Hu Minxue

Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate. I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo. The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives. My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked. To her, I was finally being disposed of. She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left. She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex. "She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds. They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter. They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back. But they made a fatal mistake. With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon. I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him. And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner. He will be my vengeance.

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.

Ninety-nine days. That was exactly how long it had been since my husband, Dante, traded my life to a Russian cartel just to save his mistress from a panic attack. I walked onto the grounds of the Vitiello estate only to find him caressing her six-month-pregnant belly at my own funeral. He didn't look like a grieving widower; he looked like a man who had finally buried his mistake. When I revealed I was alive, Dante didn't fall to his knees in relief. Instead, he protected Lucia. He believed her lies that I was insane, that I was a threat to his "heir." To prove his loyalty to her, he stood by while my father whipped me in the family chapel until my back was in shreds. Then, he dragged me to the roof and threw me into a freezing pool, watching me drown simply because Lucia claimed I pushed her. He didn't know Lucia was faking the pregnancy. He didn't know she was the one selling secrets to the Bratva. He broke his loyal wife to protect a traitor. Now, six months later, he stands in the rain holding the Vitiello diamond necklace, begging me to come home. He thinks he can buy forgiveness. But he doesn't see the man standing in the shadows behind me—the enforcer who took a bullet for me when Dante was busy breaking my bones. I looked at the diamonds, then at my husband. "I don't want a King," I whispered. "I chose the soldier."

For years, I was the perfect, understanding girlfriend. I watched my boyfriend, Brendan, and his "family friend," Kasey, flaunt their affair, but my career as an event planner was tied to his powerful family, so I endured the humiliation in silence. That all changed on the way to a charity gala I had meticulously planned. I saw a fresh hickey on Kasey's neck, a silent, screaming testament to their latest betrayal, right in front of my face. I finally broke up with him. The fallout was immediate and brutal. My own brothers hunted me down, calling me a "gold-digging whore" before dragging me back to our family. They threw a settlement agreement at me, demanding I apologize to Brendan for the "good of the family." When I refused, they disowned me. My career was systematically destroyed, leaving me with nothing. I was just a pawn they had used and discarded. The weight of it all became too much, and I collapsed, alone in my new, empty apartment. As my vision faded, I heard a key turn in the lock. It was Brendan's cousin, Graham-the quiet, powerful lawyer I'd shared a secret, passionate kiss with in the car that very same day.

After a seven-year relationship, my fiancé Bennett abandoned me on our marriage license day for a "marriage of convenience" with another woman. Heartbroken, I married the reclusive billionaire Damon Levy and disappeared. Three years later, I returned, pregnant with our second child. The first person I saw was Bennett, now working as a driver, holding a sign for "Mrs. Levy." He and his new wife didn't recognize me. They publicly humiliated me, mocking my simple dress and calling the priceless diamond bracelet from my husband a cheap fake. At a gala, their cruelty escalated. They tripped me, stomped on my hand, and shattered my bracelet. Bennett slapped me across the face, hissing at me to stop lying. Surrounded by their laughter, with my lip bleeding, I saw the man I once loved for the hollow, cruel person he truly was. But then, the room went silent. My husband, Damon, walked in, holding our son. And my little boy pointed a finger straight at Bennett and shouted, "Papa! That bad man hit Mommy!"

I was dying from a mysterious illness, but my family, including my fiancé King, dismissed me as a drama queen. At my adopted sister Isabel' s promotion party, my body finally gave out and I collapsed, coughing up blood. Instead of helping, King accused me of ruining Isabel's big night. He tore up my terminal diagnosis report right in front of me, sneering that I'd do anything for attention. Completely broken, I annulled our engagement and fled to a rundown motel to die alone. But Isabel found me. With a triumphant smile, she confessed everything-she had been slowly poisoning me for years, a plot to steal my health, my family's love, and King himself. She had no idea her entire monstrous confession was being recorded by a device left in the room. I sent that audio file to everyone and, with the help of a kind stranger, faked my own death. Years later, I had a new life, a new name, and a quiet peace I never thought possible. Then one day, a broken, haunted man walked into my seaside café, clutching a faded photo of me. It was King.

