Juline Walden
14 Published Stories
Juline Walden's Books and Stories
He Saved Her, I Lost Our Child
Mafia For three years, I kept a secret ledger of my husband's sins.
A point system to decide exactly when I would leave Blake Santos, the ruthless Underboss of Chicago.
I thought the final straw would be him forgetting our anniversary dinner to comfort his "childhood friend," Ariana.
I was wrong.
The real breaking point came when the restaurant ceiling collapsed.
In that split second, Blake didn't look at me. He dove to his right, shielding Ariana with his body, leaving me to be crushed under a half-ton crystal chandelier.
I woke up in a sterile hospital room with a shattered leg and a hollow womb.
The doctor, trembling and pale, told me my eight-week-old fetus hadn't survived the trauma and blood loss.
"We tried to get the O-negative reserves," he stammered, refusing to meet my eyes. "But Dr. Santos ordered us to hold them. He said Miss Whitfield might go into shock from her injuries."
"What injuries?" I whispered.
"A laceration on her finger," the doctor admitted. "And anxiety."
He let our unborn child die to save the blood reserves for his mistress’s paper cut.
Blake finally walked into my room hours later, smelling of Ariana’s perfume, expecting me to be the dutiful, silent wife who understood his "duty."
Instead, I picked up my pen and wrote the final entry in my black leather book.
*Minus five points. He killed our child.*
*Total Score: Zero.*
I didn't scream. I didn't cry.
I just signed the divorce papers, called my extraction team, and vanished into the rain before he could turn around. Engaged To A Coldhearted Murderer
Modern My fiancée smiled as she showed me the "intruder" she had dealt with in the ER.
I looked past her to see my mother beaten unconscious on the floor.
And on the gurney next to her lay my seven-year-old brother, cold, blue, and dead.
Brittnie clung to my arm, beaming with pride.
"I handled it, Cannon," she chirped.
"That gold digger tried to claim this bastard was your son. But I made sure they wouldn't bother us again."
My blood turned to ice.
She was holding my mother' s emerald brooch, a family heirloom, convinced it was her engagement ring.
Because of her delusion, she had refused to give my brother his EpiPen.
She had watched him suffocate to death, thinking she was winning my heart.
I looked at Gabe' s lifeless body, then at the woman I was planning to marry.
I pulled out my phone and shoved a family photo in her face.
"That gold digger is my mother," I whispered, my voice trembling with lethal rage.
"And you just murdered my brother." The Truth Hidden In A Folder
Modern For three years, I believed I had the perfect marriage with my husband, Grant, and an unbreakable bond with my best friend, Chelsey.
That illusion shattered when I found a hidden video on our shared laptop, tucked away in a folder labeled "Memories."
It showed them together in a hotel room, kissing, their bodies intertwined. I heard my husband promise my best friend he would never truly love me, that I was just a responsibility he had to bear.
He was the man who swore he'd never cheat. She was the woman who once saved my life. Their entire relationship, their fake animosity-it was all an elaborate performance to hide their affair right under my nose.
But when he left me sobbing on the floor to rush to her side after a faked car accident, something inside me finally broke.
I found them wrapped in each other's arms, and with the sound of my hand cracking across his stunned face, I made a new promise.
"We're getting a divorce." Scorned By Family, Freed By Fury
Modern The charity gala was supposed to be my final act of freedom, a staged exit from a life that wasn' t mine.
Instead, it ended with the shriek of shattering glass, my sister' s scream, and the cold accusation in Charlotte Sterling' s eyes, a theatrical terror I knew was fake as she bled onto the pristine marble from a self-inflicted wound.
Suddenly, every eye in the room, including my adoptive family' s, landed on me, fixing me with a gaze riddled with panic, concern, and finally, pure hatred, as Charlotte whispered her fabricated story of being pushed to our mother.
"Get her out of my sight," my adoptive father, Richard Sterling, snarled, his voice a low growl directed solely at me, a torrent of fury replacing the warmth that once existed.
My adoptive brother, Ethan, dragged me from the ballroom, away from the judging crowd, and into the raw, damp confines of the basement wine cellar, proclaiming I would stay there until I understood what I had done.
For two years, I had been Ava Miller, the grateful orphan, tasked with exposing Sterling Corp' s illicit operations, but now, abandoned by my agency and starved by my supposed family, a chilling realization ignited within me.
I wasn' t just a victim of betrayal; I was an agent, and if I got out, I wouldn't just pick up the pieces-I would build something entirely new, something forged in vengeance. The Twin's Legacy
Romance The blinding pain of childbirth ripped through Sarah, but it was the empty chair beside her hospital bed that truly shattered her.
