Dionisio Wambold

I was just trying to plug my mafia Capo boyfriend's backup phone into the charger. The screen lit up, and I accidentally swiped into his encrypted chats. There, I saw a glaring red dot next to every single voice message I had sent him over the past five years. Thousands of seconds of my deepest fears, my unwavering love, and my midnight pleas for help had been completely ignored. Yet, pinned at the very top was a chat with his female subordinate, Sophie. He had listened to every sixty-second complaint she made about her bitter coffee, replying with meticulous, tender care. Two weeks ago, I almost died from a ruptured appendix on our bathroom floor. I sent him desperate voice notes begging for a doctor, but he only typed a cold "Understood" and never came home. But tonight, on our seventh anniversary, when Sophie cried over a burst water pipe in her apartment, he slammed on the brakes. "Get out and call an Uber." He abandoned me in the pouring rain and sped off to save her. The first two years had been different. He used to listen. But somewhere along the way, he stopped. For five of the seven years we were together, I had deceived myself, thinking his quick replies meant he was just too busy running the underground city to listen. I couldn't understand how my life-and-death emergencies meant absolutely nothing to him, while her trivial office drama could move the most ruthless man in the city. Realizing his love had died long ago, my heartbreak suddenly vanished, replaced by a chilling sense of relief. I took off my diamond ring, packed a single black suitcase, and blocked him on every network. "William, we are done." I sent my final three-second message, and walked out the door to start a new life.

The ninety-ninth time Jax Little broke my heart was the last time. We were the golden couple of Northgate High, our future perfectly mapped out for UCLA. But in our senior year, he fell for a new girl, Catalina, and our love story became a sick, exhausting dance of his betrayals and my empty threats to leave. At a graduation party, Catalina "accidentally" pulled me into the pool with her. Jax dove in without a second's hesitation. He swam right past me as I struggled, wrapped his arms around Catalina, and pulled her to safety. As he helped her out to the cheers of his friends, he glanced back at me, my body shivering and my mascara running in black rivers. "Your life isn't my problem anymore," he said, his voice as cold as the water I was drowning in. That night, something inside me finally shattered. I went home, opened my laptop, and clicked the button that confirmed my admission. Not to UCLA with him, but to NYU, an entire country away.

For two years, I drained my own blood and emptied my private vaults to brew anti-silver potions, waiting for my mate Caleb to return victorious from the rogue wars. But the day he finally came back, he brought a fragile, sweet-smelling Omega named Lily and publicly rejected me in front of the entire pack. "I, Caleb, reject you, Serena, as my mate." He claimed Lily had risked everything to gather healing herbs to save his life at the border, and he owed her his absolute protection. He looked at my hands, which were covered in tiny, faded scars from forging his winter armor, with nothing but cold, bleak distance. He even allowed this lowly Omega to steal my dead mother's sacred Luna veil for their upcoming mating ceremony, treating my bloodline's legacy like dirt. He truly believed I was just a jealous, bitter woman, completely unaware that every potion and every piece of armor that kept him alive was secretly woven with my blood and my personal crest. Instead of begging or shedding a single tear, I calmly accepted his rejection and picked up the golden-sealed royal decree from the table. "I will accept the royal summons. I will go to the Royal City." I left him to rot with his fake savior, ready to meet the Lycan King and awaken the terrifying power of the hidden White Wolf.

