Too Late, Mr. Robbins: I Am Gone

I was born with a lethal allergy to our Mafia family's signature golden narcotic. My body treats the drug like battery acid, but my mother, the ruthless Boss of the Chicago Outfit, called my allergy a pathetic weakness. She secretly laced my soup with the poison, convinced she could force my immunity and mold me into a perfect heir. When my throat seized and I coughed up blood onto the dining table, my cowardly father just scolded me for disrespecting the Boss. My mother locked me inside a reinforced bathroom, leaving me to suffocate as my airways rapidly swelled shut. "The weak must suffer to become strong." She stood outside the door, casually chatting with a rival Capo about how my torture was necessary, completely ignoring my desperate pleas for a medic. Lying on the cold tiles, gasping for my last breath, I realized a horrifying truth. As long as I held value as her pawn, as long as my body belonged to the Family, she would keep poisoning me until it finally killed me. So, when I woke up in the underground clinic, I grabbed her massive stash of the lethal powder and swallowed it all dry. I chose to burn through my own organs and permanently lose my stomach, annihilating my value forever, just so I could sell my broken shell to her deadliest rival.

I was a wolfless Omega, forced into a humiliating contract with Alpha Declan just to keep my mother's life support running. Four years ago, he publicly rejected me as his Fated Mate, treating me like a shameful secret. But one night, I unlocked his tablet and discovered the sickening truth. He already had a "Chosen Mate," Karly, and a secret daughter named Ava. While I was fed gray nutrient paste like a stray dog, he was parading them around as his perfect family. He even moved them into the master suite and tossed out the last wooden toy belonging to my dead son. Worse, I found out my own stepbrother was Karly's spy, helping them keep me in the dark. The week I was hemorrhaging in the hospital, terrified of losing my baby, Declan wasn't fighting a border war. He was buying Karly diamonds in Paris. The week my mother suffered a massive stroke, he abandoned her to take his secret daughter skiing. I was entirely alone, a convenient shield for his lies. But the absolute betrayal burned away my lingering grief, leaving behind a freezing, unbreakable clarity. I didn't just want a divorce anymore; I wanted to burn their entire world to ash. So, I slipped a forged termination agreement into his stack of Pack contracts. Blinded by his own arrogance, the Alpha signed my freedom without even looking. Holding the legal key to my cage and a folder full of his treacherous secrets, I sped out of the manor and dialed an encrypted number. "It's time. Unleash hell."

I am the Fated Mate of Alpha Damien Blackwood, but because I was born a wolfless Omega, I was kept as his dirty little secret. The constant rejection from my mate was literally killing me. The Pack Healer handed me my death sentence: Terminal Soul Wither. My life was ticking down to its final months. While I sat in the dark, dying and gasping for air, Damien threw a twenty-million-dollar fireworks festival for his chosen future Luna, Isabelle. When he finally came home, reeking of her perfume, he only looked at me with eyes as cold as winter ice. "It's your ovulation window. Let's get this over with." He only wanted to use me to breed a powerful heir. He threatened to exile my only remaining family if I didn't comply, and even ordered me to draft a legal petition to invalidate my own existence so Isabelle could take my place. Even my adopted brother Jax, whom I suffered for years to protect, publicly threw me to the dirt just to ally with a powerful Pack. I sacrificed my brilliant future as a top strategist to marry Damien, enduring three years of abuse and isolation. Why did I have to rot away in agony while they celebrated my replacement on glossy magazines? I wouldn't let them watch me die in their golden cage. I signed the ancient Rejection petition, dropped the manor keys, and walked out into the freezing night. This time, I chose to sever the bond myself.

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.

Five years. That's how long my Mate, Alpha Courtland, locked me in the Silver Mines for killing his "true love," Kinsley. But Kinsley wasn't dead. She was hiding in the pack house, living in luxury while I rotted. When I was finally released, broken and dying, Kinsley framed me again. To protect his "pregnant" mistress, Courtland stood by and watched as she threw my ten-year-old brother off a bridge. That was the moment my love died. I climbed to the hospital roof, accepted Courtland's rejection, and jumped to my death right before his eyes. It took my suicide for him to find the truth—that I was the White Wolf who had healed his blindness, not her. That he had tortured his innocent Mate. He spent three years drowning in regret, his brain rotting from Bond Decay, praying for death. Until he saw me at a gala. I wasn't Ana anymore. I was Amelia, the fiancée of a rival Alpha. He knelt, begging for six months of my time to soothe his dying bond, offering me his entire pack as inheritance. I agreed. Not to save him, but to watch him die. And to secure the legacy for the secret son I was carrying—his son.

I spent six years raising his twins, believing I was his wife. Then the bank manager slid a document across the desk. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Dunlap. You aren't listed as the mother. Eliana Dudley is." I drove to Gavin's office, desperate for answers. Instead, I found him with his high school sweetheart, Eliana, sitting on his lap. I froze as I heard him laugh. "Alex was just a comfortable alternative," he told her. "A glorified nanny to keep the seat warm until you came back." My world shattered. But it got worse. At the twins' birthday party, the children I had loved like my own screamed that they hated me. His seven-year-old son shoved me down the stone steps. I hit the ground hard. Pain exploded in my stomach. I looked up, begging Gavin for help. He didn't move. He just wrapped his arm around Eliana and turned away. "Come on, kids," he said coldly. "Let's go cut the cake. Alex is just making a scene." I lay on the cold patio, bleeding out the baby he didn't even know I was carrying, listening to them sing "Happy Birthday" inside. He thought I would fade away. He thought a check would fix it. But when I woke up in the hospital, the woman who loved him was dead. I signed the divorce papers, walked out, and built an empire he could never touch. Now, three years later, he's begging at my feet. "I made a mistake," he sobs. I look at my new husband and smile. "I know. And now you have to live with it."