Mu Xiaoai
16 Published Stories
Mu Xiaoai's Books and Stories
My Mafia Husband's Deadly Secret
Mafia For years, I was the perfect, quiet wife to Dante Moretti, the most feared Mafia Don in New York. I mistook his lavish gifts for affection and his cold protection for care.
The ninety-ninth time I asked for a divorce, he laughed. An hour later, his mistress, Isabella, called him.
"Get out," he ordered, leaving me on a dark street corner in the pouring rain so he could rush to her side.
As I watched his armored car vanish, I finally understood the truth. Our marriage was a transaction, a pact made to settle my father's debts. I was just a placeholder, a substitute living a life designed for Isabella. Every gift, every gesture, was an echo of her tastes.
He never saw me. To him, I wasn't his wife; I was a possession. An obligation he could discard at will. He thought I was too weak, too dependent to ever fight back. He believed I couldn't survive without him.
He thought I would just run and hide. He was wrong.
You don't escape a man like Dante Moretti. He would hunt you to the ends of the earth, not out of love, but out of pride. To break a pact with a Don, you can't just run. You have to be prepared for war. And standing there, drenched and abandoned, I made a new vow: I wouldn't just leave him. I would burn his entire world to ash. The Defiant Omega's Revenge On Her Cheating Alpha
Werewolf After seven years of being together, I was finally going to try on my custom wedding dress and become Judd's Luna.
But he showed up late to the boutique, reeking of another Omega's sweet gardenia perfume. When I canceled the ceremony, he thought I was just throwing a childish tantrum.
He even brought his mistress, Corine, back to the shop and let her put on my six-figure wedding gown.
"You look beautiful," Judd told her, looking at me with disappointment.
Later, when my grandmother was on her deathbed, I desperately called him, needing my Alpha by my side for our sacred pack duty.
"Judd can't come to the phone right now," Corine answered sweetly.
My grandmother passed away without him there, and my seven years of devotion were treated like absolute garbage. He thought I was just a docile Omega who couldn't survive without him, assuming I would eventually come begging for his forgiveness.
He didn't know I had already dumped hot coffee all over that white dress and slapped him across the face.
And he certainly didn't know I had just signed the asset division accord, ready to liquidate every single penny we shared and leave him with nothing. Lethal Honeymoon
Romance I thought I had married the perfect man and stepped into a dream life in a Manhattan penthouse.
But on our wedding night, after a single sip of wine my husband Caleb insisted I drink, I blacked out.
When I woke up, I found a tiny, fresh needle puncture mark on my arm.
I secretly installed hidden cameras and captured the horrifying truth.
Caleb was drugging my wine and letting a strange man into our bedroom to drain my blood while I was unconscious.
My health rapidly deteriorated into severe anemia.
When I went to a neutral hospital for a checkup, the doctor revealed an even more absurd truth.
"Ms. Emerson, medically speaking, there are no indications of sexual intercourse. You are still a virgin."
Despite being married for weeks, my husband had never even touched me.
I didn't understand.
If he didn't want a real marriage, why marry me? What was the purpose of draining my blood every week?
And why did I catch that very same hospital doctor secretly meeting with my husband and a mysterious blonde woman who hissed about "leaving no trace"?
What kind of sick, twisted conspiracy had I been dragged into?
Looking at my pale, ghost-like reflection in the mirror, a cold certainty settled in my heart.
Since my perfect marriage was just a bloody transaction, I was going to expose every last lie and burn their world to the ground. My Fated Alpha Rejected Me, So I Chose His Rival
Werewolf My Alpha mate and I survived a deadly rogue attack years ago. He held my bleeding body and swore to the moon that I would be his only Luna.
But today, his cold voice echoed through the pack mind-link, officially announcing his mating ceremony with another high-ranking woman.
When I returned to the pack manor, his mother humiliated me by using her aura to press my Omega nature into the floor.
His new fiancée mocked my low status and flaunted her custom-made diamond ring—the very ring I had designed for my own coronation.
To keep me around as a hidden pet, Kael even arranged for me to marry a cheap, low-ranking lookalike of himself.
