Dorine Koestler
13 Published Stories
Dorine Koestler's Books and Stories
Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles
Mafia 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. One Night With The Rival Alpha
Werewolf My mother had been dead for four years, and my father, the Alpha of our pack, was now a hollow shell controlled by his new wife, Marley. I was a ghost in my own home, watching from the shadows as they celebrated a wedding that felt more like my execution.
During the reception, Marley cornered me and demanded my mother's last heirloom-a blood-red ruby-to pay off her family's secret gambling debts. When I refused, her guards pinned me down, and in the struggle, the ancient stone hit the marble floor and shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.
Framed for grand larceny by my own stepmother, I fled to a dive bar and sought refuge with Caleb Sterling, a rival Alpha who radiated power and danger. We spent a night of soul-shattering passion that I was certain was our mate bond, but the next morning, he tossed an envelope of cash at me and called me a high-end escort. When the police arrived to arrest me, he simply stepped aside and watched them drag me away in handcuffs, cold and indifferent to my screams.
"Do what you have to do," he had told the officers, his eyes devoid of any warmth.
I was a fugitive, stripped of my title, and discovered I was carrying Caleb's child-a baby cursed by his bloodline to never survive the womb. I couldn't understand why my father had abandoned me to a monster, or why the man I was destined for had sold me out just to save his own reputation.
After a brutal ambush that left my only friend in a burning wreck, I stood at the border of the forbidden North. I clutched the jagged shards of my mother's ruby and looked the Northern Warlord in the eye, ready to trigger a war that would burn my father's legacy to the ground. Her Secret Shame, His Public Affair
Romance On my wedding night, my new husband, Jameson, was blackout drunk. My best friend of twenty years, Caren, texted me practical advice: give him honey water and let him sleep it off.
But just as he quieted down, he pulled me close, his breath hot on my neck. "I love you so, so much, Caren," he whispered. Then I saw it. A tattoo I'd never seen before, a single letter 'C' inked directly over his heart.
The next morning, my birthday, Caren showed up with a cake, her smile as sweet as poison. After one bite, my throat began to close. Peanuts. She knew I was deathly allergic.
As I gasped for air, Jameson's first instinct wasn't to help me, but to defend her. He stood between us, his face a mask of fury. "What is your problem with her?" he demanded, blind to the fact that his wife was suffocating in front of him.
I stumbled, trying to reach my EpiPen, but he grabbed my arm, yanking me back. "You are going to apologize to Caren right now!"
With the last of my strength, I slapped him across the face.
"I'm pregnant," I rasped. "And I can't breathe." Revenge: The Billionaire's Downfall
Romance For eight years, I was the girlfriend of New York's most untouchable billionaire, Dean Lee. To the public, we were a fairy tale: the brilliant, cold CEO who was utterly devoted to me, a simple artist he had plucked from obscurity. He built a fortress of luxury and safety around me.
But it was all a lie. On our anniversary, I overheard him with another woman. He called me a "decoy," a "shield" he used to absorb the threats and scrutiny meant for his real love, Karina.
His mask came off. He allowed Karina to humiliate me publicly, destroy my dead mother’s heirloom, and then, as punishment, had me force-fed soup made from my beloved cat.
His final "lesson" was to throw me into an underground fight club. As I lay beaten and bleeding on the canvas, I saw him in the VIP booth, watching with bored detachment as Karina laughed beside him. The eight years of protection weren't love; they were just maintenance on his human shield.
On the verge of death, I was rescued by his biggest rival, Brennen Finley. With my last breath, I gave him the secrets that would bring Dean's empire to its knees. In exchange, I asked for just one thing.
"Make Hayley York disappear," I whispered. "Help me die." The Secret Genius Ex-Wife's Cold Revenge
Modern I spent three years playing the role of the perfect, invisible wife to Dillard Bentley, the billionaire heir of Manhattan. While he graced the tabloids with socialites, I stayed in the shadows of our penthouse, waiting for a man who treated me like a piece of furniture.
One rainy night, the facade finally shattered. Dillard came home smelling of another woman’s perfume, and I handed him the divorce papers he never expected. But before the ink could dry, a violent pain ripped through me during a family lunch, and I collapsed in a pool of blood on the pristine marble floor.
While I was being rushed to the hospital, Dillard’s mother dismissed my agony as a manipulative trick, and Dillard chose to believe her. He didn't follow the ambulance; he went to a gala to protect his mistress instead. I woke up in a cold emergency room only to be told I had lost the baby I didn't even know I was carrying. Because of the toxic "vitamins" his mother had been force-feeding me, my blood wouldn't clot, and I had to undergo surgery without a single drop of anesthesia.
I bit down on a leather strap, feeling every agonizing scrape as they cleared the remains of my child, while my husband laughed at my pain over the phone.
"Stop the drama, Erica. Tell her the divorce terms are non-negotiable. I'm busy."
He hung up, leaving me to scream in silence. I realized then that the man I had once loved was the same man who let his family poison me. The "vitamins" weren't supplements; they were a death sentence for my unborn child, and he didn't even care enough to show up.
Dillard thinks he’s divorcing a penniless nobody, but he’s about to find out that the world-renowned medical genius he’s desperate to recruit is the wife he left to bleed alone. I walked out of that hospital, threw my wedding ring in the trash, and reclaimed my true identity. Dr. N is coming to the global summit, and I’m not there to save the Bentley empire—I’m there to burn it to the ground. The Love He Destroyed, My New Power
Modern After seven years together, I told my boyfriend, Jaxon, I was pregnant. I thought it was the beginning of our forever.
Instead, I found him at my prenatal clinic, comforting his secret, pregnant wife.
He called our life a lie, a "business arrangement." His family beat me, humiliated me, and locked me in a dusty attic with rats for a month, leaving me to starve while he took his wife to her appointments.
He promised me a future, a family, but chose to protect her and abandon our child. I was just an inconvenience to be discarded.
So when they finally dragged me to the hospital, I made a choice. I waited for him to arrive after the procedure, his face full of fake concern.
He saw the blood-stained sheets and his face crumbled.
"What... what have you done?" he stammered.
I smiled, my voice as cold and empty as my womb.
"I got rid of it, Jaxon. I aborted your baby." 986 Nights of Betrayal
Romance For 986 nights, my marriage bed had not been my own.
My husband, Corbett Ewing, heir to a New York real estate empire, was haunted by a ghost, and that ghost' s sister, Ivana, was my tormentor. Every night, she' d scratch at our door, claiming nightmares, and Corbett would let her in, laying a spare duvet for her in our master bedroom.
One night, Ivana shrieked, pointing at me, "She tried to kill me! She snuck in while I was sleeping and choked me!"
Corbett, without a second thought, yelled at me, "Jenna! What did you do?" He didn' t even look at me for my side of the story.
Later, he tried to apologize with a macaron, my favorite pistachio. But it was filled with almond paste, to which I was deathly allergic.
As my throat closed up and my vision tunneled, Ivana shrieked again, claiming a panic attack over online comments. Corbett, faced with my dying gasps and her fake hysterics, chose her. He carried her away, leaving me alone to save myself.
He never came back to the hospital. He sent his assistant to discharge me. When I returned home, he tried to appease me, but then asked me to give my father' s last gift, my perfume organ, to Ivana for her "design studio."
I refused, but he took it anyway. The next morning, Ivana "accidentally" shattered a bottle of my father' s custom scent, the last physical piece of him I had.
I looked at Corbett, my hands bleeding, my heart shattered. He pulled Ivana behind him, shielding her from me, his voice cold, "That' s enough, Jenna. You' re hysterical. You' re upsetting Ivana."
In that moment, the last shred of hope died.
I was done.
I accepted an offer to be a head perfumer in France, renewed my passport, and planned my escape. Unwanted Wife, Unseen Torment
Modern Another wave of pain hit me, a familiar, gut-wrenching cramp.
I was bleeding again.
This was the tenth time.
Each time it happened, my husband, Liam Stone, would bring a woman home.
A woman who looked exactly like his first love.
Tonight was no different.
He stood in our bedroom doorway, a woman by his side he introduced as Maya, flatly stating, "She' ll be staying with us for a while."
His eyes never met mine; they were solely on her.
Then, his words like stones, he commanded, "You' ll be serving us."
I pushed myself up, the fresh bloodstain on the mattress a grim testament to my latest loss.
My body ached, my world felt numb, yet the familiar routine played out as I fetched the wine.
I returned to find them on my bed, Liam kissing her, a scene I had been forced to witness nine times before.
A single drop of red wine accidentally splashed onto Maya' s pristine white dress.
She gasped, theatrically exclaiming, "My dress! It' s ruined! This is a limited edition!"
Liam' s face turned to thunder.
He grabbed my hair, yanking my head back.
"You clumsy bitch," he snarled, then pulled out his phone.
He started a live broadcast, aiming the camera at my face, then at Maya' s stained dress, and finally, the blood on the bed.
"Look at her," he boomed to the world. "This is my wife, Chloe Miller. She can' t even do a simple task without messing it up."
Then, he shoved my face closer to Maya' s dress, barking, "Lick it clean."
My blood ran cold.
"Liam, please," I begged, humiliation clawing at my throat. "Don' t do this."
"Lick it," he repeated, his voice menacing. "Or I' ll find other ways to make you pay. Maybe you' d prefer to serve more than just one of my guests tonight?"
His threat hung in the air, vile and real.
I closed my eyes and leaned forward, the taste of wine and cheap perfume filling my mouth.
He laughed, a harsh, grating sound, then released my hair, and I collapsed.
"Get out," he spat. "And don' t come back in here tonight."
I crawled out, another sharp pain tearing through my abdomen, warm blood gushing between my legs.
He left me in the yard, naked, bleeding onto the cold, damp grass.
Ten miscarriages.
Each time, a new woman, a new cruelty.
Lying there, under the cold moon, clarity dawned.
This would never end.
He would only ever destroy me.
As the last warmth left my body, a new resolve settled in.
It was time to see Arthur Stone.
My "good fortune" was broken; I couldn't give Liam a child.
I was done.
I had to leave.
Arthur, his face etched with mirroring grief, agreed to help me.
But before I could escape, Maya found it-the small, simple urn holding the ashes of my nine miscarried children.
Liam, ever her protector, kicked me into unconsciousness.
I awoke to a new horror: a video compilation of my most private moments with him, twisted clips set to mocking music, broadcast for the world to see.
He then forced me to donate blood until my heart nearly stopped.
He froze my bank accounts.
I crawled home from the hospital, only to find Maya burning my mother' s jade hairpin, my last connection to her.
The urn was gone, its contents scattered.
The next morning, the nine pear trees I' d planted were uprooted, replaced by rose bushes for her.
That was the end.
With Arthur' s help, I left the country, divorce papers filed on my behalf.
Liam laughed when he received them, certain I' d crawl back.
He was wrong.
He only realized his mistake when he discovered Maya' s lies, the truth about her, and me.
He tried to win me back.
But it was too late.
I was gone, never coming back.
His family' s business collapsed, his health failed.
The last I heard, Liam Stone, once the man who had everything, was a reclusive, crippled beggar, haunting his desolate mansion, obsessively planting pear trees and crying out my name in his madness. A Mother's Love, A Daughter's Fury
Sci-fi My father, Richard Sterling, built his empire on control, and I, Ava, was just another asset in his meticulously ordered life.
My mother, Dr. Eleanor Vance, the brilliant AI ethicist, was deemed inconvenient, a "disaster" to be managed.
One day, she was gone, taken by men in dark suits on my father's orders, her privacy twisted into shame.
He paraded his new assistant, Charlotte Hayes, her smile triumphant, pregnant with his "new beginning," while my mother lay in the woods, a body identified only by a stranger.
He dismissed my pleas, my fears, my desperate attempts to uncover the truth, painting me as hysterical, a nuisance to his carefully crafted narrative.
He celebrated on a yacht in the Maldives, sipping champagne, while I clutched a fragmented data drive, a digital breadcrumb trail that whispered of murder, not accident.
How could the man who taught me to ride a bike, who promised to never let me fall, betray us so completely?
How could society believe his lies and brand my mother an unstable genius?
My heart screamed for justice, for the truth to shatter the polished facade of Sterling Dynamics.
With the help of my uncle and grandmother, I began to piece together the chilling reality: my mother wasn't just gone, she was silenced, murdered by the very people who claimed to love her.
And I would make them pay. His Mistress, Her Empire
Billionaires I sat in my Singapore office, thousands of miles from home, my eyes glued to the laptop.
It was Lily's 18th birthday party, a lavish affair I' d planned down to the last detail.
The live stream flickered on, and I saw the magnificent ballroom, just as I' d envisioned.
But then, the MC boomed, "Let' s welcome the heiress to Innovate Solutions, Tiffany!"
My smile froze. Tiffany?
A girl I' d never seen before walked into the spotlight, wearing Lily's custom-made gown and my family' s heirloom sapphire necklace.
Then a woman, Sarah, stepped up, beaming, "As the CEO of Innovate Solutions, it warms my heart…"
CEO? I was the CEO. A cold dread seeped in.
The camera panned, and I saw her. My Lily.
She was near a service table, holding a tray of drinks, head bowed, in a drab server' s uniform.
A group of Tiffany' s friends deliberately knocked a glass from her tray, laughing as she flinched, picking up the pieces in defeat.
A guttural roar escaped me.
I snatched my phone, hands shaking, and dialed Mark, my husband.
"Mark, what the hell is going on? Who is Tiffany? Why is she wearing Lily' s dress and my family' s necklace?"
His response was too casual, too quick.
"A surprise… Sarah' s daughter. My new co-CEO. A PR move."
Co-CEO? Sarah Miller, his old girlfriend?
"A PR move that involves my daughter serving drinks at her own birthday party?" I seethed. "Put Lily on the phone now!"
The line went dead.
A text from Lily' s friend confirmed my worst fears: "They' re treating Lily like a servant. Tiffany and her mom moved in. They told everyone Lily is an illegitimate child and that you abandoned her. Mark is letting it happen."
Moved in. Illegitimate child. Abandoned. The lies were a physical blow.
My daughter, small and broken, flashed in my mind.
Mark wasn't just having an affair; he was erasing my daughter. Erasing me.
I slammed my laptop shut.
Grabbed my purse and passport.
There would be no more calls. No more texts.
I was going home. And I was going to burn their world to the ground. His Obsession, My Hell
Romance My marriage to David Miller was a picture of perfection, a dream life built on his charm and our shared happiness.
Then came the call: my mother in an accident, and David, my husband, utterly unreachable.
Hours bled into sterile dread in the hospital waiting room, a dread far deeper than my mother' s condition.
An unknown text arrived, a single photo: David, arm around another woman, intimate, familiar.
It was my aunt, Sophia Hayes, my mother' s estranged sister, her smile painfully like mine.
My world, once perfect, splintered into a million icy shards under the humming hospital lights.
He returned late, weaving slick lies about dead phones and urgent meetings, as if I were a child to be placated.
But as he signed the papers I put before him, oblivious, a chilling sense of irony settled heavy in my gut.
The man I thought I knew, the husband who murmured of naming our child "Sophia," was a stranger.
I found his study, not an office, but a shrine to her, filled with desperate letters and a diary detailing his monstrous plan: I was just a "perfect-looking replacement" to bear "his Sophia."
The love, the marriage, the baby-all a grotesque fabrication, designed to resurrect his lost obsession.
The pain threatened to split me, but beneath it, a cold, hard resolve began to form, sharper than any grief.
He thought he' d signed investment papers; he' d signed his divorce, and my consent to end the lie he' d so carefully constructed within me.
I walked out that night, leaving his diary open, his delusion exposed, ready to erase every trace of his monstrous fantasy. A Mother's Sin
Horror I' ve always known what animals were thinking.
It' s a secret I keep, even from my boyfriend.
So when my best friend, Chloe, invited me to her cutting-edge Primate Cognition Center, I agreed, expecting just another odd day of animal thoughts.
Then I met Brutus.
A massive gorilla housed behind thick glass, his thoughts weren't mere animalistic grunts.
They were clear, chilling: "Her skin. So smooth. I want it. Tonight. I' ll take it tonight."
Hours later, Brutus escaped, his tracker leading straight to my apartment building.
Mark was working late, and I was alone.
Chloe' s police deputy brother, David, rushed to help.
I heard his muffled struggle outside my door, followed by Brutus' s casual thought: "He was strong. Good fight."
Then, Brutus used David' s dead body to knock on my door, a gruesome puppet.
When Mark called, saying he was coming home, I warned him, but he disconnected.
His last terrified thoughts flooded my mind as Brutus ambushed him in the garage.
Mark was gone.
Brutus was gone.
But then "Mark" called me.
His voice was off.
His behavior was wrong, serving me food I' m deadly allergic to.
A horrific truth clicked: Brutus wore Mark' s skin as a grotesque disguise – a calculated revenge against my mother, who had experimented on him.
My presence was now the target of his cruel, human-like rage.
Chloe arrived at our apartment, yet "Mark" lied about her being late.
My gut screamed.
I found Chloe on the balcony, bound and gagged.
Her terrified plea, once free: "It' s not Mark! It' s Brutus! He' s wearing his skin!"
Everything clicked.
With a kitchen knife glimmering in "Mark's" hand, it was time to fight for my life. You might like
Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles
Dorine Koestler 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. The Unwanted Bride Becomes The City's Queen
Breeze 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. His Unwanted Wife: The Genius Artist Returns
Zaccaria Linn On our fifth anniversary, my husband slid a black velvet box across the table.
Inside wasn't a diamond ring, but a fountain pen.
"Sign the separation papers, Aurora," Ethan said. "Ilene is spiraling again. She needs to see we are over."
I was the wife of the Mafia Underboss, yet I was being discarded for the Family Ward.
Before I could answer, Ilene stormed into the restaurant.
She shrieked that I was still wearing his ring and threw a bowl of boiling lobster bisque directly at my chest.
As my skin blistered and peeled, Ethan didn't rush to me.
He hugged her.
"It's okay," he soothed the woman who had just assaulted me. "I've got you."
The betrayal didn't stop there.
When Ilene pushed me down the stairs days later, Ethan erased the security footage to protect her from the police.
When I was kidnapped by his enemies, I called his emergency line—the one meant for life-or-death situations.
He declined the call.
He was too busy holding Ilene's hand to save his wife.
That was the moment the chain broke.
As the kidnapper's van sped onto the highway, I didn't wait for a rescue that would never come.
I opened the door and jumped into the dark.
Everyone thought Aurora Bruce died on that pavement.
Two years later, Ethan stood outside a gallery in Paris, looking at the woman he had destroyed, finally realizing he had protected the wrong one. Marrying The Rival: My Ex-Husband's Despair
Fonz Nadherny 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. The Capo's Scarred Wife: A Vicious Comeback
Sofia Wade I was the Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me.
But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest.
The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me.
They didn't.
Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her.
They let me burn to keep her warm.
When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages.
That was the moment Elena Vitiello died.
I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York.
By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring.
"You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them.
"Burn for it." Runaway Nurse: The Mafia King's Remorse
Hu Minxue For seven years, I served as the eyes for Dante Vitiello, the blind Capo of New York.
I pulled him back from the edge of madness, tending to his wounds and warming his bed when everyone else had given up on him.
But the moment his vision returned, the years of devotion turned to ash.
In a single phone call, he decided to marry Sofia Moretti for territory, dismissing me as just "the maid's daughter" and a "comfort" he intended to keep as a mistress.
He forced me to watch him court her.
At a gala, when a chaotic accident caused a tower of champagne glasses to shatter, Dante threw his body over Sofia to protect her.
He left me standing there, bleeding from the glass shards, while he carried her away like she was porcelain.
He didn't even look back at the woman who had saved his life.
I realized then that I had worshipped a broken god.
I had given him my dignity, only for him to treat me like a disposable bandage now that he was whole.
He arrogantly believed I would stay in the penthouse, grateful for his scraps.
So, while he was out celebrating his engagement, I met with his mother.
I signed the severance agreement for fifty million dollars.
I packed my bags, wiped my phone, and boarded a one-way flight to Australia.
By the time Dante came home to an empty bed, realized his mistake, and began tearing the city apart to find me, I was already a ghost. Marrying His Rival: The Ex-Fiancé's Nightmare
Moria Anninger I was the "Caged Canary" of the underworld, a biological asset designed to merge two crime families. My fiancé, Bryant Barnes, didn't love me. He loved the power I brought, and he loved his mistress, Kalia.
The night Kalia broke into my penthouse and stomped on my hand, crushing the bones and my fashion career, Bryant didn't help me. He told the police she was my guest and warned me not to embarrass him with a cast.
That was just the beginning. When Kalia lied about feeling unsafe, Bryant dangled me off a balcony. When she faked a kidnapping, he locked me in an industrial freezer for six hours until I turned blue. And when I fell into the marina, he swam right past me to save her, leaving me to drown in the freezing water.
He destroyed my body and my dignity for a woman who was stealing my designs and faking a pregnancy. He thought I was just a broken obligation he could discard.
But he made a fatal mistake. He didn't make sure I was dead.
I dragged myself out of the water and made a call to his greatest rival.
On the night of our grand merger, I walked onto the stage wearing royal blue instead of white. I rolled up my sleeve to reveal the scars he gave me, looked him dead in the eye, and grabbed the microphone.
"I hereby terminate my engagement to Bryant Barnes. And I am proud to announce my betrothal to the true King of this city." Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him
SHANA GRAY 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. Revenge Is Sweet: Marrying His Worst Enemy
CHRISTINE ROBINSON I was staring at the two pink lines on the plastic stick, trembling with the terrifying joy of carrying the heir to the New York underworld’s most ruthless faction.
Then the intercom buzzed, and a voice splintered my world.
"The little art student actually thinks I'm going to marry her? It was just a game to pass the time while you were in Europe, Estella."
I froze.
My boyfriend, Holden, was in the next room, laughing with the daughter of his rival.
He explained that I was just a "clean civilian image" he needed to secure a business deal. Now that the deal was signed, he was dumping the "stray" to marry the "Queen."
I tried to run, but freedom only lasted forty-eight hours.
Holden didn't just break my heart; he turned my terror into content.
He kidnapped me, tied me to a chair at the edge of a cliff, and forced me to choose between my life and his new fiancée's.
Then, he pushed me off the edge.
As gravity snatched me, I heard him laughing.
I landed on a stunt airbag. It was just a "social experiment." A sick prank for his amusement.
"Don't be so dramatic, Kenia," he called down. "It's just a game."
He thought I was broken. He thought I was just a prop in his life.
But he forgot that I knew his secrets.
I dragged my injured body to a payphone and dialed the one number Holden told me to fear—the rival Don, Gael Simpson.
"It's Kenia," I whispered, clutching the receiver like a lifeline. "I'm calling in the debt." 
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