Leanora Tanouye

I woke up from surgery with a jagged scar on my side and a missing kidney. My fiancé, Dante Moretti, the Capo of the Chicago Outfit, hadn't saved me from an illness. He had harvested me like spare parts to save his mistress, Sofia. "She pays the tithe," he had told the surgeon coldly while I was paralyzed by anesthesia. For ten years, I was his loyal shadow. I managed his legitimate empire, took bullets for him, and even aborted our child three years ago because Sofia threw a tantrum about bloodlines. I thought my absolute loyalty would eventually earn his love. But when the Cartel held us both over the edge of a bridge days later, Dante didn't choose me. He tackled Sofia to safety and watched as I fell backward into the freezing black river. He thought I drowned. Or worse, he assumed I was a dog that would eventually swim back to its master, no matter how hard he kicked it. He was wrong. I dragged myself out of that water, but the woman who loved him died in the depths. Seven days later, I didn't return to the Moretti penthouse. I walked straight into the headquarters of his mortal enemy, Enzo Falcone. "Do you still want to marry me?" I asked the man who wanted Dante’s head on a spike. Enzo didn't hesitate. "I will burn the city down before I let him touch you again." Now, Dante is crawling at my gates, paralyzed and ruined, holding a medical box containing my stolen kidney. But he forgot one thing: I don't want it back.

My husband, Austen, was the handsome, stable anchor in my life as a fashion influencer. His one flaw? He was hilariously bad with a camera. Or so I thought, until a viral photo exposed him as Chiaroscuro, a legendary photographer who vanished years ago for his muse, Isolde. On our anniversary, while I was secretly pregnant, he abandoned me to save her comeback show. He called not to check on me, but to demand I ship him my $15,000 camera-a gift from him-for her use. "It's wasted on your little influencer shoots anyway," he said, his voice flat. His words hit me as I sat alone in a clinic, having just lost our baby. He hung up. The dial tone buzzed in the silent room. I wasn't just a placeholder; I was a tool. I looked down at my phone, where the number for my lawyer was already saved, and pressed call.

On the night of our fifth anniversary, my husband left me standing on the shoulder of the Montauk Highway in a blinding thunderstorm. His red taillights didn't even hesitate as they faded into the rain. He abandoned me there because his ex-girlfriend, Isabelle, called to say she heard a scary noise in her basement. I stood in my soaked silk dress, shivering not from the cold, but from the realization that this was the ninth time. He had missed my gallbladder surgery to support her at a polo match. He had missed my grandmother’s funeral to fix her flat tire. But the truth was far crueler than simple neglect. Weeks later, after I survived a terrifying elevator accident that left me with a permanent limp, I overheard them talking at a gala. "The bet was for nine goodbyes, Marcus," Isabelle laughed, clutching his arm. "I bet you that I could make you leave her nine times before she finally snapped. And look at that. I won." My marriage wasn't a tragedy; it was a game. A wager between lovers who used my pain as a scoreboard. I didn't cry. I didn't make a scene. I went back to our penthouse, packed my sketchbooks, and vanished into the night without a word. Five years later, Marcus found me in a small coastal town in Maine. I was no longer the waiting wife. I was a celebrated sculptor, and I was holding the hand of a man who treated me like a treasure, not a toy. Marcus stormed into my studio, demanding I come home. My new husband stepped between us, calm and unyielding. "You're trespassing," he said. "I'm talking to my wife!" Marcus yelled. I finally turned around, looking at the man who had destroyed me, and smiled. "Ex-wife," I corrected softly. "And you're late. About five years too late."

The antiseptic smell of my deathbed couldn't mask the stench of betrayal. My wife, Emily, played the grieving spouse, her tears a performance, her whispers to her lover, Daniel, charting my demise. "He's not going to make it through the night. I'll be free soon, my love." That name, Daniel Sterling, a family friend I admired, shattered my world faster than my failing heart. My final sight was Emily's beautiful, lying face, cold and irritated by my inconvenient death. Then, blinding light. I gasped, sucking in real air, not in a hospital, but my old bedroom, decades younger, strong, unblemished hands. It was real. I was back. Memories of my first life flooded me: the loveless marriage, the quiet sacrifices, the children who weren't mine. Then, the pivotal memory from this timeline, the one that started it all: a party, too much to drink, Emily crying, pregnant, my naive proposal driven by a sense of duty, a lie. She was already carrying Daniel's child, using me as a shield to protect his budding career. The bedroom door creaked open. "Ethan? Are you awake?" It was Emily, radiant and innocent, carrying breakfast, her hand reaching for my forehead with the same feigned care from my deathbed. I flinched from her touch. "Emily," I said, my voice cold, "We need to talk about the wedding." Her smile faltered as I flatly stated, "I don't think we should get married." Her crocodile tears flowed, "I love you, Ethan!" she whimpered. "Don't," I warned, her words now poison. She played her trump card, placing her hand on her stomach. "I'm... I'm pregnant, Ethan. It's your baby." I almost laughed, knowing the truth this time. "Emily has always been like a sister to me," I announced, loud enough for our families downstairs to hear. "I'll always care for her." Her face, pure unadulterated panic, confirmed it. The game had just begun, and this time, I was making the rules.

