Breenda

On my wedding day, the wedding planner looked at me with pity in her eyes. She told me the groom had called with a last-minute request. He wanted the name on the floral arch changed from "Elena" to "Sofia." Five years of loyalty to Dante Romero, and I found out he was planning a "secret" ceremony with his mistress an hour before ours. He claimed she was dying of cancer. He said it was her final wish to be a bride, and that as a good mafia wife, I should understand. He swore it was just charity. But I had seen the texts where he called me "furniture." I had watched him step over my body when I fell down the stairs at a club, just so he could leave with her. And this morning, I watched Sofia walk into the hotel lobby wearing *my* custom French lace wedding dress, smirking as she clung to his arm. Dante thinks I'm crying in the bridal suite. He thinks I will sit in the front row of his "fake" wedding and wait for my turn like a dutiful puppet. He is wrong. I wiped my tears and picked up my phone. I didn't cancel the wedding date. I just changed the location to the ballroom next door. And I changed the groom. As Dante says his vows to his mistress, I am walking down the aisle to meet the only man the Romero family fears. The Reaper.

Kael and I were fated Mates, and for seven years, I poured my soul and my family's wealth into saving his failing pack. But everything changed when he brought home Selene, a supposedly fragile Omega. During a freezing downpour, I watched my Alpha hold his umbrella entirely over her, leaving me to stand soaked and shivering in the rain. Things only got worse from there. He let her move into my newly built Luna villa, wear my custom silk pajamas, and drink from my mugs. He even demanded I hand over my family's sacred, ancient amulet just to soothe her nervous system. Whenever she squeezed out a few fake tears, Kael would unleash his Alpha aura to suppress anyone who questioned her, publicly humiliating me and calling me a cold-blooded, jealous monster for refusing to yield my territory. I had funded his entire pack. I couldn't understand how the boy who once threw his broken body over mine to save me from a rogue bear couldn't even hold an umbrella straight for me now. My endless patience had only taught him that my boundaries were meant to be crossed. So, I decided to stop playing the understanding Mate. At his mother's grand birthday banquet, in front of all the regional elders, I placed my silver engagement ring on the table. "I, Elara, reject you, Kael, as my mate." I severed our bond, demanded the immediate return of my thirty million gold coins, and prepared to expose the filthy, feral secret his precious Omega was hiding.

I stood in the grand parlor and warned Zander that if he walked out to his mistress again, I would find another mate. He laughed in my face and called me a broken Omega whose ruined body no man would ever touch. Three days later a glowing parchment arrived. It showed two pups growing inside me, and a note from Alpha Silas promised he would come claim me as his Luna. Zander returned from patrol and mocked me for still sitting by the fire. I handed him the elders’ dissolution papers and told him I was leaving with nothing but my old moon-dog. He sneered that I was throwing a tantrum and rode off to Daphne. In the tavern Sasha hurled wine at them. Daphne spat that I was filthy and barren from the rogues who had destroyed me. Zander threw me aside when I lunged at her. Later he let Daphne butcher my loyal dog in the courtyard and called it practice for dark magic. I gathered the pieces of my only companion and felt the last thread of our bond snap. I could not understand how the man who once claimed to have saved me had spent ten years guarding a lie he knew was stolen. I turned my back on the territory, walked through the snow to Wintermoon, and let Silas mark me under the full moon while Zander howled alone outside the gates.

After six years of failed fertility treatments, my fiancé Blake and I were finally expecting our miracle child. Our shared dream, the one that had held us together through years of heartache, was finally coming true. But then I discovered he was faking amnesia to cheat on me. Heartbroken, I went to the hospital to end the pregnancy we had so desperately wanted. As I lay recovering, his mistress was rushed into the ER, bleeding out. She needed my rare blood type to survive. Blake found me, held me down, and forcibly drew my blood to save her. He called me selfish for hesitating, twisting my pain into a weapon against me. "This is why I don't love you, Eliza," he sneered. "This cold, selfish streak." That was the moment the woman he knew died. Weeks later, at his live-streamed wedding where he begged for my return, I sent him a package. Inside was the aborted embryo of the child he denied, and a recording of him confessing everything.

