Adalynn

I married Julian, the city's most ruthless Mafia Don, trading my freedom and body just to keep my dying sister alive. But when Elena needed an emergency surgery, Julian coldly denied the three hundred thousand dollars. "Submit the request to Serena. She handles all financial approvals," he dismissed me, knowing full well his secretary despised me. Serena intentionally stalled the funds, mocking my desperation while Julian rewarded her with a sacred blood-diamond heirloom meant only for the Mafia Queen. While they laughed over wine at a high-end restaurant, I watched my fragile sister pull her own life-support tubes to free me from my mafia enslavement. The devastating shock ripped through my abdomen, and in a horrific pool of blood on the clinic floor, I miscarried Julian's unborn heir. Even then, Julian's only message was a cold threat, demanding I drop to my knees and apologize to Serena for my attitude. I stared at the flatlining monitor, my soul completely hollowed out. I was his wife, yet he had casually handed the power of life and death over my only family to a malicious subordinate who wanted me replaced. I didn't shed another tear. I surgically cleared the tragic remains of my pregnancy, packed the bloody tissue into a sealed medical cooler along with my signed severance papers, and had it delivered straight to the Don's mahogany desk before vanishing into the night.

Three years ago, my fiancée Elena left me at the altar on a twisted dare, humiliating me in front of our entire mafia syndicate. Today, she blocked my headquarters with nine armored cars, demanding I divorce my pregnant wife and serve her again. "Hiring a pregnant woman to make me jealous is a bit desperate, Liam," she sneered, tossing a cheap ring at my feet. When I ignored her to escort my wife, Sienna, to her medical checkup, Elena's childhood friend Julian deliberately lunged at Sienna's swollen stomach. I threw myself in the way to take the brutal impact, but the shockwave sent Sienna to the emergency room with a threatened miscarriage. Even as the medical staff scrambled to save my unborn heir, Elena grabbed my sleeve to defend the man who caused it. "He made a mistake! Why are you holding onto a grudge?" she cried, insisting I was just throwing a tantrum to get her attention. For seven years, I took bullets to secure her family's territory, only to be discarded like a stray dog when she got bored. What made her think I would spend three years waiting to be her loyal servant, let alone forgive the attempted murder of my child? Looking at her entitled, delusional face, the last shred of my restraint turned to ash. I pulled out my phone to broadcast the security footage to the entire underworld, and calmly ordered my men to erase her family from existence.

I sat in the emergency room corridor, pressing a soaked bandage against my heavily bleeding arm. I had texted my husband of three years, billionaire Efford Thornton, begging him to come. He did come, but he walked right past me as if I were a piece of furniture. When the doctor finally brought the last bag of O-negative blood in the city to save my life, Efford's assistant intercepted it. Efford coldly ordered the blood to be sent to the VIP wing for Aletha Chase. "Mrs. Chase is pregnant with the Thornton heir," he declared flatly. "The priority is non-negotiable." As I watched my life-saving blood being carried away, he handed me a divorce agreement and an NDA. If I dared to expose his affair, he would immediately cut off the funding for my grandmother's dementia care, leaving her to rot in a public ward. He then turned his back, leaving me to bleed out in the hallway. For three years, I had given up my career and my identity to be his perfect, compliant wife. I couldn't understand how the man who once looked at me like I was his whole world could now literally watch me die just to protect his mistress. But he forgot one thing. The submissive wife he married was just a ghost. I wiped the blood from my hands, dug out the leather half-mask I had hidden away years ago, and made a call. It was time for the legendary runway model "Phoenix" to rise from the ashes and burn his empire to the ground.

My six-year-old twins, Liam and Lily, begged to go to Disneyland. But my husband, Julian Vance, planned to take his mistress to a prenatal clinic. Annoyed by the twins' crying and deeming them "too delicate and spoiled," Julian drove them out to the Mojave Desert, demanding they learn how to survive on their own. I couldn't even fathom it. I begged him desperately. "Julian, please! Give me the coordinates! Tell me where my babies are!" "They're only six! They'll die out there! I promise I'll discipline them. I'll never let them bother you again. Please, just let me go get them back!" The only answer I got was the sound of him having sex with his mistress. By the time Julian found out the truth, it was already too late. He knelt before me, crying and pleading for forgiveness, but my children were no longer around to forgive him. And I could never forgive him on their behalf.

