Juline Walden

During a massive syndicate attack, my fiancé, the most ruthless Mafia Capo, locked his grip on my wrist like an iron vice. He desperately wanted to drag me into a corner panic room to protect Bianca, the innocent underworld socialite he secretly obsessed over. In my past life, I saved him with my body—and he rewarded me with a crippled leg, years of disgust, and a push off a cliff. He believed her lies, and he murdered me for them. Opening my eyes again, I was reborn to the exact moment the safehouse was under attack. This time, I let him walk willingly into his own concrete tomb.

One night of reckless passion. One mistake that changes everything. After her stepmother drugs her and tries to sell her into marriage with a fifty-year-old predator, Chloe Prescott flees into the arms of a devastating stranger at a luxury hotel bar. In her drugged haze, she mistakes him for a high-class escort and spends the night with him. In the morning, consumed by shame and fury, she leaves behind two hundred dollars and a humiliating three-star review. Weeks later, Chloe discovers she's pregnant. With her stepmother circling her late mother's company and a baby growing inside her, she makes a desperate choice: she posts an ad for a contract husband. One year. One million dollars. No physical contact. Strictly business. The applicant who shows up is impossibly handsome, coldly arrogant, and dangerously familiar. He calls himself Julian Cross. What Chloe doesn't know is that he's Julian Sterling—the billionaire she mistook for a whore. He didn't come for her money. He came for revenge. Now she's married to the one man who has every reason to destroy her. He wants to break her. She's just trying to survive. But when their fake marriage ignites a fire neither can control, the secret she's hiding could either save them both—or burn everything to the ground.

To keep my comatose mother's heart beating in the ICU, I desperately needed two hundred thousand dollars. Instead of a loan, my aunt and uncle brought me a proxy marriage contract. They sold me to Julian Montgomery—a billionaire rumored to be a disfigured, ruthless monster—just to pay off their own bankruptcy debts. "Sign it, or they pull her plug right now." I was dragged to his gothic estate, where Julian nearly choked me in the dark on our first night. He trapped me with a fifty million dollar divorce penalty and transferred my mother to a fortress-like VIP hospital, taking absolute control of her life. He forced me to wear humiliating lingerie and play the role of a shameless gold digger to disgust his hostile family. But the most terrifying part was when he peeled off his scarred silicone mask, revealing a flawlessly handsome face underneath. Why was this manipulative psychopath spending millions on my mother's medical care? Why was he going to such extreme lengths to trap me in this hell, only to treat me worse than a maid? The answer came when his sister suddenly kicked open our bedroom door. "You think marrying this cheap whore will make you forget Luna Bloom? She's back in New York!" Feeling Julian's body instantly turn to stone at the sound of his first love's name, the truth hit me. I was nothing but a prop. But if he thought I would just lay down and be his victim, he was dead wrong.

I was working a catering gig under a fake name at the Pierre Hotel, desperately trying to stay invisible after my father’s high-profile financial fraud ruined our lives. Everything shattered when Silas Thorne handed me a glass of drugged champagne and cornered me in a locked restroom, his slurred voice demanding I "thank him properly" as he kicked in the door. To escape a fate worse than death, I lunged across a hundred-meter drop onto the balcony of the city’s most feared billionaire, Everet Adams. But the nightmare didn't end there. When I finally crawled back to my family’s cramped apartment, my father wasn't relieved to see me alive; he was furious I had "ruined the deal." He held my mother’s last gold locket over a flame, threatening to melt it unless I returned to Silas to finish what he started. My stepmother stood by, screaming that my body was the only currency we had left to pay the rent. I stared at the man who raised me, realizing he had orchestrated my assault just to secure bail money for my brother. To my own flesh and blood, I wasn't a daughter—I was a commodity, a piece of meat to be traded to the highest bidder. When Everet Adams tracked me down and offered me a way out, it came with a two-hundred-page marriage contract and a cold demand for an heir. I looked at the live feed of my brother being cornered in a prison yard and picked up the pen. "I'll sign," I told him, stepping out of my father’s shadow and into a gilded cage. As the elevator doors opened to a wall of paparazzi cameras, I leaned into Everet’s cold embrace. The world saw a fairy tale, but I knew the truth—I had just sold my soul to the only monster capable of protecting me from my own blood.

