Ai Chi

In my past life, the bullet chambered in the gun on the desk was less lethal than the indifference of the two men standing beside me. Dante and Matteo were supposed to be the future kings of Chicago, and I was their queen. But they threw it all away for Sofia—a liar with a pretty face and a fake sob story about a gambling father. They forced me into a gilded cage, making me serve Sofia like a maid while they played her saviors. They let me rot in isolation until I swallowed a bottle of pills just to escape the coldness of their neglect. They didn't even mourn me; they were too busy comforting the girl who would eventually destroy them. I died realizing that my loyalty was my fatal flaw. I had worshipped men who saw me as nothing more than an accessory, while they sacrificed their empire for a woman who played them for fools. But the universe has a sick sense of humor. It sent me back. Back to the day that sealed my fate. The Consigliere pushed the assignment papers toward us—the path to becoming Bosses. "We are not going," Dante said, looking at me with cold eyes. "Sofia needs us. She is fragile." In my past life, I begged them to stay. This time, I stepped forward and picked up the pen. "I will go," I said, signing my name in sharp black ink. "I don't need your protection anymore."

Seven years. That was the price tag attached to my father's life. When my father gambled away money he didn't have, Michael Vance paid the debt. He bought my father's safety, and in return, he bought me. I was nineteen then. A peasant girl he polished up to look like a mob wife. I was reapplying my lipstick in the vanity mirror of his armored SUV when I found a diamond choker tucked behind the sunshade. It was a million-dollar piece of jewelry that wasn't mine, engraved with a date that wasn't my birthday. That night at the gala, Michael threw his mistress's heavy fur coat at me. "Hold this, Sarah. Jessica gets hot easily." I stood there like a servant, buried under the scent of another woman’s perfume, watching my fiancé hold her on the dance floor with a tenderness he never showed me. When I stumbled from hunger, he called me a liability to his image. But when Jessica faked a crisis, he abandoned me at the venue to rush her home. I walked to the nearest trash can and shoved the expensive fur down past the half-eaten caviar. As the sugar from a cheap candy bar hit my bloodstream, the fog lifted. I realized I wasn't a wife-in-training. I was a debt that had been paid in full. I left the penthouse, the ring, and the life. But Michael wouldn't let his property go. He cornered me in a parking garage, screaming that I belonged to him, threatening to start a war. He didn't expect me to be standing next to David Chen, the Underboss of the rival Triad faction. And he certainly didn't expect me to take off my Louboutin stiletto and use it as a weapon. "I don't love you, Michael," I said, looking him in the eye as he knelt on the concrete. "And I'm not for sale anymore."

I carried our child for eight months, yet to my husband, Alpha Damien, I was invisible. When I placed the divorce agreement on his desk, he didn't even look up. He was too busy discussing nursery colors with Victoria, the woman who had taken my place in everything but title. That night, agony ripped through me. I went into premature labor right in the hallway. I grabbed Damien’s arm, begging him to save our child. But he shook me off. He turned his back on his bleeding wife to comfort Victoria, who was faking a panic attack about paint swatches. "Get the best doctors for Victoria!" he bellowed, leaving me to be wheeled into a cold storage room by a terrified intern. While he held her hand, I lay alone in the dark, my body failing. I didn't just lose the baby that night. I found out why I had been so weak. My blood was full of silver nitrate. Victoria had been poisoning me for months, and Damien had been too blind to notice. I signed the divorce papers on my deathbed and vanished into the storm. Three years later, I returned. Not as a rejected Luna, but as the owner of the empire that was buying him out. Damien stood before me at the Alpha Summit, gaunt and broken, holding the deed to his entire territory. "I signed it all over to you," he whispered, falling to his knees. "Please, Elena. I know the truth now. I’ll be your guard dog. Just let me make it right." I looked down at the man who had let our child die. "You can't buy me back, Damien," I said, stepping over him. "I'm not for sale anymore."

