Puffin

In my previous life, I spent every waking moment cleaning up the messes of Dante Moretti, the heir to the Chicago Outfit. I dragged him away from drugs and strippers just so he wouldn't miss his Initiation Ceremony. Because of my loyalty, he became a Made Man. But a year later, when he needed a scapegoat for his own incompetence, he didn't thank me. He framed me for being a rat. I was forced to watch my parents executed in front of me before I was thrown into a freezing solitary cell to rot. The last thing I felt was the biting cold leeching the life from my body while he continued to live like a king. I died realizing my love was just a weapon he used against me. But when I blinked, the suffocating darkness dissolved into blinding strobe lights. I was back in the club. It was the night before his Initiation. Dante stood in front of me, high and arrogant, demanding his car keys so he could go see a stripper named Roxy instead of preparing for his oath. In the past, I begged him to stay. I saved his reputation. This time, I looked at the man who murdered me and felt nothing but ice. I pressed the keys into his hand. "Go," I said, condemning him to his own destruction. "Have the night of your life, Dante."

My genius boyfriend, Colten, was my savior. I was the "slow" girl he single-handedly tutored into NYU. He built my entire academic future, and I thought our love story was a fairytale. But after I found another woman's birth control pills in his bag and caught him in lie after lie with his lab partner, Addisyn, I finally left him. The price was brutal: I failed every class and faced expulsion. Desperate to save myself, I went back. I played the part of his sweet, obedient girlfriend, using his tutoring to ace my retake exams while secretly planning my escape to a new program. The day my transfer was approved, he ambushed me with a public proposal. In front of a cheering crowd, he got on one knee with a diamond ring, ready to trap me in his perfect life forever. "Will you marry me?" he asked, his voice full of triumph. But before I could answer, a different woman stepped forward. It was Addisyn, and her hand was resting on her pregnant belly.

To the outside world, I was the envy of every she-wolf as the fiancée of Alpha Kael. But inside the gilded cage of his pack house, I was a ghost. I molded myself into perfection for him, wearing the colors he liked and suppressing my own voice. Until I walked past his study and saw him with Lyra—the orphan he called his "sister." His hand rested intimately on her thigh as he laughed, telling her, "Elara is just a political necessity. You are the moon in my sky." My heart shattered, but the physical blow came days later. During a training exercise, the safety cable snapped. I fell twenty feet, shattering my leg. Lying in the dirt, gasping through the pain, I watched my Fated Mate run. Not to me. He ran to Lyra, who was burying her face in his chest, feigning terror. He comforted her while I bled. Later, in the infirmary, I heard him whisper to her, "She won't die. It will just teach her who the real Luna is." He knew. He knew she had sabotaged the rope with silver, and he was protecting her attempted murder. The final thread of my love incinerated into ash. The next morning, I walked into the Council Hall, threw a thick file on the table, and looked the Elders in the eye. "I am dissolving the engagement," I stated coldly. "And I am withdrawing my family's silver supply. I will starve this Pack until you beg." Kael laughed, thinking I was bluffing. He didn't notice the lethal Beta from the rival pack standing in the shadows behind me, ready to help me burn Kael's kingdom to the ground.

I gave my brother my kidney. In return, he promised to finally bring me home. For eight years, I waited on the sidelines of his life, only to overhear him giving my "Welcome Home" party to our adopted sister. He called me a ghost he didn't know where to put, confident I'd show up and smile while she took my place. He was wrong. I didn't cry or scream; I just turned off my phone and walked away forever.

At 25, Evelyn Carter was known as the luckiest woman in all of the city of Beaumont. Victor Blake, the aristocratic heir to Beaumont's most influential family fell in love with her at first sight, marrying her despite her leg disability, and pledged unwavering loyalty. Yet, when Evelyn entrusted him with her heart, she discovered that Victor was the very one responsible for her disability. With a transformative fire, Evelyn bid farewell to her past self, leaving behind her suppressed self and embracing a new beginning.

