Pike

I woke up to find that I had lost five years of my memory. I was told that I had been married to Caspian, the ruthless Godfather of the New York Mafia, for five years. I had harbored a crush on him for a long time, so marrying him should have been good news. But the terrible truth was, he didn't seem to love me. After losing my five years of memory, he felt like nothing more than a stranger to me. "Break the blood oath, Caspian," I said. "We're getting a divorce." Yet later, he would pace outside my door late at night, refusing to leave: "Darling, just look at me one more time, please?"

On our tenth mating anniversary, I stood outside my Alpha husband's office with his favorite coffee, only to be hit by the cloying scent of rotting peaches—a female in heat. Through the mind-link, I heard him promise his mistress he'd deal with the "boring formalities" regarding me tonight. I walked in to find him plotting with his pregnant assistant, Jami. Instead of apologizing, Dustin sneered at me. "She gave me in three months what you couldn't give me in ten years. A strong lineage." He conveniently forgot that I was the one who built his empire, designed his impenetrable wards, and funded his lifestyle by selling my own family heirlooms. When I confronted him about the betrayal, he didn't just dismiss me; he shoved me. I crashed into a silver nightstand. For a normal wolf, silver is an irritant. For me, a descendant of the White Wolf bloodline, it is acid. As my flesh sizzled and blood poured down my face, blinding me, Dustin didn't even flinch. He stepped over my convulsing body—his wife of a decade—to ask his mistress if she was stressed. Lying on the floor, watching him comfort the woman wearing my mother's stolen ring, the bond finally died. He thought I was a broken, barren Luna who would accept his scraps just to keep her title. He was wrong. I didn't call the police. I called a specialist extraction team. "I am the architect of this pack's security and financial systems," I told the crew. "Decommission everything." I wasn't just leaving. I was taking my empire with me.

I lost my leg saving my husband, Kingsley. My ballet career was over, but my dying mother had secured a perfect heart transplant for my sister, Julia. We had hope. Then Kingsley gave her heart away. He and his mistress traded it for a business deal. Julia died. When I confronted him at the hospital, he shoved me against a wall. The fall didn't just shatter my world; it caused me to miscarry the baby I never knew I was carrying. In a single night, he took my sister and my child. As I lay bleeding on the floor, I looked at the man I once sacrificed everything for and made a promise. "You will regret this for the rest of your life." I divorced him and disappeared. A year and a half later, he found me, a broken man begging for forgiveness. I looked him in the eye and gave him my final answer. "There are no second chances for murder."

For three years, I was Dante Moretti's secret. I was the Underboss's property, the cure for a violent curse that plagued him. He promised that if he wasn't married by his twenty-fifth birthday, I would be his bride. But on the eve of that birthday, he ended our arrangement. He brought home another woman, Sienna, and introduced me as "the help." Sienna, with feigned innocence, knocked a precious memento from my hand, shattering it. When I confronted her, Dante slapped me twice in public, the humiliation searing my soul. Later, I discovered Sienna had framed me for kidnapping her, a lie Dante readily believed. To force a confession, he had my mother tied in a sack and thrown into the freezing lake to drown. He left her there to die. That was the moment the girl who loved him died, too. I saved my mother, and we fled the country, seeking refuge with my childhood friend, Julian. I thought I had escaped. But then Dante appeared in Australia, begging for forgiveness. I rejected him, choosing a future with Julian. I thought it was over. Until a car, driven by a vengeful Sienna, barreled towards us. The last thing I saw was Dante throwing himself in front of me, taking the full impact.

The doctors gave me three years to live. I used every last bit of my strength to marry Cedric Moon, the man I loved. On our wedding night, he abandoned me for another woman. He brought her into our home, forcing me to serve her. He made me apologize for crimes I didn't commit. His family despised me, but they adored her. Then came the staged kidnapping. To save her, Cedric traded me—his pregnant wife—to the man holding a knife. As the blade pressed against my throat, I heard my husband's voice yell at the police. "Shoot!"