I was the cherished heir of a powerful mafia family, fiercely protected by my brother, the Don, and my fiancé, the family's lethal Enforcer. But on my eighteenth birthday, they publicly framed me for the federal crimes committed by Chloe, a destitute orphan I had sponsored. They stripped me of my title and threw me into the syndicate's subterranean prison. For three months, I endured brutal electrocution and torture. When I was finally released, crippled and starving, I walked into my bedroom only to find my fiancé entangled with Chloe on my sheets. To secure their pity, Chloe faked a suicide attempt. My brother and fiancé dragged me to the clinic, pinning me down to forcefully drain my blood into Chloe as my penance. Even when the doctor exposed my arms, covered in horrific burn scars from the prison, my brother coldly ordered him to continue the transfusion. My heart, already failing from the repeated electrocutions, finally gave out. As my spirit drifted above my lifeless body, I watched the doctor reveal that the blood drain had killed me. I watched them uncover Chloe's bribery of the guards and my final, despairing voice memos. The two most ruthless men in the city fell to their knees, howling in agonizing remorse, begging my corpse for forgiveness. But looking at their tears, I felt absolutely nothing. I smiled, turned my back on their worthless apologies, and stepped into the blinding white light, leaving them to drown in a hell of their own making.

Betrayed by my own uncle for a stack of hundred-dollar bills, I was drugged at the Miami airport and trafficked to a heavily armed mercenary compound in the Darien Gap. Stripped of my dignity, I was scrubbed with industrial bleach and graded as an "A-class asset." I was supposed to be a gift for Axel Sterling, the ruthless warlord who owned the estate, but he took one look at our trembling line and coldly declared he had no interest in women. To vent her frustration, the estate manager, Bea, decided to make my life a living hell. She locked me in a pitch-black solitary cell, starving me for days. She dragged me out only to force me to watch runaway girls get torn apart by massive mastiffs and swamp crocodiles. She wanted me completely broken and begging, a mindless toy ready to submit the moment the warlord returned. Sitting in the freezing mud, covered in blood, I was pushed to the absolute brink of madness. I couldn't understand why I was being kept alive while the others were sold off to the cartels. Was it really just because I had recognized a fake 1792 colonial map in his foyer? When Axel finally returned, Bea shoved me onto the burning asphalt, throwing an oil-stained rag at my face. "Wipe them clean! Or I'll throw you back in the pit!" She hoped my clumsy panic would trigger his extreme OCD and get me killed. But I didn't cry, and I didn't beg. Recalling my university antiquities restoration classes, I treated his mud-caked combat boot like a priceless 16th-century manuscript, perfectly lifting the dirt without a single scratch. The warlord stared at my filthy, battered body, his dead eyes finally sparking with a dark, calculating interest. "Stand up. Come inside."

I was pregnant with the future heir of the Blackwood Pack, but my fated mate, Alpha Gavin, was nowhere to be found when sharp, tearing agony ripped through my swollen belly. Instead of rushing to my side, he was in a luxury penthouse with his mistress, Piper. When I desperately called his human number for help, it was Piper who answered the phone. "I'm Piper. His future Luna." Minutes later, I received a leaked audio file of Gavin promising to formally reject me the moment our pup was born. Before the heartbreak could even set in, my armored SUV was violently rammed off the road by a massive truck. It wasn't an accident. It was a targeted hit paid for by Piper's pack. I woke up in the clinic with an empty womb. My pup was dead. Gavin didn't even show up. He just mind-linked the butler to say he was "too busy" to deal with my loss. He let his mistress murder our child and treated me like disposable trash, assuming my grief would make me a weak, compliant victim. He thought he could just bury my trauma and move on with his perfect new life. He was wrong. I faked my own death in a fiery crash, leaving him with nothing but my signed rejection papers and the bloody receipt proving his mistress hired the killers. Now, armed with a new identity and untraceable wealth, I am stepping out of the shadows. I am going to bankrupt their packs from the inside out and make my former Alpha watch his empire burn.

