Lively
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Lively's Books and Stories
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. 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?" 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. Betrayed, I Married the Feared Cripple
Hu Minxue Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate.
I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo.
The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives.
My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked.
To her, I was finally being disposed of.
She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left.
She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex.
"She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds.
They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter.
They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back.
But they made a fatal mistake.
With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon.
I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him.
And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner.
He will be my vengeance. The Neglected Wife's Ultimate Mafia Vendetta
Priorities I was sold to the terrifying Mafia Don, Vincenzo Moretti, as a "Collateral Bride" to pay off my family's debts.
I thought my total submission would at least guarantee the medical payments for my bedridden mother.
But one night, I unlocked his encrypted tablet and discovered his secret life.
While he claimed to be settling bloody mafia scores in Sicily, he was actually at Disneyland with his mistress, Giuliana, and their little blonde daughter.
When I demanded a divorce, he didn't apologize.
"Sign the behavioral agreement, or I will personally pull the plug on your mother's ventilator."
The next day, he moved his secret family into our master suite.
My belongings were violently thrown into the dirt, and I was banished to the sweltering servant's quarters.
He ordered the staff to feed me nothing but watery broth and stale bread to cure my "female hysteria."
I soon found out that even my own stepbrother had been conspiring with Giuliana for years, eagerly helping to build the cage I was locked in.
I was stripped of my dignity, starved, and reduced to a pathetic joke in my own home.
Why did I have to be tortured and erased while he played the perfect, loving family man on television?
The grief and humiliation finally evaporated, freezing into a cold, sharp clarity.
I stopped crying and forged an irrevocable transfer of Giuliana's luxury penthouse, slipping it right into Vincenzo's daily stack of paperwork.
Watching the infallible Dark Don blindly sign away his mistress's greatest asset, I knew exactly what I had to do.
It was time to burn his entire empire to the ground. 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. Married To The Comatose Mafia King
Benjamen Ernst I stood before the altar of the grand gothic cathedral, about to marry Julian Moretti, the grieving adopted son stepping up for the comatose Don.
To the hundreds of mafia men behind us, it was a dutiful wedding. But I knew the horrifying truth.
Julian and his pregnant mistress, Clara, had orchestrated a brutal plot to steal my dowry and secure his place as the next Don.
In my past life, I was completely blind to their betrayal. Julian trapped me in our apartment and set it ablaze.
I could still feel the blistering heat of the fire. I could still hear my mother’s agonizing screams and my little brother Antonio’s desperate coughing as the smoke filled our lungs.
My entire family was burned alive just so Julian could swap the brides and put his whore in my place.
I died in pure agony, filled with hatred and despair, wondering why I had trusted a monster.
God hadn't saved me from those flames. The Devil had.
And he sent me back to this exact moment at the altar.
"Do you, Isabella Rossi, take Julian Moretti to be your lawfully wedded husband?" the priest asked.
Julian reached for my hand with a sickeningly gentle smile.
I didn't give it to him. I tore back my lace veil and turned to face the crowd.
"You are mistaken, Father," I said, my voice like ice. "The man I am bound to marry is your Don. Damien Moretti." Too Late To Apologize, Mr. Billionaire
Rollins Laman For seven years, I scrubbed floors, cooked books, and hid my identity as the Vitiello heiress just to test if Dante Moretti loved me for me, not my father’s power.
But the massive digital billboard in Times Square froze the blood in my veins.
It wasn’t my face next to his under the headline "The King and his new Queen." It was a cocktail waitress named Lola.
When I walked into the lobby to confront him, Lola slapped me across the face and crushed my late mother's locket under her stiletto heel.
Dante didn't defend me. He didn't even look sorry.
"You’re useful, like a stapler," he sneered, checking his watch.
"But a King needs a Queen, not a boring clerk. You can stay on as my mistress if you want to keep your job."
He thought I was a nobody. He thought he could use me to launder his money and then discard me like trash.
He didn't realize that the only reason he wasn't in federal prison was because I was protecting him.
I wiped the blood from my lip and pulled out a secure satellite phone.
Dante laughed. "Who are you calling? Your mommy?"
I stared him dead in the eyes as the line connected.
"The pact is void, Papa," I whispered. "Burn them all."
Ten minutes later, the glass doors shattered as my father’s military helicopters descended onto the street.
Dante fell to his knees, realizing too late that he hadn't just lost a secretary.
He had just declared war on the Capo dei Capi.