Lively
16 Published Stories
Lively's Books and Stories
He Chose The Mistress, Losing His True Queen
Mafia 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. In Love With My Ex's Uncle
Modern On the day of the wedding, Brendan left me and went to find his true love. When I called him, he, who had always been gentle to me, showed impatience for the first time, saying, "It's just a wedding, I'll make it up to you when I get back." Feeling disheartened, I suggested calling off the wedding. Brendan thought I was just being stubborn, and in the face of friends' advice, he said, "It's okay, when she calms down, she will come find me." It wasn't until Edrence, the prince, posted our marriage certificate that Brendan suddenly went crazy and came knocking on my door. When he saw the man who opened the door, he was slightly stunned. And I, standing behind the man, with a blush still on my face, leaned forward and asked, "Nephew, what brings you to see your auntie so late?" Rejected By The Alpha, Marked By The Monster
Werewolf At the grand Moonwise Festival, my fiancé, Archon Elliott, decided to publicly humiliate me in front of the entire court.
He commanded me to kneel and beg for his betrothal flower, treating me like a broken slave rather than the heir to House Leon.
When I refused, he brought his mistress, Corliss Schneider, into my study to deliver his ultimate punishment.
"Our marriage will be in name only. I will not share your bed, and I will certainly never give you a child."
He wanted to make me a barren laughingstock, while forcing me to publicly request Corliss be made his Junior Consort.
To make things worse, Corliss pulled out a jeweled dagger-the exact kind her cousin had used to cripple my brother's leg.
"On your wedding day, you will take this dagger, and you will slice open your own arm."
She demanded I bleed at the threshold of the Underwood estate as "payment" for offending her.
Elliott didn't stop her. Instead, a dark flicker of pleasure crossed his eyes. He wanted to see me mutilated.
I had wasted years loving a man who blindly protected the woman who ruined my family, believing he could force my submission.
But I didn't cry or beg. I simply laughed at their sheer stupidity. Rising From Ashes: The Unwanted Wife's Comeback
Modern Chloe almost died in a massive fire that reduced her childhood home to ashes.
Lying on a stretcher, choking on smoke, she desperately called her billionaire husband, Julian. He sent her straight to voicemail.
Sitting alone in the emergency room, she looked up at the TV and saw the breaking news. Julian was at another hospital, standing vigil for his ex-girlfriend, Ashley.
Ashley was just feeling a little cold, so Julian dropped everything to drape his coat—the very coat Chloe had saved up for six months to buy him—over her shoulders.
When Chloe finally dragged her burned, exhausted body back to their mansion, Julian returned only to sneer at her angry red burns.
"What's this? A new performance to get me to come home?"
He pinned her to the bed, reeking of Ashley's perfume, and demanded she fulfill her wifely duties.
For three years, Chloe had buried her identity as a talented screenwriter to play his perfect, docile wife. Yet, her near-death experience meant nothing compared to another woman's minor discomfort.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. She was nothing but a convenient shield to him.
The last shred of her love turned to ash. She slapped him hard across the face, packed a single suitcase, and transferred every dime he had ever given her back to his account—adding exactly one cent for interest.
Then, she dusted off her old laptop to accept a massive Hollywood movie deal, and sent a courier to publicly serve Julian divorce papers right in the middle of his elite Manhattan club. Shattered Vows: Ruining My Billionaire Ex-Husband
Modern Fiona spent three years in a concrete cell, taking the fall for a hit-and-run accident caused by her billionaire husband's mistress.
When she finally got out and returned home, she found him throwing a lavish party, with the mistress on his arm wearing a gown Fiona had designed. Even worse, her own seven-year-old son pointed at her in disgust.
"Go away, bad woman!"
Her husband Cecil threw her out like a stray dog. To force her into submission, he trashed her belongings and cut off the life-saving medical funding for her mentor. Driven to desperation, Fiona snuck back into the mansion to retrieve her late mother's sapphire necklace. But the mistress caught her, ripped her own clothes, and screamed that Fiona was trying to kill her. Cecil didn't even hesitate. He violently shoved Fiona backward. Her head smashed against the sharp edge of a mahogany desk, and blood immediately poured into her eyes.
Lying in a pool of her own blood, Fiona watched the man she had sacrificed her freedom for wrap his arms protectively around the woman who ruined her life. He looked at her with pure, murderous disgust, as if she were the monster.
