Nero Daniels

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.

For two years, I played the role of the "Midwestern mistake," the mousey wife Julian Ford-Sterling IV kept hidden like a shameful secret. I hid my true self behind thick glasses and ashen foundation, acting as the perfect, cowed charity case while he lived a life of marble and indifference. The day our marriage contract ended, the headlines were already screaming about his affair with Hollywood’s sweetheart, Lana Vane. Julian didn't even grant me a final conversation; he simply sent his legal team to hand me divorce papers that gave me nothing—no alimony, no shares, just a non-disclosure agreement and a one-way ticket out of his life. I signed the papers and walked away, but a drugged encounter in a dark club that same night led me back into his arms. We collided in the shadows, two strangers stripped of their titles, but I fled before dawn, accidentally leaving behind my vintage silver locket. By the time I reached my secret design studio the next morning, I discovered Julian had executed a hostile takeover of my entire life’s work. To my horror, Lana Vane was already there, clutching my stolen locket and shamelessly claiming she was the woman Julian had spent the night with. Julian stood before me in his charcoal suit, looking at me with total lack of recognition. To him, I was just a "gold-digging" architect he had bought along with the furniture. I watched them together, the man who had discarded me and the woman who had stolen my identity, realizing that Julian was obsessed with the genius of "Rose" while despising the woman who stood right in front of him. He had no idea that the wife he’d just divorced was the very person he was now desperate to control. I straightened my spine, my violet-blue eyes cold and lethal behind my new designer frames. "Mr. Ford-Sterling, you wanted the best designer in the city? You’ve got her. But you should know—I don't just build empires. I know exactly how to tear them down."

I married the most ruthless Don in Chicago, but not for love, money, or power. I married Luca Falcone because he was the only man on earth who carried the same DNA as his dead identical twin, Dante—the love of my life. For three years, I played the role of the submissive, obsessed wife. I endured his coldness. I cooked for his mistress, Sofia. I even stayed silent when Sofia pushed me down a flight of stairs in a jealous rage, nearly killing me. Luca thought I stayed because I was weak. He thought the way I stared at his face was adoration. He never realized I was looking right through him, seeing the ghost of the brother he could never live up to. But the moment the second pink line appeared on the pregnancy test, my mission was complete. I had secured the heir. I had brought a piece of Dante back to the world. The vessel was no longer needed. I signed the divorce papers, packed my bags, and vanished into the night while Luca was busy with his mistress. When he finally tracked me down months later, broken and begging on his knees for me to come home, I didn't feel a thing. I looked down at the man who thought he was a King and delivered the final blow. "I never loved you, Luca. I married you for the sperm."

After seven years of marriage, I discovered my billionaire husband Grayson' s will. He was leaving his entire fortune not to me, but to his young protégée, Kira. My life was a lie; I was just a placeholder, a womb for the heir his mistress couldn't carry. When I demanded a divorce, he laughed. "You're pregnant, Elyse. And you think you're just going to walk away with my child?" He tore up the papers, threatening to use his immense power to take our baby. Then Kira, his mistress, showed up at my door, confirming my worst fear: Grayson wanted my child to raise as his and hers. She even sent me a photo of him asleep in her bed, wearing the pajamas I bought him, with a chilling message. "He hopes our baby has a dimple too. For me." I was chosen because I resembled her. My son was meant to be her child. That night, I vanished. The news later reported a pregnant woman, identified by my wedding ring, had died in a clinic fire. But I was already on a plane, my hand on my belly, escaping to a new life.

For five years, I was the ghost in the machine, the secret architect of my boyfriend Coleton' s brilliant career. I was "Aura," the anonymous creator of our company's billion-dollar software, and I used my hidden influence to make him the star project lead in a new city 1,500 miles away. I did it all for us, for the future we were supposed to build together. But when I finally transferred to his office to surprise him, I found him wrapped up with his new assistant, Kyra-the same girl I' d seen laughing on the back of his motorcycle in a video just days before. He called her his "climbing partner," a friend, nothing more. Then, she made a mistake that cost our company millions. When I confronted her, Coleton didn't hold her accountable. He defended her. In front of the entire executive floor, he turned on me, blaming me for her failure. "If you can't handle the pressure here," he sneered, his voice dripping with contempt, "maybe you should just go back to headquarters." The man whose entire life I had built was firing me to protect another woman. Just as my world shattered, the elevator doors chimed. Our CTO stepped out, his eyes taking in my tear-streaked face and Coleton's furious one. He looked straight at my boyfriend, his voice dangerously quiet. "You have the audacity to speak to the owner of this company in that tone?"

