LARA MORRISON

I was bleeding out in the dark, bound to a chair, when I heard my husband tell another woman he would burn the world down for her. Dante Moretti didn't know I was on the other side of the paper-thin wall. He didn't know that ten years ago, I was the girl who saved his life in a frozen cave, not his mistress, Sofia. Sofia had stolen my story, and now she was stealing my life. When I tried to leave him, Dante chained me in his dungeon and whipped me until I passed out, claiming he was "disciplining" his wife. When Sofia used steel cello strings to slice my fingers open, destroying my ability to ever play again, he looked the other way. He even chose to save her over me when we fell into the freezing ocean, leaving me to drown because "Sofia is my soul." That night, I finally stopped fighting for a man who didn't exist. I called my brother, the Don of New York. "The alliance is over," I whispered into the phone. "Take me home." It took Dante three months to uncover the truth. To see the medical records proving I was the one who dragged him from that cave. He burned his own boat to trap us on an island, begging for a second chance. "I can fix this," he pleaded, tears streaming down his face as he touched my scarred, ruined hands. I looked at him, then at the man standing behind him with a rifle—the man who actually loved me. "You can't fix a shattered vase, Dante," I said. Then I watched my new protector pull the trigger.

For fifteen years, I buried my dream of motherhood because my husband, Bennett, swore he carried a tragic genetic defect. "If we have children, they will suffer," he had cried on our bathroom floor. I believed him. I made him my religion. But at a charity gala, everything shattered. He introduced his twenty-two-year-old mistress as his "little sister," only to announce moments later that she was pregnant with his heir. He never had a genetic defect. He just didn't want a child with me. The humiliation didn't stop there. He moved her into our home. He took my grandmother’s emerald necklace, reset the stone, and fastened it around her neck in front of our friends. When I tried to leave quietly, he sneered that I was jealous and toxic. He was confident he could break me, planning to manipulate me into eventually helping raise his mistress's baby. He didn't know two things. First, his mistress was faking the pregnancy to trap him. Second, I wasn't going to stay to watch the fallout. While he rushed her to the hospital for a staged emergency, blaming me for her "pain," I quietly boarded a private jet to Paris. I deleted my number. I destroyed my SIM card. I reclaimed my maiden name. By the time Bennett realized his "heir" was a lie and his wife was gone, I was already starting a new life where he didn't exist.

My phone buzzed on the counter of the vet clinic, a harsh sound, demanding my attention from a complicated case. It was Mark, my husband, sharp and impatient. "Chloe, drop whatever you' re doing. I need you." He needed his backup drive, for the biggest night of his career, a speech about 'sacrifice' and 'unwavering support', to impress his investors. I, his vet-tech wife, was racing home to fetch it, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. When I arrived, he was radiant on stage, spouting platitudes about family while I clutched the hard drive in the shadows, my stomach twisting. My phone vibrated: Dr. Reed, our son Leo' s specialist. "Chloe, the new treatment protocol is our best option, but we need to start immediately. The hospital requires a significant deposit." It was an unimaginable sum. I looked through the glass at Mark, laughing with investors, the hard drive forgotten. Leo and I were not in his world. In that moment, something inside me shifted. The long, slow burn of resentment ignited into cold, clear purpose. I wasn't going to wait for him. I wasn't going to ask him. I drove directly to sell my father' s classic Mustang – my most prized possession – for the cash. Returning home, a bright orange notice was slapped on our front door: NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE. My key wouldn' t work. My credit card was declined. I called Mark, his voice laced with fury. "Where the hell did you go? You embarrassed me, Chloe!" "The house, Mark," I whispered, trembling. "There' s a foreclosure notice. My keys don' t work." "I mortgaged it. Months ago. The startup needed a cash infusion," he sneered. "It' s gone, Chloe. My last-ditch funding failed because I was too damn distracted by all this drama with Leo. Your drama." Rain plastering my hair to my face, I sank to my knees. "We' re done," he said. "I told the bank to change the locks. You can get your things tomorrow." He hung up. Just then, Leo, pale and frail, opened the door. "Mommy? Why is Daddy yelling? Are we leaving our house?" His simple words cut through my shock. I pulled him close, whispering, "What if it was just you and me from now on? A new life. Would that be okay?" He nodded, trusting. That was all I needed.

