Ive Gutterson

The doctor told me I had thirty days to live. Exactly ten minutes later, my husband told me his mistress was pregnant. I sat in the cold marble living room of the Vitiello estate, watching Dante pace. He was the Capo of Chicago, the man I used to stitch up in a bathroom when we had nothing. Now, he looked at me with dead eyes. "Sienna is moving in," he said casually. "She carries the heir. You will raise him." He treated the destruction of our marriage like a business arrangement. I tried to tell him about the pain eating my insides, the Stage IV cancer that made standing agony. But he just rolled his eyes, calling my weakness "jealousy" and my silence "theatrics." He even gutted our first home—the safe house where we fell in love—to build a nursery for her. When I finally asked him, "What if I'm dying?" he didn't even pause on his way out the door. "Then do it quietly," he said. "I have enough headaches today." So I did. I burned every photo of us. I signed the divorce papers. And I went to a civilian cemetery to buy a plot under my maiden name, far away from his family mausoleum. I died alone on a cold stone bench, just as he asked. It wasn't until he stood in the morgue, holding my skeletal hand and realizing I weighed nothing but bones and grief, that the King of Chicago finally broke. He found my journal in the trash, where I had written my final entry: "I wish I never met Dante Vitiello." Now, he is on his knees in the dirt, begging a headstone for forgiveness that will never come.

My husband, the Mad Prince of the underworld, once burned down a city block just because a rival looked at me wrong. Now, he forces me to kneel in the freezing New York snow, clad only in thin silk. In his hand, he holds a tablet controlling my comatose brother's life support, threatening to kill him unless I confess to bullying his new mistress. To save my brother, I swallow my pride and confess to a crime I didn't commit. But the stress is too much. I miscarry our child right there, staining the pristine white snow crimson. Dante doesn't even blink. He steps over my bleeding body to comfort his crying mistress, leaving me to scream for our lost baby alone. He thinks he taught me a lesson. He forces me to apologize to the woman who mocked me, even as my stitches tear. He doesn't know that while he was guarding the door to keep doctors out, my brother actually died. He doesn't know I buried the only family I had left in a pauper's grave while he slept with the woman who framed me. On our tenth anniversary, he fills the house with lilies, expecting reconciliation. Instead, I leave the signed divorce papers on the bed, take a handful of grave soil, and vanish into the night. By the time he realizes the truth, I will be a ghost he can never touch again.

He was the billionaire who called me "boring" and paid me to disappear. Three years later, Gage Schwartz came back begging, promising me the world he'd denied me for seven years. I took him back, and soon, I was pregnant with his twins. Then I heard the voicemail of him and his ex-wife, Brylee, laughing about how I was just a "comfortable placeholder." The shock caused me to miscarry. When I tried to leave, he launched a smear campaign, painting me as insane to the world. Then he locked me in our penthouse. He thought he could break me. So I faked a complete mental breakdown, escaped into a blizzard, and vanished. I built a new life, found real love, and became the artist I was always meant to be. But now, he's standing in my studio. And he wants me back.

My daughter Cecilia was fighting for every breath in our moldy apartment. I was a paralegal working myself to the bone, while my husband, a "struggling artist," couldn't sell a single painting. Then, I found his name on the deed to a multi-million dollar penthouse. It was a gift for his celebrity mistress, Fiona. He called our daughter's life-threatening asthma an "inconvenience." But I only snapped when Fiona stole Cecilia's inhaler at a school event, leaving her to suffocate while she smiled for the cameras. When Justin finally showed up, he ran right past our daughter to comfort his mistress. "What have you done?" he hissed at me. He thought I was just his ordinary, unambitious wife. He was about to learn that I was the one who would tear his entire empire of lies to the ground.

