Lucy Cartwright
9 Published Stories
Lucy Cartwright's Books and Stories
No Next Life For The Don
Mafia For two years, I endured hell in an underground brothel, bleeding to earn the bribe money to save my Mafia Don husband from the electric chair.
But when Cassio finally returned, he didn't come to rescue me.
He marched in with thirty armed enforcers, threw annulment papers on my chest, and announced his new mistress was pregnant with his heir.
The mistress was Camilla, a low-level associate who stole the credit for my sacrifice.
Cassio believed every lie she told, looking at my degrading uniform with pure disgust.
"Sign the papers. You have disgraced the Moretti name enough."
He ignored the whip marks and burn scars covering my ruined body, tossing a stack of cash at my feet like I was trash.
When I tried to buy my freedom with the ten million dollars I had agonizingly earned, he ruthlessly blocked my bid.
He demanded I kneel and pledge loyalty to Camilla, trapping me as their property.
I couldn't understand how the man who once promised to burn the world down for me could be so blind.
I had destroyed my body and my ability to ever carry a child just to secure his freedom.
Yet he was standing here, publicly humiliating me for the woman who secretly orchestrated my torture.
Staring into his cold, unforgiving eyes, my dead heart finally turned to ash.
I calmly invoked the ancient, fatal 'Angel's Drop' trial.
I wrapped the sheer red silk around my wrists and ascended into the dark sky, choosing a shattered death in the freezing harbor over a life with him. Reborn As The Lycan King's Fated Mate
Werewolf I thought I had found my savior in Alpha Camron after my adoptive family was brutally slaughtered.
But as I lay chained to the damp dungeon wall, my inner wolf silenced by silver poison, he sneered and rejected me.
"Did you really think I loved you? You were just a dumb, loyal dog."
He confessed that he had orchestrated my family's murder to frame Lycan King Asher.
Blinded by his lies, I had plunged a silver blade into Asher's heart—the only man standing in Camron's way to the throne.
My step-sister Erica then arrived to deliver the final, crushing blows.
"He was your true fated mate, Ella," she whispered with sadistic glee. "He loved you so much he retracted his aura, leaving himself defenseless so you wouldn't get hurt killing him."
Worse, she laughed at my swollen belly, revealing the baby I carried wasn't Camron's. He had paid a filthy Rogue to defile me in the dark.
The man I murdered was the other half of my soul, and the monster I trusted had destroyed everything I loved.
My heart simply gave out, drowning in an abyss of pure agony and hatred.
Opening my eyes again, the stench of burning flesh was gone.
I was back in my attic bedroom on my fifteenth birthday.
Today was the day my evil stepmother would start her deadly plot.
This time, I would tear them all apart. The Billionaire's Secret Ten Year Obsession
Romance Brooke was supposed to marry her fiancé, Gaven, in less than twenty-four hours to secure her sick mother's corporate legacy.
But the night before the wedding, she followed a mysterious text to a hotel suite, only to find Gaven pressing her half-sister against a sofa.
Through the crack in the door, she recorded their sickening moans and their cold conspiracy to drain her mother's company the moment the marriage papers were signed.
At the altar the next day, Brooke didn't say "I do."
Instead, she hijacked the church's projector, broadcasting their sex tape and offshore fraud documents to hundreds of wealthy guests.
But instead of supporting her, her own father stormed the altar and slapped her across the face with brutal force.
He cared more about the corporate merger than his daughter, threatening to blacklist her from the industry, while Gaven vowed to completely destroy her.
Bleeding and stripped of her family ties, Brooke walked out into a freezing downpour, completely isolated against a powerful family ready to ruin her sick mother's life's work.
She had no money, no allies, and nowhere to go.
Just as a furious Gaven chased her into the street, a massive black Maybach sliced through the rain and pulled up in front of her.
Inside sat Foster Pruitt, the ruthless, terrifying billionaire whose life she had accidentally saved from a car wreck the night before.
Knowing he desperately needed a wife to secure his own empire, Brooke climbed into his car and looked at the most dangerous man in the city.
"Marry me." Reborn Heiress: Revenge On My Wedding Day
Modern I lay paralyzed in a luxury Swiss clinic, my body a heavy sack of meat I no longer controlled. The heart monitor’s rhythmic beep was the only thing louder than the silence, a mocking countdown to my inevitable end.
