Lively

I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York. To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen. But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table. It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test. "Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture." I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking. He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago. He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy. He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go. He was wrong. I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don. And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy. I wanted to erase him. I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built. Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa." It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul. On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial. When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth. He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife. Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.

On the day of the wedding, Brendan left me and went to find his true love. When I called him, he, who had always been gentle to me, showed impatience for the first time, saying, "It's just a wedding, I'll make it up to you when I get back." Feeling disheartened, I suggested calling off the wedding. Brendan thought I was just being stubborn, and in the face of friends' advice, he said, "It's okay, when she calms down, she will come find me." It wasn't until Edrence, the prince, posted our marriage certificate that Brendan suddenly went crazy and came knocking on my door. When he saw the man who opened the door, he was slightly stunned. And I, standing behind the man, with a blush still on my face, leaned forward and asked, "Nephew, what brings you to see your auntie so late?"

For three years, I was the wife of Don Dante Moretti. But our marriage was a transaction, and my heart was the price. I kept a ledger, deducting points for every time he chose her—his first love, Isabella—over me. When the score reached zero, I would be free. After he abandoned me on a roadside to rush to Isabella's side, I was hit by a car. I woke up in the ER, bleeding, only to hear a nurse shout that I was two months pregnant. A tiny, impossible hope flared in my chest. But as the doctors scrambled to save me, they patched my husband through on speakerphone. His voice was cold and absolute. “Isabella’s condition is critical,” he ordered. “Not one drop of the reserve blood is to be touched until she is safe. I don't care who else needs it.” I lost the baby. Our child, sacrificed by its own father. I later learned Isabella had only suffered a minor cut. The blood was just a “precautionary measure.” The tiny flicker of hope was extinguished, and something inside me snapped, clean and final. The debt was paid. Alone in the silence, I made the last entry in my ledger, bringing the score to zero. I signed the divorce papers I had already prepared, left them on his desk, and walked out of his life forever.

Five years ago, my brother Declan stripped me of our family name and cast me out. Now, I was a cocktail waitress with terminal cancer, desperately trying to save enough money for my own urn. To make the final payment, I got on my knees on the cold club floor to bark like a dog for a drunk man's cash. My brother saw it all. But instead of helping, his face twisted in disgust. He fired me on the spot, withheld my final paycheck, and swore I'd never work in this city again, stealing my last chance to die with a shred of dignity. He grabbed my arm, his eyes burning with a cold fire I once thought was reserved for his business rivals. "I don't care if you die," he spat. And in that moment, I knew he meant it. The last flicker of hope died. He had taken my name, my health, and my future. Now, he had even taken my death. So I wrote a letter, revealing the truth he refused to see for five years-about the stolen watch, the woman who framed me, and the cancer eating me alive. Then, I walked to the river. If I couldn't live with dignity, I would let my death be the final, undeniable truth.

For ten years, my stepbrother Kason Oneal was my protector. After our parents divorced, he fought to keep me in his home, becoming the only family I had. Everyone knew he cherished me, and my gratitude slowly blossomed into a secret love. Then, his old high school flame, Dalia Keith, came back. The man who once kissed me in the dark of my room vanished overnight, replaced by a stranger. I overheard him telling Dalia, "She's just my stepsister. I feel sorry for her, that's all." He demanded I give back the jade pendant he once worked all summer to buy for my birthday, only to give it to her. When I asked to move out of the room next to his, he laughed cruelly. "You'll move into the servant's quarters in the basement. That's where you belong now." The final blow came when he gave an interview to the press, painting me as a clingy, delusional girl. I became the public villain in their perfect love story, a parasite who couldn't let him go. Staring at a taunting picture Dalia sent of her wearing my pendant, I finally understood. My love was worthless. I picked up the phone and called my biological father. "Dad, I agree. I want to marry Hadley Payne."

The New Year's trip was meant to be a fresh start, my final test to prove myself worthy of Chloe Davis' s powerful family. I spent the holiday tirelessly entertaining her restless younger brother, Leo, a frantic effort to be the perfect future brother-in-law. Then, a single scream shattered everything. When I rushed out, Leo lay twisted at the bottom of a deep excavation pit, buried under steel and concrete. Just like that, the Davis family turned on me. Chloe's father, purple with rage, screamed, "This is your fault! You were supposed to be watching him!" Chloe stood behind him, her face a mask of horror and blame, refusing even to look at me. Their influence was a weapon, brutally efficient. Overnight, my family's construction business was ruined, contracts canceled, loans called in. A week later, two men ambushed me, beating me until my bones cracked, kicking my leg until something snapped, smashing my face into a brick wall. I woke up in a public hospital, disfigured and permanently limping, alive but utterly broken. To add insult to agony, the news blared, showing Chloe Davis marrying my best friend, Mark Johnson-the city' s new golden couple, smiling for the cameras. My betrayal was complete. I couldn' t comprehend how my life had been so utterly decimated, all hinged on a supposed accident and baseless accusations. Why me? Why this brutal, undeserved fate? Just as I was about to jump from the city' s tallest building, a voice cut through the wind: "Don't do it!" It was Sophia Anderson, the mysterious tech mogul, offering a salvation I never expected, a second chance I desperately clung to. But salvation doesn't always look like promised heaven.