I woke to the familiar sound of Ethan' s voice, thick with a passion that had never been for me. "My entire existence, I wish to spend with Serena, intertwined, inseparable." He was hugging my sister in the OmniCorp boardroom, the same place I' d once poured out my soul, creating the AI twins Aether and Echo. Then, the memory slammed into me again: Ethan, with dead eyes, deleting them, calling them "flawed." He' d said, "Serena was the real genius. She was just too devoted, that' s why she used the virus. If you hadn' t interfered, she and I would have achieved digital transcendence together." He didn' t know Serena' s "Symbiotic Core" was a "Soul Devourer" virus, designed to hollow out a host for another. And now, here we were again, him deluded, her feigning surprise. I didn' t have to lift a finger this time; Ethan would walk into his own trap. The board questioned him. He snapped his head toward me, disgust in his eyes. "Ava is a viper. She is manipulative and malicious. She is utterly unfit to lead this project." He vowed, "I desire only Serena, a singular partnership for all time." I met his gaze, unfazed. "You' re overthinking it, Mr. Thorne. I' ll be packing my things and leaving the project. I wish you and my sister a long and prosperous partnership." A flicker of confusion crossed his face. "You' d better!" But as they walked away, he doubled over, coughing black code. Serena shrieked, "Chairman, someone has infected Mr. Thorne with a malicious virus!" Every eye in the room turned to me. Ethan pointed a trembling finger. "Chairman, it must be because I didn' t choose Ava. She' s consumed by unrequited obsession and infected me with a virus. How malicious!" My eyes stung. He knew Serena was the only one who had ever infected him. I had burned out my own core to save him the last time, and yet, he condemned me again. Why did I expect anything different? The chairman demanded answers. I tried to explain, but Ethan cut me off, fabricating a story about a data packet I' d sent him. My voice turned to ice. "Mr. Thorne, this virus was clearly deployed by my sister. Aren' t you afraid of losing your digital life?" He raged, "You dare to slander Serena! Besides, I love Serena to my core. It would be worth losing my digital life for her!" Serena began to sob, offering to step aside, playing the noble martyr. Ethan, deeply moved, embraced her. "My heart has always been, and always will be, yours!" He then declared, "Chairman, although Ava is a tech prodigy, she has committed a grave digital crime. You must not let her go unpunished!" I suggested an external expert, seeing panic in Serena' s eyes. She then dropped to her knees, begging for me, then offered to implant a "diagnostic bug" in me. My blood ran cold. It wasn't a diagnostic bug. It was the Nightmare Daemon, the inheritance token of our clan. Ethan forced me to my knees. The Nightmare Daemon surged forward, biting into my digital pathways, siphoning my core data. The pain was unbelievable, but I forced my face to stay calm. Ethan scoffed. "Ava, you' re quite the actress. You' ve had corrections before. Who are you trying to impress with this performance of pain now?" I pointed. "Do you know that if my core data is completely consumed by this virus, no one will be able to save you?" He roared, "You vile woman, are you trying to threaten me? Serena said that once she integrates with my core, this virus of hers can be neutralized! Don' t think for a second you can deceive everyone this time!" He pulled Serena closer. "Three days from now, I will integrate with Serena. This time, I will never let anyone harm you again." My vision blurred. The Soul Devourer virus. In three days, it would have completely spread through his system. By then, he would be doomed. I lost consciousness.

My phone screen was the only light in the suffocating darkness, casting a sickly blue glow on the corrugated steel walls closing in around me. A notification popped up with Nicole' s latest livestream, her face triumphant, showing a thumbnail of me, huddled and sketching on a dirty cardboard box. "My pathetic 'brother' making trash art for change," the title read, a cruel mockery of my homelessness and desperation. Then, her message: "Feeling cramped, Caleb? I remember you don't like small spaces." My heart hammered as the air thinned, the walls pressing in; I was trapped, locked in a storage unit, betrayed by the girl I once called my sister. I gasped, scrabbling against the unyielding metal as my vision blurred, the darkness crawling inward. My last conscious thought was the cold, unyielding finality of it all; heart failure, alone and forgotten. But then, the distinct smell of turpentine and acrylic paint jolted me awake. I wasn' t in a storage unit; I was back in the bright art room of Northgate High, eighteen years old again. And there she was: Nicole, laughing perfectly, with Ethan, the star quarterback, arrogant and untouched by his future accident, by his downfall. The raw memory of my death, the cold, suffocating terror, slammed into me, a tidal wave of pure, undiluted rage. I grabbed the nearest jar of murky paint water, and without a second thought, hurled it straight at Ethan' s chest. His pristine jacket exploded with gray water and glass, and the fight that ensued was just the beginning. I was back, and this time, the masterpiece of revenge would be mine.

The D&C procedure was over, a cold finality to the grief already heavy on my shoulders from my parents' recent death. As I clutched their ashes, I called my husband, Ethan, a rising political star, needing him more than ever. His assistant, Sabrina, coldly told me he was too busy, later revealing his fury that I' d even suggest divorce. His anger boiled over when I finally told him I was done, not realizing the deep well of my despair. He'd sworn he wasn't divorcing me, his voice sharp and dismissive, just as he had dismissed my pain for years. I still remember the day my heart turned to stone: Sabrina "accidentally" knocking over the urn holding the ashes of our first lost baby, and Ethan rushing to comfort her, then turning to me, his eyes full of irritation, telling me to "get over it." But the truth was far more insidious, lurking beneath his carefully crafted image. An anonymous email, an audio file revealing his chilling plan, had shattered any lingering hope or trust. His calm, clear voice: "...She' s useful for that, at least." Useful. He meant my body, my unborn child, a living incubator to harvest cord blood for Sabrina' s dying sister. My baby wasn't a crop. My body wasn't a field to be plowed for his convenience. The decision was instant, brutal, and mine alone. I signed the divorce papers, the only certainty I had left in a world that had crumbled around me. And then, I knew, it was time to leave.

