Reel Life

I spent 365 days scrubbing floors as a waitress to test if my fiancé was a King. He thought I was just Blake, a poor girl with too many bills. He didn't know I was the daughter of the Capo dei Capi, the true owner of the East Coast. But it took only three seconds for him to fail the test. His mistress, Jaden, marched into the restaurant wearing a dress too tight for a place where deals were made in whispers. She treated me like a servant, throwing her keys at my chest. When I refused to bow to her, she slapped a tray of boiling hot tea onto my hand. The pain was blinding. My skin blistered instantly. I waited for Connor to defend me. I waited for him to show honor. Instead, he looked at his investors, panicked, and turned on me. "Apologize, Blake!" he screamed, desperate to keep the peace. "Kneel if you have to! Just make her happy!" He wanted a Queen to kneel to a mistress just to save his fragile ego. He had no idea I was the one holding the deed to his entire territory. I didn't kneel. I dropped his phone into the deep fryer and watched it sizzle. As my father's tactical team kicked down the doors, I untied my dirty apron. "I'm not fired, Connor," I said, watching the blood drain from his face. "I'm the landlord."

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.

My husband, a brilliant cardiac surgeon, was supposed to perform my mother's high-risk heart surgery. But just as she was being prepped, he texted me about a "major OR emergency"-a multi-car pileup he couldn't avoid. Minutes later, I saw an Instagram story. It was a picture of his hand holding another woman's, posted by a socialite whose mother was his "pet project." The caption read: "My hero, dropping everything for my mother's health scare." He wasn't saving lives in a catastrophic accident. He was holding hands for a photo op while my mother's life was on the line with a replacement surgeon. He chose them over us. He abandoned my mother's surgery for a "health scare," moved his mistress and her mother into the nursery I had prepared for our future child, and then, in front of a crowd at the hospital, publicly denied ever knowing my mother to protect his new "family." I watched him destroy our lives for their applause, for a lie. He called me dramatic, childish, and cruel for not understanding his "compassion." But what he didn't know was that I had already hired the most ruthless divorce attorney in the city. This wasn't a cry for attention; it was a declaration of war.

On the first day of school, my childhood sweetheart boyfriend, Xander Harris, took me to school, but we met a two-faced roommate. She flattered him, praising his exceptional maturity for his age. Yet, she accused me of being vain, carrying a knock-off designer bag, and creating a rich persona. As I tidied my bed, she dramatically gasped. "Wasn't that wealthy older benefactor who accompanied you yesterday supposed to rent you a place near campus? What happened? Did he change his mind?" When she learned that my boyfriend and I planned to marry right after graduation, she shouted loud, "You can't be serious! Are there still gold diggers who want to get something for nothing and rely on men?" Inside, I was laughing hysterically. Wealthy older benefactor? That was my dad! And my boyfriend? Just the son of my dad's driver.

The first sign of trouble was a pair of dirty, lace-trimmed socks, carelessly left on my kitchen counter by my rich, entitled roommate, Tiffany Gold. I was Chloe Miller, a scholarship student barely affording university, and she treated me like her personal maid, a role I was rapidly growing to resent. My attempts to manage the situation peacefully shattered when her football star boyfriend, Brett, burst in, drinking my juice and then assaulting me when I tried to leave, all while Tiffany feigned tears, painting me as the villain on social media. The university administration, influenced by Tiffany' s powerful family, sided with them, threatening my scholarship and dismissing my trauma, leaving me alone and branded a liar. How could my life be destroyed by a pair of socks and a fake cry for help? Mark, my boyfriend, an aspiring journalist, saw through their veneer. "This isn' t just a bad roommate," he told me, his eyes burning with journalistic fire. "This is abuse. We' re going to document everything." This was no longer just about survival; it was about fighting back, exposing the rot beneath the gilded surface of their privilege.

