Ming Yue
12 Published Stories
Ming Yue's Books and Stories
From Discarded Wife To Scent Queen
Mafia My husband, the ruthless Underboss of the Ewing crime family, was terrified of one thing: his dead fiancée’s memory.
Or rather, her living sister, Ivana, who used that memory to turn my life into a living hell.
To "apologize" for humiliating me at a gala, Corbett brought me a peace offering: a green macaron.
"Pistachio," he promised. "Your favorite."
I took one bite, and my throat instantly seized. It felt like barbed wire tightening around my windpipe.
It wasn't pistachio. It was almond paste.
Corbett knew I was deadly allergic. He used to carry my EpiPen on our first dates.
As I collapsed to the floor, wheezing and clawing at my neck, a scream ripped from the guest wing.
"Corbett! Help! They're posting mean comments about me again!"
Ivana.
Corbett looked down at me, his dying wife, and then looked toward the hallway where Ivana was crying over Instagram.
He hesitated for only a second.
Then he pulled his leg away from my grasping hand.
"I'll be right back," he said, turning his back on me. "Just... use your pen."
He ran to comfort a healthy woman while I crawled across the carpet, vision tunneling, forcing the needle into my own thigh to restart my heart.
As I lay there shaking, listening to him soothe her, the last thread of love snapped.
I didn't call an ambulance.
I pulled a burner phone from behind the vanity mirror and texted the one man Corbett feared more than death—his rival, Don Kain Solomon.
"I accept. Get me out." Raising the Wolves
Modern My father raised seven brilliant orphans to be my potential husbands. For years, I only had eyes for one of them, the cold and distant Caspian Vance, believing his distance was a wall I just had to break through.
That belief shattered last night when I found him in the garden, kissing his foster sister, Lyra—the fragile girl my family took in at his request, the one I had treated like my own sister.
But the true horror came when I overheard the other six Ashworth Fellows talking in the library.
They weren't competing for me. They were working together, orchestrating "accidents" and mocking my "stupid, blind" devotion to keep me away from Caspian.
Their loyalty wasn't to me, the heiress who held their futures in her hands. It was to Lyra.
I wasn't a woman to be won. I was a foolish burden to be managed. The seven men I grew up with, the men who owed my family everything, were a cult, and she was their queen.
This morning, I walked into my father's study to make a decision that would burn their world to the ground. He smiled, asking if I'd finally won Caspian over.
"No, Dad," I said, my voice firm. "I'm marrying Silas Blackwood." Muzzled by My Mate: Saved by the Supreme Alpha
Werewolf My husband brought his mistress into the care center and forced me to wash her feet.
He had forgotten everything about our marriage after an accident five years ago, treating me like a defective servant while doting on Jada.
But I endured it, hoping his memory would return.
Until Jada’s twin boys sprayed me with "water guns" filled with concentrated Wolfsbane acid.
As my skin sizzled and melted, Jada screamed that I was using witchcraft to curse her children.
Jake didn't check my wounds. He didn't ask for the truth.
He looked at me with cold, dead eyes and ordered the guards to bring the Silver Muzzle.
"This will teach you silence," he whispered.
He clamped the torture device onto my face. The silver spikes instantly fused to my burned skin, sealing my mouth shut in agony.
He then hung me from the ceiling, letting me swing there as a warning to the pack, while I bled out.
I looked down at him, my heart finally breaking.
How could the man who was once my soulmate torture me for a woman who smelled of rot and lies?
I closed my eyes and triggered the rejection bond.
*I reject you, Jake Foster.*
The moment the bond snapped, the front doors exploded inward.
A massive force of pure power crushed every wolf in the room to the floor.
The Supreme Alpha had arrived.
And he wasn't happy that someone had touched his Fated Mate. Divorce: Her New Beginning
Romance "Are you sure you packed the antique vase?" I asked my husband, David, my voice echoing in our half-empty living room, packed for our big move overseas. We were starting a new life, a new chapter.
But then, an email popped up on his laptop screen from a woman named Lisa Chang, a one-word subject line: "Congratulations." My heart hammered as I clicked it open. "Heard she signed everything. You' re finally free. Can' t wait to start our life together. The baby and I are so proud of you."
The baby. The words hit me like a punch. Lisa was pregnant. I was numb as I found my way to the bedroom, the silver locket David gave me on our first anniversary, now felt like a lie.
That evening, at a farewell dinner with David' s family, Lisa was there, seated right next to him. Eleanor, David's mother, raised her glass, triumph in her eyes: "A toast. To David, for all his success. And to new beginnings." She looked pointedly at Lisa.
I heard David and Lisa talking in a private alcove. "Is she suspicious?" Lisa asked. "No," David replied. "She has no idea. She signed the papers without a second thought. By the time the divorce is finalized, she' ll be on the other side of the world." "And the house?" "The lawyer said it' s all clean. The assets are protected. We' re set, Lisa. Just like we planned." Then, the final blow: "I felt the baby kick today."
My carefully constructed life had shattered. I had been played, every step of the way, just a pawn in their cruel game. I was nothing but a temporary placeholder, designed to be disposed of so they could begin their new life.
I wouldn' t let them win. I would fight back, not for revenge, but for myself. Discarded Husband, Rising Mogul
Modern Tonight was our tenth anniversary, wrapping up ten years of a meticulously kept contractual marriage.
For a decade, I, Ethan Lester, had been the silent architect behind my wife Sabrina Chadwick' s booming real estate empire.
I managed her entire life, a dutiful husband and housekeeper, all to repay her for saving my father' s life.
But then, she walked in, not alone, but with a smug-faced young man.
"So this is the famous kept man," Caleb sneered, his words echoing through our Manhattan penthouse lobby.
Sabrina, my wife, my partner of ten years, pulled him towards the elevator, her expression chillingly indifferent, utterly ignoring me.
She didn' t care that her protégé was publicly humiliating me.
She didn' t care what I felt when I overheard them that night, or the next morning when she ordered me to make them breakfast.
I had been nothing but a loyal servant, and now, even that seemed to be beneath her consideration.
I was left on a gurney in a crowded hospital hallway with a broken ankle after a car crash SHE forced me into, while she pampered Caleb over a scratch.
That was the moment I realized the ultimate insult: I was just a possession, easily discarded.
When the doctor asked for my family contacts, I looked him dead in the eye and said, "I have no family. Take her name off."
I had been a fool to ever think love could bloom from a bargain, or that I could ever truly matter to her.
Now, instead of cleaning her mess, I' m building my own empire.
She desperately wants me back, but she has no idea what' s coming. Ohio Betrayal: A Legacy Undone
Modern Our life in suburban Ohio looked perfect on the outside, a picture-perfect marriage that lasted five years.
But inside, I was suffocating, especially after losing our first baby.
When I finally got pregnant again, I believed hope was blooming.
Then I found my husband had bought baby supplies.
They weren't for us.
They were for his pregnant mistress, Bree.
He claimed she could give him the "heir" I couldn't.
He coldly stated it was "practical," about "legacy," accusing me of being a "faulty machine."
When I confronted them, his thuggish security shove, leading to another devastating miscarriage.
He shockingly called it "faking it."
Then, to punish me for wanting a divorce, he methodically shredded my grandmother's cherished quilt.
It was the only solace I had left.
My spirit was hollowed out.
I was left with nothing but the brutal memory of his words and actions.
How could someone claim to love you, then orchestrate such a calculated demise of your every hope and dream?
Then, a phone call from a fertility clinic, a call he received, made him believe I was still carrying his precious heir.
He came back, oozing fake repentance, painting a perfect future.
But the cold D&C report I held in my hand was the real legacy I had for him.
It was a testament to the life he' d destroyed.
This signaled the true turning point of our story. When My Savior Became My Destroyer
Romance My life belonged to Julian Vance.
He saved me at sixteen, a lost girl from the system, giving me a Manhattan apartment, Juilliard lessons, and paying for my dying sister Mia's severe cystic fibrosis care.
Mia was my world; Julian kept her alive, so I believed I loved him.
Then Julian met Chloe Raine, an indie folk singer.
He became obsessed, claiming it was a "game" to expose her "integrity."
"You're my queen. Always," he' d insist, but his eyes glowed with dangerous fascination, and a cold knot formed in my stomach.
He started neglecting me for Chloe.
One bitter Hamptons night, he dragged me onto our balcony in a rage.
When I refused to confess, he pulled out his phone, showing Mia's sterile room, her ventilator alarm blaring.
He calmly threatened her life, unless I confessed what I' d said.
My heart froze.
Mia, my only family, was a mere tool to him, her life leverage.
The man who swore to protect me was a monster.
I was his possession, my emotions irrelevant, my existence dictated by his whims and new obsessions.
I gave him the lie, but the humiliation was absolute.
My unplanned pregnancy ended in miscarriage, which he blamed on my "disobedience."
But the ultimate breaking point was Mia.
He allowed his security to remove my dying sister's life support as I screamed.
Mia died. My baby was gone. My love for Julian died with them.
He was my destroyer. I had to escape. The Girl They Blamed
Modern I was just sixteen when Hurricane Haven swept away everything, leaving me an orphan clinging to wreckage.
Then, with kind hands, Ethan Harrison pulled me from the churning water, and his family became my beacon, my home.
For four years, they rebuilt my world, filling it with a love I hadn’t known since my own mother died, a future with Ethan by my side.
He gave me a compass necklace, promising, “So you always find your way. Our way.”
But that same night, our future shattered.
The Harrison house, once filled with light, became a tomb for thirteen souls, brutally murdered.
And they said Sarah Miller did it. Me. The girl they saved, the daughter they adopted.
The accusation was a physical blow, stealing my breath, my voice, my hope.
The town that had embraced me now bayed for my blood, branding me a monster.
Trapped in a cold cell, I endured a year of relentless interrogations and public scorn, my silence misinterpreted as guilt.
How could the man I loved, the one who saved me, believe I could commit such an atrocity?
How could they all be so wrong, so blind to the truth of what I sacrificed?
What was there to say, when the world had already decided my fate?
Now, strapped to a cold chair, electrodes tracing my thoughts, they’re forcing me into a dangerous experiment: "Traumatic Memory Unveiling."
They want answers.
But the truth hidden within my shattered memories is far more terrifying, a story of loyalty, betrayal, and a sinister conspiracy I kept silent to protect them—a silence that might just kill me. I Was the Monster, They Were the Lie
Horror The splintered wood of the floorboards pressed into my cheek. Another girlfriend gone, another brutal beating from my father. Each woman I brought home to Redwood Creek, to seek the “blessing” at our family’s Pioneer’s Home, emerged twisted with rage, screaming that I was filth. My step-brothers found happy marriages after their girls went inside; I was almost thirty and still a pariah.
My father, Jedidiah Thorne, the town’s esteemed mayor, finally showed me why. He strapped me into a chair in a hidden room beneath the Pioneer’s Home, then played a horrifying video. On screen, a figure with my very face, my movements, was brutally torturing animals, then attacking my terrified girlfriends. He confirmed it was me, every single time.
My world shattered. I was a monster, a broken thing deserving only death. I sought release in the old quarry, a plunge like my mother’s alleged accident. I survived, but the narrative was set: Ethan Thorne, unstable, suicidal. My father reinforced it, holding me captive, ever-monitored. I faked insanity to finally be institutionalized.
Numbed by medication, I accepted my cage, a safely contained monster.
Until one grey day in the drab yard, I saw her. Sarah. My first love. The girl I was told I’d killed years ago. She was undeniably alive. And her eyes held a fierce, angry truth that ripped through the fog, promising to expose a horror far greater than I could ever imagine. My Best Friends, My Worst Enemies
Young Adult The last thing I remembered was Chloe's voice, sharp and gleeful, slicing through the haze of my headache: "They never loved you, Ava. Not Liam, not Noah. It was always me."
Her words were a hammer blow, each one a nail in the coffin of my life, a searing supernova of agony that exploded behind my eyes before everything faded to black.
I gasped, sitting bolt upright in my childhood bed, my unlined hands proof of a terrifying truth: I was back, the calendar on my desk screaming September 5th, senior year, before the nightmare truly began.
The reel of my first life rewound in fast-forward: Stanford, the calculated betrayals by Liam and Noah, Chloe's venomous strings, the engineered vasectomies, my promising career systematically destroyed, and the aneurysm that ended it all.
This was impossible, a future I'd already lived, a death I'd already died, yet the worn duvet felt real, the scent of my mother's pancakes too vibrant—a second chance, if I dared to seize it, to change everything.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, deleting Stanford from my early college applications and replacing it with MIT—my true dream, the one they had ruthlessly crushed.
Just then, the doorbell rang, and through the frosted glass, I saw them: Liam Walker, Noah Chen, and Chloe Jenkins, the architects of my past ruin, their bright smiles and feigned innocence an instant surge of cold dread. 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!" 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. 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."