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 didn't mean to call my boss. I definitely didn't mean to leave a seven-minute voicemail of dirty secrets about him. Working for Ruslan Oryolov is the job from hell. The man is impossible-demanding, arrogant, and way too gorgeous for his own good. After eighteen months of fetching his coffee and swallowing my pride, all I wanted was one night of stress relief. But the billionaire CEO of Bane Corporation isn't just a boss from hell. He's the head of the Oryolov Bratva-and now that he's heard every secret I never meant to share, he's decided to claim me. His contract. His rules. His protection for my three orphaned nieces and nephews-the only reason I'm signing my life away to a man I should fear. He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now he wants my soul.

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.

On my birthday, my husband Dante asked for a divorce over a plate of cold lasagna. He held my hand, tears in his eyes, and told me his mistress was pregnant. "It’s a miracle, Elena," he wept. "God has finally given me a son." He looked at me with pity, calling me "broken" because I hadn't given him an heir in eight years. He moved his pregnant mistress into the penthouse I paid for, and his mother mocked me as a "dry vine" while cooking tonic soups for the new woman. They didn't know the truth I had buried three years ago. I remembered the day the doctor slid the file across the desk: *Azoospermia. Zero sperm count.* Dante was the sterile one. I had burned the results to protect his fragile ego as a Mafia Don. I took the blame. I drank his mother's vile herbal poisons every morning until I vomited, just to keep his secret. Now, he was discarding me for a "miracle" that was biologically impossible. I signed the divorce papers without a tear. Then I bought the debt of his company, put on a blood-red dress, and walked into his heir's Christening. I didn't come to object. I came to plug a USB drive into the projector and show the entire underworld exactly whose "miracle" that baby really was.

As my husband—the most feared Mafia Don in the city—lay dying, I stood by his bed playing the perfect, grieving wife. But with his dying breath, he confessed a horrifying secret: twenty-six years ago, he secretly swapped our newborn infants in the hospital. He told me he gave my flesh and blood to his mistress so her child could inherit the empire safely, while leaving his own legitimate son to rot in the slums. Before I could even process the betrayal, his mistress and her thug son burst into the hospital suite. "I grew up in the gutter while your fake son wore custom suits," the street rat spat, kicking the bedframe. "I want the penthouses and the millions in cash by tomorrow." The mistress paraded around the room, gloating about how her bloodline would now rule the underworld. Lorenzo signed the entire Syndicate over to the Underboss—the son he believed was hers—leaving me with nothing but a violent, greedy parasite. They thought they had won. They thought I was just a discarded, empty shell, completely stripped of my power, my legacy, and my child. But as I watched the ink dry on the will, I buried a cold, triumphant smile. They didn't know one crucial detail. Twenty-six years ago, I was awake when he made the swap. And in the dead of night, I had crept down to her room and switched the babies right back.

"My world is a mess; you want nothing to do with this" "You don't have the right to decide that for me." Her chest was heaving, harsh breaths scraping the walls of her nose. "I am your wife, and I am choosing to be in your mess." He grabbed the back of her head and pulled her closer. "This is your last chance. Once you step in, I can never let go." "I'm not planning on it." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jade Saint, who was switched at birth, is coerced into an arranged marriage after returning to the Sterling home. That is, until Roman Volkov – the richest and most dangerous man in the city – claims her as his bride. Desperate to save her dying adoptive mother, she willingly enters into a contract marriage with the devil himself. But marriage to Roman is not what she thinks it is – not the enemies lurking in the shadows. Not the dangerous world he refuses to explain, and certainly not the way his cold touch begins to feel like a promise instead of a warning. Because the more she tries to understand him, the more she realises he didn't choose her by accident. And the truth behind it all may destroy her.

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 was the dutiful wife of Julian, a ruthless Capo in the Chicago Syndicate. Six months ago, my convoy was ambushed by a rival cartel. While I lay bleeding out on the cold floor of the car, my husband was on the phone with his mistress, Mia. "Lock your doors, stay inside," he told her, never once asking if I was alive. I survived, only to watch him flaunt his betrayal. He brought his mistress into our home, booked her luxury suites in Tokyo, and bought her massive diamonds with Syndicate funds. When I refused to play the part of his obedient, blind wife, he publicly humiliated me and orchestrated rumors to isolate me. He thought I was just collateral, a powerless figurehead he could control and eventually discard to settle his debts. I had endured this loveless marriage to survive in the family, yet he treated me worse than dirt while elevating a mistress who knew nothing of our world. I was suffocating in a cage of neglect, enraged by the audacity of a coward who broke every sacred vow. So, I took off my vulgar wedding ring and left it on his bathroom sink. I picked up my phone and sent a message to Dante Falcone, the exiled heir who had stitched my flesh back together in secret. This time, I chose to burn my husband's empire to the ground.

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."

For three years, I played the fool, sacrificing my dignity to drag Luca back from the abyss so he could inherit the Falcone Family. But at his grand swearing-in banquet, the woman he claimed as his own wasn't me. It was my illegitimate half-sister, Elena. To please her, he laced my soup with poison and watched his men mock my agony. When my mother was dying in the ICU and desperately needed my medical signature, Elena's enforcers pinned me to the floor of an underground fighting ring. "Perform your jester routine, Claire. Make me laugh," Elena taunted. Crying, I begged Luca to save my mother. But he just looked at me with cold disgust, wrapped his arms around Elena, and kissed her passionately right in front of me. Driven by blinding desperation, I smeared filthy clown makeup on my face and tore my dignity to shreds just to beg for a merciful laugh. But it was too late. Because of their twisted games, my mother flatlined and suffocated to death alone. I didn't understand how eighteen years of blind devotion and three years of keeping him alive amounted to nothing, or why he so easily believed Elena's fabricated lies to destroy my life. Staring at my ruined, painted face on the cold floor outside the hospital morgue, the last trace of my love for him turned to ash. I wiped away the greasepaint, downloaded the hidden evidence of their crimes, and dialed an independent federal lawyer. "I am breaking Omertà. File the lawsuit."

I was a top medical prodigy with a bright future and a loving fiancé, until my mother's heart failed and she desperately needed life-saving treatments. But my own father refused to pay the $12,000 medical bill. Instead, my fiancé kicked me out of our shared home to marry my stepsister Sabrina, and my father used his money to buy her a brand-new Porsche. I later discovered the horrifying truth. My father had deliberately framed my medical mentor, completely destroying my career, just to get a half-million-dollar payout from the Russian mob to clear his gambling debts. He traded my future and my mother's life for a luxury car and a lavish wedding for his stepdaughter. Left with absolutely nothing, I was forced to sell my silence and become a governess for New York's most ruthless mafia Don just to keep my mother alive. Sabrina even sent me a cheap, scratchy bridesmaid dress, demanding I stand behind her at the altar to watch her marry my ex. "You need to stand behind me in a cheap dress and watch me win. Because if you don't, Father will cut off your mother's life support." They thought they had crushed me into the dirt, expecting me to be their submissive victim forever. But they didn't know the terrifying mafia king had already handed me the irrefutable evidence of their crimes. On the day of the wedding, I threw that cheap dress in the trash, put on a custom black haute couture gown, and walked into the grand ballroom on the arm of the Don. ---