H-pen

Penelope Lorenzo, a woman who'd just lost everything and in utter shambles. She had never imagined that life would bring her to this point. Brayden Giovanni, the big, masked mafia who shouldn't be trifled with. Billionaire by day and Don by night. Thrust in each other's worlds by circumstances beyond their control and some that seemed to be in his control. But with danger lurking from their forgotten pasts, including a serial killer on the loose, choices must be made or consequences abound. What happens when their cocoon is threatened by forces they can't seem to identify? What happens when she leaves after unraveling his secrets and almost gets trafficked? Will she embrace he who would raze the underworld for her or will she leave with the fruit of their passion?

I was the most loyal wife of Alessandro, the coldest and most ruthless mafia godfather of the underworld. Three years ago, my husband's pregnant mistress, Valentina, framed me. She claimed that I had killed her unborn child, and my husband believed her without a moment's hesitation. Only because the old Matriarch of the mafia had saved my life seven years ago — and because I owed her that so-called "debt of life" — I gritted my teeth and agreed to serve as the mistress's shield under the banner of the legitimate wife, until her new child was safely delivered. At the banquet, the society ladies sneered at me: "The mighty Mafia Dona, reduced to the mistress's personal nanny." When Valentina demanded the silver pendant my parents had left me, he merely ordered flatly: "It's just a necklace. What is all this fuss about?" His voice was cold to the core. He believed he had long since crushed every ounce of pride I had. But he never knew that the life debt I was repaying had nothing to do with him. The moment that bastard child was born, my account with the Cavallaro family would be settled in full. I slapped the divorce papers down on his desk and blocked his number. Without looking back, I boarded a one-way flight to Europe. I was going to take back an empire of my own.

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."

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.

Catherine loved Marco with all her heart. Until she discovered that he had betrayed her with her own sister. Instead of defending Catherine, her family blamed her for standing in the way of their happiness. To them, she was nothing more than an unwanted daughter who had ruined the love story between Marco and the sister they had always favored. So Catherine gave them exactly what they wanted. She gave up Marco. She gave up the family that had never truly seen her as one of their own. Just when she thought her life couldn't get any worse, her parents sold her for twenty thousand dollars to an old, ugly man who had already been married once. Catherine thought her life was over. Then a stranger appeared and offered her a way out. His name was Lorenzo. He offered Catherine a contract marriage. He needed a wife. She needed protection. It seemed like a simple arrangement, and Catherine never expected it to change her life forever.Because she didn't know who Lorenzo really was. To the world, Lorenzo was a ruthless billionaire and the heir to one of the country's most powerful business empires. Behind closed doors, he was far more dangerous. He was the heir to a Mafia dynasty, a man who controlled an empire built on blood, fear, and absolute power. When Lorenzo offered Catherine a marriage of convenience, she accepted without hesitation. He needed a wife. She needed protection. Neither of them wanted love. At least, that was what they told themselves. But after Catherine became Mrs. Romano, Lorenzo's rules began to change. He wanted to know where she went, who she spoke to, and which man dared look at her for too long. The more Catherine tried to keep their marriage strictly business, the more possessive Lorenzo became. He no longer wanted a temporary wife. He wanted Catherine completely. Then Marco finally realized he had made the biggest mistake of his life and came back for her. He expected Catherine to still be the woman who waited for him, forgave him, and accepted whatever affection he was willing to offer. But Catherine was no longer that woman. The daughter her family discarded had become the wife of the most dangerous man in the underworld. And Lorenzo Romano would burn the world down before he let anyone take his wife away.