Our marriage was a battlefield, and the whole city had front-row seats. For five years, Chloe Davis and Mark Stone were New York City' s most famous train wreck, a story of pure animosity that sold magazines and fueled gossip columns. They said we hated each other. They were right. I had married Mark on my twenty-second birthday, a calculated decision, fueled by a decade-long desire for revenge. He was my older brother Liam' s biggest rival, a man who represented everything my family stood against. But he had Ethan' s eyes. That was enough for me back then. On our wedding night, instead of consummating our marriage, I set the penthouse on fire. That set the tone for the next five years. I paraded college students to charity auctions, smashed priceless vases, and weaponized his own humiliating betrayal against him in front of his board. Each calculated move, each public spectacle, was designed for one purpose: to push Mark Stone to his breaking point, to make him the one to initiate our divorce and set me free. And it worked. He finally served me the papers, citing his new love, Bella, as the reason. But then, the carefully constructed walls between us crumbled into something raw and ugly. In the heat of our final, desperate clash, he gasped out a name. "Bella." A sharp, searing pain shot through me, and my first instinct was to hurt him back. I bit down hard on his shoulder, tasting blood. He recoiled, his eyes wide with shock, then narrowed with fury. He left, leaving me crumpled on the floor, the pain in my abdomen intensifying. My vision blurred. "Mark," I choked out, "Something's wrong." He walked out, closing the door behind him, leaving me alone on the cold floor, convinced it was just another trick. In the sterile white of the hospital room, the truth was delivered with clinical detachment: severe internal bruising and a hairline fracture on my lower rib. These were not self-inflicted wounds; they were the physical toll of five years of "intimacy." But the real blow came, not from him, but from Bella. She orchestrated a fall in the stairwell, falsely accusing me of pushing her. Mark, blinded by her cunning, believed every word, unleashing a torrent of my past sins against me, shattering any remaining dignity. "You're just like you always do," he spat, his grip like a vise on my hair. "You set fire to our apartment. You trashed a charity event. You think I'd believe a single word that comes out of your mouth?" His face, once so familiar, was now a stranger's-blinded by a pretty face and a well-told lie. He saw Ethan's face in her, the same way I once saw it in him. The realization was so absurd it was almost funny. I had built my own cage. And now, I was trapped, exiled to a desolate seaside villa, no phone, no internet, no contact with the outside world. A punishment. A banishment. But Mark had no idea that his prison was actually my path to liberation. He thought he was breaking me. He had no idea I was just getting started.

My life was a perfectly curated dream, every detail screaming success, happiness, and partnership, especially my charismatic, devoted husband, David. Then came the call – an unsaved number, a persistent ring, and a small, hesitant voice whispering, "Daddy?" The word hit me like a physical blow, shattering the polished surface of our perfect life as I overheard the chilling truth: David had another family, a secret wife, and two young sons, hidden just miles away, all with my mother-in-law's full knowledge and complicity. How could I have been so blind, so foolish, to believe in this lie, while he built a parallel life, celebrating birthdays while I celebrated anniversaries, and she, Sarah Jenkins, his former mousy assistant, played the triumphant other woman? Knowing he would never truly let me go, that he' d use his charm and power to drag me back into his elaborate deception, I made a terrifying choice: I would orchestrate my own disappearance, faking my death out on the open water to finally reclaim my freedom.

My life for the last decade has been an endless parent-teacher conference, a special kind of hell where I was the main exhibit. It all shattered when my nine-year-old stepdaughter, Madisyn, hurled a weighted beanbag at my head, then publicly denounced me as a "kept man" and a "gold-digging loser." The humiliation spiraled, culminating in a doctored photo circulating, reviving an old, devastating lie that branded me a pervert, while my wife and her ex-boyfriend flaunted their affair and my stepdaughter called him "Dad" with a loving smile. But the real horror struck when my wife confessed: her mother had been secretly drugging me for years, suppressing my hormones, to make me "docile," to "keep me calm." That' s when the familiar ache of humiliation hardened into a single, cold thought: I'm done.

Gracie never knew that she had perfect control over her captor. All she knew was that she had caused an accident three years ago which had put him in a coma, and now he was getting his revenge on her by forcing marriage after waking up. He wanted to avenge himself, but every time he saw her, unbearable pain would spread inside him. She was the one he once truly loved. What should he do with her? Read on as her efforts to run away are thwarted, as are his intentions of vengeance because she is the one he loved once upon a time.

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.

Becoming a bride to settle a debt was never part of my dreams. Yet, my stepbrother's betrayal and a trap party turned my life upside down, shattering my illusions of a joyful marriage. Now, I'm faced with the harsh reality of being married to a ruthless Mafia boss, Alessio Marino. Can I trust his promises, or will my situation be worse than the abuse I endured from my stepbrother? With love stripped from my wedding vows, all I can do is cling to hope for God's mercy and summon the strength to navigate this perilous new life.

At my boyfriend's poorest moment, I suddenly broke up with him. Later, he became a Don in the Mafia and married me by any means necessary. Everyone said he loved me to the bone. But every night, he brought different women home, deliberately trying to provoke me. I asked no questions, shed no tears, and never disturbed his trysts with his mistresses. He went crazy with rage instead, kissing me fiercely and demanding, "Why aren't you jealous?" He didn't know I was sick. Dying. While he was furiously taking his revenge on me, I was slowly walking toward death.

