Janna Lemay

I was the daughter of a powerful Mafia Capo, but behind the grand estate doors, my parents treated me like a defective asset. My only comfort in this brutal world was a stray kitten named Tangerine. When my mother found out, she threw my kitten into a dumpster, and my father whipped my back with a heavy metal belt buckle for daring to shed a tear. I fled to the Syndicate Academy for sanctuary, only to find everyone staring at me in terror. My mother had weaponized our family's power. She broadcasted forged medical documents to the entire underworld, diagnosing me with severe schizophrenia and violent delusions. "She is completely detached from reality," my mother lied to the public. No one believed my bloody wounds, and the Academy ordered me to be sent back to my abusers to be locked away forever. I wasn't sick, I was just terrified of them. Why did a system built on "honor" protect monsters who gaslit their own blood and called it discipline? Stripped of all hope, I threw myself off the roof of the Academy to escape them. But my story didn't end when my broken body hit the cold cobblestones. Floating above my own corpse, I watched Dante, the most ruthless boss in the Syndicate, pick up my fractured phone. He uncovered the truth, rescued my surviving kitten, and turned his lethal gaze toward my parents. "I will protect your truth, even if I have to burn this whole city to the ground."

I was about to marry Dante, a ruthless New York Mafia boss. However, just three blocks away from the cathedral, his ex-wife sent a text message saying their son was coughing up blood. This was the third time, and Dante abandoned me at the altar once again, transferring a hundred million dollars to me as compensation instead. I accepted the money, but his ex-wife did not stop there. She moved into my home with her son, faked an illness, and tried to force me out. The last straw that broke me happened at the airport, when the little heir, instigated by his mother, viciously pushed me from behind. I fell hard onto the cold marble floor and lost the child I did not even know I was carrying. As I lay in a pool of my own blood, Dante's mother coldly gave an order over the phone: "The child is dead. You need to protect the living heir and Isabella's status." Dante looked at me, his face full of guilt, but eventually, he turned and walked away with them. To compensate for the child I lost, he threw a massive business empire at me, expecting me to continue waiting in the shadows while he enjoyed his family's bliss. I finally understood that in the face of his mafia bloodline, my loyalty meant absolutely nothing. With a steady hand, I signed the asset transfer documents and did not hesitate to liquidate all the properties he had given me. Then, I boarded a private cartel jet flying to Switzerland. This time, I am going to build an empire of my own!

For seven years, Jessie buried her elite quantum physics career to be Garrett's quiet, overlooked housewife and mother. She tolerated his emotional distance, sacrificed her dreams, and even survived major surgery entirely alone to keep his perfect family facade intact. Then an accidental call from a wedding planner exposed his lie. Her husband of seven years was marrying his young protegee, Brittnie Rivera, in a lavish vineyard wedding. Jessie watched her famously cold, reserved husband shower another woman with tender devotion—affection he had never once given his wife. His mother and his own six-year-old son openly adored the mistress, erasing Jessie's entire existence from the family. The worst betrayal came when Leo, her flesh and blood, stood to defend the other woman. "You're mean! I want Aunt Brittnie to be my new mom!" When Jessie confronted him, Garrett insisted the wedding was just a fake arrangement to protect his student. He blamed Jessie for ruining his plan, demanded she apologize, and threw out the cruel lie that she had trapped him into marriage. Seven years of silent devotion meant absolutely nothing to them. Jessie did not beg, cry, or break down. She slapped his arrogant, ungrateful face without hesitation. She walked away for good, filed for divorce, and reclaimed her throne—accepting the long-awaited Director position at her quantum research institute.

Hailey woke up naked in an unfamiliar hotel room, staring at the stranger beside her and a smear of dried blood on the sheets. She instantly realized she had been drugged and framed by her sweet-smiling stepsister, Isabelle. Before she could even process the horror, her father called, ordering her to get home immediately to be sold off. He was forcing her to marry a cruel, abusive billionaire twice her age just to save their failing company. Sneaking back into her own house, she overheard her stepmother and stepsister's true plot. "Once she's married off to that old creep, everything in the Lawson family will finally be ours." Desperate, Hailey rushed to her ex-fiancé for help, only to find Isabelle already sitting by his hospital bed. Her ex-fiancé, suffering from selective amnesia, looked at Hailey with absolute disgust. "Leave. Now. Stop harassing Isabelle and me." Betrayed by her blood relatives and abandoned by the man who once promised to protect her, Hailey's heart completely died. Why did she have to be the sacrificial lamb for the very monsters who ruined her life? With only one hour left before her father's men dragged her away, she made a desperate, crazy move. She posted an anonymous ad online for an immediate contract husband, and the stranger from the hotel actually took the job. Hours later, Hailey walked back into her family's mansion, slapped her fake-crying stepsister across the face, and slammed her new marriage certificate onto the coffee table. "As a married woman, I am legally unavailable for your little business arrangement."

