Cornelia

When I was eight, Dante Moretti pulled me from the fire that killed my family. For ten years, the powerful crime boss was my protector and my god. Then, he announced his engagement to another woman to unite two criminal empires. He brought her home and named her the future mistress of the Moretti family. In front of everyone, his fiancée forced a cheap metal collar around my neck, calling me their pet. Dante knew I was allergic. He just watched, his eyes cold, and ordered me to take it. That night, I listened through the walls as he took her to his bed. I finally understood the promise he’d made me as a child was a lie. I wasn't his family. I was his property. After a decade of devotion, my love for him finally turned to ash. So on his birthday, the day he celebrated his new future, I walked out of his gilded cage for good. A private jet was waiting to take me to my real father—his greatest enemy.

My husband, Clark, gave me a choice: save the mother of the woman who killed my own, or he would destroy my sister's life. He held a fabricated video over my sister Anissa's head, a cruel lie that would ruin her future. I performed the surgery, saving the life of my enemy's mother, but the blackmail drove Anissa to take her own life. When I confronted him, he didn't just break my heart. He had his Dobermans maul my hands, the ten-million-dollar hands that had saved countless lives, shattering the bones and ending my career forever. He then threw me out, leaving me for dead on a deserted road after I was brutally attacked. I had lost my mother, my sister, and my life's work, all at the hands of the man who swore to love and protect me, the man I once saved on the operating table. But as I lay in a hospital bed for the last time, a cold, calculated resolve settled deep in my bones. I made a single phone call to a man from my past. "Apollo," I whispered, my voice raw but steady. "I'm ready. I want him destroyed. Every last piece of him."

I was a foster kid with a talent for art. My benefactor, Declan, gave me everything: an education, a home, and a future. I loved him, and I agreed to be his wife. Then his adopted sister, Faye, decided she wanted my brother. When my brother rejected her, Declan had his hands broken, destroying his future as a musician. Faye framed me for kidnapping her, and Declan believed every word. He had me thrown into an abandoned mine pit filled with snakes as punishment. Then, to teach me a "permanent lesson," he had his men drag me to a clinic. They took one of my kidneys. The man who promised to protect me, who I thought was my savior, carved a piece of me out for a crime I didn't commit. The love I felt for him died on that operating table. When I woke up, he sat by my bed and told me our wedding was still on. He thought he had broken me. He was wrong. He doesn't know I have a plan. He doesn't know I'm leaving. And he'll never see me again.

The warning chimed at noon, not from a guest or the wedding planner, but a sterile blue pop-up in my vision: [System Warning: Marriage to Mark Turner not detected. Seven days remaining until digital erasure.] My phone buzzed. A trending story: "Tech Mogul Mark Turner Weds Socialite Olivia Crest in Surprise Ceremony!" My Mark, in his custom-tailored suit, was slipping a ring onto Olivia Crest' s finger – his mentor' s daughter, who he' d called a "business acquaintance." My world went silent-the wilting roses, the empty chairs, the mocking blue notification. His call came. "Ava? Where are you? The press is going crazy." He sighed. "Olivia and I... it just happened. It's better for the company this way. Be reasonable." "Reasonable?" The word shattered in my mouth. He told me he' d wire money, then dismissed me like a fired employee as Olivia' s sweet voice called, "Honey, come cut the cake!" I stood in my heavy white dress, a joke in a room of dead flowers. The hollow echo of his words-"be reasonable"-bounced around the empty hall. My hand found cigarettes, something I' d quit for him ten years ago. It took three tries to light one, my hands shaking. I watched the smoke curl. Comments on the livestream jabbed: "She deserves a man like Mark, not some behind-the-scenes nobody." "I heard his ex was some clingy programmer." They didn't know I wrote the code for their app, that my AI patent was their fortune' s foundation. Then Mark pulled Olivia close, eyes gleaming into the camera: "She walked in and brought the color. She is my life's greatest acquisition." He never said things like that to me. Digital erasure. Seven days. A bizarre, romantic pact I had coded into my AI – a digital soul-bond to a legal marriage with Mark. My ultimate proof of devotion. Now, a death sentence. I crushed the cigarette under my satin shoe. Fine. If I was going to be erased, I wasn't going quietly. I wasn't going home to cry. I was going to his wedding reception.

