Nieves Gomez

Isabella Sinclair bears the surname of the second richest and most prestigious mafia family in the country, but only that. His father was banished from the prominent family of gangsters, for marrying his mother, a woman of humble origins. Which is why Isabella has never had any contact with her father's family. At just the age of ten, Isabella has been left alone and helpless, living on the street, because her parents have died and the bank has taken everything from her, due to the accumulated debts. Isabella's whole world has fallen apart, when something incredible happens. She receives a letter from her father's family, the wealthy Sinclair's, inviting her to a unique family reunion, which will take place on a two-week cruise. Not having a roof over her head, Isabella decides to go without knowing the turn her life will take during this short trip, will meeting the Sinclair's gangsters mean her salvation or her downfall?

Can money buy everything? Even love? Edan O'Connor, a millionaire, heir to a major investment company, promises his father to marry in front of him, on his deathbed, to fulfill his last wish, there is only one detail, his father does not tolerate his girlfriend, Vivian. So Edan decides to hire a girl to pose as his new girlfriend and fake a fake marriage in front of his father. At the hospital, Edan meets Alma Contreras, a beautiful and humble young woman, who has her mother hospitalized in need of surgery that she cannot afford. Edan proposes a deal, he will pay all his mother's medical expenses, if she pretends to be his girlfriend for a few days and an acted-out marriage. In the midst of desperation and need, Alma accepts. But there are two details, suddenly, what was supposed to be a fake marriage, becomes a real marriage and thanks to a last “minute surgery, Edan's father is saved, changing the course of his contract completely. What will happen when in the middle of the performance, true feelings begin to awaken between Alma and Edan? How will Vivian, Edan's real girlfriend, a pedantic and toxic woman, take the fact that her boyfriend has married another woman? Will love to be able to overcome the barriers of money and social class?

Ava Golf is the heiress of the important fashion company G&G, which belonged to her grandfather. She is an intelligent, successful and well-known woman in the world of business and fashion. She has never lacked a suitor, however, all the boyfriends that Ava has had, have ended up leaving her for another woman, always thinner or younger. According to gossip, this is because Ava is a chubby woman, with a few extra pounds and very pronounced curves. So, thanks to this, at the age of 33, Ava is still single. After her last break-up, Ava decides that she will no longer believe in love, she swears to herself that from now on, she will only have casual encounters, no boyfriends or thoughts of marriage, and with that premise she goes out partying with her friends. That same night, she meets Alex Grand, a handsome man with blue eyes, with whom she has a casual intimate encounter and whom she never plans to see again. However, Ava's surprise is great when, the next day, she learns that the same Alex Grand she slept with the night before turns out to be one of the new partners in her grandfather's company. Ava doesn't imagine that this handsome stranger will come into her life to stay forever and turn her life upside down.

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 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."

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.

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.

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 five months pregnant and the top underground surgeon for the Chicago mafia. On Christmas Eve, I was called in to perform an off-the-books C-section on a VIP patient. But through the operating room glass, I saw my mafia boss husband, Julian. He wasn't there for me. He was slamming his fists against the door, screaming in desperation for the bleeding mistress on my table. "I swear on my life I will marry you, Lyla. Just hold on." I delivered his illegitimate son while he completely ignored my existence, kissing her knuckles with a reverence I thought was mine alone. The nightmare didn't end there. When I returned to our cold penthouse, I had my prenatal vitamins tested. They were laced with black-market hormones designed to cause severe fetal deformities and force a late-term miscarriage. Julian, the man who once took a bullet for me and swore a blood oath to protect me, had been secretly poisoning our unborn child. His entire family had been covering up his four-year affair, praising the mistress while using me as a convenient shield. How could the fiercely protective husband I loved be the very monster plotting to destroy me from the inside out? The last shred of my affection for the Capo instantly turned to ash. I calmly booked a discreet termination, drafted ironclad annulment papers, and walked out to build my own empire. ---

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

I am the best trauma surgeon in the New York mafia. For five years, I used my underground surgical earnings to fund my fiancé Dante's rise to Capo. But after a grueling six-hour surgery saving his soldier, I walked out into the pouring rain to find his new ward, Sofia, sitting in my front passenger seat. In our world, the front seat of a Capo's car is a throne that belongs exclusively to his future wife. Yet Sofia was sitting there, wearing his tailored coat and drinking from the custom silver flask I bought him. When I confronted them, Dante didn't apologize. Instead, he publicly humiliated me. "Just get in the back, Serena. She is a traumatized kid having a panic attack." He demanded I bend the knee to an associate, completely disregarding my authority and our sacred blood oath. Sofia looked at me with wide, artfully innocent eyes, but hid a victorious smile behind my flask. I had laundered half a million dollars to build his marital fortress. I had bought his loyalty with my own blood and scalpel. Why was he treating my five years of absolute devotion like garbage over a manipulative girl's fake tears? I didn't argue, and I didn't beg for his love. I simply took off the massive diamond betrothal ring, dropped it into a biohazard bin full of clotted blood, and walked away. If he wanted to give away my seat, I would take back my money, destroy his standing, and let the ultimate Boss of Bosses court me instead.

I married the ruthless mafia Don, Zane Falcone, at seventeen to pay off my father's blood debt. For three years, I played the obedient wife, secretly hoping my childhood love would thaw his cold heart. But on our third anniversary, he left me dining alone, openly flaunting his cartel heiress mistress to the entire underworld. The final blow came when my father was dying in the hospital. I called Zane, begging for a car. "I am in the middle of entertaining our southern allies, Aria. Stop being dramatic." He hung up on me. Through the receiver, I could hear him dancing with his mistress. By the time I rushed to the hospital, my father was already dead. At the funeral, Zane abandoned me in the pouring rain to answer his mistress's phone call. When he finally came home, he didn't offer condolences. Instead, he ordered me to pack his mistress's bags. I handed him the divorce papers, telling him the debt was paid, but he tore them to shreds. "Nobody leaves the Famiglia! You are mine until you are dead!" Looking at his unhinged rage, a switch flipped inside my chest. I didn't understand why I had wasted my youth hoping to change a monster who saw me as nothing but a breathing contract. The next morning, I grabbed my fake passport, snapped my SIM card in half, and disappeared.

The moment I saw my husband massaging his dead brother's pregnant mistress's feet, I knew my marriage was over. He moved her into our home under the guise of "family duty," forcing me to watch as he prioritized her comfort over our vows. The final betrayal came when she stole and deliberately broke my mother's priceless necklace. When I slapped her for the desecration, my husband struck me across the face to defend her. He had violated a sacred honor code by putting his hands on the daughter of another Don-an act of war. I looked him in the eye and swore on my mother's grave that I would bring a bloody revenge upon his entire family. Then I made one phone call to my father, and the demolition of his empire began.