Ming Yue

My husband, the ruthless Underboss of the Ewing crime family, was terrified of one thing: his dead fiancée’s memory. Or rather, her living sister, Ivana, who used that memory to turn my life into a living hell. To "apologize" for humiliating me at a gala, Corbett brought me a peace offering: a green macaron. "Pistachio," he promised. "Your favorite." I took one bite, and my throat instantly seized. It felt like barbed wire tightening around my windpipe. It wasn't pistachio. It was almond paste. Corbett knew I was deadly allergic. He used to carry my EpiPen on our first dates. As I collapsed to the floor, wheezing and clawing at my neck, a scream ripped from the guest wing. "Corbett! Help! They're posting mean comments about me again!" Ivana. Corbett looked down at me, his dying wife, and then looked toward the hallway where Ivana was crying over Instagram. He hesitated for only a second. Then he pulled his leg away from my grasping hand. "I'll be right back," he said, turning his back on me. "Just... use your pen." He ran to comfort a healthy woman while I crawled across the carpet, vision tunneling, forcing the needle into my own thigh to restart my heart. As I lay there shaking, listening to him soothe her, the last thread of love snapped. I didn't call an ambulance. I pulled a burner phone from behind the vanity mirror and texted the one man Corbett feared more than death—his rival, Don Kain Solomon. "I accept. Get me out."

My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Caspian Vance, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through. That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Lyra—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister. But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Ashworth Fellows talking in the library. They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Caspian. Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Lyra. I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen. This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Caspian over. "No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Silas Blackwood."

My husband brought his mistress into the care center and forced me to wash her feet. He had forgotten everything about our marriage after an accident five years ago, treating me like a defective servant while doting on Jada. But I endured it, hoping his memory would return. Until Jada’s twin boys sprayed me with "water guns" filled with concentrated Wolfsbane acid. As my skin sizzled and melted, Jada screamed that I was using witchcraft to curse her children. Jake didn't check my wounds. He didn't ask for the truth. He looked at me with cold, dead eyes and ordered the guards to bring the Silver Muzzle. "This will teach you silence," he whispered. He clamped the torture device onto my face. The silver spikes instantly fused to my burned skin, sealing my mouth shut in agony. He then hung me from the ceiling, letting me swing there as a warning to the pack, while I bled out. I looked down at him, my heart finally breaking. How could the man who was once my soulmate torture me for a woman who smelled of rot and lies? I closed my eyes and triggered the rejection bond. *I reject you, Jake Foster.* The moment the bond snapped, the front doors exploded inward. A massive force of pure power crushed every wolf in the room to the floor. The Supreme Alpha had arrived. And he wasn't happy that someone had touched his Fated Mate.

"Are you sure you packed the antique vase?" I asked my husband, David, my voice echoing in our half-empty living room, packed for our big move overseas. We were starting a new life, a new chapter. But then, an email popped up on his laptop screen from a woman named Lisa Chang, a one-word subject line: "Congratulations." My heart hammered as I clicked it open. "Heard she signed everything. You' re finally free. Can' t wait to start our life together. The baby and I are so proud of you." The baby. The words hit me like a punch. Lisa was pregnant. I was numb as I found my way to the bedroom, the silver locket David gave me on our first anniversary, now felt like a lie. That evening, at a farewell dinner with David' s family, Lisa was there, seated right next to him. Eleanor, David's mother, raised her glass, triumph in her eyes: "A toast. To David, for all his success. And to new beginnings." She looked pointedly at Lisa. I heard David and Lisa talking in a private alcove. "Is she suspicious?" Lisa asked. "No," David replied. "She has no idea. She signed the papers without a second thought. By the time the divorce is finalized, she' ll be on the other side of the world." "And the house?" "The lawyer said it' s all clean. The assets are protected. We' re set, Lisa. Just like we planned." Then, the final blow: "I felt the baby kick today." My carefully constructed life had shattered. I had been played, every step of the way, just a pawn in their cruel game. I was nothing but a temporary placeholder, designed to be disposed of so they could begin their new life. I wouldn' t let them win. I would fight back, not for revenge, but for myself.

Tonight was our tenth anniversary, wrapping up ten years of a meticulously kept contractual marriage. For a decade, I, Ethan Lester, had been the silent architect behind my wife Sabrina Chadwick' s booming real estate empire. I managed her entire life, a dutiful husband and housekeeper, all to repay her for saving my father' s life. But then, she walked in, not alone, but with a smug-faced young man. "So this is the famous kept man," Caleb sneered, his words echoing through our Manhattan penthouse lobby. Sabrina, my wife, my partner of ten years, pulled him towards the elevator, her expression chillingly indifferent, utterly ignoring me. She didn' t care that her protégé was publicly humiliating me. She didn' t care what I felt when I overheard them that night, or the next morning when she ordered me to make them breakfast. I had been nothing but a loyal servant, and now, even that seemed to be beneath her consideration. I was left on a gurney in a crowded hospital hallway with a broken ankle after a car crash SHE forced me into, while she pampered Caleb over a scratch. That was the moment I realized the ultimate insult: I was just a possession, easily discarded. When the doctor asked for my family contacts, I looked him dead in the eye and said, "I have no family. Take her name off." I had been a fool to ever think love could bloom from a bargain, or that I could ever truly matter to her. Now, instead of cleaning her mess, I' m building my own empire. She desperately wants me back, but she has no idea what' s coming.