Mark should have been there, holding her hand, but his phone was off, just as it had been for hours.
Another contraction hit, and alone, sweat-soaked, Sarah delivered her first twin, then geared up to do it all again, frantically trying to reach a husband who had vanished.
As she cradled her newborn, a news report flashed on the TV: a sun-drenched beach, turquoise water, and there, laughing, hand-in-hand, were Mark and her best friend Emily, on a "romantic getaway" in Bali.
Just then, a cheerful caller informed her the postpartum nanny package she'd paid for had been canceled by her husband.
Her blood ran cold. He hadn't just abandoned her; he'd taken everything.
A quick check of her banking app confirmed the horror: over eighty thousand dollars, her life savings for the twins, gone.
He'd drained it all to fund his sordid escape.
The line went dead after her mother-in-law, dismissive and callous, blamed Sarah for not "giving Mark a boy" and for being "careless with her money."
The betrayal was absolute, a crushing blow from everyone she thought she could trust.
How could she be so blind?
How could they betray her so completely, so cruelly?
The isolation crashed down, leaving her utterly alone, reeling from a decade-long lie that had just imploded.
Just when she thought she might drown in her grief, a cold, sharp voice cut through the haze, forcing her to confront an unexpected intervention and perhaps, a chance to reclaim more than just her babies. New Beginnings, Old Scars
Billionaires The tech industry' s golden couple, Mark Stone and I, stood basking in the spotlight, a symbol of shared dreams and billion-dollar success.
But that dream shattered when an anonymous email revealed Mark's decade-long betrayal: he wasn't just having an affair with Chloe Davis, our rival, but funding her company with our money.
When I confronted him, Mark shamelessly denied it, then orchestrated a vile smear campaign, publicly labeling me an unstable, cheating woman. He even weaponized our shared pain, twisting the tragic loss of our unborn child-twice-into an accusation of my infidelity. Everyone believed him. I was isolated, heartbroken, and utterly humiliated.
How could the man I loved, my partner for ten years, become such a monster? What depths of depravity would he sink to just to protect his image?
Driven by a cold fury and armed with a deceptive calm, I plotted my escape. I agreed to a "reconciliation trip" to Iceland, a cruel charade, knowing it was my perfect window to disappear, leaving him to face the wreckage of his own making. This wasn't an ending; it was a strategic withdrawal. The war had just begun. Too Late, Mr. Rockstar
Modern My husband, a rockstar on the rise, just dedicated his Battle of the Bands victory to his "true muse"-our band's new bassist, Molly.
Then they shared a long, passionate kiss on stage, right in front of me, as I stood there, holding the victory cake I' d spent two days baking for him.
Later, I heard him laugh, calling me "pathetic," a "church girl playing dress-up" who "just tries too hard."
Then, after he "saved" me from harassing strangers, he publicly shamed me for my outfit and forced me to drink until I ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.
Fresh from the ER, I saw him on one knee, proposing. Not to me, but to Molly, whispering, "I'll take care of you and our baby," words eerily similar to those he' d used when he pressured me into an abortion.
He then ripped off my designer leather jacket, the one I' d saved for months to buy for him, and draped it over Molly, declaring she "actually looks good in this."
How could he, my husband, betray me so completely and utterly humiliate me? Was this all a twisted joke, or was this the man I married all along?
Instead of crying or screaming, a strange, cold calm washed over me, and I walked straight out of that hospital, pulling out my phone to call Austin's best divorce lawyer. Her Crown, His Ruin
Fantasy The night Sabrina won Governor, my world should have been complete. I, Ethan Lester, a Hollow Keeper, had bent forgotten rituals to ensure her victory, loving her with every fiber of my being. She was my queen, now ruler of our state.
But her crown came with a cruel twist. She brazenly dismissed me and my family, choosing the slick tech billionaire Andrew Fuller, who mocked my quiet, mountain-folk parents and had them arrested on the spot. My pleas to Sabrina were met with icy indifference, her hand already intertwined with his.
The next morning, I learned my parents were dead-a convenient "suicide" in custody. When I confronted Sabrina in her office, she laughed with their killer, then scornfully dismissed my grief. "Are you seriously asking me to ruin a powerful man for a couple of nobodies from the sticks?" she sneered. She then announced our annulment and fired me, giving my advisory role to Andrew.
How could the woman I loved, the woman I gave everything for, become such a monster overnight? How did my life, built on deep traditions and fierce loyalty, collapse so entirely? This wasn't just betrayal; it was cold-blooded murder.
