Xiao Ye

I stood over the fresh dirt of my four-year-old son's grave. My husband, the Don of the Stark family, didn't hold my hand for comfort. He only adjusted his cuffs and checked that the diamond necklace he forced on me looked good for the cameras. "Stop crying," he whispered into my hair. "You're making a scene." Two days later, I woke up to the sound of shattering glass in the nursery. A strange boy stood there, smiling over the broken remains of my son's favorite snow globe. "This is Cody," my mother-in-law said coldly. "He's family. He stays." When I demanded he leave, Eli looked at me with dead eyes. "Material things can be replaced, Harper. The boy stays." Suspicion led me to the library door, where I heard the impossible truth. Cody wasn't a distant cousin. He was Eli's illegitimate son. And worse—while my son was drowning alone in the pool, Eli hadn't been at a business meeting. He had been in bed with his mistress. I realized then that the silver bracelet he had gifted me wasn't jewelry. I pried it open and found the blinking red light of a tracker. I was a prisoner in a cage of gold. So, I decided to die. I staged my suicide at the bridge, vanished into the night, and paid a shadow doctor to wipe my memories clean. I became Avery. I was happy. I was free. Until six months later, when a man in a black suit walked into my small-town cafe and looked at me with the eyes of a wolf. "Harper," he growled. "Come home."

I spent a decade as Ashton Maxwell' s shadow, building his empire and warming his bed, only for him to announce his engagement to a senator's daughter right in front of me. When assassins struck that night, he didn't just choose her; he used my body as a human shield against a grenade and then shot me himself to prove his loyalty to her family. I survived, reinvented myself as Grecia Munoz, and returned to burn his world to the ground, eventually forcing him to hand over his entire empire in a desperate plea for forgiveness. He promised to disappear so I could find peace with a kind doctor named Garrick. But Ashton' s definition of love was a sickness. To "protect" me from what he called a weakness, he secretly destroyed Garrick' s career and reputation, driving the only innocent man I ever loved to jump off a bridge. He thought this would drive me back into his arms, into the safety of the monster he created. Instead, I drove to the Hamptons, to the pristine dream home he had built for our future. He knelt before me, begging for understanding, claiming he did it all for us. I didn't offer forgiveness. I raised the pistol he had once given me, aimed at the heart I had already broken, and ended the nightmare once and for all.

For four years, I was the grieving wife of a mafia Don, drowning in the memory of our dead son. My husband, Eli, held me through it all. But a trip to the records office on the anniversary of our son's death revealed a devastating truth. He had another son. A secret family. Worse, I discovered he was with his mistress the day our son died, having dismissed the security that could have saved him. He let me believe it was my fault. When I tried to leave, he brought his mistress and their son into our home, framing me as a madwoman. His mother accused me of hurting the boy, and Eli punished me by locking me in a dark, flooding room—a cruel echo of our son's drowning. To “cure” his new heir of my son’s “ghost,” they had my baby’s grave dug up. On a yacht, Eli held me down as his mistress emptied the ashes into the ocean. Then they left me to die in the water. When I washed ashore, his mistress was waiting to deliver the final, soul-crushing blow. She hadn't scattered the ashes. She’d flushed them down a toilet. I didn't want to escape him. I wanted to erase him. I found a neuroscientist with an experimental procedure and made my request: wipe the last ten years. I didn't want to leave my husband; I wanted to make it so he never existed at all.

