Qing Cheng

For fifteen years, my husband Bennett refused to let me get pregnant. "My blood is a curse, Kelsey," he would say, gripping my hand with terrified intensity. "It kills the women who carry it. I won't risk you." I believed him. I mourned the children we never had just to stay alive for him. Then he brought Aria home. He claimed she was a distant cousin in trouble. But from the shadows of the ballroom, I watched him caress her swollen belly with a tenderness he never showed me. When I confronted him, the mask fell. "You provide the image, Kelsey," he said coldly. "She provides the bloodline. Do not make a scene." To teach me a lesson in obedience, my horse's reins were sabotaged. I woke up in the hospital with a fractured leg, only to learn he had ignored my emergency calls to hold Aria’s hand during a routine ultrasound. Lying in that sterile bed, the truth hit me harder than the fall. There was no curse. He had medically gaslighted me for a decade, stealing my fertility with a lie, just to replace me with a mistress he called "cousin." He thought he had broken me. He thought I would fade quietly into the east wing. Instead, I wiped my tears and planted listening devices in his office. He wanted a legacy? I boarded a train to Paris, leaving behind a bomb that would burn his entire world to ash.

The acrid smell of disinfectant and old wax assaulted my seventy-year-old nose. One moment, I was Butcher Betty, cleaver in hand, surrounded by the familiar scent of my shop. The next, I was a stranger in a sterile, enormous kitchen, wearing a stiff uniform, feather duster in my hand. Then, a cold, mechanical voice boomed directly inside my head: "Transmigration successful. Welcome, Host 734." My new identity: Betty, the cruel and sycophantic housekeeper of the Anderson family, tasked with following a novel' s plot. My first directive: lock eight-year-old Liam, the biological son, in the dark, damp basement without dinner to solidify my loyalty to the adopted son, Kevin. I looked at the small, terrified boy cowering in the corner, his eyes wide with a wariness that shouldn' t be in a child. This wasn' t a character. This was a scared, hungry kid. The system blared warnings, demanding I adhere to the script, that I become the villain. But I was a butcher. I fed people. I didn't starve them. "The plot can go to hell," I muttered, grabbing a saucepan. "This boy is getting a hot meal."

The ghost of my right hand ached, a constant reminder of the car crash that stole my career as a concert pianist five years ago. My husband, tech mogul David Miller, had lovingly built me a gilded cage-a penthouse palace where I was his celebrated, wounded wife, a testament to my sacrifice. "It's a masterpiece, David. The whole thing," I overheard his best friend, Mark, say. "The comeback story, the adoring husband. You've played it perfectly." My fingers hovered over the piano keys in my studio. My breath caught. "Still," Mark pressed, his voice dropping, "that car crash... it was perfectly staged. How could you know Olivia would sacrifice her hand to save you?" My world crumbled. Staged? I crept to the library door, peeking through the crack. David, swirling amber liquid, smirked. "Because she loves me," he purred, "just as I love Sarah." Sarah Jenkins. His protégé. The brilliant pianist who had risen in my place. "Ollie was always in the way," he continued. "Her talent... it was too loud. Sarah needed a clear path. I gave her one." My hand flew to my mouth, stifling a scream. The charity galas, the custom gowns, the public adoration-it wasn't love. It was a cover-up. My agonizing years of practice, my belief that my music was a testament to our shared survival-all a grotesque joke. He hadn't honored my sacrifice; he'd celebrated his crime. My life, my love, my loss-all a meticulously crafted lie. My world didn't just crumble; it was obliterated. In the rubble, cold, hard revenge began to sprout. He thought he had silenced me, turned me into a beautiful, broken symbol. He was wrong. I would not be a guest performer at the Golden Rose. I would be a competitor. I would take back everything he had stolen. I would burn his entire empire to the ground.

My daughter Chloe was the bright star of my life. I' d traded Silicon Valley for stay-at-home dad life, and her seventh birthday at "Galaxy Adventure" was everything. But the park was closed for a private event, and I watched my wife, Molly, embrace her high school sweetheart, a man who' d nearly ruined her family years ago. Chloe, oblivious, ran to her mom, only to be met with a hateful shriek: "What is she doing here?" Molly, enraged, shoved our daughter, then strapped my terrified child into a high-G-force simulator, cranking every dial to maximum. Chloe's screams were lost to the machine, and moments later, she lay limp, bleeding, dying. Molly bought off every neurosurgeon in the state, sending me cartoon band-aids as Chloe flatlined. With Chloe dead in my arms, and Molly mocking me, a chilling emptiness settled over my soul, replacing all emotion with a cold, hard resolve. They thought I was destroyed, but I made a choice that day: I'd take everything from her, just as she'd taken my everything. I needed the world to see her for the monster she was. So, I faked my own death, leaping from her penthouse balcony into the spotlight of every news camera.

