Leo Fairchild

I died in a hospital bed while my fiancé Brett and my stepsister Juliana toasted my inheritance in the next room. The lemonade she fed me wasn't kindness—it was a cardiac suppressant. The asset transfer I signed wasn't protection—it was my epitaph. As my heart monitor flatlined, I swore one thing: If I get another life, I will destroy them both. Then I opened my eyes. Crystal chandelier. Champagne. My twenty-second birthday party. Brett is about to humiliate me by gifting Juliana my mother's diamond bracelet. The crowd is waiting for the heiress to break down and cry. This time, I don't cry. I smile. I walk past them without a word. And I go straight to the man everyone has forgotten—Brett's disabled uncle, Marcello Kane, who's been rotting in a wheelchair for a decade. In front of all New York's elite, I make my choice. Not Brett. Not tears. Him. They think I've lost my mind. But I've just won the war. Because Marcello Kane isn't broken. He's a predator in disguise. And together, we're going to burn their empire to the ground.

She has thirty days. Ten billion dollars. And a quantum space that can swallow anything. Kinsey Elliott died cold, starving, and betrayed—pushed into a frozen abyss by the uncle who stole her fortune. Then she woke up. Back in her penthouse. Back in her perfect body. Back with a silver mark on her wrist that lets her store entire warehouses of supplies in a dimension where time stands still. The world has thirty days until a global ice age freezes everything. Her family has thirty days to try to lock her away, steal her money, and have her killed. And Kinsey? She has thirty days to turn ten billion dollars into an invisible fortress—and burn every last one of them to the ground. She's not surviving the apocalypse. She's building it.

To save my dying grandmother, my stepfamily forced me to marry the Blackburn heir, a man rumored to be a crippled, twisted monster. Desperate to escape the pre-marital medical exam, I climbed out a bathroom window and stumbled into an adjacent hotel suite. I begged the powerful stranger inside to help me, unbuttoning his shirt and snapping fake photos to trick my pursuing guards into thinking we were having an affair. But the stranger didn't just play along. He turned my lie against me, taking my innocence as the brutal price for his "services." Humiliated and broken, I left a single fifty-dollar bill on his nightstand as a final insult before fleeing. But my brief freedom was crushed when my stepsister caught me and dragged me straight to the Blackburn estate for the wedding. The ceremony happened without a groom. My crippled husband was supposedly confined to his sickbed in the East Wing. I thought I was finally safe, hiding in my solitary gilded cage, praying the monster I married would just rot away in his room. But that night, the shadows in my heavily guarded bedroom shifted. The stranger from the hotel stood over my bed, his eyes burning with a cold, possessive fury over that fifty-dollar bill. "You think your invalid husband is going to protect you?" As he pinned me down and my vision went black from the struggle, a terrifying realization hit me. I hadn't escaped the monster at all. I had just paid the real devil fifty dollars to own me.

For two years, Constance Mcfarland played the perfect, invisible wife. She woke up at 5:00 AM every day, surviving on half a cup of plain oats just to maintain the exact dress size her billionaire husband, Arch, demanded. Then, the doctor handed her a medical report with bold black letters: Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer. Six months to live. In a fraction of a second, memories of her pathetic existence flooded her mind. She remembered swallowing her bile when Arch walked past her without a single glance. She remembered biting her cheek until it bled while her mother-in-law publicly mocked her cheap upbringing. She remembered constantly bailing out her parasitic brother, only for her own family to treat her like a disposable ATM. She had starved and silenced herself to build a flawless facade for people who wouldn't even care if she dropped dead tomorrow. The realization hit her like a physical blow. Why had she spent her only life locked in a gilded cage, shrinking herself to please a man made of ice? The diagnosis wasn't a death sentence. It was a starting pistol. Constance didn't shed a single tear. Instead, she went straight to the bank and liquidated every penny she owned. She went home, threw her entire conservative wardrobe onto the floor, and fried a dripping bacon and cheese sandwich in front of her horrified husband. "No, this is freedom." Putting on a blood-red silk gown and five-inch stilettos, Constance smiled. She was going to spend her last six months burning the Ferguson empire to the ground.

