Elisha Plasket

He called me his wild rose, the foster kid he rescued from the streets. He built me a gilded cage and told me it was love. Then I saw the text: my best friend, Karis, showing off the engagement ring he' d just given her. I rushed to his office, only to overhear the truth. I was just a "placeholder," a "stray he picked up," a useful toy to keep his family happy while he planned his real future with her. He laughed about how easily he could control me. "A little gaslighting, a few well-placed gifts, and she'll be back where she belongs. Under my thumb." His final act of love? Drugging me and handing me over to a monster, sacrificing me as a "body double" to protect his precious Karis. He thought I was just a broken foster kid with nowhere to go. He thought he could erase me. He was wrong. As the private jet he put me on exploded over the ocean, I was already gone-saved by the powerful family I never knew I had. Now, I'm coming back, and they will pay for every single lie.

I sat at the head of the mahogany table, the heavy heirloom emeralds around my neck marking me as the future Queen of the Cosa Nostra. But the man beside me—Jax Viles, the most feared Don in New York—had his hand resting possessively on the thigh of the woman sitting to his right. She wasn't his fiancée. I was. The humiliation didn't stop at dinner. Jax moved her into my home, turned my dance studio into her closet, and when she pushed me down a flight of stairs, he stepped over my broken body to comfort her because she was "shaken up." He started a bloody gang war just to defend her honor, yet ignored my desperate calls warning him of an ambush. To him, I wasn't a partner. I was furniture—a fixture that was expected to be silent and useful. He would burn the world to ash for her, but for me, he wouldn't even skip a meeting. So, while he was out celebrating his victory for her, I didn't wait for him to come home. I left the engagement ring in the trash can next to the toilet. On his desk, I left a single note: "I release you from the oath. I hope she's worth the war." By the time he realized his mistake and came looking for his shadow, I was already gone, ready to become the Queen of my own life.

He always called me his little bird. For six years, since my parents died in that tragic fire, my uncle Michael Davies was my world. He promised to protect me, to give me a gilded cage where I could feel safe. But on the eve of my 18th birthday, that gilded cage became a prison. I overheard him in his study, a phone call that shattered my entire existence. He was talking to Emily White, his ex-fiancée, the woman he truly loved. And in that chilling conversation, I learned the truth. My "savior" had orchestrated a monstrous plan: he was going to auction me off at my own birthday party. And Emily, the woman he swore he loved, revealed she was the one who set the fire that killed my parents. My uncle knew. He' d known all along. Every sweet word, every gentle touch, every act of supposed kindness was a lie designed to keep me a pawn in his twisted game of revenge. I was just a substitute, a cheap copy of the woman he truly desired. The pain was unbearable, a betrayal so profound it left me gasping for air. But the girl who loved Michael Davies died in that hallway. A new Sarah was born, cold, hard, and desperate to escape. I would not be his victim. I would not be their entertainment. I would survive this. My only escape was a desperate plea to his grandfather: arranging a marriage to a comatose man, miles away. It felt like a desolate choice, a sacrifice for freedom. But it was my only hope. I had to get out.

One month before my wedding, a text from an unknown number shattered my perfect world. It was a photo: Chloe' s hand, unmistakably, holding a positive pregnancy test, with a single, chilling line of text: "Congrats on being a dad. Or, stepdad, I guess. - Jake." My fiancée, Chloe, didn't deny it. She laughed, casually admitting she only agreed to marry me to make her ex-boyfriend, Jake, jealous. Every memory, every tender moment, twisted into a cruel performance. I stood there, surrounded by wedding invitations, realization dawning: I wasn' t a partner; I was a prop in her twisted game, about to become a convenient father for another man' s child. The woman I adored had meticulously built our future on a foundation of calculated lies. The betrayal was total, tearing through my very core. How could I have been so blind, so foolishly tethered to a ghost? The humiliation burned. I tore the wedding invitation in half and told her I was done, disappearing from her life. I packed my bags, leaving the broken pieces of my past behind, and headed to the farthest, coldest corner of the Earth: the Arctic, determined to freeze her out of my soul and rebuild a life she could never touch.

Havenwood, Maine, was a town owned by the Thorne family, but their ancient mansion held an even darker grip through a chilling tradition. Each new Thorne bride spent her wedding night alone in the windowless Founder's Study, a tradition that consistently ended in death, just like my sister Sarah's eight years ago. Police ruled Sarah's brutal throat-slitting a "suicide," a convenient lie swiftly followed by seven more inexplicable deaths of Julian Thorne's brides in the very same room. No one believed Sarah could do that, nor could the champion swimmer who supposedly drowned herself in a tiny basin, yet my father succumbed to the narrative, claiming we couldn't fight the powerful Thornes. But I refused to let it go, spending eight years mastering forensic psychology, and now I'm back in Havenwood, declaring to a stunned town and a resigned Julian: "I will be his ninth bride."