The sound of his pen scratching against the paper was louder than the thunder outside. Beside me, Dante, the Alpha of the Blood Moon Pack, reeked of a sickly, synthetic sweetness—a witch's hex perfume that clouded his mind and made him obsessed with another woman. He tossed a folder onto my lap without even looking at me. "File this with the Council tomorrow," he ordered, his eyes glazed over as he texted his mistress, Sofia. "It's just the logistics report." He didn't know he had just signed our divorce papers. Suddenly, he slammed on the brakes in the middle of a dark highway. "Get out," he snarled, his eyes glowing a feral yellow. "Sofia is being attacked. I need the car. You're slowing me down." I froze. "Dante, this is Rogue territory." "Survive," he scoffed. He forced me out of the safety of the SUV and sped away, leaving his Fated Mate standing in the freezing rain to save a mistress who was lying on a yacht. My wolf didn't weep this time. She growled. I looked at the signed document in my hand. He thought he was stripping my access to the treasury, but he had just legally set me free. I didn't wait for him to return. I took the papers, withdrew fifty million dollars from his account, and vanished to the West Coast. When he finally clears the witch's fog from his mind and comes looking for his submissive wife, he won't find Elena the doormat. He will face the White Wolf.

I was the woman who pulled my husband, tech billionaire Brayden Quinn, out of the gutter. Our story was a modern fairy tale everyone knew. Then I discovered I was pregnant. But the baby wasn't mine. It was an embryo created by him and my worst enemy, implanted in me without my consent. I was just a surrogate for their heir. When my mother was dying, he refused to help, letting her perish from medical neglect because he was too busy with his mistress. When I tried to leave, he had my lawyer disbarred and locked me in our mansion, a prisoner in a gilded cage. He held me against a wall and told me I was his property forever. After he subjected me to a terrifying medical procedure just to remind me of who was in control, I knew the man I had saved was a monster. He hadn't just betrayed me; he had murdered my mother and stolen my body. So I made a deal with his greatest rival. I sold my controlling stake in his company for five hundred million dollars and a plan to disappear. On the deck of the superyacht he named after me, I faked a miscarriage, set off an explosion, and threw myself into the sea. Brayden Quinn would believe I was dead. He would believe he had driven his wife and his precious heir to suicide. Let him live with that.

Francesca Freeman had loved Archer Collins for ten years, ever since her father brought the skinny, silent boy home from the streets. He became her brother in name, but in her heart, he was always something more. Then, on the night he proposed, she overheard his chilling conversation with Amelia Ball: their engagement was merely the first step in his calculated revenge to destroy her family. Every kiss, every tender word since, was a lie. He called her sick, a monster, and had his men beat her, all while she endured, knowing she was just a pawn in his cruel game. He even gave her murdered mother's last memento to Amelia, the very woman who orchestrated the fire that killed her. She couldn't comprehend such betrayal from the boy she had loved, the one who had vowed to protect her. Why did he believe Amelia's lies over her, over the family who took him in? With her heart turned to ash, Francesca Freeman made a choice: she would erase her identity, disappear completely, and leave Archer to face the consequences of his own blind hatred.

The fluorescent hum of the DMV was the soundtrack to my boring life, until I tried to replace my lost driver's license. "Your marital status. It says you're divorced," the clerk said, shattering my five-year marriage to Jackson Parks with a single, flat sentence. My husband, Jackson, the man who swore he loved me, had secretly divorced me three years ago. Not only that, he had remarried the very next day to Candida Camacho, the woman who had tried to murder me on my wedding day and left me infertile. And they had a two-year-old son, Joey. I stumbled home, my world a blur, only to find Jackson and Candida in our living room, arguing. "I hate having to pretend for that pathetic woman!" Candida shrieked. Jackson, my husband, pleaded, "I love you. I've always loved you." The man I sacrificed everything for, who swore to destroy her, was now playing house with my attempted murderer, and I was the fool living in his house, sleeping in his bed, believing his lies. The pain in my abdomen, a phantom ache from five years ago, flared to life, mirroring the gaping wound in my soul. I would not be his victim anymore. "Hamilton," I said into the phone, my voice clear and steady. "I need your help. I need you to help me die."