For eight years, I loved Alpha Ryker Blackwood. The moment the mate bond snapped into place, my whole world became about him. That night, I brought him his favorite cinnamon rolls, my heart pounding with the hope that he was finally ready to accept me. As I reached his study, his thoughts slammed into me through our bond, a cruel, accidental broadcast. "Cassia Thorne will be my Chosen Mate. We'll announce she is carrying my pup to make Elara accept the Rejection. I cannot be shackled by a bond I never wanted." The silver tray slipped from my numb fingers and crashed to the floor. Ryker ripped the door open, his eyes blazing with fury. He didn't see my shattered heart; he only saw the mess on his expensive rug. "Useless," he snarled, his voice a low growl that vibrated through my soul. He slammed the door in my face, leaving me alone with the ruins of my life. A moment later, my phone buzzed. It was a pack-wide invitation to a celebration. My public execution. The pain in my chest was a physical thing, the bond tearing itself apart as I realized the man fated to be mine had planned my ultimate humiliation down to the last detail. He thought he was orchestrating my public ruin. He had no idea his chosen mate was a lie. And her secret was about to burn his entire world to the ground.

Five years ago, I was a world-renowned concert pianist. Now, I'm an auto mechanic with a mangled right hand, hiding from a past my ex-husband, Carter, dismisses as a "tantrum." He drags me to a charity gala where his mistress, Alexandrea, puts me on the spot, demanding I play for the city's elite-a cruel, public humiliation she knows I can't perform. When I refuse, Carter shoves me to the ground in a rage. He still thinks our daughter, Lily, is alive, and he uses her as a weapon. "Behave," he hisses, "and maybe we can bring Lily back home." Bring her home? The sheer ignorance is staggering. He has no idea our daughter froze to death in the same car crash that destroyed my hand. But just before the gala, my best friend uncovered the final, devastating truth. It wasn't an accident. They sabotaged my car and left us for dead. Tonight, I'm not just attending a party. I'm orchestrating a funeral. Theirs.

I was a surgeon on the most luxurious ship in the world, scrubbing my hands until they were raw to forget the name Ye Jiuting and the past I’d left behind. But at 2:15 AM, Room 404 became my graveyard when a federal agent flatlined on my table, and the world I’d built turned into a nightmare. The nurse handed me a syringe she swore was a standard antibiotic, but the ship’s medical files had been scrubbed to hide a fatal allergy. Before the body was even cold, the widow was screaming murder, and the ship’s foreman, Huston Lyons, was at my throat with a predatory grin. "You killed him, Doctor," Huston sneered, "and on this ship, people like you tend to disappear overboard." When I tried to prove the syringe was clean, Huston’s brutal grip forced the needle into my own arm, injecting me with a lethal stimulant that sent my heart into a violent, scorching frenzy. I fled into the bowels of the ship, my vision warping and my lungs burning, while a ship-wide announcement declared a five-million-dollar bounty on my head. Every desperate gambler and debt-ridden crew member was now hunting me like an animal for a chance at a clean slate. I didn't understand how the digital records could lie or why a routine dose had been replaced with poison. Was I a target, or just a convenient scapegoat for a conspiracy much larger than a single death? Just as the mercenaries were about to drag me to a black site, Clinton Collier, the terrifying "King of the Leviathan," stepped out of the shadows and claimed my life as his own. "She is my Caretaker now," he declared, wrapping a black silk ribbon around my neck to mark me as his exclusive property. I had escaped the gallows only to be collared by a monster, but as I felt his madness recede under my touch, I realized that being his only cure was the most dangerous weapon I possessed.