My daughter Lily hadn't seen her father in five years, so her joyful cry of "Daddy!" echoed through the sterile mansion as she ran to him. But his eyes were not for her. Jessica Hayes, his "one true love," stood beside him, her feigned trip and cry sending him into a panic. He scooped her up, his face contorted with concern, then shot a venomous look at our innocent five-year-old. "Lock her in the master bedroom closet. Three days. No food." My blood ran cold. "Ryan, no! Please, you can't!" "She has asthma, Ryan. She'll suffocate!" He scoffed, accusing me of lies and manipulative ploys. The guards, impervious to my pleas, ripped Lily from my arms. "Mommy! Mommy, I'm sorry!" she shrieked, carried away. That night, her terrified cries faded to desperate whimpers. "Please, Mommy... can't... breathe..." I pounded on the door until my fists were raw, screaming for them to let her out. The whimpers stopped. The closet door opened. Lily lay there, blue, not moving, not breathing. Unconscious from lack of oxygen. The ambulance siren wailed as I sank to the waiting room floor. My phone buzzed. It was Instagram. Jessica Hayes, pouting in a hospital bed with a tiny scratch. Her caption: "Mr. Peterson is so generous! I only scraped my knee and he gave me two luxury apartments as compensation. I guess I'll forgive you now~" Geotagged from a luxury hospital across town. Where our daughter wasn't. He gifted her apartments for a scraped knee, while our child suffocated. A cold numbness spread through me. "Grandma," I whispered, bowing my head to Mrs. Peterson. "Love cannot be forced. Please... let him be with Jessica. I just want to take Lily and leave." My fresh wounds throbbed, tears mixing with blood. I showed her the post, the address of our marital home given away. Mrs. Peterson's face blazed with fury. "That scoundrel! That worthless boy!" "Call that bastard and tell him to get his ass to this hospital immediately!" But it was too late. If Grandma's scolding worked, Lily would never have been locked in that closet.

The world ended on a Tuesday afternoon. One moment, I was building blocks with my five-year-old son, Leo; the next, our home bucked and collapsed around us, trapping us in a coffin of splintered wood and concrete. Pinned in the darkness, I whispered reassurances to Leo, my body shielding his, even as I felt the immense weight above us. But then Leo whimpered, his voice thin: "My leg hurts." My heart seized. His left leg was caught, crushed under a concrete beam, and I was utterly helpless. Every scream for help was swallowed by the tons of debris. Just as despair threatened to consume me, I heard it: familiar voices. Sarah was there, my wife, a top ER physician, coordinating the rescue. Hope surged, a dizzying, wild thing. "SARAH!" I bellowed with every last ounce of breath. "SARAH, IT'S DAVID! LEO IS WITH ME!" Through a tiny crack, I saw her, ten feet away. But then another voice, closer to her, cried out: "Sarah… over here…" It was Mark Johnson, her "soulmate" from college, the reason our marriage had been a hollow shell. I watched, disbelieving, as she rushed to him, ignoring my desperate pleas, prioritizing his broken arm over our son' s crushed leg. She commanded rescue workers to save him, then scooped his uninjured son into her arms, walking right past us without a second glance. The child, Ethan, even lied to her face, confirming we weren't there, and she believed him. The betrayal was a cold, hard blow, leaving me with a terrifying realization: she had heard me, chosen him, and now, my son might pay the ultimate price for her choice. My son was going into shock, and I knew, with chilling certainty, that this act of abandonment would shatter our lives forever.

David Chen, my fiancé, lay dead on top of me, his blood soaking through my clothes. His last words, a whisper against the chaos, echoed in my head: "If there's a next life, let's not be together again... I want to wait for her." For nine years, I had chased his shadow, followed him on dangerous missions, hoping my devotion would break through his icy heart. It never did. He hated me because his childhood sweetheart, Emily, had died, and I was the one left living. His father even spat, "You drove Emily to despair, and you killed David!" Everyone, even my guardian, General Thompson, regretted our forced engagement, blaming me. I regretted it most of all, feeling like a disaster magnet, destroying so many lives with my selfish, naive love. The irony was a bitter taste: I had survived, and he was gone. So, I prepared to grant his wish and finally disappear. I stood on the Golden Gate Bridge, the wind whipping my hair, the water dark and final below. Closing my eyes, I let myself fall, embracing the end. But the impact never came. Instead, I jolted awake in my own bed, sunlight streaming in. My phone buzzed, and the date on the screen made my heart stop: the day before our engagement party. I was back. This time, I wouldn't make the same mistake. This time, I would set them all free.