My life as the "Montana Wildcat" was all about rebellion against the stuffy East Coast elite. But when an old blackmail threat jeopardized my Senator father's career, I was forced into a desperate solution: a fake engagement to Sterling Prescott IV, the blue-blood heir who personified everything I ran from. My plan was simple: unleash enough chaos to scare off the Prescotts and annul the whole charade. Instead, his formidable grandmother imprisoned me in their lavish estate for a forced "refinement," and strangely, Sterling became my unexpected confidante and ally, stealing midnight burgers and listening to my wild tales. Just as our fake relationship started feeling disturbingly real, my world shattered. Suddenly, the FBI stormed our home, planting fake evidence on my laptop that implicated my father in a national security scandal, destroying his career overnight. The final blow came with paparazzi photos showing Sterling, seemingly abandoning me, arm-in-arm with Blair Vanderbilt, the daughter of my father' s bitter rival. The man I'd grudgingly begun to trust, who had broken through all my walls, had seemingly betrayed me when I needed him most, leaving me heartbroken and politically ruined, a pariah. Then, at my father's televised Senate hearing, where his career was moments from collapse, Sterling walked in. He carried a briefcase and a recording that would not only clear my father's name but expose the true architect of our downfall, turning everything I thought I knew on its head.

My eyes snapped open. Sunlight streamed through familiar curtains in what was undeniably my childhood bedroom on a military base. But a stark, chilling truth hit me: I died. I vividly remembered fire, twisted metal, and then a profound, cold darkness. My father, General Miller, walked in, his voice deep and reassuring. "Sarah, you're awake. We need to talk about your future." He began to speak of Captain Mark Olsen, the perfect, ambitious officer everyone expected me to choose. The name was a bitter taste. Because in my first life, I married Mark. Then came the devastating news: killed in action. The grief consumed me. I stopped living, leading to my own tragic car accident months later. My world ended. But it wasn't true. As a lingering spirit, I watched my world shatter while his continued. Mark, alive and vibrant, laughing with Tiffany Evans, his arm around her. They had faked his death, eloped, and built a long, happy life together, completely discarding the woman who died for him. The rage, the profound betrayal, morphed from a cold fire to a precise, icy shard in my chest. Why did I endure such suffering, such a cruel end, while they basked in their deceitful bliss? The injustice was unbearable. But this was it. My second chance. A precious, impossible gift. This time, there would be no Mark Olsen. This time, I' d choose differently. This time, my life wouldn' t end in ashes.

My brother Leo's medical bills were a crushing weight, pulling us both into a financial black hole. Then, a lifeline: a contract, presented by a lawyer with a voice dry as old parchment. My mission for the next year: transform the Kincaid children, Oliver and Chloe, into "presentable" figures for their prestigious annual gala. The payment was astronomical, the only hope I had to save Leo. I signed, ready to become the stern governess, Sarah Hayes. Stepping into the marble-floored entryway of the Long Island mansion, I faced two miniature tyrants. Oliver, thirteen, oozed practiced apathy, while Chloe, ten, clutched a tablet displaying designer logos. "Another one? How long you gonna last, lady?" Oliver sneered, followed by Chloe's contemptuous, "Do you even know who I am?" Their father, perpetually attached to his phone, was nowhere to be found, leaving me to face their immediate, blatant rebellion alone. My first command was simple: hand over the skateboard and the tablet. This unleashed an explosion of outrage. "This is child abuse!" Oliver shrieked, threatening to call his wealthy, absent father. Chloe's wail was operatic, as if I’d declared her streaks and followers dead. The contract had warned of testing, but the sheer entitlement was a shock, making every small step feel like a war. How was I supposed to achieve "significant improvement" when their every instinct was to resist and undermine me? The Kincaid money, critical for Leo's surgery and recovery, felt like a constant mockery against their spoiled lives. The weight of my brother's future pressed down, reminding me that I absolutely could not fail, no matter how impossible the task seemed. My quiet thought, "Managing these two? How hard can it be?" now echoed like the most foolish words ever spoken. I held out my hand, unflinching, for the skateboard and tablet. Their resistance was part of the job description, a challenge I had to overcome for Leo. This was my new regime, unyielding, strict, and it had just begun. My personal philosophy was simple: family first.