The call came on a Tuesday, the day before my wedding. My fiancé, David, was dead, killed in a gang shootout. My world shattered; I was five months pregnant, and the grief choked me so completely I tried to take my own life six times. Why was this pain so absolute, so suffocating, when his mother' s eyes were dry and his twin brother, Mark, couldn' t even be bothered to come home for the funeral? Then, late one night, I heard hushed voices from the study-David' s mother and a voice that was undeniably David' s. "You can't keep this up, David," she said. My blood ran cold. "She's strong, Mom. She'll get over it," David' s voice replied, callous and cruel. He wasn' t dead. He had faked his death to be with Olivia, his brother' s wife, claiming she was too "fragile" to handle the truth of losing Mark. Every tear, every desperate attempt to die, had been for a lie. The grief burned away, replaced by an icy fury. My pain wouldn' t vanish; it would transform into fuel. I picked up my phone, scrolled to a name I never thought I' d call-Ethan Thorne, David' s biggest rival. "Mr. Thorne, this is Sarah Miller," I said, my voice shockingly steady. "Your offer… for a hundred-million-dollar dowry to marry me. Does it still stand?"

I was Ava, the unsung architect behind InnovateNext, the tech empire my husband Ethan now helmed. For eight years, I' d been his devoted wife, sacrificing my groundbreaking career and protecting his fragile ego by taking the blame for our infertility. Our Connecticut home was a picture of domestic bliss, a testament to our seemingly perfect life. Then came the ping. A casual link from a friend, unfurling a private Instagram story, shattered everything. There was Ethan, supposedly headlining a conference in San Francisco, but geotagged in SoHo, New York. He stood beaming in a luxury baby boutique, arm around Chloe, a young intern, her belly unmistakably round. The look on his face – pure, unadulterated joy – was a stranger to me. My frantic call to him went to voicemail, followed by his immediate lie: "In a keynote session. Can't talk." Within hours, I faced Chloe in a lavish SoHo loft, perfectly tailored to the desires Ethan had always denied me. She smugly revealed their three-year affair, flaunting how Ethan mirrored "my Pinterest boards" for her, not me. Her final, cruel blow: "He feels sorry for you... A man needs a woman who can give him a family. He needs a woman who is soft, not one who is... capable." The profound betrayal was a punch to the gut, erasing a decade of loyalty and self-sacrifice. My heart didn't break; it turned to ash. All my years shielding his insecurities had been for a man who saw me as merely "capable," not a woman worthy of love or a family. But from that ash, something sharp and cold ignited. Revenge. I wasn't just leaving him. I was going to dismantle every empire he built on my back. The war had just begun.

Ethan Miller, an architect adrift in the shadow of his formidable wife, Isabella Vance, found his fragile existence shattering around him. His public humiliation began when Isabella outbid him for his deceased father's cherished vintage watch, only to immediately gift it to her sleek young lover, Julian Thorne. This cruel public spectacle was merely a prelude to Isabella's escalating emotional warfare. She held his ailing sister, Sarah, hostage with the threat of cutting off her life-saving experimental treatment, using her as leverage to solidify Ethan's subservience and tolerate Julian's constant presence. Julian, an utter villain, brazenly destroyed Ethan's father's watch and framed Ethan for a violent attack, all while Isabella blindly defended her lover, even sanctioning Ethan's physical assault. The ultimate devastation came when Julian, with Isabella's unwitting complicity, orchestrated Sarah's tragic death during experimental surgery. In a final act of horrifying rage and injustice, Isabella, unaware of Ethan's long-held secret protecting her own infertility, summarily aborted their last, desperate chance at a child. Left with nothing but the unbearable grief for his sister, the incomprehensible loss of his unborn child, and the sting of profound betrayal, Ethan wrestled with the unfathomable depths of his wife's cruelty and blindness. How could the woman he'd once loved, who had once saved him, become such a monstrous architect of his destruction? But out of the ashes of his shattered life, a new resolve burned: Ethan meticulously gathered damning evidence against Julian, orchestrating his own 'death' to escape Isabella's suffocating control. He shed his old identity, transforming into Marcus Thorne, finding a new purpose and unexpected love, while Isabella, confronted by his evidence, embarked on her own path of chaotic revenge and desperate atonement.

Here's the translation of your text into English: "In order to avenge the Zleanding family that was wiped out, I became a tool for Prince Cody. He sent me to the regent's residence, and I helped him seize the throne. With the help of love witchcraft, I became the only woman to climb into Regent Tobias's bed since the death of his wife. Tobias couldn't live without me, and he followed my every word and action. As I spent day after day with him, I discovered that the back garden of the Marsh Residence was imprisoning many Zleanding women. In an attempt to bring his deceased wife back to life, he poisoned them to extract resurrection witchcraft. I wanted to take them away, but on the day I obtained the antidote, my identity was revealed to the public. Tobias hated me, yet he loved me because of the witchcraft. Caught between love and hate, I ended his life and left Egoding with those girls who had been imprisoned for half their lives, to rebuild our home."

