Xia Qingnuan

I was the wife of the De Luca crime family's Underboss, a beautiful statue whose only purpose was to produce an heir. But after five years, my body had failed. The day my husband, Alessandro, told me I was barren, he also introduced me to my replacement. He called her a "vessel," a temporary arrangement, but I saw the infatuation in his eyes. He promised it was just business, but soon he was calling me a "cold statue" behind my back while spending every night with her. The ultimate humiliation came at my birthday party. When a champagne fountain shattered and sliced my arm open, he ignored me bleeding on the floor to shield her instead. In front of his entire family, the Underboss chose his mistress over his wife. He left me there, my honor shattered as completely as the glass. I was no longer just a failed wife. I was an obstacle. And in our world, obstacles are removed. But my arrogant husband didn't know his own father had a contingency plan to protect me. While he was distracted by his mistress's fake pregnancy, he unknowingly signed our divorce papers. My disappearance was no longer an escape; it was the start of my revenge.

For years, I was the perfect girlfriend, funding my boyfriend Carlton' s startup with my own money. My role was simple: be supportive, unseen, and unheard while his childhood friend, Brande, claimed the space by his side that should have been mine. On the way to a tech conference that could make his career, I saw the brutal truth I' d been denying. There, on Brande' s neck, was a fresh, dark hickey. She was curled up in his lap, her hand on his thigh, and he stroked her hair as if it were the most natural thing in the world. When I finally reacted, he called me harsh and told me to be the bigger person. Later, when I wore a dress he deemed "too much," he gave me an ultimatum. "If you walk out that door in that dress, we're done." My love, my money, my support-it was all just fuel for his ambition and their affair. I was a fool. A well-funded, supportive fool. But as I sat in the back, pushed into a corner, my shoulder bumped against his step-brother, the cold, powerful investor Harvey Hurst. And fueled by a reckless wave of defiance, I didn't pull away. Instead, I leaned into him, and for the first time in a long time, I made a decision that was all my own.

The marriage contract that would merge our two corporate empires was laid out before me. I was supposed to sign my life away to Jace Robertson, the man I had loved since we were kids. But my love had been burned away the night the chandelier fell. When it came crashing down, my fiancé didn't pull me to safety. He shoved me aside to shield my cousin, Cassidy, with his own body. He chose her. Instinctively. My own mother rushed to her side, later telling me I needed to be more understanding. "Cassidy has always been delicate, Ellie. Jace did the right thing." It was then I remembered everything. In my last life, I died alone in a cold hospital room from a cancer they found too late. Jace was on a romantic trip to the Amalfi Coast with Cassidy. My mother was at a charity luncheon. My last thought was a regret so deep it could tear a hole in the universe. I had wasted my one precious life on people who saw me as nothing more than a stepping stone. But now, I was back. The pen was in my hand, the contract on the table. Jace wanted Cassidy. My mother adored her. Fine. Let them have each other. With a steady hand, I drew a single, clean line through my name on the signature line and wrote in a new one: CASSIDY COLEMAN. This time, I would live for myself.

My fiancé, Daniel, wasn' t just late for our fifth anniversary; his assistant, Sophie, informed me he sent his apologies from a client dinner. I stood in our "Dream Home," a monument to our shared ambitions, feeling an icy premonition. Then, Daniel burst in, a raging storm, accusing me. "What did you do, Olivia?" he snarled. Sophie–his new assistant–was in the hospital, suffering a panic attack, claiming I' d threatened her. His eyes, once full of love, now burned with cold rage fueled by her lies. He seized a glass vase, shattering it against the wall, its splintering echoing my collapsing world. Pinning me against the fireplace, he threatened to destroy my career, to blackball me if I ever went near Sophie again. Later, Sophie herself arrived, dripping fake sympathy and flaunting a new cashmere sweater Daniel had bought her. She spoke of Daniel' s concern, but her words were exquisitely crafted barbs. I was left stunned, struggling to grasp the sudden, brutal betrayal. How could Daniel, the man who' d promised to build worlds with me, believe such blatant lies and turn on me so viciously? It felt impossible, yet here I was, trapped in a nightmare. Days later, finding a tiny stray kitten, Ash, brought a sliver of peace. But it was fleeting. Sophie soon appeared, hysterical, accusing me of poisoning her prize-winning Persian cat. She produced a scrap of my silk scarf, clutched in its paw, as "proof." This time, I refused to be his villain. I vowed to expose her.

