Mo Xiaoxiao

The fire that melted my skin should have been the end of my story. I had been the perfect mafia wife. I obeyed my father, I married Dante Genovese, and I even birthed his daughter. But in return, he locked us in a safehouse and lit a match. He watched from behind a steel door as I burned to ash, all because his mistress, Sofia, was jealous and wanted me out of the picture. My own brother had spiked my champagne to ensure I was too weak to fight back. I died screaming, my lungs filling with smoke and the scent of my husband's betrayal. But when I gasped awake, I wasn't in hell. I was in the bridal suite at the Ritz-Carlton. My hands were smooth. My skin was unblemished. The date on the digital clock burned red in the darkness. It was three years ago. It was the night of our engagement. The night it all began. Dante was in the bathroom right now, humming contentedly as he washed off the scent of his mistress before coming to claim his "lawful prize." In my past life, I waited for him. I let him take me, thinking my submission would earn his love. Not this time. I didn't run to the lobby for help. My family had sold me out. Instead, I took the elevator to the Penthouse floor. To the territory of the Outfit. To the door of Matteo Moretti—The Butcher. The only man ruthless enough to make Dante tremble. When the door opened, revealing a man with eyes like ice and a gun in his hand, I didn't flinch. I fell to my knees and looked up at the monster who could save me. "I am Elena Vitiello," I whispered, the drug in my veins setting my blood on fire. "And I have a proposition."

I was the "crazy girl" my family sent to a survivalist commune in Utah to rot. Four years later, I returned to Manhattan with a titanium USB drive and a heart full of ice, ready to blackmail the one man who could burn my family to the ground. But I underestimated how much they hated me. My fiancé, Preston, was already laundering money through my inheritance and sleeping with my replacement. He didn't even flinch when I showed him the evidence of his crimes. Instead, he grabbed me by the shoulders, smashed my phone, and shoved me out of his moving Lincoln into a midnight storm. I hit the wet pavement hard, my knees scraping against the asphalt as I watched him drive away, laughing about how I was a "dirt-poor exile" that nobody wanted. Within minutes, my credit cards were flagged as stolen and my father’s lawyers were drafting a statement calling me mentally unstable. I was left shivering in a puddle of oily sludge, wearing a ruined Chanel suit, with no money, no home, and no one to hear me scream. I couldn't understand how they could be so cruel. I was their flesh and blood, yet they treated me like a broken toy to be discarded in the trash. I was a "distressed asset" in a city that only valued gold. That’s when a black armored SUV pulled to the curb. King Wagner—the ruthless shark of Wall Street and Preston’s own uncle—looked at my muddy face with cold, calculating eyes. He didn't offer me pity; he offered me a leash. "You belong to me now," he whispered, pulling me into the dry warmth of his car. By the next morning, he had announced our engagement to the world, turning me into the very weapon that would slit my family's throat.

For three years, I played second fiddle to my boyfriend' s "childhood friend," Eve. When Damion finally whisked me away to Paris to rekindle our dying spark, I thought things might change. Instead, the moment we arrived, he abandoned me in the hotel lobby without my passport because Eve called with a "crisis." I spent my first night in Paris stranded and penniless while he rushed to comfort her. When he finally returned the next morning, he didn't apologize. He flew into a rage because I' d sought safety in an old college friend' s room, accusing me of cheating while he still smelled like her cheap perfume. He actually punched the only man who helped me, screaming that I was the toxic one. The gaslighting was the final straw. I didn't feel anger anymore, just a cold, liberating indifference. While he begged on his knees, quitting his job and promising to cut Eve off forever, I simply walked away. I boarded a plane to London for a promotion I' d once turned down for him, leaving him with nothing but his regrets and the "friend" he chose over me.

