HAZEL MARTIN

I spent ten years as the ward of Kason Oneal, the ruthless Underboss of the city's most dangerous crime family. He saved me when I was a child, raised me, and made me believe I was his queen. But the moment his ex-girlfriend, Dalia, returned, the illusion shattered. Kason demanded I return the jade pendant—the one he had hand-carved for my sixteenth birthday—just so he could hang it around Dalia's neck. To him, I was suddenly nothing more than a placeholder who had kept his bed warm. The cruelty didn't stop there. He stood by and watched as Dalia shredded my clothes with scissors, laughing at my tears. When I collapsed on the floor in agony from acute appendicitis, Kason didn't call an ambulance. Instead, he dragged me to a shady clinic, accusing me of faking a pregnancy to trap him. He ordered the doctor to "terminate it" while I was dying of sepsis on the table. He called me trash. He called me property. He stripped away every ounce of dignity I had left, all to please a woman who was lying to his face. I realized then that the hero who saved me when I was ten was dead. I was done begging for scraps of affection from a monster. Trembling, I walked to the phone and dialed the number of the one man Kason feared most—his sworn enemy, Hadley Payne. "Tell him yes," I whispered into the receiver. "I accept the arrangement. I will marry him." Kason thought he could break me. Instead, he was about to watch his "property" become the Queen of the rival family.

I was eight months pregnant with the heir to the Hayes pack when my husband, Michael, walked into the gala with another woman on his arm. She was wearing a blood-red dress and reeked of rotting orchids. In front of the entire Council, Michael looked at me with cold eyes and announced she was his Fated Mate. He rejected me. The force of the Alpha Command forced me to my knees, shattering the bond between us. To protect my unborn son from his cruelty, I told the greatest lie of my life. "The baby is dead," I whispered to him later. "Your rejection killed him." Broken by guilt, Michael fell from grace. My family stripped him of his wealth and status. He became a homeless Rogue, living in the dirt outside our estate walls, just to be near the place he thought his child was buried. He didn't know that the little boy playing in the garden, the one with golden Alpha eyes, was his son. He watched over us from the shadows for years, a ghost haunting his own life. Until the day the woman in the red dress returned. She held a silver dagger over my son's crib, ready to end my bloodline. And the man who had once rejected me finally found his redemption. He didn't hesitate. He threw his body between the blade and our boy.

My fiancé, Holden, married my best friend, Dominique, in Vegas. Tonight. Just hours before our lavish engagement party was set to begin. They announced it to our families and friends, calling it a "drunken mistake." Dominique, clinging to his arm, flashed a cheap ring and a triumphant smirk. She then proposed a high-stakes poker game to "celebrate," a cruel joke designed to humiliate me further. Holden, my fiancé of years, stood by her side. He even forced me to give up my grandmother's bracelet when I lost a hand, tossing the precious heirloom into a puddle of champagne. He told me it was just a game, that the bracelet meant nothing. But they didn't know my secret. I grew up in the underground poker scene. They thought they were playing with a fragile fiancée. They were about to lose everything to a shark.

I came ashore to save my Fated Mate from a genetic curse, but he locked me in a dungeon for three years. Alpha Silas believed my kind killed his parents. He drained my blood daily to feed his mistress, Emily, who claimed my essence was the only thing keeping their unborn baby alive. I endured the silver chains and the acid burns, hoping he would one day see the truth. But when my ten-year-old brother tried to rescue me, Emily smashed his skull with an iron bar right in front of Silas. Silas didn't arrest her. He didn't scream. He stood between us, shielding the murderer. "She was protecting our heir," he said coldly, looking at my brother's small, broken body floating in the tank. "You brought this on yourself." I held my brother’s corpse as my heart finally shattered. The bond between us snapped, and my body began to dissolve into sea foam. "I tried," I whispered as I faded into nothingness. Moments after I disappeared, the laboratory door opened. Silas’s parents, the ones he thought I killed, walked in alive and well. At the same time, the pack doctor rushed in, pale and trembling. "Alpha," he stammered, pointing at Emily. "There is no baby. She has been faking the pregnancy for months." Silas looked at his living parents, then at the empty pile of sea foam on the floor where his True Mate used to be. And for the first time, the Alpha screamed.