"Olivia, we need to break up." I said the words quietly. We were sitting on the couch we' d picked out together two years ago. Instead of concern, she laughed, thinking it was a joke because she forgot almond milk. Then her phone buzzed. It was Liam. Again. "Can we not do this right now? It's Liam. He needs me." It was always Liam. On our anniversary, the night my grandmother died. He always had a crisis only Olivia could solve. He arrived less than twenty minutes later, looking pale and distressed. He saw me, and his voice, laced with fake vulnerability, faltered. "Olivia said you guys were having a talk. I can go if this is a bad time. I just… I had another panic attack." He looked at Olivia, playing the victim, making me the bad guy. I' d seen this a hundred times: the late-night calls, the fabricated emergencies. I felt a snap inside me. "You' re always having a panic attack, Liam," I blurted. "You strategically dismantle. You make sure you are always the priority." Liam recoiled, his face crumbling. Olivia' s face hardened, disappointment aimed squarely at me. "Noah, stop it. You know he struggles. How can you be so cruel?" She moved to Liam' s side, placing a protective arm around him. She was comforting him. From me. My heart dissolved. I was the outsider. "I' m tired of coming in second place to him. I' m tired of being the bad guy for wanting a partner, not a part-time caregiver for your friend." I grabbed my bag. As I walked out, Olivia' s voice, thick with disbelief, followed me. "You' re really leaving? Over this? You' re just going to throw everything away because you' re jealous?" I stopped but didn' t turn. "It was already thrown away, Liv. I' m just the one finally picking up the trash." I closed the door.

I was the golden girl, the champion equestrian, adored by my father, cherished by my brother, and deeply in love with my high school sweetheart, living a perfect suburban life. Then, on my 18th birthday, everything shattered when my father brought home Maria, a "troubled teen" he adopted, and suddenly, I ceased to exist. My father, brother, and even the boy I loved, Ethan, turned their backs on me, falling for Maria' s fragile, manipulative act, consistently choosing her over me, climaxing with them missing my college graduation for her regional play. When I confronted them about their abandonment, my own father struck me, my brother coldly told me to "get out," and later, after I cooked a meal to try for closure, they accused me of poisoning Maria, believing her fabricated allergic reaction. Utterly broken and disowned, I fled in a thunderstorm, leaving behind the only family I'd ever known, not realizing it was just the beginning of my rebirth.

The faint line on the pregnancy test glowed, a stark white against the cold marble. My hand trembled, not with joy, but with the icy grip of a memory that chilled me to the bone. This was the day, the exact day it all began to unravel in my first life. Ethan, my charming, ambitious husband, a rising Harrison political star. And Seraphina, my beautiful, "golden child" stepsister, who always got what she wanted. I remembered their smiles, their whispers, and how they destroyed me. The searing pain of the car veering off the road, the blinding headlights, Sera' s triumphant sneer in the shadows just before the end. They wanted my inheritance, my position, and my very existence gone. My baby, this tiny, unformed life inside me now, had died with me then. Their betrayal was complete, my fate sealed. How could they have been so cruel, so calculating, to orchestrate such a gruesome end for a naive wife and her unborn child? The bitter injustice had consumed me, haunting my final moments. Yet, here I was. Reborn. I was actually back, precisely on the day of my first demise. The universe, it seemed, had a twisted sense of humor, or perhaps, a penchant for second acts. But this time, I wouldn' t be the unaware victim. Ava Harrison would no longer be a naive fool, easily dazzled and discarded. This time, Ava Harrison would be the one pulling the strings. My objective was clear, etched in the remembered pain: secure my child' s future, and make them all pay. Every single one of them. My revenge finally begins tonight.

