Elisha Plasket

I sat at the head of the mahogany table, the heavy heirloom emeralds around my neck marking me as the future Queen of the Cosa Nostra. But the man beside me—Jax Viles, the most feared Don in New York—had his hand resting possessively on the thigh of the woman sitting to his right. She wasn't his fiancée. I was. The humiliation didn't stop at dinner. Jax moved her into my home, turned my dance studio into her closet, and when she pushed me down a flight of stairs, he stepped over my broken body to comfort her because she was "shaken up." He started a bloody gang war just to defend her honor, yet ignored my desperate calls warning him of an ambush. To him, I wasn't a partner. I was furniture—a fixture that was expected to be silent and useful. He would burn the world to ash for her, but for me, he wouldn't even skip a meeting. So, while he was out celebrating his victory for her, I didn't wait for him to come home. I left the engagement ring in the trash can next to the toilet. On his desk, I left a single note: "I release you from the oath. I hope she's worth the war." By the time he realized his mistake and came looking for his shadow, I was already gone, ready to become the Queen of my own life.

For seventeen years, I was the Falcone family's Mafia Princess. Then a DNA test declared me a bastard orphan. My father stripped my title. My sister stole my savings. They framed me, kicked me through glass, and left me bleeding in the dirt. When I was handed to a slum thug to be destroyed, my fever hit 104. I heard Carlo Falcone's voice over the phone: "Let her rot." I jumped from a fifth-floor window into the freezing night. I survived. Now I'm not coming back as their discarded stray. I'm coming back as the queen of their deadliest enemy. And the Falcones are about to learn: You don't break a girl who has already fallen from the sky.

I was locked in a freezing, bleach-scented asylum basement, my vocal cords ruined and my face chemically melted. My step-sister Seraphina and my ex-lover Ethan walked in, but they didn't come to save me. Seraphina forced a mirror to my face so I could see my own disfigured reflection. "Your shares have been transferred to me," she whispered with a sickening smile. Then she revealed the horrifying truth: she and her mother had orchestrated my mother's death and suffocated my beloved grandfather to steal his inheritance. When I lunged at her in pure agony, Ethan shielded her and delivered a brutal kick to my ribs. He grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head against the solid concrete wall with all his might. As my vision swam with dark spots, I couldn't understand why my own father had sold me out to protect his wealth. Why did the man I once loved treat me like a diseased rat while he fed on my family's corpses? With my dying breath, I mentally cursed them to the deepest pits of hell. Opening my eyes again, the blinding light of a crystal chandelier stabbed my pupils. I was standing at my eighteenth birthday gala, unscarred and whole. Seraphina was smiling sweetly, handing me a diamond-encrusted watch secretly implanted with a military-grade GPS tracker. This time, blood would pay for blood.

I am the last surviving daughter of a murdered Mafia Don, kept as a captive trophy by Julian Moretti. To break my spirit, he systematically drugged my meals, turning me into a ghost in his gilded cage. But the true nightmare began when he brought his childhood sweetheart, Linette, to live under the same roof. When she pushed me into the estate's frozen lake and fell in with me, Julian didn't hesitate. He dove into the freezing black water, looked right into my desperate eyes, and turned his back to save her. He left me to drown. I survived the icy abyss, only to face a crueler fate. To cover up his betrayal and secure his power, Julian announced our immediate wedding, planning to parade me before the Mafia Commission as his conquered property. When I swallowed poison to escape the ultimate desecration of my family's name, he simply revived me. He pumped my veins full of paralyzing sedatives, dressed my limp body like a porcelain doll, and dragged me onto his private jet to New York. "They will see that even a proud, wounded lioness can only whimper at my feet." My father and brother had used their own bodies as shields so I could live. How could I let my family's honor be trampled by the very monster who orchestrated their massacre? As the plane descended into New York, the despair in my veins forged into cold steel. If Julian wanted a Marino bride, I would give him exactly what that meant. I would survive this forced marriage, and I would personally slit his throat at the altar.

