Sally Edwards

Nothing is more deadly than a wounded heart in the world I have always known-where power, loyalty, and treachery prevail. I never imagined that one visit would cause everything to fall apart when I went to see Leo Volkov, the infamous mafia kingpin and ex-lover of my sister. The ruthless and merciless king of the Volkov empire, Leo, had been in a terrible car accident and I felt I might offer him something-anything-before it was too late. He vanished though when I got to the hospital. Discharged, vanished, leaving just questions and a gnawing sense of abandonment. The true shock set in when I got home and discovered my boyfriend, Dmitri Baranov, locked in a hug with my sister Mara. Betrayal hardly starts to cover the damage I experienced. The worst of all is also Cold as usual, my family hardly even looked at it. Always more worried with family reputation than with my own happiness, my mother chastised me for being "dramatic." She solely considered what would be best for the family, not what I needed. But when Leo gets back, exactly as volatile and deadly as before, I find myself dragged back into a world of secrets and revenge threatening everything. Between the broken bonds with my family, a renewed, forbidden connection to the guy who once held my heart, and a conspiracy that can ruin me, I have to choose whom to believe. More importantly, if he would even take me back, am I ready to risk it all for a second chance at love?

Sold to the highest bidder to pay off a blood feud, I never imagined I would be the pawn in my father's fatal game. Still, here I am before Enzo De Luca, the most vicious mafia leader in the city. Though appealing, he is cold, deliberate, and as lethal. Though my heart races just from his proximity, it is his touch that ignites me. My body betrays me and reacts to him in ways I am powerless over. And I melt as he softly, commandingly says my name. Enzo loves neither me nor another. In his deadly kingdom, I am only another bargain, another transaction. But every time we are alone, the conflict between us snaps-desire becomes a terrible addiction. Although I detest him for everything he stands for, I yearn for the way he consumes me, body and soul. He has made it quite evident-our marriage is more about power than love. Still, every angry gaze and every snatched moment in the shadow reveals something different. Benevolent underneath his icy façade lies something broken that appeals to the darkest sides of me. But depending on a man like Enzo may mean losing everything. Bound to him now, for better or worse, I am caught in a world where loyalty is brittle and treachery carries a bullet. Our friendship gets more perilous the more truths about his empire I find. And as the past calls for us, I have to question myself: will our passion be the thing that ruins us both or can I survive loving a guy like Enzo De Luca? Burning in his arms is me. But in his universe, I could roast alive.

Synopsis: Samantha Dawson felt she could leave her errors behind, but one fateful night everything changed. Driven by a great urge to pay off her family's debt, she entered the arms of a stranger-a brief, explosive meeting that left her whirling. That evening, she never anticipated the outcome: a kid she has kept secret from the world and from him. Four years fast forward: Samantha's meticulously repaired life is collapsing once more. She is presented with an unimaginable offer-a contract marriage with Adrian Blackwood, the mysterious millionaire with more influence than anybody should-as her son's safety is at stake and debts are closing in. The only issue is Adrian is unaware she already carries his most secret. But Adrian also depends on her. He has to seem to have a flawless family if he is to land the commercial contract confirming his empire. Samantha is his response; he still doesn't know about the lethal shadows from her past threatening them both. Time is running out because of Adrian's own complex network of family treachery. Should he not get married soon, he runs the danger of losing control of his father's business to a merciless competitor with dark motives-someone already too near Samantha for comfort. Neither of them understands how interwoven their fates have become as they descend further into this perilous dance. Secrets grow, passions blossom, and foes lie around every turn. Samantha has to choose, nevertheless, whether Adrian comes near to learning the truth about her son: should she tell everything or keep quiet while the walls of their precarious arrangement collapse? And then a terrible revelation destroys their world, just as their well planned lives begin to fit. Samantha has been hiding secrets other than the child as well.