The pen hovered, ready to sign the lease for our new apartment, signaling a huge step forward after seven years with Chloe. This was supposed to be it, our future, a real home we'd finally share. Then, her phone buzzed for the third time in minutes, betraying the familiar source of chaos: Liam. "He needs me," she whispered, already pulling away, leaving me stranded with two unsigned leases and a bewildered agent. My heart sank when I scrolled social media to find Liam's smug selfie with Chloe, her arm around him, captioned "My angel, always there." Her follow-up text wasn't "Are you okay?" but an angry accusation: "Are you trying to make me look bad? I'm dealing with something real here." The supposed "crisis" was a lie, a performance designed to put Liam first, as always. Seven years of always being second, of cancelled plans and hollow apologies, now burned with the bitter truth: he wasn't having a relapse, he was just having my Chloe. Every single time, her excuses and empty promises had left me feeling like an afterthought, my feelings dismissed. How could I have been so foolishly hopeful, clinging to the belief that her fleeting affection was genuine love, not just a desperate cling to a safety net? Then, my boss offered an escape: a lead designer position in San Francisco, a chance for a fresh start. I was done with the lies, the neglect, the constant battle for a love that wasn't truly mine. Looking Chloe in the eye, despite my fever, I declared, "We're over. Your apologies are always too late." This time, I was choosing myself, walking away for good.

Ava Hayes, daughter of a revered NASA astronaut, felt destiny pulling her toward the stars, just like her hero father who'd sacrificed his life on a mission. A glittering gala was her chance to connect, but the night twisted into a public nightmare when intimate photos of her were auctioned off as a "gag." Her childhood friends, Liam and Owen, stood by, even laughing, manipulated by Bianca, whose family had built a false legacy from her own father's alleged heroism, eclipsing Ava's true family sacrifice. This wasn't just a prank; it was a calculated attack. The public shaming escalated with fabricated scandals, dragging her father's name through the mud and pushing Ava to the brink of suicide. How could the boys whose fathers owed their lives to hers turn so vile? The betrayal left her broken, yet through the ashes of despair, her mentor, Dr. Ramirez, pulled her back. Ava disappeared, finding refuge and rebuilding her brilliance at a remote observatory. But redemption, and revenge, have a way of finding their moment. Now, she's back, a lead astrophysicist, commanding a groundbreaking AstroCorp project. The scars of their cruelty run deep, but they fueled her rise. Little do Liam and Owen know, the truth about her father's ultimate sacrifice is about to rewrite history, and Ava is ready to collect on every single wound they inflicted.

What hurt her deeper than the harsh slap was her ex-boyfriend’s cruelty. Then, he came back into her life, saved her from danger, and swooped her into a fairy tale romance. However, fairy tales never lasted. She thought that he was out of her life for good, but how would ever he let her go? He played his tricks one more time and barged into her new life. Will he win her back? Will she forgive him? Where will their love go?

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."

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 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 first wedding anniversary, my husband walked out the door. Not for business. For her. I left the divorce papers on the table, my wedding ring next to his untouched champagne, and I disappeared into the night. For a year, I watched Dominic Rossi—the ruthless Underboss of the New York syndicate—drop everything the moment his phone buzzed with another crisis from Sophia. A panic attack. A sleepless night. A lie. I was his wife, the woman he’d promised to cherish, but I was never his priority. So I chose myself. Now he’s tearing the city apart trying to find me. But I’m already gone—building a new life with a job that’s mine, an apartment that’s mine, and a name that doesn’t belong to him. The girl who waited in that penthouse is dead. The woman who walked out isn’t looking back. When Dominic finally corners me, I see the cracks in his armor. He says he’s sorry. He says he loves me. He says he finally understands. But some words are too late, and some promises can’t be fixed. He made me guess for a year. Now it’s his turn to wonder if I’ll ever come back. A heart-wrenching, standalone mafia romance about a woman who refused to be second choice, and the man who learned too late what he’d lost.

I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair. They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves. Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment. But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger. In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all.