Nathan Cross, the infamous underworld boss, married Jane Rivers on the day her family's wealth collapsed. He had harbored a secret love for her for a decade. After their marriage, he treated her like royalty. Jane believed she had found the right man, until their fifth year together. She discovered she was pregnant, but Nathan, who had always cherished her, demanded she terminate the pregnancy. She overheard him speaking with a friend and learned that Nathan had betrayed her with another woman, and for the woman, he forced Jane to get rid of their child. Worse, she learned he had engineered her family's downfall, driving her parents to their deaths. Out of no choice, Jane contacted Nathan's sworn enemy abroad and faked her death to escape. After she was gone, Nathan wept, pleading for her return. But it was too late. The pain he inflicted would be repaid a hundredfold.

The moment I told Jake Reynolds we were over, he didn't believe me. He just laughed like I was joking. We had been together for five years, living in his penthouse with my mom. I never thought our life would change. It all started when his ex-girlfriend, Brittany Davis, showed up. He asked me to cook for them, but I couldn't. My mom was in the hospital, fighting terminal cancer, and I was with her. That was my first mistake. Three days later, my mom's health insurance, which was under Jake's company plan and kept her pain manageable, was canceled. I begged him, called him repeatedly, left desperate voicemails, but he blocked my number. He never answered. Two weeks later, my mom died; she spent her last days in agony because she couldn't get her medication. The day after her funeral, I saw a picture of Jake and Brittany on a yacht in the Caribbean, arm-in-arm, smiling. The caption read, "An escape with my one and only." I went to his penthouse, the place I once called home, to tell him it was over. He sneered, "I was just teaching you a lesson. You can't just say no to me." I told him simply, "You killed my mother." He knew exactly what he was doing when he cut her off. He did it because I wouldn' t cook a meal for his ex-girlfriend. A life for a dinner. This made no sense. I returned to his penthouse to retrieve my mother' s last painting. Jake and Brittany were there. When I asked for the painting, he told me to get Brittany a glass of water. Then, she deliberately ruined my five years of artwork, my sketchbook. He then took my mother' s sunflower painting, the one she painted with shaking hands, and snapped it over his knee. The crack of the wood echoed like a gunshot. He threw the pieces at my feet. But in that moment, something shifted. I started to laugh, realizing he had nothing left to take from me.

Three years ago, I was Ava, an AI research star on the cusp of changing the world, deeply in love with my fiancé, Mark, my partner in every sense. Then, a rival company framed me for corporate espionage, and the man I loved, my legal advisor, stood in court and testified against me, his calm words sealing my fate. Released from prison, I found Mark a Silicon Valley titan, his empire built on my stolen research, the very work he now claimed as his own, his sister Clara whispering venom to ensure my continued subservience. He declared he' d take care of me, only to trap me in a luxurious apartment, subtly sabotaging every attempt I made at independence, crushing my professional and personal life. Why would the man who loved me do this? Why would he actively destroy me, then pretend to be my savior? His actions were a twisted perversion of love, a calculated move to break my spirit and control my ambition, reducing me to a shell of who I once was. Just as despair threatened to consume me, a surprising offer from Liam, Mark's fiercest rival, ignited a flicker of hope, forcing me to decide: crumble under Mark's crushing control, or rise from the ashes to fight for my stolen identity and reclaim my future.

The table was set for our fifth wedding anniversary, with his favorite meal and a carefully wrapped gift, but my phone buzzed with a text that erased it all: "Something came up at work. Can\'t make it." Just that. No apology, no explanation. A familiar hollowness spread through me, deepened by the sight of his briefcase, unlatched by the door, a thick manila envelope peeking out. What I found inside shattered everything: pre-signed divorce papers, dated three months ago, detailing a "dissolution of marriage." My husband, Mark, had been planning to discard me. The betrayal hit me with a physical force, a wave of nausea. Five years of my life, put on hold for him, for our home, only to be thrown away like yesterday' s news. Then it all clicked – the distance, the late nights, the sudden reappearance of Emily, his "first love." She wasn' t just back in town; she was back in his life. I remembered the company dinner, the way he' d ignored me, the way Emily had purred, "Some things are just meant to be, aren\'t they?" He hadn' t just neglected me; he had actively replaced me. I had been a fool, lying to myself, pretending not to see the obvious cracks in our marriage. The humiliation, sharp and painful, burned through me. He wanted out? Fine. He could have it. But he wouldn' t be the one to end this on his terms. I stood up, walked to his briefcase, and meticulously placed the divorce papers exactly as I' d found them. Then, I went upstairs, to the room we' d shared for five years, and began to pack. He wouldn' t be the one to discard me. I was leaving him.

