then forced me to donate blood until my heart nearly stopped. He froze my bank accounts. I crawled home from the hospital, only to find Maya burning my mother' s jade hairpin, my last connection to her. The urn was gone, its contents scattered. The next morning, the nine pear trees I' d planted were uprooted, replaced by rose bushes for her. That was the end. With Arthur' s help, I left the country, divorce papers filed on my behalf. Liam laughed when he received them, certain I' d crawl back. He was wrong. He only realized his mistake when he discovered Maya' s lies, the truth about her, and me. He tried to win me back. But it was too late. I was gone, never coming back. His family' s business collapsed, his health failed. The last I heard, Liam Stone, once the man who had everything, was a reclusive, crippled beggar, haunting his desolate mansion, obsessively planting pear trees and crying out my name in his madness.

My father, Richard Sterling, built his empire on control, and I, Ava, was just another asset in his meticulously ordered life. My mother, Dr. Eleanor Vance, the brilliant AI ethicist, was deemed inconvenient, a "disaster" to be managed. One day, she was gone, taken by men in dark suits on my father's orders, her privacy twisted into shame. He paraded his new assistant, Charlotte Hayes, her smile triumphant, pregnant with his "new beginning," while my mother lay in the woods, a body identified only by a stranger. He dismissed my pleas, my fears, my desperate attempts to uncover the truth, painting me as hysterical, a nuisance to his carefully crafted narrative. He celebrated on a yacht in the Maldives, sipping champagne, while I clutched a fragmented data drive, a digital breadcrumb trail that whispered of murder, not accident. How could the man who taught me to ride a bike, who promised to never let me fall, betray us so completely? How could society believe his lies and brand my mother an unstable genius? My heart screamed for justice, for the truth to shatter the polished facade of Sterling Dynamics. With the help of my uncle and grandmother, I began to piece together the chilling reality: my mother wasn't just gone, she was silenced, murdered by the very people who claimed to love her. And I would make them pay.

I sat in my Singapore office, thousands of miles from home, my eyes glued to the laptop. It was Lily's 18th birthday party, a lavish affair I' d planned down to the last detail. The live stream flickered on, and I saw the magnificent ballroom, just as I' d envisioned. But then, the MC boomed, "Let' s welcome the heiress to Innovate Solutions, Tiffany!" My smile froze. Tiffany? A girl I' d never seen before walked into the spotlight, wearing Lily's custom-made gown and my family' s heirloom sapphire necklace. Then a woman, Sarah, stepped up, beaming, "As the CEO of Innovate Solutions, it warms my heart…" CEO? I was the CEO. A cold dread seeped in. The camera panned, and I saw her. My Lily. She was near a service table, holding a tray of drinks, head bowed, in a drab server' s uniform. A group of Tiffany' s friends deliberately knocked a glass from her tray, laughing as she flinched, picking up the pieces in defeat. A guttural roar escaped me. I snatched my phone, hands shaking, and dialed Mark, my husband. "Mark, what the hell is going on? Who is Tiffany? Why is she wearing Lily' s dress and my family' s necklace?" His response was too casual, too quick. "A surprise… Sarah' s daughter. My new co-CEO. A PR move." Co-CEO? Sarah Miller, his old girlfriend? "A PR move that involves my daughter serving drinks at her own birthday party?" I seethed. "Put Lily on the phone now!" The line went dead. A text from Lily' s friend confirmed my worst fears: "They' re treating Lily like a servant. Tiffany and her mom moved in. They told everyone Lily is an illegitimate child and that you abandoned her. Mark is letting it happen." Moved in. Illegitimate child. Abandoned. The lies were a physical blow. My daughter, small and broken, flashed in my mind. Mark wasn't just having an affair; he was erasing my daughter. Erasing me. I slammed my laptop shut. Grabbed my purse and passport. There would be no more calls. No more texts. I was going home. And I was going to burn their world to the ground.