Hope worked eighty-hour weeks on Wall Street, enduring daily humiliation from her boss just to be her mother's golden ticket out of poverty. But when a severe kidney infection left her bleeding and collapsing in the middle of a boardroom presentation, her boss didn't call an ambulance. He slammed his hand on the table, publicly accused her of popping pills like a junkie, and threw her out of the building. Dragging her agonizing, feverish body back home, Hope desperately needed a mother's comfort. Instead, the moment her mother heard she had lost her six-figure job, the woman's face contorted with pure rage. She didn't care that Hope's kidneys were failing; she grabbed a heavy glass ashtray and hurled it directly at Hope's head. "You threw away a six-figure job? You threw away our ticket out of this dump?!" The glass shattered against the wall, slicing Hope's bare leg open. For twenty-nine years, Hope had sacrificed her health, her dignity, and her sanity to be the perfect daughter. She didn't understand why her life was only worth the paycheck she brought home, or why her own mother would rather see her dead than unemployed. Looking at the blood dripping down her calf, the guilt that had chained her for a lifetime suddenly vanished. She pulled out her phone and hit send on a brutally honest resignation email to her toxic boss. Then, she opened a text from the intimidating, billionaire doctor who had treated her at the clinic—the only man who had ever told her she was a fighter. She packed her bags and walked out the door. This time, she was going to live for herself.

Bridget, a ruthless twenty-first-century Wall Street analyst, woke up violently coughing up murky lake water in a decaying 1978 slum. She quickly realized she was trapped in the body of a naive, marginalized teenager who had just committed suicide over a boy's cruel rejection. The original girl had been mercilessly bullied by a fake rich kid named Kurtis and his cruel followers. They had publicly read her desperate love letters out loud, mocking her as a toad trying to eat swan meat, and simply watched as she threw herself into the freezing water. Now, her impoverished mother was left weeping by the bed, facing catastrophic debt and total social ruin in their small town. Everyone expected the surviving girl to wake up begging and crying for the boy who humiliated her. Instead, a cold, calculating fury took over Bridget's analytical mind. "I already died in that lake. That stupid girl is never coming back." How could anyone throw their life away for a pathetic, vain clown wearing a mass-produced fifty-dollar watch? To Bridget, those uncollected love letters weren't symbols of teenage heartbreak. They were toxic assets. They were reputation landmines left out in the open that threatened her new family's survival. Locking away the dead girl's weak emotions, Bridget forced her freezing, exhausted body out of the clinic bed. She set a hard three-month deadline to drag this family out of tier-one poverty. But first, she was marching straight to the volunteer camp to liquidate those liabilities and completely destroy the people who drove this body to death.

I single-handedly saved my family's corporate empire from a hostile takeover, securing our market share for the next decade. But my grandfather didn't see me as a hero. He saw me as a flawed piece of inventory. To calm the board and fix the reputation I supposedly ruined, he forced me into an arranged marriage, auctioning me off to the highest bidder. Desperate, I turned to my childhood friend, Egnacio, the only person who ever promised to protect me. But instead of saving me, he publicly humiliated me. He used my desperation as a networking opportunity, pitching my arranged marriage as a business deal to a ruthless private equity king named Dexter Mathews. Later that night, I caught Egnacio holding my cruel cousin in his arms. "What man wants to be with a woman who looks at you like she's planning a hostile takeover?" Hearing him mock my pain shattered the last bit of hope I had. I realized I was never family to them. I was just a sharp knife, used to cut down their enemies and then traded for cash before I got dull. The heartbreak vanished, replaced by a cold, violent rage. I didn't break, and I didn't run. Instead, I got into the back of Dexter Mathews's car. He had watched my family tear me apart, but he didn't see a broken pawn. He saw a queen. And together, we were going to burn their entire empire to the ground.