But Fiona didn't cry. Instead, a cold smile crept onto her face as her bloody thumb secretly pressed the emergency SOS button on her phone, snapping a clear photo of him standing over her shattered body.
"My husband just violently attacked me. I am bleeding from the head. I need help."
The police were already on their way. It was time to burn his empire to the ground. No Longer A Victim, Now I Rise
Modern The fluorescent hum of the DMV was the soundtrack to my boring life, until I tried to replace my lost driver's license.
"Your marital status. It says you're divorced," the clerk said, shattering my five-year marriage to Jackson Parks with a single, flat sentence.
My husband, Jackson, the man who swore he loved me, had secretly divorced me three years ago. Not only that, he had remarried the very next day to Candida Camacho, the woman who had tried to murder me on my wedding day and left me infertile. And they had a two-year-old son, Joey.
I stumbled home, my world a blur, only to find Jackson and Candida in our living room, arguing. "I hate having to pretend for that pathetic woman!" Candida shrieked. Jackson, my husband, pleaded, "I love you. I've always loved you."
The man I sacrificed everything for, who swore to destroy her, was now playing house with my attempted murderer, and I was the fool living in his house, sleeping in his bed, believing his lies.
The pain in my abdomen, a phantom ache from five years ago, flared to life, mirroring the gaping wound in my soul. I would not be his victim anymore.
"Hamilton," I said into the phone, my voice clear and steady. "I need your help. I need you to help me die." The Price of His Bitter Regret
Modern Five years ago, my brother Declan stripped me of our family name and cast me out. Now, I was a cocktail waitress with terminal cancer, desperately trying to save enough money for my own urn.
To make the final payment, I got on my knees on the cold club floor to bark like a dog for a drunk man's cash.
My brother saw it all. But instead of helping, his face twisted in disgust. He fired me on the spot, withheld my final paycheck, and swore I'd never work in this city again, stealing my last chance to die with a shred of dignity.
He grabbed my arm, his eyes burning with a cold fire I once thought was reserved for his business rivals.
"I don't care if you die," he spat.
And in that moment, I knew he meant it. The last flicker of hope died. He had taken my name, my health, and my future. Now, he had even taken my death.
So I wrote a letter, revealing the truth he refused to see for five years-about the stolen watch, the woman who framed me, and the cancer eating me alive.
Then, I walked to the river. If I couldn't live with dignity, I would let my death be the final, undeniable truth. Zero Score: My Escape from the Mafia Don
Mafia For three years, I was the wife of Don Dante Moretti. But our marriage was a transaction, and my heart was the price. I kept a ledger, deducting points for every time he chose her—his first love, Isabella—over me. When the score reached zero, I would be free.
After he abandoned me on a roadside to rush to Isabella's side, I was hit by a car. I woke up in the ER, bleeding, only to hear a nurse shout that I was two months pregnant. A tiny, impossible hope flared in my chest.
But as the doctors scrambled to save me, they patched my husband through on speakerphone. His voice was cold and absolute.
“Isabella’s condition is critical,” he ordered. “Not one drop of the reserve blood is to be touched until she is safe. I don't care who else needs it.”
I lost the baby. Our child, sacrificed by its own father. I later learned Isabella had only suffered a minor cut. The blood was just a “precautionary measure.”
The tiny flicker of hope was extinguished, and something inside me snapped, clean and final. The debt was paid.
Alone in the silence, I made the last entry in my ledger, bringing the score to zero. I signed the divorce papers I had already prepared, left them on his desk, and walked out of his life forever. The Man Who Broke Her Heart
Romance For ten years, my stepbrother Kason Oneal was my protector. After our parents divorced, he fought to keep me in his home, becoming the only family I had. Everyone knew he cherished me, and my gratitude slowly blossomed into a secret love.
Then, his old high school flame, Dalia Keith, came back.
The man who once kissed me in the dark of my room vanished overnight, replaced by a stranger. I overheard him telling Dalia, "She's just my stepsister. I feel sorry for her, that's all."
He demanded I give back the jade pendant he once worked all summer to buy for my birthday, only to give it to her.
When I asked to move out of the room next to his, he laughed cruelly. "You'll move into the servant's quarters in the basement. That's where you belong now."
The final blow came when he gave an interview to the press, painting me as a clingy, delusional girl. I became the public villain in their perfect love story, a parasite who couldn't let him go.