My husband made me ride in the freezing cargo hold because his mistress wanted peace and quiet. I died back there, clutching the "vitamins" she gave me, while they laughed in the front seat. It wasn't until my frozen body was found that Atlas realized he had just killed his own wife and unborn child. Ten years ago, I saved Atlas from a car crash that left me with the mind of a child. He hated me for it. He treated me like a burden and let his mistress, Kacie, feed me high-dose abortion pills disguised as health supplements. When the police uncovered the truth, Atlas' s world shattered. He discovered Kacie had never been pregnant-but I was. Consumed by a belated, violent rage, he executed Kacie with his own hands and demanded the death penalty for himself. He thought death would be his redemption. He thought he could find me on the other side and make amends. But when his spirit finally reached out to mine, begging for forgiveness, I didn't feel the love I had yearned for in life. I felt nothing. "Go away, Atlas," I whispered, watching his soul crumble. "I'm finally free."

My boss shoved me into a room to handle a VIP patient who was threatening suicide. She was Evelin Bennett, a famous fashion influencer, hysterical over her fiancé. But when she tearfully showed me a photo of the man she loved, my world shattered. It was my husband of two years, Ben, a kind construction worker I'd found after an accident left him with amnesia. Except in this photo, he was Bernard Logan, a ruthless tycoon standing in front of a skyscraper bearing his name. Just then, the real Bernard Logan walked in, dressed in a suit that cost more than my car. He strode past me as if I didn't exist and wrapped his arms around Evelin. "Baby, I'm here," he murmured, his voice the same deep, soothing tone he used on me after a bad day. "I'll never leave you again. I promise." He had made that exact promise to me a hundred times over. He kissed her forehead, declaring he loved only her-a performance for an audience of one: me. He was showing me that our entire marriage, our life together during his amnesia, was a secret to be buried. As he carried her from the room, his cold eyes met mine one last time. The message was clear: You are a problem to be erased.

For six years, I devoted my life to my wife, tech CEO Isabella Stone. After I saved her from a fire, I became the sole caregiver for her comatose mother, putting my own life on hold so she could build her empire. Then she went on national television and told the world our marriage was just a debt of gratitude. She never loved me. That same night, her mother died. I tried to call her, but her ex-fiancé—the man who abandoned her in that fire—answered the phone. She was with him, pregnant with his child, while her mother died alone in a hospital. At the funeral, she collapsed and lost the baby. Her lover screamed that it was my fault, and she stood by his side, letting him blame me. I divorced her. I thought it was over. But as we left the lawyer's office, her lover tried to run me over. Isabella pushed me out of the way, taking the hit herself. With her last breath, she confessed the truth. "The baby... he was yours, Izzy. He was always yours."

The hospital corridor smelled of disinfectant, quiet except for my wife Sarah's voice through the door. She' d claimed amnesia after a car accident, unable to remember me, her husband of five years. But what I heard next wasn't confusion. "It' s just for seven days. Then I'll say my memory came back. He can't blame a 'sick' person, right?" Mark Davis, a junior developer at our company, responded, "Aren't you worried he'll just cut you off? Financially, I mean." Sarah laughed, a chilling sound. "David? He loves me too much. He'll feel guilty and give me anything I want. This is the only way to get him to step down so you can take over the Alpha Corp project. Once you're in charge, everything will be ours." My world shattered. The woman was a stranger. The next day, Sarah, with a fake bandage, announced Mark as acting CTO, thrusting a temporary leave form at me. Everyone watched, expecting an explosion. They knew I co-founded the company, built its technical foundation from scratch. I signed the papers without a word. "Okay," I said, my voice even, leaving Sarah bewildered. Did they truly believe I was blind to their scheme? She had no idea. The Alpha Corp project, her intended prize for Mark, had a one-hundred-million-dollar penalty for failure. A seven-day time bomb she had just armed herself. This wasn't merely her plan anymore; it was mine too.