I woke up in a silk-sheeted penthouse, the lingering warmth of my husband’s body still on the bed. But by the time the sun hit the floor-to-ceiling windows, Chadwick Dyer had already transitioned from the passionate lover of the night before into a cold corporate executioner. He didn't say "good morning." He placed a blue folder from his family’s elite legal counsel on the nightstand and told me his childhood sweetheart, Ansley, was back in town. Our three-year marriage was being terminated as a "strategic move" to ensure the stability of his family’s multi-billion dollar trust. He shoved a settlement check for millions into my bag, sneering that it was enough for me to live "happily ever after" with the man named Jay I supposedly called for in my sleep. I walked out with nothing but my old suitcase, returning to my hidden life as a master art conservator, only to be blackmailed back into his world forty-eight hours later. His grandfather threatened to ruin my career and my mother’s home unless I played the devoted wife for the cameras while Ansley staged a fake suicide attempt to reel Chadwick back in. Standing in a VIP hospital wing, I realized the sickening truth: I was never the lead in my own marriage. I was just the understudy, a working-class girl picked because I was a dead ringer for the blonde socialite he truly desired. I was a placeholder for a ghost, a cheap replica used to fill a void until the "real" version returned. "You can have him," I told her, finally seeing through the high-society rot. "He's hollow anyway." I walked away from the hospital and the Dyer legacy, ready to disappear for good. But as I sat in a taxi, a notification on my phone stopped my heart. The man I thought had drowned three years ago—the Jay who haunted my dreams and the only man I ever truly loved—wasn't a ghost at the bottom of the Atlantic. He was the heir to a rival empire, he was back in New York, and he was the only one powerful enough to burn the Dyer family to the ground.

My wedding day was ruined by a crazed woman named Isolde, who claimed my husband, Ezekiel, was her soulmate from a past life. Then, after a car accident, Ezekiel faked amnesia, siding with her and putting me through hell. He let Isolde murder my mother, forced me to face my deepest fears, and poisoned me in public. When I finally had Isolde arrested, Ezekiel's revenge was swift and brutal. He kidnapped me and, in a final act of cruelty, snapped the neck of my puppy, Muffin-the only comfort I had left. He thought he had broken me, that he had destroyed every last piece of my soul. He was wrong. He had just unleashed a monster. Now, from the shadows, I will dismantle his empire, ruin his life, and make him pay for every tear I shed. My revenge has just begun.

My son Leo's panicked cry ripped through our Queens apartment. He was seizing, turning blue, his little body rigid. I dropped everything, scooped him up, and raced to the hospital, only to be told the closest ambulance was twenty minutes away. My only hope was my sputtering ten-year-old sedan, a humiliating relic from before my real estate mogul husband, Franklin West, declared bankruptcy. But traffic was a nightmare, and a detour spat me out into Times Square, where hundred-dollar bills were fluttering from the sky. And there he was, Franklin West, on a rooftop stage, arms outstretched like a king, beside a young, beautiful, and very pregnant Janel Morales, his cruel real estate agent. My "bankrupt" husband was literally making it rain money, orchestrating an obscene publicity stunt. I called him, desperate. "Franklin, it's Leo! He's sick, he can't breathe. I'm stuck. I need you." He dismissed me, claiming he was hiding from creditors in a Jersey motel, then hung up, turning to kiss his mistress tenderly. He didn't love us. He was standing on a rooftop with his pregnant mistress, throwing away more money than I had seen in a year, while our son struggled for every breath. The rage and betrayal felt like acid in my stomach. How could he lie so brazenly, so monstrously, while our son was dying? How could he choose a public spectacle and a new family over his own child? A dam inside me broke. The love, the trust, the years I had dedicated to this man-it was all gone. He had made his choice. Now I had to save our son. Alone.

For twenty years, I, Sarah Miller, was the devoted wife, mother, and household manager, blindly enduring a marriage crumbling from unspoken resentments. Then, my husband, Mark, casually tossed out my expensive, medical-grade skincare to make room for his golf shoes, while my daughter, Emily, dismissed my distress with a sneer. That day, the dam holding back two decades of swallowed words burst, and I declared, "I want a divorce." They dismissed it as a "dramatic episode," then deliberately excluded me from their first-class seats on a celebratory trip I' d paid for-leaving me to sit alone in economy like a forgotten piece of luggage. My attempt to confront them only led to Mark threatening to have me removed by a flight attendant, followed by my mother-in-law, Brenda' s, veiled venom and physical assault, a constant reminder of their calculated cruelty. The final straw came when, after a seafood dinner they ordered despite my life-threatening allergy, Mark froze my credit card, leaving me stranded and penniless in a foreign country. How could these people, my own family, treat me with such utter contempt and disregard? In that moment of absolute abandonment, a cold fury solidified: I would not beg, I would not yield, and I would not be their victim any longer.

