JOSSY MAGIC

"You are a cold-blooded psycho! Get your filthy, bloodstained hands off me!" Through clenched teeth, Irma shrieked as she battled to liberate herself from the man's barbarous hold. His eyes were a refulgent inferno. They held an insidious fire of lust as they thrived deeper into her debilitated ones. "How flattering!" The man sneered, and Irma froze.  A ripple of both ice and fire skint in her nerves at the man's vexatious riposte. Before she could amass any little bravery left in her, the man spoke again in a hoarse tremor, erupting a chill down her spinal tube. "But if you don't watch your sweet, dirty mouth, you snoopy, pesky brat, my third leg will shut it for you! Or maybe," he wavered, and fixed his dangerous, lascivious gazes on hers, gently stroking her hair as if petting his sweet, wild pet, "that is what you want, little dove?" A freelance journalist, flaming with ardent desires to unveil the secrets behind the series of mysterious disappearances happening in the city. Her hunch points her to the dark underworld of the mafia, and unfortunately, she crashes into LUCCA DE'MATTHEW-the other name for terror! Their encounter will evoke a catastrophe that only they can solve. But how, if their mere beingness is a menace to each other?

I spent years cleaning up a man. We were in love, or should I better say, I was in love, because in the end, that is what that shit felt. After all that I did for him, he heartlessly broke my heart. Found him in bed with our wedding planner two weeks to our wedding. And he had the balls to take pleasure in my pains. I almost became a murderer that night. Almost killed a man. I put the very first stain on my family's spotless name. My father could not take it. He distanced himself from me and stood a safe distance to watch the whole world rise against me. But in all these difficult and trying moments, one thing remained my solace and my beacon of all the good vibes that I yearned for-Joe Fredrick Montana. My stepbrother. And before we knew it, the connection bloomed into something we both never anticipated. It is wrong, yet so strong! It is forbidden, yet irresistible. For a while, none of us seemed to care about the consequences of our steamy undercover affairs, until something that threatens to tear everything between us and beyond happens. This, is our story!

She was all alone, wallowing in divine grief and lamenting her losses. She had nothing to call her own, and all her wounds had refused to heal. She yearned for just one thing now—to disconnect from the cruel world. In the darkness, she closed her eyes, hoping to awaken in a place of tranquility—in heaven, surrounded by the beautiful souls she had lost. But to her bewilder, she found herself in bed the next morning with someone she would never have anticipated seeing again, especially in the darkest moment of her life—Liam Morgan Adams. Her ex. And he came with his own overflowing bucket of surprisal and sorrows that, for reasons best known to him, only Lynn could help him carry. "Bear me a child, Lynn. The price is yours to name.” He spoke, and everything in Lynn froze. A child! Her head spun some degrees, and when it settled, she squinted as the raw memories of her past pains surged in, fused with the memories of what they once had.  And his constant, desperate plea left her between a rock and a hard place. Can she do this? Can this be her redemption?  And Liam, why would a filthy, married billionaire ask for a child out of wedlock? And why Lynn, of all people?

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."

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.

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.

On my wedding day, the wedding planner looked at me with pity in her eyes. She told me the groom had called with a last-minute request. He wanted the name on the floral arch changed from "Elena" to "Sofia." Five years of loyalty to Dante Romero, and I found out he was planning a "secret" ceremony with his mistress an hour before ours. He claimed she was dying of cancer. He said it was her final wish to be a bride, and that as a good mafia wife, I should understand. He swore it was just charity. But I had seen the texts where he called me "furniture." I had watched him step over my body when I fell down the stairs at a club, just so he could leave with her. And this morning, I watched Sofia walk into the hotel lobby wearing *my* custom French lace wedding dress, smirking as she clung to his arm. Dante thinks I'm crying in the bridal suite. He thinks I will sit in the front row of his "fake" wedding and wait for my turn like a dutiful puppet. He is wrong. I wiped my tears and picked up my phone. I didn't cancel the wedding date. I just changed the location to the ballroom next door. And I changed the groom. As Dante says his vows to his mistress, I am walking down the aisle to meet the only man the Romero family fears. The Reaper.

My husband swallowed a ten-year prison sentence to save me from my abusive stepfather. When he got out, he built a mafia empire and made me his Queen. But last night, his encrypted tablet lit up with an ultrasound photo and a text from another woman. "Our little secret is growing." The mistress soon called to mock me. She was pregnant, while I had been barren for four years. When I confronted my husband, he didn't apologize. Instead, he assigned heavily armed guards to protect her and burned my divorce papers with his cigar. "The only exit from this Family is death," he warned. The nightmare deepened when I uncovered her true identity. The mistress was my half-sister, and her mastermind was the mother who had abandoned me at six. My husband knew. He even whispered our sacred vow to her-"I will shield you from the blood"-the exact words he used when I lost our child on a freezing concrete floor for his syndicate. I took bullets for him. I waited a decade outside those prison gates. Yet he used my absolute loyalty to lock me in a cage, handing my crown to the family that threw me to the wolves. He thought I was just a helpless wife, entirely dependent on his mercy. He didn't know I was Vanguard, the shadow billionaire controlling the very lifelines of his empire. I calmly picked up my phone and called my head operative. "Liquidate his supply chains. Let's see whose empire turns to ash first."

