Landslide

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.

Being born a defective "wolfless" in the bankrupt Mccall pack meant I was treated worse than a stray dog. While running from rogue enforcers collecting my family's debts, I accidentally triggered a fated mate bond with a terrifying, dominant Alpha in a hotel elevator. But after a night of intense passion, I woke up bruised and alone, finding a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill on the nightstand. He had treated me like a cheap, nameless prostitute. When I fled back home, my family didn't care about my trauma. My stepmother slapped me, and my father held a knife to his own throat to force me to take my sister's place in an arranged marriage. They sold me to the ruthless Mejia Clan to clear their fifty-million-dollar debt, shoving me into a musty, wrinkled gown. My new husband didn't even show up to the wedding, and his family dumped me at his penthouse, leaving me to be humiliated by a woman claiming to be his cherished mistress. Why was I always the sacrificial lamb, destined to be used and discarded by everyone? But I was done being their victim. "If you ever pull another stunt in my house, the next thing I pour over your face won't be cold water." I smashed a pitcher of ice water over the mistress's head, claiming my territory. I only had to survive this fake marriage for sixty days, and this time, I refused to bow to anyone.

I was a Dragonless orphan taken in by a noble family, forced to be the substitute bride for my cowardly stepsister to marry a comatose, cursed Dragon Lord. To ensure I couldn't refuse, my stepmother drugged my wine at a family dinner. She locked me in a dark hotel room with a stranger, planning to have me ruined so I'd have no choice but to take her daughter's place. I barely escaped the terrifying, burning man in that room, only to be dragged back to the estate. When I stood in the grand foyer and refused the marriage, my stepmother smiled coldly. "It would be a terrible shame if your foster mother's health were to suddenly decline." She threatened to murder the only person who ever loved me. Even my childhood best friend betrayed me, selling me out for a plot of land and threatening to frame my healing skills as witchcraft. I was completely cornered, forced to walk into a tomb of a marriage as a sacrificial lamb just so my stepsister could chase after a handsome prince. Why did my life have to be treated like disposable trash for their greedy ambitions? But they severely underestimated me. Before leaving, I extorted a massive fortune from my stepmother as my dowry. And on my wedding night, when I realized my "comatose" husband was actually the lethal, fully awake man from the hotel room, I didn't panic. I looked into his murderous eyes and offered him a deadly deal. This time, I was going to burn their entire world to the ground.

My family tried to sell me to a monster. Frankie Glover was a low-ranking Warrior from the Glover Pack, notorious for his violent temper and wandering hands. To everyone else, I was just a wolfless girl with no rank, no claws, and no power to fight back. To my mother and sister-in-law, I was even less than that. I was a price tag. So I ran. In the middle of a freezing Chicago storm, I jumped into the first Uber I saw and begged the dangerous-looking driver to take me anywhere but home. He smelled like cedar, rain, and something darker beneath the scent suppressant on his skin. I should have been afraid of him. Instead, I heard myself say the craziest words of my life. “I’ll pay you five hundred dollars a month. Just... marry me.” I expected him to throw me out. He drove me straight to City Hall. By morning, my family had disowned me, Frankie was furious, and my new husband had become the only thing standing between me and the Pack that wanted to claim me. Everyone thought Damien Montgomery was just a broke, unaffiliated Uber driver. A Rogue with no money, no status, and no Pack behind him. Then Frankie cornered us at a restaurant. He threatened my best friend. He mocked her child. He tried to hit me. Damien caught his wrist before the blow landed. “Don’t touch my wife.” The room went silent. Even the wolves stopped breathing. One moment, Damien was the quiet man who drove a beat-up Toyota and lived in an old apartment building on the edge of neutral territory. The next, he snapped Frankie’s wrist, exposed his fake Rolex scam in front of everyone, and made three Glover Pack Warriors run like frightened dogs. That was when I started to understand. My husband was hiding something. The spacious top-floor apartment. The black credit card he claimed was just a bank promotion. The way Pack men lowered their eyes around him before they even knew why. The terrifying grandfather who showed up alone with a jade wolf-fang heirloom and called me the Luna of the family. None of it made sense. Damien said he was nobody. But nobody did not carry the scent of old bloodlines under layers of suppressant. Nobody did not make wolves tremble with a single word. Nobody did not look at a wolfless girl like she was already his. I married a stranger to escape one monster. Now I’m beginning to wonder if I accidentally married the most dangerous Alpha in Chicago.