I stood at the gala, draped in diamonds worth millions, playing the role of the perfect Mafia wife. But the illusion shattered when his mistress walked in wearing a necklace identical to mine—a cattle brand dipped in gold. When I confronted them, Liam didn't defend me. He shoved me aside to protect her. I hit the floor, and as my blood soaked into the white stage, I realized he had killed our unborn child. But the nightmare didn't end there. I woke up to find that Liam had ordered me sedated to "manage my hysteria." The complications from his control and the trauma had forced an emergency hysterectomy. He hadn't just killed his heir; he had stolen my future. Yet, he still tried to lock me in his estate, convinced he could force me to love him again if he just kept me hidden long enough. He thought I was broken. He thought I was his property. He was wrong. With the help of a doctor who had loved me from the shadows for years, I faked my death and vanished. Six months later, the great Don found me in a small-town bookstore, falling to his knees to beg for a second chance. I looked at the man who destroyed me and handed him a single dollar bill. "Loyalty is the only currency, Liam," I said, quoting his own vow back to him. "And you are bankrupt."

The pregnancy test showed two pink lines. After four years of a quiet marriage to Carter Leon, we were finally having a baby. I thought this was the final piece of our story. But when I went to the county clerk's office for a certified copy of our marriage certificate, I was told there was no record of our marriage. Instead, Carter was legally married to Erlene Fulton, my estranged stepsister and his high school sweetheart. My world shattered. I was nothing more than a mistress, a placeholder. Then, my family, including Carter, pressured me to "step aside" for Erlene, who was supposedly dying and wished to die as Carter's wife. I refused, revealing my pregnancy, only to be locked away by my father and stepmother. Carter later convinced me it was all a charade, a performance for a dying woman. I watched him marry Erlene, a ghost at their grand wedding. He spent his time with her, while I, like a fool, kept believing his lies. Until I overheard Erlene and Carter. He confessed he had always loved her, and that marrying me was just a plan to wound her pride and make her return. My four years, my devotion, my love-all a calculated move. I was a pawn, and so was my baby. The promises, the soft touches, the shared smiles-all fake. How could I have been so blind? How could he be so cruel? I had to save myself, and my child, from this poison. I ran, determined to leave the lie behind.

"The wedding is back on," my mother' s voice announced, shattering the calm of my Los Angeles penthouse. An arranged marriage to Everette Bryant, a relic from my grandfather' s past, was suddenly my future. I thought I could lean on Danial and Ismael, my childhood friends, my rocks during a mysterious illness. But a new intern, Judi Coffey, had entered our lives, and something felt off. Judi, with her innocent facade, quickly became the center of their universe. She stumbled, she cried, she even deliberately broke my award, all to gain their sympathy. Danial and Ismael, once my protectors, turned their backs, their concern solely for her. "Angelina, what's wrong with you? She's just an intern," Danial accused, his eyes cold. Ismael added, "That was harsh. She's just a kid." Their blind loyalty escalated. Judi' s manufactured crisis, a flat tire, pulled them away, leaving me alone. Later, Danial, enraged by a broken vase, shoved me, causing a head injury. He didn't even notice my allergic reaction, a symptom they once rushed to treat. How could they forget everything? The bee stings, the shellfish allergies, the times they held my hand in the emergency room. The gardenias Danial planted, now the source of my suffering, went unnoticed. I looked at their faces, at the two men I had known my entire life, and saw strangers. My decision was made. I burned our shared memories, resigned from my firm, and put my house up for sale. I was leaving them, all of them, for good.

My heart sank when I heard, "Three million dollars has been withdrawn from your joint savings account." Gone. The money, our life' s work, our shared dream, was gone. I knew instantly where it went: to Summer Reed, Liam' s high school sweetheart, the ghost of our marriage. Last night, I overheard Liam on the phone, promising Summer our money, saying, "Of course, it' s our money. Chloe' s and mine. But she' ll understand. Your well-being is the most important thing." He had tricked me into signing "investment papers," draining our future for his old flame. I felt pathetic, a walking bank account for his true love. When I returned to our apartment to grab my last things, I found Summer already moved in, wearing my robe, eating dinner cooked by my husband. He even made her favorite dish, forgetting I was allergic to garlic. He then put her in our bed, saying it was "just for a few days." I finally understood; I was just a prop in their reunion. Liam blamed me, called me "possessive." He then revealed Summer' s husband was abusive, and she had nowhere to go, trying to excuse his betrayal. The office gossiped about Liam' s affair, his spending company money on Summer, taking her to Paris while I managed our home, his career, and built my own. How could he do this? How could his devotion to her erase six years of our life, our dreams, our unborn child? What kind of monster pretends to care while actively destroying everything we built? I wouldn't stand for it. I packed my bags, smashing our wedding photo, and called my estranged brother, Ethan. "I' m coming home," I whispered. This was over. I was getting a divorce.