Autumn woke up with a brutal headache and a glowing red warning projected onto her retinas. She had been bound to a ruthless system as the "Elite Girlfriend" to Harrison Jennings, the wealthiest, most robotic student on campus. But her status was a death sentence: Cannon Fodder scheduled for deletion. To survive, she had to flawlessly execute a grueling daily schedule of academic perfection and emotional detachment. If she broke character, showed weakness, or failed her study quotas, the system electrocuted her mind. She was trapped in a digital nightmare, bullied by her roommate and forced to endure Harrison's suffocating scrutiny. He didn't date her; he optimized her like faulty software, even throwing $50,000 at her just to stop her from working a "dirty" part-time job because it violated his strict mysophobic parameters. Pushed to the brink of a breakdown, Autumn was exhausted and terrified. Why was she forced to appease a high-functioning sociopath who measured human connection in data points and efficiency metrics? Until one afternoon, desperate to scare off a creeping frat boy, she loudly faked a deranged, obsessive love for Harrison's flawless logic. She turned around to find Harrison standing right behind her. His usually dead, icy eyes were suddenly burning with a dark, suppressed intensity. "The statement you just made," he rasped, towering over her. "Does it hold legal validity?"

My fiancée smiled as she showed me the "intruder" she had dealt with in the ER. I looked past her to see my mother beaten unconscious on the floor. And on the gurney next to her lay my seven-year-old brother, cold, blue, and dead. Brittnie clung to my arm, beaming with pride. "I handled it, Cannon," she chirped. "That gold digger tried to claim this bastard was your son. But I made sure they wouldn't bother us again." My blood turned to ice. She was holding my mother' s emerald brooch, a family heirloom, convinced it was her engagement ring. Because of her delusion, she had refused to give my brother his EpiPen. She had watched him suffocate to death, thinking she was winning my heart. I looked at Gabe' s lifeless body, then at the woman I was planning to marry. I pulled out my phone and shoved a family photo in her face. "That gold digger is my mother," I whispered, my voice trembling with lethal rage. "And you just murdered my brother."

For three years, I believed I had the perfect marriage with my husband, Grant, and an unbreakable bond with my best friend, Chelsey. That illusion shattered when I found a hidden video on our shared laptop, tucked away in a folder labeled "Memories." It showed them together in a hotel room, kissing, their bodies intertwined. I heard my husband promise my best friend he would never truly love me, that I was just a responsibility he had to bear. He was the man who swore he'd never cheat. She was the woman who once saved my life. Their entire relationship, their fake animosity-it was all an elaborate performance to hide their affair right under my nose. But when he left me sobbing on the floor to rush to her side after a faked car accident, something inside me finally broke. I found them wrapped in each other's arms, and with the sound of my hand cracking across his stunned face, I made a new promise. "We're getting a divorce."

For three years, I kept a secret ledger of my husband's sins. A point system to decide exactly when I would leave Blake Santos, the ruthless Underboss of Chicago. I thought the final straw would be him forgetting our anniversary dinner to comfort his "childhood friend," Ariana. I was wrong. The real breaking point came when the restaurant ceiling collapsed. In that split second, Blake didn't look at me. He dove to his right, shielding Ariana with his body, leaving me to be crushed under a half-ton crystal chandelier. I woke up in a sterile hospital room with a shattered leg and a hollow womb. The doctor, trembling and pale, told me my eight-week-old fetus hadn't survived the trauma and blood loss. "We tried to get the O-negative reserves," he stammered, refusing to meet my eyes. "But Dr. Santos ordered us to hold them. He said Miss Whitfield might go into shock from her injuries." "What injuries?" I whispered. "A laceration on her finger," the doctor admitted. "And anxiety." He let our unborn child die to save the blood reserves for his mistress’s paper cut. Blake finally walked into my room hours later, smelling of Ariana’s perfume, expecting me to be the dutiful, silent wife who understood his "duty." Instead, I picked up my pen and wrote the final entry in my black leather book. *Minus five points. He killed our child.* *Total Score: Zero.* I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just signed the divorce papers, called my extraction team, and vanished into the rain before he could turn around.