Four years ago, I melted my skin into the asphalt to pull Julian Moretti from a burning wreckage. I spent years in the shadows, nursing him back to health, hiding my scars while he reclaimed his title as the Underboss of New York. But on the way to our wedding, everything shattered. Estelle Russo, the woman who caused the crash that ruined me, complained of a stomach ache in the limousine. Julian didn't hesitate. He ordered the driver to stop on the shoulder of the highway. "Get out," he barked at me, his eyes cold. He forced me out of the car in my wedding gown, leaving me stranded in the dust and exhaust fumes just so Estelle could lie down on the seat. "Take a cab to the church," he sneered before speeding away. He didn't just leave me on the road; he abandoned me at the altar to hold the hand of the woman who had once tried to kill him. He called our relationship a "debt" he was tired of paying. I stood there, the lace of my dress heavy with humiliation, realizing I was never his Queen—I was just his collateral damage. I didn't call a taxi. Instead, I pulled a burner phone from my bodice and dialed the one number that would end his reign. "The deal is live," I whispered. "He chose her." I stripped off the wedding dress, climbed over the guardrail, and stepped into the black sedan waiting to take me to his greatest enemy.

My fiancé, Dereck, told me a construction accident had shattered my dominant hand, ending my career as an architect. But drifting in a drugged haze, I overheard the truth. It wasn't an accident. He had paid the doctor to cripple me, to make me a "broken architect" so I could never leave him. I soon discovered his real reason: a secret son with his lover, Kacey. He was building their family while destroying my life. At a party celebrating the "adoption" of his own child, Kacey framed me for an attack. Dereck and his family called me a worthless disgrace in front of everyone. He thought he had broken me. He thought he had erased me. He was wrong. I faked my own fiery death, leaving him to rot in his guilt while I prepared my revenge.

For seven years, I was a prisoner in a wheelchair, and my husband, Carter, was my devoted savior. After the accident that stole my legs, he fed me, bathed me, and carried me. He was my entire world. Then I discovered his secret: he was having an affair with Jade, the daughter of the man who crippled me. My "recovery" smoothies weren't for healing; they were laced with sedatives to keep me weak and dependent. When I confronted them, Jade pushed me down the stairs. As I lay bleeding on the cold marble floor, I felt a sharp, agonizing pain. I was losing our baby. Carter looked down at me with disgust. "You're pathetic, Alayna. Stay here and rot." He walked out, leaving me to die. But I didn't die. My family found me. And as I slowly, miraculously, learned to walk again, the broken wife he knew was gone. They took my legs, my child, and my trust. Now, I would take everything from them.

Amelia Hopewell was found by her biological father and brought home. That same day, she discovered a bodyguard, Edmund Nash, barely clinging to life after being tormented by the false heiress. She used half her blood to save him. Later, when Amelia's father fell gravely ill, all the family's assets were secretly frozen by a notorious crime lord. In desperation, Amelia sought Edmund's help. Instead, she witnessed the crime lord's second-in-command standing respectfully before him. "Mr. Nash, if Miss Hopewell's father doesn't get surgery within three hours, he won't survive," the man said. "The company's success owes much to the money Miss Hopewell gave you. Are you sure you won't reveal your true identity to her?" he asked. Edmund toyed with an expensive sapphire necklace, his eyes cold and detached. "For the next three hours, ensure Amelia Hopewell doesn't borrow a single penny," he ordered. "Rosalyn said if Amelia's father gets the surgery, she won't let me step foot in her room again. What a vengeful little girl." Amelia realized the crime lord who had been crushing her family's business for three years was none other than her beloved fiancé, Edmund Nash. Upon learning the truth, Amelia dialed the number of her former subordinate, "I want Edmund ruined in three days!"