"Liam, let's get a divorce." I said the words calmly, five years into being the perfect corporate wife to Liam Hayes, a man who married me for convenience, never love. My life, carefully constructed on a transactional foundation, shattered when his high school sweetheart, Chloe Miller, returned, not just to reclaim her place in his life, but to tear down mine. He publicly humiliated me at a charity gala, on a brightly lit stage in front of hundreds, announcing that our entire marriage was merely "a business arrangement." He branded me a manipulative, jealous monster, accusing me of hiring thugs to attack Chloe, showcasing staged security footage as "proof." The crowd stared, whispered, and judged, turning me into a national punchline, the "mistake" he was "correcting," while he embraced Chloe as his "true love." Every eye in the ballroom burned with disgust, and my heart hammered with a raw mixture of shock, betrayal, and a deep, agonizing injustice. I looked at him, across the sea of judging faces, and finally understood: there was nothing left to fight for, no trust to salvage. "So, you want a divorce, Liam?" I asked, my voice steady, my decision made. His cold, firm "Yes" was the final nail, but it was also my liberation; I would walk away, with everything I had secretly built, and leave his twisted world behind.

My mother' s last breath was a promise from a man whose name was a myth: Mr. Sterling, my father. He was supposed to take me in, but instead, I found myself an intruder in a mansion of glass and cold stone, an unwelcome "charity case" to the perfect, privileged twins, Olivia and Liam. They treated me with disdain, their silent hostility a constant pressure, and at school, the whispers started. "Chloe Sterling, the illegitimate daughter." When Tiffany and her cronies began to torment me, physically and emotionally, I was utterly alone, abandoned by the very family I' d been sacrificed to. Hope shattered, I thought I was nothing but collateral damage, a problem to disappear. But in my deepest despair, they appeared – Olivia and Liam – no longer my tormentors but furious protectors, wielding a startling truth: my father wasn' t just cold, he was a monster who had crushed their dreams and stolen their inheritance. Stripped bare, broken, they looked at me, an outsider with nothing left to lose, and whispered, "You have to be our weapon." And in that moment, the ghost of a girl faded, replaced by a fierce resolve: I would dismantle his empire from within, not just for myself, but for the family he had tried to destroy.

The first thing Ava noticed on her fifth wedding anniversary was the suffocating silence, a stark contrast to the candlelit dinner she'd envisioned with Ethan. Instead, he stood by the window, his back to her, and when he finally turned, his face was a mask of cold stone. He told her they weren' t going to their anniversary dinner. On the table lay two stacks of paper: divorce papers, already signed by him, and a heavy, cream-colored envelope containing a wedding invitation-for her, to marry her childhood friend Liam. The words hit her with the force of a physical blow. "I don't understand," she whispered, her hands trembling. How could he possibly believe she was in love with Liam, her best friend, who was simply a constant, steady presence in her life? He even showed her an Instagram post of their honeymoon, declaring her love for Ethan, as if to mock her oblivion. A wave of dizziness washed over her. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. But as Ethan walked away, leaving behind the shattered sound of pottery from his studio, a cold dread settled in her stomach. Someone had put this idea in his head. Someone had done this to them, and Ava was about to find out who.

The static-laced call from Matthew was a punch to the gut. He was my partner, my 'boyfriend,' and he was supposedly captured by El Martillo’s cartel. He demanded I bring half a million dollars, alone, to a remote warehouse, promising it was the only way to save him. I threw protocol out the window, raced through the Arizona heat, and walked into that dusty, desolate building, ready to face a cartel for him. But Matthew wasn't tied up or bruised. He was perfectly fine, and he took the money I’d risked my life for, handing it to El Martillo’s enforcer. Then, with a chillingly calm voice, he pointed at me and said, "And here’s a bonus for El Martillo. She’s a top-tier artist. Now let me go." The world tilted. My partner, the man I thought I loved, had sold me out. Before I could process the betrayal, his fist connected with my face, a brutal blow that knocked me to the ground. El Martillo’s men closed in, ready for a "welcome party" that meant my agonizing end. As their boots slammed into me, I saw a familiar tattoo on one of their necks—a coyote. My coyote. A design only one other person should know in such detail. Hope, sharp and desperate, cut through the pain. This wasn't the end. This was the beginning of my real mission.