For three years, I endured a freezing, arranged marriage with Julian Carlisle-Vance, foolishly hoping my childhood crush would eventually warm his heart. But the moment his "friend" Seraphina called about a minor wrist ache, he abandoned me in our bed, rushing to her side and publicly flaunting his devotion online. When I finally handed him the divorce papers, willing to walk away with absolutely nothing, he refused to sign. Instead, he blackmailed me. He blocked the settlement for my younger brother's impending assault charges, using his freedom as leverage to force me into a sick ultimatum. "The marriage stays on paper, but in private, you will be my mistress." He wanted to strip me of my dignity, keeping me as a secret plaything while my own father conspired with Seraphina, putting my late mother's precious jadeite necklace up for auction just to punish my disobedience. Julian even twisted a moment of my vulnerability, accusing me of secretly loving his dead brother, using that paranoid delusion as an excuse to ruthlessly degrade me. I didn't understand why the man I loved hated me so much, or why my own family would sell my mother's soul to the highest bidder just to keep me leashed to a psychopath. But when I saw my mother's necklace headlining the Sotheby's VIP preview, the suffocating despair inside me finally burned away into a cold, clear rage. I wiped my tears and calmly began planning my appearance at the auction. They thought the necklace was a chain to bind me, but I was going to make it my weapon.

Allison was hiding in a dusty small-town garage, working as a mechanic to suppress the lethal, experimental serum freezing her veins. But a call from her estranged, wealthy father shattered her peace. He threatened to permanently freeze her dead mother's trust fund if she didn't return to the family estate immediately. That trust fund held the only key to the truth behind her past and her survival. When she stepped into the sprawling mansion in her faded hoodie, her family treated her like a stray dog. Her stepmother mocked her cheap clothes, and her half-brother called her a piece of trash. Her father tossed a vocational school enrollment form at her, telling her to learn to sew so they could marry her off to anyone desperate enough. Her perfect, porcelain-doll stepsister Gwyneth even deliberately smashed a glass of boiling milk against her own leg. "Why did you push me?!" Gwyneth screamed, crying tears of fake terror to frame Allison. "You vicious bitch! You're just as sick as your mother!" her father roared, raising his hand to strike her. They looked at her with absolute disgust, thinking she was just a stupid, uncultured hick they could easily manipulate and destroy. They had no idea that the girl standing before them was a lethal operative who already possessed all their offshore tax ledgers and darkest secrets. Allison easily caught her father's wrist mid-air, her grip like a steel vice. "I'm not going to a trade school," she whispered coldly, ripping the form into pieces. "I am going to Crestwood Academy." It was time to take back everything that belonged to her, with interest.

When our family empire crumbled, my sister and I were sold off as collateral to the Chicago Outfit. My fierce sister Frankie was forced to marry Damien Moretti, the terrifying Don. I was shackled to his brother Leo, a notorious, degenerate playboy. I thought my life was over, but the real nightmare began on our wedding night. A terrified maid handed me the wrong room key. Exhausted and numb, I crawled into a dark honeymoon suite, praying my new husband would be too drunk to find me. Instead, the heavy door opened, and a man fueled by a drug-laced drink stepped in. He was ruthless, punishing, and entirely stripped away my dignity in the pitch black. When the morning light finally broke, I turned my head, expecting to see Leo's boyish face. Instead, I saw a profile carved from ice. Damien Moretti. The Don. My sister's husband. The very man who had previously called me a "liability" and ruined my life. When he realized who I was, his eyes filled with absolute, chilling disgust. He dragged me out of the ruined sheets, threw me onto the floor of a freezing shower, and demanded to know why I had sneaked into his suite. "You ruined me. How am I supposed to look at Frankie? You should have just killed me. Kill me now, Damien. It would be a mercy compared to this." I sobbed, the freezing water mingling with my tears. He just stared down at me with cold, unreadable intent. I was now trapped in a house of monsters, carrying the Don's darkest secret, and I had to figure out how to survive without destroying my sister.

My boyfriend and stepsister murdered me for my inheritance, their celebratory kiss a final insult above my broken body on the rain-slicked concrete of the port. As my soul floated inches from my own face, a tyrant the world knew only as a disfigured cripple, Charles Moses, arrived with a team of soldiers. He ignored my killers, who were now begging for their lives. Instead, he fell to his knees in the mud and blood. He cradled my lifeless head in his hands, and a gut-wrenching sob of pure agony tore from his throat before he carried my body into the black ocean. As the water closed over us, I didn't understand. Why did this monster, a man I had never met, weep for me as if I was his entire world? My eyes snapped open. I was five years in the past, coughing up water in a hospital bed. It was the night my family screamed at me for ruining my stepsister's dress after she'd tried to drown me. When they offered to marry me off to the "crippled monster" Charles Moses to save my perfect stepsister from that fate, I didn't fight them. I smiled and said yes. This time, I would walk straight into the lion's den myself.

