Xiao Wang

Three years after I buried an empty casket for my husband, I found him alive in a grocery store parking lot. He was rubbing a stranger's pregnant belly, smiling a soft smile I had never seen in our years of marriage. My husband, the ruthless Don of Chicago, had become "Arthur," a gentle man with no memory of the empire he ruled or the wife he left behind. To protect his happiness, I swallowed my agony and lied. "I am his cousin," I told his pregnant fiancée, Mia. I brought them home to his estate, enduring the torture of watching him give her the tenderness that used to belong to me. But my mercy was rewarded with cruelty. Dante looked at me with cold, unfamiliar eyes and slapped divorce papers onto the table. "Sign them," he demanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "I want to marry Mia before the baby comes. I want a fresh start." He didn't know I was dying of a heart defect caused by the stress of grieving him. He didn't know I stalled for two weeks not for money, but because I wanted to be buried with his name. I died the morning the deadline arrived, taking the secret of my love to the grave. Ironically, that very night, a bullet grazed his temple during an ambush, unlocking the memories he had lost. He remembered the peach orchard. He remembered our blood oath. He remembered that I was his soulmate. He ran to my brother’s gates, screaming my name, blood pouring down his face, desperate to beg for forgiveness. But my brother just stood there, blocking the entrance to the cemetery with a cruel smile. "She waited for you every single day," he spat. "And you killed her."

I jumped into the freezing Hudson River. Not to kill myself, but to save the only thing I had left—my father's Medal of Valor, which Krystal had thrown into the water like a stick for a dog. I clawed my way up the muddy bank, lungs burning, shivering violently. I looked up at the villa balcony, hoping my Fated Mate, Jaxon, would be looking for me. He wasn't. He was wrapping his arms around Krystal, watching the artificial meteor shower he had arranged just for her. "Anything for you, my love," he said, completely forgetting I was drowning in the dark below. For three years, I believed I had "Wolf Sickness." I took the pills he sent, grateful for his care. But the pills were poison. Wolfsbane. Designed to keep me weak, docile, and unable to shift, just so he could replace me with a more powerful Luna. He called me a liability. He watched his mistress run me over with her Porsche, ordered his guards to silence me, and let her dogs tear my skin. Now, clutching the cold medal, the final thread of our bond snapped. I didn't go back to the pack house. I dragged my broken body to the airport and sent one final text. "I, Alina Phillips, reject you, Jaxon Francis." I mailed him the medical report proving he had been poisoning his own mate, and then I disappeared. By the time he realizes what he's done, the Alina he knew will be dead.

I was just the decoration at the gala, the dutiful wife of Chicago's Underboss, Dante Moretti. Then my phone buzzed with a photo of his hand on another woman's thigh, taken inside the venue just minutes ago. I finally snapped, leaking the photo to the press to shame him. Dante dragged me home, pinned me to the sofa, and carved a thin line into my collarbone with a switchblade. "You don't get to leave until I say you're done," he warned. But the real devastation came later. An anonymous video file revealed the truth about my mother's "suicide" ten years ago. She didn't jump. My sister, Sofia, pushed her. And Dante? He didn't marry me for power. He brokered a deal with my father to cover up the murder and took me as hush money. I crashed Sofia's birthday party to expose them, but my father slapped me in front of everyone. Dante grabbed my fresh wound and forced me to my knees. "Apologize to your sister," he threatened, "or I bulldoze your mother's grave right now." I swallowed my pride, bowed my head, and apologized. But Sofia just laughed, pulled out a detonator, and pressed the button anyway. "Oops," she giggled as the explosion rocked the ground. "Happy birthday to me." Watching the smoke rise from my mother's destroyed mausoleum, the old Elena died. I vanished into the night, leaving behind signed divorce papers and my bloodied dress. When Dante finally tracked me down, I wasn't hiding in fear. I was standing next to his mortal enemy, Luca Rossi, wearing a massive diamond ring. I handed Dante a cream-colored envelope. "What is this?" he asked, his hands trembling. "An invitation," I said, my voice ice-cold. "To the wedding of Don Luca Rossi and Elena Vitiello."