My world ended with a Dropbox link, a preview of what I thought was our wedding reel, a montage of the perfect love story Andrew and I had built from our foster home days to City Hall. Instead, I found professional, high-resolution photos of Andrew with Molly Chavez, his intern, posing as the ideal political power couple, his hand possessively on her back, her face beaming at his side. When Molly called, feigning an apology for a "mix-up," I heard Andrew' s voice in the background, clear as day: "She won't do anything. She needs me and this life." That devastating line shattered me, making all his dismissals and forgotten promises click, revealing I was just a discarded relic of his past, not his partner. But the Gabrielle he knew, the one who meekly accepted his condescension and believed she needed him, died right then; I picked up my phone, not to call him, but to call my lawyer, ready to draw up divorce papers, effective immediately.

Five years ago, I gave everything – my dreams, my health, every last penny – to save the man I loved from a fatal heart condition. I scrubbed pots on double shifts, my hands raw, convinced I was putting my love on the path to recovery. But his fiancée, Jennifer, had other plans. She showed him doctored photos, whispered lies, and made it seem like I was selling my body, not my soul, for him. He believed her instantly, threw the money back in my face, and walked away, spitting that I deserved to rot. Now, five years later, those words are a cold prophecy: my kidneys are failing, I have six months to live. As I stumbled out of the free clinic, dizzy and broken, I saw him again-Ethan Scott, now a superstar music producer, stepping out of a luxury car with Jennifer, her hand protectively over a pregnant belly. They were heading into the exclusive private hospital next door, a world away from my despair. My body chose that moment to betray me; I collapsed, scattering my pills and medical records on the dirty sidewalk. He stared down at me, his eyes colder than any winter, then watched as Jennifer ground her heel into my hand and had my lifeline swept into a trash can. He even threw a crumpled twenty-dollar bill at my feet, declaring I was worth less than a donation to an animal shelter. How could he believe such monstrous lies? How could he, the man I sacrificed everything for, be so utterly blind to the truth of what I endured for him? What secret did Jennifer hold over him that made him choose her cruel deception over the life-saving act I committed?

Three years of playing my guitar until my fingers bled, enduring stale smoke and leering eyes in a Vegas lounge. It was all for him, my fiancé Jax, to pay off a $500,000 debt that threatened his family's legacy. Finally, the "contract" was fulfilled, the debt paid, and I was on my way home, dreaming of our reunion. But when I reached our old apartment, it was empty, a foreclosure notice taped to the door. Panic clawed at my throat as his phone went straight to voicemail, over and over. Then, a notification from a music blog changed everything, showing Jax, my fiancé, beaming with Savannah Monroe at a high-profile Nashville party. The caption: "Nashville's new power couple, Jax Thorne and Savannah Monroe, celebrate their groundbreaking merger." My phone clattered to the dusty floor, my mind unable to grasp the words. I stumbled to the penthouse address listed, only to overhear their voices dripping with casual cruelty. "She'd do anything for me," Jax bragged, his voice cold, "Pure profit." Savannah's syrupy drawl followed, "The loan shark? Seriously? You hired an out-of-work actor from Memphis." My blood ran cold as the truth hit me: the debt, the loan shark, the three years of hell-all a lie, a twisted game orchestrated by the man I loved. "Revenge," Jax hissed, "Her father stole a hit song from my dad. Ruined him. Drove him to suicide. I wanted her to feel what it was like to have everything taken away." My entire life, my sacrifice, my love-it was all a setup, a cruel, elaborate joke. His father was a jealous drunk, a gambler, and the 'stolen song' was a generous gift, not a theft. I was a pawn in a revenge plot based on a lie, completely broken, with nothing left. But as I stood there in the Nashville sun, clutching a small, crumpled piece of paper-a mysterious number for "a true emergency"-a desperate, fluttering hope ignited. I had never used it. With trembling hands, I dialed. "Rothschild, private office." The name echoed in my mind, a legend. "I... I need to speak to Marcus Rothschild," I whispered, "It's an emergency."