The antiseptic smell was the last thing I remembered. In my "other" life, the one that ended in blood and despair, I died from late-stage cancer in an unpaid hospital bed. My parents, Sarah and Robert, cried. They held my hand, promising to take care of everything, just as they had for years while I diligently sent them money for my health insurance. But they lied. The money was gone, squandered on a secret life. My father finally broke, confessing they' d adopted a son, Liam, channeling all my money to him, building a new family on the foundation of my slow death. The betrayal shattered something inside me. The weight of the kitchen knife, my mother' s scream, then nothing. Until I blinked. Sunlight streamed through my bedroom window. My husband, David, slept beside me. My body felt healthy, a full year before Dr. Evans' death sentence. A terrifying, undeserved second chance. I remembered the insurance renewal notice I' d ignored yesterday because I trusted them. This time, I wouldn't. When I called my mother, her usual syrupy sweetness faltered. "Oh… perfectly fine if you handle that yourself," she said, before asking for another twenty thousand dollars for renovations. I gave it to them, a ticket to the truth. Then came the photo: a blurry, half-demolished kitchen, and in the corner, a bright blue, brand-new plastic dinosaur. Liam already existed. The confusion lifted, replaced by a cold, sharp purpose. The hunt had begun.

The smell of grain and something sour-a barn in my suburban kitchen-was the first sign of something deeply wrong with my seemingly normal life with my mother, Eleanor. Standing over the blender, humming an unsettling tune, she poured what looked like chicken feed into it, her eyes wild with a grim, fanatical determination. "It's for your own good, Sarah," she explained, utterly calm, "The curse from your past life, when you were a neglected pig, is still holding you back. This will cleanse you." My stomach lurched; this wasn' t the first time she' d spouted Mrs. Gable's charlatan nonsense, but the ritualistic "cleansing" had never been this tangible. "I am not drinking animal feed," I said, my voice shaking with disgust. "This is insane." Her composure shattered. "You will drink it!" she shrieked, lunging at me with the sloshing blender jar, pinning me against the wall as the world went dark. I gasped, sucking in the familiar, acrid smell, my eyes snapping open to find myself on the kitchen floor, my mother still humming, the bag of chicken feed unopened. I scrambled up, touching the back of my head-no blood, no pain, just the impossible, terrifying realization: I had died, and now I was back. "Mom, what are you doing?" the words escaped me, a ghostly echo of a conversation that had already occurred. Her face held the same fanatical expression, as she began, "It's for your own good, Sarah. Mrs. Gable was very clear-" "No," I cut her off, the phantom pain in my skull too real, "Stop." Then came the final blow, a chilling announcement that shattered any remaining hope: "I've already found a man for you. Mark will be here any minute. He's a good, strong man. He knows what to do with a difficult woman like you." This wasn't just a curse; it was a cage. I had to get out.

I was just an ambitious architect, chasing a prestigious fellowship that would define my career. But then the email came, and my world blurred: the fellowship was awarded to my husband' s best friend, Ethan, who had no business getting it. My mother-in-law, Debra, beamed with feigned sympathy, calling it "God's plan" for me to focus on "a family," while my husband, Andrew, nodded along, smugly implying my career was an obstacle. It wasn't just losing a fellowship; it was discovering they had "accidentally" unplugged my laptop, erasing hours of work, and Andrew had allowed his mother to give away a $3,000 bottle of Scotch meant to save my promotion. The final, horrifying blow came when I overheard Andrew tell Debra he' d get me pregnant "even if I have to do it behind her back," just to make me "settle down and be a proper wife." They thought they had me trapped, a pawn in their twisted game of family. They had no idea that their cruel little "plan" had just awakened a cold, precise fury they couldn't even begin to imagine.

My wife, Isabella, was my entire world. I' d given her my kidney, saved her life, sacrificing my burgeoning career as a concert pianist without a second thought. Our love was my masterpiece. But after a minor car crash, she woke up claiming amnesia, her eyes hollow, devoid of any recognition for her husband. My place was immediately usurped by Julian, her manipulative childhood friend, and I became nothing but a nuisance. At a dinner he hosted, with a chilling smirk, Isabella coerced me, a man with a life-threatening peanut allergy, into eating poisoned food. As my body convulsed and I choked for air, she stood by, watching me die on the restaurant floor, her laughter mingling with Julian's as I slipped into darkness. As a helpless ghost, my torment only deepened. I witnessed her utter callousness towards my corpse, then Julian' s brutal physical assault and cold-blooded deception of Eleanor, my beloved mother-in-law, the only soul who fought for me. The pain of betrayal was eclipsed only by profound confusion: how could the woman I saved become such a monster? Then, a shocking truth emerged from hospital security footage: Isabella' s amnesia was a calculating lie, and Julian was a murderer, caught red-handed. An icy, terrifying resolve ignited in her eyes, transforming her. Now, a merciless game of vengeance begins, and Julian, the architect of our collective ruin, is about to face a reckoning far worse than death.