My husband, Augustine, was a serial cheater, and I was a terminally ill artist. His mistress didn't just steal my marriage; she publicly flaunted it, taunting me at every turn. The final blow came when they desecrated the sculpture I made for my dead mother, laughing as they defiled my most sacred memory. He used my childhood trauma to break me, freezing my assets, destroying my career, and trapping me in our home like a prisoner. He had promised to be my safe harbor, but instead, he became the monster who weaponized my deepest pain. But my cancer gave me a deadline and a dark purpose. I lured him back, manipulating him into destroying his mistress and bankrupting himself for a forgiveness I would never grant. As he knelt before me, a broken man offering his shattered empire, I gave him my final command. "Now," I whispered, my voice cold as the grave, "it's time to pay with your life."

I loved Dozier McCarthy with a madness that terrified him. So when his new girlfriend accused me of pushing her down the stairs, he didn't defend me. Instead, he signed the papers to lock me away in Serenity Heights. He called it "rehabilitation" for my obsession. I called it three years of hell. While he lived his perfect life, I was strapped to a bed, force-fed heavy antipsychotics that they called "vitamins." Those pills didn't just kill my love for him. They slowly destroyed my kidneys. When he finally came to collect me, he smiled, thinking my silence meant I was "cured." He didn't know he was looking at a walking corpse. Now that the doctors have given me a terminal diagnosis, Dozier is on his knees, offering millions to fix what he broke. "We'll find a donor," he begged, tears streaming down his face. "I'll save you." I just pulled my hand away and adjusted my apron. "It's too late, Dozier. I have a bagel cart to run." He wanted to control my life. Now, he can only watch me die on my own terms.

My family stormed into my apartment, not to celebrate my prestigious science award, but to drag me to my influencer sister' s party. They didn' t know that just downstairs, I was bleeding out on the cold basement floor after an attack. With my last breath, I called for help. My brother texted me to "grow up." My mother left a voicemail scolding me for my "embarrassing little tantrum." My last hope was my fiancé, Daxton. I gasped that I thought I was dying. He sighed, annoyed. "Anabella, you' re being dramatic. Don't ruin Kamryn's big night." Then he hung up. They thought I was jealous. They thought I was trying to steal my sister's spotlight. But I wasn't. I was dead. And now, as a ghost trapped in my own home, I have to watch the people who let me die… and wait for them to finally find my body.

After five years of marriage and giving birth to his son, I was finally being welcomed into the powerful Downs family. The rule was simple: bear a son, and you're in the family trust. I had done my part. But at the lawyer's office, I discovered my entire life was a lie. My husband, Hudson, already had a wife listed on the trust: Hailey Gomez, his high school sweetheart who supposedly died a decade ago. I wasn't his wife. I was a substitute, a placeholder to produce an heir. Soon, the "dead" Hailey was living in my house, sleeping in my bed. When she deliberately shattered my grandmother's ashes, Hudson didn't blame her. He locked me in the basement to "teach me a lesson." The ultimate betrayal came when he used our sick son, August, as a pawn. To force me to reveal Hailey's location after she staged her own kidnapping, he ripped the breathing tube from our son's nebulizer. He left our child to die while he ran to her side. After August died in my arms, the love I had for Hudson turned to pure, cold hatred. He beat me at our son's grave, thinking he could break me completely. But he'd forgotten about the power of attorney I'd slipped into a stack of architectural deeds. He signed it without a second glance, dismissing my work as unimportant. That arrogance would be his downfall.

I was on my way to tell my boyfriend, Cooper, that I was pregnant. He was my savior, the man who rescued me after a brutal assault left me an orphan. But when I arrived at his penthouse, I overheard him talking to his sister, Kenya. My entire life was a lie. The assault wasn't random; it was a "prank" they had orchestrated so he could play the hero. It only got worse. Kenya tortured and killed my dog for "surgical practice," and Cooper defended her. They leaked a private video of me, destroying my reputation at school. When I tried to escape, Kenya sent thugs after me, and the attack caused me to miscarry our child. As I lay bleeding in the hospital, Cooper blamed me for losing the baby. He then told me the miscarriage had left me permanently infertile. His final demand was the cruelest. He said I had to "compensate" his sister for all the trouble I'd caused by donating one of my kidneys to her. But they had made one fatal mistake. They thought I was a powerless orphan. They didn't know I had just inherited a billion-dollar empire from a secret aunt. And I was about to use every penny to burn their world to the ground.