I was the Lycan King's political wife, universally despised as a "wolfless Omega" freak. When my husband, Kingsley, was poisoned with a lethal dose of silver at a pack gala, I disguised my scent and risked everything to drag him to safety. But instead of recognizing his mate, he threw me to the wolves. He spent weeks tearing the city apart to find his "mysterious savior," while treating me like a sickening disease. "Stay out of my sight. You reek of sickness." He spat those words at me, completely blind to the fact that the scent he hated was the bleach I used to hide my tracks. Meanwhile, my abusive family publicly humiliated me, auctioning off my mother's grave to my worst enemy while Kingsley just watched in disgust. I endured his icy glares and their venomous insults in silence. They all thought I was just a pathetic, empty shell they could crush. They didn't know I was "The Zero"—the phantom hacker currently bleeding their financial empires dry. At the grand auction, I finally dropped the act. I wiped out my enemy's fortune with a single keystroke, bought my mother's land, and traded it to the Elders for my absolute freedom. Now, as the auction screens bleed red, Kingsley is staring at me with dark, consuming shock. He finally realizes the lethal monster he’s been hunting was his submissive wife all along.

My husband locked me in a glass cage in the center of the ballroom, announcing to the elite of the pack that my father was dead. While his assistant, Debra, draped herself over him, Austen turned the thermostat down until industrial coolant pumped into my prison. I was eight months pregnant with his heir, begging for mercy, but he only raised a champagne glass to his new "Nolan Pack." To prove my submission, he ordered warriors to douse me in ice water laced with silver and wolfsbane. The chemicals burned my skin, but the cold killed my unborn son. As I lay in a pool of frozen red blood, watching the life fade from my womb, Austen finally panicked—not for me, but for his reputation. My father, the Supreme Alpha, wasn't dead. He tore the doors off their hinges to save me, but it was too late for the baby. Waking up in the hospital, empty and broken, I listened to Austen beg not for forgiveness, but for a cover-up to save the stock price. "We can just make another one," he said, dismissing my dead son like a broken toy. That was the moment the weak, loving wife died. I stood up, my eyes glowing with the ancient silver light of the White Wolf. I didn't just divorce him. I used the Alpha Voice to sever our bond, stripping him of his rank, his sanity, and his name. Now, I am the Queen of the Winter Moon Pack.

He called me his wild rose, the foster kid he rescued from the streets. He built me a gilded cage and told me it was love. Then I saw the text: my best friend, Karis, showing off the engagement ring he' d just given her. I rushed to his office, only to overhear the truth. I was just a "placeholder," a "stray he picked up," a useful toy to keep his family happy while he planned his real future with her. He laughed about how easily he could control me. "A little gaslighting, a few well-placed gifts, and she'll be back where she belongs. Under my thumb." His final act of love? Drugging me and handing me over to a monster, sacrificing me as a "body double" to protect his precious Karis. He thought I was just a broken foster kid with nowhere to go. He thought he could erase me. He was wrong. As the private jet he put me on exploded over the ocean, I was already gone-saved by the powerful family I never knew I had. Now, I'm coming back, and they will pay for every single lie.

He always called me his little bird. For six years, since my parents died in that tragic fire, my uncle Michael Davies was my world. He promised to protect me, to give me a gilded cage where I could feel safe. But on the eve of my 18th birthday, that gilded cage became a prison. I overheard him in his study, a phone call that shattered my entire existence. He was talking to Emily White, his ex-fiancée, the woman he truly loved. And in that chilling conversation, I learned the truth. My "savior" had orchestrated a monstrous plan: he was going to auction me off at my own birthday party. And Emily, the woman he swore he loved, revealed she was the one who set the fire that killed my parents. My uncle knew. He' d known all along. Every sweet word, every gentle touch, every act of supposed kindness was a lie designed to keep me a pawn in his twisted game of revenge. I was just a substitute, a cheap copy of the woman he truly desired. The pain was unbearable, a betrayal so profound it left me gasping for air. But the girl who loved Michael Davies died in that hallway. A new Sarah was born, cold, hard, and desperate to escape. I would not be his victim. I would not be their entertainment. I would survive this. My only escape was a desperate plea to his grandfather: arranging a marriage to a comatose man, miles away. It felt like a desolate choice, a sacrifice for freedom. But it was my only hope. I had to get out.