When I resisted, he used his Alpha Command to crush my shoulders, warning me not to ruin his pack's reputation.
I didn't understand why the man who once loved me could throw me away like garbage.
It wasn't until I accidentally found his diary that I learned his dying mother had used a forbidden blood oath to force his betrayal.
She traded her life for mine, and Kael chose his political duty over my soul, playing god with my life and expecting me to quietly bear the agony.
My heart completely died.
I threw his moonstone ring into the mud, leaving him on his knees desperately digging in the rain.
Then, I calmly called the rival Nightfall Alpha.
"Meet me at the Priestess temple tomorrow. We are severing the bond." Fake Marriage To The Undercover Boss
Romance Emaline Finley was drowning in massive debt to keep her dying father alive, even enduring a humiliating blind date with an arrogant man just to find a financial lifeline.
But the fatal blow came from her former best friend, Kitty. Kitty, who was already engaged to Emaline's ex-boyfriend, deliberately told Emaline's father that his expensive treatments were bleeding his daughter dry.
Out of extreme guilt, her father threw away his life-saving medication and checked himself out of the hospital to die at home. When Emaline found him, he was coughing up pools of bright red blood, his lungs rapidly collapsing. As the paramedics rushed him away, Kitty called to gloat, mocking Emaline's poverty and telling her to go watch her father die.
Emaline was completely shattered, suffocating under the sheer injustice of it all. She had been betrayed, stripped of her dignity, and was now forced to watch her only parent slip away because of a cruel, spiteful lie.
Just as her world went dark, a wildly wealthy stranger stepped in. Cullen Preston, the mysterious man who had witnessed her humiliating date, paid the astronomical medical bills and brought in the city's top surgeon to pull her father back from death. But his salvation wasn't charity.
"Consider it a dowry."
He bought her father's life, and in exchange, he demanded Emaline as his wife. Bound By Lies: Marrying The Strict Colonel
Modern I borrowed my wealthy best friend's identity to seduce Colonel Ethan Christensen. He was the powerful uncle of my ex-boyfriend, Kayden, who had brutally dumped me for a rich heiress.
My revenge plan worked too well. Ethan fell deeply in love with my fake persona and proposed. But then he handed me a thick envelope: a top-secret military background check requiring fingerprints and ten years of history.
My fake identity was about to be shattered. I faced federal fraud charges and prison time. More than that, the guilt was eating me alive. Ethan wasn't a pawn; he was a genuinely honorable man who promised to protect me. Terrified and exhausted by the lies, I typed out a full confession, ready to tell him everything and walk away.
But right before I hit send, Kayden's new fiancée called to gloat about their engagement. Through the phone, I heard Kayden's voice, lazily mocking my low status.
"Tell her to stay home. Tell her to find someone on her own level in the gutter."
The rage burned away all my guilt. Why should I be the bigger person while they destroyed my life without a second thought?
I deleted the confession and called my friend to hire a black-market hacker. I needed a flawless, forged background in forty-eight hours. I am going to marry Ethan Christensen, and I am going to smile when Kayden is forced to call me "Aunt." Mated To My Dead Husband's Twin
Romance I thought marrying into the Barrett dynasty would be my fairy tale, but my wedding day felt more like a business merger. My husband, Jarret, didn't even look at me as he checked his watch at the altar, treating our marriage like a political chore.
Two months later, the world shattered when Jarret's diplomatic convoy was bombed. The news reported him dead, with his twin brother Jayden as the sole survivor.
When "Jayden" returned to the estate limping on a cane, the house became a tomb. My mother-in-law and our cousin Cristine immediately moved to freeze my bank accounts and strip me of my rights, calling me a "greedy climber." I was a widow in a house of wolves, but the real nightmare started when I saw "Jayden" drop his cane and passionately kiss Jarret's mistress in the dark.
I crept to the study and heard the bone-chilling truth: Jarret wasn't the one who died. He had murdered his own brother in the blast to steal his identity and become a "surviving hero." Even worse, he was already planning my "accidental" overdose once I signed over the family trust.
