Xiao Youzi

I was 'Nine', the deadliest assassin of The Syndicate. But yesterday, my boss faked my death in an explosion and sent me to New York. I was ordered to infiltrate the Russo family as their long-lost biological daughter. But my biological parents didn't want me. They loved the fake daughter they had raised in my place. My mother called me a feral stray and tried to shove me into a mildewed servant's quarter, while the fake daughter lived in a grand suite. When the fake daughter cried upon seeing me, my father pointed a finger at my face, yelling at me for disrespecting his precious replacement. "You are nothing but a crude, uncultured mistake trying to ruin her life!" They treated me like garbage, trying to assert dominance over a girl they thought was a helpless stray. But when I cornered my mother and whispered my question, her reaction changed everything. "If I hadn't been stolen all those years ago, would you have even needed a replacement?" She didn't cry for the child she lost. Instead, all the color drained from her face, and her eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated terror. She knew. Even if she hadn't orchestrated it herself, my mother knew exactly why I was kidnapped eighteen years ago. They thought they could bully a pathetic orphan. They didn't realize they had just invited a monster into their home.

I gave up my architecture dream and my entire inheritance to help Garrison build his law firm, reducing myself to a glorified maid in his home for five years. But the night my mother lay dying in the hospital, Garrison didn't come. Instead, I saw him on the news, proposing to his mistress, Kayla, with a diamond ring bought with my savings. When I confronted them, Garrison didn't apologize. Instead, he forced me to sign my 15% stake in the company over to Kayla for zero dollars. He claimed she needed "security" because she was fragile. Even when I threw the toxicology report at him, proving Kayla had poisoned my mother with arsenic to get her out of the way, Garrison covered it up to save his precious merger. He looked me in the eye and told me to apologize to the woman who murdered my mother. That was the moment Janet Gardner died. I signed the papers, threw the divorce agreement in his face, and vanished into the night without a trace. Three years later, at a prestigious art gallery in Paris, a gaunt, broken man fell to his knees in front of the famous artist "Jane." Garrison wept, clutching the hem of my dress, begging for my forgiveness. I looked down at my ex-husband with a polite, empty smile. "I'm sorry, sir. Do I know you?"

For three years, a rare liver disease has been killing me. Through it all, my husband Julian has been my rock. Our last hope was a black-market liver, secured through a life-debt owed to my family, the Volkov Bratva. But from my hospital bed, I overheard him promise that very liver to another woman. It was for his mistress's mother. I soon discovered he had a four-year-old daughter with her. Their family was established; I was just the placeholder. On a hidden security feed, I watched him in my dead parents' penthouse—a sacred place he forbade me from visiting—bouncing their child on his knee. Then he fastened the diamond necklace he'd bought for my birthday around his mistress's neck. The final blow came when I heard her whisper, "Just a little longer... the fever will do the rest." He wasn't just leaving me. He was actively trying to kill me. The love I had for him didn't just die; it turned to a cold, hard stone in my chest. The man whose devotion I never questioned now made my skin crawl with revulsion. The next morning, I signed myself out of the hospital against medical advice. I left my wedding ring and the signed divorce papers on the entryway table, blocked his number, and walked out of our house without looking back.

Ava stepped off the jet, eager to finally hug her daughter, Lily, after eighteen months away on a critical mission. A familiar face, her handler, handed her a tablet, saying, "Welcome home, Ava. Everything is ready for your debriefing tomorrow. Tonight is yours." Her eyes immediately landed on a headline: "Tech Prodigy Lily Thorne Exposed as Fraud, Groundbreaking AI Code Auctioned Off by Estranged Husband Mark Vance." And then the photo. Lily, bound to a chair on a brightly lit stage, her face pale, a mixture of shock and utter devastation. Her estranged son-in-law, Mark Vance, stood beside a woman Ava didn' t recognize-his new fiancée, Chloe. He was sneering into the camera, declaring Lily would be finished, blacklisted, her future one of "menial jobs and constant public humiliation." The tablet shattered in Ava' s hand, cracks spiderwebbing across the screen. Her blood ran cold. The rage was a physical force, shimmering in the air around her. How could he do this? How could a man she once trusted betray her daughter so completely, so publicly? This wasn't just a betrayal; it was an execution. "The mission isn' t over," Ava declared, her voice unnaturally calm, her gaze fixed on something far beyond the horrified handler. "It just began."