"I'll do it," I told my father, agreeing to an arranged marriage to save our failing family business. It was a lifeline. But then my mother mentioned Chloe, and the truth, raw and ugly, began to unravel: my five-year relationship, the company we built together, everything was a lie. I had given up my dream career, poured my savings and energy into "O'Connell & Davis Design" for a love I thought was real. But Chloe had always seen me as a stand-in, a "successful and stable" version of her childhood crush, Noah Vance. I discovered their secret chats, their intimate moments, and the chilling realization that my entire existence in her life had been a performance. Even my grandmother's redesigned engagement ring, a symbol of my intent, was just another prop in her twisted game. She brazenly claimed it as hers, desperate to maintain her illusion. The depth of her betrayal, the calculated deceit, left me hollow. My love, my sacrifices, our shared future-all reduced to a cruel joke. In the face of her desperate attempts to reel me back in-her feigned distress for Noah, her oblivious claims of love-I cut all ties, walked away from our shared life, and embraced a future with the formidable Isabella Rossi, a woman who had seen my worth all along.

The last thing I remembered was the cold, my body broken, kneeling in the snow at Chloe Davis' s memorial. I was Olivia Reynolds, a tech heiress who gave everything for Julian Thorne, only for him to shatter my soul. He built a digital shrine to his "dead" ex-girlfriend in our home, forcing me to chant repentance for sins I didn' t commit, mourning a woman whose supposed death catalyzed his public transformation into a guru. This relentless torment led to my miscarriage, the loss of our unborn child, and ultimately, my own lonely death. Then, I opened my eyes. I was back in the bridal suite of the Grand Astoria Hotel, on my wedding day, the scent of gardenias filling the air. The day it all began, again. Julian walked in, his charming smile now turning my stomach. "Olivia, my love," he said, "I need to talk to you about Chloe." He spun the same manipulative tale from my past life, claiming Chloe was leaving the country forever and he needed to see her "one last time" for "our future." He called it a sacrifice we had to make, together. The same sacrifice that had made me the lamb on his altar before. I remembered his cruelty, my empty crib, my parents' grief, Ethan' s vacant eyes after Julian destroyed his life. He had been reborn too, and knew. But this time, I wouldn't be so foolish. I wouldn't cry or beg. I would give Julian exactly what he thought he wanted: my blessing to go.

The yacht' s engine faded, leaving me stranded on a desolate island. My fiancé, Liam, and my adoptive sister, Brittany, had promised a celebratory pre-wedding adventure, but they left me there to die. For ten agonizing days, the emergency beacon on the smartwatch Liam gave me, supposedly a symbol of his protection, blinked unseen. He ignored my desperate signal, the battery dying, my hope dwindling with each passing hour. My leg was shattered, twisted at an unnatural angle from a wild boar attack, leaving me crippled and starving, death a patient shadow. Then, a man emerged from the jungle, a rugged survivalist named Jax, who became my savior, tending my wounds and feeding me. I fell for him, hard and fast, believing fate had replaced a false love with a real one. One night, the pulsing light of a satellite phone deep in the jungle shattered that illusion. I crawled to his hidden bunker, and heard Jax–whose real name was Jason Cole–reporting to Brittany, confirming my worst fears. "I need to stay here to ensure she doesn' t escape and challenge the heiress for her inheritance," he said, his voice cold and professional. Brittany' s chilling reply echoed through the night: "Just make sure it' s clean. No traces. The island will take care of the rest." My savior was my jailer, every kind gesture a calculated lie, every moment a performance. He was poisoning my wound, making sure the island would be blamed for my slow, agonizing death. But I wasn't just a victim; I was an architect, and I could build a storm. Sneaking into his high-tech bunker, I manipulated satellite weather data, designing a phantom hurricane aimed directly at the island. My fabricated storm was my only ticket off this island, but first, I had to survive the real monster trapped with me.

