Kaya N

She hates him. He refuses to let himself want her. Lina Gray never thought love would betray her. Until the man she trusted, traded her life to pay his debts. Delivered into the hands of Carlino Lacentra, the Mafia king whose name ends conversations. Lina is stripped of choice and crowned Donna to secure a throne she never asked for. In his world, power is law, loyalty is currency, and a woman beside the king is never just a woman. --- His eyes returned to me-slow, assessing. Then, without warning, his hands shot up and clamped around my throat. I gasped, instinctively clawing at his arms. He didn't move. "Disobey me again," he said, voice low, stripped of warmth, "and we won't be counting next time." Even shaking, I lifted my chin. "Then don't mistake silence for obedience," I said hoarsely. Carlino's voice followed-calm, absolute, as if nothing had happened. "Lock her floor tonight." That was when it settled. There was no mercy here. No exaggeration. Every word, every threat-he meant them. He wasn't pretending to be the devil. He simply didn't bother hiding it.

"Where do you think you're going, huh? You're mine now, Little Mouse. Get back in the house!" Vincenzo's voice boomed, sending chills down Victoria's spine as her world seemed to crumble. Victoria Washington was shattered-betrayed by her boyfriend who dumped her the day before his wedding, to her sister. She was left humiliated, mocked by everyone. But fate had other plans for her. She's broken, he's lost. She's full of fear, and he's the monster. Yet, somehow, he's her light while he remains in darkness. Vincenzo Dante will stop at nothing to tarnish his family's name for forcing him into a marriage he never wanted. But what he doesn't realize is that his new wife is stronger than she seems-too broken to bend under his cruelty. But when love begins to bloom, and secrets start to unfold, what will happen next?

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."

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

(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.