My blood ran cold as I realized the gentle, calloused hands that touched me on my wedding night hadn't belonged to my husband at all. I had fallen in love with Jayden, the man Jarret had just vaporized for a promotion.
I tried to escape, but they caught me and forced a sedative into my arm. When I woke up, the family doctor was standing over me with a predatory smile.
"Congratulations, Elise. You're ten weeks pregnant."
Jarret leaned over my bed, his eyes cold and victorious. They aren't going to kill me anymore. They've turned me into an incubator for an heir, trapped in a golden cage with the monster who murdered the father of my child. Discarded Wife: The Shadow Strategist Returns
Mafia I stood in the center of the ballroom, watching my husband accept credit for the massacre I had meticulously planned.
To the underworld, Craig Snyder was the King, a strategic genius who had crippled the Russian mafia.
To me, he was the man who had just re-gifted my anniversary present—a Patek Philippe watch—to match the diamond bracelet dangling from his mistress’s wrist.
The Senator’s daughter, Chanel, laughed at a joke only he could hear, wearing a red dress and a look of naive adoration that used to be mine.
When I confronted him, expecting an apology, Craig didn't just dismiss me.
He slapped me across the face in front of the city's elite, the sound echoing like a gunshot.
He yanked the wedding ring off my finger, drawing blood, and placed it into Chanel’s palm, calling me a hysterical, barren relic.
Later, I found the forged documents. He had signed my name to transfer every asset we built together into his sole possession, leaving me with nothing but a hush-money check.
He thought I was just a scorned wife. He forgot that I was the architect of his empire.
So, I drove my car off a bridge.
I let the world believe I was dead. I let him mourn the woman he destroyed while I watched from the shadows, erasing his existence from my accounts.
Six months later, at the Global Crime Summit, Craig stood up with a diamond ring, ready to beg my memory for forgiveness.
But the doors opened, and I didn't walk in alone.
I walked onto the stage holding the hand of his deadliest rival, Felix Tyson.
I wasn't there to take him back. I was there to take his kingdom. Beyond Repair: A New Beginning
Romance The system overload alarm shrieked, sparks flying, monitors flickering.
My own algorithm, my miracle cure, was dying, and it was taking me with it.
Liam Thorne, facing me, declared, "Bring her back, Ava! You said your algorithm could heal anything!" His face a mask of cold fury over his lost love, Chloe.
"It can fix systems, Liam, not resurrect data that's been corrupted for a year!" I cried, tears streaming, a sharp pain shooting through my chest.
His voice, a low growl devoid of warmth, accused, "You ruined everything. If it weren't for you, Chloe would have finished her AI, and we would have built an empire. You owe me this."
He' d forced me to push my healing algorithm past its limits for a ghost project of Chloe' s, a project she had sabotaged out of jealousy due to an archaic Thorne family tradition: whoever fixed Liam's paralyzed system had to marry him.
I had fixed it, naive, desperate for validation, eager to prove my genius. It became my prison.
The final alarm blared, screens went black, and darkness consumed me as the pain in my chest exploded.
Then, I gasped. My eyes shot open.
I wasn' t in my lab. I was in a lavish room, all white leather and chrome, sunlight streaming through a floor-to-ceiling window. Liam Thorne sat in a high-tech wheelchair, younger, but still etched with frustration.
I knew this day. This was the day it all began. The day the Thorne family brought me here, the brilliant reclusive tech genius, to fix Liam\'s critically damaged mobility system.
In my past life, I would have felt a thrill of challenge. This time, I looked at Liam, the man who would watch me die without remorse, and a faint, knowing smile touched my lips.
"Your system is beyond repair," I stated, my voice clear and steady. An Atonement of Love
Romance My world shattered the day Liam Sterling, the man I'd loved since childhood, turned into my fiercest accuser.
His father, my beloved mentor, was dead, and Liam, blinded by grief, believed my own innocent father was a criminal, the cause of his despair.
He looked at me, not with love, but with chilling hatred.
He threw the engagement ring—our symbol of forever—onto the marble floor, its clatter echoing the definitive punctuation mark on our shared history.