For years, I played the part of the dutiful, soft-spoken wife, even though my family's wealth could buy and sell my husband's entire town. I worked a low-paying job, pretending every dollar counted, all to soothe Brian's fragile ego as we saved for our daughter Stella's private school. Then, a cold notification shattered the illusion: our $150,000 in savings was gone. Brian flinched, then confessed: he'd given every penny to his mother, not for an emergency, but to buy a house for his deadbeat brother, Ryan, and his pregnant fiancée, Gabrielle. My daughter's future, sacrificed for their shameless greed. But instead of the tears and accusations Brian expected, a calm, terrible clarity washed over me. I smiled, a slow, understanding smile, and pretended it was "just money." As his family's demands for a lavish wedding escalated-a Tiffany ring, the Four Seasons, a luxury car-I played along, promising my "uncle's" company would handle it. Then, I unveiled my masterpiece: a "fake divorce" to access a multi-million-dollar trust fund, a lie so tantalizing even Brian's avaricious mother mortgaged her house for the wedding deposits. They thought they were fleecing a naive fool. They had no idea they were walking into a meticulously laid trap, designed to utterly ruin them. Tonight, at the wedding, the truth will come out, and they will pay for every penny.

The wedding ring was still cold on my finger when Scarlett, my brand new wife, tossed her phone on the bed. Our Hawaii honeymoon? Canceled. A "business opportunity" came up, she said, already pulling out a sleek black dress. Just a few hours after saying "I do," my world was already shrinking to fit hers. Then came the real unraveling. Left behind in a chaotic foreign riot by the very woman I married and her trusted assistant, I survived hell. I was beaten, starved, and left for dead. When I finally crawled back home, battered and scarred, Scarlett didn't offer comfort – she threw stale pretzels at me and watched with disgust as I ate them off the floor like an animal. Later, she even shoved me down a flight of stairs, leaving me with a ruptured spleen. My life, my love, my very existence was just an inconvenient asset to her. How could the woman I' d loved my entire life treat me like garbage, or worse, a public relations problem? Why was I always the one left broken while she walked away clean? But when her assistant, Dylan, showed up to gloat about orchestrating my near-death experience, confessing every twisted detail of his plan to get rid of me right in front of Scarlett, everything changed. He thought he had manipulated them both, but he made one fatal mistake. Scarlett had finally learned, the hard way, who the real villain was. And now, it was her turn to decide who she was.

The bell above my clinic door jingled. I was Dr. Hayes, a woman who' d finally built a life, a stable family. Pregnant with our planned baby, I believed my husband, Mark, was as excited as I was. Then Chloe, a seemingly confident student, walked in with a smile that felt sharp, unpleasant. "I'm Chloe. Mark's student," she stated, then pushed up her sleeve. There, a fresh tattoo: an infinity symbol intertwined with our anniversary date. "Mark got one too," she purred, "Matching. Cute, right? He said it symbolized forever. Our forever." My stomach clenched, the air left my lungs. That night, Mark played the doting husband, his hand resting on my pregnant belly. But I smelled her perfume, faintly. Days later, I watched on our car's security camera as Mark drove to Chloe's apartment, not a "faculty meeting." I heard him tell her, "Poor Evie. So trusting... Evie' s predictable, a bit naive." He laughed with her, calling my past, my pain, "clingy." Then came Chloe' s texts: a photo of Mark in her bed, followed by a box of my childhood cookies. "He got them for me," she wrote, "Said they reminded him of sweet, innocent things. Guess I' m his new sweet thing." He saw me as the damaged girl from the group home, easily fooled, not the woman I'd become. The man I believed saved me from my past used it to mock me with his mistress. How could I bring our baby into a home built on such casual, callous lies? The trusting, hopeful Evie was gone. I called a clinic, then a ruthless lawyer. This time, I was playing for keeps.

