Hemme E

(ADULT CONTENT) Lucia - I had gotten to the point in my life where I could totally understand why people felt the need to take their own life. It was a need a lot of people thought they understood but in reality didn't even know the half of it. I would know because it was a need I constantly battled with. My life was complete shit. I'd lost my parents at a young age, been tossed from one abusive chaotic home to the other until I'd finally decided I couldn't take it anymore and had run away. Only running away had made it worse. Way worse. Because living on the streets I witnessed a lot of things no young girl should ever witness. Then for a moment it seemed like I'd found love. He was kind, caring and sweet. But even that didn't last. I told myself then that I was completely done. At first I didn't want to live at all. Later on, I just wanted to live long enough to get my revenge on everyone who had dared to make my life miserable. I never expected I would want to live for him. Bruno - Inheriting a ruthless top mafia gang at a very young age did a lot of damage to someone. It certainly did a whole lot of damage to me. Fucked me up so bad I could no longer tell what was right from what was wrong. I could no longer separate what I needed to do from what I wanted to do. And it was fine, really. I didn't give a flying fuck what anyone thought about it. It was who I was now and there was no going back. At least that was what I'd thought. Until I'd met Lucia. I still couldn't explain it but seeing her up there, hands tied above her head as she waited for whatever asshole was going to buy her at the auction caused some kind of reaction in me. It was enough to tell me that I should probably let someone else buy her so she could be their problem. Unfortunately I'd never been one to stop myself from making a wrong decision. So I bought her anyway. And who would have guessed? She turned out to be the best decision I'd ever made.

Sierra Lane was out for a fresh start. After finding her fiance in bed with a close friend she'd packed up and moved out of the city, promising herself she was going on a break from men. She'd endured one too many heartbreaks and she was finally done. Or so she thought. Her plans blurred in no time. The last person she could possibly be with turned out to be the one she wanted the most. He was way out of her league. Apart from being a billionaire CEO and single dad, he was also her boss. She would have been content hiding in the shadows and denying her attraction to him. If he hadn't made it his mission to have her. *** Jayden Grey could not remember the last time he'd felt the burning desire to be with a woman. Until her. He wasn't sure why he wanted her so much that everything else came second. He figured it could be the fact that his son seemed to have formed a special bond with her. Or maybe it was because she had showed up in his life at a point in his life where he needed her the most. Or maybe it was the fact that just the thought of her made him hard. He wanted her. Badly. And even though she was determined to resist him, he was even more determined to have her. Mind, body and soul. He loved a good chase after all. It was only a matter of time before he had her exactly as he wanted. Permanently his.

"Leave," I ordered, proud that my voice didn't sound half as shaky as I felt. "Is that what you really want, Keera?" He asked in a whisper. Before I could muster a response, his hand raised mine, slowly bringing my fingers to his nose. The same fingers that had been moving inside of me only minutes ago. My heart thudded. He kept his eyes locked with mine as he inhaled the scent of my release before bringing my fingers to his mouth and dragging his tongue over the fingers, licking them clean. ---- Keera - They shouldn't exist. It was impossible. They were freaks of nature. That had been my initial thoughts about werewolves. And for years I believed I was right to think that because all the werewolves I met did nothing but hurt me. Especially him. I'd been drawn to him from the very first day that I saw him. Before I realized he hated me. I didn't want to admit it but he was the one who reinforced my hatred for werewolves. I didn't need to help them out. But I did. And I watched my life spiral out of control. From crossing every boundary I ever built by getting into a relationship with him to finding out I was his mate. Grayson - I despised her before I even got the chance to meet her in person. Our relationship was forbidden. Werewolves weren't allowed to mate with humans. I didn't think I could ever even be considering the possibility. But that was before her. I found out she was my mate. There was no way I was letting her go then. I didn't mind stepping down as Alpha if it meant I could be with her. Because whether she liked it or not she felt the same about 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.

I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair. They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves. Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment. But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger. In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all.

Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate. I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo. The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives. My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked. To her, I was finally being disposed of. She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left. She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex. "She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds. They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter. They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back. But they made a fatal mistake. With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon. I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him. And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner. He will be my vengeance.