The launch party for my wife' s tech startup was a whirlwind, but then the smoke started. A rigged collapsed, a fire erupted. I saw Jennifer, my wife of twelve years, instinctively shield her prized intern, Ethan, and drag him to safety, abandoning me as the world went dark. I woke up a month later in the ICU, my lungs ravaged. The first thing I saw was a message from Jennifer. My heart fluttered with foolish hope. "Ethan is recovering at home," it read, "he's craving that clam chowder you make. Drop some off for him." Not a single "How are you?" or "I'm glad you're alive." Just a demand. A chore. For him. Something inside me, twelve years of devotion, finally snapped. I canceled our expensive IVF appointment and booked a one-way trip to Iceland. Jennifer called, not concerned for my health, but enraged about the money and the IVF. She called me jobless, worthless, and praised Ethan as "brilliant" and "forward-thinking." Then I found the single rose she sent me, a stark contrast to the 999 roses Ethan flaunted on Instagram. Hours later, I returned home from the hospital to changed locks and a used condom in our bedroom trash. The man she wanted, the one who would beg, was gone. My love had turned to ash. I calmly called a divorce lawyer. This wasn't just about betrayal; it was about finally choosing myself.

I was once a well-known feminist activist, but later I became a gold digger and a submissive wife. To earn money for Frank's medical treatment, I married Zachary and became a stepmother to his autistic son, Erik. Former friends criticized me for degrading myself and cut off contact with me. My life became very narrow; I spent my days meticulously caring for Erik and my nights accompanying Zachary through the ups and downs. In the fifth year of our marriage, Erik's biological mother returned. She was a wealthy heiress, a PhD from a prestigious university, stunningly beautiful, and had built a feminist persona on social media, amassing millions of followers. In comparison, I felt dull and uninteresting, and people found me repulsive. So, I decided to file for divorce.

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 alone at the center of my art gallery opening, clutching a glass of warm champagne, while the guests whispered behind their hands. My husband, the Capo of the Chicago Outfit, wasn't there. A breaking news alert on my phone explained why. It was a high-definition photo of Dante shielding his mistress, Isabella, from the rain. He was touching her with a protective possessiveness he had never once shown me. Then came his text: "Isabella needed me. Go home." That was the moment the cage door unlocked. I didn't go home to cry. I went to his office the next morning with a stack of papers disguised as "gallery insurance forms." While Isabella sat on his desk, mocking me for being a boring housewife, Dante was too annoyed to read the fine print. He just wanted me gone so he could get back to her. He signed the divorce decree. He signed the asset dissolution. Most importantly, without looking, he signed the irrevocable relinquishment of parental rights. I walked out with my freedom, but fate had a cruel sense of humor. That night, I stared at a positive pregnancy test. I was carrying the Sovrano heir he had always demanded. And he had just legally signed away his right to ever know his child. I fled to the Swiss Alps, vanishing into the snow to raise my baby away from his world of blood and bullets. I thought I was safe, until six months later. Dante hadn't just sent men to look for me. He had burned his own shipping empire to the ground, destroying his status as King, just to prove he would trade it all for the wife he threw away.

"Fifty strikes," Floyd ordered, his voice devoid of warmth. I knelt in the freezing snow, watching the man I had taken a bullet for five years ago stand beside his new fiancée, Jaylah. Because Jaylah tore her engagement dress and blamed me, Floyd let his men beat me until my face was unrecognizable. But that was just the beginning of my hell. To save his alliance with Jaylah's family, he drained my blood to save her mother, ignoring my own fading pulse. When Jaylah lied that I tried to burn her, Floyd forced me to thrust my hands—my architect's hands—into glowing coals until the flesh melted. He stripped me of my name, my protection, and finally, my life. "You are a liability," he said, pushing me into the freezing pool with a skimmer pole. He watched me drown with the same detached interest he used to inspect firearms. My lungs burned, and my heart turned to ice. I died hating him more than I ever loved him. I thought it was the end. But then, I gasped. Air rushed into my lungs. I wasn't in the water. I was sitting at a drafting table, five years before the nightmare began. My hands were smooth. No scars. No burns. And when Floyd Meyers approached me on the quad, smiling like the boy I used to love, I didn't smile back. I ran.

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."