"You have stage four glioblastoma, Ethan. It's inoperable." The doctor' s words hit me like a physical blow, stripping the air from my lungs. Just hours earlier, I was on the brink of a breakthrough with my new social media algorithm, the one that would change everything for Harrison Tech. Now, everything had changed for me. Before I could even process the diagnosis, less than an hour later, I was brutally assaulted in an alley, my life's work ripped from my hands. My adoptive family, the Harrisons, treated my assault with cold indifference, preoccupied with celebrating their biological son, Noah, who was receiving an award-an award for my stolen algorithm. Then, the final betrayal: my girlfriend, Chloe, announced her engagement to Noah, a public display of affection with the very people who had just orchestrated my ruin. The business trip, the award, the assault-it all clicked into place, a sickening tableau of calculated cruelty. How could the family I had given everything to, the woman I loved, abandon me so completely, so callously? Why was my impending death met with such a chilling lack of empathy, traded instead for shallow ambition and a stolen legacy? With nothing left to lose, and perhaps only months to live, I resolved to cut all ties, walking out on the Harrisons and the life I thought was mine. But some betrayals run deeper than blood, and the final act of this twisted family drama was yet to play out.

I loved Andrew with every part of my being, my adoptive brother, the golden son of the Clark family. My world shattered when my whispered confession, "I love you," was met with his icy disgust and a chilling declaration: "You are my sister. That' s disgusting." He orchestrated my exile, marrying me off to Luis Martinez, a man rumored to be a dangerous cartel leader in Miami, deeming me a "stain" he had to "fix." Two peaceful years later, with Luis, I found a real home and unwavering love, even carrying his child-a life Andrew viciously tore apart in a bloody raid, telling me he had killed Luis "to save me." Why did he destroy everything I cherished, everything that finally made me happy, and why did he brand me a familial disease to be cured? Consumed by grief and a vengeance colder than Andrew' s betrayal, I will rise from the ashes of my ruined life to make him pay for every drop of blood he spilled.

I was barely surviving, cleaning sticky tables at the diner, praying my scholarship exam would be my ticket out of this dead-end town and away from my foster mom Maria' s mounting medical bills. Then, they walked in: the Parkers, my biological parents, followed by a girl my age who was sickeningly sweet, Ashley. They said they'd been looking for me, but that saccharine smile on Ashley's face was a lie. Suddenly, glowing text appeared in mid-air, a live stream comment: "[Ashley is so kind! Good thing she has the 'Luck-Siphon System' bound to the villain, or we wouldn' t have our perfect girl.]" My blood ran cold when another comment flashed, this one a chilling red: "[The foster mom is so tragic. Her eventual death in a house fire is an 'unfortunate accident' that the villain (Hailey) shouldn't blame Ashley for.]" Villain? House fire? My kind, hardworking Maria, just collateral damage in some twisted plot? This perfect girl, my "sister," was stealing my future, my talents, even my mother' s life, all for her own twisted glory. I was the villain in her story, the one destined to be stripped bare and then discarded. But if they wanted a villain, I would give them one far worse than they could ever imagine. I would move into their pristine mansion, get close to Ashley, and take back every single thing she had stolen from me. I decided right then: Hailey, the hardworking student, was gone. Now, only the villain remained, ready to dismantle their perfect world, piece by horrifying piece.