The charity gala was supposed to be my final act of freedom, a staged exit from a life that wasn' t mine. Instead, it ended with the shriek of shattering glass, my sister' s scream, and the cold accusation in Charlotte Sterling' s eyes, a theatrical terror I knew was fake as she bled onto the pristine marble from a self-inflicted wound. Suddenly, every eye in the room, including my adoptive family' s, landed on me, fixing me with a gaze riddled with panic, concern, and finally, pure hatred, as Charlotte whispered her fabricated story of being pushed to our mother. "Get her out of my sight," my adoptive father, Richard Sterling, snarled, his voice a low growl directed solely at me, a torrent of fury replacing the warmth that once existed. My adoptive brother, Ethan, dragged me from the ballroom, away from the judging crowd, and into the raw, damp confines of the basement wine cellar, proclaiming I would stay there until I understood what I had done. For two years, I had been Ava Miller, the grateful orphan, tasked with exposing Sterling Corp' s illicit operations, but now, abandoned by my agency and starved by my supposed family, a chilling realization ignited within me. I wasn' t just a victim of betrayal; I was an agent, and if I got out, I wouldn't just pick up the pieces-I would build something entirely new, something forged in vengeance.

The blinding pain of childbirth ripped through Sarah, but it was the empty chair beside her hospital bed that truly shattered her. Mark should have been there, holding her hand, but his phone was off, just as it had been for hours. Another contraction hit, and alone, sweat-soaked, Sarah delivered her first twin, then geared up to do it all again, frantically trying to reach a husband who had vanished. As she cradled her newborn, a news report flashed on the TV: a sun-drenched beach, turquoise water, and there, laughing, hand-in-hand, were Mark and her best friend Emily, on a "romantic getaway" in Bali. Just then, a cheerful caller informed her the postpartum nanny package she'd paid for had been canceled by her husband. Her blood ran cold. He hadn't just abandoned her; he'd taken everything. A quick check of her banking app confirmed the horror: over eighty thousand dollars, her life savings for the twins, gone. He'd drained it all to fund his sordid escape. The line went dead after her mother-in-law, dismissive and callous, blamed Sarah for not "giving Mark a boy" and for being "careless with her money." The betrayal was absolute, a crushing blow from everyone she thought she could trust. How could she be so blind? How could they betray her so completely, so cruelly? The isolation crashed down, leaving her utterly alone, reeling from a decade-long lie that had just imploded. Just when she thought she might drown in her grief, a cold, sharp voice cut through the haze, forcing her to confront an unexpected intervention and perhaps, a chance to reclaim more than just her babies.

The tech industry' s golden couple, Mark Stone and I, stood basking in the spotlight, a symbol of shared dreams and billion-dollar success. But that dream shattered when an anonymous email revealed Mark's decade-long betrayal: he wasn't just having an affair with Chloe Davis, our rival, but funding her company with our money. When I confronted him, Mark shamelessly denied it, then orchestrated a vile smear campaign, publicly labeling me an unstable, cheating woman. He even weaponized our shared pain, twisting the tragic loss of our unborn child-twice-into an accusation of my infidelity. Everyone believed him. I was isolated, heartbroken, and utterly humiliated. How could the man I loved, my partner for ten years, become such a monster? What depths of depravity would he sink to just to protect his image? Driven by a cold fury and armed with a deceptive calm, I plotted my escape. I agreed to a "reconciliation trip" to Iceland, a cruel charade, knowing it was my perfect window to disappear, leaving him to face the wreckage of his own making. This wasn't an ending; it was a strategic withdrawal. The war had just begun.

My husband, a rockstar on the rise, just dedicated his Battle of the Bands victory to his "true muse"-our band's new bassist, Molly. Then they shared a long, passionate kiss on stage, right in front of me, as I stood there, holding the victory cake I' d spent two days baking for him. Later, I heard him laugh, calling me "pathetic," a "church girl playing dress-up" who "just tries too hard." Then, after he "saved" me from harassing strangers, he publicly shamed me for my outfit and forced me to drink until I ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Fresh from the ER, I saw him on one knee, proposing. Not to me, but to Molly, whispering, "I'll take care of you and our baby," words eerily similar to those he' d used when he pressured me into an abortion. He then ripped off my designer leather jacket, the one I' d saved for months to buy for him, and draped it over Molly, declaring she "actually looks good in this." How could he, my husband, betray me so completely and utterly humiliate me? Was this all a twisted joke, or was this the man I married all along? Instead of crying or screaming, a strange, cold calm washed over me, and I walked straight out of that hospital, pulling out my phone to call Austin's best divorce lawyer.

