Dashing Wave Rider

For ten years, I disguised myself as my dead twin brother, fighting bloody mob wars to build the Falcone family's bootlegging empire. When the war ended, I thought I could finally take off the men's suits and be Anya again. Instead, my parents stole my victories to secure my father's power, demanding I disappear forever. When I tried to expose the truth, my family dragged me into a soundproof basement. My younger brother forced a metal funnel past my teeth and poured corrosive chemicals down my throat, dissolving my vocal cords into a blistered ruin. They chained me to a freezing pier, whipped me bloody, and let the men I used to lead spit on me as a jealous traitor. Then, under the guise of a family reconciliation dinner, my mother drugged my wine. While I lay paralyzed but fully conscious on my bed, my brother took heavy iron pliers and crushed all ten of my fingers, bone by bone. They wanted to ensure I could never hold a gun or write the truth again. I had slaughtered for them, bled for them, and craved only their love. In return, they pulverized my body and painted me as a hysterical madwoman just to keep the crown I had won for them. The foolish girl who wanted a family died in that agonizing pain, leaving behind only a ghost. Dragging my mangled, bandaged body into the rival Romano family's charity gala, I collapsed at the feet of their ruthless matriarch. "I invoke the sacred code," I rasped through my chemically burned throat. "I demand a Vendetta."

It's common knowledge that Ethan married me only because I look like his first love. Three years of marriage, and he never once slept with me, because he thought it would be a desecration of his first love. On the surface, I was madly in love with him. In reality, I was blowing through his money like crazy and keeping a man on the side. But now there's a problem. The man I've been keeping… how does he look exactly like the richest man in New York? And even have the same name?

In my previous life, I poured my family's savings into Diego Torres. He was a scholarship student I mistook for a tech prodigy, and I helped him become a billionaire. His way of thanking me was conspiring with his first love, Kiana, to kill me in an explosion. My mistake cost me everything. But when I opened my eyes again, I found myself back in the campus cafe, years before my murder. There was still time to fix every mistake. Diego sat across from me, demanding a thirty-thousand-dollar monthly allowance for Kiana, or else he would refuse my funding. In that instant, I knew he had been reborn too.

My husband, Alpha Kaeden, once looked at me with adoration. But after he brought Clemmie home, his eyes turned cold, glazed over by the "herbal tea" she fed him. Now, I lay chained to a steel table in the dungeon, the smell of my own burning flesh filling the air. Kaeden stood over me, indifferent to my screams. He ordered the guards to electrocute me through silver cuffs—the poison of our kind—even though he knew I was carrying his pup. But torture wasn't the end goal. I froze when I heard the doctor’s question. "The transplant carries risks, Alpha. Taking a heart from a living donor..." Clemmie didn't just want my husband; she wanted my heart to cure her "sickness" and steal my White Wolf power. I waited for Kaeden to refuse. Instead, he rubbed his temples and delivered my death sentence. "Harvest the heart. Dispose of the rest." "And the fetus?" the doctor asked. "Incinerate it." Those words killed me faster than the silver. I died on the operating table that night, my heart flatlining for three minutes to stage my death. Kaeden thinks I am ash in a jar. He thinks he saved his mistress. But when I opened my eyes in the safe house, they weren't brown anymore. They were glowing silver. Beside me, my daughter slept, alive and radiating ancient power. The weak Luna is dead. The White Wolf has risen. And I am going home to take back my pack.

My family framed me for corporate espionage, and my uncle told me I was dead to them. So I obliged. I faked my own death and built a new life as Elia Parker, a successful architect married to a tech mogul. But after five years, my past refused to stay buried. My cousin found me at my own grave and dragged me to a public event, parading me around like a ghost. My uncle, who left me to rot in a hospital, feigned shock. My aunt shrieked that I was a monster for faking my death. Then she lunged, her nails raking across my cheek and drawing blood. "You ungrateful bitch!" she screamed. As I stood there bleeding, my so-called family just watched, not one of them moving to help. It was the same cold indifference that had destroyed me five years ago. Just as I was about to break, a voice cut through the chaos, quiet but radiating power. "Is everything alright here, Elia?" It was my husband, Javier Bates. And the look on his face told me their world was about to burn.

I was the fiancée of the Chicago Outfit’s heir, a bond sealed by blood and eighteen years of history. But when his mistress pushed me into the freezing pool at our engagement gala, Jax didn’t swim toward me. He swam past me. He scooped up the girl who pushed me, cradling her like fragile glass, while I struggled against the weight of my gown in the murky water. When I finally dragged myself out, shivering and humiliated before the entire underworld, Jax didn’t offer a hand. He offered a scowl. "You’re making a scene, Eliana. Go home." Later, when that same mistress shoved me down the stairs, shattering my knee and my dance career, Jax stepped over my broken body to comfort her. I overheard him telling his friends, "I’m just breaking her spirit. She needs to learn she’s property, not a partner. Once she’s desperate enough, she’ll be the perfect obedient wife." He thought I was a dog that would always return to its master. He thought he could starve me of affection until I begged for scraps. He was wrong. While he was busy playing protector to his mistress, I wasn't crying in my room. I was packing his ring into a cardboard box. I cancelled my transfer to UCLA and enrolled at NYU instead. By the time Jax realized his "property" was missing, I was already in New York, standing next to a man who looked at me like a queen, not a possession.