The steel door of the "behavioral correction facility" clanged shut, freeing me after five years of unspeakable torment. I returned to my grand New England mansion, my face a roadmap of scars, my body wracked by a terminal illness. Yet, my mother, Eleanor, and my wife, Olivia, greeted me not with solace, but with cold accusation, immediately blaming me for my younger brother Jake' s fabricated trauma. Olivia chillingly presented divorce papers, her eyes devoid of warmth, sneering that my hundred cuts were nothing compared to Jake' s supposed suffering. They dismissed my dying body as a manipulative ploy, my mother even admitting she orchestrated my brutal incarceration. I was a walking, disfigured ghost of a man, haunted by memories of forced drain cleaner and relentless beatings, yet they still saw only a deceitful monster. How could my own family abandon me to such horrors, actively participate in my torture, and then refuse to believe the undeniable evidence of their cruelty? The final humiliation came at Jake' s lavish birthday gala, where he forced me to publicly apologize. But then, a raw, hidden video from the facility, detailing my screams and brutal abuse, unexpectedly exploded onto the screens, momentarily shattering their facade. Jake' s desperate, manipulative accusations quickly re-blinded them, sealing my fate once more. With death approaching, I yearned only for escape from this family, whose belated remorse and desperate scramble for justice felt hollow and too late. But the truth, once glimpsed, had a way of fighting back.

Ethan Miller, a dedicated software developer, thought he had it all—a promising career, a secret five-year relationship with the vibrant Maya Rodriguez, and a future he was finally ready to embrace. His parents’ constant nudges about marriage were just background noise to the passionate, whirlwind romance he shared with Maya. But then, at a rooftop party, a casual overheard conversation shattered his world into a million pieces. He wasn't her beloved boyfriend; he was merely her "five-year intensive training program," her "driving school car," a disposable practice dummy for her "dream guy," Leo Vance. Every whispered promise, every intimate moment, twisted into a grotesque lie. Maya’s manipulative charm, her blatant disregard for his feelings, and her astonishing choice to prioritize Leo even during her own critical accident, laid bare the horrifying depth of her betrayal. Humiliated and heartbroken, Ethan felt like a pawn in someone else's cruel game. How could five years of his life be nothing more than an elaborate, cold-hearted charade? Was his unwavering love, his entire carefully constructed world, just a warm-up act for someone else’s main event? The pain was a raw, gaping wound; the humiliation, absolute. From the ashes of betrayal, a steely resolve ignited within him. Ethan cut all ties, sold everything he owned, and moved across the country, seeking a fresh start and a genuine connection. He found it in Olivia Chen, a woman who offered not drama, but true companionship and healing. Now, as he stands at the altar, unexpected chaos erupts, threatening the quiet happiness he’s finally built. Will he conclusively break free from his past, or will Maya’s final, desperate attempt drag him back into her toxic orbit?

I'd poured millions into Sophia Evans, transforming a waitress into a chic SoHo gallery owner. For four years, I funded her life, her mother's life-saving medical treatments, her brother's MIT education. All because she was the spitting image of Ava, my beloved fiancée, who died seven years ago in a sailing accident I still blame myself for. Our wedding, a high-society spectacle, was set for the next day. Then, I overheard the devastating truth: her childhood sweetheart, Jake, had threatened to jump from her gallery balcony if she married me. And Sophia? She agreed to publicly humiliate me, leaving me stranded at the altar, just to appease his fragile ego. My carefully constructed world, built on Ava's ghost, imploded. Later, at a charity gala, Jake crashed the event, screaming I'd stolen her; when I was knocked down in the chaos, Sophia rushed to *his* side, not mine. The betrayal was complete; she'd played me, using my grief and my money. I was done. I immediately cancelled the wedding, cut off every penny, and even aired her deceit to our stunned guests before escaping to Dublin to start fresh. But months later, after her mother passed away and I learned Jake was still venomously manipulating her, I did something utterly unexpected, something that even shocked myself. I offered Sophia a job in Dublin working directly for me.

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.

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

"What if I don't want to go home?" "Then come with me." That single decision changed my life forever. Never in my life have I ever experienced what it means to be loved, not even when my father was still around. But it all became worse after he abandoned us. Morgana, my mom had never treated me like her own and as a result we always had heated arguments. After being saved from street hoodlums by the feared mafia leader, Sylvester Muskegon, i find myself living inside the mansion of the most dangerous mafia family in the city. Cold-hearted killers. Powerful brothers. Deadly secrets. Yet behind their terrifying reputations, they treat me like some little precious princess, especially Sylvester, the ruthless mafia king whose touch feels safer than home ever did. But becoming the Mafia's Princess comes with a deadly price. Because once the enemies of the Muskegons discover my existence, I'm no longer just an innocent girl caught in their world...i became their greatest weakness.

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 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.