Three years ago, I sacrificed my career, taking the fall for a professional misconduct charge to shield my wife, Nicole, and her budding political ambitions. Tonight, her re-election campaign launch party was supposed to be my comeback, the moment she' d finally reintroduce me to her world. Instead, she offered a single dollar bill, the same token given to low-level volunteers, as she turned away to flirt with her smirking Chief of Staff, Wesley. The next day, Wesley flaunted a custom-made watch Nicole gave him, far more valuable than my car, while she dismissed my hurt with a cold command: "In public, you're just a volunteer, and call me Councilwoman." Then, alone and burning with fever, I called her for help, only to hear Wesley's voice in the background, a chilling affirmation of their intimacy, before she abruptly hung up. The final blow came when she watched Wesley frame me for the watch' s theft at a fundraiser, allowing me to be publicly shamed, then slapped me and called me a thief in front of everyone. Humiliation burned hotter than any fever, igniting a cold, stark realization: the woman I protected had orchestrated my destruction. I didn't argue. I calmly called my lawyer and filed for divorce.

My hands were calloused from years on construction sites, every ache a testament to the future Gabrielle and I were building. That future shattered when she burst into tears, claiming our life savings – eighty thousand dollars – had vanished in a crypto scam. "It' s okay, Gabby," I told her, holding her tight, even as my world crumbled. I promised we' d make it back, taking extra shifts, my mom Maria even offering to help clean at the Rittenhouse Grand. Then the hospital called. My mom, Maria, was in the ER, her hands brutally crushed by a hammer. The hotel claimed she' d "accidentally spilled a drink" on a guest. My blood ran cold, a rage I never knew I possessed simmering beneath the surface. I stormed to the Rittenhouse, my fury set on finding the monster who did this. But hidden in a private dining room, I found Gabrielle. My wife. She was laughing, adorned in silk, handing a man a "bouquet" of rolled-up hundred-dollar bills. "That old hag who bumped into you?" she cooed, "I had security take care of her. They broke her fingers and threw her out." My mother. Not an accident, but a cruel, calculated act. And the $80,000? "It was for that custom suit of yours," she told the man, "the one the old cleaner ruined." My world didn't just tilt; it imploded. Everything I believed, everything I loved, was a lie. My mother, now maimed, screamed for me to save her bone fragments from being fed to dogs. And just moments later, Gabrielle was demanding tequila for her Four Seasons suite. How could the woman I vowed to love be such a monster? How could my mother' s agonizing pain be the cost of a suit and a twisted game? I carried her secrets, her fears, as the doctor confirmed her hands were permanently destroyed. But when Gabrielle, in the same hospital, offered to buy my dying mother' s organs for Ethan' s family, claiming she was a "disgruntled ex," then hung up on me because Ethan' s mother was critical, a cold resolve settled deep in my gut. What kind of hell was this, and how could I make her pay?

My life was one of quiet harmony, raised off-grid with ancient wisdom, seeing the world's hidden currents. But Elias, my adoptive father, sent me back to my biological family, the opulent Whitmores, to untangle a spiritual unease he promised only they could resolve. What I found was not a home, but a viper's nest of sickening energies. My birth parents, my brothers, and especially Brenda – the "false heiress" – were dripping with greed, deception, and malice. Brenda, seeing me as a threat to her gilded cage, launched a ruthless campaign to destroy me. She publicly framed me for assault, faked a near-drowning, and even stabbed herself with a family heirloom, screaming I was a monster. Despite my calm observations, my warnings of their own destructive paths, they dismissed me as crazy, a witch, a dangerous fraud. They rallied together, not against the darkness within them, but against me. I was thrown out of their mansion, abandoned without a penny, and later faced thugs hired by Brenda, sent to "teach me a lesson." How could these people, my own blood, be so utterly blind to the truth of their actions, so willingly embrace their own decay? Why did they cling to their malicious lies about me, even as the carefully constructed facade of their perfect lives began to crack and crumble around them? But their malice only fueled my resolve. Armed with my unique spiritual sight, I would no longer simply observe. This wasn't just about untying ancient threads; it was about exposing the rot at the heart of their empire and letting the universe's ultimate justice take its devastating course.

Shelly had always had a crush on Harry, ever since the third grade. However, their love story started with her as a honey trap. To carry out her aunt’s plan for revenge, Shelly got close to Harry and made him fall in love with her. When he found out the truth, he ruined the engagement party and made her pay for her betrayal. He did love her, but when he was overwhelmed by all the conspiracies, hatred drowned out whatever love was in his heart.

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."

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

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.

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

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 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.

I was a Vitiello, sold to the Morettis to secure an alliance. For five years, I quietly loved Dante, counting down the minutes until our wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral. But it ended with a single text three minutes before the ceremony. "Stay at the apartment. Sofia is awake. Don't make a scene." His ex-girlfriend, the love of his life, had woken from a coma with no memory. Just like that, I was erased. For thirty days, I waited in the shadows while Dante played hero to a woman who didn't remember him. He told me he was protecting her fragile mind. But then I found the truth. I stood outside the doctor's office and heard Dante refuse a treatment that would restore Sofia's memory. "If she remembers, she might leave again," Dante told the doctor. "Elena will wait. She's a good soldier. Let me have my fantasy." He wasn't protecting her. He was keeping her broken to feed his ego, banking on my submission. He thought I was furniture he could put in storage. He was wrong. I didn't go back to the apartment. Instead, I dialed a number every made man in New York feared. "Matteo," I said to Dante's lethal older brother, the King of the underworld. "I am done waiting. I want to be a Moretti bride. But not Dante's."

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.