For twenty years, I was the heart of Havenwood, the boy with the miraculous feather that brought life to barren fields and healed the sick. My gift built their prosperity; I gave them everything, believing I was blessed to serve my people. Then, the blight came, stubborn and unyielding, and suddenly, their gratitude turned to fury. They labeled me a monster, accused me of hoarding power, and the same faces I' d known since childhood, led by Mr. Gable, dragged me through the streets and into a jail cell. "You will remember me," I told their hateful faces as Sheriff Davis drove me away; a warning they met with mocking laughter. Just when despair was setting in, Julian Croft, a wealthy man whose racehorse I once saved, bailed me out, but his intent was not kindness. He wanted to buy my power, to turn my gift into a tool for his luxury resort, demanding I make his barren mountainside a paradise. "No," I defied him, a new strength burning in me as he sneered, "I' m not your tool." For my rebellion, his men brutalized me, leaving me battered and broken, but not defeated. I limped back to Havenwood, seeking refuge, only to be met with accusations that the blight had worsened because of my absence, and a demand for a million dollars in damages. "You owe us!" they screamed, their greed consuming them as they blamed me for their own suffering. In a horrifying climax, Mr. Gable, believing my feather was a "plug" holding back power, ripped it from my neck with rusty sheep shears, convinced it would unleash my full gift upon them. The pain was excruciating, a tearing agony, but as the feather crumbled to dust, something new awakened within me. A power, untamed and mine alone, surged through my veins, washing away my wounds, leaving me stronger than ever before. I turned my back on their horrified faces, leaving Havenwood to its self-made curse, knowing their prosperity would wither without me. I rebuilt my life far away, prospering in a bustling city, while Havenwood succumbed to the very blight they blamed me for, ravaged by unnaturally aggressive insects and rats. Their desperation grew, and the very people who had once praised me, then condemned me, then brutalized me, finally realized the truth: their savior was gone, and their damnation was their own doing. Mr. Gable' s family died horrifically, his wife driven mad, and an ill-fated "purifier" brought even more devastation, leading to the unthinkable death of every child in Havenwood. The town, now a biohazard, vanished from the map, its few survivors scattered and insane, while Julian Croft, too, met a swift, unceremonious end. I was finally free, building my own life on my own terms, leaving the ghosts of Havenwood behind, a testament to the price of betrayal and unbridled greed.

The official notification arrived, its synthesized voice delivering a death sentence. My brilliant, rebellious sister, Luna, was "terminated" by OmniCorp-a corporate word for erased, dead. My hands trembled as I gripped the datapad, rain blurring the neon city outside. They said it was a security investigation, a closed case. But I knew OmniCorp's lies. They owned this city, its air, its jobs, its very laws. They took Luna because she defied them. My grief was a raw wound, but then I found it: a small, black data-puck hidden under her bed. Luna' s secret, even from me. This device, alien to OmniCorp's tech, held her hacker signature: a crescent moon. It contained files, data streams codenamed 'Nyx', listing names and accounts-all tied to OmniCorp' s most secret projects and its CEO, Dr. Elias Thorne. Luna wasn't just hacking; she was building a case. A weapon. And they killed her for it. The city, veiled in acid rain, felt like a cage. My heart pounded with helpless rage. They weren't just erasing her; they were rewriting her end, calling it an "accidental death" on public screens. My compliant life, keeping my head down to survive, felt like a poison. But then, the lie smothering my grief ignited something else: revenge. They had silenced my sister to protect their secrets. The weight in my stomach turned into cold, hard resolve. I looked at the data-puck, no longer just tech, but a promise. A weapon. And I would learn how to use it.

I was Elara Vance, a humble janitor by day, a secret Legacy Keeper by night, painstakingly saving every penny for my retirement. Then came the ludicrously generous $35 million offer from Marcus Thorne, a titan of industry. His demand: perform a sacred lineage ritual over his "suicided" son, Julian, and then "sanitize" the scene. It felt wrong, but it was my escape. Stepping into Julian' s opulent, blood-soaked room, a primal chill seized me – this was no suicide. The gruesome scene screamed violence, not despair. Then I saw him, truly saw the "body," and my world tilted violently off its axis. Julian Thorne wasn't just a dead rich kid; he was Jake Miller, the man I' d loved, who vanished a decade ago, leaving my heart in pieces. And he wasn't dead. He was alive, barely, a victim of a monstrous, unspeakable betrayal. Marcus Thorne, the grieving father, was a cold-blooded killer who' d tried to murder his own son and wanted me, the Legacy Keeper, to clean up the mess and take the fall. The decade of heartache over Jake' s disappearance collided with burning rage and terror. How could the man I loved be entwined in such depravity, and I, the innocent, be the chosen scapegoat? The weight of his family' s dark secrets threatened to crush me in that room. With Marcus' s goons pounding at the door, demanding answers, I knew I had two choices: die here, or fight back using the very "ritual" he desperately craved. This wasn't about money anymore; it was about survival, and exposing a powerful family's terrifying truth.

The world snapped back for Sarah Miller. It wasn't a blessing. It was June 14th, the day her life first shattered. That day, her son, David, received his prestigious ROTC scholarship acceptance. It was a golden ticket. Then, it was brutally snatched away. Her husband, Sergeant Mark Jenkins, the man she' d sacrificed everything for, didn't just have an affair with Brenda Lewis. He openly diverted David's esteemed scholarship to Brenda's entitled son, Kevin. Overnight, Sarah was painted as the "unhinged ex-wife." Mark and Brenda flaunted their "perfect" new family, built on disgusting lies. She remembered the public humiliation David endured. She remembered his spirit dimming under relentless bullying. She remembered the unspeakable note he left behind and the awful silence in his room before his suicide. Consumed by grief and labeled a crazy scorned woman, Sarah herself faded into a blur of despair. Her own tragic, unspoken end followed. How could one man be so utterly devoid of conscience? To destroy his own son for a new life? The injustice burned. The raw pain was still fresh. Why would fate curse her with such a horrifying memory, only to offer it again? Then, the shocking realization hit her. She was back. It was June 14th. A second chance. This time, she wouldn't be a victim. This time, David would live. This time, she would fight. And no one on this earth would stand in her way.