The paper in my hand felt like a death sentence: glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. That same day, my estranged wife, Chloe, flashed across my laptop screen, pregnant with another man' s child, her new partner, Mark Jensen, by her side. Before I could even process the betrayal, my five-year-old son, Liam, shattered my phone, screaming, "I hate you!", his loyalty already shifted to Chloe' s new family. Later that day, a venomous spider bite and a brutal car crash-orchestrated by Chloe herself-left me clinging to life, only for her and Mark to attempt to block my treatment at the hospital, almost succeeding. They dragged me from my hospital bed, still recovering, and locked me in my own basement, binding me to a chair. Forced to confess to lies I never spoke, I endured their physical and emotional torment, my own son throwing a toy car at my face. Every word they spoke, every blow they landed, twisted the knife of injustice deeper, making me question how the woman I loved and the child I adored could become my tormentors. My world was crumbling, everything I built stripped away by those closest to me, leaving me utterly alone and broken. But then, a new doctor, Evelyn Reed, emerged, a beacon of hope against the darkness, a promise that this nightmare, and the lies that fueled it, would finally be exposed.

The yacht bucked like a wild beast in the Lake Michigan storm, and my family faced a terrible choice. There were only two spots left on the rescue boat, and my father didn' t hesitate: "Caleb, get in. Grab the dog." They chose my adopted brother, the "good luck charm," and my mother' s prized show dog over me, yelling for me to swim to a non-existent marina. My fiancée, Molly, was already gone, announcing her engagement to Caleb on the evening news before they even knew if I was dead or alive. When I finally dragged myself back, barely clinging to life, I was met not with relief, but with rage and disgust. My "brother" Caleb, the perfect son, framed me for theft, and my parents, the people who were supposed to love me, forced me to strip naked in front of their staff, searching for something I didn't steal. How could my own family do this? How could they betray me so completely, not just once, but again and again, pushing me to the absolute breaking point? That day, as I walked away, leaving everything and everyone I knew behind, I wasn't just leaving a house; I was severing a destiny. I was done being Ethan Duncan, the cursed son; now, I would simply become Ethan, and I would build a life so strong, so independent, that their world would crumble without me.

My name is Maya Rodriguez, and I pretty much live at WOLF Radio, spinning indie tracks and secretly nursing a hopeless crush on Ethan Miller, our university' s star quarterback. He' s that guy – popular, talented, and completely out of my league. Then came Homecoming. A text from my best friend shattered my world: Ethan was about to ask Chloe Davis, the campus queen, to the Ball. And he was going to do it using my microphones! My stomach clenched. I had to stop him. In a panic, I recorded a voice note to Liv: "Liv, I have to stop this! I can't let him use the WOLF Radio mic to ask Chloe! You know how I feel about Ethan!" But a forgotten Bluetooth connection turned my private confession into a public announcement, booming across the entire stadium. The mortified silence, then the gasps and laughter. My deepest secret, broadcast to thousands. I wanted to die. Chaos. Humiliation. How could my mistake be so catastrophic? I was the invisible sound tech, always behind the scenes. This was beyond anything I could imagine. The star quarterback, frozen on the field, looking directly at me. But then the impossible happened: Ethan sought me out. He wasn't angry. He was oddly amused. He revealed a massive misunderstanding – the proposal wasn't for Chloe, or even for him. My public humiliation was all for nothing. Or was it? What exactly was the campus heartthrob doing, being so incredibly kind to the girl who just declared her crush to the whole school?