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 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.

On our fifth anniversary, my husband slid a black velvet box across the table. Inside wasn't a diamond ring, but a fountain pen. "Sign the separation papers, Aurora," Ethan said. "Ilene is spiraling again. She needs to see we are over." I was the wife of the Mafia Underboss, yet I was being discarded for the Family Ward. Before I could answer, Ilene stormed into the restaurant. She shrieked that I was still wearing his ring and threw a bowl of boiling lobster bisque directly at my chest. As my skin blistered and peeled, Ethan didn't rush to me. He hugged her. "It's okay," he soothed the woman who had just assaulted me. "I've got you." The betrayal didn't stop there. When Ilene pushed me down the stairs days later, Ethan erased the security footage to protect her from the police. When I was kidnapped by his enemies, I called his emergency line—the one meant for life-or-death situations. He declined the call. He was too busy holding Ilene's hand to save his wife. That was the moment the chain broke. As the kidnapper's van sped onto the highway, I didn't wait for a rescue that would never come. I opened the door and jumped into the dark. Everyone thought Aurora Bruce died on that pavement. Two years later, Ethan stood outside a gallery in Paris, looking at the woman he had destroyed, finally realizing he had protected the wrong one.

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."

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 Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me. But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest. The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me. They didn't. Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her. They let me burn to keep her warm. When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages. That was the moment Elena Vitiello died. I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York. By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring. "You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them. "Burn for it."

I was staring at the two pink lines on the plastic stick, trembling with the terrifying joy of carrying the heir to the New York underworld’s most ruthless faction. Then the intercom buzzed, and a voice splintered my world. "The little art student actually thinks I'm going to marry her? It was just a game to pass the time while you were in Europe, Estella." I froze. My boyfriend, Holden, was in the next room, laughing with the daughter of his rival. He explained that I was just a "clean civilian image" he needed to secure a business deal. Now that the deal was signed, he was dumping the "stray" to marry the "Queen." I tried to run, but freedom only lasted forty-eight hours. Holden didn't just break my heart; he turned my terror into content. He kidnapped me, tied me to a chair at the edge of a cliff, and forced me to choose between my life and his new fiancée's. Then, he pushed me off the edge. As gravity snatched me, I heard him laughing. I landed on a stunt airbag. It was just a "social experiment." A sick prank for his amusement. "Don't be so dramatic, Kenia," he called down. "It's just a game." He thought I was broken. He thought I was just a prop in his life. But he forgot that I knew his secrets. I dragged my injured body to a payphone and dialed the one number Holden told me to fear—the rival Don, Gael Simpson. "It's Kenia," I whispered, clutching the receiver like a lifeline. "I'm calling in the debt."

For seven years, I served as the eyes for Dante Vitiello, the blind Capo of New York. I pulled him back from the edge of madness, tending to his wounds and warming his bed when everyone else had given up on him. But the moment his vision returned, the years of devotion turned to ash. In a single phone call, he decided to marry Sofia Moretti for territory, dismissing me as just "the maid's daughter" and a "comfort" he intended to keep as a mistress. He forced me to watch him court her. At a gala, when a chaotic accident caused a tower of champagne glasses to shatter, Dante threw his body over Sofia to protect her. He left me standing there, bleeding from the glass shards, while he carried her away like she was porcelain. He didn't even look back at the woman who had saved his life. I realized then that I had worshipped a broken god. I had given him my dignity, only for him to treat me like a disposable bandage now that he was whole. He arrogantly believed I would stay in the penthouse, grateful for his scraps. So, while he was out celebrating his engagement, I met with his mother. I signed the severance agreement for fifty million dollars. I packed my bags, wiped my phone, and boarded a one-way flight to Australia. By the time Dante came home to an empty bed, realized his mistake, and began tearing the city apart to find me, I was already a ghost.

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.

I was the "Caged Canary" of the underworld, a biological asset designed to merge two crime families. My fiancé, Bryant Barnes, didn't love me. He loved the power I brought, and he loved his mistress, Kalia. The night Kalia broke into my penthouse and stomped on my hand, crushing the bones and my fashion career, Bryant didn't help me. He told the police she was my guest and warned me not to embarrass him with a cast. That was just the beginning. When Kalia lied about feeling unsafe, Bryant dangled me off a balcony. When she faked a kidnapping, he locked me in an industrial freezer for six hours until I turned blue. And when I fell into the marina, he swam right past me to save her, leaving me to drown in the freezing water. He destroyed my body and my dignity for a woman who was stealing my designs and faking a pregnancy. He thought I was just a broken obligation he could discard. But he made a fatal mistake. He didn't make sure I was dead. I dragged myself out of the water and made a call to his greatest rival. On the night of our grand merger, I walked onto the stage wearing royal blue instead of white. I rolled up my sleeve to reveal the scars he gave me, looked him dead in the eye, and grabbed the microphone. "I hereby terminate my engagement to Bryant Barnes. And I am proud to announce my betrothal to the true King of this city."