I sat in the freezing conference room, my knuckles white as I strangled a cheap plastic pen. Outside, Manhattan was weeping in the gray rain, but inside, the air was sterile and dead. I stared at the polished mahogany table, seeing the distorted reflection of a man who hadn't slept in forty-eight hours—a man about to sign his own divorce papers. Across from me, my wife Linda wouldn't even look at me. She was too busy drumming her fingers near a diamond ring that cost more than I had made in the last five years combined. Then the door swung open, and Simon Thorne walked in. The billionaire heir didn't say a word; he just walked behind Linda and placed a heavy, possessive hand on her shoulder, marking her as his. "Let's wrap this up," Simon said, checking his Patek Philippe with the bored tone of a man ordering a coffee he didn't want. Linda finally looked through me like I was a ghost and told me to stop dragging this out. She whispered that I couldn't even afford myself anymore, a physical punch to the gut given I’d lost my job three weeks ago. After I signed, Simon flicked a business card at me, mockingly offering me a job as a doorman for minimum wage. I walked out into the downpour, shivering in a suit I couldn't afford to dry clean. My phone vibrated with a text from my landlord: "Pack your things. Keys by tonight or I’m calling the cops." I stood on the corner of 5th Avenue with exactly $42.18 to my name, watching Simon kiss my wife through the glass wall of the penthouse. I was thirty, homeless, and drowning in a city of lions. I wanted to roar until my throat bled, but I just stood there, a drowned rat in a world of predators. How could I have lost everything so fast? Why was the woman who promised to stay through "for poorer" now leaning into the arms of the man who just humiliated me? Suddenly, my phone screen exploded with a blinding golden light. An app called the Midas Protocol installed itself, declaring poverty a disease and itself the cure. With one tap, a million dollars bypassed a federal hold and hit my account, and a "Nemesis Card" appeared in my digital inventory. I didn't hesitate. I typed Simon Thorne’s name into the vengeance algorithm and hit execute. The game had officially changed.

I told my boyfriend, Caleb, that we were over. He built his tech empire with my inheritance, but for months, his assistant Kimberly had been slowly replacing me in our life. He called me paranoid and emotional. But when I went back to our apartment to get my mother's necklace, I found Kimberly there, wearing my silk robe. She stood over the shattered pieces of my mother's locket, claiming it was an accident. When I lunged at her, Caleb ran in, shielded her, and called me a monster. "It's just a thing," he said coldly. "I'll buy you a better one." But the real betrayal came from Kimberly's mouth. She sneered and threw a painful secret from my past in my face—a trauma I had only ever confessed to Caleb, who had sworn he would protect it with his life. He had handed her the weapon to destroy me. That's when I finally saw him clearly. He hadn't just cheated; he had used my money to build his kingdom and my vulnerability to control me. I looked at the man I had created and made a new promise. "I am going to burn your entire world to the ground."

My engagement party was supposed to be the start of my perfect life with Michael. Then, his "adopted sister" Tiffany showed up, flashing a hickey and claiming Michael needed her to help us conceive a son on our wedding night. My world shattered as Michael watched, a faint, unreadable smile on his face, openly enjoying my humiliation. The next day, Michael brutally murdered my dear younger brother, Ethan, right in front of me to make me apologize to Tiffany. He even took away my parents' life-saving medical funding, forcing me to plan our wedding while they suffered. I endured his and Tiffany' s twisted games, their constant physical and emotional torment, all to protect the last people I had left. They told me I was adopted, that I was worthless, that my family meant nothing compared to Tiffany' s happiness. Every lash of his whip was a cold reminder that my life was a game to them, a test for Michael to prove his loyalty to his grandfather. But as I lay bleeding, defeated, a new feeling rose within me: a burning desire for revenge. I survived, found help, and then I fought back. I leaked the horrifying videos and audio of their cruelty to the world, destroying their perfect facade and Michael' s empire. But that was just the beginning. Michael' s furious retaliation against Tiffany, his desperate attempts to win me back even after his parents died and he was blinded, only fueled my fire. His self-destruction was meaningless to me now. I wanted him to understand that some lines, once crossed, can never be uncrossed. My name is Olivia Reynolds, and this is the story of how I took everything back, piece by agonizing piece.