Ethan Miller, a gritty musician, found himself trapped in a gilded cage, bound to the ruthless music mogul Victoria Vanderbilt. His sister Maya' s life depended on Tori' s whims and VME' s endless resources. He endured years as Tori' s star, her lover, her prized possession, sacrificing his soul for Maya' s critical care. But Tori' s attention, a fleeting and dangerous thing, soon shifted to Julian Vance, a brash performance artist. Ethan's music became "dated," his loyalty dismissed, and VME' s lifeline to Maya was cruelly severed. He watched, helpless, as Julian' s family and their goons ripped Maya' s ventilator away, causing her agonizing death. Tori, witnessing his despair, callously shrugged it off, declaring it "resource reallocation." How could the woman he loved, who once vowed to protect him fiercely, become a monster who facilitated his sister' s demise? His very devotion had been a poisoned gift, leading to the ultimate, unbearable price. In that moment of profound loss and brutal betrayal, Ethan Miller died. He rose from the ashes, now Liam Kincaid, a ghost determined to vanish from Tori' s toxic world, seeking true freedom and peace.

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 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 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."

For four years, I traced the bullet scar on Chace’s chest, believing it was proof he would bleed to keep me safe. On our anniversary, he told me to wear white because "tonight changes everything." I walked into the gala thinking I was getting a ring. Instead, I stood frozen in the center of the ballroom, drowning in silk, watching him slide his mother's sapphire onto another woman's finger. Karyn Warren. The daughter of a rival family. When I begged him with my eyes to claim me, to save me from the public humiliation, he didn't flinch. He just leaned toward his Underboss, his voice amplified by the silence. "Karyn is for power. Ember is for pleasure. Don't confuse the assets." My heart didn't just break; it incinerated. He expected me to stay as his mistress, threatening to dig up my dead mother’s grave if I refused to play the obedient pet. He thought I was trapped. He thought I had nowhere to go because of my father’s massive gambling debts. He was wrong. With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and texted the one name I was never supposed to use. Keith Mosley. The Don. The monster under Chace's bed. *I am invoking the Blood Oath. My father’s debt. I am ready to pay it.* His reply came three seconds later, buzzing against my palm like a warning. *The price is marriage. You belong to me. Yes or No?* I looked up at Chace, who was laughing with his new fiancée, thinking he owned me. I looked down and typed three letters. *Yes.*

I went to the family lawyer for a routine travel clearance. Instead, I was handed a divorce decree. The ink was three years old. While I had been playing the role of the dutiful Capo's wife, Dante had secretly divorced me the day after our fifth anniversary. Twenty-four hours later, he legally married the nanny, Gia, and named her cruel-eyed son as his heir. I returned home to confront him, only for the boy to throw boiling tomato soup on me. Dante didn't check my burns. He cradled the boy and looked at me with pure, drug-fueled hatred, calling me a monster for upsetting his "son." The final blow came in a parking garage. A car sped toward us. Dante didn't pull me to safety. He shoved me into the vehicle's path, using my body as a human shield to protect his mistress. Lying broken on the asphalt, I realized Aria Vitiello was already dead to him. So, I decided to make it official. I arranged a private flight over the Atlantic and ensured there were no survivors. By the time Dante was weeping over the wreckage, realizing too late that he had been poisoned against me, I was already in France. The Canary was dead. The Reaper had risen.

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 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.

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.

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 a Vitiello, sold to the Morettis to secure an alliance. For five years, I quietly loved Dante, counting down the minutes until our wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral. But it ended with a single text three minutes before the ceremony. "Stay at the apartment. Sofia is awake. Don't make a scene." His ex-girlfriend, the love of his life, had woken from a coma with no memory. Just like that, I was erased. For thirty days, I waited in the shadows while Dante played hero to a woman who didn't remember him. He told me he was protecting her fragile mind. But then I found the truth. I stood outside the doctor's office and heard Dante refuse a treatment that would restore Sofia's memory. "If she remembers, she might leave again," Dante told the doctor. "Elena will wait. She's a good soldier. Let me have my fantasy." He wasn't protecting her. He was keeping her broken to feed his ego, banking on my submission. He thought I was furniture he could put in storage. He was wrong. I didn't go back to the apartment. Instead, I dialed a number every made man in New York feared. "Matteo," I said to Dante's lethal older brother, the King of the underworld. "I am done waiting. I want to be a Moretti bride. But not Dante's."