My brother, Ethan, was my whole world, the only light in a home cloaked in shadows, a world where my stepsister, Chloe, reigned supreme, pulling the strings of my father and the man I loved, Dr. Liam Miller. The call came on a Tuesday, pulling me from my mother' s art gallery, and dragging me into a family meeting that would shatter what little peace I had left. Chloe, with a chilling smile, revealed her plan: to marry me off to Noah Blackwood, a reclusive billionaire rumored to be monstrously disfigured, all to settle her own failed engagement and save my father' s crumbling finances. My world crumbled further when I realized Liam, my childhood friend, the man I had painted a thousand times in my dreams, sided with them, his eyes cold and judgmental, dismissing my pleas as "selfish." Then, with a terrifying suddenness, Ethan collapsed, his small body going limp in my arms; a horrifying consequence of an overdose of his heart medication that Chloe had orchestrated, and Liam, ever so blind, had enabled. My rage wasn't just cold anymore; it was a consuming fire, burning away years of fear and submission, leaving me with one clear thought: if I was to be a pawn, I would play this game to win, not just for Ethan' s life, but for my own freedom. I would marry Noah Blackwood, but not as their sacrifice; I would use his power to burn their world to the ground and finally claim justice.

The last thing I remembered was the bitter taste of the tea my daughter, Stella, had made for me. I died slowly, my body betraying me while my mind screamed, alone in a secluded D.C. apartment. Stella, the brilliant Yale graduate, the political commentator I had molded into a star, watched. Just a day before, her viral video had already shredded my reputation, painting me as a monster. The poison she gave me simply finished the job. Dying by the hand of your own child, the one you sacrificed everything for, is a special kind of hell. There was no confusion, only a chilling clarity as my life drained away, her cold, detached eyes the last thing I saw. How could the daughter I pushed to greatness pay me back with death and public humiliation? Was this truly the end of everything? Then, with a gasp, I woke up. The familiar smell of old wood and fried onions filled my lungs. My hands, strong and calloused, not the useless claws of my deathbed. And there she was: a seventeen-year-old Stella, rebellious and sharp, clutching that art school acceptance letter. I knew this moment. This was where the fatal battle of my first life began, the path leading directly to my murder. This time, everything would be different.

My marriage to Seraphina had rules: five years of waiting for full moons and "energetic alignment." During a raging wildfire, I found my wife, Seraphina, intimately huddled with another man, Julian, and a young boy, Leo, looking like a blissful family. She didn't care I'd discovered her betrayal; she just told me I was 'upsetting the harmony' and kicked me out of my own home. She even refused my divorce, claiming it would 'disrupt her karmic path' and then abandoned me bleeding in a cafe after I was injured saving her, to coddle a child who wasn't even hers. Was my love and sacrifice truly so worthless, so easily discarded for a life built on her curated lies and calculated manipulations? But then I saw the pictures and videos of her secret life, the raw, unhinged laughter broke free-the man who loved Seraphina was dead, and a new, free me was finally born.

Ten years with Ethan, my high school sweetheart, culminated in the diamond ring I' d always dreamed of. My engagement party buzzed with excitement, a celebration of our perfect love story. But the dream shattered when Ethan violently shoved me at the party, his voice ice-cold. Then, a scene I' ll never erase: Ethan, on our marital bed, with Chloe-my old friend, now my bitter enemy. And the chilling truth: his proposal wasn't for me at all. The ring I wore bore Chloe' s initials. Our apartment, my future, everything, was meticulously designed for her, a cruel charade. He ripped down our photos, denied my pain, and then, he slapped me, demanding I apologize to the very person destroying my world. My own parents, my mentors, had even distanced themselves, thanks to Chloe's past manipulations-all known to Ethan. I was a pawn, a placeholder in their twisted game of revenge and manipulation. How could the man who promised to love and protect me conspire with the woman who stole my art scholarship, the woman he knew was my deepest wound, to orchestrate such a public humiliation? But no more. On the very day he planned to discard me at the altar, I decided to reclaim my story. I canceled the wedding, booked a flight overseas, and exposed their entire deceitful plot to his horrified family. This wasn't an ending; it was my defiant beginning.