I spent hours preparing Thanksgiving dinner, the turkey golden and perfect, a silent testament to the quiet life in our upscale suburban home. My wife, Izzy, was supposed to be home, but her booming lifestyle brand, Elysian Living, always came first. I was the unacknowledged foundation, the silent partner in a world she claimed to have built alone. Then I saw it—an Instagram story from Kev, her slick "Brand Strategist." He was grinning next to a brand-new Aston Martin, with Izzy by his side, her ring finger conspicuously bare. His caption, "Izzy knows how to treat her MVP," twisted the familiar knot in my stomach tighter. Moments later, Izzy called, not with an apology, but a sharp accusation about company gossip, hanging up before I could even defend myself. My phone buzzed again, this time a direct message from Kev, a taunting video tour of the car's interior. His voice smugly called me "old man." While her calls relentlessly flooded my screen, I thought of every late night. I thought of every bit of seed money, every crucial contact I leveraged to build "her" empire. None of which she ever acknowledged. The weight of her ingratitude, the blatant affair I was too "stupid" to notice, and the constant disrespect finally hit me with a chilling clarity. I was tired of being her silent safety net, her unappreciated fool. Something inside me snapped. I recorded an audio message for Kev, cold and precise. It exposed him as the parasite he was. Then I blocked him and turned off my phone. A new, definitive strategy for my own life was finally forming.

I'm Sarah Miller, a highly-paid "Soul Weaver" specializing in unique and often unconventional final rituals to bring closure to grieving families. My latest lucrative assignment, an $80,000 overnight "final companionship" at an isolated upstate New York estate, was meant to be purely symbolic for a wealthy young man named Ethan. As I prepared for the intimate ritual, ensuring his body stayed suitably pliable with electric blankets, I noticed something profoundly unsettling. My "deceased" client, Ethan, was alive, his chest rising with a faint, steady breath. The truth unfurled in terrifying whispers: he was Marcus Thorne, the scion of a tech empire, kidnapped by the seemingly grief-stricken Jenkinses, who were now my captors. Their monstrous plot was far beyond ransom; they intended for me to conceive a child with Marcus, then brutally murder us both to secure his family' s immense fortune. Trapped and utterly isolated in the dimly lit viewing room, my cell phone mysteriously ruined and the heavy doors locked from the outside, I realized my professional expertise in the ceremonies of death had become a meticulously crafted trap for the living. The sickening realization struck me: I, the pragmatic Soul Weaver who navigated grief for a fee, was now a pawn in a cold-blooded scheme, facing a fate far worse than any ritual I had ever performed. I was no longer an impartial professional but a direct participant in a nightmare, facing murderous criminals rather than mourning loved ones. But as terror threatened to paralyze me, a new resolve ignited, fueled by deception and an urgent need for survival. With Marcus, my "client," by my horrified side, we formulated a desperate, insane plan to turn my unique skills against them. We would harness the very superstitions that led them to hire a Soul Weaver, conjuring a terrifying 'ghostly' haunting within their own mansion to fight for our escape.

My life was always a supporting role to my brother, Caleb – a "spare part" for his childhood illness, my parents' love a finite resource entirely consumed by him. As "E," I finally felt seen, connecting deeply with Olivia after her accident-induced blindness. But my world shattered when Caleb, orchestrated by our parents, impersonated "E," stealing Olivia's trust and leading to their engagement. They humiliated me, twisting my gentle attempts at truth into jealous sabotages. The final blow came after a brutal car crash: bleeding and near death, I heard my parents and Olivia explicitly prioritize Caleb, caring only for his minor scrapes, not my life. Lying there, abandoned, a chilling clarity washed over me. This wasn't just neglect; it was active erasure. How could they be so utterly cruel? How could Olivia choose the lie so easily? In that moment, a quiet resolve ignited. Enough. This was my second chance – not to fight, but to finally cut the rotten cord. I would walk away, but not before delivering one final, devastating wedding gift that would shatter their perfect facade and set me free.