The world came back in a rush of white. White ceiling, white sheets, the sterile smell of antiseptic. My head throbbed. I was in a hospital. My fiancé, Cameron, rushed to my bedside, his face creased with worry. I decided to play a prank, pretending I had amnesia. "Who... who are you?" I whispered. His relief evaporated, replaced by a calculating look. He showed me a picture of another woman, Hannah Nichols, an intern at his family's company. "She's the woman I love," he said, his voice flat. "But you and I are getting married. Our families have an agreement. A business merger. It's too important to fail." My mind reeled. The man I loved was telling me our entire relationship was a lie. I felt a surge of fury. "Then call it off," I snapped. He grabbed my wrist, panic in his eyes. "If this merger falls through, my family is ruined. Hannah... she's very fragile. The stress would destroy her." My life, my love, my future-it was all just collateral damage in his pathetic, selfish drama. I was nothing more than a business deal. The witty, proud Alicia England, heiress to a tech empire, reduced to a bargaining chip. Later, I heard him on the phone, his voice soft and tender. "Don't worry, Hannah. It's all under control. She has amnesia. She doesn't remember a thing. Love me? Of course, she loves me. She's been obsessed with me since we were kids. It' s almost pathetic." My heart shattered. He thought I was a broken, forgetful fool he could manipulate. He was about to find out how wrong he was.

I woke up after five years in a coma, a miracle, the doctors said. The last thing I remembered was pushing my husband, Derek, out of the way of an oncoming truck. I saved him. But a week later, at the county clerk's office, I discovered a death certificate filed two years ago. My parents' names were on it. And then, Derek's signature. My husband, the man I saved, had declared me dead. Shock turned to a hollow numbness. I returned to our home, only to find Anjelica Hardin, the woman who caused the crash, living there. She kissed Derek, casually, familiarly. My son, Errol, called her "Mommy." My parents, Alva and Glyn, defended her, saying she was "one of the family now." They wanted me to forgive, to forget, to understand. They wanted me to share my husband, my son, my life, with the woman who had stolen it all. My own son, the child I had carried and loved, screamed, "I want her to go away! Go away! That's my mommy!" pointing at Anjelica. I was an outsider, a ghost haunting their happy new life. My awakening wasn't a miracle; it was an inconvenience. I had lost everything: my husband, my child, my parents, my very identity. But then, a call from Zurich. A new identity. A new life. Catherine Anderson was dead. And I would live only for myself.

My husband accused me of putting his assistant in the hospital. He claimed the AC I turned on, despite her protests, caused her to collapse from severe cramps. I was eight months pregnant and the office was dangerously hot, but he still blamed me. To "make it up to me," he invited me to a party at an exclusive club. I woke up on the floor of a glass-walled freezer. Outside, my husband, Austen, stood with his arm wrapped around a perfectly healthy Deb. He raised a glass to the city’s elite, toasting to “cooling down” his hot-headed wife. They watched as his men stripped me to my underwear and forced my bare knees onto a floor of ice. They poured buckets of freezing water over my head and my pregnant belly until I felt a warm trickle between my legs. I was bleeding. I was losing our baby. While I lay there, Austen pounded on the glass, screaming at me to apologize, to tell him I forgave him so he wouldn't have to be the monster. He sneered that I was all alone, that my father was dead and no one was coming to save me.

I was an architect, designing futures, and I finally had my own: a baby with my fiancé, Ethan Riley. Then, a brutal attack left me in darkness. Ethan told me it was a mugging, that they saved me but couldn't save my eyes. I believed him, clinging to him in my new black world. But then, one night, I overheard his cold confession: he had orchestrated it all. My blinding, the termination of my pregnancy, even the removal of my uterus, were all to secure Isabella' s future-a woman from his past he felt indebted to, who turned out to be his secret wife and mother of his child, Mia. My fiancé, the man I loved, was a monster who had meticulously planned to destroy me and replace me with his secret family. He moved his mistress and their child into our home, telling me they were a struggling friend and her daughter, expecting me to be grateful for Isabella's "care." Even his parents joined in, treating me as a discarded, blind burden. The pain, the betrayal, was unimaginable. My entire life had been a horrific stage for his twisted play. Why would he do this? How could someone I loved so deeply inflict such monstrous cruelty? But in that deepest dark, something new ignited within me. He thought he had broken me, that the darkness would be my prison. He was wrong. It would be my shield. I would play the part of the blind victim, gather my evidence, and make him pay. This wasn' t the end of my story; it was the start of a war he would never see coming.