The sterile scent of rubbing alcohol was too familiar. For five years, I'd been pregnant with Ethan Vanderbilt’s child, only to lose them, each time beneath the gaze of his wife. This time, Olivia, his wife, stood over me, a cruel smile pasted on her face, a gleaming needle in her hand. Ethan watched from the doorway, just like always. After the screams and excruciating pain, I lost not only my baby but also my ability to ever have children again following a forced hysterectomy. The news broke my father, who leaped to his death because he couldn't bear my torment. At his funeral, Olivia forced me to my knees, then kicked me relentlessly until my surgical wounds burst, leaving me bleeding uncontrollably. She even took photos of my battered body, laughing as she suggested I sell myself to pay for his burial. Then, she deliberately scattered his ashes into the mud. How could Ethan, the man I once loved, stand by and watch me endure such depravity? Why was I trapped in this living hell, systematically tortured, robbed of my children, my body, and now my father, all based on some horrifying, unknown lie? As Olivia rained blows upon my head in the pouring rain, her hateful laughter echoing, I fumbled for my phone. There was one person who knew the true story behind Olivia’s venom, the real reason for her twisted revenge. With my last breath, I pressed record.

The story started on their first encounter. Something inside her urged Vanessa to offer him herself so that he could have a child. A beautiful story began but was cut short when she left right after a little girl was born. Four years later, he again found her in front of his eyes. But she was horrified when the little girl thought the diapers she had brought were a gift "I couldn't tell her that her mother abandoned her!" He explained. He would rather lie to his daughter than let her be disappointed in her mother. After all, he had always been sure that she would return one day!

On my wedding day, my father sold me to the Chicago Outfit to pay his debts. I was supposed to marry Alex Moreno, the heir to the city's most powerful crime family. But he couldn't even be bothered to show up. As I stood alone at the altar, humiliated, my best friend delivered the final blow. Alex hadn't just stood me up; he had run off to California with his mistress. The whispers in the cathedral turned me into a joke. I was damaged goods, the rejected bride. His family knew the whole time and let me take the public fall, offering me his cousins as pathetic replacements-a brute who hated me or a coward who couldn't protect me. The humiliation burned away my fear, leaving only cold rage. My life was already over, so I decided to set the whole game on fire myself. The marriage pact only said a Carlson had to marry a Moreno; it never said which one. With nothing left to lose, I looked past the pathetic boys they offered. I chose the one man they never expected. I chose his father, the Don himself.

My marriage to Joshua Caldwell was a prison sentence. I was a Hartman trophy, sold to the powerful family who had destroyed mine. Then I discovered he was cheating. His mistress was pregnant with the child he denied me, and he was stealing my secret song lyrics to build her career. When I confronted him, he called me a spineless liability and threatened to destroy what was left of my family. To make matters worse, a one-night stand with a stranger turned out to be with my husband's brother, Anthony Caldwell-the Don of the city. He knew all of Joshua's secrets and used them to trap me in a twisted game, seeing me as nothing more than an asset. They both thought I was a broken doll they could control. I wrote a song for his mistress, a beautiful execution with a single, impossible note I knew would destroy her voice. She sang it, and now her career is over. Now the Don has summoned me to Chicago, not knowing the woman he thinks is his asset is the one who just burned his brother's world to the ground.

At my boyfriend's poorest moment, I suddenly broke up with him. Later, he became a Don in the Mafia and married me by any means necessary. Everyone said he loved me to the bone. But every night, he brought different women home, deliberately trying to provoke me. I asked no questions, shed no tears, and never disturbed his trysts with his mistresses. He went crazy with rage instead, kissing me fiercely and demanding, "Why aren't you jealous?" He didn't know I was sick. Dying. While he was furiously taking his revenge on me, I was slowly walking toward death.

