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.

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?"

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Becoming a bride to settle a debt was never part of my dreams. Yet, my stepbrother's betrayal and a trap party turned my life upside down, shattering my illusions of a joyful marriage. Now, I'm faced with the harsh reality of being married to a ruthless Mafia boss, Alessio Marino. Can I trust his promises, or will my situation be worse than the abuse I endured from my stepbrother? With love stripped from my wedding vows, all I can do is cling to hope for God's mercy and summon the strength to navigate this perilous new life.

At my boyfriend's poorest moment, I suddenly broke up with him. Later, he became a Don in the Mafia and married me by any means necessary. Everyone said he loved me to the bone. But every night, he brought different women home, deliberately trying to provoke me. I asked no questions, shed no tears, and never disturbed his trysts with his mistresses. He went crazy with rage instead, kissing me fiercely and demanding, "Why aren't you jealous?" He didn't know I was sick. Dying. While he was furiously taking his revenge on me, I was slowly walking toward death.

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.

Andrew Hebert, the man who promised to protect me, stood on a stage and announced his engagement to my tormentor. It wasn't just heartbreak; it was a business deal. He was selling me to a creditor to cover his gambling debts. The applause of the powerful families was a death sentence, each clap sealing my fate as collateral. Andrew had paraded me here just to show everyone I was an asset to be liquidated, while his new fiancée smirked at me from the stage. I was trapped, with no money and no one to turn to. The man I loved was leading me to the slaughter. But as I fled into the library, a voice emerged from the shadows, deep and dangerous. Damien Maddox. The Dark Don. The only man Andrew feared. He offered me a different kind of cage, one with the power to burn Andrew's world to the ground. With nothing left to lose, I looked the devil in the eyes. "Take me with you."

On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news. He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city. The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.” For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets. My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me. So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts. He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked. He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree. He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies.

I watched my husband, the most feared Capo in New York, sign away our marriage with the same cold indifference he usually reserved for ordering a hit. The nib of his Montblanc pen scratched against the paper, drowning out the rain hitting the coffee shop window. He didn't bother to read a single word. He thought he was signing routine shipping manifests for the family business. In reality, he was signing the "Dissolution of Union" papers I had hidden beneath the cover sheet. He was too distracted to check. His eyes were glued to his encrypted phone, frantically texting Sofia—the widow, the tragic beauty, the woman who had haunted our marriage for three years. "Done," he grunted, tossing the stack into his armored SUV without even glancing at me. "Business is concluded, Elena. We leave." Moments later, his phone rang with her special emergency tone. His demeanor shifted from cold boss to frantic protector instantly. "Driver, divert. She needs me," he roared. He looked at me with zero affection and ordered, "Get out, Elena. Luca will take you home." He kicked me out of the car into the pouring rain to rush to his mistress, completely unaware he had just legally granted me my freedom. I stood on the curb, shivering but smiling for the first time in years. By the time the Don realizes he just signed his own divorce, I will be a ghost in San Francisco. And he will have nothing left but his shipping logs and his regret.

My grandfather sold me to a man named Maverick to settle his gambling debts. I stood on the private platform at Union Station, a human payment waiting to be collected. But he never came. An hour later, his assistant called to say the deal was off. I was told to disappear by morning or face the consequences. My family blamed me for their ruin and threw me out onto the street. Homeless and disowned, I had no choice but to take a low-level job at Prosperity Group, the biggest investment firm in Chicago. I needed to survive. I never understood why he rejected me. I had followed every rule, worn the red dress he demanded, and waited like a lamb for slaughter. Why would he agree to save my family only to destroy us at the last second? On my first day, I was called into the CEO's office. The man behind the desk was Damien Maddox, the city's most ruthless billionaire. He looked at me with a chilling familiarity. He was the man who had bought me. And he was the man who had thrown me away.

I replaced my twin sister in a marriage contract to the ruthless Mafia Don, Donovan Blackwood. For three years, I was a ghost in his home, silently enduring his coldness while he flaunted his mistress, Chloe. On the very last day of our contract, Chloe staged an accident. Donovan didn't hesitate. He forced me to drain my blood to save her life. Then, to prove his loyalty to her, he drove me to the cliffs and pushed me into the freezing ocean. He even locked me in a cellar infested with spiders—my deepest phobia—because she lied and said I threatened her. He thought he was punishing the spoiled, arrogant Isabella. He didn't know he was breaking Ava, the woman who had silently memorized his allergies and waited up for him in the dark every single night. When I finally took my fifty million dollars and vanished, I left behind nothing but the divorce papers and a photo revealing the truth. He tore the city apart, destroying my family to find me, only to realize he had tortured the wrong woman. Now, he is standing on my porch in the pouring rain, staring in horror at the simple wooden ring on my finger given to me by another man. He falls to his knees, begging for a chance to love the wife he tried to destroy. I look at him, feeling absolutely nothing. "It's too late, Donovan," I say, locking the door. "You killed her."