I was lying in a hospital bed, my body shattered from a terrible car crash. My best friend Belinda walked in, but she didn't come to comfort me. She came to gloat. "You didn't really think the crash was an accident, did you?" She told me that she and my fiancé, Braxton, had tampered with my brakes. She stroked her slightly curved belly, smiling as she confessed that she was carrying his child. They needed me dead so Braxton could take over my family's company. Even worse, they had paid a drunk driver to run my parents and my brother off the road. My entire family was wiped out by design. As my world crumbled, a lawyer walked in. He was sent by my husband, Julian, who hadn't visited me once. The lawyer coldly handed me divorce papers to sign on my deathbed. I died alone, suffocating on my own blood, consumed by a burning hatred for the people I trusted most. Why did they destroy my family? Why did Julian abandon me when I needed him the most? But when I opened my eyes again, the sterile hospital room was gone. I was standing in my childhood bedroom, staring at my flawless, eighteen-year-old face in the mirror. It was exactly one week before my engagement party with Braxton. This time, I wouldn't be their victim. I would burn their worlds to the ground.

In her past life, Christabel was locked in an abandoned medical facility, her fingers crushed and her vision blurred with her own blood. Her stepsister, Hilary, stood over her in a pristine white Chanel suit, smiling as she delivered the final blow. "Derrick's plane went down. No survivors." Hilary whispered the words with fake pity, throwing a stack of newspapers directly at Christabel's face. The bold headlines screamed about the Sanders family's absolute bankruptcy and liquidation. Christabel's parents and brother had already died trying to protect her. Now, Hilary was sealing her inside this rusted, pitch-black room to rot away completely. Christabel couldn't even move her dead limbs to fight back. She could only wait for her heartbeat to stop, drowned in absolute, crushing helplessness. She hated herself for being so blind, for letting Hilary and her fiancé Jaylon manipulate her, destroy her family, and steal everything she ever loved. In her final agonizing second, a vicious curse echoed in her mind. She swore that if she had another chance, she would drag them all to hell. Then, a violent sensation of falling ripped through her, and her eyes snapped open. Blinding light from a crystal chandelier stabbed her eyes, and an unnatural, burning heat rushed through her veins. She had been reborn. She was back at eighteen, in the exact hotel room where Hilary and Jaylon had plotted to drug her and ruin her reputation forever. This time, the show was hers to direct.

This is a terrifying memory I'd rather never speak of again. We were just high school students when the town accidentally unearthed a mass grave. That night, Keegan Wilkerson, the most popular senior, showed up at a party with a trophy: a finger bone he had stolen from the site. He passed the bone around. Everyone wanted to touch it, just to prove they had the guts. A day later, Keegan was bedridden with a raging fever, drifting in and out of consciousness. Then he started counting with his eyes closed. "One... two... three..." He counted endlessly. Soon, everyone who had touched that bone fell ill, in the exact same order. The doctors called it a rare infection. But my grandma said it was a curse, and that Wilkerson was already beyond saving.

My bank account showed exactly $42.18, and my student loan notifications were flashing red. I lived in a sweltering Queens apartment with my Aunt Lydia, where the air was thick with the smell of stale frying oil and the constant threat of being homeless. Lydia handed me a grainy photo of a man twice my age and told me she had already "sold" me to him. He was a dry cleaner looking for a wife, and in exchange for my hand, he would pay off her credit cards and my debt. If I didn't show up for the date that night, my boxes would be on the curb by midnight. I arrived at the cafe in a state of panic, my selective mutism making it impossible to even breathe. In the crowded room, I accidentally sat at the wrong table. Instead of the man from the photo, I found myself facing Gerhard Holcomb—the cold, terrifyingly handsome billionaire whose family owned the very museum where I worked. He didn't send me away; instead, he studied my trembling hands and offered me a different deal: a two-year contract marriage, a two-million-dollar payout, and a strict clause forbidding any children. I signed the papers and moved into his Park Avenue penthouse, thinking I was finally safe. But when I went back to the old apartment to retrieve the only memento of my dead parents, Lydia lashed out, leaving me bleeding from a head wound. Gerhard’s retaliation was absolute—he had her arrested and her building foreclosed on within hours, claiming he was simply "protecting his assets." As I recovered in his silent, glass-walled home, I saw a call from a famous socialite flash on his phone, and a cold truth settled in my gut. I wasn't just a wife; I was a placeholder, a silent shield used to fend off the women from his past. I looked at the massive pink diamond on my finger and realized the silence I had lived in my whole life was about to become my most expensive prison. I had traded a life of poverty for a high-stakes game of shadows, and now I had to survive the man who claimed to own me.