Our life in suburban Ohio looked perfect on the outside, a picture-perfect marriage that lasted five years. But inside, I was suffocating, especially after losing our first baby. When I finally got pregnant again, I believed hope was blooming. Then I found my husband had bought baby supplies. They weren't for us. They were for his pregnant mistress, Bree. He claimed she could give him the "heir" I couldn't. He coldly stated it was "practical," about "legacy," accusing me of being a "faulty machine." When I confronted them, his thuggish security shove, leading to another devastating miscarriage. He shockingly called it "faking it." Then, to punish me for wanting a divorce, he methodically shredded my grandmother's cherished quilt. It was the only solace I had left. My spirit was hollowed out. I was left with nothing but the brutal memory of his words and actions. How could someone claim to love you, then orchestrate such a calculated demise of your every hope and dream? Then, a phone call from a fertility clinic, a call he received, made him believe I was still carrying his precious heir. He came back, oozing fake repentance, painting a perfect future. But the cold D&C report I held in my hand was the real legacy I had for him. It was a testament to the life he' d destroyed. This signaled the true turning point of our story.

My life belonged to Julian Vance. He saved me at sixteen, a lost girl from the system, giving me a Manhattan apartment, Juilliard lessons, and paying for my dying sister Mia's severe cystic fibrosis care. Mia was my world; Julian kept her alive, so I believed I loved him. Then Julian met Chloe Raine, an indie folk singer. He became obsessed, claiming it was a "game" to expose her "integrity." "You're my queen. Always," he' d insist, but his eyes glowed with dangerous fascination, and a cold knot formed in my stomach. He started neglecting me for Chloe. One bitter Hamptons night, he dragged me onto our balcony in a rage. When I refused to confess, he pulled out his phone, showing Mia's sterile room, her ventilator alarm blaring. He calmly threatened her life, unless I confessed what I' d said. My heart froze. Mia, my only family, was a mere tool to him, her life leverage. The man who swore to protect me was a monster. I was his possession, my emotions irrelevant, my existence dictated by his whims and new obsessions. I gave him the lie, but the humiliation was absolute. My unplanned pregnancy ended in miscarriage, which he blamed on my "disobedience." But the ultimate breaking point was Mia. He allowed his security to remove my dying sister's life support as I screamed. Mia died. My baby was gone. My love for Julian died with them. He was my destroyer. I had to escape.

I was just sixteen when Hurricane Haven swept away everything, leaving me an orphan clinging to wreckage. Then, with kind hands, Ethan Harrison pulled me from the churning water, and his family became my beacon, my home. For four years, they rebuilt my world, filling it with a love I hadn’t known since my own mother died, a future with Ethan by my side. He gave me a compass necklace, promising, “So you always find your way. Our way.” But that same night, our future shattered. The Harrison house, once filled with light, became a tomb for thirteen souls, brutally murdered. And they said Sarah Miller did it. Me. The girl they saved, the daughter they adopted. The accusation was a physical blow, stealing my breath, my voice, my hope. The town that had embraced me now bayed for my blood, branding me a monster. Trapped in a cold cell, I endured a year of relentless interrogations and public scorn, my silence misinterpreted as guilt. How could the man I loved, the one who saved me, believe I could commit such an atrocity? How could they all be so wrong, so blind to the truth of what I sacrificed? What was there to say, when the world had already decided my fate? Now, strapped to a cold chair, electrodes tracing my thoughts, they’re forcing me into a dangerous experiment: "Traumatic Memory Unveiling." They want answers. But the truth hidden within my shattered memories is far more terrifying, a story of loyalty, betrayal, and a sinister conspiracy I kept silent to protect them—a silence that might just kill me.

The splintered wood of the floorboards pressed into my cheek. Another girlfriend gone, another brutal beating from my father. Each woman I brought home to Redwood Creek, to seek the “blessing” at our family’s Pioneer’s Home, emerged twisted with rage, screaming that I was filth. My step-brothers found happy marriages after their girls went inside; I was almost thirty and still a pariah. My father, Jedidiah Thorne, the town’s esteemed mayor, finally showed me why. He strapped me into a chair in a hidden room beneath the Pioneer’s Home, then played a horrifying video. On screen, a figure with my very face, my movements, was brutally torturing animals, then attacking my terrified girlfriends. He confirmed it was me, every single time. My world shattered. I was a monster, a broken thing deserving only death. I sought release in the old quarry, a plunge like my mother’s alleged accident. I survived, but the narrative was set: Ethan Thorne, unstable, suicidal. My father reinforced it, holding me captive, ever-monitored. I faked insanity to finally be institutionalized. Numbed by medication, I accepted my cage, a safely contained monster. Until one grey day in the drab yard, I saw her. Sarah. My first love. The girl I was told I’d killed years ago. She was undeniably alive. And her eyes held a fierce, angry truth that ripped through the fog, promising to expose a horror far greater than I could ever imagine.