They had taken everything. Now, I would take it all back. 949: The Score That Blew Up My Family
Sci-fi My mother, Karen, stood by my hospital bed, her face cold as my heart monitor slowed. I was dying from organ failure, a sudden, rapid illness, while my older sister, Brittany, thrived as a popular influencer, celebrated for achievements that were, in truth, always mine.
This wasn't just sickness. It was the "Exchange System"-a chilling secret weapon my own parents had wielded. They' d systematically pilfered my successes, my health, even my Stanford-bound SAT scores, to fuel Brittany's fabricated "genius." My entire life was a lie, a resource to be drained for her benefit.
My father, Rick, a silent accomplice, watched as I withered away. Every talent, every ounce of robust health, funneled into Brittany. As the final heart monitor beep flatlined, darkness consumed me, the bitter truth of their monstrous deceit searing my soul.
How could my own family turn me into a mere resource, stealing my very life until I perished, all to elevate another's hollow existence? The injustice suffocated me. Was I truly just a battery for my "genius" sister, erased from history by those who should have loved me?
Then, light. I gasped, bolting upright in my own bed. It was a month before the SATs-the turning point where my life last pivoted to its tragic end. The memories of my death, of Karen' s icy words, were vivid. This time, I would not be their victim. I knew their system. And this time, I would break its rules. The Monster She Chose
Horror I woke up cold, Thanksgiving Eve all over again, the phantom pressure of water in my lungs, a chilling memory of how my wife Ashley had ended my last life.
Ashley was already humming, getting ready to leave-not for her aging parents, but for Brandon, her toxic lover, sealing her family' s fate with lies and then locking me in our bedroom to prevent me from interfering.
After a desperate escape, I raced to her parents' apartment, only to find the building engulfed in flames, while Ashley, through cunning phone calls, dismissed my desperate pleas to rescuers, painting me as an erratic husband and leading to my arrest as her parents perished inside.
My heart shattered by her shocking betrayal and Brandon's calculated cruelty, I was consumed by a cold, burning rage, realizing the terrifying depth of her obsession that led to such an unthinkable tragedy.
At the funeral, I publicly exposed Ashley's cold deceptions, and as Brandon shamelessly proposed to her amidst the fresh grief, his true monstrousness was revealed, finally breaking her twisted delusion and setting me free to forge a life unbound by their dark past. Charleston Soul Swap
Fantasy My Charleston life was straight out of a storybook: a loving family, a handsome fiancé, Chad, and a generous engagement gift – a historic mansion in the heart of the city.
But then came the nightmare.
One dizzying moment at my engagement party, surrounded by opulence, and the next I was trapped.
Trapped inside my fluffy white Bichon, Angel, my world became a terrifying cacophony of barks and urine.
Through the bars of a filthy cage, I saw my step-brother Billy Ray smirk, abandoning me—Sarah Jenkins, the wealthy heiress—to a notorious high-kill animal shelter.
I knew Daisy-Mae, his conniving wife, was now standing triumphant and relieved in *my* gorgeous Charleston home, inhabiting *my* body, embracing *my* privileged life.
The betrayal was absolute, the cruelty unimaginable, turning my gilded existence into a nightmare worse than death.
How could this dark magic be real?
How could my own family turn so viciously against me?
Miraculously, I jolted awake, back in my own bed, days before the horrific swap was truly meant to happen.
My first move: feigning a sudden, violent dander allergy to banish poor Angel—and Daisy-Mae's trapped soul—from my rooms.
This time, I'm not just fighting back; I'm turning their dark schemes against them, inch by agonizing inch. Unbowed: The Evelyn Hayes Story
Modern Evelyn Hayes, a venture capitalist celebrating a milestone in her impressive career, just wanted a quiet moment at a campus Starbucks, dressed comfortably after a long panel. But a simple outfit choice unexpectedly ignites a firestorm: anonymous messages turn into public online attacks, spearheaded by Mark Jenkins, an aspiring entrepreneur she's about to judge.
He demonizes her, painting her first as "distracting," then as a "corrupt elite" actively sabotaging his dreams. When he realizes she's the lead investor for the prestigious "Pioneer" Accelerator, he unleashes a venomous social media campaign, exploiting his family for sympathy and turning the internet into a mob crying "#CancelEvieHayes" and accusing her of being everything wrong with Silicon Valley.
How did a casual tank top become an excuse for such a calculated, personal vendetta? How can one man’s bitter entitlement twist reality and orchestrate a public shaming campaign against a professional woman?
