Jun Wen

I spent a year scrubbing floors in my fiancé’s club, hiding my identity as the daughter of the Capo dei Capi. I needed to know if Connor Bishop was a King worth merging empires with, or just a puppet. The answer came walking in wearing a neon pink dress. Jaden Juarez, a civilian he was infatuated with, didn't just treat me like a servant; she deliberately poured scalding espresso over my hand because I refused to be her valet. The pain was blinding, my skin blistering instantly. I video-called Connor, showing him the burn, expecting him to enforce the code of our world. Instead, seeing his investors watching, he panicked. He chose to sacrifice me to save face. "Get on your knees," he roared through the speaker. "Beg her pardon. Show her the respect she deserves." He wanted the daughter of the most dangerous man on the East Coast to kneel to his mistress. He thought he was showing strength. He didn't realize he was looking at a woman who could burn his entire world to ash with a single phone call. I didn't cry. I didn't beg. I simply hung up the phone and locked the kitchen doors. Then, I dialed the one number everyone in the underworld feared. "Dad," I said, my voice cold as steel. "Code Black. Bring the papers." "And send the wolves."

On the night of the Full Moon Banquet, I stood in my mother's white silk dress, waiting for my childhood sweetheart, Chace, to finally claim me as his mate. Instead, he stood on stage holding another woman's hand. He didn't just reject me. He humiliated me before the entire pack. "Ember is gentle," Chace announced, his eyes cold. "But a pack needs strength. She will serve Karyn. And because I am generous, she will stay on as a Breeder." A mistress. A vessel for pups he would never acknowledge. To prove his loyalty to his new Luna, Chace forced me to drink Wolfsbane wine. As I convulsed on the floor, he laughed. He even threatened to dig up my dead mother's bones and feed them to wild dogs because Karyn called her a traitor. He thought he had broken me. He didn't know the poison hadn't killed me. It had dissolved the seal on my core, waking up a bloodline thought to be extinct. I wasn't a weak Omega. I was a White Wolf. And I had one card left to play—a debt owed to my mother by the Alpha King himself. I clutched the obsidian token in my pocket and screamed into the mental void. Keith Mosley, I am calling in the debt. A dark, ancient voice answered immediately. I hear you, little wolf. What do you desire? I looked at Chace's smug face one last time. Revenge.

On my birthday, I went to the resort I designed to tell my fiancé, Elias, that I was pregnant with his child. Instead, I found him at the altar, marrying my stepsister in a ceremony officiated by my own mother. When I confronted him, he laughed. "Pregnant? You're delusional, Aubrie. Kallie is dying, and you're here spreading malicious lies." My entire family agreed. They called me a jealous monster. During a wildfire at the resort, he shoved me to the ground to save her, breaking my leg and causing me to lose our baby. They left me there, alone and broken, convinced I was insane. They thought they had destroyed me. But from my hospital bed, I made a single phone call to my lawyer. I didn't just want to disappear from their lives-I wanted to erase them from the world. And I had the evidence to do it.