Ethan Hayes, a Manhattan billionaire, meticulously adjusted his silk tie before the floor-to-ceiling window of his penthouse. For four years, he’d poured his wealth into Maya Rodriguez, funding her lavish life, her family’s endless medical bills, and her brother's elite schooling. He saw her as the living echo of Olivia, his beloved fiancée tragically lost years ago, and tonight, he planned to propose. But hidden by a structural support on a windswept rooftop, he overheard a conversation that tore his carefully curated reality apart. Maya, her family, and her childhood friend Leo Maxwell. “You can’t marry him, Maya. He stole you,” Leo sobbed, his voice cracking. “If you go through with this, I’ll jump!” To Ethan's horror, Maya whispered, "Okay, Leo. I'll leave Ethan at the altar. We'll run away." The illusion, meticulously constructed over four years, shattered into a million pieces. He wasn't just a benefactor; he was a pawn, a source of endless funds, destined for public humiliation. Maya was not only using him but callously planning to jilt him, her family complicit in the cruel charade. A strange, cold calm settled over him, replacing the crushing weight of betrayal. How could he have been so blind, so desperate to resuscitate a ghost, that he fell for such a calculated deception? The woman he'd placed on a pedestal was nothing but a manipulative fraud, willing to exploit his grief. He turned and walked away unseen, pulling out his phone. The wedding, Maya, his entire life in New York – it was all over. He was leaving. He was done chasing echoes; it was time to finally build a life that was truly his own.

The moment she witnessed her fiance’s betrayal, Leah’s heart shattered into a million pieces. She never would have thought that Luciam, the charming CEO of the top company in the world, would propose to her on the spot. She was the girl he had spent all those years missing and looking for, the only one who could bring warmth back to his cold heart. But there was one problem: she didn’t know who he was anymore. Now that he had found her and she was back in his arms, he would never let her run away from him ever again.

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.

I'm a moaning mess as Antonio slams into me from behind. His hips hit me hard, and each deep thrust sends shockwaves through my body. My breasts bounce with every movement, my eyes roll back, and I moan his name without control. The pleasure he gives me is overwhelming-I can't hold it in. I feel my walls tighten around his thick length. The pressure builds fast, and then- I explode around him, my orgasm tearing through me. He groans loud and deep as he releases inside me, his hot seed spilling into me in thick pulses. Just when I think he's done, his grip shifts. He turns me over and lays me flat on the bed. His dark eyes stare into mine for a moment, filled with raw hunger. I glance down- He's still hard. Before I can react, he grabs my wrists, pins me down, and pushes himself inside me again. He fills me completely. My hips rise on instinct, meeting his rhythm. Our bodies move together, locked in a wild, uncontrollable dance. "You're fucking sweet," he groans, his voice rough and breathless. "I can't get enough of you... not after that night, Sol," he growls, slamming into me harder. The force of his words and his thrusts make my body shake. "Come for me," he commands, his voice low and full of heat. And just like that, my body trembles. Waves of pleasure crash over me. I cry out, shaking with the force of my orgasm. "Mine," he growls again, louder this time. His voice is feral, wild, like a beast claiming what belongs to him. The sound sends a shiver down my spine. *** Solene was betrayed, humiliated, and erased by Rowan Brook, the man she once called husband, Solene is left with nothing but her name and a burning hunger for revenge. She turns to the one man powerful enough to destroy the Brooks family from within: Rowan's estranged and dangerous uncle, Antonio Rodriguez. He's ruthless. A playboy who never sleeps with the same woman twice. But when Solene walks into his world, he doesn't just break the rules, he creates new ones just for her. What begins as a calculated game quickly spirals into obsession, power plays, and secrets too deadly to stay buried. Because Solene isn't just anyone's ex... she's the woman they should've never underestimated. Can she survive the price of revenge? Or will her heart become the next casualty? And when the truth comes out, will Antonio still choose her... or destroy her?

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 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 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.

When I was eight, Dante Moretti pulled me from the fire that killed my family. For ten years, the powerful crime boss was my protector and my god. Then, he announced his engagement to another woman to unite two criminal empires. He brought her home and named her the future mistress of the Moretti family. In front of everyone, his fiancée forced a cheap metal collar around my neck, calling me their pet. Dante knew I was allergic. He just watched, his eyes cold, and ordered me to take it. That night, I listened through the walls as he took her to his bed. I finally understood the promise he’d made me as a child was a lie. I wasn't his family. I was his property. After a decade of devotion, my love for him finally turned to ash. So on his birthday, the day he celebrated his new future, I walked out of his gilded cage for good. A private jet was waiting to take me to my real father—his greatest enemy.