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'm a moaning mess as Antonio slams into me from behind. His hips hit me hard, and each deep thrust sends shockwaves through my body. My breasts bounce with every movement, my eyes roll back, and I moan his name without control. The pleasure he gives me is overwhelming-I can't hold it in. I feel my walls tighten around his thick length. The pressure builds fast, and then- I explode around him, my orgasm tearing through me. He groans loud and deep as he releases inside me, his hot seed spilling into me in thick pulses. Just when I think he's done, his grip shifts. He turns me over and lays me flat on the bed. His dark eyes stare into mine for a moment, filled with raw hunger. I glance down- He's still hard. Before I can react, he grabs my wrists, pins me down, and pushes himself inside me again. He fills me completely. My hips rise on instinct, meeting his rhythm. Our bodies move together, locked in a wild, uncontrollable dance. "You're fucking sweet," he groans, his voice rough and breathless. "I can't get enough of you... not after that night, Sol," he growls, slamming into me harder. The force of his words and his thrusts make my body shake. "Come for me," he commands, his voice low and full of heat. And just like that, my body trembles. Waves of pleasure crash over me. I cry out, shaking with the force of my orgasm. "Mine," he growls again, louder this time. His voice is feral, wild, like a beast claiming what belongs to him. The sound sends a shiver down my spine. *** Solene was betrayed, humiliated, and erased by Rowan Brook, the man she once called husband, Solene is left with nothing but her name and a burning hunger for revenge. She turns to the one man powerful enough to destroy the Brooks family from within: Rowan's estranged and dangerous uncle, Antonio Rodriguez. He's ruthless. A playboy who never sleeps with the same woman twice. But when Solene walks into his world, he doesn't just break the rules, he creates new ones just for her. What begins as a calculated game quickly spirals into obsession, power plays, and secrets too deadly to stay buried. Because Solene isn't just anyone's ex... she's the woman they should've never underestimated. Can she survive the price of revenge? Or will her heart become the next casualty? And when the truth comes out, will Antonio still choose her... or destroy her?

I stood outside my husband's study, the perfect mafia wife, only to hear him mocking me as an "ice sculpture" while he entertained his mistress, Aria. But the betrayal went deeper than infidelity. A week later, my saddle snapped mid-jump, leaving me with a shattered leg. Lying in the hospital bed, I overheard the conversation that killed the last of my love. My husband, Alessandro, knew Aria had sabotaged my gear. He knew she could have killed me. Yet, he told his men to let it go. He called my near-death experience a "lesson" because I had bruised his mistress's ego. He humiliated me publicly, freezing my accounts to buy family heirlooms for her. He stood by while she threatened to leak our private tapes to the press. He destroyed my dignity to play the hero for a woman he thought was a helpless orphan. He had no idea she was a fraud. He didn't know I had installed micro-cameras throughout the estate while he was busy pampering her. He didn't know I had hours of footage showing his "innocent" Aria sleeping with his guards, his rivals, and even his staff, laughing about how easy he was to manipulate. At the annual charity gala, in front of the entire crime family, Alessandro demanded I apologize to her. I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I simply connected my drive to the main projector and pressed play.

I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella. Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark. But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved. Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies. When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel. While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest. The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella. He ordered my father to punish me. I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth. That night, the love in my heart finally died. On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape—the only proof that I was Seven. Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney. By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

When I was eight, Dante Moretti pulled me from the fire that killed my family. For ten years, the powerful crime boss was my protector and my god. Then, he announced his engagement to another woman to unite two criminal empires. He brought her home and named her the future mistress of the Moretti family. In front of everyone, his fiancée forced a cheap metal collar around my neck, calling me their pet. Dante knew I was allergic. He just watched, his eyes cold, and ordered me to take it. That night, I listened through the walls as he took her to his bed. I finally understood the promise he’d made me as a child was a lie. I wasn't his family. I was his property. After a decade of devotion, my love for him finally turned to ash. So on his birthday, the day he celebrated his new future, I walked out of his gilded cage for good. A private jet was waiting to take me to my real father—his greatest enemy.