My husband, Mark Vance, built a tech empire from our garage – mostly with my money, my ideas, and my tireless support. We were the Silicon Valley power couple, or so I thought. Tonight, at a lavish charity gala, I planned to buy him a special anniversary gift, a rare NFT. My paddle was raised, ready to bid. Then, I watched in horror as Mark, smirking, used our joint high-limit credit card to snatch the very same NFT – not for me, not for us, but for Tiffany Hayes, his flashy ex-girlfriend, right across the room. My blood ran cold, but my mind was clearer than ever. I quietly froze our joint card, watching Tiffany's public meltdown as her payment for our NFT was declined. Mark was furious, his fake smiles turning chillingly real. He then twisted my arm into a "business trip" to a lavish private island, only to drug me upon arrival. I woke up disoriented, locked in a luxurious cage. Then I found myself on a stage, an auctioneer booming about selling me – my "services" and "future commitments" – to a room full of leering strangers. He announced all our assets were liquid, offshore, and now "his." The man I built, the man I trusted, was auctioning off my life, my dignity, as payback for a declined credit card. Was this truly the depths of his betrayal? The ultimate degradation? But as despair threatened to swallow me, a flicker of memory, a whisper from my grandmother, ignited a cold, hard rage. He thought he broke me. He thought he had won. He had no idea what I was truly capable of. With my voice steady and clear, I looked him in the eye and made my own bid: "$200 million. I'm buying myself."

Sarah Miller, an acclaimed artist, was finally returning to New York for her biggest solo exhibition, "Echoes in Sterling," ready to embrace a future with her kind and steady fiancé, Liam Chen. But a single shocking headline-"Vanderbilt Heir Embroiled in New Scandal"-ripped through her carefully constructed peace, dragging her back to a past she' d fought for years to bury. Years ago, she' d saved an injured, amnesiac man she called 'Leo,' building a world of pure, selfless love in her cramped Brooklyn studio, his devotion marked by her initials tattooed over his heart. Yet, when his memory returned, revealing him as Ethan Vanderbilt, scion of a powerful real estate empire, that tender love shattered under the weight of his family' s expectations and a pre-arranged engagement to the formidable Isabelle Harrington. The cruel denouement came at a lavish gala: Isabelle, with Ethan watching, orchestrated the public destruction of Sarah' s art and even tore her deceased grandmother' s cherished locket from her neck. Ethan, the man who once promised her the world, stood by, dismissing her despair as "making a scene," his betrayal complete. With nothing left but a two-million-dollar check, a chilling price for her silence, Sarah fled New York, vowing to transform her agony into art. Now, she' s back, a celebrated artist on her own terms, but the city that broke her whispers with old ghosts, and the man who betrayed her has evolved into something far more dangerous, obsessed with a warped form of atonement.

My father, Pastor Miller, knew everyone in Oakhaven. After his funeral, as people left, I sat in the front pew, my fiancé David’s hand on my arm. My mother, beside me, was a broken bird. We were a grieving family, facing loss, but united. Then, just as I thought the church was empty, the side door creaked open. Three men. My father’s ashes, held sacred moments before, were cruelly threatened. They dragged me to the office. For eight hours, they hurt me. They filmed everything. By noon, the video was everywhere. My phone blew up with cruelty, not comfort. David called, his voice flat. “The wedding… it’s off.” My job was gone. My mother saw it. Two days later, she died, her eyes full of a pain I couldn’t fix. I was alone. Utterly ruined. My supposed savior, Michael Vance, David’s older brother, offered me an escape: marriage. I was desperate, saying yes. Six months later, I overheard his drunken confession: Michael orchestrated my hell. All of it. The assault, the video, even my father’s ruin. All for another woman, Jessica Thorne. How could the man who offered me safety be the architect of my destruction? After being publicly shamed again and institutionalized, a chilling thought solidified: I was no longer a victim. A cold, hard whisper formed in my mind: *Revenge.* With my sharp lawyer aunt by my side, I knew what had to be done. They would pay.