I sacrificed everything for her. My top-tier university scholarship, my architectural dreams, all to work for her father' s firm, playing the perfect, accommodating husband to Chloe for five long years. One Tuesday, curiosity led my hand to unlock an ornate wooden box on her vanity, a box she claimed held precious family heirlooms. Inside, there was no jewelry. Only a discreet urn and two receipts: one for a D&C procedure, the other for cremation. My blood ran cold when I saw the 'father' s name' wasn't mine. It was Leo, the musician she' d painted as a crazed stalker, the man I' d served a restraining order to protect her from. That restraining order, my very act of protection, wasn't a deterrent to their affair; it was the ultimate foreplay, according to a recording I later heard. Her family dismissed my pain, my father-in-law openly favored Leo, even hiring him to work alongside me. But the true breaking point came when Chloe watched, impassively, as I thrashed in a cold lake, struggling to breathe after she pushed me in. She walked away, leaving me to drown. The love I had for her didn't just die; it was extinguished, replaced by a chilling void. It wasn't about anger or sadness anymore, but an utter sense of betrayal that twisted my entire reality. And that's when the plan began to form. A cold, precise design to give them the "legacy" they truly deserved, on the biggest stage of all: the dedication ceremony of the skyscraper I designed.

It began innocently enough. My high school roommate, Jessica, needed a place to stay during a break, just as my older brother, David, was prepping for his SATs, his ticket to an Ivy League dream. My trusting parents welcomed her into our home. Then, the nightmare struck. A scream in the night. Jessica, teary-eyed, accused David of something unspeakable-a monstrous, venomous lie. That lie didn' t just stick; it decimated us. David's scores plunged, his dreams shattered, expelled from school. He found a dead-end job, then an accident claimed his life. Our parents, heartbroken, soon followed. And Jessica? She remained, a parasite feeding on our grief, playing the survivor while I simmered with impotent rage until everything ended in fire. The memory was a raw, bleeding wound-the profound injustice, the agony of watching my family crumble from a fabrication. Why did it have to end like that? Why couldn't I have seen through her sweet facade sooner? But then, I gasped awake, sunlight streaming through my familiar window. The calendar showed the exact date. Downstairs, I heard her voice: Jessica' s. I was back. This wasn't a dream. This was a second chance, a fierce, burning clarity-a chance to save David, my parents, and myself, and to dismantle Jessica' s wicked game, piece by deceitful piece.

The bright town fair turned dark when my ten-year-old daughter Lily, clutching her voice recorder, was tormented by Brandon, my ex-husband' s girlfriend' s son. When he shoved her, my defensive slap echoed, breaking my world. That protective act was instantly weaponized by Mark' s manipulative partner, Victoria. Convinced I was "unhinged," my ex-husband Mark swiftly sent us to "Tranquil Pathways Youth Academy" -a grim place, more prison than therapy. Inside, I was systematically drugged, shamed, and isolated. They promised Lily' s well-being hinged on my "compliance" while she vanished into a "specialized unit." To Mark, I was painted as psychotic, my desperate pleas dismissed, yet my mother's intuition screamed betrayal. The injustice and helplessness maddened me. My ex-husband had abandoned us, believing their lies. Lily was gone, somewhere in those cold walls, and I was being stripped of my mind, consumed by fear for her. Months later, Mark arrived, finally doubting. Through my drugged stupor, chilling clarity led him to a hidden floorboard in my desolate room. There, beside Lily' s lifeless body, was her cherished recorder-holding the undeniable truth, and igniting a cold, unyielding vengeance within me.

Richard is only a year older than me, but he has always used his status as my older brother to pressure me. When we were kids, he would scold me for skipping class, and as we grew up, he would still interfere in my love life. My friends joked, "Your brother can't possibly like you, right? You two aren't even real siblings." Since then, I deliberately distanced myself from him, but during the New Year, he suddenly brought home a girl. "Tricia, call her sister-in-law." That night, I locked myself in my room and cried uncontrollably. He pulled me out from under the covers and gently wiped away my tears. "You're allowed to make me mad by dating a boyfriend, but I can't be upset with you?"