I woke up in a sterile hospital room with a throbbing head and a memory as blank as the white walls. Before I could even ask who I was, my fiancé, Beckham, stormed in with my sister, Isamar, and ended our engagement with a look of pure disgust. "Stop the act, Chanel," he sneered, accusing me of crashing my car just to hound him for money. "The accident won't save you this time. You're a pathetic gold digger, and you just lost your meal ticket." The nightmare only deepened from there. My own mother disowned me over the phone, freezing my bank accounts and calling me a disgrace for "faking a suicide" just to get Beckham's attention. When I returned to the family estate to reclaim my legal documents, my mother slapped me across the face, and my brother, Liam, tried to beat me, treating me like a common thief in my own home. Left with nothing but a black business card and a debt I couldn't pay, I fled into a rainy night on a stolen ATV. My adrenaline was crashing, and my hands shook on the handlebars as I rounded a sharp, wet curve. I lost control, skidding across the asphalt and smashing head-first into a luxury Maybach. The man who stepped out of the car was none other than Duke Montgomery-the most feared, powerful man in the city, a "disfigured recluse" the tabloids whispered about in hushed tones. I didn't understand why my own blood treated me like trash or why my sister was smirking while I bled in the mud. I was a stranger to my own past, discarded by everyone I was supposed to love, and now I owed a fifty-thousand-dollar repair bill to a man who looked like he could crush me with a single word. But as I looked into Duke's cold, aristocratic eyes, something inside me snapped. I didn't beg for mercy. I stood my ground and offered a high-stakes negotiation. "I will work it off," I told him, stepping into his car and choosing to walk straight into the lion's den to take back the life they stole from me.

For six years, I endured my husband David's family shaming me for my barren womb. I went through countless painful fertility treatments, clinging to his promises that we would one day have a child. Then I saw the picture on his secret social media: David, his arm around my "wellness coach," Briana, her belly round with their "little miracle." The confrontation was a nightmare. Briana shoved me, and I was left bleeding on the floor as David rushed her to the hospital. Later, my own family told me to accept the affair for the sake of my brother's medical bills, which David's family paid. David even slapped me for daring to call Briana a liar. But the true horror came in a message from Briana. She gloated that David had been sabotaging my treatments all along. He had made me believe I was broken, just so he could replace me. My hope turned to ice. I found them celebrating in a hotel suite. As David reached for me, I met his terrified gaze and threw myself down the grand staircase. My life was over, and I was taking them down with me.

My husband, a rising political star, begged me to reconcile. I thought our love story was real. It was a lie, a public spectacle designed for his political gain and my systematic destruction. On our anniversary, I found a group chat on his tablet. He and his mistress were laughing about how predictable I was, calling me a "naive fool" for believing his promises. The cruelty escalated from there. He poisoned my food, publicly humiliated me at a charity auction that left me bankrupt, and even had me whipped in his family's basement as a twisted form of punishment. The final blow came when I overheard him plotting my murder. He planned a "tragic hiking accident" at a remote cliff during a storm, a perfect crime to make me disappear forever. But I turned his murder plot into my own escape. I faked my death and started over as a baker in a quiet town. A year later, he found me, haunted by regret, but his final act of redemption-and the true cost of my freedom-was something I never saw coming.

For ten years, I, Chloe Davis, devoted myself to Ethan Stone, the elusive tech mogul. I poured my life into supporting his ambitions, waiting for the day his guarded heart would finally open. I truly believed that night, at the meticulously planned party, was our moment. Then, Ethan walked in, not alone, but with Serena Vance, his fiancée. The word hit me like a physical blow, tearing through every hope I' d ever held. He then demanded I give him the engagement ring I' d designed, so he could propose to her. He watched, cold and indifferent, as Serena and her friends stripped me naked in the courtyard, humiliating me in front of everyone. I was left exposed, shamed, and utterly heartbroken, as Ethan stood by and did nothing. How could the man I' d given everything to become such a monster? Why did I waste a decade of my life on him? As despair threatened to consume me, a familiar face from my past appeared, a beacon in the darkness. Alex Chen, the quiet boy from my childhood, had come for me. I chose him, breaking free from Ethan' s cruelty and leaving everything behind. But just as I started to heal, I uncovered a shocking truth: Alex' s love was a cage, meticulously built on manipulation and deceit. He had orchestrated my humiliation, using Serena to destroy Ethan, all to claim me. Realizing I was a pawn in an obsessive game, I walked away from them both, determined to reclaim my life. I packed a small bag and vanished, seeking refuge in a remote mountain town, ready to forge a new path where my fate was finally, truly my own.

