Eileen

Seven years ago, my fiancé, Don Dante Moretti, sent me to prison to take the fall for my adopted sister, Chiara. He called it a gift—a way to protect me from a worse fate. Today, he picked me up from prison only to abandon me at my family's estate. His reason? Chiara was having another one of her "episodes." My parents then informed me I'd be staying in the third-floor storage room, so as not to disturb the fragile girl who stole my life. They celebrated her "recovery" with a lavish dinner party, while I was treated like a ghost. When I refused to join, my mother hissed that I was ungrateful, and my father called me jealous. They assumed I couldn't understand their venomous whispers. But prison was my university. I learned Spanish. I understood every word. It was then I realized I wasn't just a sacrifice; I was disposable. The love I once felt for all of them had turned to ash. That night, in the dusty storage room, I logged onto an encrypted channel I'd set up years ago. A single message was waiting: "The offer stands. Do you accept?" My hands, scarred and steady, typed back, "I accept."

I was the wife of Brennan Johnson, the head of the Sterling Syndicate. For years, I was the perfect partner, helping him climb from a young enforcer to the undisputed boss, believing he was the man who had once saved my life and promised to protect me forever. That illusion shattered when I overheard him promising that same protection to a young art student he was sleeping with. When I confronted him, he called me tainted and complicated. When I asked for a divorce, he cut my cheek with shattered glass and snarled that I belonged to him. He publicly gave my foundation and a necklace meant for me to his mistress, declaring her his "one and only" in front of the entire city. The ultimate betrayal came when we were both kidnapped. The kidnappers held a knife to each of our throats and told him to choose. He looked at me, his wife, and said, "I choose her." He abandoned me to be assaulted and killed, walking away with his new love without a backward glance. But I didn't die. An old family loyalist saved me. I faked my death, escaped the country, and built a new life from the ashes of the old one. I was finally free. Until tonight, when he walked into my restaurant, a ghost from a life I had buried. He found me. And he wants me back.

My seven-year marriage to the heir Kobe Kidd began as a contract. I was the respectable placeholder wife he needed. In exchange, I got the stability I'd craved my whole life. I kept my side of the bargain perfectly, except for one mistake: I fell in love with him. Then, his first love, Felicie, came back into the picture. Suddenly, I wasn't a wife; I was an obstacle. After our car crashed, he scrambled to save an unconscious Felicie from the wreckage, leaving me trapped inside the smoking vehicle without a second glance. I survived the explosion, only to face something worse. When Felicie was stabbed by her own violent ex after using me as a human shield, she told Kobe I’d hired the man to kill her. He believed her instantly. He didn't check the cameras. He didn't ask me a single question. He just looked at me with pure, undiluted hatred and had me thrown into the mansion's cold, dark basement. I was locked away for days, screaming for a man who had already left me to burn. I finally understood. It didn’t matter what the truth was. I wasn't her, and that was the only crime that mattered. So I finalized our divorce, walked away without looking back, and started a new life. But months later, he found me. He showed up in my small café an ocean away, his eyes full of regret, begging for a second chance. He said he finally knew the truth. He said he loved me.