The first thing I noticed was the jarring yellow light, not the soft city gray I expected, and a small boy playing on my bedroom floor. He looked at me with wide, innocent eyes and smiled, saying, "Mommy, you're awake!" My heart hammered. Then my husband, Mark, walked in, followed by my parents, casually talking about "our son, Leo," as if this wasn't an impossible nightmare. They presented a birth certificate, DNA test, and even hospital footage, all with my name, proving I was Leo' s mother, claiming my successful career was a delusion caused by mental illness. They drugged me, gaslit me, and painted me as the unstable one, making me doubt my entire memory and sanity. How could my own body, my own family, betray me so completely? Was I truly losing my mind? Just as I surrendered to this crushing reality, a woman identical to me, my long-lost twin sister Ashley, appeared, triggering a chilling revelation: the lie was real, but it wasn't mine-it was hers. This child, this life, belonged to Ashley, while Mark and my parents had conspired to steal my identity and sanity. I had to play their game, pretending to accept my "illness," to reclaim my life and unmask their monstrous deception.

I loved Michael so fully, a quiet burning devotion for my youth pastor, believing he was my soulmate. Then he left me for his "true love." In a fit of desperate jealousy, I hired men to just `scare` him, but it went horribly wrong. He suffered a head injury, waking with amnesia, claiming I was the only woman he remembered, the only one he loved. Guilt gnawed at me, but I clung to his twisted miracle, marrying him fast. My mother warned me, her voice weak but firm: "Sarah, this isn't right." I dismissed her, blinded by supposed love. Months later, in an isolated cabin during brutal childbirth, I heard Michael' s voice, cold and ruthless. He confessed his amnesia was a lie, a scheme with my stepsister, Jessica, his true love. They planned to steal my baby and force me into degradation. My baby girl was murdered by him, yet I was forced to breastfeed Jessica' s child, a constant, sickening humiliation. My mother' s warnings echoed, a devastating realization setting in: I was just a pawn, a "milk machine." But when Jessica cruelly revealed my own child had been slowly poisoned, something in me snapped. Broken, but not defeated, Mama V – an old friend of my late mother – recognized me when Michael dumped me at a decrepit city club, fully intending to sell me into a life I couldn't bear. She offered me a choice: sing for my life, or be swallowed by despair. I chose to sing. And I chose to live.

My five-year marriage to Logan was a twisted cycle: he' d orchestrate "final" breakups, always expecting me to beg him back. I always did. Our tenth "final" split began over spilled coffee. But this time, I found his unlocked laptop and "The Ava Project" – a chilling journal where he meticulously documented his sadistic pleasure in my tears, his calculated cruelty, and how he used his mistress, Chloe, as a weapon. He was a monster. He publicly paraded Chloe with my heirloom locket, then ignored my injury from a falling chandelier. He moved Chloe into our home, framed me for poisoning her, and force-fed me migraine-inducing wine. Worst of all, he actively helped Chloe steal my culinary dream, crushing my scholarship. He genuinely relished my anguish, believing my submission fed his warped need for control. My love was his perverse entertainment, my loyalty exploited. The horrific realization clicked: my suffering was his ultimate pleasure, and he was deliberately destroying me. But no more. Feigning surrender, I secretly secured a new culinary scholarship in New Orleans. Despite his escalating torment, I finally escaped his clutches. Now, thriving and free, Logan believes he can reclaim his "broken doll." He has no idea his cruel games ultimately forged a phoenix.

Henry‘s father and brother died the same year he was born. The family matriarch was devastated, so she went to a fortune teller to seek for help. They found out that in order to get rid of the ill omen brought to his family, he needed to wed someone who had a hard life like him. According to the clairvoyant, he should marry Kelley, a sole survivor of a devastating earthquake from a few years back. However, Henry was already engaged to another woman. How could he ever marry a stranger and leave the woman he loved?

I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair. They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves. Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment. But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger. In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all.