He cast me out, suffering from bone cancer I hadn't revealed, believing it yet another one of my family's lies.
Now homeless and destitute, my father, falsely imprisoned for embezzlement, suffered a heart attack behind bars.
Liam, despite my desperate pleas, denied him bail, sealing his fate.
Soon after, the brutal news came: my father died in prison.
The cruelty escalated.
Liam paraded me at a gala, forcing a grotesque performance of the dutiful fiancée, only to publicly destroy a cherished gift—my bronzed ballet slippers—a relic of my mother and my dreams.
When I begged him to believe my terminal diagnosis, he scoffed, accusing me of faking illness.
Then his assistant, Chloe Davis, fabricated a monstrous lie: a miscarriage, claiming I was responsible.
Liam believed her, swearing vengeance on me for killing a child that never existed.
How could he be so blind?
How could the man who promised to protect me become this cruel stranger, actively destroying my life?
I was accused of harassment and threats, my cancer dismissed as an elaborate trick, and finally, condemned to a psychiatric facility.
My mother, consumed by grief and shock over my father's death and my arrest, died shortly after.
Alone, broken, and dying, I found myself trapped, unable to prove my innocence, questioning if the love we shared was ever real.
But deep down, a flicker of defiance remained—a silent promise that the truth, however brutal, would eventually surface. My Wife, The Murderer
Modern My life was perfect, or so I thought. I was Ethan, a former architect, now a devoted stay-at-home dad, happily supporting my ambitious wife, Nicole, a rising city councilwoman, as she chased her mayoral dreams. Our beautiful daughter, Lily, was celebrating her sixth birthday at what was deceptively also a high-stakes political fundraiser in the dream home I designed.
Then, the world shattered. A deafening explosion ripped through our home, and in an instant, the smoke and flames consumed everything, including my little Lily. Days later, I woke up in a hospital, horrifically burned, only to hear Nicole, my wife, coldly order the surgeon to perform a vasectomy during my skin graft surgery, not for medical reasons, but to ensure "my real son, Caleb" was the sole heir.
As I lay there, paralyzed and helpless, slipping in and out of consciousness, I overheard the monstrous truth. Nicole hadn't just allowed Lily to die; she meticulously planned the "gas leak" explosion with a hitman. Our daughter, her own child, was a "political liability," an "obstacle" to Caleb's inheritance. Lily was merely a "tragic story" to secure her election.
My physical pain was a dull ache compared to the pure, hellish agony ripping through my soul. How could the woman I loved, the mother of my child, be such a cold-blooded monster? What kind of twisted ambition sacrifices an innocent life for power?
But my shattered world was not the end; it was the beginning. In the silent, agonizing nights, the architect's mind that built structures began to deconstruct, to plan, to plot. I swallowed my screams, feigned unconsciousness, and made a silent vow: she had taken everything from me, and now, I would take everything from her. Justice for Lily, no matter the cost. The Bride Who Rose from Ashes
Modern Days before my picture-perfect wedding to Kevin Davenport, a man as beloved in our tight-knit town as his prominent family, my life stretched before me, an unblemished canvas.
But a late-night stroll turned into a nightmare when I was savagely attacked, leaving me battered, disfigured, and my future hanging by a thread.
Waking in the sterile hospital room, amidst the beeping machines, the true horror unfolded: my own father and brother, the very men who vowed to protect me, were the architects of my suffering.
I overheard them celebrating, their voices chillingly calm, about how my "unfortunate accident" cleared the path for Dad's ambitious intern, Jessica Evans, to become a Davenport in my stead.
They deliberately stalled my reconstructive surgery, allowing my severe injuries to worsen, while simultaneously unleashing a venomous smear campaign across social media, painting me as the villain.
And then came the doctor's quiet confession: the brutal assault and subsequent neglect meant I might never be able to have children.
The ultimate blow landed when Jessica herself glided into my room in my wedding dress, her triumphant smile twisting as she leaned in to whisper that she'd paid the attackers extra to ensure my visible "unforgettable" disfigurement.
My father and brother watched, their faces hard with approval, ready to silence my pain.