Andrew Hebert, the man who promised to protect me, stood on a stage and announced his engagement to my tormentor. It wasn't just heartbreak; it was a business deal. He was selling me to a creditor to cover his gambling debts. The applause of the powerful families was a death sentence, each clap sealing my fate as collateral. Andrew had paraded me here just to show everyone I was an asset to be liquidated, while his new fiancée smirked at me from the stage. I was trapped, with no money and no one to turn to. The man I loved was leading me to the slaughter. But as I fled into the library, a voice emerged from the shadows, deep and dangerous. Damien Maddox. The Dark Don. The only man Andrew feared. He offered me a different kind of cage, one with the power to burn Andrew's world to the ground. With nothing left to lose, I looked the devil in the eyes. "Take me with you."

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.

My grandfather sold me to a man named Maverick to settle his gambling debts. I stood on the private platform at Union Station, a human payment waiting to be collected. But he never came. An hour later, his assistant called to say the deal was off. I was told to disappear by morning or face the consequences. My family blamed me for their ruin and threw me out onto the street. Homeless and disowned, I had no choice but to take a low-level job at Prosperity Group, the biggest investment firm in Chicago. I needed to survive. I never understood why he rejected me. I had followed every rule, worn the red dress he demanded, and waited like a lamb for slaughter. Why would he agree to save my family only to destroy us at the last second? On my first day, I was called into the CEO's office. The man behind the desk was Damien Maddox, the city's most ruthless billionaire. He looked at me with a chilling familiarity. He was the man who had bought me. And he was the man who had thrown me away.

On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news. He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city. The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.” For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets. My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me. So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts. He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked. He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree. He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies.

She's sin wrapped in a nun habit. He is the devil who makes her want to confess. Luciano Moretti, the mafia's most feared enforcer, kills without hesitation, prays to no god, and bleeds for the Cosa Nostra. Sister Elizabeth has spent her life behind church walls, burying her desires under layers of penance and prayer. She is supposed to be untouchable-a quiet, secluded nun devoted to faith. But when she finds him bleeding on the altar one night, their worlds collide in a sin neither heaven nor hell can cleanse. He's meant to marry her sister to seal a deal between two mafia empires. She's meant to keep her vows and distance. But temptation has a cruel sense of humour... Because he's the last man she should want. She's the only woman he can't have. But one touch, one look, and everything sacred begins to crumble. Luciano does not seek salvation. Instead, he lures her into a dangerous path, one that includes everything she is meant to avoid, and everytime she whispers "forgive me, Father," her soul sinks deeper into him. As bloodlines clash and loyalty turns to betrayal, Elizabeth learns that the war outside the chapel isn't the only one she must survive. Because Luciano's world is built on violence and secrets, one of which binds her fate to his in ways neither of them saw coming. Desire clashes with devotion. Duty turns to betrayal. And when they're both drowning in a love so forbidden, not even God can save them.

My father bailed a violent ex-con out of prison just to force me into a marriage with him. I stood in a filthy Bronx hallway, my Vera Wang gown dragging through the grime, knowing this was the price for my mother’s life. If I didn't marry the man behind the steel door, the wire transfer for her hospital ventilator wouldn't go through the next morning. The man, a scarred giant named Dock, treated me with cold contempt, telling me he didn't touch things he didn't want—and he didn't want a "Jacobson." I thought I had hit rock bottom, tied to a criminal while my family lived in luxury. But the nightmare was just beginning. When I tried to return my wedding dress to pay for rent, my sister Janie and stepmother found me. They laughed as security dragged me out of the boutique, calling me a "charity case." When I finally crawled back to our family manor to beg for the money my father had promised, Janie revealed the horrific truth. She had liquidated my mother’s medical trust to fund a waterfront real estate project. "Get out and let your mother rot," she screamed, throwing a glass of ice water in my face before having guards dump me in the dirt. I knelt on the gravel, wet and bleeding, realizing my own flesh and blood had signed my mother's death warrant for a profit. I had nothing left—no money, no home, and a husband who was supposed to be a monster. I didn't understand why they hated me so much, or how I would survive the night. But then, a black car screeched to a halt in front of me. Dock pulled me inside, his eyes burning with a lethal coldness I’d never seen in a common thug. As he wiped the blood from my hands, he picked up a encrypted phone and gave a single command. "Initiate Project Titan. I want the Jacobson Group insolvent by Friday." I looked at the man I thought was a broke felon, realizing I hadn't just married a stranger—I had married the most dangerous man in the city, and he was about to burn my family's world to the ground.