"Ava, are you sure about this? The Venice project is a huge commitment. Two years is a long time." My boss asked, as I looked out my office window at the New York skyline, a view I'd worked my whole life to earn. "I'm sure, Mark. I've made up my mind." That's when he casually asked if my wedding to Ethan Hayes was on hold. "No," I said, "There is no wedding." The truth was, my fingers, slick with blood, were fumbling to open Ethan's laptop, hoping to find answers. Instead, I found a folder labeled "C," filled with thousands of photos of Chloe Davis, his high school sweetheart. There wasn't a single folder for me. I searched for photos of us and found a mere handful from a company party two years ago. For eight years, I'd made excuses for him, believing his charming lies. The excuses I'd built, the little walls around my heart, all came crashing down. That wasn't the worst of it. On his social media, Ethan had just posted: "The whale is back in the ocean." Chloe was his Moby Dick, his obsessive pursuit, and she was back. He had used our engagement, our wedding, to win her back. I was a prop in his twisted play. Then, Mark, Ethan's best friend, called, saying Ethan was a mess at The Black Rose. And Chloe was there. I arrived to see Ethan with his arm draped around Chloe, whispering in her ear. "She's not my fiancée!" he slurred, "I'm not marrying anyone." He never really wanted to claim me. I was just a placeholder until the real thing came along. He didn't love me. He never had. My eight-year gamble had failed. I had put all my chips on him, and I had lost everything. The relationship was over. It had been over for a long time; I was just the last one to know. I cancelled the wedding and flew to Venice. But he followed, a ghost from my past, still trying to control me. He even lied, claiming Chloe was faking her illnesses for attention. Then, in a car crash, I fumbled for my phone, desperate for help, and called him. My call went straight to voicemail. I survived, but he wasn't there. When he finally showed up, he apologized, claiming Chloe had a panic attack. "Chloe. Always Chloe." I realized I had made a terrible mistake, relying on him. "We're over, Ethan," I whispered, "This has to stop." I had to put an end to it, once and for all.

For fifteen years, my wife Sarah' s complaints were the soundtrack of my life. "Eight thousand dollars," she' d whine, always about the paltry dowry my mother gave us. It was a constant, low-level hum, punctuated by her rants about her cousin Jessica' s lavish gifts and exotic vacations. Tonight, after a call with Jessica, it escalated. "Hawaii again," she fumed, eyes burning with a strange, calculating fire. Then, the unthinkable: "What if we get divorced?" A fake divorce, she clarified, a scheme to extort money from my mother. She envisioned millions, and my mother' s precious jewelry. I stared at her, stunned by the audacity, the naked greed. My phone buzzed. A text from my boss: `$3 million bonus. Wire transfer tomorrow.` A strange calm washed over me. The words silenced Sarah' s relentless complaining, the past fifteen years of bitterness. I looked at her, truly looked at her, and a plan of my own began to form. This wasn' t just about the money anymore. It was about quiet, about peace, about freedom. "Okay," I said, my voice steady, surprising even myself. "Let' s do it." Her triumphant grin missed the cold resolve settling deep in my gut. This wasn' t her fake divorce. It was my real one.

The blue and red lights flashed, and the wail of the siren cut through the Nashville night. My husband, Ethan, stood over me, his face a mask of concern, but his eyes were cold as he painted me a dangerous, jealous woman. The police officer' s notepad was out, a white sheet covered something on the road, and my vintage Mustang was mangled. "No," I whispered, "I wasn't driving. Sabrina was." But Ethan smiled, whispering a chilling confession: "You're pregnant, you see. You get... confused." He twisted my pain into a weapon, using my own history against me, and I was thrown into a nightmare of accusations. My biological parents, the Clarks, disowned me, my "sister" Sabrina watched with a triumphant smirk, and soon I was signing a confession, my only hope to save my unborn child from the ordeal of a trial. I ended up in prison, losing everything-my freedom, my reputation, my child. Every day was a fight, and my only solace was writing songs, pouring my betrayal and injustice onto paper. I even built a fragile connection with a music blogger, a lifeline in my despair. Yet, after my early release, when I returned home, I found Ethan and Sabrina celebrating, living the life I'd lost. Then came the ultimate betrayal: Sabrina abusing Melody, the sight igniting a forgotten fury. And just when I clawed my way back, building a tentative connection with my estranged daughter, Ethan, the man who claimed to love me, orchestrated the theft of my life's work-my entire album, proudly debuted by Sabrina. He wanted me broken, dependent, stripped of everything. Why would he push me to this absolute edge? What dark twisted game was he truly playing? One thing became brutally clear: I wouldn't just survive; I would fight back, not for answers to his madness, but to burn his world down and reclaim my daughter, my music, and my name.