The phone buzzed, waking me to the day my life shattered before. My fiancé, Mark, was on the line, urgently asking for five million dollars for an "investment" -the same five million he' d embezzled to buy a lavish diamond necklace for his mistress, Brittany. This time, I was ready. I refused, reported him anonymously, and watched him get arrested. But Mark and Brittany weren' t done playing victims, painting me as the heartless villain to force my hand, ignoring the debt I' d paid from my past life, covering for his crimes. At a party, Brittany publicly shamed me, clinging to him while he watched with the adoration I' d craved for years. He even slapped me, ending our engagement with venom. But I had a secret weapon. He didn' t know I had the ultimate proof. A recording. A video of him confessing his scheme, detailing how he planned to use my savings to fund his affair. The reveal silenced the room, shattering their facade, and turning the public tide against them. I walked away from the wreckage, severing all ties. But when Mark landed in jail again, his parents, good people caught in his mess, begged for my help. My heart ached for them, but not for him. I bailed him out, not out of love, but and revealed Brittany's continued manipulation. Only then did the truth finally dawn on him – but it was too late. He'd ruined our lives before, and this time, there was no turning back. I wanted a fresh start.

The voicemail clicked, just like the ninety-eighth one had. My family was busy celebrating my adopted sister Molly' s "Sweet 19" birthday, completely forgetting my own diagnosis: Acute Myeloid Leukemia, terminal, a week at most. When I tried to quietly arrange my death benefits at Social Security, they stormed in, furious. My father bellowed about me embarrassing them on Molly's birthday, my mother sneered at my "cheap" hospital report, accusing me of faking illness for attention. Then Molly, ever the actress, cried crocodile tears, begging me to stop lying. As blood streamed from my nose onto the floor, I declared to the horrified clerk: "I have no family." Back in the house that was never a home, Molly sweet-talked me into baking her a peanut butter pie for her party – fully aware of her severe peanut allergy that I' d been blamed for years ago. Exposed, she shrieked, faking a fall, and my father's fist found my face, sending me sprawling, blood mixing with old tears. He roared for me to get out, hurling a beer bottle that grazed my temple as I fled. Penniless and bleeding, I collapsed in a grimy motel room, waiting to die alone. Then Molly arrived, dropping her innocent act to gloat. Her chilling confession laid bare years of malicious manipulation – the faked allergy, the bullying, the constant torment designed to make them choose her over me. "You'll die alone," she sneered, kicking me while I was down, "and I'll have everything." She didn't see my old laptop recording her confession, or the email I sent to my family with the subject line: "The Truth."

The scream died in my throat. The phantom pain of my brutal past life, the one where I died in a desolate commune, still clung to me. I shot up in my old teenage room, sunlight streaming in. I was Sarah again, but with the scars of a lifetime of horror etched into my soul. My adopted siblings, Ethan and Chloe, the architects of that horror, were downstairs. My kind, oblivious parents were completely unaware of their true nature. Then, Ethan's whiny voice cut through the morning, demanding a new gaming PC. Chloe, ever the manipulator, chimed in, suggesting a "little run away" plan. Just like they did before. My blood ran cold. In my first life, I was a naive fool, desperate for their approval. I went along with it, leading me straight into an unimaginable hell while Ethan found his abusive "benefactor." I remembered the endless suffering, the betrayal that sealed my fate. How could they be so casually cruel, so destructive? This time, the fear and confusion were gone. They had been replaced by a cold, burning rage. They thought they could play their manipulative games again. But they were wrong. This time, I wasn't running away. This time, things would be different. This time, I was ready.

Ethan, a cold New York executive, thought his ailing childhood sweetheart, Claire, was his only priority. He'd banished his pregnant wife, Sarah, to a remote swamp shack, believing she'd failed Claire. But Sarah's banishment was her brutal murder, secretly orchestrated by Claire for her unique blood. Five years later, Claire's mysterious illness returned, sending Ethan, still oblivious, back to the shack for Sarah's power. Instead, he found Leo, a five-year-old boy, Sarah's spitting image. Blinded by obsession, Ethan scoffed at any mention of paternity, dismissing Leo as a "bastard." As Claire feigned agonizing pain, he coldly ordered doctors to drain Leo's blood, convinced it held the cure. My ghostly form hovered, screaming, my hands uselessly passing through my dying son. How could he not see this was his own child? How could he sacrifice our flesh and blood for the very woman who murdered me? His oblivious cruelty was a chilling, bottomless abyss. But as Leo lay lifeless, his blood mingled with Ethan' s own from a cut. Just then, a horrifying secret from my shallow grave began to emerge. The brutal truth of my violent death, and Leo' s true father, would shatter Ethan's world. This devastating revelation would trigger a reckoning he could never escape.