My marriage to David Miller was a picture of perfection, a dream life built on his charm and our shared happiness. Then came the call: my mother in an accident, and David, my husband, utterly unreachable. Hours bled into sterile dread in the hospital waiting room, a dread far deeper than my mother' s condition. An unknown text arrived, a single photo: David, arm around another woman, intimate, familiar. It was my aunt, Sophia Hayes, my mother' s estranged sister, her smile painfully like mine. My world, once perfect, splintered into a million icy shards under the humming hospital lights. He returned late, weaving slick lies about dead phones and urgent meetings, as if I were a child to be placated. But as he signed the papers I put before him, oblivious, a chilling sense of irony settled heavy in my gut. The man I thought I knew, the husband who murmured of naming our child "Sophia," was a stranger. I found his study, not an office, but a shrine to her, filled with desperate letters and a diary detailing his monstrous plan: I was just a "perfect-looking replacement" to bear "his Sophia." The love, the marriage, the baby-all a grotesque fabrication, designed to resurrect his lost obsession. The pain threatened to split me, but beneath it, a cold, hard resolve began to form, sharper than any grief. He thought he' d signed investment papers; he' d signed his divorce, and my consent to end the lie he' d so carefully constructed within me. I walked out that night, leaving his diary open, his delusion exposed, ready to erase every trace of his monstrous fantasy.

I' ve always known what animals were thinking. It' s a secret I keep, even from my boyfriend. So when my best friend, Chloe, invited me to her cutting-edge Primate Cognition Center, I agreed, expecting just another odd day of animal thoughts. Then I met Brutus. A massive gorilla housed behind thick glass, his thoughts weren't mere animalistic grunts. They were clear, chilling: "Her skin. So smooth. I want it. Tonight. I' ll take it tonight." Hours later, Brutus escaped, his tracker leading straight to my apartment building. Mark was working late, and I was alone. Chloe' s police deputy brother, David, rushed to help. I heard his muffled struggle outside my door, followed by Brutus' s casual thought: "He was strong. Good fight." Then, Brutus used David' s dead body to knock on my door, a gruesome puppet. When Mark called, saying he was coming home, I warned him, but he disconnected. His last terrified thoughts flooded my mind as Brutus ambushed him in the garage. Mark was gone. Brutus was gone. But then "Mark" called me. His voice was off. His behavior was wrong, serving me food I' m deadly allergic to. A horrific truth clicked: Brutus wore Mark' s skin as a grotesque disguise – a calculated revenge against my mother, who had experimented on him. My presence was now the target of his cruel, human-like rage. Chloe arrived at our apartment, yet "Mark" lied about her being late. My gut screamed. I found Chloe on the balcony, bound and gagged. Her terrified plea, once free: "It' s not Mark! It' s Brutus! He' s wearing his skin!" Everything clicked. With a kitchen knife glimmering in "Mark's" hand, it was time to fight for my life.

My mom is pressuring me to go on blind dates. On a whim, I grabbed a handsome guy off the street to pretend to be my boyfriend. After taking advantage of him, I dumped him. Two years later, the interviewer turns out to be my ex-boyfriend whom I had abandoned. His face darkens. "Kaelyn, right? How long did your last boyfriend last?" "Less than a month before you dumped him? Your loyalty is questionable." "A girl like you isn't suitable for our company." But he broke down when he found out I got married. The day after the interview was a bust, he was waiting at my doorstep, holding a child. He smiled and asked, "Married? Where's your husband?"

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 marriage to Joshua Caldwell was a prison sentence. I was a Hartman trophy, sold to the powerful family who had destroyed mine. Then I discovered he was cheating. His mistress was pregnant with the child he denied me, and he was stealing my secret song lyrics to build her career. When I confronted him, he called me a spineless liability and threatened to destroy what was left of my family. To make matters worse, a one-night stand with a stranger turned out to be with my husband's brother, Anthony Caldwell-the Don of the city. He knew all of Joshua's secrets and used them to trap me in a twisted game, seeing me as nothing more than an asset. They both thought I was a broken doll they could control. I wrote a song for his mistress, a beautiful execution with a single, impossible note I knew would destroy her voice. She sang it, and now her career is over. Now the Don has summoned me to Chicago, not knowing the woman he thinks is his asset is the one who just burned his brother's world to the ground.

At my boyfriend's poorest moment, I suddenly broke up with him. Later, he became a Don in the Mafia and married me by any means necessary. Everyone said he loved me to the bone. But every night, he brought different women home, deliberately trying to provoke me. I asked no questions, shed no tears, and never disturbed his trysts with his mistresses. He went crazy with rage instead, kissing me fiercely and demanding, "Why aren't you jealous?" He didn't know I was sick. Dying. While he was furiously taking his revenge on me, I was slowly walking toward death.