One month before my wedding, a text from an unknown number shattered my perfect world. It was a photo: Chloe' s hand, unmistakably, holding a positive pregnancy test, with a single, chilling line of text: "Congrats on being a dad. Or, stepdad, I guess. - Jake." My fiancée, Chloe, didn't deny it. She laughed, casually admitting she only agreed to marry me to make her ex-boyfriend, Jake, jealous. Every memory, every tender moment, twisted into a cruel performance. I stood there, surrounded by wedding invitations, realization dawning: I wasn' t a partner; I was a prop in her twisted game, about to become a convenient father for another man' s child. The woman I adored had meticulously built our future on a foundation of calculated lies. The betrayal was total, tearing through my very core. How could I have been so blind, so foolishly tethered to a ghost? The humiliation burned. I tore the wedding invitation in half and told her I was done, disappearing from her life. I packed my bags, leaving the broken pieces of my past behind, and headed to the farthest, coldest corner of the Earth: the Arctic, determined to freeze her out of my soul and rebuild a life she could never touch.

Havenwood, Maine, was a town owned by the Thorne family, but their ancient mansion held an even darker grip through a chilling tradition. Each new Thorne bride spent her wedding night alone in the windowless Founder's Study, a tradition that consistently ended in death, just like my sister Sarah's eight years ago. Police ruled Sarah's brutal throat-slitting a "suicide," a convenient lie swiftly followed by seven more inexplicable deaths of Julian Thorne's brides in the very same room. No one believed Sarah could do that, nor could the champion swimmer who supposedly drowned herself in a tiny basin, yet my father succumbed to the narrative, claiming we couldn't fight the powerful Thornes. But I refused to let it go, spending eight years mastering forensic psychology, and now I'm back in Havenwood, declaring to a stunned town and a resigned Julian: "I will be his ninth bride."

I sacrificed everything for her. My top-tier university scholarship, my architectural dreams, all to work for her father' s firm, playing the perfect, accommodating husband to Chloe for five long years. One Tuesday, curiosity led my hand to unlock an ornate wooden box on her vanity, a box she claimed held precious family heirlooms. Inside, there was no jewelry. Only a discreet urn and two receipts: one for a D&C procedure, the other for cremation. My blood ran cold when I saw the 'father' s name' wasn't mine. It was Leo, the musician she' d painted as a crazed stalker, the man I' d served a restraining order to protect her from. That restraining order, my very act of protection, wasn't a deterrent to their affair; it was the ultimate foreplay, according to a recording I later heard. Her family dismissed my pain, my father-in-law openly favored Leo, even hiring him to work alongside me. But the true breaking point came when Chloe watched, impassively, as I thrashed in a cold lake, struggling to breathe after she pushed me in. She walked away, leaving me to drown. The love I had for her didn't just die; it was extinguished, replaced by a chilling void. It wasn't about anger or sadness anymore, but an utter sense of betrayal that twisted my entire reality. And that's when the plan began to form. A cold, precise design to give them the "legacy" they truly deserved, on the biggest stage of all: the dedication ceremony of the skyscraper I designed.

It began innocently enough. My high school roommate, Jessica, needed a place to stay during a break, just as my older brother, David, was prepping for his SATs, his ticket to an Ivy League dream. My trusting parents welcomed her into our home. Then, the nightmare struck. A scream in the night. Jessica, teary-eyed, accused David of something unspeakable-a monstrous, venomous lie. That lie didn' t just stick; it decimated us. David's scores plunged, his dreams shattered, expelled from school. He found a dead-end job, then an accident claimed his life. Our parents, heartbroken, soon followed. And Jessica? She remained, a parasite feeding on our grief, playing the survivor while I simmered with impotent rage until everything ended in fire. The memory was a raw, bleeding wound-the profound injustice, the agony of watching my family crumble from a fabrication. Why did it have to end like that? Why couldn't I have seen through her sweet facade sooner? But then, I gasped awake, sunlight streaming through my familiar window. The calendar showed the exact date. Downstairs, I heard her voice: Jessica' s. I was back. This wasn't a dream. This was a second chance, a fierce, burning clarity-a chance to save David, my parents, and myself, and to dismantle Jessica' s wicked game, piece by deceitful piece.