My marriage to Mark seemed solid, our life comfortable, until his college reunion. I was there as the supportive wife, trying to ignore a growing unease. Then I saw him, too close to Jessica, his high school sweetheart and now his sister-in-law. The "Ten-Year Love Blueprint" he' d detailed for her-not me-was just the first blow. That night, I found Jessica kissing my drunk husband in our home, then overheard the devastating truth: her son, Kevin, was Mark' s, not his brother' s. My perfectly constructed life imploded as Mark dismissed my pain and his mother furiously defended his affair. A reckless car crash, caused by Jessica, led to my miscarriage; Mark, shockingly, blamed me, then his mother coldly announced, "You weren't strong enough." Even my own parents, dependent on Mark's generous support, disowned me for daring to expose his betrayal. Abandoned and broken, the injustice was crushing: how could everyone I loved betray me so completely, leaving me a disposable substitute in a life that was never truly mine? The agony of losing everything, especially my baby, felt unbearable. But a fateful accident unexpectedly offered a dark opportunity for ultimate escape and rebirth, transforming me into a vengeful phantom armed with a meticulous plan for absolute justice.

The champagne flute felt colder than the ballroom air at my lavish engagement party to Senator Ethan Prescott, D.C.'s golden boy. In my first life, this night had been a triumph. But tonight, Isabella Vance, Ethan' s mistress, brazenly crashed the party, heavily pregnant and dramatically announcing, "Ethan, this baby is yours." Chaos swallowed the room; cameras flashed, but I felt a chilling calm. In my previous life, this betrayal had led to my career' s ruin, a faked scandal, and a lonely "accident" – Ethan and Izzy' s masterpiece of destruction. Back then, I was broken; now, I simply placed my flute down and announced, clear-eyed and cold, "Our engagement is over." They continued their facade, building a new narrative and trying to publicly shame me at a White House State Dinner. Ethan mocked me, Izzy sneered at my simple dress, and their cronies tried to have me escorted out, believing I was a pathetic ghost from their past. They thought I was weak, a broken woman clinging to the fringes of their brilliant new lives. Every condescending word, every dismissive glance, was a fresh wound, a reminder of the injustice that had cost me everything. Did they truly think I'd just vanish? My heart, once shattered, was now a block of ice, focused solely on retribution. This time, I was no one's pawn. Just as they tried to completely discredit me, President Thompson himself appeared, announcing my true status as his "most trusted advisor," shielding me with the full weight of his office. My father's legacy, my own history saving the President's life, suddenly became my indisputable shield and sword. The real game had just begun.

I once believed Reverend Thorne was my savior. Found freezing in the remote Alabama woods at five, abandoned by my own cruel mother, he offered me a home, a fragile hope within the church orphanage. But that hope shattered when, at eighteen, he learned of my innocent affection. Fearing scandal, he sent me on a deadly mission, deep into the dangerous Ozark Mountains-a place guarded by hostile hermits. He knew it was a death sentence. I died a brutal death, but my spirit lingered, unseen. I watched as he dismissed my murder, slandered my memory, and even married my cruel half-sister, Seraphina. My very essence was erased, my final desperate pleas unheard, my ghost cast out as "evil." Every shred of dignity, every memory of kindness, was crushed. How could a man I idolized, who once offered salvation, betray me so utterly? Why was my tormentor allowed triumph while I faded into oblivion? But then, a chilling miracle: I awoke, a child once more, with every agonizing memory intact. The same frozen woods, the same false savior offering his hand. This time, I ran. This time, I refuse to be a victim. My second life begins now, and this time, I choose my own path to healing, love, and a justice far sweeter than revenge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Andrew Hebert, the man who promised to protect me, stood on a stage and announced his engagement to my tormentor. It wasn't just heartbreak; it was a business deal. He was selling me to a creditor to cover his gambling debts. The applause of the powerful families was a death sentence, each clap sealing my fate as collateral. Andrew had paraded me here just to show everyone I was an asset to be liquidated, while his new fiancée smirked at me from the stage. I was trapped, with no money and no one to turn to. The man I loved was leading me to the slaughter. But as I fled into the library, a voice emerged from the shadows, deep and dangerous. Damien Maddox. The Dark Don. The only man Andrew feared. He offered me a different kind of cage, one with the power to burn Andrew's world to the ground. With nothing left to lose, I looked the devil in the eyes. "Take me with you."