The night Sabrina won Governor, my world should have been complete. I, Ethan Lester, a Hollow Keeper, had bent forgotten rituals to ensure her victory, loving her with every fiber of my being. She was my queen, now ruler of our state. But her crown came with a cruel twist. She brazenly dismissed me and my family, choosing the slick tech billionaire Andrew Fuller, who mocked my quiet, mountain-folk parents and had them arrested on the spot. My pleas to Sabrina were met with icy indifference, her hand already intertwined with his. The next morning, I learned my parents were dead-a convenient "suicide" in custody. When I confronted Sabrina in her office, she laughed with their killer, then scornfully dismissed my grief. "Are you seriously asking me to ruin a powerful man for a couple of nobodies from the sticks?" she sneered. She then announced our annulment and fired me, giving my advisory role to Andrew. How could the woman I loved, the woman I gave everything for, become such a monster overnight? How did my life, built on deep traditions and fierce loyalty, collapse so entirely? This wasn't just betrayal; it was cold-blooded murder. They had taken everything. Now, I would take it all back.

My mother, Karen, stood by my hospital bed, her face cold as my heart monitor slowed. I was dying from organ failure, a sudden, rapid illness, while my older sister, Brittany, thrived as a popular influencer, celebrated for achievements that were, in truth, always mine. This wasn't just sickness. It was the "Exchange System"-a chilling secret weapon my own parents had wielded. They' d systematically pilfered my successes, my health, even my Stanford-bound SAT scores, to fuel Brittany's fabricated "genius." My entire life was a lie, a resource to be drained for her benefit. My father, Rick, a silent accomplice, watched as I withered away. Every talent, every ounce of robust health, funneled into Brittany. As the final heart monitor beep flatlined, darkness consumed me, the bitter truth of their monstrous deceit searing my soul. How could my own family turn me into a mere resource, stealing my very life until I perished, all to elevate another's hollow existence? The injustice suffocated me. Was I truly just a battery for my "genius" sister, erased from history by those who should have loved me? Then, light. I gasped, bolting upright in my own bed. It was a month before the SATs-the turning point where my life last pivoted to its tragic end. The memories of my death, of Karen' s icy words, were vivid. This time, I would not be their victim. I knew their system. And this time, I would break its rules.

I woke up cold, Thanksgiving Eve all over again, the phantom pressure of water in my lungs, a chilling memory of how my wife Ashley had ended my last life. Ashley was already humming, getting ready to leave-not for her aging parents, but for Brandon, her toxic lover, sealing her family' s fate with lies and then locking me in our bedroom to prevent me from interfering. After a desperate escape, I raced to her parents' apartment, only to find the building engulfed in flames, while Ashley, through cunning phone calls, dismissed my desperate pleas to rescuers, painting me as an erratic husband and leading to my arrest as her parents perished inside. My heart shattered by her shocking betrayal and Brandon's calculated cruelty, I was consumed by a cold, burning rage, realizing the terrifying depth of her obsession that led to such an unthinkable tragedy. At the funeral, I publicly exposed Ashley's cold deceptions, and as Brandon shamelessly proposed to her amidst the fresh grief, his true monstrousness was revealed, finally breaking her twisted delusion and setting me free to forge a life unbound by their dark past.

My Charleston life was straight out of a storybook: a loving family, a handsome fiancé, Chad, and a generous engagement gift – a historic mansion in the heart of the city. But then came the nightmare. One dizzying moment at my engagement party, surrounded by opulence, and the next I was trapped. Trapped inside my fluffy white Bichon, Angel, my world became a terrifying cacophony of barks and urine. Through the bars of a filthy cage, I saw my step-brother Billy Ray smirk, abandoning me—Sarah Jenkins, the wealthy heiress—to a notorious high-kill animal shelter. I knew Daisy-Mae, his conniving wife, was now standing triumphant and relieved in *my* gorgeous Charleston home, inhabiting *my* body, embracing *my* privileged life. The betrayal was absolute, the cruelty unimaginable, turning my gilded existence into a nightmare worse than death. How could this dark magic be real? How could my own family turn so viciously against me? Miraculously, I jolted awake, back in my own bed, days before the horrific swap was truly meant to happen. My first move: feigning a sudden, violent dander allergy to banish poor Angel—and Daisy-Mae's trapped soul—from my rooms. This time, I'm not just fighting back; I'm turning their dark schemes against them, inch by agonizing inch.

