Ive Gutterson
11 Published Stories
Ive Gutterson's Books and Stories
You Said Die Quietly, So I Did
Mafia The doctor told me I had thirty days to live. Exactly ten minutes later, my husband told me his mistress was pregnant.
I sat in the cold marble living room of the Vitiello estate, watching Dante pace. He was the Capo of Chicago, the man I used to stitch up in a bathroom when we had nothing.
Now, he looked at me with dead eyes.
"Sienna is moving in," he said casually. "She carries the heir. You will raise him."
He treated the destruction of our marriage like a business arrangement.
I tried to tell him about the pain eating my insides, the Stage IV cancer that made standing agony. But he just rolled his eyes, calling my weakness "jealousy" and my silence "theatrics."
He even gutted our first home—the safe house where we fell in love—to build a nursery for her.
When I finally asked him, "What if I'm dying?" he didn't even pause on his way out the door.
"Then do it quietly," he said. "I have enough headaches today."
So I did.
I burned every photo of us. I signed the divorce papers. And I went to a civilian cemetery to buy a plot under my maiden name, far away from his family mausoleum.
I died alone on a cold stone bench, just as he asked.
It wasn't until he stood in the morgue, holding my skeletal hand and realizing I weighed nothing but bones and grief, that the King of Chicago finally broke.
He found my journal in the trash, where I had written my final entry:
"I wish I never met Dante Vitiello."
Now, he is on his knees in the dirt, begging a headstone for forgiveness that will never come. The Runaway Wife: Never Forgiving You
Modern My husband, the Mad Prince of the underworld, once burned down a city block just because a rival looked at me wrong.
Now, he forces me to kneel in the freezing New York snow, clad only in thin silk.
In his hand, he holds a tablet controlling my comatose brother's life support, threatening to kill him unless I confess to bullying his new mistress.
To save my brother, I swallow my pride and confess to a crime I didn't commit.
But the stress is too much.
I miscarry our child right there, staining the pristine white snow crimson.
Dante doesn't even blink.
He steps over my bleeding body to comfort his crying mistress, leaving me to scream for our lost baby alone.
He thinks he taught me a lesson.
He forces me to apologize to the woman who mocked me, even as my stitches tear.
He doesn't know that while he was guarding the door to keep doctors out, my brother actually died.
He doesn't know I buried the only family I had left in a pauper's grave while he slept with the woman who framed me.
On our tenth anniversary, he fills the house with lilies, expecting reconciliation.
Instead, I leave the signed divorce papers on the bed, take a handful of grave soil, and vanish into the night.
By the time he realizes the truth, I will be a ghost he can never touch again. The Billionaire Who Called Me Boring
Modern He was the billionaire who called me "boring" and paid me to disappear. Three years later, Gage Schwartz came back begging, promising me the world he'd denied me for seven years. I took him back, and soon, I was pregnant with his twins.
Then I heard the voicemail of him and his ex-wife, Brylee, laughing about how I was just a "comfortable placeholder."
The shock caused me to miscarry. When I tried to leave, he launched a smear campaign, painting me as insane to the world. Then he locked me in our penthouse.
He thought he could break me.
So I faked a complete mental breakdown, escaped into a blizzard, and vanished. I built a new life, found real love, and became the artist I was always meant to be.
But now, he's standing in my studio.
And he wants me back. The Genius Betrayed: A Silent Witness
Sci-fi I woke to the familiar sound of Ethan' s voice, thick with a passion that had never been for me.
"My entire existence, I wish to spend with Serena, intertwined, inseparable."
He was hugging my sister in the OmniCorp boardroom, the same place I' d once poured out my soul, creating the AI twins Aether and Echo.
Then, the memory slammed into me again: Ethan, with dead eyes, deleting them, calling them "flawed."
He' d said, "Serena was the real genius. She was just too devoted, that' s why she used the virus. If you hadn' t interfered, she and I would have achieved digital transcendence together."
He didn' t know Serena' s "Symbiotic Core" was a "Soul Devourer" virus, designed to hollow out a host for another.
And now, here we were again, him deluded, her feigning surprise.
I didn' t have to lift a finger this time; Ethan would walk into his own trap.
The board questioned him.
He snapped his head toward me, disgust in his eyes. "Ava is a viper. She is manipulative and malicious. She is utterly unfit to lead this project."
He vowed, "I desire only Serena, a singular partnership for all time."
I met his gaze, unfazed. "You' re overthinking it, Mr. Thorne. I' ll be packing my things and leaving the project. I wish you and my sister a long and prosperous partnership."
A flicker of confusion crossed his face. "You' d better!"
But as they walked away, he doubled over, coughing black code.
Serena shrieked, "Chairman, someone has infected Mr. Thorne with a malicious virus!"
Every eye in the room turned to me.