On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news. He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city. The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.” For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets. My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me. So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts. He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked. He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree. He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies.

I watched my husband, the most feared Capo in New York, sign away our marriage with the same cold indifference he usually reserved for ordering a hit. The nib of his Montblanc pen scratched against the paper, drowning out the rain hitting the coffee shop window. He didn't bother to read a single word. He thought he was signing routine shipping manifests for the family business. In reality, he was signing the "Dissolution of Union" papers I had hidden beneath the cover sheet. He was too distracted to check. His eyes were glued to his encrypted phone, frantically texting Sofia—the widow, the tragic beauty, the woman who had haunted our marriage for three years. "Done," he grunted, tossing the stack into his armored SUV without even glancing at me. "Business is concluded, Elena. We leave." Moments later, his phone rang with her special emergency tone. His demeanor shifted from cold boss to frantic protector instantly. "Driver, divert. She needs me," he roared. He looked at me with zero affection and ordered, "Get out, Elena. Luca will take you home." He kicked me out of the car into the pouring rain to rush to his mistress, completely unaware he had just legally granted me my freedom. I stood on the curb, shivering but smiling for the first time in years. By the time the Don realizes he just signed his own divorce, I will be a ghost in San Francisco. And he will have nothing left but his shipping logs and his regret.

My father bailed a violent ex-con out of prison just to force me into a marriage with him. I stood in a filthy Bronx hallway, my Vera Wang gown dragging through the grime, knowing this was the price for my mother’s life. If I didn't marry the man behind the steel door, the wire transfer for her hospital ventilator wouldn't go through the next morning. The man, a scarred giant named Dock, treated me with cold contempt, telling me he didn't touch things he didn't want—and he didn't want a "Jacobson." I thought I had hit rock bottom, tied to a criminal while my family lived in luxury. But the nightmare was just beginning. When I tried to return my wedding dress to pay for rent, my sister Janie and stepmother found me. They laughed as security dragged me out of the boutique, calling me a "charity case." When I finally crawled back to our family manor to beg for the money my father had promised, Janie revealed the horrific truth. She had liquidated my mother’s medical trust to fund a waterfront real estate project. "Get out and let your mother rot," she screamed, throwing a glass of ice water in my face before having guards dump me in the dirt. I knelt on the gravel, wet and bleeding, realizing my own flesh and blood had signed my mother's death warrant for a profit. I had nothing left—no money, no home, and a husband who was supposed to be a monster. I didn't understand why they hated me so much, or how I would survive the night. But then, a black car screeched to a halt in front of me. Dock pulled me inside, his eyes burning with a lethal coldness I’d never seen in a common thug. As he wiped the blood from my hands, he picked up a encrypted phone and gave a single command. "Initiate Project Titan. I want the Jacobson Group insolvent by Friday." I looked at the man I thought was a broke felon, realizing I hadn't just married a stranger—I had married the most dangerous man in the city, and he was about to burn my family's world to the ground.

I replaced my twin sister in a marriage contract to the ruthless Mafia Don, Donovan Blackwood. For three years, I was a ghost in his home, silently enduring his coldness while he flaunted his mistress, Chloe. On the very last day of our contract, Chloe staged an accident. Donovan didn't hesitate. He forced me to drain my blood to save her life. Then, to prove his loyalty to her, he drove me to the cliffs and pushed me into the freezing ocean. He even locked me in a cellar infested with spiders—my deepest phobia—because she lied and said I threatened her. He thought he was punishing the spoiled, arrogant Isabella. He didn't know he was breaking Ava, the woman who had silently memorized his allergies and waited up for him in the dark every single night. When I finally took my fifty million dollars and vanished, I left behind nothing but the divorce papers and a photo revealing the truth. He tore the city apart, destroying my family to find me, only to realize he had tortured the wrong woman. Now, he is standing on my porch in the pouring rain, staring in horror at the simple wooden ring on my finger given to me by another man. He falls to his knees, begging for a chance to love the wife he tried to destroy. I look at him, feeling absolutely nothing. "It's too late, Donovan," I say, locking the door. "You killed her."