Ming Yue

My husband, the ruthless Underboss of the Ewing crime family, was terrified of one thing: his dead fiancée’s memory. Or rather, her living sister, Ivana, who used that memory to turn my life into a living hell. To "apologize" for humiliating me at a gala, Corbett brought me a peace offering: a green macaron. "Pistachio," he promised. "Your favorite." I took one bite, and my throat instantly seized. It felt like barbed wire tightening around my windpipe. It wasn't pistachio. It was almond paste. Corbett knew I was deadly allergic. He used to carry my EpiPen on our first dates. As I collapsed to the floor, wheezing and clawing at my neck, a scream ripped from the guest wing. "Corbett! Help! They're posting mean comments about me again!" Ivana. Corbett looked down at me, his dying wife, and then looked toward the hallway where Ivana was crying over Instagram. He hesitated for only a second. Then he pulled his leg away from my grasping hand. "I'll be right back," he said, turning his back on me. "Just... use your pen." He ran to comfort a healthy woman while I crawled across the carpet, vision tunneling, forcing the needle into my own thigh to restart my heart. As I lay there shaking, listening to him soothe her, the last thread of love snapped. I didn't call an ambulance. I pulled a burner phone from behind the vanity mirror and texted the one man Corbett feared more than death—his rival, Don Kain Solomon. "I accept. Get me out."

My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Caspian Vance, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through. That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Lyra—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister. But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Ashworth Fellows talking in the library. They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Caspian. Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Lyra. I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen. This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Caspian over. "No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Silas Blackwood."

My husband brought his mistress into the care center and forced me to wash her feet. He had forgotten everything about our marriage after an accident five years ago, treating me like a defective servant while doting on Jada. But I endured it, hoping his memory would return. Until Jada’s twin boys sprayed me with "water guns" filled with concentrated Wolfsbane acid. As my skin sizzled and melted, Jada screamed that I was using witchcraft to curse her children. Jake didn't check my wounds. He didn't ask for the truth. He looked at me with cold, dead eyes and ordered the guards to bring the Silver Muzzle. "This will teach you silence," he whispered. He clamped the torture device onto my face. The silver spikes instantly fused to my burned skin, sealing my mouth shut in agony. He then hung me from the ceiling, letting me swing there as a warning to the pack, while I bled out. I looked down at him, my heart finally breaking. How could the man who was once my soulmate torture me for a woman who smelled of rot and lies? I closed my eyes and triggered the rejection bond. *I reject you, Jake Foster.* The moment the bond snapped, the front doors exploded inward. A massive force of pure power crushed every wolf in the room to the floor. The Supreme Alpha had arrived. And he wasn't happy that someone had touched his Fated Mate.

"Are you sure you packed the antique vase?" I asked my husband, David, my voice echoing in our half-empty living room, packed for our big move overseas. We were starting a new life, a new chapter. But then, an email popped up on his laptop screen from a woman named Lisa Chang, a one-word subject line: "Congratulations." My heart hammered as I clicked it open. "Heard she signed everything. You' re finally free. Can' t wait to start our life together. The baby and I are so proud of you." The baby. The words hit me like a punch. Lisa was pregnant. I was numb as I found my way to the bedroom, the silver locket David gave me on our first anniversary, now felt like a lie. That evening, at a farewell dinner with David' s family, Lisa was there, seated right next to him. Eleanor, David's mother, raised her glass, triumph in her eyes: "A toast. To David, for all his success. And to new beginnings." She looked pointedly at Lisa. I heard David and Lisa talking in a private alcove. "Is she suspicious?" Lisa asked. "No," David replied. "She has no idea. She signed the papers without a second thought. By the time the divorce is finalized, she' ll be on the other side of the world." "And the house?" "The lawyer said it' s all clean. The assets are protected. We' re set, Lisa. Just like we planned." Then, the final blow: "I felt the baby kick today." My carefully constructed life had shattered. I had been played, every step of the way, just a pawn in their cruel game. I was nothing but a temporary placeholder, designed to be disposed of so they could begin their new life. I wouldn' t let them win. I would fight back, not for revenge, but for myself.