Evelyn Hayes, a venture capitalist celebrating a milestone in her impressive career, just wanted a quiet moment at a campus Starbucks, dressed comfortably after a long panel. But a simple outfit choice unexpectedly ignites a firestorm: anonymous messages turn into public online attacks, spearheaded by Mark Jenkins, an aspiring entrepreneur she's about to judge. He demonizes her, painting her first as "distracting," then as a "corrupt elite" actively sabotaging his dreams. When he realizes she's the lead investor for the prestigious "Pioneer" Accelerator, he unleashes a venomous social media campaign, exploiting his family for sympathy and turning the internet into a mob crying "#CancelEvieHayes" and accusing her of being everything wrong with Silicon Valley. How did a casual tank top become an excuse for such a calculated, personal vendetta? How can one man’s bitter entitlement twist reality and orchestrate a public shaming campaign against a professional woman? Refusing to be silenced, Evelyn knows she must fight back, not just for her reputation, but for every woman targeted by online hate. But as she prepares to expose Mark’s dark past, a terrifying truth emerges: his desperation could turn vicious. Will she overcome the digital mob and a dangerous real-life threat, or will his false narrative destroy everything she’s built?

The Annual Honors Convocation. My valedictorian speech was a triumph, the applause warm, my parents’ faces beaming with pride. I had given it all to academics, and this was my moment of glory. My future felt bright, endless possibilities stretching before me. I was ready to step off that stage and into a new chapter. But then, Mr. Davies, our notoriously strict history teacher and the school’s champion of discipline, called me back. He held up a small, cream-colored envelope, sealed, for all to see. He announced, amplified by the microphone, that it was an “admiration note” found in my textbook – a clear signal of an uncomfortable public exposé he intended to make. My stomach dropped, recognizing the careful calligraphy. Ethan. His son. Mr. Davies, oblivious, believed it was *to* me, not from him, and he was about to weaponize it. He forced me to read the heartfelt words aloud to the entire horrified audience, watching my parents wilt in their seats, threatening my participation in the prestigious National Mock Trial Championships if I didn't identify the "irresponsible" writer. The bitter irony choked me. Here was the man who constantly lauded his son’s “focus” and “discipline,” preparing to publicly dismantle the very young man who wrote these tender sentiments, all while making me complicit. How could he be so utterly blind? How could I possibly navigate this moral tightrope without betraying Ethan, or completely derailing my hard-earned academic future? Just as the suffocating pressure threatened to break me, a quiet, resolute voice cut through the auditorium’s stunned silence. “Stop.” Ethan Davies rose from his seat, pale but unyielding. He was about to shatter his father’s carefully constructed world, and radically redefine my own, with a confession that would flip the entire narrative on its head.

I'm a timid and gentle flying squirrel, and one day I found myself in the body of a true heiress. The fake heiress orders me around. "Pick up the socks on the floor." I comply, "Where should I put them?" "Put them in my mouth." I stuffed them in. "Pour the foot bath water for me." "Sure, where should I pour it?" "Pour it on my face." I tipped the whole basin over. "What are we having for lunch?" "What do you want to eat?" "I want to eat poop." Alright, just wait, I quickly shut the bathroom door. Outside, the fake heiress's voice was deafening: "If you dare to make me eat poop, I'll kill you! You’re not really going to poop, are you? I won’t eat it, I won’t eat it…" The squirrel felt frustrated; humans change so quickly. Does she really want to eat it or not?

I didn't mean to call my boss. I definitely didn't mean to leave a seven-minute voicemail of dirty secrets about him. Working for Ruslan Oryolov is the job from hell. The man is impossible-demanding, arrogant, and way too gorgeous for his own good. After eighteen months of fetching his coffee and swallowing my pride, all I wanted was one night of stress relief. But the billionaire CEO of Bane Corporation isn't just a boss from hell. He's the head of the Oryolov Bratva-and now that he's heard every secret I never meant to share, he's decided to claim me. His contract. His rules. His protection for my three orphaned nieces and nephews-the only reason I'm signing my life away to a man I should fear. He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now he wants my soul.

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 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."