I was married to the Dark Don of New York, but to the Trevino family, I was just collateral. While I was suffering from agonizing acute appendicitis, my husband forced me out into the freezing rain just to watch him parade his mistress in front of the city's elite. When I handed him the annulment papers and begged for my freedom, he coldly burned them to ashes right in front of my face. He watched me collapse on the floor in blinding pain, completely ignoring my deathly pale skin. "Stop this pathetic performance. If you aren't ready for the gala by seven, I will throw your grandfather into a state facility." His mistress even mocked my illness, handing me raw oysters with a victorious smirk while he looked at me with pure disgust. I finally understood that in this gilded cage, my life meant absolutely nothing to him. If I stayed, I would die here—either from a ruptured appendix or from his suffocating cruelty. So, I took a heavy dose of painkillers, threw my diamond ring into the river, and emptied the family's hidden safe. When he finally cornered me in a dark alley to drag me back, I shoved the real annulment papers into his chest. "Touch me, and I will scream until every rat in this city hears me." I stepped into the getaway cab, taking the master copies of his smuggling ledgers with me. It was time to burn his empire to the ground.

"Happy Anniversary," my husband said, sliding the separation agreement across the mahogany desk. It was the eighteenth time in five years I had signed these papers. Matteo De Luca, the most ruthless Capo in New York, checked his Rolex with cold impatience. "Sign it, Sera. Bianca is on the ledge again. She needs to see we're over, or she jumps." Bianca. The ward. The broken bird. The woman whose fragile psyche dictated every moment of my marriage. I signed my name, and he left me alone on our anniversary to save her. Again. But saving her wasn't enough. When Bianca pushed me down a flight of marble stairs in a fit of jealous rage, shattering my spine and leaving me paralyzed, I thought Matteo would finally choose me. I was wrong. I woke up in the hospital to find him holding her hand, not mine. "The security footage has been wiped," he told me, his voice void of emotion. "We cannot have a scandal. You fell, Sera. That is the story." He erased the truth. He erased my pain. He protected the woman who crippled me over his own wife. Two months later, he wheeled me into a gala, playing the doting husband while I sat in the chair that was my prison. He didn't know I had a burner phone hidden in my velvet dress. He didn't know that tonight, the obedient wife was going to die on the pavement, and a ghost would rise in her place. I looked at him one last time and dropped the phone in his lap. "I hope she's worth it."

I spent five years laundering my family's wealth and buying military-grade weapons to crown my husband, Alistair, the Don of the Chicago Mafia. But the night before his coronation, he drove an Italian stiletto into my stomach. He sneered that a Don needed a true Mafia Queen, and that was always meant to be his "fragile" friend, Kylie. As I bled out on the Persian rug, he revealed the sickening truth. The night I was found in a rival Irish boss's bed two years ago wasn't a setup by our enemies. Alistair had ordered his own mother and sister to drug and frame me. He just needed me terrified enough to sign over my merchant trust fund to prove my loyalty. My entire marriage, my sacrifices, and my stolen wealth were just stepping stones for him and his mistress. I had bled for him and won him the city, only to be slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb so he could hand my empire to another woman. Before the flames I started consumed us both, I swore I'd drag his entire family to hell. Opening my eyes again, the suffocating smoke was gone, replaced by the scent of lavender and the bitter taste of chloral hydrate. I was back on the exact night of the frame-up two years ago. Outside the door, my sister-in-law was whispering, waiting for the Irish boss to arrive so they could ruin me. This time, I was going to make sure she was the one in that bed.

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.

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 was sold to the terrifying Mafia Don, Vincenzo Moretti, as a "Collateral Bride" to pay off my family's debts. I thought my total submission would at least guarantee the medical payments for my bedridden mother. But one night, I unlocked his encrypted tablet and discovered his secret life. While he claimed to be settling bloody mafia scores in Sicily, he was actually at Disneyland with his mistress, Giuliana, and their little blonde daughter. When I demanded a divorce, he didn't apologize. "Sign the behavioral agreement, or I will personally pull the plug on your mother's ventilator." The next day, he moved his secret family into our master suite. My belongings were violently thrown into the dirt, and I was banished to the sweltering servant's quarters. He ordered the staff to feed me nothing but watery broth and stale bread to cure my "female hysteria." I soon found out that even my own stepbrother had been conspiring with Giuliana for years, eagerly helping to build the cage I was locked in. I was stripped of my dignity, starved, and reduced to a pathetic joke in my own home. Why did I have to be tortured and erased while he played the perfect, loving family man on television? The grief and humiliation finally evaporated, freezing into a cold, sharp clarity. I stopped crying and forged an irrevocable transfer of Giuliana's luxury penthouse, slipping it right into Vincenzo's daily stack of paperwork. Watching the infallible Dark Don blindly sign away his mistress's greatest asset, I knew exactly what I had to do. It was time to burn his entire empire to the ground.