Rutledge Shepp

I was a Mafia Princess, and he was the gutter rat I tried to make a King. On our wedding day, with five hundred guests watching, Luca Moretti didn't say his vows. Instead, after receiving a photo of a secret child, he looked at me with panic and backed away from the altar. "I can't do this," he announced to the silent church. "She's here. She'll ruin the kid." He chose a waitress and their illegitimate daughter over me. He walked out, leaving me humiliated in a dress that cost more than most people's lives. Forty-eight hours later, he married her. He gave the waitress my ring, my future, and his name, all to protect a child he had hidden from me. When I confronted him weeks later, he looked at me with cold eyes and told me he did it for honor. He destroyed me to save them, convinced I would fade away into the background. He thought he could break a Vitiello and not pay the price. Five years later, I returned to Chicago. The gala went silent as I walked in, wearing blood-red silk. Luca approached me, eyes full of regret, begging for a second chance, claiming his marriage to the waitress was a mistake. He thought he could win me back. Until a little girl ran into the room—my daughter. And behind her walked my husband. Not a soldier, but the Reaper himself, Dante Cavallaro. Luca’s face turned pale as he realized the truth. He had left me at the altar to play father, but I had married the Devil to become a Queen.

My wedding was three days away when the police told me my fiancé, David Reed, was dead, lost to the sea in a hiking accident. Just like that, I became a pregnant widow, my world turning gray. Then, David' s older brother, Mark Reed, returned from Africa. When I saw him, the resemblance to David was shocking, a ghost in my living room with a slightly deeper voice. I found myself staring, haunted by his presence. One night, the baby kicking, I overheard voices from the study. It was David' s laugh. My blood ran cold, and I crept closer, the door ajar. "You have to be more careful, David. She almost looked at you funny today," Eleanor whispered. "Relax, Mom. She' s a wreck," David sneered, his voice dripping with confidence. My grief was a joke. He had faked his death for Aisha, a mistress he planned to return to once her supposed terminal illness ran its course. I was a backup plan, a safety net. His mother, the woman who had held me while I cried, was in on the disgusting lie. The pain in my abdomen intensified, a physical manifestation of my agony. I stumbled back to my room, locking the door. My brother Chris called, saying I' d sent a blank text. I heard Aisha' s soft giggle in the hall. She was here, in my house, looking healthy and triumphant. Her eyes met mine through the crack in the door, a cruel, deliberate look that said, "I have him. You have nothing." My mind went blank with rage, then settled into a chilling calm. The game was on.

The phone felt heavy in my hand, a cold, dead weight. It had been a year since I last heard her voice, a year of silence that felt like a lifetime. My doctor' s words echoed in my head: "Glioblastoma, stage four. I' m sorry, Ethan. We' re talking months, maybe less." I called her, my thumb hovering over the button. "Happy wedding day," I said, pushing the words out. "And the second thing… you once promised that you' d carry my coffin after I die." The line went dead. A week after that promise, Olivia had left me. "I never loved you, Ethan," she had said, her face a mask of indifference. Her words broke me more than the illness ever could. That' s why I was in Zurich, in a sterile room, scheduled to end my life tomorrow. But then I saw her, by the lake, skipping stones, just like we used to. As I took a step towards her, a man came up, wrapping his arm around her waist. Liam Stone. "Olivia' s fiancé," he said, extending a hand. "We' re actually getting married tomorrow." My death day would be her wedding day. The universe had a sick sense of humor. I fled, only to stumble into the path of an oncoming tram. Olivia saved me, pulling me back. But as she pulled me up, her sleeve rode up, and I saw it: a silver bracelet, engraved with "L.S." She had been with him while we were still together. My life, my love, my everything, was a lie. "I' m dying," I told her, hoarse. "I have a brain tumor." Her facade cracked. Then, she asked me for a favor. "I need you to take the photos, Ethan. Just for the ceremony." I agreed, on one condition: "I want a photo. Just one. Of you and me. Together." She agreed, then immediately abandoned me for Liam. At the wedding, she used my origami stars, our special date on her new wedding ring. "It never meant anything, Ethan," she said, her eyes cold. "It was never real." I was numb. I left, heading back to the clinic, my fate sealed. Then, a text from Liam: We could use an extra hand with some last-minute wedding preparations. He was trying to buy my compliance, to turn my final day into a transaction. Fine, I replied. I didn' t know why I agreed. Maybe I needed to burn the image of her happiness into my brain so I could finally let go.