My fiancé thought he was manipulating a naive heiress, unaware I had video proof of him plotting to commit me to an asylum. He planned to steal my inheritance with my cousin, but tonight, I' m not signing a marriage license. I' m signing his death warrant. For years, I played the role of the docile, grateful orphan while Holden and Dianne mocked me behind my back. They called me mentally incompetent, laughing as they planned to strip me of my father' s legacy and lock me away. I watched them parade around my birthday gala, smug in their victory, treating me like a fragile doll on the verge of a breakdown. They expected tears. They expected submission. Instead, they got a cold-blooded execution. In front of the entire New York elite, I didn't hand my voting rights to the golden boy who promised to love me. I walked past him and handed the charter to the one man the entire family feared. Hazen Ingram. The scarred, silent "monster" of the dynasty. As Holden screamed and was dragged away by security, I realized something terrifyingly beautiful. I didn't just choose revenge. I chose the only man who ever truly protected me.

My boyfriend, a chess prodigy, planned to publicly humiliate me at our graduation. He'd spent three years faking our relationship, even secretly filming us, all to get revenge for a lie he believed about my father. I overheard his entire twisted plan just before it was set to happen. So I fled to Paris, leaving him with the wreckage of his prized antique chess set and a video of me smashing it to pieces. I built a new life, found real love with a kind man named Kolton, and my art began to flourish. I was finally healing, finally safe. Then, one morning, my ex shattered my apartment door, holding a black rose, his eyes burning with a terrifying declaration: "I was wrong. I love you. And I'm not leaving until you're mine again."

My voice was a pathetic whisper. I was on my knees, hands clutching the hem of her dress. My vision was blurry, the room swaying. "Get off me, Ethan," she said, her voice flat. "You' re pathetic." She kicked my hands away. The love I used to see in her eyes was gone, replaced by contempt. Then I heard Liam, my own half-brother, gloating. "Pixel Legacy is ours now, Sophia. And with his signature on that transfer document, there' s nothing he can do." My game. My life' s work. Stolen. And Sophia, my girlfriend, was his willing accomplice. The drug Liam gave me hit hard. I was in agony, slamming my raw knuckles against the carpet. I heard their laughter from the living room. She re-entered, ordered me to stop making noise, and when I begged for a doctor, she locked me in. Later, she and Liam forced more of the poison down my throat, leaving me to dissolve into a black void. When I woke, I was in a hospital. A new intern, Noah, told me he found me unconscious in the bathroom, bleeding. My phone buzzed with an email from Sophia: an "Agreement" to erase me from my own life, stealing everything, leaving me with nothing but a few thousand dollars as a consolation prize. How could she? How could three years of shared dreams crumble into this cruel reality? Was it always a lie? As I lay there, helpless and broken, a cold resolve settled in my gut. I would not die here. I would leave. I would survive this. I would get my own back.

I had given ten years of my life to Scott & Associates, a law firm I built from the ground up, making myself indispensable as their senior paralegal and handling everything from client intake to IT. My boss, Mr. Scott, had promised me a partnership for years, a dream I clung to, along with my significant five-figure Christmas bonus that barely acknowledged my worth. Then, his newly-graduated niece, Madisyn, arrived as "Operations Manager" and immediately announced a drastic, public pay cut, effective immediately. The harassment began almost instantly-forced to clean toilets, fix jammed copiers, and endure petty humiliations while Mr. Scott watched and approved. But the real blow came when I learned Madisyn had slashed my bonus from five figures to a mere thousand dollars, falsely accusing me of laziness to justify her actions. Every shred of loyalty I had withered, replaced by a cold fury at their betrayal and utter disregard for my dedication. They had no idea what they had just unleashed. I didn't just quit; I walked out, knowing my meticulous records would soon expose their financial crimes and tear their entire empire down.