The crystal chandeliers glittered over the ballroom, a cold parody of joy as I stood in the shadows, a forgotten daughter at my father' s company anniversary. Then, the announcement shattered my carefully constructed composure: my stepsister, Clara, was engaged to Julian Croft, the only man who had ever shown me kindness in this suffocating life. His averted gaze, her cruel, triumphant smile directly at me-it was a public execution of my last fragile hope, a final, devastating blow after years of being blamed, dismissed, and having my mother' s legacy sold off for a symbolic dollar. How could the man I loved stand by while she destroyed me, just like my father had ignored my mother' s pain and my own cries for years? What twisted game was this, where their happiness was built on my ruin? Cut off and cast out, a mysterious stranger offered me a terrifying choice: remain a victim, or begin a war for justice, for my mother' s honor, and for myself.

I was pregnant, happily married to Julian Vance, a successful tech mogul. I believed we had the picturesque life, our future unfolding perfectly before us. Then, the words hit me like a physical blow, broadcast live from our building lobby. Julian, my loving husband, announced on TV that Liv Cartwright's child was his, shamefully implying our unborn baby was the byproduct of a violent robbery. My world shattered. Julian callously dismissed my heartbreak, choosing to sacrifice me and our child for Liv' s supposed vulnerability. Liv moved into our penthouse, systematically turning my existence into a living hell, her manipulations and humiliations an unending torment. He blindly believed every one of her lies, even when she physically assaulted me and then twisted the narrative, leaving me injured and abandoned. Drowning in an abyss of disgrace, I secretly ended my pregnancy. How could he be so utterly blind? How could the man I loved betray me so profoundly, abandoning our sacred bond for a calculating, deceitful woman? The searing injustice festered, transforming my grief into a cold, burning rage. But I wouldn't allow myself to be a silent casualty. He thought he could escape the wreckage he created? I would ensure he paid for every single lie, starting with an unforgettable delivery at his precious Liv' s lavish baby shower. It was time for him to face the truth.

My daughter, Emily, lay brutally assaulted in a hospital bed, clinging to life. But the real nightmare began when my wife, Jessica, cold and unfeeling, told me the police found Emily' s blood on my jacket. The Assistant District Attorney I married betrayed me instantly, letting the police drag me away while she watched. She froze my assets, publicly shamed me, and twisted our shared love for Emily' s art into proof of my depravity. Driving home, a dashcam recording exposed her chilling plot with her ex-lover, Ethan: they orchestrated Emily' s attack to frame me, seize my brewery, and coldly deemed Emily's suffering a "small price." Even worse, I learned Jessica had been feeding him information for years, believing his lies that I had wronged her, making her a willing participant in the scheme to destroy me. How could the woman I loved, Emily's mother, be such a monster? The betrayal was a physical blow, choking me, drowning me in a profound sense of injustice and utter powerlessness. But after Ethan and Jessica left me for dead, a hospital call pierced the darkness: Emily was awake. And she had named her attacker.

Eleanor Hayes, my godmother, sat across from me in her familiar study, presenting glossy portfolios for my future. "It's time you thought seriously about settling down," she said, gentle yet firm. My heart slammed against my ribs, a desperate drum. This conversation. This room. I knew it. A cold dread, sharp as a winter blade, pierced through me, an echo from a life already lived. Isabelle Vance. Her beautiful, cruel face flashed, bringing with it the suffocating memories of my first existence. "You were never good enough for me, Ethan," she' d hissed, her eyes like ice, a final cut. That bitter, public divorce, her humiliating betrayal with Julian Croft. Then, the shouting, the chaotic confrontation, and her spoiled child' s reckless prank. The fall. Darkness. A chilling plunge into an ornamental lake, drowning amidst the detached laughter of society. My own death, undeniably real, my last breath choked with bitter regret and public ridicule. Now, I was back. Years earlier. At this exact, pivotal moment that began my first life' s spiral into ruin. I could feel the ghost of that past betrayal, the hollowness of a future wasted, screaming at me. I had been a fool, desperate for acceptance from the wrong woman. But this time, a second chance pulsed with terrifying clarity. This time, I would defy expectations. This time, I would choose my own destiny, no matter how unconventional.

