ELKEDI

Lia, a twenty-one year old lady from a wealthy mafia Italian family finally finds love in a rival mafia family. After much persuasion she and her lover, Franco are able to convince their families that their love for each other was real and deep and they later get married. However, on their wedding day Franco starts to behave strangely. He is not the man that Lia used to know when they were dating. He changes from the sweet loving and caring gentleman that he was while they courted to an arrogant and abusive husband. Franco opens up to Lia's elder brother, Lorenzo, on their wedding day that he won't be the husband that Lia had always dreamed of. He promises to make her life a misery. Lorenzo is shocked by Franco's openness particularly as they were just getting married and tries to persuade Lia to call off the wedding. Lia does not listen to Lorenzo because according to her it was not news that the Franco's family was a rival mafia family. She believed that they had crossed that hurdle successfully when both families agreed to their marriage. She dismisses Lorenzo's warnings which she thought were based on that ground. Lorenzo, however, goes on to tell the rest of the family what Franco had told him personally. After the wedding, Lia begins to experience what Lorenzo her brother tried to warn her about. Franco had started abusing her both physically and verbally. However, Lia not knowing the reason for this sudden change in her husband was determined to keep her marriage. Two years after their wedding, she still had not conceived. This she attributed to the lack of peace and love she was experiencing in her marriage. Her love for Franco however was still very strong and she was determined to make her marriage work. One day she came back from shopping at noon to find Franco, her husband stark naked with another lady on their matrimonial bed. This was when she realized that her relationship with Franco had so much degenerated. She decided to leave him for a while until he was willing and ready to get help to restore their union. Lia ends up going back to her father's house. Her brother Lorenzo one day discovers some scars and bruises on his sister's body giving him a clearer picture of what she had been through while she was with Franco. He accuses her of lying and covering up for Franco all this while. Against Lia's wish he reveals it to the family and vows to avenge every pain Franco had put his sister through. Franco on the other hand does not change his ways. He decides to continue to have all the fun in his life believing that Lia's love for him would soon make her come back begging once she comes back to her senses. Her brother tries to persuade her to divorce Franco, but she refuses as she still loved Franco very much. This only infuriated Lorenzo the more. He swore he would kill Franco for breaking his sister's heart and taking his family for granted. He goes ahead to advise Lia not to bother thinking of going back to Franco because to him Franco was already a dead man. During a family gathering she begs her family to help her save her marriage as that was the only reason why she left her home in the first place. What had caused the sudden change in Lia's husband, Franco? Would Lia be able to restore the love she was sure Franco once had for her? Can she save Franco from Lorenzo's anger and promise to avenge every pain he had put her through? Read this compelling story to find out if true love is enough to bring about the love, peace and harmony Lia desires.

"Getting Nathan to marry me will surely be my first revenge for their betrayal, Nana." Clara said sobbing. Clara was a product of rape. She was hated by her mum from birth. Her mother Vivian, who was just sixteen as at that time, saw Clara as an obstacle to her becoming successful in life. Vivian had immediately ordered a trusted help to drop her at the staircase of the closest orphanage to where she lived on the day of her birth. Her grandmother who had almost completely lost touch with Clara's mother due to past grievances picked Clara from the orphanage and raised her till she was twenty-one years old. She is later persuaded by Nana, her grandma to accept her mother's invitation to come live with her. Clara also discovered that she had fallen hopelessly in love with Madam Whitson's soon to be son-in-law, Jonathan. Jonathan who was fondly called Nathan, was the billionaire CEO of the biggest conglomerate in New York. His good looks, imposing height and piercing dark eyes along with his massive wealth made him the most eligible bachelor in town. Madam Whitson's only child, beautiful spoilt Leticia who always got what she wanted was one person no one wanted to have issues with as she was capable of anything. She was so evil that there were rumors that she once drugged her mother to prevent her from having more children and poisoned thereafter the maid who had assisted her in the act. As the truth began to unravel as to why Clara had been sent for by her mother and later sent away again after been used, Clara decided to fight against the devilish Leticia and her mum. Would she be able to get Nathan to go against his beloved mother's dying wish and marry her? Was she ready to face the ambitious and deadly Leticia in a love battle? What was the last truth she needed, to finally destroy those who had terribly wronged her? Discover this in this captivating story of love, betrayal and revenge.