My fiancé, Jordan, walked in looking impeccable in the custom suit I had bought him for his birthday. He wasn't alone; my best friend, Chloe, followed him into the room, wearing the vintage Givenchy dress I had saved for our anniversary gala.
Jordan didn't look like a grieving man; he looked bored as he held up a blue folder confirming that my family's offshore trust had finally cleared. Chloe giggled, leaning over me to ask if I finally realized it was the engagement wine she had spiked seven days ago. Jordan brushed a cold hand over my forehead, calling me a "perfect little asset" before pulling Chloe into a hungry kiss right over my dying body. To ensure there was no turning back, he pulled out a silver lighter and set my living will on fire, watching the only document that could have saved me turn to ash.
I tried to scream, to curse them both to hell for stealing my life and my legacy, but all that came out was a wet, rattling wheeze. My own father, I would later learn, had known about the takeover and chose the profit over his own daughter's life.
As the darkness swallowed me whole, I made a silent, desperate promise: if there was anything after this, I would come back and destroy every single one of them.
I gasped, my body jerking upright as air rushed into my lungs like liquid fire.
I wasn't in Switzerland, and there was no poison in my veins. I was back in my Manhattan bedroom, staring at a phone that read June 12—the morning of the wedding, the day I was supposed to die, and the day I decided to burn their world to the ground. Tune In for My “Apology”
Modern My ex-boyfriend, Gabriel, the man who once promised me forever, looked at me as if I were a stain on his expensive suit. He was here to finish the job of destroying my life.
To save my brother from jail, he demanded an impossible six-figure settlement and a humiliating, live-streamed public apology.
Three years ago, his now-fiancée, my rival Aspen Watkins, framed me for cyberbullying. Gabriel believed her lies, publicly denounced me, and shattered my world. The scandal led to my expulsion, my parents' fatal car crash, and the loss of our family fortune.
He was ready to humiliate me all over again for a crime I never committed, his eyes cold and unyielding. The punishment wasn't just for my brother; it was for me.
But as I prepared for my public execution, a mysterious billionaire made me an offer. He knew the truth and gave me the means to fight back.
Aspen wanted a spectacle.
I decided to give her one. Love Turns To Ashes
Mafia I grew up with Asher from a young age.
He once saved my life by taking a hit meant for me from an enemy, and I was kidnapped and brutally mistreated because of him.
Everyone in the circle knew that I, the daughter of the Dixon family, was the center of Asher's world.
But when he returned from building a branch in the Golden Triangle after two years, he brought back a young woman dressed in immaculate white.
She looked pure, but she was provocative in her gaze.
"Nicola, it was just an accident between Asher and me, but he insists on taking responsibility for me. Please stop him."
I looked at her hand resting on her belly with Asher's ring around her finger. My fingers trembled slightly.
The next moment, the bodyguard behind me pressed a cold gun barrel against that young woman's temple.
I turned to Asher, who was clenching his fists tightly.
I said coldly, "If you insist on marrying her, then leave the Dixon family for good." Her Final Act
Horror For seven years, I lived as "Chloe' s boyfriend," a quiet coder whose entire self-worth was built around her "saving" me from social anxiety.
Our Austin apartment was loud, packed for the Super Bowl party, until the music died and everyone stared as Chloe walked out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, carried by her ex-boyfriend, Blake.
His smirk was a dare, a familiar test of my manufactured jealousy, but this time, something inside me was just... quiet.
My unexpected calm ignited a terrifying rage in Chloe, shattering her control and escalating her manipulations from fake tears and public flirtations to a staged car crash and a chilling threat to jump from our 15th-floor balcony.
I calmly moved on, started a new life, and was building my own success, finally free of her endless drama.
Then, just weeks later, at my promotion celebration, she appeared in a white wedding gown, asked for one last photo, and plunged a knife into her own stomach, collapsing into my arms.
Her final, horrifying act left me tragically, undeniably free. His Quiet Escape
LGBT+ My wife, Vicky, said she had a business trip. "It's important, Ethan," she' d said, not looking at me. That was her excuse for missing the music festival, the one I' d bought tickets for months ago. So I went alone.
Then, on the main stage screen, there she was, smiling next to Dylan Hayes, her college ex. The interviewer asked about inspiration. "Sometimes you wish you could go back to a simpler time," Vicky cooed, her eyes on Dylan. "Like, three years ago, before I made certain life choices." Three years ago. That's when we got married. My stomach dropped. The beer tasted like poison.