Liam once bought me an island and filled a gallery with my art, showering me with a love so grand it felt like magic, a devotion I mistook for safety. Then, one Tuesday, it shattered. "Chloe is pregnant," he stated, his adopted sister, the one who called me 'sis,' and the child was supposedly his. I watched, numb and disbelieving, as he dismissed my pleas, his eyes cold as ice, twisting reality to protect her reputation above all else-our marriage, our family, even our infant son, Leo. His twisted logic knew no bounds; he forced me into an impossible lie, threatening to destroy me if I refused, transforming our home into a gilded cage where I was trapped, a hostage to his obsession. The nightmare deepened when Chloe, in a sickening act, diluted Leo's life-saving medicine, causing his death; yet, Liam, blinded by his loyalty to her, believed her teary lies over my anguished truth, leaving me utterly alone in my grief. As if that wasn't enough, she desecrated Leo's ashes with cat litter, and Liam, with terrifying calm, forced me to clean the vile mixture with my bare hands, shattering what little spirit I had left. The final insult came at a charity gala: Liam, to satisfy Chloe's cruel whim, forced me-severely allergic-to eat shrimp, causing me to collapse as he publicly announced Chloe's fake pregnancy, erasing my existence. His betrayal led to my brutal assault by his enemies, orchestrated by Chloe, where Leo's ashes were scattered, and in utter despair, I consumed the last dose of an experimental amnesiac, praying for oblivion. Three years later, I am Anya, a flower shop owner in France, my past a blank slate, living a peaceful life with Ben, the kind doctor who has grown to love me. But the past is not done with me yet. Liam arrives, a ghost of his former self, consumed by a desperate need for redemption, unraveling the fragile peace I've built and dragging me back to a history of trauma, betrayal, and a dead child I cannot remember, yet feel with every fibra of my being.

My life was supposed to be a dream, a bright future with my husband Andrew, leaving my wealthy Napa Valley life behind for love. But our condo fell through, leaving me, a six-month pregnant woman, stuck in my in-laws' cramped, stale house. That Black Friday, my mother-in-law Maria, obsessed with a TV, used my pregnant belly as a battering ram in a store, live-streaming my humiliation. The video went viral, branding me an "entitled Karen," costing me my job, and leading to ceaseless online attacks. When I collapsed in agony, fearing miscarriage, Andrew just turned over and went to sleep, while Maria called me a "drama queen." His father then suggested a divorce, saying my tarnished reputation would hurt Andrew's career, and Andrew nodded in agreement. My baby was gone, lost because Maria actively sabotaged my birth control and then shoved me, and Andrew abandoned me in my darkest hour. Did they truly believe they could destroy me and get away with it, simply because I chose love over my family' s wealth? They thought my family' s reputation was my greatest weakness, but they were wrong. I let them move into my family's guesthouse, watched their greed, and meticulously planned how I would dismantle their world, piece by piece.

For five years, I, Scarlett King, abandoned my East Coast dynasty to be the secret mistress of tech mogul Julian Thorne, believing our intense, private connection was true love. Tonight, at a lavish charity gala, my heart pounded as Julian bid on my grandmother' s vintage Cartier watch, a public claim I secretly craved. But as the gavel fell, winning the priceless heirloom, Julian turned away from me, announcing his executive assistant, Brianna, as his fiancée and sliding my cherished family watch onto her wrist for the entire ballroom to witness. My world shattered under the weight of the roaring cheers, and Julian, with a devastating smirk, whispered only to me, "Don't look so sad, kitten. This changes nothing for us. My nights are still yours." He viewed me as a mere plaything, a dirty secret to be kept in a box, utterly betraying five years of unwavering loyalty and a twisted kind of love. Shortly after, a cold text banished me from "our" penthouse, giving me one hour before security escorted me out, my life with him reduced to an inventory for a storage unit. How could he so brutally discard five years of my life, my love, my trust, for a conventional wife and a public spectacle, acting as if my public humiliation was just a minor inconvenience to our "games"? How dared he imply I was just a disposable mistress, easily replaced and forgotten in his climb to conventional wealth? As his condescending shadow fell over me, I stood up, declared "We're done, Julian," and walked away, ready to build a new kingdom from the ashes of his betrayal.