For four years, I secretly poured my family's trust fund into the Schwartz MC, acting as the President's Old Lady and the club's private ATM. But when Daryl returned from his cross-state run, he didn't come back alone. He brought home a blonde mistress and a four-year-old boy with his exact same gray eyes. "She gave me an heir. From today on, she is the official Old Lady of this chapter." He expected me to step down to a shared club girl, demanding I stay in the grease pit to tune their bikes and pay their bills. When I cut off their vendor accounts and demanded my millions back, his family showed their true, parasitic colors. Daryl and his mother locked me inside my own heavily reinforced workshop. Through the ventilation shaft, I heard them plotting their sickening next move. They couldn't kill me because they needed my wealth and my engine patents to survive on the highway. Instead, they planned to slip tranquilizers into my water, force Daryl on me, and get me pregnant so I would be legally tied to him forever. "A woman with a baby never walks away," his mother sneered. They thought locking me in the dark would break my spirit and turn me into their obedient slave. But they had no idea they had locked me inside a fully stocked chemical armory. I grabbed the high-grade racing oxidizers and industrial solvents from my workbench. They wanted a private party tonight, so I was going to make sure they never forgot the fire.

She went to lose her virginity to her boyfriend... But woke up in his father's bed. Now, Isabella is trapped between two dangerous men- one who thinks he owns her... and one who refuses to let her go. Secrets. Desire. Betrayal. And a Mafia King who never shares what's his.

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.

For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."

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."

My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement. To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia. It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping. But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished. She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug. She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago. The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash. Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name. She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant. I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead. I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye. "Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you." Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth. "Prove it," he growled. I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip.

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.

Three days before the wedding. I was hiding in the dressing room, watching my fiancé caress the swollen belly of another woman. Luca, the man who had saved my life five years ago, was smiling at his mistress, Sofia. But the real knife to the heart wasn't the affair—it was the dress. The custom wedding gown he had "lovingly" ordered for me featured intricate silver embroidery along the hem. It didn't spell Elena. It read Sofia. He was planning to make me walk down the aisle wearing his mistress's name. Later that night, I found a video of him mocking me to his crew, calling me a "dead fish" and admitting he only wanted my family's Capo status. He planned to keep his "true love" on the side while I played the role of the oblivious, ornamental wife. He thought I was just a sheltered princess. He forgot that my bloodline was built on vengeance. I didn't cry. I didn't confront him. Instead, I scrubbed his scent off my skin and dialed a number everyone in Chicago feared. "The pact with the Cavallaro family," I asked my father, my voice cold as stone. "Is it still valid?" "Dante is the Underboss now," my father warned. "He is a butcher. He breaks men for sport." "Good," I replied. "I am done playing with boys." I secretly booked the Gold Ballroom across the hall from my original venue. Luca thought he was walking into a marriage on Saturday. He didn't know I was bringing a monster to the altar instead.

I was the wife of Dante Cavalli, the most ruthless mafia Don in the country. But today, his Underboss slid mandatory annulment papers across my hospital bed, ordering me to dissolve our marriage. In my past life, I dropped to my knees and begged them not to abandon me. I spent the next thirty years locked in Dante's massive penthouse, waiting for a man who bathed the streets in blood but never gave me a single drop of warmth. My aristocratic mother-in-law stripped me of every cent, leaving me completely isolated. I foolishly threw away a brilliant surgical career to be a submissive, obedient mafia wife. In the end, Dante never came to see me, and I died entirely alone in that massive, empty bed. Until my last breath, my chest was suffocated by a lifetime of regrets. I couldn't understand why I had sacrificed my freedom and my scalpels for a man who would only feel a twisted guilt decades after I was already a cold corpse. Opening my eyes again, Fate had dragged me back to the exact day my nightmare truly began. Matteo stood at the foot of my bed, clearly expecting my usual pathetic tears. "Take your time to think about it." This time, I didn't cry or beg for my life. I just picked up the fountain pen, signed my name, and walked out to reclaim the scalpel I had abandoned.

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.