Staring at a taunting picture Dalia sent of her wearing my pendant, I finally understood. My love was worthless. I picked up the phone and called my biological father. "Dad, I agree. I want to marry Hadley Payne." The Price Of Love, A Life Reclaimed
Modern The New Year's trip was meant to be a fresh start, my final test to prove myself worthy of Chloe Davis' s powerful family. I spent the holiday tirelessly entertaining her restless younger brother, Leo, a frantic effort to be the perfect future brother-in-law.
Then, a single scream shattered everything. When I rushed out, Leo lay twisted at the bottom of a deep excavation pit, buried under steel and concrete.
Just like that, the Davis family turned on me. Chloe's father, purple with rage, screamed, "This is your fault! You were supposed to be watching him!" Chloe stood behind him, her face a mask of horror and blame, refusing even to look at me. Their influence was a weapon, brutally efficient. Overnight, my family's construction business was ruined, contracts canceled, loans called in. A week later, two men ambushed me, beating me until my bones cracked, kicking my leg until something snapped, smashing my face into a brick wall.
I woke up in a public hospital, disfigured and permanently limping, alive but utterly broken. To add insult to agony, the news blared, showing Chloe Davis marrying my best friend, Mark Johnson-the city' s new golden couple, smiling for the cameras. My betrayal was complete.
I couldn' t comprehend how my life had been so utterly decimated, all hinged on a supposed accident and baseless accusations. Why me? Why this brutal, undeserved fate?
Just as I was about to jump from the city' s tallest building, a voice cut through the wind: "Don't do it!" It was Sophia Anderson, the mysterious tech mogul, offering a salvation I never expected, a second chance I desperately clung to. But salvation doesn't always look like promised heaven. The Woman Who Reclaimed Life
Fantasy The antiseptic smell was the last thing I remembered.
In my "other" life, the one that ended in blood and despair, I died from late-stage cancer in an unpaid hospital bed.
My parents, Sarah and Robert, cried. They held my hand, promising to take care of everything, just as they had for years while I diligently sent them money for my health insurance.
But they lied. The money was gone, squandered on a secret life.
My father finally broke, confessing they' d adopted a son, Liam, channeling all my money to him, building a new family on the foundation of my slow death.
The betrayal shattered something inside me. The weight of the kitchen knife, my mother' s scream, then nothing.
Until I blinked.
Sunlight streamed through my bedroom window. My husband, David, slept beside me. My body felt healthy, a full year before Dr. Evans' death sentence.
A terrifying, undeserved second chance.
I remembered the insurance renewal notice I' d ignored yesterday because I trusted them. This time, I wouldn't.
When I called my mother, her usual syrupy sweetness faltered. "Oh… perfectly fine if you handle that yourself," she said, before asking for another twenty thousand dollars for renovations.
I gave it to them, a ticket to the truth.
Then came the photo: a blurry, half-demolished kitchen, and in the corner, a bright blue, brand-new plastic dinosaur. Liam already existed.
The confusion lifted, replaced by a cold, sharp purpose. The hunt had begun. Surviving Eleanor: A Daughter's Rebellion
Horror The smell of grain and something sour-a barn in my suburban kitchen-was the first sign of something deeply wrong with my seemingly normal life with my mother, Eleanor.
Standing over the blender, humming an unsettling tune, she poured what looked like chicken feed into it, her eyes wild with a grim, fanatical determination.
"It's for your own good, Sarah," she explained, utterly calm, "The curse from your past life, when you were a neglected pig, is still holding you back. This will cleanse you."
My stomach lurched; this wasn' t the first time she' d spouted Mrs. Gable's charlatan nonsense, but the ritualistic "cleansing" had never been this tangible.
"I am not drinking animal feed," I said, my voice shaking with disgust. "This is insane."
Her composure shattered. "You will drink it!" she shrieked, lunging at me with the sloshing blender jar, pinning me against the wall as the world went dark.
I gasped, sucking in the familiar, acrid smell, my eyes snapping open to find myself on the kitchen floor, my mother still humming, the bag of chicken feed unopened.
I scrambled up, touching the back of my head-no blood, no pain, just the impossible, terrifying realization: I had died, and now I was back.
"Mom, what are you doing?" the words escaped me, a ghostly echo of a conversation that had already occurred.
Her face held the same fanatical expression, as she began, "It's for your own good, Sarah. Mrs. Gable was very clear-"
"No," I cut her off, the phantom pain in my skull too real, "Stop."
Then came the final blow, a chilling announcement that shattered any remaining hope: "I've already found a man for you. Mark will be here any minute. He's a good, strong man. He knows what to do with a difficult woman like you."