Ethan pointed a trembling finger. "Chairman, it must be because I didn' t choose Ava. She' s consumed by unrequited obsession and infected me with a virus. How malicious!"
My eyes stung. He knew Serena was the only one who had ever infected him. I had burned out my own core to save him the last time, and yet, he condemned me again. Why did I expect anything different?
The chairman demanded answers. I tried to explain, but Ethan cut me off, fabricating a story about a data packet I' d sent him. My voice turned to ice. "Mr. Thorne, this virus was clearly deployed by my sister. Aren' t you afraid of losing your digital life?"
He raged, "You dare to slander Serena! Besides, I love Serena to my core. It would be worth losing my digital life for her!"
Serena began to sob, offering to step aside, playing the noble martyr. Ethan, deeply moved, embraced her. "My heart has always been, and always will be, yours!"
He then declared, "Chairman, although Ava is a tech prodigy, she has committed a grave digital crime. You must not let her go unpunished!"
I suggested an external expert, seeing panic in Serena' s eyes. She then dropped to her knees, begging for me, then offered to implant a "diagnostic bug" in me.
My blood ran cold. It wasn't a diagnostic bug. It was the Nightmare Daemon, the inheritance token of our clan.
Ethan forced me to my knees. The Nightmare Daemon surged forward, biting into my digital pathways, siphoning my core data. The pain was unbelievable, but I forced my face to stay calm.
Ethan scoffed. "Ava, you' re quite the actress. You' ve had corrections before. Who are you trying to impress with this performance of pain now?"
I pointed. "Do you know that if my core data is completely consumed by this virus, no one will be able to save you?"
He roared, "You vile woman, are you trying to threaten me? Serena said that once she integrates with my core, this virus of hers can be neutralized! Don' t think for a second you can deceive everyone this time!"
He pulled Serena closer. "Three days from now, I will integrate with Serena. This time, I will never let anyone harm you again."
My vision blurred. The Soul Devourer virus. In three days, it would have completely spread through his system. By then, he would be doomed.
I lost consciousness. The Price of Stolen Genius
Modern My phone screen was the only light in the suffocating darkness, casting a sickly blue glow on the corrugated steel walls closing in around me.
A notification popped up with Nicole' s latest livestream, her face triumphant, showing a thumbnail of me, huddled and sketching on a dirty cardboard box.
"My pathetic 'brother' making trash art for change," the title read, a cruel mockery of my homelessness and desperation.
Then, her message: "Feeling cramped, Caleb? I remember you don't like small spaces."
My heart hammered as the air thinned, the walls pressing in; I was trapped, locked in a storage unit, betrayed by the girl I once called my sister.
I gasped, scrabbling against the unyielding metal as my vision blurred, the darkness crawling inward.
My last conscious thought was the cold, unyielding finality of it all; heart failure, alone and forgotten.
But then, the distinct smell of turpentine and acrylic paint jolted me awake.
I wasn' t in a storage unit; I was back in the bright art room of Northgate High, eighteen years old again.
And there she was: Nicole, laughing perfectly, with Ethan, the star quarterback, arrogant and untouched by his future accident, by his downfall.
The raw memory of my death, the cold, suffocating terror, slammed into me, a tidal wave of pure, undiluted rage.
I grabbed the nearest jar of murky paint water, and without a second thought, hurled it straight at Ethan' s chest.
His pristine jacket exploded with gray water and glass, and the fight that ensued was just the beginning.
I was back, and this time, the masterpiece of revenge would be mine. The Heiress Undone: A Politician's Ruin
Romance The D&C procedure was over, a cold finality to the grief already heavy on my shoulders from my parents' recent death.
As I clutched their ashes, I called my husband, Ethan, a rising political star, needing him more than ever.
His assistant, Sabrina, coldly told me he was too busy, later revealing his fury that I' d even suggest divorce.
His anger boiled over when I finally told him I was done, not realizing the deep well of my despair.
He'd sworn he wasn't divorcing me, his voice sharp and dismissive, just as he had dismissed my pain for years.
I still remember the day my heart turned to stone: Sabrina "accidentally" knocking over the urn holding the ashes of our first lost baby, and Ethan rushing to comfort her, then turning to me, his eyes full of irritation, telling me to "get over it."
But the truth was far more insidious, lurking beneath his carefully crafted image.
An anonymous email, an audio file revealing his chilling plan, had shattered any lingering hope or trust.
His calm, clear voice: "...She' s useful for that, at least."
Useful.
He meant my body, my unborn child, a living incubator to harvest cord blood for Sabrina' s dying sister.
My baby wasn't a crop.
My body wasn't a field to be plowed for his convenience.
The decision was instant, brutal, and mine alone.
I signed the divorce papers, the only certainty I had left in a world that had crumbled around me.
And then, I knew, it was time to leave. You Can't Sell What's Priceless: Her $200M Bid
Billionaires My husband, Mark Vance, built a tech empire from our garage – mostly with my money, my ideas, and my tireless support.
We were the Silicon Valley power couple, or so I thought.
Tonight, at a lavish charity gala, I planned to buy him a special anniversary gift, a rare NFT.
My paddle was raised, ready to bid.
Then, I watched in horror as Mark, smirking, used our joint high-limit credit card to snatch the very same NFT – not for me, not for us, but for Tiffany Hayes, his flashy ex-girlfriend, right across the room.
My blood ran cold, but my mind was clearer than ever.
I quietly froze our joint card, watching Tiffany's public meltdown as her payment for our NFT was declined.
Mark was furious, his fake smiles turning chillingly real.
He then twisted my arm into a "business trip" to a lavish private island, only to drug me upon arrival.
I woke up disoriented, locked in a luxurious cage.
Then I found myself on a stage, an auctioneer booming about selling me – my "services" and "future commitments" – to a room full of leering strangers.
He announced all our assets were liquid, offshore, and now "his."
The man I built, the man I trusted, was auctioning off my life, my dignity, as payback for a declined credit card.
Was this truly the depths of his betrayal? The ultimate degradation?
But as despair threatened to swallow me, a flicker of memory, a whisper from my grandmother, ignited a cold, hard rage.
He thought he broke me.
He thought he had won.
He had no idea what I was truly capable of.
With my voice steady and clear, I looked him in the eye and made my own bid: "$200 million. I'm buying myself." The Phoenix Artist
Modern Sarah Miller, an acclaimed artist, was finally returning to New York for her biggest solo exhibition, "Echoes in Sterling," ready to embrace a future with her kind and steady fiancé, Liam Chen.
But a single shocking headline-"Vanderbilt Heir Embroiled in New Scandal"-ripped through her carefully constructed peace, dragging her back to a past she' d fought for years to bury.
Years ago, she' d saved an injured, amnesiac man she called 'Leo,' building a world of pure, selfless love in her cramped Brooklyn studio, his devotion marked by her initials tattooed over his heart.
Yet, when his memory returned, revealing him as Ethan Vanderbilt, scion of a powerful real estate empire, that tender love shattered under the weight of his family' s expectations and a pre-arranged engagement to the formidable Isabelle Harrington.
The cruel denouement came at a lavish gala: Isabelle, with Ethan watching, orchestrated the public destruction of Sarah' s art and even tore her deceased grandmother' s cherished locket from her neck.
Ethan, the man who once promised her the world, stood by, dismissing her despair as "making a scene," his betrayal complete.
With nothing left but a two-million-dollar check, a chilling price for her silence, Sarah fled New York, vowing to transform her agony into art.
Now, she' s back, a celebrated artist on her own terms, but the city that broke her whispers with old ghosts, and the man who betrayed her has evolved into something far more dangerous, obsessed with a warped form of atonement. Beyond the Altar
Horror My father, Pastor Miller, knew everyone in Oakhaven. After his funeral, as people left, I sat in the front pew, my fiancé David’s hand on my arm. My mother, beside me, was a broken bird. We were a grieving family, facing loss, but united.
Then, just as I thought the church was empty, the side door creaked open. Three men. My father’s ashes, held sacred moments before, were cruelly threatened. They dragged me to the office. For eight hours, they hurt me. They filmed everything.
By noon, the video was everywhere. My phone blew up with cruelty, not comfort. David called, his voice flat. “The wedding… it’s off.” My job was gone. My mother saw it. Two days later, she died, her eyes full of a pain I couldn’t fix. I was alone. Utterly ruined.
My supposed savior, Michael Vance, David’s older brother, offered me an escape: marriage. I was desperate, saying yes. Six months later, I overheard his drunken confession: Michael orchestrated my hell. All of it. The assault, the video, even my father’s ruin. All for another woman, Jessica Thorne. How could the man who offered me safety be the architect of my destruction?
After being publicly shamed again and institutionalized, a chilling thought solidified: I was no longer a victim. A cold, hard whisper formed in my mind: *Revenge.* With my sharp lawyer aunt by my side, I knew what had to be done. They would pay. You might like
Rejected by the Son, I Chose the Don
Rabbit 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 Husband's Brother Owns My Secret
Rabbit 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. 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." 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. Marrying The Ex-Fiancé's Ruthless Mafia Brother
Nero Daniels My fiancé left me standing alone at the podium during our rehearsal dinner to rush to the side of a woman whose only illness was a desperate need for attention.
He humiliated me in front of the heads of the Five Families, abandoning our alliance to scoop his "dying" mistress off the floor.
I didn't cry. I didn't run. I walked straight to the head table, to the most terrifying man in the city—his older brother, the Don.
"The Woodward family owes me a husband," I declared calmly.
An hour later, I was married to the Capo dei Capi. But my ex-fiancé didn't accept his demotion.
He kidnapped me, strapping me to a chair in a soundproof basement.
For three days, he drained my blood pint by pint to "save" his mistress, Jaidyn, who watched me fade while she casually ate an apple.
"Take another bag," she ordered, smiling at my agony. "She still has too much fight in her."
As the cold crept up my chest and my vision blurred, I realized I was going to die for a lie, drained dry by a madman.
Then, the steel door detonated.
Through the smoke and debris walked my husband, not with a ransom, but with a serrated knife and a promise to burn them alive. Too Late, Mr. Don: The Wife You Buried
Cinderella's Sister I went to the family lawyer for a routine travel clearance. Instead, I was handed a divorce decree. The ink was three years old.
While I had been playing the role of the dutiful Capo's wife, Dante had secretly divorced me the day after our fifth anniversary.
Twenty-four hours later, he legally married the nanny, Gia, and named her cruel-eyed son as his heir.
I returned home to confront him, only for the boy to throw boiling tomato soup on me.
Dante didn't check my burns. He cradled the boy and looked at me with pure, drug-fueled hatred, calling me a monster for upsetting his "son."
The final blow came in a parking garage. A car sped toward us.
Dante didn't pull me to safety. He shoved me into the vehicle's path, using my body as a human shield to protect his mistress.
Lying broken on the asphalt, I realized Aria Vitiello was already dead to him. So, I decided to make it official.
I arranged a private flight over the Atlantic and ensured there were no survivors.
By the time Dante was weeping over the wreckage, realizing too late that he had been poisoned against me, I was already in France.
The Canary was dead. The Reaper had risen. His Discarded Gem: Shining In The Ruthless Don's Arms
Temple Madison For four years, I traced the bullet scar on Chace’s chest, believing it was proof he would bleed to keep me safe.
On our anniversary, he told me to wear white because "tonight changes everything." I walked into the gala thinking I was getting a ring.
Instead, I stood frozen in the center of the ballroom, drowning in silk, watching him slide his mother's sapphire onto another woman's finger.
Karyn Warren. The daughter of a rival family.
When I begged him with my eyes to claim me, to save me from the public humiliation, he didn't flinch. He just leaned toward his Underboss, his voice amplified by the silence.
"Karyn is for power. Ember is for pleasure. Don't confuse the assets."
My heart didn't just break; it incinerated. He expected me to stay as his mistress, threatening to dig up my dead mother’s grave if I refused to play the obedient pet.
He thought I was trapped. He thought I had nowhere to go because of my father’s massive gambling debts.
He was wrong.
With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and texted the one name I was never supposed to use.
Keith Mosley. The Don. The monster under Chace's bed.
*I am invoking the Blood Oath. My father’s debt. I am ready to pay it.*
His reply came three seconds later, buzzing against my palm like a warning.
*The price is marriage. You belong to me. Yes or No?*
I looked up at Chace, who was laughing with his new fiancée, thinking he owned me.
I looked down and typed three letters.
*Yes.* My Cold Heart: Rejecting The Mafia Boss
Jia Zhong My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket.
He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent.
But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress.
Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you."
To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife.
When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala.
He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent.
He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters.
He thought he had broken me.
He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage.
But he made a fatal error.
He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign.
They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me.
And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck.
I didn't jump to die.
I jumped to be reborn.
And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin. Mistaken Identity: Loving The Wrong Twin Sister
Tabbie Platt I replaced my twin sister in a marriage contract to the ruthless Mafia Don, Donovan Blackwood.
For three years, I was a ghost in his home, silently enduring his coldness while he flaunted his mistress, Chloe.
On the very last day of our contract, Chloe staged an accident.
Donovan didn't hesitate.
He forced me to drain my blood to save her life.
Then, to prove his loyalty to her, he drove me to the cliffs and pushed me into the freezing ocean.
He even locked me in a cellar infested with spiders—my deepest phobia—because she lied and said I threatened her.
He thought he was punishing the spoiled, arrogant Isabella.
He didn't know he was breaking Ava, the woman who had silently memorized his allergies and waited up for him in the dark every single night.
When I finally took my fifty million dollars and vanished, I left behind nothing but the divorce papers and a photo revealing the truth.
He tore the city apart, destroying my family to find me, only to realize he had tortured the wrong woman.
Now, he is standing on my porch in the pouring rain, staring in horror at the simple wooden ring on my finger given to me by another man.
He falls to his knees, begging for a chance to love the wife he tried to destroy.
I look at him, feeling absolutely nothing.
"It's too late, Donovan," I say, locking the door. "You killed her."