My life with Jake was supposed to be a rom-com: I, the supportive girlfriend, he, the brooding game developer destined for greatness. But our apartment was a toxic mess of his empty energy drinks and my growing resentment, as the rent-paying backbone of his "genius." Strange, unsolicited “viewer comments” glowed in the air around me, always excusing his messes, validating his outbursts, and telling me how to be the "perfect" partner. They echoed in my ears the night Jake threw a tantrum over a hot dog, shattering our matching mugs and leaving me cut and bleeding, while the comments screamed that he was just "hangry" and "passionate." After Jake publicly flaunted his "support crew" and I lost my major freelance job due to the "difficult" reputation he manufactured, I was drowning in a narrative everyone else seemed to believe. Why was my life so chaotic, and why did everyone, even my own parents, act like I was the problem? Fleeing in despair, I stumbled upon a shocking truth: My entire life, every argument, every emotional manipulation, was a meticulously crafted "script" by a "Relationship Architect" named Mark Taylor, designed to make me the perfect, submissive character in Jake's "hero's journey."

For five years, I was Mrs. Davenport, cleaning up after my husband's one-night stands and enduring his casual cruelty. Call it a gilded cage, but this mansion was my prison, bought by my sacrifice: I was the secret medical lifeline keeping him, Ethan Davenport, alive. Our cruel contract was nearing its end, just three months left. Then, Chloe, his perfect ex-girlfriend, waltzed back in. Her arrival wasn't a gentle reunion; it was a wrecking ball designed to finish what Ethan's neglect had started. She smeared my name, orchestrated a public humiliation, and then watched, smiling, as Ethan, fueled by rage and alcohol, dragged me to a damp, cold cellar. He tore apart my most sacred possession-my fiancé's diary-then brutally killed my loyal dog, Buddy, right before my eyes. As I bled, collapsing into unconsciousness, I heard his ex's venomous whisper: she'd had all my precious memories of him incinerated. They had taken everything. My dignity, my love, my last connection to a life I cherished. My heart was a hollowed-out space, suffocating under a mountain of grief and betrayal. How could a human being be so cruel, so blind, to the sacrifices I'd made to keep him alive? But on the day our notorious contract officially expired, I walked out. With nothing but the clothes on my back and a one-way ticket to a remote Pacific Northwest retreat, I finally chose myself. It was time to disappear, to burn away the past, and somehow, exist again.

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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 our fifth anniversary, my husband slid a black velvet box across the table. Inside wasn't a diamond ring, but a fountain pen. "Sign the separation papers, Aurora," Ethan said. "Ilene is spiraling again. She needs to see we are over." I was the wife of the Mafia Underboss, yet I was being discarded for the Family Ward. Before I could answer, Ilene stormed into the restaurant. She shrieked that I was still wearing his ring and threw a bowl of boiling lobster bisque directly at my chest. As my skin blistered and peeled, Ethan didn't rush to me. He hugged her. "It's okay," he soothed the woman who had just assaulted me. "I've got you." The betrayal didn't stop there. When Ilene pushed me down the stairs days later, Ethan erased the security footage to protect her from the police. When I was kidnapped by his enemies, I called his emergency line—the one meant for life-or-death situations. He declined the call. He was too busy holding Ilene's hand to save his wife. That was the moment the chain broke. As the kidnapper's van sped onto the highway, I didn't wait for a rescue that would never come. I opened the door and jumped into the dark. Everyone thought Aurora Bruce died on that pavement. Two years later, Ethan stood outside a gallery in Paris, looking at the woman he had destroyed, finally realizing he had protected the wrong one.

I was the Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me. But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest. The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me. They didn't. Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her. They let me burn to keep her warm. When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages. That was the moment Elena Vitiello died. I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York. By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring. "You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them. "Burn for it."