The bright town fair turned dark when my ten-year-old daughter Lily, clutching her voice recorder, was tormented by Brandon, my ex-husband' s girlfriend' s son. When he shoved her, my defensive slap echoed, breaking my world. That protective act was instantly weaponized by Mark' s manipulative partner, Victoria. Convinced I was "unhinged," my ex-husband Mark swiftly sent us to "Tranquil Pathways Youth Academy" -a grim place, more prison than therapy. Inside, I was systematically drugged, shamed, and isolated. They promised Lily' s well-being hinged on my "compliance" while she vanished into a "specialized unit." To Mark, I was painted as psychotic, my desperate pleas dismissed, yet my mother's intuition screamed betrayal. The injustice and helplessness maddened me. My ex-husband had abandoned us, believing their lies. Lily was gone, somewhere in those cold walls, and I was being stripped of my mind, consumed by fear for her. Months later, Mark arrived, finally doubting. Through my drugged stupor, chilling clarity led him to a hidden floorboard in my desolate room. There, beside Lily' s lifeless body, was her cherished recorder-holding the undeniable truth, and igniting a cold, unyielding vengeance within me.

Richard is only a year older than me, but he has always used his status as my older brother to pressure me. When we were kids, he would scold me for skipping class, and as we grew up, he would still interfere in my love life. My friends joked, "Your brother can't possibly like you, right? You two aren't even real siblings." Since then, I deliberately distanced myself from him, but during the New Year, he suddenly brought home a girl. "Tricia, call her sister-in-law." That night, I locked myself in my room and cried uncontrollably. He pulled me out from under the covers and gently wiped away my tears. "You're allowed to make me mad by dating a boyfriend, but I can't be upset with you?"

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 watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

I was the 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.

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 a Vitiello, sold to the Morettis to secure an alliance. For five years, I quietly loved Dante, counting down the minutes until our wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral. But it ended with a single text three minutes before the ceremony. "Stay at the apartment. Sofia is awake. Don't make a scene." His ex-girlfriend, the love of his life, had woken from a coma with no memory. Just like that, I was erased. For thirty days, I waited in the shadows while Dante played hero to a woman who didn't remember him. He told me he was protecting her fragile mind. But then I found the truth. I stood outside the doctor's office and heard Dante refuse a treatment that would restore Sofia's memory. "If she remembers, she might leave again," Dante told the doctor. "Elena will wait. She's a good soldier. Let me have my fantasy." He wasn't protecting her. He was keeping her broken to feed his ego, banking on my submission. He thought I was furniture he could put in storage. He was wrong. I didn't go back to the apartment. Instead, I dialed a number every made man in New York feared. "Matteo," I said to Dante's lethal older brother, the King of the underworld. "I am done waiting. I want to be a Moretti bride. But not Dante's."

For five years, I lived a beautiful lie. I was Aliana Hughes, the cherished wife of the city's most feared Mafia Capo and the beloved daughter of the Don. I believed my arranged marriage had blossomed into love. On my birthday, my husband promised me the amusement park. Instead, I found him there with his other family, celebrating the fifth birthday of the son I never knew he had. I overheard their plan. My husband called me a "naive fool," a placeholder to legitimize his secret son. The ultimate betrayal wasn't his affair, but the sight of my own father's car parked across the street. My family wasn't just aware; they were the architects of my ruin. Back home, I found the proof: a secret photo album of my husband's other family posing with my parents, and records showing my father had bankrolled the entire deception. They had even drugged me on weekends so he could play happy family. The grief didn't break me. It turned into something cold and sharp. I was a ghost in a life that was never mine, and a ghost has nothing to lose. I copied every damning file onto a USB drive. As they celebrated their perfect day, I sent a courier with my parting gift: a recording of their treachery. While their world burned, I walked toward the airport, ready to erase myself and start over.