I was dragged back from the countryside by my father for one purpose: to be a sacrificial lamb. He ordered me to marry the mafia Don Damien Valachi in place of my sister. Everyone in the underworld knew that this Don's brides never saw the light of the next day. My stepmother put on a fake smile and took my hand, calling it an "honor"; my sister hid behind her, unable to conceal the gleam of triumph in her eyes. I smiled coldly and held up two fingers: "Twenty million dollars. Now." My father tried to play tricks, planning to take back the money from my trust fund after I died, but I had someone transfer every cent out before the wedding, leaving him a zero balance. The next day, the wedding car pulled up to the Valachi estate. The butler ordered the driver to use the service entrance-it seemed my groom didn't think I was worthy of the front gate. I got out and switched to an armored vehicle. I floored the accelerator, crashing straight through the estate gates. The gates shattered, and I didn't stop until I reached the main steps. I jumped out, the heel of my shoe crushing a broken iron railing, and shouted: "The bride is here." I looked up, scanning every window until my gaze stopped on one dark pane. I knew Damien was watching. I brushed the dust off my skirt, raised my voice a notch, and smiled: "What, the Don of the Valachi family doesn't dare come out to meet his new wife?"

My mother is marrying a monster tomorrow. I'm the only one who remembers. My widowed mother was arranged to marry Lorenzo, a powerful Mafia Capo. I thought his status would finally bring us protection. But on the third day of their marriage, Lorenzo moved his pregnant mistress, Camilla, into the estate's master suite. She loudly claimed the child in her womb was the orphaned blood of a fallen soldier. "A Capo of Lorenzo's stature is doing your mother a service," the Syndicate wives mocked me, demanding we accept our place. Camilla systematically seized my mother's territory cuts and subjected her to endless psychological torture, while Lorenzo simply turned a blind eye. When the baby was born, it bore the exact same distinct birthmark on its neck as Lorenzo. Only then did we realize Lorenzo had used my mother as a convenient shield for his illicit affair, stealing my dead father's legacy and slowly draining our lives away. I didn't understand why the Family's brutal justice allowed a thief to siphon funds under the guise of caring for a martyr's widow, leaving us to die in absolute disgrace. Opening my eyes again, I was back to the day before the mob wedding. Looking at my six-year-old hands, I grabbed the torn marriage petition and stole the secret trust documents. This time, I ran straight to the heavily guarded gates of Don Salvatore, the most ruthless executioner in the city.

On my birthday, my husband Dante asked for a divorce over a plate of cold lasagna. He held my hand, tears in his eyes, and told me his mistress was pregnant. "It’s a miracle, Elena," he wept. "God has finally given me a son." He looked at me with pity, calling me "broken" because I hadn't given him an heir in eight years. He moved his pregnant mistress into the penthouse I paid for, and his mother mocked me as a "dry vine" while cooking tonic soups for the new woman. They didn't know the truth I had buried three years ago. I remembered the day the doctor slid the file across the desk: *Azoospermia. Zero sperm count.* Dante was the sterile one. I had burned the results to protect his fragile ego as a Mafia Don. I took the blame. I drank his mother's vile herbal poisons every morning until I vomited, just to keep his secret. Now, he was discarding me for a "miracle" that was biologically impossible. I signed the divorce papers without a tear. Then I bought the debt of his company, put on a blood-red dress, and walked into his heir's Christening. I didn't come to object. I came to plug a USB drive into the projector and show the entire underworld exactly whose "miracle" that baby really was.

"It was just one night stand, and now I'm pregnant with triplets? Gosh!" Josephine Jade never thought that she would have to run away from her own family while pregnant. She was alone, without money, without connections, with three fetuses in her stomach. How can she survive? However, Josephine couldn't give up now, until she managed to reclaim her arbitrarily seized property and get back at everyone who tried to get rid of her. A sick child, a past crush that comes back, a mysterious eccentric man, and a family that hates her, will weave together the journey of Josephine Jade's new life. "You have no right to separate me from my children, you bastard! I will survive and you will submit to me. Just watch!"