I died alone on a cold hospital bed, my father gone, my life shattered by my best friend Madison and my boyfriend Kevin. Madison had drugged me, sold me to a cartel in Cancún, and watched a video of my humiliation go viral. They turned everyone against me, Kevin branding me a slut, my university expelling me, and the cyberbullying driving me to despair, while Madison used my stolen identity to destroy my family. My father, my secret protector, died after loan sharks Madison sent hounded him, leaving me with nothing but overwhelming grief and a searing sense of betrayal. Then, I opened my eyes in the sorority house living room, hearing Madison's saccharine voice, realizing I was back: the day it all began, but this time, I wouldn't be the victim.

My name is Ethan; I used to be a Michelin-starred chef, but now I' m the trophy husband to Victoria, a real estate mogul who keeps me on a humiliating $200 allowance in our luxurious Hollywood Hills mansion that feels like nothing more than a gilded cage. When a severe car accident badly injured my dominant hand, requiring $5,000 for urgent, career-saving surgery, Victoria' s voice on the phone was cold, accusing me of "leeching" and attempting to find "new ways to grab her money" before she abruptly hung up, dismissing my pain as a mere annoyance. That callous denial cost me everything, leaving me with permanent nerve damage that utterly crushed any hope of ever cooking professionally again. Yet, she simultaneously showered her platonic "childhood friend" Liam with extravagant tokens of affection, like a $75,000 vintage watch, flaunting his "BestieGoals" on Instagram. Later, still suffering at the hospital with my throbbing hand, I learned she was hosting a massive drone party at our house, spelling out "Welcome Home Liam!" while I waited for a ride that simply never came. The anger and hurt I used to feel, the desperation for her attention, all evaporated, replaced by a chilling numbness, a profound, almost eerie detachment. What else could I say, sitting across from her at breakfast, as she scrolled through Liam's posts with a small smile, never once looking at me, never once acknowledging the depth of her complete disregard? So, when she eventually scoffed, "Aren' t you even a little bit jealous?", I met her gaze, truly seeing her for the first time, and replied with absolute, unnerving calm, "No, Victoria, why would I be?" That night, I ripped off my wedding ring, gave it to a cab driver, and made a call that promised a new life, a new kitchen, and new freedom, far from her suffocating golden trap.

I, Sarah, a government scientist, finally returned home after three years buried in advanced aerospace tech, eager to reunite with my husband, David, at LAX. But instead of David, a greasy stranger grabbed me, claiming to be my husband, Kevin, while David and my best friend Jessica appeared – not to save me, but to validate the lie, treating me like I was insane. My entire life was twisted: photos morphed, a locket changed, and my own parents whispered for me to accept "Kevin," as I was publicly branded a delusional homewrecker, prompting a horrifying first timeline that ended in tragedy. How could every single piece of my reality be rewritten overnight, my very memories gaslighted by those closest to me? Reeling from the unimaginable betrayal, I refused to break, and with one critical detail – a distinct mole on "my" shoulder in a fake wedding video, a mole only my best friend possessed – I found the crack in their perfect digital prison, ready to fight for my stolen truth.

At fifty, my body broken and worn, I lay dying on a cold, stained mattress. Every ounce of my being had been spent on Ethan Vance, the man who now stood across the room in his expensive suit, callously discussing his future with Chloe Harrison – the stepsister who had effortlessly stolen the life intended for me, leaving me with nothing but exhaustion and regret. "Scarlett was just a means to an end," Ethan smoothly confessed to Chloe, his voice dripping with deceit. Then, adding to the crushing weight of betrayal, my supposed brother, Marcus Thorne, revealed the ultimate lie: "Scarlett, I was never your brother. I was adopted solely to protect Chloe, the true Harrison family heir in their privileged eyes." The double betrayal was a physical agony, yet I was too weak to even stir. My life felt like a cruel, wasted joke; my deepest love, a meticulously crafted illusion; my very family, a grotesque sham designed purely for my exploitation. As darkness finally consumed me, the profound weight of this ultimate deception was unbearable. How could I have been so astonishingly naive? How could I have sacrificed everything for those who, with chilling indifference, orchestrated my downfall and used me as a mere pawn? The burning injustice of my stolen identity, my sabotaged existence, ignited a furious despair that transcended death itself. Then, a sharp, life-affirming gasp. I bolted upright, my hands young, smooth, undeniably twenty-two again. This was the exact pivotal moment, the critical turning point that had led to my tragic past. But not this time. The past was dead, replaced by a fierce determination. I was alive, I remembered everything, and my destiny was mine to reclaim.