My fiancé, Drew, had a crippling germ phobia. Our wedding was a merger in disguise-a deal where my fortune would save his family's failing company. But at the altar, in front of the world, he left me for his intern. He declared he was choosing "love over money," painting me as the cold-hearted villain who tried to buy a husband. He wasn't done. He staged a suicide attempt from my office building, live-streaming to the world how my "cruelty" had pushed him to the edge. Then, he and his new love came to my office with their final demand: twenty percent of my company and my late mother's priceless necklace. "Cassidy is quite fond of it," he sneered. The next day, during the emergency board meeting called to fire me, he called, gloating. "It's checkmate, Jaeda. Just accept that you've lost." I put him on speakerphone for the entire board to hear. "Actually, Drew," I said, as federal agents walked into the room, "I own the entire board."

I woke up gasping, the memory of my first life still fresh: my fiancé, Elliott, watching coldly as I drowned, his mind poisoned by a woman named Katarina after an accident gave him amnesia. This time, I had a plan to escape before his fateful yacht trip. But the doorbell rang. It was Elliott, home early. And holding his arm was Katarina. He claimed he'd had a "small incident" on the yacht, but his eyes were clear. He remembered me. He had no amnesia. He brought her into our home anyway, moving her into my deceased mother's studio. He ordered my parents' priceless mementos thrown in the trash. When I protested, he threw me against the wall. When Katarina "accidentally" shattered a photo of my family, he slapped me and locked me out of the house in the pouring rain. In my first life, I could blame his cruelty on his memory loss. I told myself he was a victim, too. But now, he remembered everything—our childhood, our love, our promises. This wasn't a man being manipulated. This was a monster, deliberately choosing to torture me. When Katarina smashed the last gift from my mother, I finally snapped and attacked her. Elliott's response was swift. He had his guards drag me to a soundproofed room in the basement and strap me to a chair. As the electricity seared through my body, I understood. My second chance wasn't an escape. It was a new level of hell, and this time, my torturer was fully aware of what he was doing.

At my company' s anniversary party, my husband Mark, beaming, played a game with his assistant, Lily, a cookie balanced on his forehead. As the room erupted in applause when he succeeded, I cheered, "Go, Mark!" The room fell silent. Lily' s smile vanished, her eyes welling with tears as she whimpered, "Oh, Mark." Mark, furious, snapped at me, "What' s wrong with you, Olivia? You always have to ruin everything. You're such a killjoy. So boring." Then, in front of everyone-our colleagues and friends-he bent down and kissed Lily, deeply and passionately. On our tenth wedding anniversary, watching Mark kiss another woman, I felt absolutely nothing. Later, Lily, riding comfortably in the passenger seat of our car, flashed a sickeningly sweet smile and called me "Sis-in-law." I remembered Mark once scoffing at my handmade charm, saying it didn' t match his car' s style, yet he found a custom pink paint job acceptable. The next morning, Lily posted a photo of red roses on Instagram: "This big silly man always remembers my birthday." In the corner, my wedding ring rested on a man' s hand. When Mark returned, he joked, "What' s the occasion? You even made a cake?" He then smeared frosting on my cheek, remarking on the cake' s poor presentation. If this had happened any other year, I would have screamed and cried. Instead, I calmly dumped the cake in the trash. He tried to appease me with expensive jewelry, a routine apology after every fight. But when I saw Lily' s text on his phone-"Mark, I had so much fun tonight, see you tomorrow~"-he erupted in a rage. He shoved me, throwing me off balance. My arm sliced on the coffee table, and my ankle twisted. He simply muttered, "For God' s sake, Olivia," before rushing to Lily' s side after she called him, leaving me injured and alone. Why did he care more about her fake sickness than my real injury? I was numb. I was utterly done. What else could I do but finally set myself free? That night, for the first time in a decade, I slept soundly, knowing I had made the right decision. My life had to change.

My eyes snapped open. I was five years old again, held in my father's strong arms, his face etched with worry as he sighed, "Alright, Ava, I'll marry her." The words struck me cold: Chloe Raine, my art tutor, my future stepmother, my murderer. In my last life, that exact sentence sealed my grim fate. I, a naive child, had cried for him to marry her, desperate for a mother. Chloe used my innocent longing to infiltrate the Hamilton name and wealth, only to end my life years later, once she was pregnant with her own child, by exploiting my severe peanut allergy. I remembered the chilling staged kidnapping, the car trunk, and her cold voice arranging to dump my body, every detail of the darkness, fear, and ultimate betrayal. Now, I was inexplicably back, reborn at this precise, fateful moment. My five-year-old body sobbed in my father's embrace, but inside, a cold, adult rage simmered, burning away any trace of childish innocence. This time, things would be profoundly different. Chloe, standing nearby with a barely hidden triumphant smirk, believed she had won. She wanted into the Hamilton family, but I would ensure she regretted that wish for the rest of her miserable life, turning my doting father, my powerful grandmother Eleanor, and our fiercely loyal staff into my unsuspecting instruments of a long, agonizing vengeance.