My life was perfect, the American dream within reach. I was Ash Carter, engaged to Ethan Miller, our star quarterback, future NFL legend. We had it all mapped out: the big house, the easy life, the picture-perfect wedding. Then, in a brutal flash, it all imploded. An ACL tear, career-ending complications. Ethan, my golden boy, was broken. His father disgraced. My mother, Karen, wasted no time. "You have to break it off, Ashley," she commanded, her voice cutting, practical. He was a "liability," a "nobody." The dreams of wealth and connections she envisioned for me vanished with his ruined knee. I felt sick, my stomach churning at the thought of the conversation to come. I knew she was right, didn't I? For my future. For her sanity. My thumb hovered over Ethan's name, ready to end it. Then, my phone buzzed wildly, not a call, but bright, blocky letters flashing across my vision like a game interface. `GAME FEED: CRITICAL CHOICE!` `ABANDONING ETHAN MILLER NOW = 'TRAGIC SPINSTER' BAD ENDING. DETAILS: Social ruin, crushing debt, lonely cat lady. Forty cats. Minimum.` My blood ran cold. Was this real? `ETHAN MILLER IS PROPHESIED TO ACHIEVE UNEXPECTED GREATNESS. STAY THE COURSE FOR 'POWER COUPLE' GOOD ENDING. DETAILS: Influence, respect, true partnership. Legendary status.` My life was a game? The words "forty cats" burned behind my eyes. Looking at Ethan, broken on the couch, the breakup words died. Fear, stark and overwhelming, took hold. The path was terrifyingly clear. And I had to play.

When Lora first stepped foot in England to take part in an international competition, she clicked with the beautiful Sandra who hid a sad secret. The very same day they became friends, they crossed paths with Johnny being bothered by two men. This was how their story started. Both Lora and Johnny hated each other from the get-go. However, before they knew it, they already fell hard for each other.

Going against her parents' wishes, Molly insisted on getting married to the man she loved. Yet, she didn't find the happiness she hoped for within her marriage. After being cheated, deceived, and even imprisoned by her husband, she became overwhelmed by desperation and decided to commit suicide. But contrary to what she expected, her life didn't end. Instead, she found out she was granted another chance to do everything differently. With this brand new opportunity in her hands, she promised herself she would live a wonderful life this time around. However, destiny didn't want to give her a break as it kept dragging her into love traps.

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.

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 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 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.

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."

On my wedding day to Julian Moretti, the future Mafia Don, I was deliberately sent to the wrong penthouse. My half-sister Sofia had crawled into my fiancé's bed, leaving me to be discovered by the family's exiled, alcoholic cousin. In my past life, I was shattered by this orchestrated betrayal. I cried and begged when Julian publicly humiliated me, choosing his illegitimate mistress over his rightful bride. I played the perfect, dignified Mafia wife for years. I swallowed his insults, ignored his infidelities, and accepted my ruined reputation to keep the peace. But my blind obedience only paved the way for my murder. Julian discarded me, and I was poisoned to death so Sofia could steal my crown as the Mafia Queen. Until my agonizing last breath, I didn't understand. I had honored our families' blood alliance flawlessly. Why was I the sacrificial lamb while they were rewarded for their treason? Opening my eyes again, I was back on the dark leather sofa, suffocating in my heavy silk wedding dress. This time, I didn't shed a single tear. I grabbed a heavy brass letter opener, marched straight into the Don's main study, and slapped the Underboss across the face in front of the entire family. "A Valdez woman does not share her husband," I declared coldly. "To honor the alliance, I will marry Dante." If they wanted to make my humiliation a fact, I was going to make it a funeral.

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 replaced my twin sister in a marriage contract to the ruthless Mafia Don, Donovan Blackwood. For three years, I was a ghost in his home, silently enduring his coldness while he flaunted his mistress, Chloe. On the very last day of our contract, Chloe staged an accident. Donovan didn't hesitate. He forced me to drain my blood to save her life. Then, to prove his loyalty to her, he drove me to the cliffs and pushed me into the freezing ocean. He even locked me in a cellar infested with spiders—my deepest phobia—because she lied and said I threatened her. He thought he was punishing the spoiled, arrogant Isabella. He didn't know he was breaking Ava, the woman who had silently memorized his allergies and waited up for him in the dark every single night. When I finally took my fifty million dollars and vanished, I left behind nothing but the divorce papers and a photo revealing the truth. He tore the city apart, destroying my family to find me, only to realize he had tortured the wrong woman. Now, he is standing on my porch in the pouring rain, staring in horror at the simple wooden ring on my finger given to me by another man. He falls to his knees, begging for a chance to love the wife he tried to destroy. I look at him, feeling absolutely nothing. "It's too late, Donovan," I say, locking the door. "You killed her."