Reckless playboy Alex Sterling was back in New York, straight from his Alaska 'sabbatical,' finally ready to claim his inheritance: his grandfather's multi-billion dollar tech empire. But my greedy parents, Richard and Victoria, along with my plotting half-brothers, Marcus and Leo, were already circling like sharks, eyeing Sterling Innovations for themselves. They wasted no time. At dinner, they openly challenged my competence, a performative prelude. Then came the emergency board meeting, where they tried to oust me as 'unfit,' propped up by bribed board members and even a seemingly damning testimony from brilliant engineer Chloe Davis, whom my father had pressured. It looked like a clear victory for them. Everyone bought their narrative: the unstable playboy heir, easily removed. But they knew nothing of the deeper game; they didn't see the meticulously gathered evidence I held, or their own years of hidden treachery. Their attempt to commit me to a 'wellness retreat' was the final straw, and the ultimate bait. What they thought was their triumph was actually a meticulously planned trap. Now, it was time to reveal who the true puppet master was, expose their attempted murders, and the dark secrets they'd kept hidden for decades.

My husband, Mark, was always busy building his AI car startup, NovaDrive. As an engineer sidelined by an accident, I clung to the hope that our upcoming tenth anniversary would bring him home, back to the man I married. But then, I found his work tablet. A message thread with "Sweetheart S." revealed not just a months-long affair, but secret plans for a romantic trip to Paris—a trip he told me was a crucial business meeting. His mistress, a woman named Sophia, then brazenly sought me out, revealing she was pregnant with Mark's child and scoffing that my accident had made things "complicated." Meanwhile, Mark was systematically stripping me of everything—our joint assets funneled into offshore accounts, my precious family heirlooms stolen from a safe deposit box and gifted to Sophia. He even called me a "liability." The pain wasn't just the affair; it was the calculated cruelty, the meticulous betrayal I'd endured while he painted me as the clinging wife. How could the man who held my hand in the ER become someone who wanted to erase me completely, leaving me with nothing? Just when I thought I was utterly alone, broken and financially ruined, a desperate Sophia arrived at my door. She’d finally seen Mark for the cold, manipulative user he was. Now, we're forging an unlikely alliance, ready to bet that two wronged women can bring down an empire built on lies.

My husband was abusive towards me, so I called the police. My mother-in-law said that every couple fights. Really? Later, her son was almost unable to take care of himself due to the abuse. My father-in-law and mother-in-law quickly stepped in to mediate, but I retorted with the fact that not every couple fights.

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.

I was the Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me. But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest. The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me. They didn't. Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her. They let me burn to keep her warm. When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages. That was the moment Elena Vitiello died. I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York. By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring. "You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them. "Burn for it."

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.

MAFIA RUTHLESS: BOOK ONE ************* ************ *********** The devil's captive became his heart's keeper. *************** *********** *********** Revenge! The only thing the strong ,powerful and ruthless mafia don Alessandro Moretti has harboured for years. When he discovers the identity of his mother's killer,he doesn't go after the man alone. He wants everything belonging to Giovanni Conti burnt to the ground,including his most valuable possession-his daughter. Auctioned off by her uncle to the highest bidder,Isabelle Conti's fate is sealed. Not until masked gunmen crash her wedding,and she wakes up in the don's den. She becomes his captive. His obsession...His willing prey. His weapon of vengeance. Isabelle Conti turns out to be different from the others,this time around she doesn't want his affection...she needs his downfall. And when she finally has him where she wants him and she's torn between her feelings and surrendering to the ruthless don. One question threatens to destroy everything, Have you ever loved me?

For four years, I traced the bullet scar on Chace’s chest, believing it was proof he would bleed to keep me safe. On our anniversary, he told me to wear white because "tonight changes everything." I walked into the gala thinking I was getting a ring. Instead, I stood frozen in the center of the ballroom, drowning in silk, watching him slide his mother's sapphire onto another woman's finger. Karyn Warren. The daughter of a rival family. When I begged him with my eyes to claim me, to save me from the public humiliation, he didn't flinch. He just leaned toward his Underboss, his voice amplified by the silence. "Karyn is for power. Ember is for pleasure. Don't confuse the assets." My heart didn't just break; it incinerated. He expected me to stay as his mistress, threatening to dig up my dead mother’s grave if I refused to play the obedient pet. He thought I was trapped. He thought I had nowhere to go because of my father’s massive gambling debts. He was wrong. With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and texted the one name I was never supposed to use. Keith Mosley. The Don. The monster under Chace's bed. *I am invoking the Blood Oath. My father’s debt. I am ready to pay it.* His reply came three seconds later, buzzing against my palm like a warning. *The price is marriage. You belong to me. Yes or No?* I looked up at Chace, who was laughing with his new fiancée, thinking he owned me. I looked down and typed three letters. *Yes.*