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 four years, I traced the bullet scar on Chace’s chest, believing it was proof he would bleed to keep me safe. On our anniversary, he told me to wear white because "tonight changes everything." I walked into the gala thinking I was getting a ring. Instead, I stood frozen in the center of the ballroom, drowning in silk, watching him slide his mother's sapphire onto another woman's finger. Karyn Warren. The daughter of a rival family. When I begged him with my eyes to claim me, to save me from the public humiliation, he didn't flinch. He just leaned toward his Underboss, his voice amplified by the silence. "Karyn is for power. Ember is for pleasure. Don't confuse the assets." My heart didn't just break; it incinerated. He expected me to stay as his mistress, threatening to dig up my dead mother’s grave if I refused to play the obedient pet. He thought I was trapped. He thought I had nowhere to go because of my father’s massive gambling debts. He was wrong. With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and texted the one name I was never supposed to use. Keith Mosley. The Don. The monster under Chace's bed. *I am invoking the Blood Oath. My father’s debt. I am ready to pay it.* His reply came three seconds later, buzzing against my palm like a warning. *The price is marriage. You belong to me. Yes or No?* I looked up at Chace, who was laughing with his new fiancée, thinking he owned me. I looked down and typed three letters. *Yes.*

I was staring at the two pink lines on the plastic stick, trembling with the terrifying joy of carrying the heir to the New York underworld’s most ruthless faction. Then the intercom buzzed, and a voice splintered my world. "The little art student actually thinks I'm going to marry her? It was just a game to pass the time while you were in Europe, Estella." I froze. My boyfriend, Holden, was in the next room, laughing with the daughter of his rival. He explained that I was just a "clean civilian image" he needed to secure a business deal. Now that the deal was signed, he was dumping the "stray" to marry the "Queen." I tried to run, but freedom only lasted forty-eight hours. Holden didn't just break my heart; he turned my terror into content. He kidnapped me, tied me to a chair at the edge of a cliff, and forced me to choose between my life and his new fiancée's. Then, he pushed me off the edge. As gravity snatched me, I heard him laughing. I landed on a stunt airbag. It was just a "social experiment." A sick prank for his amusement. "Don't be so dramatic, Kenia," he called down. "It's just a game." He thought I was broken. He thought I was just a prop in his life. But he forgot that I knew his secrets. I dragged my injured body to a payphone and dialed the one number Holden told me to fear—the rival Don, Gael Simpson. "It's Kenia," I whispered, clutching the receiver like a lifeline. "I'm calling in the debt."

On our ninth anniversary, my husband Dominick didn't toast to us. Instead, he rested his hand on his mistress's pregnant belly in front of the entire crime family. I was just a debt payment to him, a ghost in a forty-thousand-dollar gown. But the humiliation didn't end in the ballroom. When his mistress, Chastity, started hemorrhaging later that night, he didn't call an ambulance. He dragged me to the family clinic. He knew I had a serious heart condition. He knew a transfusion of that magnitude could trigger a fatal cardiac event. "She is carrying my son," he said, his eyes devoid of any humanity. "You will give her whatever she needs." I begged him. I bargained for my freedom. He lied and agreed, just to get the needle in my arm. As my dark red blood flowed through the tube to save the woman destroying my life, my chest tightened. The monitors began to scream. My heart was failing. "Mr. Reyes! She's crashing!" the doctor shouted. Dominick didn't even turn around. He walked out of the room to hold Chastity's hand, leaving me to die on the table. I survived, but Annis Myers died in that clinic. He thought I would return to the penthouse and continue being his obedient, silent wife. He thought he owned the blood in my veins. He was wrong. I went back to the penthouse one last time. I struck a match. I let the room burn. By the time Dominick realized I wasn't in the ashes, I was already on a plane to London. I had left my wedding ring in an envelope, along with the medical records that proved his cruelty. He wanted a war? I would give him one.

My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent. But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress. Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes. "If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you." To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife. When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala. He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent. He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters. He thought he had broken me. He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage. But he made a fatal error. He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign. They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me. And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck. I didn't jump to die. I jumped to be reborn. And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin.

For seven years, I served as the eyes for Dante Vitiello, the blind Capo of New York. I pulled him back from the edge of madness, tending to his wounds and warming his bed when everyone else had given up on him. But the moment his vision returned, the years of devotion turned to ash. In a single phone call, he decided to marry Sofia Moretti for territory, dismissing me as just "the maid's daughter" and a "comfort" he intended to keep as a mistress. He forced me to watch him court her. At a gala, when a chaotic accident caused a tower of champagne glasses to shatter, Dante threw his body over Sofia to protect her. He left me standing there, bleeding from the glass shards, while he carried her away like she was porcelain. He didn't even look back at the woman who had saved his life. I realized then that I had worshipped a broken god. I had given him my dignity, only for him to treat me like a disposable bandage now that he was whole. He arrogantly believed I would stay in the penthouse, grateful for his scraps. So, while he was out celebrating his engagement, I met with his mother. I signed the severance agreement for fifty million dollars. I packed my bags, wiped my phone, and boarded a one-way flight to Australia. By the time Dante came home to an empty bed, realized his mistake, and began tearing the city apart to find me, I was already a ghost.