For seven years, I scrubbed floors, cooked books, and hid my identity as the Vitiello heiress just to test if Dante Moretti loved me for me, not my father’s power. But the massive digital billboard in Times Square froze the blood in my veins. It wasn’t my face next to his under the headline "The King and his new Queen." It was a cocktail waitress named Lola. When I walked into the lobby to confront him, Lola slapped me across the face and crushed my late mother's locket under her stiletto heel. Dante didn't defend me. He didn't even look sorry. "You’re useful, like a stapler," he sneered, checking his watch. "But a King needs a Queen, not a boring clerk. You can stay on as my mistress if you want to keep your job." He thought I was a nobody. He thought he could use me to launder his money and then discard me like trash. He didn't realize that the only reason he wasn't in federal prison was because I was protecting him. I wiped the blood from my lip and pulled out a secure satellite phone. Dante laughed. "Who are you calling? Your mommy?" I stared him dead in the eyes as the line connected. "The pact is void, Papa," I whispered. "Burn them all." Ten minutes later, the glass doors shattered as my father’s military helicopters descended onto the street. Dante fell to his knees, realizing too late that he hadn't just lost a secretary. He had just declared war on the Capo dei Capi.

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.

(ADULT CONTENT) Lucia - I had gotten to the point in my life where I could totally understand why people felt the need to take their own life. It was a need a lot of people thought they understood but in reality didn't even know the half of it. I would know because it was a need I constantly battled with. My life was complete shit. I'd lost my parents at a young age, been tossed from one abusive chaotic home to the other until I'd finally decided I couldn't take it anymore and had run away. Only running away had made it worse. Way worse. Because living on the streets I witnessed a lot of things no young girl should ever witness. Then for a moment it seemed like I'd found love. He was kind, caring and sweet. But even that didn't last. I told myself then that I was completely done. At first I didn't want to live at all. Later on, I just wanted to live long enough to get my revenge on everyone who had dared to make my life miserable. I never expected I would want to live for him. Bruno - Inheriting a ruthless top mafia gang at a very young age did a lot of damage to someone. It certainly did a whole lot of damage to me. Fucked me up so bad I could no longer tell what was right from what was wrong. I could no longer separate what I needed to do from what I wanted to do. And it was fine, really. I didn't give a flying fuck what anyone thought about it. It was who I was now and there was no going back. At least that was what I'd thought. Until I'd met Lucia. I still couldn't explain it but seeing her up there, hands tied above her head as she waited for whatever asshole was going to buy her at the auction caused some kind of reaction in me. It was enough to tell me that I should probably let someone else buy her so she could be their problem. Unfortunately I'd never been one to stop myself from making a wrong decision. So I bought her anyway. And who would have guessed? She turned out to be the best decision I'd ever made.

My mother is marrying a monster tomorrow. I'm the only one who remembers. My widowed mother was arranged to marry Lorenzo, a powerful Mafia Capo. I thought his status would finally bring us protection. But on the third day of their marriage, Lorenzo moved his pregnant mistress, Camilla, into the estate's master suite. She loudly claimed the child in her womb was the orphaned blood of a fallen soldier. "A Capo of Lorenzo's stature is doing your mother a service," the Syndicate wives mocked me, demanding we accept our place. Camilla systematically seized my mother's territory cuts and subjected her to endless psychological torture, while Lorenzo simply turned a blind eye. When the baby was born, it bore the exact same distinct birthmark on its neck as Lorenzo. Only then did we realize Lorenzo had used my mother as a convenient shield for his illicit affair, stealing my dead father's legacy and slowly draining our lives away. I didn't understand why the Family's brutal justice allowed a thief to siphon funds under the guise of caring for a martyr's widow, leaving us to die in absolute disgrace. Opening my eyes again, I was back to the day before the mob wedding. Looking at my six-year-old hands, I grabbed the torn marriage petition and stole the secret trust documents. This time, I ran straight to the heavily guarded gates of Don Salvatore, the most ruthless executioner in the city.

During a massive syndicate attack, my fiancé, the most ruthless Mafia Capo, locked his grip on my wrist like an iron vice. He desperately wanted to drag me into a corner panic room to protect Bianca, the innocent underworld socialite he secretly obsessed over. In my past life, I saved him with my body—and he rewarded me with a crippled leg, years of disgust, and a push off a cliff. He believed her lies, and he murdered me for them. Opening my eyes again, I was reborn to the exact moment the safehouse was under attack. This time, I let him walk willingly into his own concrete tomb.