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 was the "Caged Canary" of the underworld, a biological asset designed to merge two crime families. My fiancé, Bryant Barnes, didn't love me. He loved the power I brought, and he loved his mistress, Kalia. The night Kalia broke into my penthouse and stomped on my hand, crushing the bones and my fashion career, Bryant didn't help me. He told the police she was my guest and warned me not to embarrass him with a cast. That was just the beginning. When Kalia lied about feeling unsafe, Bryant dangled me off a balcony. When she faked a kidnapping, he locked me in an industrial freezer for six hours until I turned blue. And when I fell into the marina, he swam right past me to save her, leaving me to drown in the freezing water. He destroyed my body and my dignity for a woman who was stealing my designs and faking a pregnancy. He thought I was just a broken obligation he could discard. But he made a fatal mistake. He didn't make sure I was dead. I dragged myself out of the water and made a call to his greatest rival. On the night of our grand merger, I walked onto the stage wearing royal blue instead of white. I rolled up my sleeve to reveal the scars he gave me, looked him dead in the eye, and grabbed the microphone. "I hereby terminate my engagement to Bryant Barnes. And I am proud to announce my betrothal to the true King of this city."

One casual visit to her father's study; an unplanned collision with the malevolent Russian Bratva mafia boss plunged her life into a downward spiral. Forced to marry him for an alliance that bordered on keeping her family's business stronger, she had no choice but to accept her fate after an unsuccessful attempt at absconding right before the wedding. But with each new discovery about him, she realized that the masked husband she despised so much had several layers that tugged at her heartstrings, giving her no choice but to fall deeply for him. However, what happens when the dreary and dark secrets from his past resurfaces and threatens to disrupt not just their blooming relationship and his position as Capo, but their existence as well?

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."

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.

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

For seven years, I served as the eyes for Dante Vitiello, the blind Capo of New York. I pulled him back from the edge of madness, tending to his wounds and warming his bed when everyone else had given up on him. But the moment his vision returned, the years of devotion turned to ash. In a single phone call, he decided to marry Sofia Moretti for territory, dismissing me as just "the maid's daughter" and a "comfort" he intended to keep as a mistress. He forced me to watch him court her. At a gala, when a chaotic accident caused a tower of champagne glasses to shatter, Dante threw his body over Sofia to protect her. He left me standing there, bleeding from the glass shards, while he carried her away like she was porcelain. He didn't even look back at the woman who had saved his life. I realized then that I had worshipped a broken god. I had given him my dignity, only for him to treat me like a disposable bandage now that he was whole. He arrogantly believed I would stay in the penthouse, grateful for his scraps. So, while he was out celebrating his engagement, I met with his mother. I signed the severance agreement for fifty million dollars. I packed my bags, wiped my phone, and boarded a one-way flight to Australia. By the time Dante came home to an empty bed, realized his mistake, and began tearing the city apart to find me, I was already a ghost.

I stood outside my husband's study, the perfect mafia wife, only to hear him mocking me as an "ice sculpture" while he entertained his mistress, Aria. But the betrayal went deeper than infidelity. A week later, my saddle snapped mid-jump, leaving me with a shattered leg. Lying in the hospital bed, I overheard the conversation that killed the last of my love. My husband, Alessandro, knew Aria had sabotaged my gear. He knew she could have killed me. Yet, he told his men to let it go. He called my near-death experience a "lesson" because I had bruised his mistress's ego. He humiliated me publicly, freezing my accounts to buy family heirlooms for her. He stood by while she threatened to leak our private tapes to the press. He destroyed my dignity to play the hero for a woman he thought was a helpless orphan. He had no idea she was a fraud. He didn't know I had installed micro-cameras throughout the estate while he was busy pampering her. He didn't know I had hours of footage showing his "innocent" Aria sleeping with his guards, his rivals, and even his staff, laughing about how easy he was to manipulate. At the annual charity gala, in front of the entire crime family, Alessandro demanded I apologize to her. I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I simply connected my drive to the main projector and pressed play.

On our fifth anniversary, my husband slid a black velvet box across the table. Inside wasn't a diamond ring, but a fountain pen. "Sign the separation papers, Aurora," Ethan said. "Ilene is spiraling again. She needs to see we are over." I was the wife of the Mafia Underboss, yet I was being discarded for the Family Ward. Before I could answer, Ilene stormed into the restaurant. She shrieked that I was still wearing his ring and threw a bowl of boiling lobster bisque directly at my chest. As my skin blistered and peeled, Ethan didn't rush to me. He hugged her. "It's okay," he soothed the woman who had just assaulted me. "I've got you." The betrayal didn't stop there. When Ilene pushed me down the stairs days later, Ethan erased the security footage to protect her from the police. When I was kidnapped by his enemies, I called his emergency line—the one meant for life-or-death situations. He declined the call. He was too busy holding Ilene's hand to save his wife. That was the moment the chain broke. As the kidnapper's van sped onto the highway, I didn't wait for a rescue that would never come. I opened the door and jumped into the dark. Everyone thought Aurora Bruce died on that pavement. Two years later, Ethan stood outside a gallery in Paris, looking at the woman he had destroyed, finally realizing he had protected the wrong one.

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.*