The last thing I remembered was Chloe's voice, sharp and gleeful, slicing through the haze of my headache: "They never loved you, Ava. Not Liam, not Noah. It was always me." Her words were a hammer blow, each one a nail in the coffin of my life, a searing supernova of agony that exploded behind my eyes before everything faded to black. I gasped, sitting bolt upright in my childhood bed, my unlined hands proof of a terrifying truth: I was back, the calendar on my desk screaming September 5th, senior year, before the nightmare truly began. The reel of my first life rewound in fast-forward: Stanford, the calculated betrayals by Liam and Noah, Chloe's venomous strings, the engineered vasectomies, my promising career systematically destroyed, and the aneurysm that ended it all. This was impossible, a future I'd already lived, a death I'd already died, yet the worn duvet felt real, the scent of my mother's pancakes too vibrant—a second chance, if I dared to seize it, to change everything. My fingers flew across the keyboard, deleting Stanford from my early college applications and replacing it with MIT—my true dream, the one they had ruthlessly crushed. Just then, the doorbell rang, and through the frosted glass, I saw them: Liam Walker, Noah Chen, and Chloe Jenkins, the architects of my past ruin, their bright smiles and feigned innocence an instant surge of cold dread.

He walked into her life like a devil out of hell. She lost everything—her first love, her husband, the man she loved with her heart... all thanks to him! But Vincent didn't care. He was prepared to pay any price to get Lydia. He was a kind doctor, whose gentleness melted everyone’s heart. His deep, intoxicating eyes could hypnotize people with just one look. However, this perfect appearance belied the dangerous beast that lurked underneath. Will Lydia be able to escape the clutches of this wolf in sheep's clothing?

Rebecca had never imagined in her wildest dreams that such trouble would befall her. Her boyfriend, whom she was going out with for more than a year, now told her he wished to break up with her to marry another woman. She was devastated and left in a daze, her mind a blank. On the day she had resigned to drowning herself in alcohol, she bumped into Albert. She had set him up but now found herself trapped with this shrewd and scheming man. To pay for the prize, she agreed to be his lover for ten days. But then, his addiction to her gripped him tighter day by day.

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.

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.

My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement. To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia. It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping. But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished. She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug. She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago. The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash. Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name. She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant. I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead. I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye. "Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you." Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth. "Prove it," he growled. I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip.

Andrew Hebert, the man who promised to protect me, stood on a stage and announced his engagement to my tormentor. It wasn't just heartbreak; it was a business deal. He was selling me to a creditor to cover his gambling debts. The applause of the powerful families was a death sentence, each clap sealing my fate as collateral. Andrew had paraded me here just to show everyone I was an asset to be liquidated, while his new fiancée smirked at me from the stage. I was trapped, with no money and no one to turn to. The man I loved was leading me to the slaughter. But as I fled into the library, a voice emerged from the shadows, deep and dangerous. Damien Maddox. The Dark Don. The only man Andrew feared. He offered me a different kind of cage, one with the power to burn Andrew's world to the ground. With nothing left to lose, I looked the devil in the eyes. "Take me with you."

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 perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair. They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves. Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment. But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger. In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all.

On my wedding day to Julian Moretti, the future Mafia Don, I was deliberately sent to the wrong penthouse. My half-sister Sofia had crawled into my fiancé's bed, leaving me to be discovered by the family's exiled, alcoholic cousin. In my past life, I was shattered by this orchestrated betrayal. I cried and begged when Julian publicly humiliated me, choosing his illegitimate mistress over his rightful bride. I played the perfect, dignified Mafia wife for years. I swallowed his insults, ignored his infidelities, and accepted my ruined reputation to keep the peace. But my blind obedience only paved the way for my murder. Julian discarded me, and I was poisoned to death so Sofia could steal my crown as the Mafia Queen. Until my agonizing last breath, I didn't understand. I had honored our families' blood alliance flawlessly. Why was I the sacrificial lamb while they were rewarded for their treason? Opening my eyes again, I was back on the dark leather sofa, suffocating in my heavy silk wedding dress. This time, I didn't shed a single tear. I grabbed a heavy brass letter opener, marched straight into the Don's main study, and slapped the Underboss across the face in front of the entire family. "A Valdez woman does not share her husband," I declared coldly. "To honor the alliance, I will marry Dante." If they wanted to make my humiliation a fact, I was going to make it a funeral.

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."

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.