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.

When Jimena, a young single mother with a dark past and a violent ex she's desperate to forget, crosses paths with Alessio Fanucci, a dangerous mafia heir, her world is turned upside down. All she wanted was to get by working as a maid at the Fanucci mansion and to keep her distance from the three infamous Fanucci brothers as much as possible. Things take a turn when the oldest brother and heir, Alessio, breaks off his arranged engagement with his ex and urgently needs a new one. Alessio, cold, ruthless, dominant, and not someone anyone talks back to, sees the quiet Jimena as nothing more than his pawn. Meanwhile, she sees Alessio as nothing more than another monster she needs to escape. As they spend more time together, the lines between fake and reality begin to blur, and they discover they have more in common than they initially thought. Tensions rise when Jimena's ex returns, threatening her new comfortable life and the secrets she’s been withholding. He is out for revenge and is determined to go to any length for it, even if that means forming an alliance with the Fanuccis' enemy, who happens to be the family of Alessio’s ex. With a war, untold truths, and feelings at stake, will Jimena’s newly formed bonds keep standing, or will everything around her crumble?

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.

My adoptive family, the Castillos, treated their biological children like royalty, but used me as a disposable pawn. To secure a mafia alliance, they forced me to take my beautiful sister's place and marry Don Damien Moretti, a man rumored to be a ruthless, bloodthirsty monster. They thought they were sending me to my execution. At our engagement banquet, my mother and sister deliberately gifted me a cheap, counterfeit gown to humiliate me in front of New York's elite. When I publicly exposed their lie, my father demanded I apologize. My mother even raised her hand to slap me in front of everyone. "You are a vicious curse! You ruin everything!" They eagerly waited for the Don to execute me on the spot for embarrassing them. I had spent years secretly saving their company from bankruptcy and supplying the underground experimental drugs that kept my brother's mafia career alive. Yet, they threw me to the wolves without a second thought, disgusted by my very existence. But they didn't know that just an hour before the banquet, I had saved a bleeding, masked stranger in a dark alley-who turned out to be Damien Moretti himself.

I spent three years hating Damien Castillo, the ruthless mafia Don who kidnapped me from my engagement party and ruined my reputation. But in the end, it was my perfect fiancé, Julian, and my sweet half-sister, Sophia, who slipped the deadly poison into my wine. As the venom burned through my veins in that freezing cellar, I watched Julian smile. He and Sophia had orchestrated my brutal death. She had been sleeping in his bed all along, intentionally miscarrying his bastard child just to frame me as 'impure' and strip me of my family's protection. My own father used me as a political pawn, letting them throw me away like garbage. And Damien? The monster I had fought and despised for years marched straight into a suicide ambush for me. He was riddled with bullets, turning his body into a human shield just to buy me a few more seconds of life. "Touch her and you die." I died in that blood-soaked basement, clutching his lifeless body, suffocating on my own blind trust. Why did I ever believe the golden boy who betrayed me? Why did I fight the only man who truly loved me? Opening my eyes again, the stench of copper and mold was gone, replaced by the scent of Cuban cigars and black silk. I was back in 1928, on the exact night Damien stormed my engagement party and locked me in his penthouse. This time, when the ruthless Don approached me, I didn't scream or run back to my killers. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him.

The space between them disappeared. She arched into him, tilting her head as his lips traced a slow path down her jaw, then lower. Goodness, she wanted more. *** Valentina De Luca was never meant to be a Caruso bride. That was her sister's role-until Alecia ran off with her fiancé, leaving behind a family drowning in debt and a deal that couldn't be undone. Now, Valentina is the one offered up as collateral, forced into marriage with Naples' most dangerous man. Luca Caruso has no use for a woman who wasn't part of the original bargain. To him, Valentina is nothing more than a replacement, a means to reclaim what was promised to him. But she isn't as fragile as she seems. And the more their lives tangle, the harder she is to ignore. Everything begins to go well for her, well, until her sister returns. And with her, the kind of trouble that could ruin them all.

I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair. They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves. Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment. But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger. In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all.