My 5-year-old son, Leo, watched helplessly as I slowly withered away from endless bone marrow donations. My wife, Victoria, dismissed my agonizing decline, blinded by her childhood flame Julian Vance's manufactured illness and charisma. Leo frantically pleaded for help, but Victoria, consumed by Julian, ignored his desperate cries, even after he reported me coughing up blood. Instead, she pushed him violently, leaving him injured and alone amidst Julian's cruel laughter. After my death, Leo tried to fulfill my last wish, only for Julian to mockingly destroy my favorite donuts and viciously slash my son’s lip, forcing him to call him "Father." My spirit, helpless, watched as Leo collapsed, unconscious and bleeding, onto my lifeless body, utterly abandoned. How could a mother be so utterly deaf to her child's pleas, so complicit in such monstrous cruelty? The injustice was a burning void, a father's agony witnessing his son's betrayal. Found near death, Leo was rushed to the hospital, where Julian later crept in to silence him with a pillow. But a spectral surge of pure, desperate paternal rage—my rage—slammed Julian away, alerting security and shattering the monstrous facade. The truth about his fake illness and vengeful plot would finally unravel, setting the stage for a dramatic reckoning and Leo’s long fight for justice and redemption.

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.

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 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.

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

I 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.

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."

"It was just one night stand, and now I'm pregnant with triplets? Gosh!" Josephine Jade never thought that she would have to run away from her own family while pregnant. She was alone, without money, without connections, with three fetuses in her stomach. How can she survive? However, Josephine couldn't give up now, until she managed to reclaim her arbitrarily seized property and get back at everyone who tried to get rid of her. A sick child, a past crush that comes back, a mysterious eccentric man, and a family that hates her, will weave together the journey of Josephine Jade's new life. "You have no right to separate me from my children, you bastard! I will survive and you will submit to me. Just watch!"

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.

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.

My father bailed a violent ex-con out of prison just to force me into a marriage with him. I stood in a filthy Bronx hallway, my Vera Wang gown dragging through the grime, knowing this was the price for my mother’s life. If I didn't marry the man behind the steel door, the wire transfer for her hospital ventilator wouldn't go through the next morning. The man, a scarred giant named Dock, treated me with cold contempt, telling me he didn't touch things he didn't want—and he didn't want a "Jacobson." I thought I had hit rock bottom, tied to a criminal while my family lived in luxury. But the nightmare was just beginning. When I tried to return my wedding dress to pay for rent, my sister Janie and stepmother found me. They laughed as security dragged me out of the boutique, calling me a "charity case." When I finally crawled back to our family manor to beg for the money my father had promised, Janie revealed the horrific truth. She had liquidated my mother’s medical trust to fund a waterfront real estate project. "Get out and let your mother rot," she screamed, throwing a glass of ice water in my face before having guards dump me in the dirt. I knelt on the gravel, wet and bleeding, realizing my own flesh and blood had signed my mother's death warrant for a profit. I had nothing left—no money, no home, and a husband who was supposed to be a monster. I didn't understand why they hated me so much, or how I would survive the night. But then, a black car screeched to a halt in front of me. Dock pulled me inside, his eyes burning with a lethal coldness I’d never seen in a common thug. As he wiped the blood from my hands, he picked up a encrypted phone and gave a single command. "Initiate Project Titan. I want the Jacobson Group insolvent by Friday." I looked at the man I thought was a broke felon, realizing I hadn't just married a stranger—I had married the most dangerous man in the city, and he was about to burn my family's world to the ground.