I was reborn on the day of the Scott Hospitality Innovator's Gauntlet, the air thick with burnt sugar and the scent of my past misery. I won that competition, but instead of the grand prize, I gained a forced marriage to Ryan Scott, grandson of the powerful food empire patriarch. My wedding day turned into a public spectacle when Ryan's socialite "true love" faked a suicide attempt, painting me as the villain who stole her life. Years of icy marriage culminated in a nightmare: Ryan smothered our infant son, believing he was saving his precious Molly from my "theft," then murdered me. My last thought was of my dying father, knowing he'd be next. Now, I'm back, standing at the final challenge of that very competition, but this time, I' m not just winning; I'm orchestrating my freedom.

Six years ago, I fled my hometown and the toxic shadow of my ex, Stella, rebuilding a new life far away with my loving wife, Maria, and our sweet daughter. Returning for my high school reunion felt like a minor obligation, a chapter I thought was long closed. But Stella, ever the master of drama, blindsided me by announcing her engagement to the very man she left me for, using the moment to publicly humiliate me. I retaliated with a calm, pointed gift that shattered her grand announcement, but her obsession only escalated. She ambushed my wife and me, hurled hateful insults at Maria, then shockingly, physically assaulted our innocent five-year-old daughter. A cold rage consumed me as the woman who once broke my heart turned her venom on my family, framing me for assault when I protected my child. Then the anonymous online attacks began, a vicious smear campaign against Maria and me that threatened to destroy everything I had built. Was this simply her desperate revenge, or was there something more sinister behind her relentless malice? I would not let her win; I set a trap, a public reckoning to expose Stella's lies once and for all and reclaim my family's peace.

My life felt like a flawless painting: a thriving art gallery in SoHo, a visa to expand to Paris, and a husband, Ethan, whose grand gestures-even donating a kidney-painted him as the epitome of devotion. But the hushed "whispers even in paradise" I overheard at the French consulate soon materialized into a sickening reality as unfamiliar perfume, a fuchsia lipstick stain, and a pair of lacy thongs pointed to a betrayal within my own home. Ethan' s mistress, Chloe Vance-the unsuspecting Mark's sister and a houseguest who flaunted her presence-was brazen, openly taunting me and daringly sending me explicit videos of their affair, even boasting about being pregnant with his child. The man who once swore eternal love and sacrificed his health for me had meticulously constructed a grotesque pantomime, his every tender touch a suffocating lie designed to gaslight me into insanity. But the agony of betrayal solidified into a chilling resolve: I would not quietly vanish; instead, on our anniversary, I publicly forced Ethan to sign his divorce and transfer his fortune, setting the stage for his dramatic downfall and my own audacious freedom.

My stepmother, Eleanor, was about to ruin my life again, just like before. A cream-colored envelope, sealed with the Vanderbilt crest, landed on our mahogany table like a death sentence. This was it: the nightmare I' d already lived once, revisited. Eleanor' s eyes gleamed as she declared the Vanderbilts wanted an 'alliance' – a marriage for one of us Miller girls. I knew exactly what that meant: I was to be sold off to a powerful dynasty, just like in my previous life. My father, Colonel Miller, was a hero overseas, out of reach, leaving no one to stop Eleanor. They paraded my stepsister, Brie, first. But when she inevitably feigned illness, Eleanor' s gaze landed on me. My stepfamily, always eager to exploit my father's name, expected me to be their dutiful pawn, just as I' d been broken and discarded before. They thought I was the same naive girl, easily manipulated and ready to sacrifice. They were clueless about the searing memories, the clear roadmap of their treachery, I carried. But this time, things would be different. This wasn' t surrender; it was the first move in my own calculated game. I wouldn' t just endure their schemes. I would fight. My foreknowledge was my ultimate weapon, and the game had just begun.

Help! Prince Trevor has died suddenly, and the Queen insists that I be buried with him. Even if I had ten lives to live, it would still be a trap. I can't escape this terrifying cycle of death. Ahhh, I don't want to die again!