My phone buzzed with the perfectly captured picture: my husband, Andrew, beaming with the surrogate and their newborn, a son I' d paid a fortune to bring into this world. I typed a lie: "He's beautiful, I'm so happy for us." I was a spectator to my own life, my body a continuous failure after six miscarriages, each a tiny ghost in our silent house. Then, the call came: my eight-year-old niece, Madisyn, was in a terrible accident and needed B-negative blood-my rare type. But when I offered to donate, Andrew, his family, and even his wife, panicked, refusing my help. The doctor's chilling whisper shattered my world: "The resemblance is uncanny… Madisyn is your daughter, isn' t she?" My first "miscarriage" wasn't a miscarriage; it was a kidnappingorchestrated by my husband. Andrew confessed, not with remorse, but with monstrous casualness: he' d given away our child to his infertile brother to save their "family line." He even dared to gaslight me, blaming my grief and rage for ruining the "perfect family" he' d built with another woman. When I confronted him again, he shoved me, leaving me burned and abandoned on the floor after Madisyn staged a horrifying attack on the new baby and framed me. My heart, already shattered, turned to ice. Andrew would never believe me; he didn't want to. He had decided long ago who I was-the "unhinged wife"-and nothing I said would change his narrative. Screaming inside, I signed the divorce papers, picked up the pieces of my life, smashed the symbols of our shared past, and called the most ruthless lawyer on the East Coast. This wasn't just a divorce; it was a war. I was getting my daughter back, and I was going to make him pay for every stolen child.

My new, hostile stepfamily was hardly a welcome wagon as I fought for a coveted dance scholarship at Northwood University. Then, my world truly started to unravel. My crucial audition music mysteriously vanished, thanks to my stepsister Isabelle, whose cruelty was just warming up. Days later, campus security "found" stolen exam papers and Isabelle' s diamond bracelet meticulously planted in my room. Overnight, I was branded a thief and an academic cheat, suspended from school, my reputation shattered, my scholarship dreams utterly crushed. How could everyone so readily believe such convenient lies, turning me into a pariah, a target for the university' s whispers? How could "evidence" so perfectly frame me, leaving me isolated and utterly out of options? My anonymous blog, "The Campus Muse," where I poured out raw truths about integrity and overcoming adversity, became my last desperate refuge. What I didn't realize was that the voice I found there – a voice speaking truth into the echoing chamber of false accusations – was about to resonate deeply with an unexpected ally, setting in motion a chain of events that would expose Isabelle' s calculated malice and fight to reclaim my name.

For five years, I, Ethan Miller, was the steady anchor in Sarah's life, a well of quiet devotion for a love she never truly reciprocated. Our marriage was a beautiful, empty shell, and I, her husband, felt increasingly like a ghost she barely saw. Then Mark Vance, her college flame and unaddressed obsession, reappeared. The facade swiftly crumbled. My gut clenched discovering her hidden shrine of his photos, and watching her eyes sparkle for him, while for me, they were always flat. The final, devastating blow came with finding a positive pregnancy test – and Mark's intimate email to her, discussing "our baby" and a shared future. My wife was pregnant with his child, right there in our home, and he was claiming paternity. The humiliations piled on: she introduced me to Mark as someone who "helps with things," ditched my award ceremony for his event, and callously abandoned me in a hospital bed for his phone call. My life, my very existence, was systematically erased from her world, replaced by him. How could she be so oblivious, so savagely dismissive of the man who had poured his soul into making her happy? The silent anger gnawed at me, a cold, hard certainty solidifying deep within. This was no longer just grief; it was a profound disgust for the sheer scale of her betrayal. So, while she was busy celebrating her engagement to Mark—on our fifth wedding anniversary, no less—I sent her a video. In it, I calmly laid out every lie, every deception, every cruel slight. Attached was the signed, finalized divorce decree. Our cooling-off period was over. Our marriage was a relic. I was done. And I was leaving.

Ava Thompson, a New England political heiress, thought she had it all: a glamorous wedding to rising D.C. star Ethan Cole, a picture-perfect union of two prominent families. But the silence in their grand Washington house, and Ethan' s constant devotion to Chloe, his adopted sister, hinted at a different truth. One night, that truth exploded. Ava overheard Ethan confessing their marriage was merely "a means to an end" and she "meant nothing" - his fierce loyalty belonging solely to Chloe. Her heart shattered, the beautiful facade of her life crumbling around her. Ethan openly dismissed Ava' s pain, choosing to protect Chloe' s malicious acts, including Chloe' s chilling confession to murdering Ava' s best friend, Maya. Using his family' s immense power, Ethan ensured Chloe walked free, twisting reality to frame Ava and threaten her loyal assistant. The ultimate betrayal came during a disastrous yacht event when Ethan instinctively saved Chloe first, leaving a helpless Ava to drown in the turbulent Chesapeake Bay. How could the man she loved, the man who was supposed to be her partner, abandon her so ruthlessly? Why was he so blindly devoted to a sister who was clearly a manipulative sociopath? Pushed to the brink, utterly broken by the profound injustice and the cold reality of her expendability, Ava collapsed. But as she healed, a cold, unshakeable resolve built within her. She would uncover the full truth behind Ethan' s warped loyalty to Chloe and fight for the justice Maya was denied. Ava, the dismissed wife, was coming for them, ready to dismantle a powerful family, one secret at a time.