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'm a moaning mess as Antonio slams into me from behind. His hips hit me hard, and each deep thrust sends shockwaves through my body. My breasts bounce with every movement, my eyes roll back, and I moan his name without control. The pleasure he gives me is overwhelming-I can't hold it in. I feel my walls tighten around his thick length. The pressure builds fast, and then- I explode around him, my orgasm tearing through me. He groans loud and deep as he releases inside me, his hot seed spilling into me in thick pulses. Just when I think he's done, his grip shifts. He turns me over and lays me flat on the bed. His dark eyes stare into mine for a moment, filled with raw hunger. I glance down- He's still hard. Before I can react, he grabs my wrists, pins me down, and pushes himself inside me again. He fills me completely. My hips rise on instinct, meeting his rhythm. Our bodies move together, locked in a wild, uncontrollable dance. "You're fucking sweet," he groans, his voice rough and breathless. "I can't get enough of you... not after that night, Sol," he growls, slamming into me harder. The force of his words and his thrusts make my body shake. "Come for me," he commands, his voice low and full of heat. And just like that, my body trembles. Waves of pleasure crash over me. I cry out, shaking with the force of my orgasm. "Mine," he growls again, louder this time. His voice is feral, wild, like a beast claiming what belongs to him. The sound sends a shiver down my spine. *** Solene was betrayed, humiliated, and erased by Rowan Brook, the man she once called husband, Solene is left with nothing but her name and a burning hunger for revenge. She turns to the one man powerful enough to destroy the Brooks family from within: Rowan's estranged and dangerous uncle, Antonio Rodriguez. He's ruthless. A playboy who never sleeps with the same woman twice. But when Solene walks into his world, he doesn't just break the rules, he creates new ones just for her. What begins as a calculated game quickly spirals into obsession, power plays, and secrets too deadly to stay buried. Because Solene isn't just anyone's ex... she's the woman they should've never underestimated. Can she survive the price of revenge? Or will her heart become the next casualty? And when the truth comes out, will Antonio still choose her... or destroy her?

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.

"Lovely, Cara," he whispers, licking and kissing my clit. I'm twitching, shaking, back arched- He reaches down and picks up the champagne bottle, pouring out the liquid on my body. I gasp at the sudden bubbling cold. I try to wriggle away but he holds me down and sucks the champagne, licking me clean, making these filthy delighted noises as he does it. "I couldn't help myself. You taste too good." - Fed up with her abusive husband, twenty-three-year-old Cara Hellington runs away from home and ends up in a notorious bar, destitute, sad, but relieved and free. When she gets into a verbal altercation with the snotty bartender over the ownership of her credit cards, an unlikely savior comes to her aid. Eros Kazan Alfred. He's tall, massive, rippling with muscles, and covered with dark tattoos. Everything Cara is not used to. Everything Cara is drawn to. She should run towards the opposite direction, away from him. But she runs right onto his bed. After a hot sizzling night together, Cara is comfortable and confident in him taking good care of her. But tensions are rising all around them, as significant figures from their past will stop at nothing to bring them both down. Will they succumb under the wickedly twisted circumstances fate seems to be throwing at them?

I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York. To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen. But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table. It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test. "Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture." I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking. He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago. He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy. He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go. He was wrong. I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don. And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy. I wanted to erase him. I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built. Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa." It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul. On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial. When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth. He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife. Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.

I spent a year scrubbing floors in my fiancé’s club, hiding my identity as the daughter of the Capo dei Capi. I needed to know if Connor Bishop was a King worth merging empires with, or just a puppet. The answer came walking in wearing a neon pink dress. Jaden Juarez, a civilian he was infatuated with, didn't just treat me like a servant; she deliberately poured scalding espresso over my hand because I refused to be her valet. The pain was blinding, my skin blistering instantly. I video-called Connor, showing him the burn, expecting him to enforce the code of our world. Instead, seeing his investors watching, he panicked. He chose to sacrifice me to save face. "Get on your knees," he roared through the speaker. "Beg her pardon. Show her the respect she deserves." He wanted the daughter of the most dangerous man on the East Coast to kneel to his mistress. He thought he was showing strength. He didn't realize he was looking at a woman who could burn his entire world to ash with a single phone call. I didn't cry. I didn't beg. I simply hung up the phone and locked the kitchen doors. Then, I dialed the one number everyone in the underworld feared. "Dad," I said, my voice cold as steel. "Code Black. Bring the papers." "And send the wolves."