Tonight was our tenth anniversary, wrapping up ten years of a meticulously kept contractual marriage. For a decade, I, Ethan Lester, had been the silent architect behind my wife Sabrina Chadwick' s booming real estate empire. I managed her entire life, a dutiful husband and housekeeper, all to repay her for saving my father' s life. But then, she walked in, not alone, but with a smug-faced young man. "So this is the famous kept man," Caleb sneered, his words echoing through our Manhattan penthouse lobby. Sabrina, my wife, my partner of ten years, pulled him towards the elevator, her expression chillingly indifferent, utterly ignoring me. She didn' t care that her protégé was publicly humiliating me. She didn' t care what I felt when I overheard them that night, or the next morning when she ordered me to make them breakfast. I had been nothing but a loyal servant, and now, even that seemed to be beneath her consideration. I was left on a gurney in a crowded hospital hallway with a broken ankle after a car crash SHE forced me into, while she pampered Caleb over a scratch. That was the moment I realized the ultimate insult: I was just a possession, easily discarded. When the doctor asked for my family contacts, I looked him dead in the eye and said, "I have no family. Take her name off." I had been a fool to ever think love could bloom from a bargain, or that I could ever truly matter to her. Now, instead of cleaning her mess, I' m building my own empire. She desperately wants me back, but she has no idea what' s coming.

Our life in suburban Ohio looked perfect on the outside, a picture-perfect marriage that lasted five years. But inside, I was suffocating, especially after losing our first baby. When I finally got pregnant again, I believed hope was blooming. Then I found my husband had bought baby supplies. They weren't for us. They were for his pregnant mistress, Bree. He claimed she could give him the "heir" I couldn't. He coldly stated it was "practical," about "legacy," accusing me of being a "faulty machine." When I confronted them, his thuggish security shove, leading to another devastating miscarriage. He shockingly called it "faking it." Then, to punish me for wanting a divorce, he methodically shredded my grandmother's cherished quilt. It was the only solace I had left. My spirit was hollowed out. I was left with nothing but the brutal memory of his words and actions. How could someone claim to love you, then orchestrate such a calculated demise of your every hope and dream? Then, a phone call from a fertility clinic, a call he received, made him believe I was still carrying his precious heir. He came back, oozing fake repentance, painting a perfect future. But the cold D&C report I held in my hand was the real legacy I had for him. It was a testament to the life he' d destroyed. This signaled the true turning point of our story.

My life belonged to Julian Vance. He saved me at sixteen, a lost girl from the system, giving me a Manhattan apartment, Juilliard lessons, and paying for my dying sister Mia's severe cystic fibrosis care. Mia was my world; Julian kept her alive, so I believed I loved him. Then Julian met Chloe Raine, an indie folk singer. He became obsessed, claiming it was a "game" to expose her "integrity." "You're my queen. Always," he' d insist, but his eyes glowed with dangerous fascination, and a cold knot formed in my stomach. He started neglecting me for Chloe. One bitter Hamptons night, he dragged me onto our balcony in a rage. When I refused to confess, he pulled out his phone, showing Mia's sterile room, her ventilator alarm blaring. He calmly threatened her life, unless I confessed what I' d said. My heart froze. Mia, my only family, was a mere tool to him, her life leverage. The man who swore to protect me was a monster. I was his possession, my emotions irrelevant, my existence dictated by his whims and new obsessions. I gave him the lie, but the humiliation was absolute. My unplanned pregnancy ended in miscarriage, which he blamed on my "disobedience." But the ultimate breaking point was Mia. He allowed his security to remove my dying sister's life support as I screamed. Mia died. My baby was gone. My love for Julian died with them. He was my destroyer. I had to escape.

I was just sixteen when Hurricane Haven swept away everything, leaving me an orphan clinging to wreckage. Then, with kind hands, Ethan Harrison pulled me from the churning water, and his family became my beacon, my home. For four years, they rebuilt my world, filling it with a love I hadn’t known since my own mother died, a future with Ethan by my side. He gave me a compass necklace, promising, “So you always find your way. Our way.” But that same night, our future shattered. The Harrison house, once filled with light, became a tomb for thirteen souls, brutally murdered. And they said Sarah Miller did it. Me. The girl they saved, the daughter they adopted. The accusation was a physical blow, stealing my breath, my voice, my hope. The town that had embraced me now bayed for my blood, branding me a monster. Trapped in a cold cell, I endured a year of relentless interrogations and public scorn, my silence misinterpreted as guilt. How could the man I loved, the one who saved me, believe I could commit such an atrocity? How could they all be so wrong, so blind to the truth of what I sacrificed? What was there to say, when the world had already decided my fate? Now, strapped to a cold chair, electrodes tracing my thoughts, they’re forcing me into a dangerous experiment: "Traumatic Memory Unveiling." They want answers. But the truth hidden within my shattered memories is far more terrifying, a story of loyalty, betrayal, and a sinister conspiracy I kept silent to protect them—a silence that might just kill me.