My adoptive family, the Castillos, treated their biological children like royalty, but used me as a disposable pawn. To secure a mafia alliance, they forced me to take my beautiful sister's place and marry Don Damien Moretti, a man rumored to be a ruthless, bloodthirsty monster. They thought they were sending me to my execution. At our engagement banquet, my mother and sister deliberately gifted me a cheap, counterfeit gown to humiliate me in front of New York's elite. When I publicly exposed their lie, my father demanded I apologize. My mother even raised her hand to slap me in front of everyone. "You are a vicious curse! You ruin everything!" They eagerly waited for the Don to execute me on the spot for embarrassing them. I had spent years secretly saving their company from bankruptcy and supplying the underground experimental drugs that kept my brother's mafia career alive. Yet, they threw me to the wolves without a second thought, disgusted by my very existence. But they didn't know that just an hour before the banquet, I had saved a bleeding, masked stranger in a dark alley-who turned out to be Damien Moretti himself.

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

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.

Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate. I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo. The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives. My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked. To her, I was finally being disposed of. She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left. She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex. "She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds. They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter. They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back. But they made a fatal mistake. With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon. I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him. And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner. He will be my vengeance.

When Jimena, a young single mother with a dark past and a violent ex she's desperate to forget, crosses paths with Alessio Fanucci, a dangerous mafia heir, her world is turned upside down. All she wanted was to get by working as a maid at the Fanucci mansion and to keep her distance from the three infamous Fanucci brothers as much as possible. Things take a turn when the oldest brother and heir, Alessio, breaks off his arranged engagement with his ex and urgently needs a new one. Alessio, cold, ruthless, dominant, and not someone anyone talks back to, sees the quiet Jimena as nothing more than his pawn. Meanwhile, she sees Alessio as nothing more than another monster she needs to escape. As they spend more time together, the lines between fake and reality begin to blur, and they discover they have more in common than they initially thought. Tensions rise when Jimena's ex returns, threatening her new comfortable life and the secrets she’s been withholding. He is out for revenge and is determined to go to any length for it, even if that means forming an alliance with the Fanuccis' enemy, who happens to be the family of Alessio’s ex. With a war, untold truths, and feelings at stake, will Jimena’s newly formed bonds keep standing, or will everything around her crumble?

Becoming a bride to settle a debt was never part of my dreams. Yet, my stepbrother's betrayal and a trap party turned my life upside down, shattering my illusions of a joyful marriage. Now, I'm faced with the harsh reality of being married to a ruthless Mafia boss, Alessio Marino. Can I trust his promises, or will my situation be worse than the abuse I endured from my stepbrother? With love stripped from my wedding vows, all I can do is cling to hope for God's mercy and summon the strength to navigate this perilous new life.

I spent five years laundering my family's wealth and buying military-grade weapons to crown my husband, Alistair, the Don of the Chicago Mafia. But the night before his coronation, he drove an Italian stiletto into my stomach. He sneered that a Don needed a true Mafia Queen, and that was always meant to be his "fragile" friend, Kylie. As I bled out on the Persian rug, he revealed the sickening truth. The night I was found in a rival Irish boss's bed two years ago wasn't a setup by our enemies. Alistair had ordered his own mother and sister to drug and frame me. He just needed me terrified enough to sign over my merchant trust fund to prove my loyalty. My entire marriage, my sacrifices, and my stolen wealth were just stepping stones for him and his mistress. I had bled for him and won him the city, only to be slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb so he could hand my empire to another woman. Before the flames I started consumed us both, I swore I'd drag his entire family to hell. Opening my eyes again, the suffocating smoke was gone, replaced by the scent of lavender and the bitter taste of chloral hydrate. I was back on the exact night of the frame-up two years ago. Outside the door, my sister-in-law was whispering, waiting for the Irish boss to arrive so they could ruin me. This time, I was going to make sure she was the one in that bed.