John Authur

Sierra Monroe's life spirals into darkness when she's drawn into the world of the powerful De Santos brothers-one a ruthless, undisclosed mafia leader, the other a billionaire hiding dangerous secrets. Desperate to save her mother, Sierra agrees to a contract marriage with Adrian De Santos, hoping for protection but uncovering far more. As she seeks revenge against those who destroyed her family, Sierra is forced to confront love, betrayal, and survival in a city that takes no prisoners.

Scarlet's life takes a dark turn when she discovers Aiden, her boyfriend, has been secretly dating her stepsister Evelyn. Heartbroken and betrayed, she finds herself in the arms of Sebastian Hawthorne, a mysterious billionaire with a hidden agenda. As Scarlet becomes entangled in Sebastian's dangerous world, she must fight for her own survival while seeking revenge on those who have wronged her.

Camille Laurent was stolen at birth. Swapped by a greedy nanny, abandoned without a second thought, and erased from her rightful place in one of the most powerful families in the country. While the real heiress struggled to survive, the nanny's daughter, Talia, was raised in luxury as the beloved jewel of the Laurent family, pampered by Camille's parents, adored by her three brothers, and even promised to the prestigious Matteo Devereux through a childhood engagement arranged by their grandparents. Then the truth came out. Six months ago, Camille was finally brought back to the Laurent family. To protect the family reputation and prove their devotion to their bloodline, the Laurent patriarch transferred 35% of his personal shares into Camille's name overnight, instantly making her one of the wealthiest heiresses in the country. It brought anxiety to all the Laurent family. But what they don't know.is that Camille never needed them. Behind her elegant smile lies a woman filled with secrets powerful enough to shake the whole family. She's a miraculous healer capable of curing the incurable poisons. Yet despite everything, her family still chooses Talia. Every accusation against Talia is forgiven. Every scheme against Camille is brushed aside. Even Matteo, the man who was supposed to be Camille's fiancé-cannot let go of the woman he always believed belonged by his side. But while the Laurent family underestimates Camille, another man begins to see exactly who she is. Dante Moretti. The ruthless heir of an old-money dynasty. A billionaire CEO worshipped by the public.and the merciless king of a criminal empire hidden beneath the city's glittering surface. When Dante is poisoned by a rival syndicate with a deadly toxin no doctor can cure, he offers a fortune for anyone who can save him. Only Camille can. Their deal is simple: she becomes his personal physician, and he gives her anything she wants.

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."

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."

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.

I spent three excruciating years building an underworld empire for Cassius, only for him to give the ultimate symbol of his protection to a fragile girl named Serena on the very day he proposed to me. My biological brother Julian, my protector Enzo, and my ally Lucian all followed suit, prioritizing Serena's fake tears over my life. They forced me into a lethal bone marrow extraction to save her. When I welcomed the agony—using it to trigger my system's extraction protocol, my only way home to the real world—they violently aborted the procedure. They accused me of twisted manipulation and locked me in a high-security medical prison. There, they handed my care over to Serena, who tortured me in secret, calibrating my pain to hover just below the medical alarms. "You will live," she whispered, "so that you may watch them choose me—until the act itself becomes a prayer." I didn't understand. Why was my physical agony never enough to make them stop, yet a single tear from Serena became their absolute law? Why wouldn't they just let me die so I could go home? Then I saw my real brother Arthur, exhausted by my hospital bed, through the system feed—and I realized I couldn't die. Not yet. I wiped all emotion from my face and calmly signed the papers for their live public reconciliation broadcast. Before I leave this world for good, I will tear Serena's perfect facade to pieces.

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.

"Where do you think you're going, huh? You're mine now, Little Mouse. Get back in the house!" Vincenzo's voice boomed, sending chills down Victoria's spine as her world seemed to crumble. Victoria Washington was shattered-betrayed by her boyfriend who dumped her the day before his wedding, to her sister. She was left humiliated, mocked by everyone. But fate had other plans for her. She's broken, he's lost. She's full of fear, and he's the monster. Yet, somehow, he's her light while he remains in darkness. Vincenzo Dante will stop at nothing to tarnish his family's name for forcing him into a marriage he never wanted. But what he doesn't realize is that his new wife is stronger than she seems-too broken to bend under his cruelty. But when love begins to bloom, and secrets start to unfold, what will happen next?

For sixteen years, I was the naive, pliant wife to Dante Moretti, a ruthless Mafia Capo. I funded his empire with my hidden family wealth. I endured his affairs. His family treated me like a fool in silk. But at his mother's sixtieth birthday gala, Dante threw an annulment decree at my feet—standing beside his new mistress, a rival mafia princess. His mother wore my late mother's stolen diamonds around her neck. He declared I was too weak to be a Capo's wife, and if I tried to take my daughter, his guards would carry me out in a body bag. The entire Syndicate watched. Every Capo. Every soldier. They were waiting for the soft, useless wife to fall to her knees and beg. They thought I only knew how to pick out silk curtains. They didn't know my family's blood money was the only thing keeping their empire from bleeding out. I didn't cry. I smiled. Picked up the annulment papers. Turned my back to the crowd. And signaled the soldiers I had embedded in his guard for years. "Begin the audit. Strip them bare."

I am Serena Vitiello. My family's bloodline was the shield that allowed my husband, Salvatore, to become an untouchable mafia boss. However, at the national syndicate summit, he actually claimed his power was all thanks to his mistress, Chiara. He even took off my heavy family gold signet ring and slipped it onto her finger. To completely break my spirit, he intentionally forced me to eat a plate of scallops, knowing full well I was allergic. He watched coldly as my throat swelled until I couldn't breathe. When I confronted that mistress at the headquarters, Salvatore actually slapped me hard to the ground in front of my loyal soldiers. What was even more outrageous was that Chiara took a forged ultrasound report, claiming she was pregnant with Salvatore's heir. This shock was too much for my grandfather's heart to bear, ultimately triggering a fatal heart attack. "Let's go, we have another party to attend." Salvatore said to her with a smile, turning away without even glancing at the flatline on my grandfather's heart monitor. He thought I was just a broken, submissive wife who would quietly give up my crown. He naively believed he had built this empire all by himself, forgetting that all these years, I was the one secretly using my family's fortune to cover his millions of dollars in losses. I was the one who bought off those judges to keep his business running for a decade. So, when he slammed the divorce papers on the table, demanding that I transfer all the family's territories to him, I lowered my head and signed. He couldn't wait to snatch the pen and excitedly signed his name on the agreement, completely unaware that he had just legally taken over eighty million dollars of cartel debt. Meanwhile, I had already transferred all the clean money under my name.

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.