How could the family I loved, the people who should have protected me, orchestrate such a monstrous betrayal, sacrificing my body, my future, and my very identity for their ambition?
The physical agony paled in comparison to the searing rage and profound despair that ignited within me, consuming every last shred of my old life.
They thought they had broken me irrevocably, that I was a defeated, silenced doll in their cruel game.
But as they celebrated their victory, I reached for a hidden burner phone, dialing the number of a woman they had underestimated for years: my formidable, estranged mother, Eleanor Vance, a corporate lawyer in New York.
Let them think I was sedated and compliant. My real fight had just begun. My Stolen Life: The Billionaire\'s Revenge
Modern The black SUV pulled up to my childhood D.C. estate after ten years away.
I stepped out, expecting a quiet, perhaps strained, family dinner.
Instead, a lavish party was in full swing, music and laughter spilling from the open doors.
Then I saw her: my cousin, Chloe, wearing my dress, laughing with Julian Vance-my fiancé from a decade ago.
My research. My fellowship. She was claiming it all as her own, right in front of me.
Just as confusion ripped through me, my mother, Eleanor, appeared, her face hardening into an icy mask.
"Ava," she said, her voice a chilling whisper. "What are you doing here?"
Before I could demand an explanation, she cut me off, announcing Chloe' s engagement and achievements as if I didn't exist.
When I protested, claiming my stolen life, my own mother publicly declared me "unwell" and "confused," a danger under medical care.
My father, David, stood silent, then sided with her, allowing security to drag me away and lock me in a secluded wing of my own home.
Betrayal ripped through me, a suffocating blanket of disbelief.
How could my family do this? Erase me, steal my entire existence, and frame me as insane?
But then, my father returned, a tray with sedatives in hand, and a flicker in his eyes-a silent warning, a hidden promise.
This wasn't abandonment. This was a staged escape.
I took the pills, publicly "dying" as Ava, knowing I was about to be reborn. The Monster He Became
Fantasy The pills sealed my fate, but death wasn't freedom.
My spirit lingered, unseen, tethered to a world where my husband, Ethan, flaunted Jessie – the woman who'd driven me to my grave.
Three years of silent purgatory passed.
Then, Jessie's ambition required my 'skills,' subtly manipulating Ethan to desperately search for 'me.'
Ethan found my brother Mike, and his own mother, Eleanor, a woman I'd rescued.
But Jessie's lies-claiming I faked my death-twisted his mind.
I watched, helpless, as his rage exploded: he ordered my grave exhumed, shoved Eleanor to her death, then coldly ordered Mike shot.
My family annihilated, my grave desecrated-all fueled by a woman's ambition and a man's blind rage.
How could a son not recognize his own mother?
How could Jessie steal my heroism?
The injustice was a silent scream in my ethereal throat.
Yet, fragments of truth-a locket, my bones, a seashell-shattered Ethan' s delusion, exposing Jessie' s monstrous deceit and his complicity.
Consumed by cold fury, Ethan transformed into an avenger.
He plotted a fiery reckoning at his father's abandoned factory, luring them all to a final, cleansing inferno.
In that blaze, my tether would finally break. From scapegoat to king
Romance My world revolved around Brittany, so when her ex-boyfriend Chad messed up, I sacrificed everything, even my reputation, to take the fall for his hit-and-run.
Then came the call that fractured my reality: Brittany was pregnant, but she wanted to tell the world the baby was Chad's, and for his career, she wanted me to agree to a horrifying abortion.
I watched, numb and helpless, as she openly embraced Chad, planning a fake future with our unborn child while orchestrating my public humiliation, costing me my job and turning me into a national pariah.
I endured public assaults and relentless smears, branded a "cowardly drunk driver" and an "unstable stalker," while the woman I loved actively helped destroy everything I had.
How could the woman I'd built my simple life around so cruelly extinguish our future, betray our child, and conspire with the very man I covered for, all to ensure my utter ruin?
The love I clung to turned to ash, leaving me stripped bare of everything I knew, an empty shell staring at the indifferent Austin sky.