My plane landed smoothly, yet my heart churned with a nervous hope. I hadn' t told David I was coming, hoping to bridge the growing chasm in our two-year "convenient" marriage-a partnership built more on family connections than genuine affection. But as I watched David Hayes' s assistant, Sarah Jenkins, casually link arms with him at the airport, her "smooth and practiced" voice oozing familiarity, a cold dread began to set in. She looked like a model, not the efficient helper David had mentioned. Her eyes, bright and confident, scanned me from head to toe, making me feel like a specimen under a microscope, an intruder. "You have to be careful, Chloe. Men can get tired of the same old thing. It' s good you came to check up on him," she purred in the car, a thinly veiled warning coated in false sweetness. My husband, David, just gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white, and offered a weak, dismissive laugh. He didn't defend me; he managed the situation. That night, alone in his hotel suite, scrolling through a torrent of screenshots Sarah had mysteriously sent, my world shattered. "It' s a convenient marriage, Sarah. You know that. It' s not about passion." "You and me? We' re about everything else." The words, his words, tore through me like a physical blow. He had a whole vibrant life here-concerts, dinners, milestones-a life I was excluded from. My once protective, encouraging husband, the boy who called me pretty, was gone, replaced by a stranger who saw me as a "plain," "boring" obligation. The next day, during a forced shopping trip, he picked out a scarf for me. "Sarah has one just like it. She has amazing taste," he said. Then, he bought an identical one for her, right in front of me, using our "fresh start" as a cover for his infidelity. "People might compare," he fretted, not worried about me, but about what Sarah or his circle would think if we wore the same thing. My humiliation turned to ice. Then, Sarah appeared, melting into tears at the sight of the scarf, claiming they had picked it out. David, without a moment's hesitation, bolted after her, leaving me standing alone on a crowded street, holding the symbol of his betrayal. "He chose her," my mind screamed, the realization a stark, brutal clarity.

The relentless buzz of my phone announced another rejection, a common melody in the life of a struggling indie filmmaker. Then, my best friend' s panicked face flashed on screen: "Chloe, have you seen the news? It\'s Ethan. His new exhibition. It\'s everywhere." A cold dread washed over me-Ethan, my estranged artist-husband, whose art had always blurred the lines of our life. But what I saw on that major art blog wasn\'t art; it was a violation: intimate photos of me, twisted into a public spectacle, portraying me as his "tragic muse." The comments section exploded: #JusticeForChloe, #CancelEthanMiller, yet it felt like a new form of torment, a public stripping of my privacy. I stormed to his loft, demanding answers, only for him to shrug, "It\'s art, Chloe. It\'s supposed to tell the truth." He stood there, casually threatening to expose painful, private moments to my traditional grandmother if I didn\'t publicly apologize and collaborate in his twisted narrative. Before I could process his cruelty, the phone rang again-the nursing home. My grandmother had fallen. She died in the hospital, her last words a plea for me to be strong, to not let anyone make me feel small, as my humiliated face was plastered across the news. When I returned to the loft, Ethan was there with his new muse, Ava, who, feigning sympathy, accidentally revealed she knew about my grandmother' s death. Then, a charity gala, a public relations stunt, where Ethan unveiled a new sculpture-encasing my grandmother\'s stolen locket, pulled directly from her grave. Ava tearfully accused me, playing the perfect victim, implying I had desecrated her grave for art. Ethan, without hesitation, believed her, his eyes filled with a cold, performative fury, declaring me a monster and having me dragged away. Trapped, discarded, then brutally beaten by Ethan under Ava' s gleeful gaze, I realized the full depth of their monstrous betrayal. My world was shattered, my body broken, but in the ruins of my spirit, a cold, unwavering resolve began to form: Chloe Davis had to die, so Aria Sinclair could rise and burn his world to the ground.

My life with Ethan was a predictable loop: his phone calls about Olivia, his "friend" who always needed him, my forgotten anniversaries, and our shared savings mysteriously funneling into her latest drama. It was exhausting, yet I' d become numb to it, a quiet resignation my constant companion. Then, a stark notification flashed on my sleek, Agency-issued device: "Covenant Term Conclusion: Operative Maya. Extraction Protocol initiated. T-minus seven days." Five years of this life, defined by his neglect and her endless demands, were about to end. Just like that. A profound, almost liberating indifference washed over me. Later, true to form, Ethan called, cancelling our anniversary dinner again because Olivia was having a crisis. He expected my usual quiet frustration, but all I felt was nothing. Every chipped-away piece of me over the years had finally left me utterly empty. He couldn't comprehend my calm "Okay," only that it wasn't the reaction he was used to. He' d barely noticed how deeply I' d funded his dreams, how I' d been the only one holding onto "our" life. What did it all even mean, this existence where I was merely an afterthought, an ATM? But that notification wasn't just an end; it was a beginning. A countdown to an 'extraction protocol' only I understood. The taste of freedom was intoxicating, and I knew, with utter certainty, that the real assignment was just beginning. And this time, it was for me.