For two years, falling for Andrew Morris was my escape-an immortal like me, I just wanted a simple, mortal love, a normal life. But two days after he promised me a home in the Appalachians, his warm voice turned to ice: "She's the one. Take her." Suddenly, I was on my knees, wrists bound, watching Andrew hold another woman, Jennifer, as the entire town looked on. They had lured me here to be a human sacrifice for their "Forest Spirit," a desperate plea to save their crops. Imprisoned and drugged with a truth root, I watched Andrew try to steal my fortune, only for Jennifer to swoop in, expose their mutual deceit, and brutally slash my face. Pain and betrayal consumed me, an agony amplified by the bizarre echo of my ancient past, and a desperate, drug-addled whisper escaped my lips: "Caleb will know." Hours later, beaten and abandoned on a moss-covered altar, I was ready for death, until the true "Forest Spirit" appeared-not a monster, but the powerful, terrifying being I had spent centuries running from, the very one who had "cursed" me with endless life: Caleb.

On our third wedding anniversary, I left my restaurant early, the scent of success clinging to my whites, a silver locket meant for my wife, Jocelyn, burning a hole in my pocket. But when I found her at her Silicon Valley office, she wasn't waiting for me; she was laughing, head tilted back, with Caleb Blakely, her old flame. My blood ran cold when she introduced me, her husband of three years, as merely a "friend who collaborates on catering events," right after I watched her sign the divorce papers I' d cunningly hidden within a fake contract. Over the next weeks, I watched her prioritize his manufactured crises, accept his cronuts while ignoring our vanishing past, and heard her speak to him with the intimate warmth she hadn't shown me in years. I lay in a hospital bed, shattered from a car crash, while the woman who vowed to be my life partner, was busy celebrating Caleb' s birthday, completely oblivious to my situation. That same evening, standing in the quiet, empty apartment I' d secretly moved my life into, I looked out at the city lights and finally calmly said, "It's over, Jocelyn. We' re over."

My wedding night was supposed to be a dream. I stood there, stiff in my white lace dress, looking forward to forever with Ethan. He was the man I'd loved since girlhood, our families and friends had just celebrated our union. But the dream quickly turned into a nightmare. In our honeymoon suite, he coldly declared, "This was a mistake. I don't love you." He spoke of annulment, "false pretenses," and just tossed me aside like yesterday's trash. Five years passed in the shadow of that brutal humiliation. I rebuilt my life, slowly, finding quiet happiness as the secretly married wife of US Senator Alex Sterling. But fate, or perhaps cruelty, intervened. A chance encounter in a bookstore brought Ethan and his current fiancée, Brittany – my former intern – back into my life. They relentlessly mocked me, scorned my simple life, then falsely accused me of theft. The public spectacle escalated into physical violence as Ethan dragged me into a back room, intent on disfiguring me with a letter opener, all while Brittany smirked. Trapped, bruised, and bleeding, I faced the man who had shattered my world once before, now determined to destroy me completely. How could he still hold such power, such venom? Why did he refuse to believe my truth, even when my dignity lay shattered on the floor for all to see? Just as despair threatened to consume me and the sharp point of the letter opener hovered inches from my face, a commanding voice split the chaos: "Get your hands off my wife!" My husband, Senator Alex Sterling, strode in, a force of nature, ready to reclaim his Sarah and exact a righteous fury.