I didn't mean to call my boss. I definitely didn't mean to leave a seven-minute voicemail of dirty secrets about him. Working for Ruslan Oryolov is the job from hell. The man is impossible-demanding, arrogant, and way too gorgeous for his own good. After eighteen months of fetching his coffee and swallowing my pride, all I wanted was one night of stress relief. But the billionaire CEO of Bane Corporation isn't just a boss from hell. He's the head of the Oryolov Bratva-and now that he's heard every secret I never meant to share, he's decided to claim me. His contract. His rules. His protection for my three orphaned nieces and nephews-the only reason I'm signing my life away to a man I should fear. He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now he wants my soul.

Three days before the wedding. I was hiding in the dressing room, watching my fiancé caress the swollen belly of another woman. Luca, the man who had saved my life five years ago, was smiling at his mistress, Sofia. But the real knife to the heart wasn't the affair—it was the dress. The custom wedding gown he had "lovingly" ordered for me featured intricate silver embroidery along the hem. It didn't spell Elena. It read Sofia. He was planning to make me walk down the aisle wearing his mistress's name. Later that night, I found a video of him mocking me to his crew, calling me a "dead fish" and admitting he only wanted my family's Capo status. He planned to keep his "true love" on the side while I played the role of the oblivious, ornamental wife. He thought I was just a sheltered princess. He forgot that my bloodline was built on vengeance. I didn't cry. I didn't confront him. Instead, I scrubbed his scent off my skin and dialed a number everyone in Chicago feared. "The pact with the Cavallaro family," I asked my father, my voice cold as stone. "Is it still valid?" "Dante is the Underboss now," my father warned. "He is a butcher. He breaks men for sport." "Good," I replied. "I am done playing with boys." I secretly booked the Gold Ballroom across the hall from my original venue. Luca thought he was walking into a marriage on Saturday. He didn't know I was bringing a monster to the altar instead.

I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella. Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark. But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved. Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies. When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel. While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest. The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella. He ordered my father to punish me. I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth. That night, the love in my heart finally died. On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape—the only proof that I was Seven. Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney. By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.

What would you do if you walked in on your husband cheating? I'll tell you what I did: Ran out the door with nothing but the clothes on my back. A month later, I'm broke, jobless, almost homeless. But then, while filling in as a waitress at a fancy restaurant, I trip and land in the lap of a gorgeous stranger. One thing leads to another and we end up hooking up. Afterwards, he leaves. That's the end of that... right? WRONG. Because the next day, my temp agency sets me up for a job t hat seems too good to be true. But when I arrive for the interview, my jaw drops. It's the stranger. Turns out he's rich. Like, very rich. And powerful. Like, very powerful. And here's his offer: "Live in my house.Be my wife.Have my baby." Needless to say, I start to freak out. I stand up and stammer, "Um, I'll have to get back to you..." And he replies: "You're misunderstanding.It wasn't a question. You're not going anywhere."

For seven years, I bled to protect Dante Morretti and his family. I drained my own inheritance to bribe cops, hire underground doctors, and secure his throne as the Don of New York. But on our seventh anniversary, as I stood outside his club with a custom-forged gift, I saw the syndicate announcement. Dante had just publicly crowned a Capo's daughter as his queen. When I confronted him, he brushed off my anger. "Stop this drama, Eva. You are my fiancée. She is a political necessity." His parents, whose lives I had saved, told me to stop throwing a tantrum. His mother looked at me with pure disdain. "You are the legal wife. You manage the household. You see to our care." Worse, I discovered Dante had used my emergency extraction funds—money meant to keep his family safe—to buy his new queen a luxury penthouse. I had taken a bullet for his mother the exact same night he was caught on camera sleeping with Serena. I gave them my youth, my money, and my blood, only to be treated as an unpaid warden and a disposable shield. I didn't understand how my seven years of fierce loyalty could be erased so easily. But I didn't shed a single tear. I calmly handed Dante an itemized bill for $367,420, dropped my safe house keys on the table, and walked away. This time, I would build my own empire.