This wasn't just a curse; it was a cage. I had to get out. When Home Becomes A Battlefield
Modern I was just an ambitious architect, chasing a prestigious fellowship that would define my career.
But then the email came, and my world blurred: the fellowship was awarded to my husband' s best friend, Ethan, who had no business getting it.
My mother-in-law, Debra, beamed with feigned sympathy, calling it "God's plan" for me to focus on "a family," while my husband, Andrew, nodded along, smugly implying my career was an obstacle.
It wasn't just losing a fellowship; it was discovering they had "accidentally" unplugged my laptop, erasing hours of work, and Andrew had allowed his mother to give away a $3,000 bottle of Scotch meant to save my promotion.
The final, horrifying blow came when I overheard Andrew tell Debra he' d get me pregnant "even if I have to do it behind her back," just to make me "settle down and be a proper wife."
They thought they had me trapped, a pawn in their twisted game of family.
They had no idea that their cruel little "plan" had just awakened a cold, precise fury they couldn't even begin to imagine. My Wife's Silent Witness
Romance My wife, Isabella, was my entire world.
I' d given her my kidney, saved her life, sacrificing my burgeoning career as a concert pianist without a second thought.
Our love was my masterpiece.
But after a minor car crash, she woke up claiming amnesia, her eyes hollow, devoid of any recognition for her husband.
My place was immediately usurped by Julian, her manipulative childhood friend, and I became nothing but a nuisance.
At a dinner he hosted, with a chilling smirk, Isabella coerced me, a man with a life-threatening peanut allergy, into eating poisoned food.
As my body convulsed and I choked for air, she stood by, watching me die on the restaurant floor, her laughter mingling with Julian's as I slipped into darkness.
As a helpless ghost, my torment only deepened.
I witnessed her utter callousness towards my corpse, then Julian' s brutal physical assault and cold-blooded deception of Eleanor, my beloved mother-in-law, the only soul who fought for me.
The pain of betrayal was eclipsed only by profound confusion: how could the woman I saved become such a monster?
Then, a shocking truth emerged from hospital security footage: Isabella' s amnesia was a calculating lie, and Julian was a murderer, caught red-handed.
An icy, terrifying resolve ignited in her eyes, transforming her.
Now, a merciless game of vengeance begins, and Julian, the architect of our collective ruin, is about to face a reckoning far worse than death. Unscripted: My Own Story
Romance My life with Jake was supposed to be a rom-com: I, the supportive girlfriend, he, the brooding game developer destined for greatness.
But our apartment was a toxic mess of his empty energy drinks and my growing resentment, as the rent-paying backbone of his "genius."
Strange, unsolicited “viewer comments” glowed in the air around me, always excusing his messes, validating his outbursts, and telling me how to be the "perfect" partner.
They echoed in my ears the night Jake threw a tantrum over a hot dog, shattering our matching mugs and leaving me cut and bleeding, while the comments screamed that he was just "hangry" and "passionate."
After Jake publicly flaunted his "support crew" and I lost my major freelance job due to the "difficult" reputation he manufactured, I was drowning in a narrative everyone else seemed to believe.
Why was my life so chaotic, and why did everyone, even my own parents, act like I was the problem?
Fleeing in despair, I stumbled upon a shocking truth: My entire life, every argument, every emotional manipulation, was a meticulously crafted "script" by a "Relationship Architect" named Mark Taylor, designed to make me the perfect, submissive character in Jake's "hero's journey." His Ex, My Hell
Romance For five years, I was Mrs. Davenport, cleaning up after my husband's one-night stands and enduring his casual cruelty.
Call it a gilded cage, but this mansion was my prison, bought by my sacrifice: I was the secret medical lifeline keeping him, Ethan Davenport, alive.
Our cruel contract was nearing its end, just three months left.
Then, Chloe, his perfect ex-girlfriend, waltzed back in.
Her arrival wasn't a gentle reunion; it was a wrecking ball designed to finish what Ethan's neglect had started.
She smeared my name, orchestrated a public humiliation, and then watched, smiling, as Ethan, fueled by rage and alcohol, dragged me to a damp, cold cellar.
He tore apart my most sacred possession-my fiancé's diary-then brutally killed my loyal dog, Buddy, right before my eyes.
As I bled, collapsing into unconsciousness, I heard his ex's venomous whisper: she'd had all my precious memories of him incinerated.
They had taken everything.
My dignity, my love, my last connection to a life I cherished.