My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement. To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia. It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping. But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished. She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug. She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago. The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash. Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name. She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant. I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead. I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye. "Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you." Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth. "Prove it," he growled. I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip.

As I lay in the cold underground clinic, terminating the unborn heir of the city's most feared mafia underboss, my phone lit up. My fiancé of seven years had just publicly pledged his protection and a home-cooked meal to his ex-lover, moments after telling me to risk a deadly ambush by ordering takeout. When I returned to our penthouse, bleeding and broken, he didn't even notice. He gave my specialized prenatal milk to his ex because she had a "delicate stomach," leaving me only a hollowed-out egg white and dry crusts. When I begged him to stay, he violently kicked my packed suitcase across the marble floor. "Elena's medical needs take priority right now," he snapped, rushing out because his ex felt cold. He even blocked my secure number when I frantically tried to reach him one last time. For seven years, we had built an empire together. I couldn't understand how a past flame playing the fragile doe could make him discard my life and our child's existence so callously, treating me like worthless scraps. Sitting in the empty penthouse, I wiped my tears and opened the global Syndicate network. "My betrothal to Vincent is officially dissolved. Act accordingly." I powered down my phone, grabbed my tactical gear, and boarded a private jet to leave his territory forever.

"My gift has finally arrived, a perfect specimen, perfect for an heir." *** If only I had known that I wouldn't ever return to my house. Never see my mother, my siblings, or Violet... I never would have gotten in that car. My father remarked, "She's all yours," "Dad? Dad? Dad?! " I yelled. I squirmed as tears began to stream, attempting to break free. *** Years have passed... "My gift has finally arrived," said a voice I recognized. That voice was the catalyst for my downfall. "Well, now that we're acquainted, I think we can go see my son." You know, I purchased you for him. "A perfect specimen, perfect for an heir," he murmured, a nasty smirk on his face. *** "Son!" Antonio applauded. "What do you want, father?" I felt a little chill at the sound of the fresh voice. The Italian accent in the words, together with how deep, velvety, and dominating it was, shook me to my very core. I was a little pleased that he spoke so harshly about his father. He had midnight-black hair that fell in a part of his onyx eyes, which was lengthy in the center but short on the sides. Deeply tanned complexion, full pink lips, and a jawline with a five o'clock shadow. He was dressed in a black suit with a white shirt beneath that had the first three buttons undone, revealing some tattoos. His hands were encrusted with silver rings, some of which had black jewels. Both hands and backs of both had tattoos. I was intrigued by the creative swirls since I was ignorant of the whole tattoo. Not if he made the decision to remove his shirt. *** Lucy was sold to Antonio Martinelli, the former boss of the biggest Italian mafia when she was 14 years old. After spending years in the "safe house," Lucy is delivered to his son Luca Martinelli, the new leader, as a birthday gift. Luca fights the urge to fall in love with the ebony beauty as Lucy attempts to keep a promise she made and regain her former self. Will they endure all the deceit, lust, murder, and betrayal committed in the name of love together?

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.

When my mafia boss husband claimed his empire was crumbling, I worked grueling cleaning jobs just to keep our rundown safehouse afloat. I had once taken a bullet for him, and I was willing to scrub toilets to save him. But hiding behind a hotel linen cart, I overheard him whispering to his mistress. "Make sure the wife keeps working," he murmured. "I want to see the precise measure of humiliation required to break her." His bankruptcy was a lie, a sadistic game to test my blind loyalty. He moved his mistress into our home and threw my belongings in the trash. When I tried to leave, he threatened to cut off my dying father's life support. His men shattered my ankle while he coddled his mistress, and he ignored my desperate calls as my father took his last breath alone. He even orchestrated a cruel prank that shocked me into miscarrying our child, leaving me bleeding in a bathtub while he walked away in disgust. I had given him three years of my youth and bled for him, only to realize the teenage boy who once promised me the world was dead. He was a monster who enjoyed tearing my soul apart just because he was bored. Waking up in the sterile hospital room, I felt no more tears, only the quiet relief of a severed chain. His mistress walked in, dropped her sweet smile, and bowed her head to me with absolute respect. "Boss, I have successfully sold all his routes," she said. I looked at my horrified husband standing at the door, and calmly handed his financial ledgers to the FBI.