Camille Laurent was stolen at birth. Swapped by a greedy nanny, abandoned without a second thought, and erased from her rightful place in one of the most powerful families in the country. While the real heiress struggled to survive, the nanny's daughter, Talia, was raised in luxury as the beloved jewel of the Laurent family, pampered by Camille's parents, adored by her three brothers, and even promised to the prestigious Matteo Devereux through a childhood engagement arranged by their grandparents. Then the truth came out. Six months ago, Camille was finally brought back to the Laurent family. To protect the family reputation and prove their devotion to their bloodline, the Laurent patriarch transferred 35% of his personal shares into Camille's name overnight, instantly making her one of the wealthiest heiresses in the country. It brought anxiety to all the Laurent family. But what they don't know.is that Camille never needed them. Behind her elegant smile lies a woman filled with secrets powerful enough to shake the whole family. She's a miraculous healer capable of curing the incurable poisons. Yet despite everything, her family still chooses Talia. Every accusation against Talia is forgiven. Every scheme against Camille is brushed aside. Even Matteo, the man who was supposed to be Camille's fiancé-cannot let go of the woman he always believed belonged by his side. But while the Laurent family underestimates Camille, another man begins to see exactly who she is. Dante Moretti. The ruthless heir of an old-money dynasty. A billionaire CEO worshipped by the public.and the merciless king of a criminal empire hidden beneath the city's glittering surface. When Dante is poisoned by a rival syndicate with a deadly toxin no doctor can cure, he offers a fortune for anyone who can save him. Only Camille can. Their deal is simple: she becomes his personal physician, and he gives her anything she wants.

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

On our wedding day, my brother made a joke. "For every minute the groom is late, he pays five hundred dollars!" Enzo, the city's most feared mafia Don, was six minutes late. He laughed and handed over three thousand dollars in cash without blinking. Seeing his generosity, my father confidently entrusted my life to him. But the moment the wedding ring was on my finger, Enzo looked at me with a dark, chilling smile. "Your family likes this game, right?" he whispered coldly. "From now on, every minute you are late, I deduct five hundred dollars from your allowance." Year one: I was three minutes late to a Syndicate dinner. He deducted fifteen hundred dollars. Year two: I was twelve minutes late to my doctor's appointment. He deducted six thousand dollars. Year four: On our anniversary, my father suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. I rushed him to the hospital in the pouring rain and arrived at the restaurant forty minutes late. Enzo glanced at the cold steak on the table and smirked. "Twenty thousand dollars. It comes out of your account tomorrow." I didn't argue. I just nodded. When we got home, he carelessly tossed his tablet to me, asking me to check the parking fee. But the moment the screen unlocked, a new notification popped up. [Transferred $5,000 to Valentina. Memo: An apology for making you wait ten minutes.] My hands trembled as I opened his chat history. When she was one minute late for their date, he sent her five hundred dollars. When she didn't show up at the hotel, he wired her ten thousand to coax her. And this very afternoon, while I was begging the doctors to save my dying father, Enzo was in a luxury suite, paying his mistress an apology fee. Scrolling up, I found over a thousand transactions for custom lingerie and luxury hotels, dating back six years. He had been with her two years before he even married me. The next morning, I wired him the exact twenty thousand dollars for my anniversary fine. Then, I booked a Syndicate severance lawyer.

I was happily pregnant through IVF, thinking I had finally built a perfect life with my billionaire husband, Dante. Then, an anonymous photo led me to a hidden drawer in his study, where I found a vasectomy confirmation dated a full year before we even started trying for a baby. My world shattered when I went to his office for answers and overheard him talking to his assistant. "This marriage, this child... it's all a sacrifice. I needed the perfect substitute to build up and destroy, just to prove my loyalty to Elara." The painful IVF injections, my precious pregnancy, our entire marriage—it was all a meticulously crafted performance for his childhood sweetheart. He even planned to publicly humiliate me at an upcoming gala as a welcome gift for her return. I wept for the years I had wasted and for my innocent unborn child, conceived merely as a pawn in their sick, twisted game. They thought they could discard me like trash because they believed I was just a helpless orphan with no one to turn to. But they didn't know I had spent the last three years hiding my true identity for the sake of this marriage. Wiping away my tears, I picked up my phone and called my father, the most feared underground king in the world.

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.