"Don't die on me, Tom, I can't lose you for the second time. It will ruin me." Vivienne said desperately, holding his sweaty face in her hands. Tom hid his pain and smiled up at her. "There are too many filthy fantasies of you and I in my head that I'm yet to carry out. I won't forgive myself if I die, Vee." She couldn't look away... ~ For Eight years, Vivienne lost her light after the death of her teenage lover, Tristan Bennett. Forced to engage his cruel stepbrother based on based on family's agreement, she made the decision to flee on their wedding day. Now, hidden in a city where no one knows her name, she sort for a new job only for her to discover that her new billionaire boss was her lover who died eight years ago. He doesn't remember her. He bears another name. And he has another woman now? Not any ordinary woman-A dangerous mafia lord's daughter who happens to be obsessed with him. But Tristan, now known as Tom in his new mafia world wants to bail out, and he needs a contract marriage with a new woman to leave his obsessive girlfriend. Vivienne agreed to the marriage contract with every intention to help him get back his past memories. But what happens when all circumstances surrounding them threatens to sabotage her efforts? Tom's cruel stepbrother who wanted Vivienne than breath itself-His Mafia boss, and his obsessive girlfriend. Vivienne must risk danger and death to be with her lover again. But some problems are far too complicated with many secrets to solve, and Vivienne is about to find out.

I went to the family lawyer for a routine travel clearance. Instead, I was handed a divorce decree. The ink was three years old. While I had been playing the role of the dutiful Capo's wife, Dante had secretly divorced me the day after our fifth anniversary. Twenty-four hours later, he legally married the nanny, Gia, and named her cruel-eyed son as his heir. I returned home to confront him, only for the boy to throw boiling tomato soup on me. Dante didn't check my burns. He cradled the boy and looked at me with pure, drug-fueled hatred, calling me a monster for upsetting his "son." The final blow came in a parking garage. A car sped toward us. Dante didn't pull me to safety. He shoved me into the vehicle's path, using my body as a human shield to protect his mistress. Lying broken on the asphalt, I realized Aria Vitiello was already dead to him. So, I decided to make it official. I arranged a private flight over the Atlantic and ensured there were no survivors. By the time Dante was weeping over the wreckage, realizing too late that he had been poisoned against me, I was already in France. The Canary was dead. The Reaper had risen.

I replaced my twin sister in a marriage contract to the ruthless Mafia Don, Donovan Blackwood. For three years, I was a ghost in his home, silently enduring his coldness while he flaunted his mistress, Chloe. On the very last day of our contract, Chloe staged an accident. Donovan didn't hesitate. He forced me to drain my blood to save her life. Then, to prove his loyalty to her, he drove me to the cliffs and pushed me into the freezing ocean. He even locked me in a cellar infested with spiders—my deepest phobia—because she lied and said I threatened her. He thought he was punishing the spoiled, arrogant Isabella. He didn't know he was breaking Ava, the woman who had silently memorized his allergies and waited up for him in the dark every single night. When I finally took my fifty million dollars and vanished, I left behind nothing but the divorce papers and a photo revealing the truth. He tore the city apart, destroying my family to find me, only to realize he had tortured the wrong woman. Now, he is standing on my porch in the pouring rain, staring in horror at the simple wooden ring on my finger given to me by another man. He falls to his knees, begging for a chance to love the wife he tried to destroy. I look at him, feeling absolutely nothing. "It's too late, Donovan," I say, locking the door. "You killed her."

My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent. But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress. Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes. "If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you." To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife. When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala. He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent. He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters. He thought he had broken me. He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage. But he made a fatal error. He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign. They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me. And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck. I didn't jump to die. I jumped to be reborn. And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin.