His Unwanted Wife, My New Dawn

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 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.

For three years, I documented the slow death of my marriage in a black journal. It was my 100-point divorce plan: for every time my husband, Blake, chose his first love, Ariana, over me, I deducted points. When the score hit zero, I would leave. The final points vanished the night he left me bleeding out from a car crash. I was eight weeks pregnant with the child we had prayed for. In the ER, the nurses frantically called him-the star surgeon of the very hospital I was dying in. "Dr. Santos, we have a Jane Doe, O-negative, bleeding out. She's pregnant, and we're about to lose them both. We need you to authorize an emergency blood transfer." His voice came over the speaker, cold and impatient. "I can't. My priority is Miss Whitfield. Do what you can for the patient, but I can't divert anything right now." He hung up. He condemned his own child to death to ensure his ex-girlfriend had resources on standby after a minor procedure.

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.

For ten years, I lived for Dante Moretti. I waited for my eighteenth birthday, knowing that the Alpha of the Dark Nebula was my fated mate. But when the day finally came, he didn't claim me. He brought Isabella home instead. A warrior. A political asset. "Welcome home, my future Luna," he announced to the pack, shattering my heart in front of everyone. I was just the orphan girl who couldn't Shift. A liability. To ensure I knew my place, Isabella offered me a "gift." A collar made of pure silver. To a human, it is jewelry. To a wolf, it is acid. When she locked it around my neck, the metal sizzled. The smell of my own burning flesh filled the room. I fell to my knees, screaming, looking at Dante with tears in my eyes. I begged him to stop her. But he just looked at me, his face a mask of cold logic. "Wear it," he commanded, ignoring the smoke rising from my skin. "Consider it discipline. If you take it off, you leave the Pack." He thought he was protecting me. He thought making me look weak would save me from his enemies. He didn't realize he was killing the girl who loved him. That night, I didn't just take off the collar. I closed my eyes, found the golden thread of our Mate Bond in my mind, and snapped it in half. Dante collapsed in the hallway, clutching his chest in agony as he felt our connection die. "What did you do?" he whispered into the void. "I set you free, Alpha," I said. Then I ran into the storm. He thought I was a defenseless human. He didn't know I was the lost daughter of the Royal White Wolf bloodline. And when I returned, I wouldn't be kneeling.

When her half-sister stole her fiancé, scarred her face, and threw her from a skyscraper, Amelia thought it was the end-until fate gave her a second chance. Reborn with bitter clarity, she vowed not to repeat the same mistakes. In her past life, she had been kind to a fault; now, she would wear a mask of innocence to outmaneuver every snake in the grass. One by one, she tore down their schemes-leaving her treacherous sister begging, her stepmother pleading, her worthless father groveling, and her ex-fiancé crawling back. Her response was a cold smirk and two words: "Get lost." But the one thing she never anticipated was crossing paths with Damien Taylor-the most powerful and untouchable man in the capital-on the very first day of her new life. They said he was ruthless, ice-cold, immune to any woman's charm. Amelia believed it. until she learned the truth: the man was dangerously cunning. "Miss Johnson, I saved you. How about dinner?" "Miss Johnson, I helped you. Don't you owe me a favor?" Backed against the wall, Amelia felt his low voice vibrate through her: "You owe me too much, Amelia. It's time to pay up-starting with you." Only much later would she realize. she'd been owing him all along.

Two years of marriage left Brinley questioning everything, her supposed happiness revealed as nothing but sham. Abandoning her past for Colin, she discovered only betrayal and a counterfeit wedding. Accepting his heart would stay frozen, she called her estranged father, agreeing to the match he proposed. Laughter followed her, with whispers of Colin's power to toss her aside. Yet, she reinvented herself-legendary racer, casino mastermind, and acclaimed designer. When Colin tried to reclaim her, another man pulled Brinley close. "She's already carrying my child. You can't move on?"

My husband Julian celebrated our five-year anniversary by sleeping with his mistress. He thought I was a clueless trophy wife, too dim to notice the vanilla and tuberose scent on his expensive suits. He was wrong. For years, I played Mrs. Vance, hiding my brilliance while Julian claimed my patents. An anonymous email confirmed his ultimate betrayal: photos of him and Scarlett Kensington in ecstasy. My heart didn't break; it solidified into ice at five years wasted. I activated "The Protocol" for a new identity and escape countdown. Playing the doting wife, I plotted his downfall, catching him with his mistress selling my work, and publicly snapping his credit card. His betrayals and stolen work ignited a cold, calculated fury. He had no idea the monster he'd created. I was dismantling his empire. I shredded his patent papers, stripping him of his ill-gotten gains. With a final tap, I initiated "Identity Erasure." Mrs. Vance was dead. Dr. Evelyn Thorne had just begun her counterattack.

Abandoned as a child and orphaned by murder, Kathryn swore she'd reclaim every shred of her stolen birthright. When she returned, society called her an unpolished love-child, scoffing that Evan had lost his mind to marry her. Only Evan knew the truth: the quiet woman he cradled like porcelain hid secrets enough to set the city trembling. She doubled as a legendary healer, an elusive hacker, and the royal court's favorite perfumer. At meetings, the directors groaned at the lovey-dovey couple, "Does she really have to be here?" Evan shrugged. "Happy wife, happy life." Soon her masks fell, and those who sneered bowed in awe.

A year into the marriage, Thea rushed home with radiant happiness-she was pregnant. Jerred barely glanced up. "She's back." The woman he'd never let go had returned, and he forgot he was a husband, spending every night at her hospital bed. Thea forced a smile. "Let's divorce." He snapped, "You're jealous of someone who's dying?" Because the woman was terminal, he excused every jab and made Thea endure. When love went cold, she left the papers and stormed off. He locked down the city and caught her at the airport, eyes red, dropping to his knees. "Honey, where are you going with our child?"

I gave him three years of silent devotion behind a mask I never wanted to wear. I made a wager for our bond-he paid me off like a mistress. "Chloe's back," Zane said coldly. "It's over." I laughed, poured wine on his face, and walked away from the only love I'd ever known. "What now?" my best friend asked. I smiled. "The real me returns." But fate wasn't finished yet. That same night, Caesar Conrad-the Alpha every wolf feared-opened his car door and whispered, "Get in." Our gazes collided. The bond awakened. No games. No pretending. Just raw, unstoppable power. "Don't regret this," he warned, lips brushing mine. But I didn't. Because the mate I'd been chasing never saw me. And the one who did? He's ready to burn the world for me.