My sister Alia was dying. Her only hope was an experimental surgery that cost half a million dollars. With only two weeks to find the money, I had to swallow my pride and go to the one person I hated most: my estranged billionaire brother, Damon. But I never got to see him. His executive assistant, a woman named Ginger, took one look at my cheap dress and decided I was a stalker. She refused to pass along my message. She dragged me into a back room, sneering that my story about a dying sister was pathetic. In front of her colleagues, she tore Alia' s life-saving medical records to shreds and threw them in the trash. She slapped me across the face, poured hot coffee on my chest, and ripped my dress open to humiliate me further. I lay on the floor, broken and bleeding, while she laughed. All I could think about was the closing window for Alia' s surgery. Every piece of paper she destroyed, every second she wasted, was another nail in my sister' s coffin. Because of that delay, Alia died. When my brother finally found out what his assistant had done, the grief that should have broken us instead forged something new and terrible. I looked at him and said that jail wasn't enough. We would give Ginger everything she ever dreamed of, just so we could be the ones to burn it all to the ground.

The phone call felt like a death sentence. "Killed in action." My husband, David Miller, a decorated Navy SEAL and the love of my life, was gone, leaving me and our five-year-old daughter, Lily, alone. But then, he walked through the door. He looked exactly like David, yet it wasn't him. It was Mark, David\'s identical twin brother, a man I knew to be a selfish, lazy bum, now wearing the mask of my heroic husband. He moved through the grieving relatives, accepting condolences, even letting Grandma Miller sob on his shoulder, all while his eyes met mine with a cold, calculating assessment, daring me to expose him. The nausea hit me, a wave of realization that this wasn' t grief; it was an act. He wasn\'t here to mourn; he was here to steal David\'s identity, to erase him to escape his own pathetic existence. And then fear for Lily, blissful in her coloring, replaced my grief. I had to protect her, no matter the cost. So, I stepped into the role of the devoted, grief-stricken widow. "David," I choked out, throwing my arms around him, "I thought I\'d lost you. They told me you were gone." He stiffened, but recovered quickly, his voice a cheap imitation of my real husband\'s. I played along, even when his girlfriend, Ashley, pregnant with his child, announced their "happy news" at David' s memorial, then demanded our house and savings. The audacity was sickening, but I feigned despair, exposing their cruel intentions to the shocked family. Later, in the backyard, I burned David' s belongings – a painful sacrifice. Mark and Ashley watched, enraged, as he remained trapped by the identity he' d stolen, unable to act for fear of exposing himself. Then Lily, innocent and pure, delivered the first crack in his facade. "Mommy," she asked, looking at Mark, "Why does Daddy look different? His eyes are mean." The words hung in the air, a child\'s innocent observation, but for the first time, I saw real fear in Mark\'s eyes. This was just the beginning. I would make sure he regretted the day he decided to come back from the dead.

It started on the one-year anniversary of my return, a day meant for joy. Instead, my family, devout and God-fearing, brutally murdered me. My brother, my protector, became a "defiler" screaming monster, my father, a man of God, cut off my hand with a rusty saw, and my mother, once overjoyed, called me an "abomination." They threw my bleeding body into a silo, sealing the hatch, and as I died, I only had one question: Why? It was the locket. The small, carved wooden locket my sister, Esther, had given me moments before, a "welcome home" gift that instantly turned my loving family into rabid killers. Somehow, I woke up. It' s the same day, the same anniversary. Esther is coming up the stairs, the locket in her hand, about to give me the gift that will trigger their bloodlust again. This time, I refuse. But Esther is cunning, and soon, I'm dodging my family's crazed attacks, desperately trying to expose their dark beliefs to the authorities. They look at me like I' m simply a troubled girl with an overzealous family. Knowing the law won't stop their fanaticism, I have no choice but to use their own twisted faith against them, no matter the cost, to finally break free.