The splintered wood of the floorboards pressed into my cheek. Another girlfriend gone, another brutal beating from my father. Each woman I brought home to Redwood Creek, to seek the “blessing” at our family’s Pioneer’s Home, emerged twisted with rage, screaming that I was filth. My step-brothers found happy marriages after their girls went inside; I was almost thirty and still a pariah. My father, Jedidiah Thorne, the town’s esteemed mayor, finally showed me why. He strapped me into a chair in a hidden room beneath the Pioneer’s Home, then played a horrifying video. On screen, a figure with my very face, my movements, was brutally torturing animals, then attacking my terrified girlfriends. He confirmed it was me, every single time. My world shattered. I was a monster, a broken thing deserving only death. I sought release in the old quarry, a plunge like my mother’s alleged accident. I survived, but the narrative was set: Ethan Thorne, unstable, suicidal. My father reinforced it, holding me captive, ever-monitored. I faked insanity to finally be institutionalized. Numbed by medication, I accepted my cage, a safely contained monster. Until one grey day in the drab yard, I saw her. Sarah. My first love. The girl I was told I’d killed years ago. She was undeniably alive. And her eyes held a fierce, angry truth that ripped through the fog, promising to expose a horror far greater than I could ever imagine.

The last thing I remembered was Chloe's voice, sharp and gleeful, slicing through the haze of my headache: "They never loved you, Ava. Not Liam, not Noah. It was always me." Her words were a hammer blow, each one a nail in the coffin of my life, a searing supernova of agony that exploded behind my eyes before everything faded to black. I gasped, sitting bolt upright in my childhood bed, my unlined hands proof of a terrifying truth: I was back, the calendar on my desk screaming September 5th, senior year, before the nightmare truly began. The reel of my first life rewound in fast-forward: Stanford, the calculated betrayals by Liam and Noah, Chloe's venomous strings, the engineered vasectomies, my promising career systematically destroyed, and the aneurysm that ended it all. This was impossible, a future I'd already lived, a death I'd already died, yet the worn duvet felt real, the scent of my mother's pancakes too vibrant—a second chance, if I dared to seize it, to change everything. My fingers flew across the keyboard, deleting Stanford from my early college applications and replacing it with MIT—my true dream, the one they had ruthlessly crushed. Just then, the doorbell rang, and through the frosted glass, I saw them: Liam Walker, Noah Chen, and Chloe Jenkins, the architects of my past ruin, their bright smiles and feigned innocence an instant surge of cold dread.

He walked into her life like a devil out of hell. She lost everything—her first love, her husband, the man she loved with her heart... all thanks to him! But Vincent didn't care. He was prepared to pay any price to get Lydia. He was a kind doctor, whose gentleness melted everyone’s heart. His deep, intoxicating eyes could hypnotize people with just one look. However, this perfect appearance belied the dangerous beast that lurked underneath. Will Lydia be able to escape the clutches of this wolf in sheep's clothing?

Rebecca had never imagined in her wildest dreams that such trouble would befall her. Her boyfriend, whom she was going out with for more than a year, now told her he wished to break up with her to marry another woman. She was devastated and left in a daze, her mind a blank. On the day she had resigned to drowning herself in alcohol, she bumped into Albert. She had set him up but now found herself trapped with this shrewd and scheming man. To pay for the prize, she agreed to be his lover for ten days. But then, his addiction to her gripped him tighter day by day.

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?

"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.

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.*

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 fiancé left me standing alone at the podium during our rehearsal dinner to rush to the side of a woman whose only illness was a desperate need for attention. He humiliated me in front of the heads of the Five Families, abandoning our alliance to scoop his "dying" mistress off the floor. I didn't cry. I didn't run. I walked straight to the head table, to the most terrifying man in the city—his older brother, the Don. "The Woodward family owes me a husband," I declared calmly. An hour later, I was married to the Capo dei Capi. But my ex-fiancé didn't accept his demotion. He kidnapped me, strapping me to a chair in a soundproof basement. For three days, he drained my blood pint by pint to "save" his mistress, Jaidyn, who watched me fade while she casually ate an apple. "Take another bag," she ordered, smiling at my agony. "She still has too much fight in her." As the cold crept up my chest and my vision blurred, I realized I was going to die for a lie, drained dry by a madman. Then, the steel door detonated. Through the smoke and debris walked my husband, not with a ransom, but with a serrated knife and a promise to burn them alive.