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.

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."

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."

My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement. To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia. It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping. But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished. She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug. She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago. The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash. Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name. She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant. I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead. I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye. "Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you." Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth. "Prove it," he growled. I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip.

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 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.

My husband, Don Lorenzo Bianchi, the man who once took ninety-nine lashes for me, had just locked me in a guest room. I was four months pregnant with our child, the heir to his mafia empire. My crime was throwing a glass of wine on his mistress, a woman he had moved into our home. She cornered me in the garden, gloating that once the baby was born, he would give it to her to raise as her own. Later, she shoved me down the grand staircase, then threw herself down after me, screaming to my husband that I had tried to kill her. As I lay in a pool of my own blood, Lorenzo rushed past me, scooping her into his arms and carrying her away without a single backward glance. To force me to apologize, he had my parents brought to my hospital room and brutally whipped until they collapsed at his feet. He was no longer the man who had 999 crystals sewn into my wedding dress. He was a monster who believed every lie she told and punished me for her crimes. How could the man who swore to love me forever become this cruel stranger? But he didn't know the truth. Days before the fall, I had secretly terminated the pregnancy. I took the urn containing our child's ashes, filed for divorce, and disappeared from his world forever.

I was the wife of Dante Cavalli, the most ruthless mafia Don in the country. But today, his Underboss slid mandatory annulment papers across my hospital bed, ordering me to dissolve our marriage. In my past life, I dropped to my knees and begged them not to abandon me. I spent the next thirty years locked in Dante's massive penthouse, waiting for a man who bathed the streets in blood but never gave me a single drop of warmth. My aristocratic mother-in-law stripped me of every cent, leaving me completely isolated. I foolishly threw away a brilliant surgical career to be a submissive, obedient mafia wife. In the end, Dante never came to see me, and I died entirely alone in that massive, empty bed. Until my last breath, my chest was suffocated by a lifetime of regrets. I couldn't understand why I had sacrificed my freedom and my scalpels for a man who would only feel a twisted guilt decades after I was already a cold corpse. Opening my eyes again, Fate had dragged me back to the exact day my nightmare truly began. Matteo stood at the foot of my bed, clearly expecting my usual pathetic tears. "Take your time to think about it." This time, I didn't cry or beg for my life. I just picked up the fountain pen, signed my name, and walked out to reclaim the scalpel I had abandoned.

She went to lose her virginity to her boyfriend... But woke up in his father's bed. Now, Isabella is trapped between two dangerous men- one who thinks he owns her... and one who refuses to let her go. Secrets. Desire. Betrayal. And a Mafia King who never shares what's his.

I was tracing the gold paint on my own tombstone when a hand tapped me on the shoulder. It was Clayton. The same man who, five years ago, had left me bleeding out in a ditch because he didn't want to be late for my sister's engagement party. "Die quietly, Ivy," he had said over the phone before hanging up. Now, standing over my grave, he dropped his cheap plastic flowers in shock. "Ivy? You're... we buried you." They hadn't buried me. They had buried an empty box to save face, mourning a "troubled" daughter they had actually discarded like broken trash the moment I became a liability. Clayton's shock quickly turned to that familiar, arrogant anger. He accused me of faking my death for attention. He told me I was sick for putting the family through such pain. He even reached out to grab my arm, intending to drag me back to my father to apologize. "You're coming with me," he spat. "You owe us an explanation." But he made a fatal mistake. He thought he was talking to Ivy Dillard, the soft girl who cried when she skinned her knees. He didn't notice the town car waiting at the curb, or the man stepping out of it. Before Clayton's fingers could graze my coat, a hand made of steel caught his wrist. Collin Richardson, the most feared Capo in Chicago, stepped between us. "Touch my wife again," Collin whispered, his voice promising violence. "And you lose the hand." I smiled at the terror draining the color from Clayton's face. I didn't come back from the dead to explain myself. I came back to bury them.