The Thorne mansion reeked of unspoken rivalries. I, Sarah Ashton, was one of eighteen women, disowned by my family for this role. Ethan, my childhood sweetheart, now saw me with cold resentment, obsessed with Brenda, who claimed to save his life. A chilling premonition haunted me: Ethan' s rage-filled face, his hands stained with my blood, my newborn twins' cries silenced. He kills us. So, the faint blue lines on the test brought not joy, but icy terror. My unborn, his children. The ones he would destroy. I secretly bribed the doctor to hide my twin pregnancy. Days later, Brenda announced her fake pregnancy; overjoyed Ethan demanded marriage. The horror peaked when Brenda, feigning a fall and accusing me, screamed I harmed her "baby." Ethan' s fury erupted. He punched me, then kicked my stomach. Agony ripped through me. "My babies…" I choked, bleeding. "Ethan… I'm pregnant…" He laughed, "Pregnant? You? Don' t try that lie now." He saw only his "victim" and "attacker," dismissing my agony. My premonition became real: my twins, lost to their father's blind rage. As darkness consumed me, Eleanor Thorne, Ethan's grandmother, burst in, face etched with horror. She knew. With her help, I escaped, grieving my lost children. Ethan built his joyous new life on Brenda' s lies, unaware Eleanor was patiently orchestrating a reckoning he' d never forget.

Three years at Yale, I missed the Texas heat and the Sterling ranch, counting down the days to surprise my sister, Lily. I pictured our joyful reunion, the familiar echo of laughter in the grand halls. Instead, a chilling silence hung over the mansion. Her familiar room was replaced by a gaudy guest suite. A faint, rhythmic creaking led me to the gardens. There, under a wilting magnolia, stood a crude dog run. And inside, a tattered pink fabric betrayed the unimaginable – Lily. My sister, rail-thin, hair matted, whimpered, "No… no cookies. Cookies are for good people. Master says I'm a pet." Just then, Pamela, my stepmother, emerged, smug and heavily pregnant, dangling Lily's half of our family's sacred Falcon emblem. "Ava, darling. Home a bit sooner than expected, aren't we?" "That badge means power, and Lily graciously gave me her share," she purred, her gaze predatory, eyeing mine. How could Robert, my own father, stand by while his daughter was brutalized? He had shielded Pamela, allowed her to twist our family's legacy into this grotesque nightmare. This wasn't merely a family dispute; it was an act of heinous cruelty. A deliberate erasure of everything my mother had built. And I, the rightful heir, was now utterly alone, powerless. When her goons cornered me, tearing away my own Falcon emblem, she declared Falcon International finally hers. But they didn't know that under my shirt, hidden by years of preparation, was a silent beacon. With a single, desperate press, I had activated the Ghost Tactical Squad—Falcon's most elite, most discreet unit. The game was about to change.

I was Emily Rose, a top-tier law student, interning at the prestigious Kent Corporation. William Kent, the notorious playboy heir, relentlessly pursued me, and I fell hard, believing I was finally his "one." Old Man Kent had even announced a challenge: the woman who could tame William for six months would be the next Mrs. Kent. I pictured a future, a ring, a life. Then the news broke: Sophia Vanderbilt, William’s society-approved match, staged a public, bloody suicide attempt, blaming me as the gold-digging home-wrecker. William, to save his family's reputation and his own ascent, instantly turned on me, calling me a calculating liar. The Kents ensured my scholarship vanished, my reputation was shredded, and I became a corporate pariah. They didn't stop there; my nurse mother was framed for theft, and my younger brother faced drug charges. My world burned as their lawyers offered a chilling ultimatum: confess and disappear, or my family would face ruin. I refused, and the next day, a black SUV ran a red light. Then, nothing. Until I snapped awake, back at the very Kent gala where William first charmed me – the night it all began. My heart hammered, a wild bird trapped, but this time, it vibrated with a cold, clear resolve. Why was I back? To relive this nightmare, this betrayal? No, this time, I wouldn't be their lamb. I met William's gaze, my eyes cold and flat: "Not yours, Mr. Kent. Excuse me." This time, the game was mine to play.

They spent a night together, but he was a stranger to her. She fled in panic, thinking that they would never see each other again, but she didn't expect that this man would appear again. Once the resentment, love, and hatred began, it meant that she would completely surrender to the man in front of her. How could that be! She wouldn't be fooled by this man!

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.

I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair. They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves. Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment. But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger. In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all.

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.