For the nearly five years they had been married, Cory had never stayed in their house long. He would come back once a month and ruthlessly pull Susanna into bed as if it was nothing more than routine and what was his to take! She had spent their entire marriage trying to please him and doing her best to be a good wife. And yet, he would still rather enjoy the company of photos and posters of another woman pasted all over the room. Eventually, her hopes were shattered and her stupidity stopped getting the best of her and she signed the divorce agreement. It was only once she had left that he realized he'd lost a piece of his heart when he lost her.

The following day, Nancy had just been released from prison. On the flight back home, she bumped into a man that was all too familiar, Ryan. Long ago, she ended up in bed with him after a cruel trick played by her stepsister. She ended up pregnant after, giving birth to a beautiful baby girl. She had just barely gotten out of the hospital when she was thrown into prison. Now that she was free, she had no other intention in mind but to get her daughter back. Left with no choice, she would have to do everything in her power to get her daughter back whom Ryan had taken away.

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.

The space between them disappeared. She arched into him, tilting her head as his lips traced a slow path down her jaw, then lower. Goodness, she wanted more. *** Valentina De Luca was never meant to be a Caruso bride. That was her sister's role-until Alecia ran off with her fiancé, leaving behind a family drowning in debt and a deal that couldn't be undone. Now, Valentina is the one offered up as collateral, forced into marriage with Naples' most dangerous man. Luca Caruso has no use for a woman who wasn't part of the original bargain. To him, Valentina is nothing more than a replacement, a means to reclaim what was promised to him. But she isn't as fragile as she seems. And the more their lives tangle, the harder she is to ignore. Everything begins to go well for her, well, until her sister returns. And with her, the kind of trouble that could ruin them all.

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.

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.

My fiancé Jaret Frazier promised to protect me on my nineteenth birthday. By the next year, he had married a Mafia Princess for power and locked me in a hidden apartment as his secret mistress. When his new wife discovered I was pregnant, she didn't file for divorce. She sent her enforcers to my bedside. They held me down while a back-alley butcher tore my unborn son from my womb. Jaret never came to save me. For ten years, I rotted in that gilded cage, watching him use my money to become an Underboss while I faded into a ghost. I died alone, completely erased. Then, I opened my eyes. I was back in my own bed, unscarred, the calendar turned back to the year my life was destroyed. Jaret was still just my fiancé, not yet my jailer. And this time, I wouldn't be the one who ended up in a cage.

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.

On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news. He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city. The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.” For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets. My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me. So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts. He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked. He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree. He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies.

I watched my husband, the most feared Capo in New York, sign away our marriage with the same cold indifference he usually reserved for ordering a hit. The nib of his Montblanc pen scratched against the paper, drowning out the rain hitting the coffee shop window. He didn't bother to read a single word. He thought he was signing routine shipping manifests for the family business. In reality, he was signing the "Dissolution of Union" papers I had hidden beneath the cover sheet. He was too distracted to check. His eyes were glued to his encrypted phone, frantically texting Sofia—the widow, the tragic beauty, the woman who had haunted our marriage for three years. "Done," he grunted, tossing the stack into his armored SUV without even glancing at me. "Business is concluded, Elena. We leave." Moments later, his phone rang with her special emergency tone. His demeanor shifted from cold boss to frantic protector instantly. "Driver, divert. She needs me," he roared. He looked at me with zero affection and ordered, "Get out, Elena. Luca will take you home." He kicked me out of the car into the pouring rain to rush to his mistress, completely unaware he had just legally granted me my freedom. I stood on the curb, shivering but smiling for the first time in years. By the time the Don realizes he just signed his own divorce, I will be a ghost in San Francisco. And he will have nothing left but his shipping logs and his regret.

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."