Refusing to be silenced, Evelyn knows she must fight back, not just for her reputation, but for every woman targeted by online hate. But as she prepares to expose Mark’s dark past, a terrifying truth emerges: his desperation could turn vicious. Will she overcome the digital mob and a dangerous real-life threat, or will his false narrative destroy everything she’s built? Honors Night, Unscripted Drama
Young Adult The Annual Honors Convocation. My valedictorian speech was a triumph, the applause warm, my parents’ faces beaming with pride. I had given it all to academics, and this was my moment of glory. My future felt bright, endless possibilities stretching before me. I was ready to step off that stage and into a new chapter.
But then, Mr. Davies, our notoriously strict history teacher and the school’s champion of discipline, called me back. He held up a small, cream-colored envelope, sealed, for all to see. He announced, amplified by the microphone, that it was an “admiration note” found in my textbook – a clear signal of an uncomfortable public exposé he intended to make.
My stomach dropped, recognizing the careful calligraphy. Ethan. His son. Mr. Davies, oblivious, believed it was *to* me, not from him, and he was about to weaponize it. He forced me to read the heartfelt words aloud to the entire horrified audience, watching my parents wilt in their seats, threatening my participation in the prestigious National Mock Trial Championships if I didn't identify the "irresponsible" writer.
The bitter irony choked me. Here was the man who constantly lauded his son’s “focus” and “discipline,” preparing to publicly dismantle the very young man who wrote these tender sentiments, all while making me complicit. How could he be so utterly blind? How could I possibly navigate this moral tightrope without betraying Ethan, or completely derailing my hard-earned academic future?
Just as the suffocating pressure threatened to break me, a quiet, resolute voice cut through the auditorium’s stunned silence. “Stop.” Ethan Davies rose from his seat, pale but unyielding. He was about to shatter his father’s carefully constructed world, and radically redefine my own, with a confession that would flip the entire narrative on its head. 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. Stripper's Love: I Married My Ex's Uncle
G~Aden I'm a moaning mess as Antonio slams into me from behind. His hips hit me hard, and each deep thrust sends shockwaves through my body.
My breasts bounce with every movement, my eyes roll back, and I moan his name without control. The pleasure he gives me is overwhelming-I can't hold it in.
I feel my walls tighten around his thick length. The pressure builds fast, and then-
I explode around him, my orgasm tearing through me. He groans loud and deep as he releases inside me, his hot seed spilling into me in thick pulses.
Just when I think he's done, his grip shifts. He turns me over and lays me flat on the bed. His dark eyes stare into mine for a moment, filled with raw hunger. I glance down-
He's still hard.
Before I can react, he grabs my wrists, pins me down, and pushes himself inside me again. He fills me completely. My hips rise on instinct, meeting his rhythm. Our bodies move together, locked in a wild, uncontrollable dance.
"You're fucking sweet," he groans, his voice rough and breathless.
"I can't get enough of you... not after that night, Sol," he growls, slamming into me harder. The force of his words and his thrusts make my body shake.
"Come for me," he commands, his voice low and full of heat.
And just like that, my body trembles. Waves of pleasure crash over me. I cry out, shaking with the force of my orgasm.
"Mine," he growls again, louder this time. His voice is feral, wild, like a beast claiming what belongs to him. The sound sends a shiver down my spine.
***
Solene was betrayed, humiliated, and erased by Rowan Brook, the man she once called husband, Solene is left with nothing but her name and a burning hunger for revenge.
She turns to the one man powerful enough to destroy the Brooks family from within: Rowan's estranged and dangerous uncle, Antonio Rodriguez.
He's ruthless. A playboy who never sleeps with the same woman twice. But when Solene walks into his world, he doesn't just break the rules, he creates new ones just for her.
What begins as a calculated game quickly spirals into obsession, power plays, and secrets too deadly to stay buried. Because Solene isn't just anyone's ex... she's the woman they should've never underestimated.
Can she survive the price of revenge? Or will her heart become the next casualty?
And when the truth comes out, will Antonio still choose her... or destroy her?
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 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. 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. Jilted Pet Becomes The Mafia Queen
Cornelia When I was eight, Dante Moretti pulled me from the fire that killed my family. For ten years, the powerful crime boss was my protector and my god.
Then, he announced his engagement to another woman to unite two criminal empires.
He brought her home and named her the future mistress of the Moretti family.
In front of everyone, his fiancée forced a cheap metal collar around my neck, calling me their pet.
Dante knew I was allergic. He just watched, his eyes cold, and ordered me to take it.
That night, I listened through the walls as he took her to his bed.