Ethan Miller stared at divorce papers, trapped in a marriage that promised everything but delivered only a polite, desolate void. For years, his wife, Ava Harrison, remained an untouchable enigma, her dedication to charity work a fortress against intimacy. Then, a soft sigh from her private "sanctuary" – the music room – shattered the façade. Ethan found Ava enraptured, whispering Liam's name, clutching a silver toy, surrounded by childhood photos of her adopted brother, exposing a dark, incestuous truth. This wasn't just bizarre; it explained his unconsummated marriage, his role as a convenient "prop." Later, Liam, her enabler, attacked Ethan with a broken bottle, then brutally beat him, while Ava prioritized her brother and the family name, dismissing Ethan's agony as "accidents." Why was he a fool, discarded and abused, while his wife protected a monster? His love, once a perfect score, had been systematically, ruthlessly chipped away by betrayals, leaving only raw, unbearable emptiness. With nothing left, Ethan signed the papers, packed his bag, and walked out of the gilded cage, finally free. He chose a new life in London, leaving behind the chilling memory of Ava' s last, desperate text: "Liam needs you. Come back."

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.

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."

My eyes struggled open, but a heavy weight held them shut. I was paralyzed, trapped in a cold hospital room, the rhythmic beep of a heart monitor a cruel reminder of my mother's death. I, Elena Vitiello, who controlled everything, was now helpless, reduced to a slab of meat. Then I heard his footsteps. Dante. My husband, my anchor. But his voice was chillingly devoid of warmth as he ordered, "Do not increase the dosage. I will not risk damaging the organ's viability." The organ. My mind went blank, ice filling my veins. Trapped and unable to move, I realized Dante saw me only as a "political placeholder," never loving me. He was having my kidney removed, carved from my body like livestock, to save his mistress, Sofia-the woman whose messes I'd cleaned for ten years. His hand, usually my comfort, smeared away my tear with sheer disgust. The scalpel tore into my flesh, a blinding, white-hot agony. Every tug and pull hollowed me out, stripping away my potential, my love, my future. How could the man I bled for reduce me to a mere object, a spare part for his true love? The sheer insult of it fueled a volcanic rage. As my kidney was lifted out, the final illusion of our marriage shattered completely. My fear dissolved, replaced by a chilling, absolute calm. The darkness that embraced me was not defeat, but the coiling silence of a viper preparing to strike. This kidney was not a sacrifice. It was the down payment for Dante Moretti's life.

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 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.

What's more embarrassing than a butt dial? Butt dialing your boss... And leaving a dirty voicemail when you're uhh... "thinking" about them. Working as Ruslan Oryolov's personal assistant is the job from hell. After a long day spent tending to the billionaire's every whim, I need some stress relief. So when I get home that night, that's exactly what I do. Problem is, my thoughts are still stuck on the bosshole who's ruining my life. That's fine-because of all Ruslan's many sins, being gorgeous might be the most dangerous. Tonight, fantasies of him are just what I need to push me over the edge. But when I look down at my phone squished next to me, There it is. A voicemail for 7 minutes and 32 seconds... Sent to Ruslan Oryolov. I panic and throw my phone across the room. But there is no undoing the damage done by my very vocal O. So what can I do? My plan was to just avoid him and act like it never happened. Besides, no one that busy checks their voicemails, right? But when he schedules a one-on-one meeting with me for exactly 7 minutes and 32 seconds, One thing is for certain: He. Heard. Everything.

For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."

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 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.

Kelvin held her wrist and pulled her into a room in the hotel. "What are you doing?" Amelia asked, trying to tug at him. "Don't pretend you don't want this too." He said, rubbing his thumb at her hard nipples threatening to tear out of her dress, his eyes watching as her body responded to him. He held her neck in the most seductive way and pinned her against the wall. His hand went up under her black dress tracing her skin in a calculated path, as his fingers touched her already soaked pants, Amelia let out a soft moan and pulled him closer with a kiss. *** Amelia found herself getting married to her ex-fiancé's brother, it was an almost perfect revenge. Only to find herself wrapped deeper in the evil hands of the brothers. Would she ever be able to get her revenge and find her true love? Explore a tale of romance, suspense, treachery, and love. The fascinating novel 'For Her Sake' will have you reading until the very last page.