I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York. To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen. But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table. It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test. "Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture." I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking. He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago. He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy. He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go. He was wrong. I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don. And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy. I wanted to erase him. I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built. Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa." It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul. On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial. When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth. He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife. Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.

Elora Griffiths was on her way to drop her daughter off at school when her husband's enemies opened fire in the street. The bodyguard her husband had personally assigned to protect them abandoned the car the instant the shots rang out. Mother and daughter were hit multiple times, teetering on the brink of death. Elora frantically called her husband, Rodger Griffiths, but he didn't answer. Her brother, Hugh Dale, arrived just in time and saved them both. "How could this happen? Didn't Rodger assign someone to protect you?" Hugh asked. Elora sobbed uncontrollably, "The bodyguard ran away!" On the way to the hospital, Elora kept trying Rodger's number, desperate. One call after another... Finally, on the ninety-ninth attempt, the line connected. On the other end was the female bodyguard, trembling, her voice barely holding back tears. "Rodger, it's really not my fault! There were so many assassins. I would've died if I tried to stop them! I was so scared..." Elora held her breath, waiting for her husband's wrath to thunder down. But Rodger just sighed. "Forget it. The important thing is you're safe," he said. Meanwhile, Elora's daughter took her last breath in her arms. The pain was suffocating. She held her daughter close as her body went cold and stiff, teeth gritted in fury, "Hugh, I'm divorcing him! I'll cut off every single arms shipment to the Griffiths family from the largest arms company in Crownport!"

I stood alone at the center of my art gallery opening, clutching a glass of warm champagne, while the guests whispered behind their hands. My husband, the Capo of the Chicago Outfit, wasn't there. A breaking news alert on my phone explained why. It was a high-definition photo of Dante shielding his mistress, Isabella, from the rain. He was touching her with a protective possessiveness he had never once shown me. Then came his text: "Isabella needed me. Go home." That was the moment the cage door unlocked. I didn't go home to cry. I went to his office the next morning with a stack of papers disguised as "gallery insurance forms." While Isabella sat on his desk, mocking me for being a boring housewife, Dante was too annoyed to read the fine print. He just wanted me gone so he could get back to her. He signed the divorce decree. He signed the asset dissolution. Most importantly, without looking, he signed the irrevocable relinquishment of parental rights. I walked out with my freedom, but fate had a cruel sense of humor. That night, I stared at a positive pregnancy test. I was carrying the Sovrano heir he had always demanded. And he had just legally signed away his right to ever know his child. I fled to the Swiss Alps, vanishing into the snow to raise my baby away from his world of blood and bullets. I thought I was safe, until six months later. Dante hadn't just sent men to look for me. He had burned his own shipping empire to the ground, destroying his status as King, just to prove he would trade it all for the wife he threw away.

For nine years, I was the perfect mafia wife. I laundered Marcus Thorne’s money through my design firm, smiled at his dinners, and ignored the lipstick stains on his collars. I believed in the Omertà of our marriage. I thought my loyalty was my armor. I was wrong. On the night of our anniversary gala, a car lost control and barreled straight toward us in the parking lot. Marcus didn't look at me. Not once. He lunged for his mistress, Izzy, tackling her to safety behind a concrete pillar. I was left standing in the open. The impact threw me like a ragdoll. I lay bleeding on the cold asphalt, my body broken, watching through the haze as my husband frantically checked his mistress for scratches. "My ankle," she whimpered. Without a backward glance, he picked her up and carried her to his limousine, leaving me to bleed out on the pavement. He didn't leave me because he panicked. He left me because I was just a shield he used to protect what he actually loved. As darkness crept in, a shadow fell over me. It wasn't Marcus. It was Julian Croft, his sworn rival. I looked at the empty spot where my husband should have been and made a choice. "Get me to the hospital," I rasped, staring into the eyes of the enemy. "And then help me burn his empire to the ground."