My whole life was about getting out of this blue-collar town. Ivy League scholarships were my ticket, and I lived and breathed SAT prep. My best friend, Bree Van Doren, struggled with her studies, her family's hardware store failing. She always said I made it look so easy. Then Bree suggested a "study retreat" at her remote family cabin in the Adirondacks. After she handed me a bottle of water, that's the last thing I remembered before darkness. I woke up on a dirt floor, head pounding, in a filthy shack. This was no cabin; this was a nightmare. The Petersons, a rough, menacing family, treated me like an animal. Then Bree appeared, her face shockingly cold, flatly admitting she sold me to them. For a few hundred bucks and a beat-up snowmobile, my "best friend" had erased her academic competition. I was to "keep Cletus company." Sold. Like an object. For a snowmobile. Every Ivy League dream I had, reduced to ash. Panic clawed at my throat. How? Why? Even my own cousin, Jake, seeing me bruised and desperate, didn't recognize me. But a silent scream of "NO" echoed in my mind. I would not break. I was Sarah Miller, and my formidable grandparents, Eli and Agnes Miller, would find me. And when they did, Bree Van Doren would pay.

My seven-year-old daughter, Lily, just died from leukemia. Grief consumed me, but my wife, Vicky, told me it was the will of fate-the experimental Swiss treatment simply failed. We buried our sweet girl. But then, hours later, I overheard Vicky' s voice, surprisingly light, from her study. She was on a video call, laughing with her best friend, Chloe. "He' s back, Chloe! Julian! His big project in Dubai went bust." Vicky giggled, then scoffed, "Honestly, Lily' s illness was such a drain. Julian doesn' t need to know I had a child, especially one so sick." Then came the words that ripped my world apart: "I found a clinic in Switzerland, very discreet. Euthanasia." My heart, already shattered, was pulverized. Vicky had killed our daughter. And now, with Lily barely cold in her grave, Vicky was parading Julian, her old flame, through our home, mocking my life' s work, and quickly erasing Lily' s every trace. She painted me as an unstable, grieving fool. She vowed to destroy me, to ensure I got nothing. How could the woman I loved, the mother of my child, be such a monster? How could I have been so blind? But the pain wasn't just mine; it was Lily' s, a horrific injustice. I wouldn't let them erase her. I would fight back, for Lily' s legacy, for the truth, and green the world with the "Oasis System" she loved, whether Vicky and Julian liked it or not.

At 35, architect Emily was on top of the world. Her firm just won a major contract for a downtown skyscraper, and she was celebrating a successful career, building dreams one blueprint at a time. Then came the text. Not for her, but for her husband Ethan. It flashed on his iPad: "My Little Muse. Is the show over? I bought you your favorite vinyl." Show? He was rehearsing. A chilling comment from her best friend echoed: Ethan had said Emily was "dull," like "a book he’d read too many times." Her trembling hands unlocked his devices. What she found was a sick tapestry of lies: cutesy messages, secretive Venmo payments to a "Sophia M.," and social media posts flaunting his custom guitar pick and even his vintage watch. The dashcam footage confirmed it all—intimate kisses with a very young "Little Muse" while he was supposedly "rehearsing." This wasn't just a fling; it was a brazen, calculated betrayal, a sickening echo of his "dull" remark. Every shared memory twisted into a lie. Had their entire life together been a farce? How could the man she loved debase her so utterly, all for a cheap thrill? When Ethan announced a "band tour" that was actually a luxurious Miami getaway with his mistress, a cold rage set in. He thought she was numb, easily discarded? He was about to learn that an architect could build more than skyscrapers—she could construct the perfect downfall, ready to serve him a dose of reality he’d never forget.