My mother-in-law, Martha, was a human storm cloud, always hovering, always raining contempt on my life as a writer. When she and my father-in-law arrived for an "extended visit" for her "medical tests," the already thick air in our suburban home became suffocating. Her sharp voice, accusing me of getting lost and being "not a real man," was a familiar prick, but when she scoffed at my profession and questioned my ability to provide, I felt the familiar burn of frustration turn into a deep, internal ache. My wife, Olivia, usually my shield, tried to protect me, arguing with her mother, claiming Martha's alleged brain tumor made her unpredictable. But then, a chilling comment slipped from Martha' s lips: she asked Olivia why she hadn't called from Miami, not New York, where her business trip was supposed to be. Olivia quickly dismissed it as her mother' s confusion, but a sliver of doubt, sharp and cold, lodged itself in my mind. This wasn' t just Martha' s cruelty; something darker, more insidious was at play, shaking the very foundation of my trust. Later, my seemingly harmless neighbor, Mark, offered cryptic warnings about "protecting the throne" and people "sneaking in the back door." His knowing smirk, coupled with Martha's strange slip, began to twist my unease into a sickening suspicion. I had to know. I had to know if the quiet life I' d built, the love I cherished, was nothing more than a carefully constructed lie.

The sleek leather of my 50th-floor office chair felt real, the hum of the AC familiar. I was Andrew Scott, Wall Street rising star, not ex-con '734'. Then, the intercom buzzed. My assistant, voice tight with panic: "Mr. Scott, it's Ryan Clark...about Jenny...an accident." A physical blow. The exact same words. Fifteen years in a concrete box, the taste of stale bread, followed by the blinding Hamptons sun, Jenny-my dead wife-laughing with Ryan, their son looking exactly like him. The final memory: a dark New Jersey alley, the smell of garbage and my own blood. It wasn't a nightmare; it was my life, and it ended. But I wasn't dead. My heart pounded, not with fear for the woman I loved and our unborn child as it had before, but with a cold, hard rage. They had played their game, and I had lost everything. Now, it was my turn. And this time, I knew all their moves.

The cold gurney, the execution chamber ceiling, then a familiar, hateful face: Kevin, my ex-fiancé, the President. He was there to watch me die, bloodshot eyes, rumpled suit, looking deranged. Treason, they said. A lie so colossal it had already swallowed my father, my sister, my entire family. His whispered words were a final, chilling insult: "I found her, you know. Crystal. She was happy. You took her from me. You murdered the woman I loved." My vision blurred as the lethal cocktail burned, my tongue heavy with the truth I couldn't speak – that I' d saved Crystal, not hidden her for myself. His face, twisted with a grief entirely his own twisted invention, was the last thing I saw before blackness swallowed me. Then, a gasp tore from my lungs, and I was bolt upright in my own silk sheets, sunlight streaming into my Georgetown townhouse. My phone buzzed. Kevin. The date on the screen made my blood run cold: today was the day he was supposed to run off with Crystal Vance. My "first life" had begun its nosedive on this very day. This time, it would be different. This time, I knew the enemy. And this time, I would not be merciful.

For five years, I was Jessica Blackwood' s executive assistant. My life was a gilded cage, controlled by her tyrannical father, Arthur. My arranged marriage to Liam Walker, his Head of Security, was a cold, unconsummated sham; we were strangers under one roof. Driven to despair by Arthur' s control over her dreams of motherhood, Jess and I planned the unthinkable: fake our deaths. But the night before my staged "accident," Liam, my stoic husband, showed an unexpected vulnerability, leading to a passionate connection that upended everything. I faked my death and began our "free" life in Aspen with Jess. Then, a shock: we were both pregnant-Liam' s child for me. Our perfect escape now felt too managed, a new, subtle prison. Soon, news broke: Jess was "institutionalized" for a mental breakdown. Fury and despair consumed me. Arthur had viciously re-trapped Jess, aiming for her unborn child. A gnawing question plagued me: Was Liam part of this new cage? Was our passionate night merely a calculated manipulation? Had our defiance been utterly futile? Heavily pregnant, I vowed to return and dismantle Arthur' s empire, freeing Jess at any cost. But on my journey, my car was ambushed. The masked man was no stranger. It was Liam, revealing a shattering truth about our past and the true identity of our enemy.

I, Aurora, last heir of the Sunstone, stood ready for my Unity Ceremony with Ethan, leader of the Stormriver, a sacred bond prophesied to secure our lands. I believed in our shared duty, even in a slowly blooming love for him. But at the altar, Ethan publically scorned me, declaring his "true love" for my trusted aide, Sylvie, shattering our alliance and the very foundation of our world. The Council, dazzled by his reckless display of power and Sylvie' s fabricated innocence, abandoned me and my lineage, allowing Ethan to devastate our Sunstone Valley, extinguishing my peoples' light and our sacred Sun-crystals. Then, as I prepared for my crucial Solar Renewal, he shattered my power core and entombed me alive in a collapsing mountain. How could the very people I was sworn to protect, including the man I considered my dearest, fall so utterly blind to a manipulative lie, sacrificing everything for a power-hungry charade? They thought they had buried a guardian, but they merely forged the Shadow. I did not die in that tomb; I was reborn as the formidable Shadow Sovereign, and now, armed with terrifying darkness, I will make every betrayer regret their choices.

