Grey Pen

I found out my husband of three years had cheated on me and his mistress is the one who told me-because he didn't have the balls to do it himself. I move out and get a new apartment, a job as a bartender, and try to move on with a broken heart. I wonder where it all went wrong, if I hadn't been enough for him, if I'd been stupid for marrying him in the first place. I'm at work one night when he walks inside-the most beautiful man I've ever seen. He sits at the bar and a forest fire burns between us. I was depressed the moment before he entered, but the second I look at his blue eyes, I forget the dumpster fire that my life has become. I invite him back to my place and it's the most passionate night of my life. I expect to never see him again. I just want him as an anti-depressant-but he wants me all to himself. I just got my heart ripped out of my chest so I want something easy and no-strings-attached, but he wants all the strings because he's hooked. I don't get much of a say in the matter, and that's not surprising when I learn why-because he's the Butcher. The crime lord of all crime lords, the boss that overshadows all of Paris, that makes everyone abide by his rules-or pay. And now I'm his.

He wants to save her. She wants to hide. She's damaged. He's determined. Fate brought them together. Love binds them. Johnny Kavanagh is the definition of popular. He is an all-star rugby player with loads of friends, which means he should be enjoying the many perks of his life. But what people don't know is that he has been dealing with a painful injury that could halt the magnificent trajectory of his career. This means he has no time for distractions or mistakes. Especially not a girlfriend. Shannon Lynch has been bullied all her life. She is shy and would rather hide herself away to make it through school. But when she arrives at Tommen College for a fresh start, she meets the notorious Johnny Kavanagh on her first day in a not-so-romantic way. What follows is a complicated friendship that turns into undeniable chemistry. It seems that Shannon won't be able to hold onto the anonymous status she once hoped for. But maybe that's alright? Johnny won't give up on Shannon. No matter what it might cost them both.

He wants to save her. She wants to hide. She's damaged. He's determined. Fate brought them together. Love binds them. Johnny Kavanagh is the definition of popular. He is an all-star rugby player with loads of friends, which means he should be enjoying the many perks of his life. But what people don't know is that he has been dealing with a painful injury that could halt the magnificent trajectory of his career. This means he has no time for distractions or mistakes. Especially not a girlfriend. Shannon Lynch has been bullied all her life. She is shy and would rather hide herself away to make it through school. But when she arrives at Tommen College for a fresh start, she meets the notorious Johnny Kavanagh on her first day in a not-so-romantic way. What follows is a complicated friendship that turns into undeniable chemistry. It seems that Shannon won't be able to hold onto the anonymous status she once hoped for. But maybe that's alright? Johnny won't give up on Shannon. No matter what it might cost them both.

I'm not the type of girl who picks up a man on a rooftop bar. Not the kind of girl who lets a man's hands roam my body, discovering I have no panties on. Never the girl who has hours' worth of o's from a smoking-hot one-night stand. But Dominick makes it so easy to say yes. His body, his moves, and his oh-so-wicked tongue have me saying it over and over again. Yes, please. Yes, more. Yes, right there. He worships every inch of my body, and I'm still sore the next morning when I meet him again. This time, he's Mr. Dalton, my sister's cutthroat entertainment lawyer. And he has a proposition for me. He wants to make me famous. Of course, that means sharing a screen with my wildly jealous sister. It means giving up my career. It means the whole world will suddenly know everything about me. Which presents one catastrophic problem-Dominick doesn't date famous people. So, do I take a chance at becoming a Hollywood star, or do I pass up the opportunity to be with the man who gave me a taste of forever?

He is powerful, older and my boss, a lethal combination. Job satisfaction has taken on a whole new meaning. When I lied on my resume, I didn't expect it to matter. I mean any child would love me; I was born to be a nanny. I applied for a position working for a woman, or so I thought. But Julian Masters is definitely all man...the kind you dream of licking chocolate from. The first day was bad. The kids were the spawn of the devil and I spied through a window and caught him doing something obscene.... and equally fascinating. The second day was worse, he caught me snooping in his bathroom cabinet in my skimpy pyjamas and all hell broke loose. On the third day, I ran over him in a golf cart. And by day four I had decided that I wanted that chocolate...all of it. Melted....on me. But intelligent, widowed Judges don't fall for ditzy nannies. Or do they?

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 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.

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.

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."

My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent. But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress. Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes. "If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you." To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife. When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala. He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent. He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters. He thought he had broken me. He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage. But he made a fatal error. He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign. They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me. And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck. I didn't jump to die. I jumped to be reborn. And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin.

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 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.

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

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."