I stood outside my husband's study, the perfect mafia wife, only to hear him mocking me as an "ice sculpture" while he entertained his mistress, Aria. But the betrayal went deeper than infidelity. A week later, my saddle snapped mid-jump, leaving me with a shattered leg. Lying in the hospital bed, I overheard the conversation that killed the last of my love. My husband, Alessandro, knew Aria had sabotaged my gear. He knew she could have killed me. Yet, he told his men to let it go. He called my near-death experience a "lesson" because I had bruised his mistress's ego. He humiliated me publicly, freezing my accounts to buy family heirlooms for her. He stood by while she threatened to leak our private tapes to the press. He destroyed my dignity to play the hero for a woman he thought was a helpless orphan. He had no idea she was a fraud. He didn't know I had installed micro-cameras throughout the estate while he was busy pampering her. He didn't know I had hours of footage showing his "innocent" Aria sleeping with his guards, his rivals, and even his staff, laughing about how easy he was to manipulate. At the annual charity gala, in front of the entire crime family, Alessandro demanded I apologize to her. I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I simply connected my drive to the main projector and pressed play.

I was the brilliant money launderer for the most feared syndicate on the East Coast, and the fiercely loyal wife of its Underboss, Dante. While I worked sleepless nights to build his underworld dominion, he secretly diverted my operations to fund a luxury club for his naive barista mistress. When I confronted them and publicly exposed her, Dante didn't show a shred of guilt. Instead, he slapped me across the face in front of the entire syndicate. He draped his tailored jacket over his crying mistress to shield her, then turned his cold eyes on me. "Apologize to her right now, or I will send every single soldier in your crew to the slaughterhouse." He then weaponized the mafia's whisper network to destroy my reputation, painting me as a hysterical, paranoid woman just to legitimize his affair. For years, I had blindly endured his psychological torture, believing my devotion would eventually earn his respect. But looking at the brutal purple handprint on my cheek, and the ninety-nine dried bouquets of white roses he kept in the attic to carelessly patch over his toxic abuse, my heart finally turned to ice. I didn't throw a tantrum, nor did I beg for his love anymore. I left his apology blood diamonds on the table, drafted my mafia severance papers, and walked out of his territory for good. This time, I would build my own empire, and let him drown in the ruins of his.

For two years, I played the perfect, silent wife to Damien Moretti, the ruthless Don of the New York mafia. But tonight, he threw a thick manila envelope onto our nightstand. It was an annulment. "Giuliana is back. She's dying, and I am done playing house with you." His first love had returned, supposedly sick with terminal cancer. He demanded I sign the papers and leave the penthouse immediately so he could rush to her side. He looked at me with absolute disgust, expecting me to break down and beg. When she later staged a fake assassination attempt to frame me, Damien blindly believed her pathetic tears. He dragged me to the hospital, ready to unleash his murderous wrath on me for daring to touch his precious white rose. I looked at the man I had shared a bed with for two years. He was supposed to be a powerful, calculating leader, yet he was completely blinded by a cheap liar and a forged medical report. He actually thought I was just a weak, greedy socialite who would quietly take the fall. He had no idea that behind my docile mask, I was 'K', the digital underworld's most elusive hacker. I calmly signed the papers, took his millions, and pulled the real security footage of his perfectly healthy ex. At tonight's family dinner, I am going to shatter her fragile facade and make the Don choke on his own stupidity before I walk away for good.

I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella. Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark. But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved. Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies. When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel. While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest. The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella. He ordered my father to punish me. I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth. That night, the love in my heart finally died. On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape—the only proof that I was Seven. Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney. By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.

I was three days away from marrying the Underboss of the Fazio crime family when I unlocked his burner phone. The screen glowed toxic bright in the dark next to my sleeping fiancé. A message from a contact saved as 'Little Trouble' read: "She is just a statue, Dante. Come back to bed." Attached was a photo of a woman lying in the sheets of his private office, wearing his shirt. My heart didn't break; it simply stopped. For eight years, I believed Dante was the hero who pulled me from a burning opera house. I played the perfect, loyal Mafia Princess for him. But heroes don't give their mistresses rare pink diamonds while giving their fiancées cubic zirconia replicas. He didn't just cheat. He humiliated me. He defended his mistress over his own soldiers in public. He even abandoned me on the side of the road on my birthday because she faked a pregnancy emergency. He thought I was weak. He thought I would accept the fake ring and the disrespect because I was just a political pawn. He was wrong. I didn't cry. Tears are for women who have options. I had a strategy. I walked into the bathroom and dialed a number I hadn't dared to call in a decade. "Speak," a voice like gravel growled on the other end. Lorenzo Moretti. The Capo of the rival family. The man my father called the Devil. "The wedding is off," I whispered, staring at my reflection. "I want an alliance with you, Enzo. And I want the Fazio family burned to the ground."