My heart was a hollowed-out space, suffocating under a mountain of grief and betrayal.
How could a human being be so cruel, so blind, to the sacrifices I'd made to keep him alive?
But on the day our notorious contract officially expired, I walked out.
With nothing but the clothes on my back and a one-way ticket to a remote Pacific Northwest retreat, I finally chose myself.
It was time to disappear, to burn away the past, and somehow, exist again. 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.
His Vow Broke, Her Empire Woke
Hei Baidong I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair.
They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves.
Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment.
But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger.
In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all. From Jilted Bride To Mafia Empress
Xiao Wang For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne.
But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.”
My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love.
He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party." No Tears For My Cold Mafia Husband
Amigo On our first wedding anniversary, my husband walked out the door.
Not for business. For her.
I left the divorce papers on the table, my wedding ring next to his untouched champagne, and I disappeared into the night.
For a year, I watched Dominic Rossi—the ruthless Underboss of the New York syndicate—drop everything the moment his phone buzzed with another crisis from Sophia. A panic attack. A sleepless night. A lie. I was his wife, the woman he’d promised to cherish, but I was never his priority.
So I chose myself.
Now he’s tearing the city apart trying to find me. But I’m already gone—building a new life with a job that’s mine, an apartment that’s mine, and a name that doesn’t belong to him. The girl who waited in that penthouse is dead. The woman who walked out isn’t looking back.
When Dominic finally corners me, I see the cracks in his armor. He says he’s sorry. He says he loves me. He says he finally understands.
But some words are too late, and some promises can’t be fixed.
He made me guess for a year. Now it’s his turn to wonder if I’ll ever come back.
A heart-wrenching, standalone mafia romance about a woman who refused to be second choice, and the man who learned too late what he’d lost. Reborn, I Ruined Their Perfect Life
Priority I spent five years laundering my family's wealth and buying military-grade weapons to crown my husband, Alistair, the Don of the Chicago Mafia.
But the night before his coronation, he drove an Italian stiletto into my stomach.
He sneered that a Don needed a true Mafia Queen, and that was always meant to be his "fragile" friend, Kylie.
As I bled out on the Persian rug, he revealed the sickening truth.
The night I was found in a rival Irish boss's bed two years ago wasn't a setup by our enemies. Alistair had ordered his own mother and sister to drug and frame me.
He just needed me terrified enough to sign over my merchant trust fund to prove my loyalty.
My entire marriage, my sacrifices, and my stolen wealth were just stepping stones for him and his mistress.
I had bled for him and won him the city, only to be slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb so he could hand my empire to another woman.
Before the flames I started consumed us both, I swore I'd drag his entire family to hell.
Opening my eyes again, the suffocating smoke was gone, replaced by the scent of lavender and the bitter taste of chloral hydrate.
I was back on the exact night of the frame-up two years ago.
Outside the door, my sister-in-law was whispering, waiting for the Irish boss to arrive so they could ruin me.
This time, I was going to make sure she was the one in that bed. Burned by Poison, Saved by the Devil
Gale Kaaya My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement.
To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia.
It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping.
But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished.
She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug.
She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago.
The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash.
Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name.
She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant.
I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead.
I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye.
"Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you."
Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth.
"Prove it," he growled.
I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip. Dying To Escape The Obsessive Mafia Don
Priority I spent three excruciating years building an underworld empire for Cassius, only for him to give the ultimate symbol of his protection to a fragile girl named Serena on the very day he proposed to me.
My biological brother Julian, my protector Enzo, and my ally Lucian all followed suit, prioritizing Serena's fake tears over my life.
They forced me into a lethal bone marrow extraction to save her. When I welcomed the agony—using it to trigger my system's extraction protocol, my only way home to the real world—they violently aborted the procedure. They accused me of twisted manipulation and locked me in a high-security medical prison. There, they handed my care over to Serena, who tortured me in secret, calibrating my pain to hover just below the medical alarms.
"You will live," she whispered, "so that you may watch them choose me—until the act itself becomes a prayer."
I didn't understand. Why was my physical agony never enough to make them stop, yet a single tear from Serena became their absolute law? Why wouldn't they just let me die so I could go home?
Then I saw my real brother Arthur, exhausted by my hospital bed, through the system feed—and I realized I couldn't die. Not yet.
I wiped all emotion from my face and calmly signed the papers for their live public reconciliation broadcast.
Before I leave this world for good, I will tear Serena's perfect facade to pieces.