But reaching the absolute bottom ignited a forgotten flame.
With nothing left to lose, I dialed a number I hadn't touched in years, summoning Scarlett, the fierce heiress to a vast Texas oil fortune, ready to unleash the sleeping giant of my family's power.
It was time for the Walkers to remind everyone exactly who they were. You might like
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." 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. My Mafia Husband's Betrayal, My Fury
Kinship My husband, Don Lorenzo Bianchi, the man who once took ninety-nine lashes for me, had just locked me in a guest room. I was four months pregnant with our child, the heir to his mafia empire.
My crime was throwing a glass of wine on his mistress, a woman he had moved into our home.
She cornered me in the garden, gloating that once the baby was born, he would give it to her to raise as her own. Later, she shoved me down the grand staircase, then threw herself down after me, screaming to my husband that I had tried to kill her.
As I lay in a pool of my own blood, Lorenzo rushed past me, scooping her into his arms and carrying her away without a single backward glance.
To force me to apologize, he had my parents brought to my hospital room and brutally whipped until they collapsed at his feet.
He was no longer the man who had 999 crystals sewn into my wedding dress. He was a monster who believed every lie she told and punished me for her crimes. How could the man who swore to love me forever become this cruel stranger?
But he didn't know the truth. Days before the fall, I had secretly terminated the pregnancy. I took the urn containing our child's ashes, filed for divorce, and disappeared from his world forever. 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. Too Late, Mr. Mafia: The Surgeon He Discarded
Winnie Suchoff I was the wife of Dante Cavalli, the most ruthless mafia Don in the country.
But today, his Underboss slid mandatory annulment papers across my hospital bed, ordering me to dissolve our marriage.
In my past life, I dropped to my knees and begged them not to abandon me.
I spent the next thirty years locked in Dante's massive penthouse, waiting for a man who bathed the streets in blood but never gave me a single drop of warmth.
My aristocratic mother-in-law stripped me of every cent, leaving me completely isolated.
I foolishly threw away a brilliant surgical career to be a submissive, obedient mafia wife.
In the end, Dante never came to see me, and I died entirely alone in that massive, empty bed.
Until my last breath, my chest was suffocated by a lifetime of regrets.
I couldn't understand why I had sacrificed my freedom and my scalpels for a man who would only feel a twisted guilt decades after I was already a cold corpse.
Opening my eyes again, Fate had dragged me back to the exact day my nightmare truly began.
Matteo stood at the foot of my bed, clearly expecting my usual pathetic tears.
"Take your time to think about it."
This time, I didn't cry or beg for my life.
I just picked up the fountain pen, signed my name, and walked out to reclaim the scalpel I had abandoned. Abandoned Heiress, Now His Mafia Bride
Priority I was tracing the gold paint on my own tombstone when a hand tapped me on the shoulder.
It was Clayton.
The same man who, five years ago, had left me bleeding out in a ditch because he didn't want to be late for my sister's engagement party.
"Die quietly, Ivy," he had said over the phone before hanging up.
Now, standing over my grave, he dropped his cheap plastic flowers in shock.
"Ivy? You're... we buried you."
They hadn't buried me.
They had buried an empty box to save face, mourning a "troubled" daughter they had actually discarded like broken trash the moment I became a liability.
Clayton's shock quickly turned to that familiar, arrogant anger.
He accused me of faking my death for attention.
He told me I was sick for putting the family through such pain.
He even reached out to grab my arm, intending to drag me back to my father to apologize.
"You're coming with me," he spat. "You owe us an explanation."
But he made a fatal mistake.
He thought he was talking to Ivy Dillard, the soft girl who cried when she skinned her knees.
He didn't notice the town car waiting at the curb, or the man stepping out of it.
Before Clayton's fingers could graze my coat, a hand made of steel caught his wrist.
Collin Richardson, the most feared Capo in Chicago, stepped between us.
"Touch my wife again," Collin whispered, his voice promising violence. "And you lose the hand."
I smiled at the terror draining the color from Clayton's face.
I didn't come back from the dead to explain myself.
I came back to bury them. 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.
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