She's sin wrapped in a nun habit. He is the devil who makes her want to confess. Luciano Moretti, the mafia's most feared enforcer, kills without hesitation, prays to no god, and bleeds for the Cosa Nostra. Sister Elizabeth has spent her life behind church walls, burying her desires under layers of penance and prayer. She is supposed to be untouchable-a quiet, secluded nun devoted to faith. But when she finds him bleeding on the altar one night, their worlds collide in a sin neither heaven nor hell can cleanse. He's meant to marry her sister to seal a deal between two mafia empires. She's meant to keep her vows and distance. But temptation has a cruel sense of humour... Because he's the last man she should want. She's the only woman he can't have. But one touch, one look, and everything sacred begins to crumble. Luciano does not seek salvation. Instead, he lures her into a dangerous path, one that includes everything she is meant to avoid, and everytime she whispers "forgive me, Father," her soul sinks deeper into him. As bloodlines clash and loyalty turns to betrayal, Elizabeth learns that the war outside the chapel isn't the only one she must survive. Because Luciano's world is built on violence and secrets, one of which binds her fate to his in ways neither of them saw coming. Desire clashes with devotion. Duty turns to betrayal. And when they're both drowning in a love so forbidden, not even God can save them.

On my birthday, my husband Dante asked for a divorce over a plate of cold lasagna. He held my hand, tears in his eyes, and told me his mistress was pregnant. "It’s a miracle, Elena," he wept. "God has finally given me a son." He looked at me with pity, calling me "broken" because I hadn't given him an heir in eight years. He moved his pregnant mistress into the penthouse I paid for, and his mother mocked me as a "dry vine" while cooking tonic soups for the new woman. They didn't know the truth I had buried three years ago. I remembered the day the doctor slid the file across the desk: *Azoospermia. Zero sperm count.* Dante was the sterile one. I had burned the results to protect his fragile ego as a Mafia Don. I took the blame. I drank his mother's vile herbal poisons every morning until I vomited, just to keep his secret. Now, he was discarding me for a "miracle" that was biologically impossible. I signed the divorce papers without a tear. Then I bought the debt of his company, put on a blood-red dress, and walked into his heir's Christening. I didn't come to object. I came to plug a USB drive into the projector and show the entire underworld exactly whose "miracle" that baby really was.

"My world is a mess; you want nothing to do with this" "You don't have the right to decide that for me." Her chest was heaving, harsh breaths scraping the walls of her nose. "I am your wife, and I am choosing to be in your mess." He grabbed the back of her head and pulled her closer. "This is your last chance. Once you step in, I can never let go." "I'm not planning on it." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jade Saint, who was switched at birth, is coerced into an arranged marriage after returning to the Sterling home. That is, until Roman Volkov – the richest and most dangerous man in the city – claims her as his bride. Desperate to save her dying adoptive mother, she willingly enters into a contract marriage with the devil himself. But marriage to Roman is not what she thinks it is – not the enemies lurking in the shadows. Not the dangerous world he refuses to explain, and certainly not the way his cold touch begins to feel like a promise instead of a warning. Because the more she tries to understand him, the more she realises he didn't choose her by accident. And the truth behind it all may destroy her.

I was washing the caked blood from my five-year-old daughter's broken body in the family mortuary. She had been tortured to death by a rival cartel. My husband Julian, the underworld's legendary "Master of Whispers," claimed his intelligence division did everything they could, but the rescue coordinates were wrong. Yet, while I stood over our child's corpse, he was busy comforting his new apprentice, Chloe. She posted a picture of their intertwined hands online, bragging that she had "accidentally deleted a crucial audio file" yesterday, but the boss had held her hand and forgiven her. Yesterday. The exact day my daughter died. When I confronted him, Julian slapped me across the face in front of our men. "You carry the curse of your bloodline! You are an omen of death! You brought this on her!" He blamed me for our child's slaughter, demanding I apologize to his mistress, while he secretly wiped the server logs to protect the incompetent girl who got our daughter killed. He actually thought I would just swallow the grief, refusing a divorce because I still loved him, allowing him to use my family's immense wealth to play house with his whore. But he forgot one crucial detail. His legendary "God's Ear" was a total myth, a lie entirely powered by the secret algorithms I funded to cover up his permanent deafness. I calmly gathered the ashes of my daughter from the floor and picked up my phone. "Initiate an immediate withdrawal of all funds from Julian's division. Let them bleed."

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 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.

Seven days before I was set to marry the most feared Mafia Don in the country, I was asked to step out of my own wedding photos. Because my shadow was ruining the shot. The photographer then took ninety-nine pictures—of my fiancé and my adopted sister. When I refused to give up the master suite meant for a wife, the man I loved called me ungrateful. He abandoned me at a remote compound to take her to a nail salon. So three days before the ceremony, I returned his keys, his ledgers, and his world. I left a single note: 'Thank you.' Eight years later, I came back home—and found him waiting for me on the same road where he once left me behind. He promised to wait forever. He broke that vow in the worst way possible. And I never even heard the crash.