Their lives were switched after a fateful car accident. When Ivy woke up in the hospital, she remembered nothing, including her own name. However, a strange man who addressed her as "Cassie" told her that they were engaged. She married this charming billionaire and indulged in his limitless adoration. What she didn’t know was that she had stolen her twin sister’s happiness. When the truth was revealed, he still wanted to be with Ivy, but she refused him relentlessly and left. Five years later, he finally met her again. As he looked affectionately into her eyes, he wanted nothing but one more chance to win her heart back.

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'm a moaning mess as Antonio slams into me from behind. His hips hit me hard, and each deep thrust sends shockwaves through my body. My breasts bounce with every movement, my eyes roll back, and I moan his name without control. The pleasure he gives me is overwhelming-I can't hold it in. I feel my walls tighten around his thick length. The pressure builds fast, and then- I explode around him, my orgasm tearing through me. He groans loud and deep as he releases inside me, his hot seed spilling into me in thick pulses. Just when I think he's done, his grip shifts. He turns me over and lays me flat on the bed. His dark eyes stare into mine for a moment, filled with raw hunger. I glance down- He's still hard. Before I can react, he grabs my wrists, pins me down, and pushes himself inside me again. He fills me completely. My hips rise on instinct, meeting his rhythm. Our bodies move together, locked in a wild, uncontrollable dance. "You're fucking sweet," he groans, his voice rough and breathless. "I can't get enough of you... not after that night, Sol," he growls, slamming into me harder. The force of his words and his thrusts make my body shake. "Come for me," he commands, his voice low and full of heat. And just like that, my body trembles. Waves of pleasure crash over me. I cry out, shaking with the force of my orgasm. "Mine," he growls again, louder this time. His voice is feral, wild, like a beast claiming what belongs to him. The sound sends a shiver down my spine. *** Solene was betrayed, humiliated, and erased by Rowan Brook, the man she once called husband, Solene is left with nothing but her name and a burning hunger for revenge. She turns to the one man powerful enough to destroy the Brooks family from within: Rowan's estranged and dangerous uncle, Antonio Rodriguez. He's ruthless. A playboy who never sleeps with the same woman twice. But when Solene walks into his world, he doesn't just break the rules, he creates new ones just for her. What begins as a calculated game quickly spirals into obsession, power plays, and secrets too deadly to stay buried. Because Solene isn't just anyone's ex... she's the woman they should've never underestimated. Can she survive the price of revenge? Or will her heart become the next casualty? And when the truth comes out, will Antonio still choose her... or destroy her?

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.

I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella. Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark. But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved. Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies. When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel. While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest. The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella. He ordered my father to punish me. I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth. That night, the love in my heart finally died. On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape—the only proof that I was Seven. Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney. By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return.

I died on a Tuesday. It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father. I was twenty years old. He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant. He chose her. He always chose her. And then, I woke up. Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for. This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice. He didn't know he was talking to a ghost. He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal. He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder. That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry. She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts. So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie. I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane. But I will not be a victim. This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter. This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain.