"Happy Anniversary," my husband said, sliding the separation agreement across the mahogany desk. It was the eighteenth time in five years I had signed these papers. Matteo De Luca, the most ruthless Capo in New York, checked his Rolex with cold impatience. "Sign it, Sera. Bianca is on the ledge again. She needs to see we're over, or she jumps." Bianca. The ward. The broken bird. The woman whose fragile psyche dictated every moment of my marriage. I signed my name, and he left me alone on our anniversary to save her. Again. But saving her wasn't enough. When Bianca pushed me down a flight of marble stairs in a fit of jealous rage, shattering my spine and leaving me paralyzed, I thought Matteo would finally choose me. I was wrong. I woke up in the hospital to find him holding her hand, not mine. "The security footage has been wiped," he told me, his voice void of emotion. "We cannot have a scandal. You fell, Sera. That is the story." He erased the truth. He erased my pain. He protected the woman who crippled me over his own wife. Two months later, he wheeled me into a gala, playing the doting husband while I sat in the chair that was my prison. He didn't know I had a burner phone hidden in my velvet dress. He didn't know that tonight, the obedient wife was going to die on the pavement, and a ghost would rise in her place. I looked at him one last time and dropped the phone in his lap. "I hope she's worth it."

I stood before the altar of the grand gothic cathedral, about to marry Julian Moretti, the grieving adopted son stepping up for the comatose Don. To the hundreds of mafia men behind us, it was a dutiful wedding. But I knew the horrifying truth. Julian and his pregnant mistress, Clara, had orchestrated a brutal plot to steal my dowry and secure his place as the next Don. In my past life, I was completely blind to their betrayal. Julian trapped me in our apartment and set it ablaze. I could still feel the blistering heat of the fire. I could still hear my mother’s agonizing screams and my little brother Antonio’s desperate coughing as the smoke filled our lungs. My entire family was burned alive just so Julian could swap the brides and put his whore in my place. I died in pure agony, filled with hatred and despair, wondering why I had trusted a monster. God hadn't saved me from those flames. The Devil had. And he sent me back to this exact moment at the altar. "Do you, Isabella Rossi, take Julian Moretti to be your lawfully wedded husband?" the priest asked. Julian reached for my hand with a sickeningly gentle smile. I didn't give it to him. I tore back my lace veil and turned to face the crowd. "You are mistaken, Father," I said, my voice like ice. "The man I am bound to marry is your Don. Damien Moretti."

I am the wife of Dante Moretti, a powerful Mafia Underboss. But in secret, I am "Spettro," the phantom architect who built his entire encrypted bootlegging empire. On my birthday, I came home to find him gifting our five-year-old daughter the exact plush toy he had violently slapped out of my hands months ago. Only this time, he was giving it to his mistress, Adriana, to present as her own. "Auntie Adriana is a million times better than Mommy." My daughter's innocent words pierced my heart, while Dante coldly dismissed my presence, treating me like an unwelcome stranger interrupting their perfect family. He mocked my mothering, allowed his mistress to sever my desperate phone calls with my child, and weaponized his power to break our daughter's spirit just to spite me. He sneered that my only purpose was to stay quiet, absolutely certain I would crawl back the second my allowance ran dry. He thought I was just a weak, submissive wife who had lost everything. He didn't realize that the empire he arrogantly ruled was entirely built on my stolen brilliance. I left my diamond ring on the table, violently slashed our ancient blood oath in half, and walked out of his gilded cage forever. Sitting in a cold warehouse, I placed my hands on my telegraph machine and initiated the Ghost Protocol to permanently paralyze his entire criminal network. The era of playing the dutiful wife was over. I am Donna Falcone, and the vendetta has just begun.

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.

For seven years, I was his eyes. But the moment he regained his sight, he decided to marry someone else. Seven years of devotion couldn't buy his heart. I gave him back his dignity. Now that he was restored as the Godfather of the New York Mafia, he laughed with others, degrading me to the status of a mere "mistress." He thought I didn't understand Italian, but I heard him loud and clear: he was going to marry his first love. He arrogantly believed I would always love him, willing to stay in his penthouse like a caged bird. But he was wrong. I boarded a one-way flight to Australia. Dante, I don't want you anymore. By the time he returned home, he would have lost me forever. But a sore loser refuses to concede. Even if he had to burn the world to the ground, he would search for me and beg for my forgiveness.

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.