The Discarded Mafia Princess's Ruthless Return

I am the last surviving daughter of a murdered Mafia Don, kept as a captive trophy by Julian Moretti. To break my spirit, he systematically drugged my meals, turning me into a ghost in his gilded cage. But the true nightmare began when he brought his childhood sweetheart, Linette, to live under the same roof. When she pushed me into the estate's frozen lake and fell in with me, Julian didn't hesitate. He dove into the freezing black water, looked right into my desperate eyes, and turned his back to save her. He left me to drown. I survived the icy abyss, only to face a crueler fate. To cover up his betrayal and secure his power, Julian announced our immediate wedding, planning to parade me before the Mafia Commission as his conquered property. When I swallowed poison to escape the ultimate desecration of my family's name, he simply revived me. He pumped my veins full of paralyzing sedatives, dressed my limp body like a porcelain doll, and dragged me onto his private jet to New York. "They will see that even a proud, wounded lioness can only whimper at my feet." My father and brother had used their own bodies as shields so I could live. How could I let my family's honor be trampled by the very monster who orchestrated their massacre? As the plane descended into New York, the despair in my veins forged into cold steel. If Julian wanted a Marino bride, I would give him exactly what that meant. I would survive this forced marriage, and I would personally slit his throat at the altar.

Richard is only a year older than me, but he has always used his status as my older brother to pressure me. When we were kids, he would scold me for skipping class, and as we grew up, he would still interfere in my love life. My friends joked, "Your brother can't possibly like you, right? You two aren't even real siblings." Since then, I deliberately distanced myself from him, but during the New Year, he suddenly brought home a girl. "Tricia, call her sister-in-law." That night, I locked myself in my room and cried uncontrollably. He pulled me out from under the covers and gently wiped away my tears. "You're allowed to make me mad by dating a boyfriend, but I can't be upset with you?"

I was locked in a freezing, bleach-scented asylum basement, my vocal cords ruined and my face chemically melted. My step-sister Seraphina and my ex-lover Ethan walked in, but they didn't come to save me. Seraphina forced a mirror to my face so I could see my own disfigured reflection. "Your shares have been transferred to me," she whispered with a sickening smile. Then she revealed the horrifying truth: she and her mother had orchestrated my mother's death and suffocated my beloved grandfather to steal his inheritance. When I lunged at her in pure agony, Ethan shielded her and delivered a brutal kick to my ribs. He grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head against the solid concrete wall with all his might. As my vision swam with dark spots, I couldn't understand why my own father had sold me out to protect his wealth. Why did the man I once loved treat me like a diseased rat while he fed on my family's corpses? With my dying breath, I mentally cursed them to the deepest pits of hell. Opening my eyes again, the blinding light of a crystal chandelier stabbed my pupils. I was standing at my eighteenth birthday gala, unscarred and whole. Seraphina was smiling sweetly, handing me a diamond-encrusted watch secretly implanted with a military-grade GPS tracker. This time, blood would pay for blood.

I was the Lycan King's political wife, universally despised as a "wolfless Omega" freak. When my husband, Kingsley, was poisoned with a lethal dose of silver at a pack gala, I disguised my scent and risked everything to drag him to safety. But instead of recognizing his mate, he threw me to the wolves. He spent weeks tearing the city apart to find his "mysterious savior," while treating me like a sickening disease. "Stay out of my sight. You reek of sickness." He spat those words at me, completely blind to the fact that the scent he hated was the bleach I used to hide my tracks. Meanwhile, my abusive family publicly humiliated me, auctioning off my mother's grave to my worst enemy while Kingsley just watched in disgust. I endured his icy glares and their venomous insults in silence. They all thought I was just a pathetic, empty shell they could crush. They didn't know I was "The Zero"—the phantom hacker currently bleeding their financial empires dry. At the grand auction, I finally dropped the act. I wiped out my enemy's fortune with a single keystroke, bought my mother's land, and traded it to the Elders for my absolute freedom. Now, as the auction screens bleed red, Kingsley is staring at me with dark, consuming shock. He finally realizes the lethal monster he’s been hunting was his submissive wife all along.

My husband locked me in a glass cage in the center of the ballroom, announcing to the elite of the pack that my father was dead. While his assistant, Debra, draped herself over him, Austen turned the thermostat down until industrial coolant pumped into my prison. I was eight months pregnant with his heir, begging for mercy, but he only raised a champagne glass to his new "Nolan Pack." To prove my submission, he ordered warriors to douse me in ice water laced with silver and wolfsbane. The chemicals burned my skin, but the cold killed my unborn son. As I lay in a pool of frozen red blood, watching the life fade from my womb, Austen finally panicked—not for me, but for his reputation. My father, the Supreme Alpha, wasn't dead. He tore the doors off their hinges to save me, but it was too late for the baby. Waking up in the hospital, empty and broken, I listened to Austen beg not for forgiveness, but for a cover-up to save the stock price. "We can just make another one," he said, dismissing my dead son like a broken toy. That was the moment the weak, loving wife died. I stood up, my eyes glowing with the ancient silver light of the White Wolf. I didn't just divorce him. I used the Alpha Voice to sever our bond, stripping him of his rank, his sanity, and his name. Now, I am the Queen of the Winter Moon Pack.

I sat at the head of the mahogany table, the heavy heirloom emeralds around my neck marking me as the future Queen of the Cosa Nostra. But the man beside me—Jax Viles, the most feared Don in New York—had his hand resting possessively on the thigh of the woman sitting to his right. She wasn't his fiancée. I was. The humiliation didn't stop at dinner. Jax moved her into my home, turned my dance studio into her closet, and when she pushed me down a flight of stairs, he stepped over my broken body to comfort her because she was "shaken up." He started a bloody gang war just to defend her honor, yet ignored my desperate calls warning him of an ambush. To him, I wasn't a partner. I was furniture—a fixture that was expected to be silent and useful. He would burn the world to ash for her, but for me, he wouldn't even skip a meeting. So, while he was out celebrating his victory for her, I didn't wait for him to come home. I left the engagement ring in the trash can next to the toilet. On his desk, I left a single note: "I release you from the oath. I hope she's worth the war." By the time he realized his mistake and came looking for his shadow, I was already gone, ready to become the Queen of my own life.