My own public declaration of divorce at an open mic that night spiraled into a media frenzy. Vicky, terrified of public backlash, hit back. Not at me, but at my sick younger brother, Liam. She threatened to cut off funding for his life-saving leukemia treatments unless I went along with her sanitized PR narrative: we'd "amicably separated," and she was simply "reconnecting" with her new business partner-Dylan.
The injustice burned. To leverage my brother's health for her image? To see her ex-lover ensconced in her company, a reminder of her betrayal? I was trapped, but I wouldn't be broken. She wanted a new chapter without me? Fine. I would write one for me and Liam.
That night, while she celebrated her carefully crafted facade, I packed our bags. I typed up a divorce petition, signed it, and left it on her pristine kitchen island. I found a new, fully-funded clinical trial for Liam across the country. My brother' s treatment, my escape. We were gone, leaving her to face the consequences of her choices. The Cost of Love: Abandoned and Broken
Romance My life was perfect: a star quarterback, engaged to my high school sweetheart, Chloe, and surrounded by a loving adoptive family who always put me first.
Then Liam appeared, claiming to be my long-lost biological half-brother, weaving tragic tales that instantly captivated everyone around me.
One by one, my adoptive mother, my three stepsisters, and even Chloe, chose him, abandoning me completely when a flash flood swept me away, leading to my brutal kidnapping and torture, which they dismissed as my own fault. Liam stole my dreams, my scholarship, and then my last chance to play football, while my family celebrated him as their new hero, claiming I was "not up to it."
The ultimate betrayal came when he brazenly wore my jacket and used a precious, deeply personal memento, meant for the child Chloe had lied about losing, as a dog toy. How could everyone I loved turn their backs so easily, believing every lie from a stranger while my entire life shattered around me?
With nothing left but the raw ache of their indifference, I walked out of that house and that town forever, determined to find a new life, far from the shadows of my past and the people who destroyed me. 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.
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. 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. The Underboss's Obsession: Stealing The Bride
Diversion Three days before the wedding.
I was hiding in the dressing room, watching my fiancé caress the swollen belly of another woman.
Luca, the man who had saved my life five years ago, was smiling at his mistress, Sofia. But the real knife to the heart wasn't the affair—it was the dress.
The custom wedding gown he had "lovingly" ordered for me featured intricate silver embroidery along the hem.
It didn't spell Elena.
It read Sofia.
He was planning to make me walk down the aisle wearing his mistress's name.
Later that night, I found a video of him mocking me to his crew, calling me a "dead fish" and admitting he only wanted my family's Capo status. He planned to keep his "true love" on the side while I played the role of the oblivious, ornamental wife.
He thought I was just a sheltered princess. He forgot that my bloodline was built on vengeance.
I didn't cry. I didn't confront him. Instead, I scrubbed his scent off my skin and dialed a number everyone in Chicago feared.
"The pact with the Cavallaro family," I asked my father, my voice cold as stone. "Is it still valid?"
"Dante is the Underboss now," my father warned. "He is a butcher. He breaks men for sport."
"Good," I replied. "I am done playing with boys."
I secretly booked the Gold Ballroom across the hall from my original venue. Luca thought he was walking into a marriage on Saturday.
He didn't know I was bringing a monster to the altar instead. 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. Ravaged Crown - A Mafia Romance
Nicole Fox What would you do if you walked in on your husband cheating?
I'll tell you what I did:
Ran out the door with nothing but the clothes on my back.
A month later, I'm broke, jobless, almost homeless.
But then, while filling in as a waitress at a fancy restaurant, I trip and land in the lap of a gorgeous stranger.
One thing leads to another and we end up hooking up.
Afterwards, he leaves.
That's the end of that... right?
WRONG.
Because the next day, my temp agency sets me up for a job t
hat seems too good to be true. But when I arrive for the interview, my jaw drops. It's the stranger. Turns out he's rich. Like, very rich. And powerful. Like, very powerful. And here's his offer:
"Live in my house.Be my wife.Have my baby."
Needless to say, I start to freak out.
I stand up and stammer, "Um, I'll have to get back to you..."
And he replies:
"You're misunderstanding.It wasn't a question. You're not going anywhere." 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. 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." 
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