When I was eight, Dante Moretti pulled me from the fire that killed my family. For ten years, the powerful crime boss was my protector and my god. Then, he announced his engagement to another woman to unite two criminal empires. He brought her home and named her the future mistress of the Moretti family. In front of everyone, his fiancée forced a cheap metal collar around my neck, calling me their pet. Dante knew I was allergic. He just watched, his eyes cold, and ordered me to take it. That night, I listened through the walls as he took her to his bed. I finally understood the promise he’d made me as a child was a lie. I wasn't his family. I was his property. After a decade of devotion, my love for him finally turned to ash. So on his birthday, the day he celebrated his new future, I walked out of his gilded cage for good. A private jet was waiting to take me to my real father—his greatest enemy.

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.

Elora Griffiths was on her way to drop her daughter off at school when her husband's enemies opened fire in the street. The bodyguard her husband had personally assigned to protect them abandoned the car the instant the shots rang out. Mother and daughter were hit multiple times, teetering on the brink of death. Elora frantically called her husband, Rodger Griffiths, but he didn't answer. Her brother, Hugh Dale, arrived just in time and saved them both. "How could this happen? Didn't Rodger assign someone to protect you?" Hugh asked. Elora sobbed uncontrollably, "The bodyguard ran away!" On the way to the hospital, Elora kept trying Rodger's number, desperate. One call after another... Finally, on the ninety-ninth attempt, the line connected. On the other end was the female bodyguard, trembling, her voice barely holding back tears. "Rodger, it's really not my fault! There were so many assassins. I would've died if I tried to stop them! I was so scared..." Elora held her breath, waiting for her husband's wrath to thunder down. But Rodger just sighed. "Forget it. The important thing is you're safe," he said. Meanwhile, Elora's daughter took her last breath in her arms. The pain was suffocating. She held her daughter close as her body went cold and stiff, teeth gritted in fury, "Hugh, I'm divorcing him! I'll cut off every single arms shipment to the Griffiths family from the largest arms company in Crownport!"

I stood alone at the center of my art gallery opening, clutching a glass of warm champagne, while the guests whispered behind their hands. My husband, the Capo of the Chicago Outfit, wasn't there. A breaking news alert on my phone explained why. It was a high-definition photo of Dante shielding his mistress, Isabella, from the rain. He was touching her with a protective possessiveness he had never once shown me. Then came his text: "Isabella needed me. Go home." That was the moment the cage door unlocked. I didn't go home to cry. I went to his office the next morning with a stack of papers disguised as "gallery insurance forms." While Isabella sat on his desk, mocking me for being a boring housewife, Dante was too annoyed to read the fine print. He just wanted me gone so he could get back to her. He signed the divorce decree. He signed the asset dissolution. Most importantly, without looking, he signed the irrevocable relinquishment of parental rights. I walked out with my freedom, but fate had a cruel sense of humor. That night, I stared at a positive pregnancy test. I was carrying the Sovrano heir he had always demanded. And he had just legally signed away his right to ever know his child. I fled to the Swiss Alps, vanishing into the snow to raise my baby away from his world of blood and bullets. I thought I was safe, until six months later. Dante hadn't just sent men to look for me. He had burned his own shipping empire to the ground, destroying his status as King, just to prove he would trade it all for the wife he threw away.

For nine years, I was the perfect mafia wife. I laundered Marcus Thorne’s money through my design firm, smiled at his dinners, and ignored the lipstick stains on his collars. I believed in the Omertà of our marriage. I thought my loyalty was my armor. I was wrong. On the night of our anniversary gala, a car lost control and barreled straight toward us in the parking lot. Marcus didn't look at me. Not once. He lunged for his mistress, Izzy, tackling her to safety behind a concrete pillar. I was left standing in the open. The impact threw me like a ragdoll. I lay bleeding on the cold asphalt, my body broken, watching through the haze as my husband frantically checked his mistress for scratches. "My ankle," she whimpered. Without a backward glance, he picked her up and carried her to his limousine, leaving me to bleed out on the pavement. He didn't leave me because he panicked. He left me because I was just a shield he used to protect what he actually loved. As darkness crept in, a shadow fell over me. It wasn't Marcus. It was Julian Croft, his sworn rival. I looked at the empty spot where my husband should have been and made a choice. "Get me to the hospital," I rasped, staring into the eyes of the enemy. "And then help me burn his empire to the ground."