We were two weeks away from our wedding, a culmination of seven years I' d poured into supporting Nicole' s dream. Then, she dropped a bomb: she was going to be a surrogate for Ryan, her deceased mentor' s manipulative son, because "he needed this." She left me stranded at a funeral in a storm, prioritized his emotional needs over my life-threatening allergy, and when I faced a high fever alone, she quietly packed an overnight bag to go stay with him. Each abandonment was a calculated betrayal, a casual cruelty that ripped through my heart, leaving me invisible and discarded. I looked at her, at the woman who had systematically erased my worth, and realized: my future, my very existence, meant absolutely nothing to her. So I wrote a desperate Instagram post: "Wedding in two weeks. Need a new bride. Any takers?" My phone buzzed, and an unknown number with a Seattle area code changed everything.

We were the Hale brothers, Liam and Ethan, groomed to inherit an empire of power and influence. Our upcoming engagement dinner wasn't just a celebration; it was the strategic alliance that would cement our dynasty. But on the eve of that pivotal night, a blinding flash, a screech, and a brutal car crash threw us into a living nightmare. I saw it all with horrifying clarity: our future, laid bare. Our names, smeared across every screen as traitors. Our father' s empire, dissolving into dust. And leading the charge? Our fiancées, Ava and Chloe, their faces masks of cold righteousness as they delivered soul-crushing lies to federal investigators, all orchestrated by Julian, their hidden puppet master. Ava accusing me of illegal server access, Chloe claiming Ethan's desperation. Two unforgivable lies, whispered by the women we loved, fueled by a shadow. The memory of a gun in my hand, Ethan's shot, then my own – the only escape from prison – was an unbearable weight. Then, a gasp. The smell of antiseptic. Waking in a hospital bed, Ethan beside me, his eyes wide with the same shared horror. The nurse smiled brightly: "Just in time for your family dinner tonight!" The engagement dinner. Our last chance. Not fools this time.

My father arranged my marriage to Liam, the man I' d secretly loved for a decade. But on our wedding night, Liam, seeing only a gilded cage and forced manipulation, turned his back, muttering, "You got what you wanted, Ava." He fled overseas for three years, leaving me to raise our daughter, Grace, alone. He returned with his ex-girlfriend Chloe and her daughter Skylar. Liam shamelessly favored Skylar, explicitly neglecting Grace, even re-gifting Chloe's old scarf to me. Confirmation of his true life came from a public video where he boasted of "peak happiness" with Chloe and her child. My heart, once foolishly hopeful, shattered into ice. The man I loved was a brutal illusion; the one in that video, smiling with another's child, was real. How could he be so utterly cruel to his own flesh and blood, treating me merely as a disposable burden? The final snap came when Grace suffered a severe allergic reaction. Liam, however, prioritized Skylar' s minor heat rash, diverting critically needed specialists. As Grace gasped, her innocent whisper, "Mommy, if Daddy likes Skylar more, it's okay. I just need you," ignited an unbreakable resolve. He would never hurt her again.

Caleb served as an assistant for four years and a canary for three years. I never thought I could walk out of that villa that imprisoned me. Nathan, the poor school grass with disabled legs, returned after six years abroad and successfully defeated the Griffin Group. Caleb went bankrupt and became a destitute. Nathan carried me out of that villa, holding me in his hands like a princess for a year. On my 26th birthday, I was killed by Caleb in the villa. Nathan, covered in blood, held me and said calmly, "Yaoyao, you go first, I will follow soon." Looking at his tearful eyes, I desperately prayed to the gods to save him and let him live. The gods answered my prayers. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to 18 years old. Nathan, this time it's my turn to save you.

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?

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 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.

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.

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 husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent. But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress. Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes. "If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you." To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife. When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala. He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent. He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters. He thought he had broken me. He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage. But he made a fatal error. He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign. They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me. And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck. I didn't jump to die. I jumped to be reborn. And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin.