My Seven-Year Lie: The Jilted Consigliere

Seraphina had loved Damien through three years of marriage, yet she could never outshine the first love Bianca he had cherished in his heart for a full decade. On the very day she was diagnosed with gastric cancer, he was by Bianca's side, accompanying their son for a medical checkup. She made no scene, no fuss, simply took the divorce papers and left quietly - only to be met with far crueler retaliation. She finally learned the truth: he had married her solely to avenge his sister. While she was wasting away from her fatal illness, he gripped her chin cold-heartedly and sneered, "This is what your father owes me." Before long, her family was utterly destroyed. Her father was left a vegetative state. With nothing left to live for, Seraphina jumped from a high building. "The life my father owed you... I've paid it back in full." The always poised, arrogant Damien dropped to his knees, his eyes bloodshot and frantic. Over and over again, he begged brokenly for her to come back to him.

For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."

The rain in Detroit was slick with grime when my family finally came to fetch me. They didn't want a reunion; they wanted a sacrificial lamb to marry into the Kaufman empire to save their failing business. I thought I was just being sold off, but the limo ride ended under a dark overpass where six hired thugs were waiting with chains. My own sister had ordered them to "break my spirit" so I’d be a shaking, pathetic mess by the time I reached the altar. They called me "Detroit trash" and sprayed air freshener when I sat on their leather seats. My stepmother wanted a video of me begging for my life, and my father was ready to trade me like a used car to a man everyone called a "vegetable." They expected a submissive country girl, unaware that I was a high-level "cleaner" who could snap a radius bone before they could even scream. When I finally reached the Kaufman estate, I found my fiancé, Barron, slumped in a wheelchair, drooling and silent. But as soon as the doors closed, the "invalid" grabbed my wrist with a grip of iron and whispered a command that changed everything. I didn't understand why my own blood was so desperate to see me destroyed. What had I ever done to deserve a hit squad and a forced marriage to a man they thought was a corpse? But Barron isn't a vegetable, and I'm not a victim. We just touched down at the Moon family gala in a matte-black helicopter, and as the doors slide open, the "broken" bride is about to show them exactly what happens when you throw away the wrong daughter. "If we're going to crash a party," Barron whispered, his eyes burning with lethal clarity, "we should make an entrance."

I woke up gasping, the phantom smell of smoke and my family's dying screams still burning in my throat. But there was no fire. I was twenty-two again, back on the exact day my father was to announce our arranged marriages. My sister, Janeen, burst into my room with a triumphant smile. "Worrying about marrying that cold-blooded Underboss?" she mocked. "They say he's a monster. Plus, he'll be a cripple in two years anyway." My blood turned to ice. She knew about Eliga Russo's future accident. Janeen was reborn, too. She eagerly told our father she wanted the "better" match with the prominent Whitney family, dumping the terrifying Russo marriage on me. She thought she was brilliant, leaving me with a doomed mafia boss and his three feral adopted sons. But she didn't know the Whitneys' political scandal was exactly what caused our enemies to burn our entire family alive in my past life. She laughed at my "misfortune," truly believing she had secured a life of high-society power while I was being sent to hell. What she didn't realize was that she wasn't the only one holding a map to the future. She thought she was playing chess, but I was the one who designed the board. I lowered my head and pretended to cry, gladly accepting the marriage to the monster. This time, I wouldn't be a pawn. I would save Eliga, tame his sons, and become the queen of the Russo empire.

It was my birthday, but instead of celebrating, I was bleeding on the floor of my own bedroom. My sister Serena had just smashed a champagne bottle over my legs, her eyes filled with a dark madness because our father allowed me to wear the family diamonds. To escape her, I bolted into a pitch-black guest suite, only to be grabbed by a man who felt like a wall of solid muscle. He was drugged, unstable, and pinned me against the wall, his teeth sinking into my neck in a primal claim that left a permanent mark. I managed to flee, but the nightmare was just beginning. My father didn't care about my injuries; he only cared that I had "insulted" the man in that room—Delos French, the most powerful CEO in New York. He threatened to stop paying for my mother’s critical care facility unless I went to Delos and begged for his forgiveness. My brother Julian was even worse, intentionally pouring scalding coffee over my bandaged wounds just to see me flinch. They forced me into a revealing gold dress, treating me like a high-priced commodity to be sold to the highest bidder to save their failing company. I didn't understand how the people who were supposed to love me could be more predatory than the monster in the dark. I had spent my life fixing their scandals, yet they were ready to throw me to the wolves the moment I became useful as a pawn. But when I stood before Delos French at his gala, he didn't see a trophy. He recognized my scent, my touch, and the fire in my eyes. He trapped me in his private lounge, kneeling to clean the blood from my injured feet. "Marry me," he whispered, his voice a low, terrifying growl. "And I will give you the power to burn your family to the ground." I looked into the eyes of the man who had hunted me and realized he was the only one offering me a weapon to destroy the people who had broken me. "Okay," I whispered.

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.