I gave him a kidney, built his empire beside him, even risked my life for our son. My world revolved around my family, and for years, it felt perfect. Then, Michael' s old flame, Jessica, reappeared, infecting our home with venom. My own son, Ethan, twisted by her influence, turned hostile, wishing me dead and abusing our pet. Michael' s words confirmed my worst fears: "She needs me. She wouldn't know how to survive without me." They left me injured on a dark, rain-soaked street after my son pulled me from the car. I found my beloved cat, Buddy, brutalized by Ethan. Then came the final photo: Michael and Jessica, naked, mocking me. My life, my sacrifices, were meticulously shredded, leaving me utterly annihilated. Emotionally, I was already gone, my spirit extinguished by their calculated cruelty. How could the very people I cherished betray me so utterly? It was then I whispered to the interface, "Confirm activation of Protocol Chimera. Simulated demise. New identity. Complete severance." The Sarah they brutalized was dead. It was time to make it official.

I was Isabella "Izzy" Montoya, sole heiress to a fortune that swayed nations, groomed to choose a husband who would secure my family's legacy. In my first life, that man was Ethan Ashford, my charming, long-standing crush. I poured the Montoya empire into his rise, gifted him power beyond measure. Then he soared, destroyed everything I held dear, seized our assets, and left me with nothing but ash and a shattered heart. He blamed me publicly, left me utterly ruined. I died, heartbroken, and Marc Vance, the good man who quietly loved me, died trying to expose Ethan, trying to save *me*. Our dynasty was decimated. The memories of his betrayal, the destruction of my family, and the quiet heroism of Marc Vance were vivid, cruel. How could I have been so blind? How could one man cause so much devastation? Then, I woke up. It was the day of the Legacy Gala, the day I was to announce my choice – the man who would receive the "Montoya Midas Touch." This time, Ethan Ashford would not win. This time, I would choose wisely, and the Midas Touch would not turn to dust in my hands.

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.

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.

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."

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.

I watched my husband, the most feared Capo in New York, sign away our marriage with the same cold indifference he usually reserved for ordering a hit. The nib of his Montblanc pen scratched against the paper, drowning out the rain hitting the coffee shop window. He didn't bother to read a single word. He thought he was signing routine shipping manifests for the family business. In reality, he was signing the "Dissolution of Union" papers I had hidden beneath the cover sheet. He was too distracted to check. His eyes were glued to his encrypted phone, frantically texting Sofia—the widow, the tragic beauty, the woman who had haunted our marriage for three years. "Done," he grunted, tossing the stack into his armored SUV without even glancing at me. "Business is concluded, Elena. We leave." Moments later, his phone rang with her special emergency tone. His demeanor shifted from cold boss to frantic protector instantly. "Driver, divert. She needs me," he roared. He looked at me with zero affection and ordered, "Get out, Elena. Luca will take you home." He kicked me out of the car into the pouring rain to rush to his mistress, completely unaware he had just legally granted me my freedom. I stood on the curb, shivering but smiling for the first time in years. By the time the Don realizes he just signed his own divorce, I will be a ghost in San Francisco. And he will have nothing left but his shipping logs and his regret.

"Happy Anniversary," my husband said, sliding the separation agreement across the mahogany desk. It was the eighteenth time in five years I had signed these papers. Matteo De Luca, the most ruthless Capo in New York, checked his Rolex with cold impatience. "Sign it, Sera. Bianca is on the ledge again. She needs to see we're over, or she jumps." Bianca. The ward. The broken bird. The woman whose fragile psyche dictated every moment of my marriage. I signed my name, and he left me alone on our anniversary to save her. Again. But saving her wasn't enough. When Bianca pushed me down a flight of marble stairs in a fit of jealous rage, shattering my spine and leaving me paralyzed, I thought Matteo would finally choose me. I was wrong. I woke up in the hospital to find him holding her hand, not mine. "The security footage has been wiped," he told me, his voice void of emotion. "We cannot have a scandal. You fell, Sera. That is the story." He erased the truth. He erased my pain. He protected the woman who crippled me over his own wife. Two months later, he wheeled me into a gala, playing the doting husband while I sat in the chair that was my prison. He didn't know I had a burner phone hidden in my velvet dress. He didn't know that tonight, the obedient wife was going to die on the pavement, and a ghost would rise in her place. I looked at him one last time and dropped the phone in his lap. "I hope she's worth it."