Elora Griffiths was on her way to drop her daughter off at school when her husband's enemies opened fire in the street. The bodyguard her husband had personally assigned to protect them abandoned the car the instant the shots rang out. Mother and daughter were hit multiple times, teetering on the brink of death. Elora frantically called her husband, Rodger Griffiths, but he didn't answer. Her brother, Hugh Dale, arrived just in time and saved them both. "How could this happen? Didn't Rodger assign someone to protect you?" Hugh asked. Elora sobbed uncontrollably, "The bodyguard ran away!" On the way to the hospital, Elora kept trying Rodger's number, desperate. One call after another... Finally, on the ninety-ninth attempt, the line connected. On the other end was the female bodyguard, trembling, her voice barely holding back tears. "Rodger, it's really not my fault! There were so many assassins. I would've died if I tried to stop them! I was so scared..." Elora held her breath, waiting for her husband's wrath to thunder down. But Rodger just sighed. "Forget it. The important thing is you're safe," he said. Meanwhile, Elora's daughter took her last breath in her arms. The pain was suffocating. She held her daughter close as her body went cold and stiff, teeth gritted in fury, "Hugh, I'm divorcing him! I'll cut off every single arms shipment to the Griffiths family from the largest arms company in Crownport!"

I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York. To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen. But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table. It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test. "Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture." I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking. He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago. He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy. He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go. He was wrong. I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don. And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy. I wanted to erase him. I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built. Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa." It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul. On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial. When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth. He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife. Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.

I stood alone at the center of my art gallery opening, clutching a glass of warm champagne, while the guests whispered behind their hands. My husband, the Capo of the Chicago Outfit, wasn't there. A breaking news alert on my phone explained why. It was a high-definition photo of Dante shielding his mistress, Isabella, from the rain. He was touching her with a protective possessiveness he had never once shown me. Then came his text: "Isabella needed me. Go home." That was the moment the cage door unlocked. I didn't go home to cry. I went to his office the next morning with a stack of papers disguised as "gallery insurance forms." While Isabella sat on his desk, mocking me for being a boring housewife, Dante was too annoyed to read the fine print. He just wanted me gone so he could get back to her. He signed the divorce decree. He signed the asset dissolution. Most importantly, without looking, he signed the irrevocable relinquishment of parental rights. I walked out with my freedom, but fate had a cruel sense of humor. That night, I stared at a positive pregnancy test. I was carrying the Sovrano heir he had always demanded. And he had just legally signed away his right to ever know his child. I fled to the Swiss Alps, vanishing into the snow to raise my baby away from his world of blood and bullets. I thought I was safe, until six months later. Dante hadn't just sent men to look for me. He had burned his own shipping empire to the ground, destroying his status as King, just to prove he would trade it all for the wife he threw away.

For nine years, I was the perfect mafia wife. I laundered Marcus Thorne’s money through my design firm, smiled at his dinners, and ignored the lipstick stains on his collars. I believed in the Omertà of our marriage. I thought my loyalty was my armor. I was wrong. On the night of our anniversary gala, a car lost control and barreled straight toward us in the parking lot. Marcus didn't look at me. Not once. He lunged for his mistress, Izzy, tackling her to safety behind a concrete pillar. I was left standing in the open. The impact threw me like a ragdoll. I lay bleeding on the cold asphalt, my body broken, watching through the haze as my husband frantically checked his mistress for scratches. "My ankle," she whimpered. Without a backward glance, he picked her up and carried her to his limousine, leaving me to bleed out on the pavement. He didn't leave me because he panicked. He left me because I was just a shield he used to protect what he actually loved. As darkness crept in, a shadow fell over me. It wasn't Marcus. It was Julian Croft, his sworn rival. I looked at the empty spot where my husband should have been and made a choice. "Get me to the hospital," I rasped, staring into the eyes of the enemy. "And then help me burn his empire to the ground."