She's Dead, Mr. Blackwood Please Don't Cry

For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."

The rain in Detroit was slick with grime when my family finally came to fetch me. They didn't want a reunion; they wanted a sacrificial lamb to marry into the Kaufman empire to save their failing business. I thought I was just being sold off, but the limo ride ended under a dark overpass where six hired thugs were waiting with chains. My own sister had ordered them to "break my spirit" so I’d be a shaking, pathetic mess by the time I reached the altar. They called me "Detroit trash" and sprayed air freshener when I sat on their leather seats. My stepmother wanted a video of me begging for my life, and my father was ready to trade me like a used car to a man everyone called a "vegetable." They expected a submissive country girl, unaware that I was a high-level "cleaner" who could snap a radius bone before they could even scream. When I finally reached the Kaufman estate, I found my fiancé, Barron, slumped in a wheelchair, drooling and silent. But as soon as the doors closed, the "invalid" grabbed my wrist with a grip of iron and whispered a command that changed everything. I didn't understand why my own blood was so desperate to see me destroyed. What had I ever done to deserve a hit squad and a forced marriage to a man they thought was a corpse? But Barron isn't a vegetable, and I'm not a victim. We just touched down at the Moon family gala in a matte-black helicopter, and as the doors slide open, the "broken" bride is about to show them exactly what happens when you throw away the wrong daughter. "If we're going to crash a party," Barron whispered, his eyes burning with lethal clarity, "we should make an entrance."

I jumped into the freezing Hudson River. Not to kill myself, but to save the only thing I had left—my father's Medal of Valor, which Krystal had thrown into the water like a stick for a dog. I clawed my way up the muddy bank, lungs burning, shivering violently. I looked up at the villa balcony, hoping my Fated Mate, Jaxon, would be looking for me. He wasn't. He was wrapping his arms around Krystal, watching the artificial meteor shower he had arranged just for her. "Anything for you, my love," he said, completely forgetting I was drowning in the dark below. For three years, I believed I had "Wolf Sickness." I took the pills he sent, grateful for his care. But the pills were poison. Wolfsbane. Designed to keep me weak, docile, and unable to shift, just so he could replace me with a more powerful Luna. He called me a liability. He watched his mistress run me over with her Porsche, ordered his guards to silence me, and let her dogs tear my skin. Now, clutching the cold medal, the final thread of our bond snapped. I didn't go back to the pack house. I dragged my broken body to the airport and sent one final text. "I, Alina Phillips, reject you, Jaxon Francis." I mailed him the medical report proving he had been poisoning his own mate, and then I disappeared. By the time he realizes what he's done, the Alina he knew will be dead.

It was my birthday, but instead of celebrating, I was bleeding on the floor of my own bedroom. My sister Serena had just smashed a champagne bottle over my legs, her eyes filled with a dark madness because our father allowed me to wear the family diamonds. To escape her, I bolted into a pitch-black guest suite, only to be grabbed by a man who felt like a wall of solid muscle. He was drugged, unstable, and pinned me against the wall, his teeth sinking into my neck in a primal claim that left a permanent mark. I managed to flee, but the nightmare was just beginning. My father didn't care about my injuries; he only cared that I had "insulted" the man in that room—Delos French, the most powerful CEO in New York. He threatened to stop paying for my mother’s critical care facility unless I went to Delos and begged for his forgiveness. My brother Julian was even worse, intentionally pouring scalding coffee over my bandaged wounds just to see me flinch. They forced me into a revealing gold dress, treating me like a high-priced commodity to be sold to the highest bidder to save their failing company. I didn't understand how the people who were supposed to love me could be more predatory than the monster in the dark. I had spent my life fixing their scandals, yet they were ready to throw me to the wolves the moment I became useful as a pawn. But when I stood before Delos French at his gala, he didn't see a trophy. He recognized my scent, my touch, and the fire in my eyes. He trapped me in his private lounge, kneeling to clean the blood from my injured feet. "Marry me," he whispered, his voice a low, terrifying growl. "And I will give you the power to burn your family to the ground." I looked into the eyes of the man who had hunted me and realized he was the only one offering me a weapon to destroy the people who had broken me. "Okay," I whispered.

I was just the decoration at the gala, the dutiful wife of Chicago's Underboss, Dante Moretti. Then my phone buzzed with a photo of his hand on another woman's thigh, taken inside the venue just minutes ago. I finally snapped, leaking the photo to the press to shame him. Dante dragged me home, pinned me to the sofa, and carved a thin line into my collarbone with a switchblade. "You don't get to leave until I say you're done," he warned. But the real devastation came later. An anonymous video file revealed the truth about my mother's "suicide" ten years ago. She didn't jump. My sister, Sofia, pushed her. And Dante? He didn't marry me for power. He brokered a deal with my father to cover up the murder and took me as hush money. I crashed Sofia's birthday party to expose them, but my father slapped me in front of everyone. Dante grabbed my fresh wound and forced me to my knees. "Apologize to your sister," he threatened, "or I bulldoze your mother's grave right now." I swallowed my pride, bowed my head, and apologized. But Sofia just laughed, pulled out a detonator, and pressed the button anyway. "Oops," she giggled as the explosion rocked the ground. "Happy birthday to me." Watching the smoke rise from my mother's destroyed mausoleum, the old Elena died. I vanished into the night, leaving behind signed divorce papers and my bloodied dress. When Dante finally tracked me down, I wasn't hiding in fear. I was standing next to his mortal enemy, Luca Rossi, wearing a massive diamond ring. I handed Dante a cream-colored envelope. "What is this?" he asked, his hands trembling. "An invitation," I said, my voice ice-cold. "To the wedding of Don Luca Rossi and Elena Vitiello."

Three years after I buried an empty casket for my husband, I found him alive in a grocery store parking lot. He was rubbing a stranger's pregnant belly, smiling a soft smile I had never seen in our years of marriage. My husband, the ruthless Don of Chicago, had become "Arthur," a gentle man with no memory of the empire he ruled or the wife he left behind. To protect his happiness, I swallowed my agony and lied. "I am his cousin," I told his pregnant fiancée, Mia. I brought them home to his estate, enduring the torture of watching him give her the tenderness that used to belong to me. But my mercy was rewarded with cruelty. Dante looked at me with cold, unfamiliar eyes and slapped divorce papers onto the table. "Sign them," he demanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "I want to marry Mia before the baby comes. I want a fresh start." He didn't know I was dying of a heart defect caused by the stress of grieving him. He didn't know I stalled for two weeks not for money, but because I wanted to be buried with his name. I died the morning the deadline arrived, taking the secret of my love to the grave. Ironically, that very night, a bullet grazed his temple during an ambush, unlocking the memories he had lost. He remembered the peach orchard. He remembered our blood oath. He remembered that I was his soulmate. He ran to my brother’s gates, screaming my name, blood pouring down his face, desperate to beg for forgiveness. But my brother just stood there, blocking the entrance to the cemetery with a cruel smile. "She waited for you every single day," he spat. "And you killed her."