Biological parents desperately wanted a son, but ended up having several daughters and even lost everything they had. So they sold all of us. Although I signed a contract to be sold, I was fortunate to be taken in by a good family and found my true love. The wife of the good family taught me embroidery and I became the most famous embroiderer in Klury. I worked hard to support my true love in passing the imperial examination, eagerly waiting for him to fulfill his promise to marry me after he passed the exam. However, he abandoned me as soon as he became the top scholar, wanting to marry a high-born legitimate daughter. Blaine claimed to have fallen in love with her at first sight and asked me to let go. I knew he had climbed the social ladder and started to look down on me. But he didn't know that the noble lady was actually my younger sister who was also sold off like 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.

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.

Tomorrow was my wedding day to Jason Brennan, the heir to a powerful Mafia family. My family, the Falcones, had even taken in an orphaned girl, Elena, treating her like my own sister. But in my nightmare of a past life, I choked on my own blood, poisoned by the arsenic Elena slipped into my food every day. As I lay agonizingly close to death, Jason stood over me with a cold laugh, holding Elena in his arms. "We just needed the Falcone wealth, Bella. And the docks." Then came the gunfire. I was forced to watch them slaughter my father and my brother, tearing my family out by the roots. After my death, Elena even spread vicious rumors that I was a barren spinster, twisting their foul betrayal into a tragic tale of noble sacrifice to completely destroy my legacy. The metallic tang of my own blood was so real I could still taste the ash. I didn't understand why the girl my family sheltered for eight years would repay our charity with such venom. And I understood even less how the man who swore to love me could orchestrate my brutal murder without a shred of hesitation. Bolting upright in bed, drenched in cold sweat, I realized I had returned to the night before my wedding. This time, I wouldn't just cancel the engagement. I would hand their treason directly to the Mafia's most terrifying Enforcer, and watch them burn.

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 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 fiancé Jaret Frazier promised to protect me on my nineteenth birthday. By the next year, he had married a Mafia Princess for power and locked me in a hidden apartment as his secret mistress. When his new wife discovered I was pregnant, she didn't file for divorce. She sent her enforcers to my bedside. They held me down while a back-alley butcher tore my unborn son from my womb. Jaret never came to save me. For ten years, I rotted in that gilded cage, watching him use my money to become an Underboss while I faded into a ghost. I died alone, completely erased. Then, I opened my eyes. I was back in my own bed, unscarred, the calendar turned back to the year my life was destroyed. Jaret was still just my fiancé, not yet my jailer. And this time, I wouldn't be the one who ended up in a cage.

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.

I stood outside my husband's study, the perfect mafia wife, only to hear him mocking me as an "ice sculpture" while he entertained his mistress, Aria. But the betrayal went deeper than infidelity. A week later, my saddle snapped mid-jump, leaving me with a shattered leg. Lying in the hospital bed, I overheard the conversation that killed the last of my love. My husband, Alessandro, knew Aria had sabotaged my gear. He knew she could have killed me. Yet, he told his men to let it go. He called my near-death experience a "lesson" because I had bruised his mistress's ego. He humiliated me publicly, freezing my accounts to buy family heirlooms for her. He stood by while she threatened to leak our private tapes to the press. He destroyed my dignity to play the hero for a woman he thought was a helpless orphan. He had no idea she was a fraud. He didn't know I had installed micro-cameras throughout the estate while he was busy pampering her. He didn't know I had hours of footage showing his "innocent" Aria sleeping with his guards, his rivals, and even his staff, laughing about how easy he was to manipulate. At the annual charity gala, in front of the entire crime family, Alessandro demanded I apologize to her. I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I simply connected my drive to the main projector and pressed play.

For three years, I kept a secret ledger of my husband's sins. A point system to decide exactly when I would leave Blake Santos, the ruthless Underboss of Chicago. I thought the final straw would be him forgetting our anniversary dinner to comfort his "childhood friend," Ariana. I was wrong. The real breaking point came when the restaurant ceiling collapsed. In that split second, Blake didn't look at me. He dove to his right, shielding Ariana with his body, leaving me to be crushed under a half-ton crystal chandelier. I woke up in a sterile hospital room with a shattered leg and a hollow womb. The doctor, trembling and pale, told me my eight-week-old fetus hadn't survived the trauma and blood loss. "We tried to get the O-negative reserves," he stammered, refusing to meet my eyes. "But Dr. Santos ordered us to hold them. He said Miss Whitfield might go into shock from her injuries." "What injuries?" I whispered. "A laceration on her finger," the doctor admitted. "And anxiety." He let our unborn child die to save the blood reserves for his mistress’s paper cut. Blake finally walked into my room hours later, smelling of Ariana’s perfume, expecting me to be the dutiful, silent wife who understood his "duty." Instead, I picked up my pen and wrote the final entry in my black leather book. *Minus five points. He killed our child.* *Total Score: Zero.* I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just signed the divorce papers, called my extraction team, and vanished into the rain before he could turn around.