As Ava Moreno, a Queens girl with a mountain of medical bills, my sustainable design for the Phoenix Tower was my magnum opus, ready to redefine NYC's skyline. This was the breakthrough I'd poured my soul into, my chance to save my ailing mother whose MS was relentlessly worsening. Suddenly, in a packed boardroom, Julian Sterling’s aide, Liam Astor, launched a vicious public attack. He stripped me from the project, twisting my past into insidious rumors of "ethical ambiguities" and "gold-digging" from my college days. My career, my reputation—everything I’d built—imploded in an instant. The fallout was brutal. My former colleague, Veronica Bell, shamelessly took over, later sabotaging my design, while my old boss, Marcus Finch, tried to blackmail me. Forced into desperate measures, I faced humiliating propositions from powerful men like Councilman Thompson, revealing the city's predatory underbelly. All the while, my mother's experimental treatments demanded astronomical sums, plunging me deeper into a financial abyss. Why did this keep happening? Was I destined to be a victim, my talent overshadowed by relentless slander? Every act of "help" from Julian Sterling, the enigmatic billionaire I’d known since college, felt like a transactional noose, further cementing my public image as his "kept woman." But as I faltered under the weight of it all, a fierce resolve ignited. I would not break. For my mother, I would accept this "blood money," navigate this gilded cage, and fight. My journey into the cutthroat world of power and compromise had only just begun.

Daria had been promoted to the role of the CEO's secretary but it left her feeling confused. She was so happy that her career was taking off but what she didn't know was that she had unwittingly stepped into a romantic trap. On her first day in her new role, she encountered a challenging situation. She walked into her boss's office to find him tussling with a woman. While trying to help him, she ended up accidentally stabbing him with a cactus. She couldn't understand why an average girl like her was chosen for this important role in the first place and now she was terrified that she would lose her new job on the first day itself. What would happen when she learned the truth? Where would their story go?

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.

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 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 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."

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.

On our ninth anniversary, my husband Dominick didn't toast to us. Instead, he rested his hand on his mistress's pregnant belly in front of the entire crime family. I was just a debt payment to him, a ghost in a forty-thousand-dollar gown. But the humiliation didn't end in the ballroom. When his mistress, Chastity, started hemorrhaging later that night, he didn't call an ambulance. He dragged me to the family clinic. He knew I had a serious heart condition. He knew a transfusion of that magnitude could trigger a fatal cardiac event. "She is carrying my son," he said, his eyes devoid of any humanity. "You will give her whatever she needs." I begged him. I bargained for my freedom. He lied and agreed, just to get the needle in my arm. As my dark red blood flowed through the tube to save the woman destroying my life, my chest tightened. The monitors began to scream. My heart was failing. "Mr. Reyes! She's crashing!" the doctor shouted. Dominick didn't even turn around. He walked out of the room to hold Chastity's hand, leaving me to die on the table. I survived, but Annis Myers died in that clinic. He thought I would return to the penthouse and continue being his obedient, silent wife. He thought he owned the blood in my veins. He was wrong. I went back to the penthouse one last time. I struck a match. I let the room burn. By the time Dominick realized I wasn't in the ashes, I was already on a plane to London. I had left my wedding ring in an envelope, along with the medical records that proved his cruelty. He wanted a war? I would give him one.

I was staring at the two pink lines on the plastic stick, trembling with the terrifying joy of carrying the heir to the New York underworld’s most ruthless faction. Then the intercom buzzed, and a voice splintered my world. "The little art student actually thinks I'm going to marry her? It was just a game to pass the time while you were in Europe, Estella." I froze. My boyfriend, Holden, was in the next room, laughing with the daughter of his rival. He explained that I was just a "clean civilian image" he needed to secure a business deal. Now that the deal was signed, he was dumping the "stray" to marry the "Queen." I tried to run, but freedom only lasted forty-eight hours. Holden didn't just break my heart; he turned my terror into content. He kidnapped me, tied me to a chair at the edge of a cliff, and forced me to choose between my life and his new fiancée's. Then, he pushed me off the edge. As gravity snatched me, I heard him laughing. I landed on a stunt airbag. It was just a "social experiment." A sick prank for his amusement. "Don't be so dramatic, Kenia," he called down. "It's just a game." He thought I was broken. He thought I was just a prop in his life. But he forgot that I knew his secrets. I dragged my injured body to a payphone and dialed the one number Holden told me to fear—the rival Don, Gael Simpson. "It's Kenia," I whispered, clutching the receiver like a lifeline. "I'm calling in the debt."

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.

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.