I finally understood the promise he’d made me as a child was a lie. I wasn't his family. I was his property.
After a decade of devotion, my love for him finally turned to ash.
So on his birthday, the day he celebrated his new future, I walked out of his gilded cage for good.
A private jet was waiting to take me to my real father—his greatest enemy. He Chose The Mistress, Losing His True Queen
Lively I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York.
To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen.
But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table.
It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test.
"Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture."
I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking.
He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago.
He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy.
He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go.
He was wrong.
I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don.
And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy.
I wanted to erase him.
I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built.
Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa."
It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul.
On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial.
When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth.
He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife.
Because the woman who loved him no longer existed. Spring Beneath the Grave
Rabbit Elora Griffiths was on her way to drop her daughter off at school when her husband's enemies opened fire in the street.
The bodyguard her husband had personally assigned to protect them abandoned the car the instant the shots rang out.
Mother and daughter were hit multiple times, teetering on the brink of death.
Elora frantically called her husband, Rodger Griffiths, but he didn't answer.
Her brother, Hugh Dale, arrived just in time and saved them both.
"How could this happen? Didn't Rodger assign someone to protect you?" Hugh asked.
Elora sobbed uncontrollably, "The bodyguard ran away!"
On the way to the hospital, Elora kept trying Rodger's number, desperate.
One call after another...
Finally, on the ninety-ninth attempt, the line connected. On the other end was the female bodyguard, trembling, her voice barely holding back tears.
"Rodger, it's really not my fault!
There were so many assassins. I would've died if I tried to stop them! I was so scared..."
Elora held her breath, waiting for her husband's wrath to thunder down.
But Rodger just sighed.
"Forget it. The important thing is you're safe," he said.
Meanwhile, Elora's daughter took her last breath in her arms.
The pain was suffocating.
She held her daughter close as her body went cold and stiff, teeth gritted in fury, "Hugh, I'm divorcing him! I'll cut off every single arms shipment to the Griffiths family from the largest arms company in Crownport!" Saved By The Ruthless Rival Don
Maverick For nine years, I was the perfect mafia wife. I laundered Marcus Thorne’s money through my design firm, smiled at his dinners, and ignored the lipstick stains on his collars.
I believed in the Omertà of our marriage. I thought my loyalty was my armor.
I was wrong.
On the night of our anniversary gala, a car lost control and barreled straight toward us in the parking lot.
Marcus didn't look at me. Not once.
He lunged for his mistress, Izzy, tackling her to safety behind a concrete pillar.
I was left standing in the open.
The impact threw me like a ragdoll. I lay bleeding on the cold asphalt, my body broken, watching through the haze as my husband frantically checked his mistress for scratches.
"My ankle," she whimpered.
Without a backward glance, he picked her up and carried her to his limousine, leaving me to bleed out on the pavement.
He didn't leave me because he panicked. He left me because I was just a shield he used to protect what he actually loved.
As darkness crept in, a shadow fell over me. It wasn't Marcus.
It was Julian Croft, his sworn rival.
I looked at the empty spot where my husband should have been and made a choice.
"Get me to the hospital," I rasped, staring into the eyes of the enemy.
"And then help me burn his empire to the ground." The Runaway Wife's Secret Heir
Shu Yu I stood alone at the center of my art gallery opening, clutching a glass of warm champagne, while the guests whispered behind their hands.
My husband, the Capo of the Chicago Outfit, wasn't there.
A breaking news alert on my phone explained why.
It was a high-definition photo of Dante shielding his mistress, Isabella, from the rain. He was touching her with a protective possessiveness he had never once shown me.
Then came his text:
"Isabella needed me. Go home."
That was the moment the cage door unlocked. I didn't go home to cry. I went to his office the next morning with a stack of papers disguised as "gallery insurance forms."
While Isabella sat on his desk, mocking me for being a boring housewife, Dante was too annoyed to read the fine print.
He just wanted me gone so he could get back to her.
He signed the divorce decree.
He signed the asset dissolution.
Most importantly, without looking, he signed the irrevocable relinquishment of parental rights.
I walked out with my freedom, but fate had a cruel sense of humor. That night, I stared at a positive pregnancy test.
I was carrying the Sovrano heir he had always demanded.
And he had just legally signed away his right to ever know his child.
I fled to the Swiss Alps, vanishing into the snow to raise my baby away from his world of blood and bullets.
I thought I was safe, until six months later.
Dante hadn't just sent men to look for me.
He had burned his own shipping empire to the ground, destroying his status as King, just to prove he would trade it all for the wife he threw away.