Thanksgiving. I was back home in rural Vermont, sifting through our old attic, looking for ornaments. Then I found it: a Polaroid of a 10-year-old me with a boy named "Cousin Leo," a cousin I’d never heard of, who then vanished from the photo right before my eyes. My family insisted Leo was real, eagerly anticipating his arrival, but their stories about him were a chaotic mess of contradictions—tall, short, professor, contractor, living everywhere and nowhere. They had no photos, no contact info, nothing tangible. Yet, strange toys appeared, my niece claimed he visited, and an unseen voice called from our empty porch. Was I losing my mind, or were they all caught in some bizarre, shared delusion? They blamed my childhood memory gaps, conveniently dismissing the chilling inconsistencies only I seemed to see. The warm, familiar holiday turned cold, filled with an unsettling unease. As their cheerful "memories" curdled into whispers of strange encounters and empty eyes, I realized this wasn't just confusion—something far darker was at play, and I was the only one who could unearth the truth about this phantom cousin.

"The year she graduated, her parents both died in a ruthless car accident. She was forced to live under another’s roof, but her life was even worse than a servant’s. That night, she was imprisoned in a warehouse, and the thin quilt could no longer cover her cold heart. Her cousin and aunt sent a man to destroy her innocence. After she escaped by luck, she was sold to an old man as his lover. However, at midnight every midnight, a man was whispering in her ear."

As a result of a conspiracy, Leona was kidnapped. The next day, she found herself caught in a love trap set by Louis, a handsome billionaire and also an infamous playboy. Before she realized what had happened, she had already become his wife. Trapped in an emotionless marriage, she resolutely rejected him. However, when she fell pregnant with his child during her amnesia, he took good care of her and thus began a passionate love affair. When she gradually relented and gave her heart to him, a storm began to quietly brew on the horizon.

My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent. But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress. Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes. "If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you." To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife. When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala. He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent. He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters. He thought he had broken me. He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage. But he made a fatal error. He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign. They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me. And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck. I didn't jump to die. I jumped to be reborn. And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin.

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 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."

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 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.

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.

I was the invisible failure of the Goff family, hiding my medical genius behind a report card full of Fs and a slumped posture. One rainy night, I found a man bleeding out in a dark alley behind the school gymnasium, a knife protruding from his gut. To keep the police from digging into my secrets, I dragged the dying stranger to my bedroom and stitched him up using a hidden surgical kit. I thought I was being careful, but my cousin Cleora caught a glimpse of the blood and immediately alerted my fiancé's wealthy family. By morning, my world collapsed as my future in-laws stormed the manor, throwing an annulment agreement at my feet. They called me a "loose woman" and "million-dollar trash," while my own housekeeper gleefully testified against me. At school, the word "SLUT" was spray-painted across my locker in jagged red letters, and the boy I was supposed to marry looked at me with nothing but cold revulsion. I didn't understand why they were so eager to destroy me before even asking for the truth. I was the one who had spent years protecting this family's reputation, yet they were throwing me to the wolves over a single misunderstanding. I felt a surge of cold fury as I realized my loyalty had been met with nothing but betrayal. Everything changed when the "dying" stranger finally walked down the stairs, shirtless and bandaged, revealing himself as Braylon Lancaster, the most powerful man in the city. He didn't just defend me; he froze my fiancé's entire family fortune with a single phone call. As my in-laws fled in terror, a courier arrived with a five-carat pink diamond from the head of the city's most dangerous crime syndicate. The note read: "The debt is acknowledged." Suddenly, I wasn't just a failure anymore-I was the most sought-after woman in the underworld.

My grandfather sold me to a man named Maverick to settle his gambling debts. I stood on the private platform at Union Station, a human payment waiting to be collected. But he never came. An hour later, his assistant called to say the deal was off. I was told to disappear by morning or face the consequences. My family blamed me for their ruin and threw me out onto the street. Homeless and disowned, I had no choice but to take a low-level job at Prosperity Group, the biggest investment firm in Chicago. I needed to survive. I never understood why he rejected me. I had followed every rule, worn the red dress he demanded, and waited like a lamb for slaughter. Why would he agree to save my family only to destroy us at the last second? On my first day, I was called into the CEO's office. The man behind the desk was Damien Maddox, the city's most ruthless billionaire. He looked at me with a chilling familiarity. He was the man who had bought me. And he was the man who had thrown me 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."