My five-year contract marriage to Ethan Cole was finally over. Five years of polite estrangement, a polished cage built on a merger of empires. I had signed the divorce papers, ready to escape to Austin, chasing a desperate echo of what I'd lost. My fiancé, Michael, had died five years ago, and now, a musician named Noah Evans, his spitting image, offered a fragile hope he could bring a piece of him back. But Ethan' s manipulative stepsister, Chloe, had other plans. Consumed by a twisted possessiveness for Ethan, she launched a campaign of terror against me. First, a poison attempt, then a brutal kidnapping, and finally, a chilling plot to throw me off a cliff. Each escalating attack was met with Ethan' s blind indulgence, his desperate attempts to protect Chloe at all costs, leaving me brutally exposed and utterly alone. Why couldn't he see her true nature? Why did he always choose her over basic decency? My life was a constant dance with death, fueled by Chloe' s deranged jealousy and punctuated by Ethan' s hollow apologies. I clung to Noah, an unwitting lifeline in this nightmare. Then, during Chloe's final, explosive act of madness, Noah made a choice. He sacrificed himself, pushing me to safety as the world erupted in flames. As he lay dying, he revealed a truth that shattered my carefully constructed world: "Michael... Michael was my older brother." Suddenly, the desperate echo became a profound connection. My anonymous benefactor for years, the boy I unknowingly sponsored, was Michael' s flesh and blood, a man who loved me not merely as a proxy, but for who he was. With Chloe gone and Ethan finally facing his own devastating regrets, I chose a new path. A path not away from loss, but towards a genuine, healing love with Noah. Ethan, adrift in his remorse, was left with only the bitter taste of everything he' d so carelessly lost.

My beloved Mike was dying. So when a mysterious "Program" offered a cure, I agreed to their impossible demand: marry arrogant billionaire Ethan Vanderbilt in a highly publicized ceremony. The clock was ticking. I endured public humiliations, the callous indifference of my forced fiancé, and the cruel games of his venomous ex-girlfriend, Chloe Astor. After she framed me for theft, Ethan furiously canceled the wedding. Desperate, I humiliated myself, begging, even kneeling to lick Chloe' s shoes, all to keep Mike's lifeline intact. Ethan, provoked by a new slight from Chloe, reignited the wedding plans into a grotesque spectacle of revenge. The ceremony finally happened, but just as the vows were complete, Ethan abandoned me at the altar, rushing to his "distressed" ex. As I lay there, broken, a message confirmed Mike was stable, my contract fulfilled. My public "suicide" was my ultimate escape, a final act in his world. But death wasn't the end. Haunted by my fall, Ethan discovered the horrifying truth: I wasn't just his fiancée, I was an operative in a fabricated reality, and his entire world was a staged "narrative." Now, consumed by a desperate, possessive love he never knew he had, he' s accepted a suicidal "new task" from "The System" to cross dimensions and reclaim me. He thinks I'm his. But I'm building a new life with Mike, the man I loved enough to fake my death in another reality. And he's about to find out how truly impossible that reunion will be.

An accident compels their destinies to get intertwined. Lily had saved James when he was ruthlessly kidnapped seven years ago. However, it seemed as if fate had other plans for them. When James woke up, he had already gotten out of the country. He'd been sent abroad to seek treatment for his legs. Given that he'd been in a coma, it didn't seem like he had any other choice. He badly wanted to find the girl who had saved his life. But he had no idea who she was. He wasn't even able to obtain her name. It took him seven years of strenuous searching to finally find her. Without any further hesitation, he brought her home. He definitely didn't want to risk losing her again. He'd cherish her as long as he lived!