My marriage to Joshua Caldwell was a prison sentence. I was a Hartman trophy, sold to the powerful family who had destroyed mine. Then I discovered he was cheating. His mistress was pregnant with the child he denied me, and he was stealing my secret song lyrics to build her career. When I confronted him, he called me a spineless liability and threatened to destroy what was left of my family. To make matters worse, a one-night stand with a stranger turned out to be with my husband's brother, Anthony Caldwell-the Don of the city. He knew all of Joshua's secrets and used them to trap me in a twisted game, seeing me as nothing more than an asset. They both thought I was a broken doll they could control. I wrote a song for his mistress, a beautiful execution with a single, impossible note I knew would destroy her voice. She sang it, and now her career is over. Now the Don has summoned me to Chicago, not knowing the woman he thinks is his asset is the one who just burned his brother's world to the ground.

I sat at the head of the mahogany table, the heavy heirloom emeralds around my neck marking me as the future Queen of the Cosa Nostra. But the man beside me—Jax Viles, the most feared Don in New York—had his hand resting possessively on the thigh of the woman sitting to his right. She wasn't his fiancée. I was. The humiliation didn't stop at dinner. Jax moved her into my home, turned my dance studio into her closet, and when she pushed me down a flight of stairs, he stepped over my broken body to comfort her because she was "shaken up." He started a bloody gang war just to defend her honor, yet ignored my desperate calls warning him of an ambush. To him, I wasn't a partner. I was furniture—a fixture that was expected to be silent and useful. He would burn the world to ash for her, but for me, he wouldn't even skip a meeting. So, while he was out celebrating his victory for her, I didn't wait for him to come home. I left the engagement ring in the trash can next to the toilet. On his desk, I left a single note: "I release you from the oath. I hope she's worth the war." By the time he realized his mistake and came looking for his shadow, I was already gone, ready to become the Queen of my own life.

The Crimson Throne By Eva Obrien In a world where loyalty is lethal and love is a weakness, she must choose between vengeance and survival. When Adriana De Luca's father-the powerful leader of the De Luca crime family-is assassinated, she is left with two options: run and die in hiding or fight to claim the throne that was never meant for her. But in the ruthless world of the mafia, power is taken, not given. To secure her survival, she is forced into an arranged marriage with Lorenzo "Enzo" Moretti, a feared and merciless mafia kingpin who trusts no one. Their union is meant to bring peace between warring families, but when hidden enemies start striking from the shadows, Adriana realizes the real threat isn't outside-it's within. As betrayals unfold and a war erupts, Adriana must decide: ✔ Trust the man she was forced to marry, or destroy him before he destroys her. ✔ Hunt down her father's killer, or become the next target. ✔ Rule with blood, or risk being buried by it. In a game where love is dangerous and power is deadly, will she survive long enough to take what's hers?

I was the wife of Brennan Johnson, the head of the Sterling Syndicate. For years, I was the perfect partner, helping him climb from a young enforcer to the undisputed boss, believing he was the man who had once saved my life and promised to protect me forever. That illusion shattered when I overheard him promising that same protection to a young art student he was sleeping with. When I confronted him, he called me tainted and complicated. When I asked for a divorce, he cut my cheek with shattered glass and snarled that I belonged to him. He publicly gave my foundation and a necklace meant for me to his mistress, declaring her his "one and only" in front of the entire city. The ultimate betrayal came when we were both kidnapped. The kidnappers held a knife to each of our throats and told him to choose. He looked at me, his wife, and said, "I choose her." He abandoned me to be assaulted and killed, walking away with his new love without a backward glance. But I didn't die. An old family loyalist saved me. I faked my death, escaped the country, and built a new life from the ashes of the old one. I was finally free. Until tonight, when he walked into my restaurant, a ghost from a life I had buried. He found me. And he wants me back.