After breaking up with the movie king, I went diving and ended up getting sprayed with ink by a giant octopus. In that moment, I was invaded by the octopus's genes. This creature has nine brains, eight tentacles, and three hearts. My IQ skyrocketed instantly, and the romantic mindset that had troubled me for years was replaced by a new career-focused mindset. This time, I could finally distinguish who truly cared for me and who was just putting on a facade. I fired my angelic bitch of a manager and took control of everything myself. When I argued with netizens, I could take on a hundred of them at once. Later, the movie king called me again: "You respond to netizens pretty quickly, but why can't you see my messages?" I sincerely replied: "Sorry, but my IQ is too high now; you're a bit beneath me."

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.

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."

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."

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 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.

My husband, Don Lorenzo Bianchi, the man who once took ninety-nine lashes for me, had just locked me in a guest room. I was four months pregnant with our child, the heir to his mafia empire. My crime was throwing a glass of wine on his mistress, a woman he had moved into our home. She cornered me in the garden, gloating that once the baby was born, he would give it to her to raise as her own. Later, she shoved me down the grand staircase, then threw herself down after me, screaming to my husband that I had tried to kill her. As I lay in a pool of my own blood, Lorenzo rushed past me, scooping her into his arms and carrying her away without a single backward glance. To force me to apologize, he had my parents brought to my hospital room and brutally whipped until they collapsed at his feet. He was no longer the man who had 999 crystals sewn into my wedding dress. He was a monster who believed every lie she told and punished me for her crimes. How could the man who swore to love me forever become this cruel stranger? But he didn't know the truth. Days before the fall, I had secretly terminated the pregnancy. I took the urn containing our child's ashes, filed for divorce, and disappeared from his world forever.

I was the wife of Dante Cavalli, the most ruthless mafia Don in the country. But today, his Underboss slid mandatory annulment papers across my hospital bed, ordering me to dissolve our marriage. In my past life, I dropped to my knees and begged them not to abandon me. I spent the next thirty years locked in Dante's massive penthouse, waiting for a man who bathed the streets in blood but never gave me a single drop of warmth. My aristocratic mother-in-law stripped me of every cent, leaving me completely isolated. I foolishly threw away a brilliant surgical career to be a submissive, obedient mafia wife. In the end, Dante never came to see me, and I died entirely alone in that massive, empty bed. Until my last breath, my chest was suffocated by a lifetime of regrets. I couldn't understand why I had sacrificed my freedom and my scalpels for a man who would only feel a twisted guilt decades after I was already a cold corpse. Opening my eyes again, Fate had dragged me back to the exact day my nightmare truly began. Matteo stood at the foot of my bed, clearly expecting my usual pathetic tears. "Take your time to think about it." This time, I didn't cry or beg for my life. I just picked up the fountain pen, signed my name, and walked out to reclaim the scalpel I had abandoned.

She went to lose her virginity to her boyfriend... But woke up in his father's bed. Now, Isabella is trapped between two dangerous men- one who thinks he owns her... and one who refuses to let her go. Secrets. Desire. Betrayal. And a Mafia King who never shares what's his.

I was tracing the gold paint on my own tombstone when a hand tapped me on the shoulder. It was Clayton. The same man who, five years ago, had left me bleeding out in a ditch because he didn't want to be late for my sister's engagement party. "Die quietly, Ivy," he had said over the phone before hanging up. Now, standing over my grave, he dropped his cheap plastic flowers in shock. "Ivy? You're... we buried you." They hadn't buried me. They had buried an empty box to save face, mourning a "troubled" daughter they had actually discarded like broken trash the moment I became a liability. Clayton's shock quickly turned to that familiar, arrogant anger. He accused me of faking my death for attention. He told me I was sick for putting the family through such pain. He even reached out to grab my arm, intending to drag me back to my father to apologize. "You're coming with me," he spat. "You owe us an explanation." But he made a fatal mistake. He thought he was talking to Ivy Dillard, the soft girl who cried when she skinned her knees. He didn't notice the town car waiting at the curb, or the man stepping out of it. Before Clayton's fingers could graze my coat, a hand made of steel caught his wrist. Collin Richardson, the most feared Capo in Chicago, stepped between us. "Touch my wife again," Collin whispered, his voice promising violence. "And you lose the hand." I smiled at the terror draining the color from Clayton's face. I didn't come back from the dead to explain myself. I came back to bury them.

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.