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 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 the "Caged Canary" of the underworld, a biological asset designed to merge two crime families. My fiancé, Bryant Barnes, didn't love me. He loved the power I brought, and he loved his mistress, Kalia. The night Kalia broke into my penthouse and stomped on my hand, crushing the bones and my fashion career, Bryant didn't help me. He told the police she was my guest and warned me not to embarrass him with a cast. That was just the beginning. When Kalia lied about feeling unsafe, Bryant dangled me off a balcony. When she faked a kidnapping, he locked me in an industrial freezer for six hours until I turned blue. And when I fell into the marina, he swam right past me to save her, leaving me to drown in the freezing water. He destroyed my body and my dignity for a woman who was stealing my designs and faking a pregnancy. He thought I was just a broken obligation he could discard. But he made a fatal mistake. He didn't make sure I was dead. I dragged myself out of the water and made a call to his greatest rival. On the night of our grand merger, I walked onto the stage wearing royal blue instead of white. I rolled up my sleeve to reveal the scars he gave me, looked him dead in the eye, and grabbed the microphone. "I hereby terminate my engagement to Bryant Barnes. And I am proud to announce my betrothal to the true King of this city."

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."

On our fifth anniversary, my husband slid a black velvet box across the table. Inside wasn't a diamond ring, but a fountain pen. "Sign the separation papers, Aurora," Ethan said. "Ilene is spiraling again. She needs to see we are over." I was the wife of the Mafia Underboss, yet I was being discarded for the Family Ward. Before I could answer, Ilene stormed into the restaurant. She shrieked that I was still wearing his ring and threw a bowl of boiling lobster bisque directly at my chest. As my skin blistered and peeled, Ethan didn't rush to me. He hugged her. "It's okay," he soothed the woman who had just assaulted me. "I've got you." The betrayal didn't stop there. When Ilene pushed me down the stairs days later, Ethan erased the security footage to protect her from the police. When I was kidnapped by his enemies, I called his emergency line—the one meant for life-or-death situations. He declined the call. He was too busy holding Ilene's hand to save his wife. That was the moment the chain broke. As the kidnapper's van sped onto the highway, I didn't wait for a rescue that would never come. I opened the door and jumped into the dark. Everyone thought Aurora Bruce died on that pavement. Two years later, Ethan stood outside a gallery in Paris, looking at the woman he had destroyed, finally realizing he had protected the wrong one.

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 Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me. But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest. The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me. They didn't. Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her. They let me burn to keep her warm. When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages. That was the moment Elena Vitiello died. I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York. By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring. "You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them. "Burn for it."

For seven years, I served as the eyes for Dante Vitiello, the blind Capo of New York. I pulled him back from the edge of madness, tending to his wounds and warming his bed when everyone else had given up on him. But the moment his vision returned, the years of devotion turned to ash. In a single phone call, he decided to marry Sofia Moretti for territory, dismissing me as just "the maid's daughter" and a "comfort" he intended to keep as a mistress. He forced me to watch him court her. At a gala, when a chaotic accident caused a tower of champagne glasses to shatter, Dante threw his body over Sofia to protect her. He left me standing there, bleeding from the glass shards, while he carried her away like she was porcelain. He didn't even look back at the woman who had saved his life. I realized then that I had worshipped a broken god. I had given him my dignity, only for him to treat me like a disposable bandage now that he was whole. He arrogantly believed I would stay in the penthouse, grateful for his scraps. So, while he was out celebrating his engagement, I met with his mother. I signed the severance agreement for fifty million dollars. I packed my bags, wiped my phone, and boarded a one-way flight to Australia. By the time Dante came home to an empty bed, realized his mistake, and began tearing the city apart to find me, I was already a ghost.

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.

I was staring at the two pink lines on the plastic stick, trembling with the terrifying joy of carrying the heir to the New York underworld’s most ruthless faction. Then the intercom buzzed, and a voice splintered my world. "The little art student actually thinks I'm going to marry her? It was just a game to pass the time while you were in Europe, Estella." I froze. My boyfriend, Holden, was in the next room, laughing with the daughter of his rival. He explained that I was just a "clean civilian image" he needed to secure a business deal. Now that the deal was signed, he was dumping the "stray" to marry the "Queen." I tried to run, but freedom only lasted forty-eight hours. Holden didn't just break my heart; he turned my terror into content. He kidnapped me, tied me to a chair at the edge of a cliff, and forced me to choose between my life and his new fiancée's. Then, he pushed me off the edge. As gravity snatched me, I heard him laughing. I landed on a stunt airbag. It was just a "social experiment." A sick prank for his amusement. "Don't be so dramatic, Kenia," he called down. "It's just a game." He thought I was broken. He thought I was just a prop in his life. But he forgot that I knew his secrets. I dragged my injured body to a payphone and dialed the one number Holden told me to fear—the rival Don, Gael Simpson. "It's Kenia," I whispered, clutching the receiver like a lifeline. "I'm calling in the debt."