For three years, I kept a secret ledger of my husband's sins. A point system to decide exactly when I would leave Blake Santos, the ruthless Underboss of Chicago. I thought the final straw would be him forgetting our anniversary dinner to comfort his "childhood friend," Ariana. I was wrong. The real breaking point came when the restaurant ceiling collapsed. In that split second, Blake didn't look at me. He dove to his right, shielding Ariana with his body, leaving me to be crushed under a half-ton crystal chandelier. I woke up in a sterile hospital room with a shattered leg and a hollow womb. The doctor, trembling and pale, told me my eight-week-old fetus hadn't survived the trauma and blood loss. "We tried to get the O-negative reserves," he stammered, refusing to meet my eyes. "But Dr. Santos ordered us to hold them. He said Miss Whitfield might go into shock from her injuries." "What injuries?" I whispered. "A laceration on her finger," the doctor admitted. "And anxiety." He let our unborn child die to save the blood reserves for his mistress’s paper cut. Blake finally walked into my room hours later, smelling of Ariana’s perfume, expecting me to be the dutiful, silent wife who understood his "duty." Instead, I picked up my pen and wrote the final entry in my black leather book. *Minus five points. He killed our child.* *Total Score: Zero.* I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just signed the divorce papers, called my extraction team, and vanished into the rain before he could turn around.

Everyone thought I was the pampered queen of Marcus D’Angelo, New York's most feared Don. But I was just a placeholder for the woman he couldn't have: his cousin, Izzy. The truth shattered everything at a family dinner. A waiter tripped, sending a tureen of scalding soup flying toward the table. Without a second of hesitation, Marcus threw himself over Izzy to shield her. He left me exposed. The boiling liquid seared my legs, but the real agony was watching him cradle her face, checking for scratches, while I screamed on the floor. "In my hierarchy of pain," he later told her, ignoring my burns, "her death is an inconvenience. A scratch on you is a tragedy." He didn't know that while he was comforting her over a bruise, I was in emergency surgery losing our unborn child. When I woke up, he didn't ask about me. He didn't ask about the baby he didn't know existed. instead, he asked if I would donate blood to help Izzy recover. That was the moment the old Liv died. I signed the divorce papers with a steady hand. And inside the envelope with the legal documents, I tucked a single, devastating medical report. *Diagnosis: Spontaneous Abortion. Cause: Trauma.* I left it on his desk and disappeared into the night. By the time he realizes he sacrificed his own heir to save his mistress, I will be a ghost he can never touch again.

The day my husband, a Mafia Underboss, told me I was genetically unfit to carry his heir, he brought home my replacement—a surrogate with my eyes and a working womb. He called her a "vessel" but paraded her as his mistress, abandoning me while I bled on the floor at a party to protect her and planning their secret future in the villa he once promised me. But in our world, wives don't just walk away—they disappear, and I decided to orchestrate my own vanishing act, leaving him to the ruin he so carefully built for himself.

The combination to my husband's private safe was the date of his mistress's birth. Inside, arranged beside his gun and stacks of cash, I found a legal document that shattered my world. Clause 4: Upon the birth of the heir, my architecture firm is absorbed into the Moretti Trust. Clause 5: Primary guardianship is transferred to the father and his proxy, Kaleigh. Kaleigh is my step-sister. She is also the woman currently warming my husband's bed. When I confronted Jacob, the Don of the city, he didn't offer a shadow of shame. He simply gripped my chin, his eyes cold as ice, and whispered, "There is no divorce in this life. You leave in a coffin." My lawyer betrayed me. The police were on his payroll. I was trapped in a gilded cage, waiting to be discarded. Then came the final blow—an intercepted audio recording. "The moment the head crowns, she is done," Jacob's voice said on the tape. "If she fights, she dies on the table." They didn't just want my baby. They wanted to erase me completely. I realized I couldn't win in court, and I couldn't win in a street fight. To escape a man who owned the city, I had to cease to exist. I drove my car to a desolate ravine and doused the leather seats in gasoline. I took off my wedding ring, placed it on the dashboard, and lit a match. I wasn't going to kill my son. I was going to burn the world down for him.