Xia Qingnuan
12 Published Stories
Xia Qingnuan's Books and Stories
The Billionaire's Most Painful Regret
Mafia I was the wife of the De Luca crime family's Underboss, a beautiful statue whose only purpose was to produce an heir. But after five years, my body had failed.
The day my husband, Alessandro, told me I was barren, he also introduced me to my replacement. He called her a "vessel," a temporary arrangement, but I saw the infatuation in his eyes.
He promised it was just business, but soon he was calling me a "cold statue" behind my back while spending every night with her. The ultimate humiliation came at my birthday party. When a champagne fountain shattered and sliced my arm open, he ignored me bleeding on the floor to shield her instead.
In front of his entire family, the Underboss chose his mistress over his wife.
He left me there, my honor shattered as completely as the glass. I was no longer just a failed wife. I was an obstacle. And in our world, obstacles are removed.
But my arrogant husband didn't know his own father had a contingency plan to protect me. While he was distracted by his mistress's fake pregnancy, he unknowingly signed our divorce papers. My disappearance was no longer an escape; it was the start of my revenge. My Cheating Ex's Ultimatum Backfired
Romance For years, I was the perfect girlfriend, funding my boyfriend Carlton' s startup with my own money. My role was simple: be supportive, unseen, and unheard while his childhood friend, Brande, claimed the space by his side that should have been mine.
On the way to a tech conference that could make his career, I saw the brutal truth I' d been denying. There, on Brande' s neck, was a fresh, dark hickey.
She was curled up in his lap, her hand on his thigh, and he stroked her hair as if it were the most natural thing in the world. When I finally reacted, he called me harsh and told me to be the bigger person.
Later, when I wore a dress he deemed "too much," he gave me an ultimatum.
"If you walk out that door in that dress, we're done."
My love, my money, my support-it was all just fuel for his ambition and their affair. I was a fool. A well-funded, supportive fool.
But as I sat in the back, pushed into a corner, my shoulder bumped against his step-brother, the cold, powerful investor Harvey Hurst. And fueled by a reckless wave of defiance, I didn't pull away. Instead, I leaned into him, and for the first time in a long time, I made a decision that was all my own. Reborn From Their Cold Betrayal
Romance The marriage contract that would merge our two corporate empires was laid out before me. I was supposed to sign my life away to Jace Robertson, the man I had loved since we were kids.
But my love had been burned away the night the chandelier fell. When it came crashing down, my fiancé didn't pull me to safety. He shoved me aside to shield my cousin, Cassidy, with his own body.
He chose her. Instinctively.
My own mother rushed to her side, later telling me I needed to be more understanding. "Cassidy has always been delicate, Ellie. Jace did the right thing."
It was then I remembered everything. In my last life, I died alone in a cold hospital room from a cancer they found too late. Jace was on a romantic trip to the Amalfi Coast with Cassidy. My mother was at a charity luncheon.
My last thought was a regret so deep it could tear a hole in the universe. I had wasted my one precious life on people who saw me as nothing more than a stepping stone.
But now, I was back. The pen was in my hand, the contract on the table. Jace wanted Cassidy. My mother adored her. Fine. Let them have each other.
With a steady hand, I drew a single, clean line through my name on the signature line and wrote in a new one: CASSIDY COLEMAN.
This time, I would live for myself. A Wife's Vengeful Return
Modern My fiancé, Daniel, wasn' t just late for our fifth anniversary; his assistant, Sophie, informed me he sent his apologies from a client dinner. I stood in our "Dream Home," a monument to our shared ambitions, feeling an icy premonition.
Then, Daniel burst in, a raging storm, accusing me. "What did you do, Olivia?" he snarled. Sophie–his new assistant–was in the hospital, suffering a panic attack, claiming I' d threatened her. His eyes, once full of love, now burned with cold rage fueled by her lies.
He seized a glass vase, shattering it against the wall, its splintering echoing my collapsing world. Pinning me against the fireplace, he threatened to destroy my career, to blackball me if I ever went near Sophie again. Later, Sophie herself arrived, dripping fake sympathy and flaunting a new cashmere sweater Daniel had bought her. She spoke of Daniel' s concern, but her words were exquisitely crafted barbs.
I was left stunned, struggling to grasp the sudden, brutal betrayal. How could Daniel, the man who' d promised to build worlds with me, believe such blatant lies and turn on me so viciously? It felt impossible, yet here I was, trapped in a nightmare.
Days later, finding a tiny stray kitten, Ash, brought a sliver of peace. But it was fleeting. Sophie soon appeared, hysterical, accusing me of poisoning her prize-winning Persian cat. She produced a scrap of my silk scarf, clutched in its paw, as "proof." This time, I refused to be his villain. I vowed to expose her. A Quiet Man's Vengeance
Modern My mother-in-law, Martha, was a human storm cloud, always hovering, always raining contempt on my life as a writer.
When she and my father-in-law arrived for an "extended visit" for her "medical tests," the already thick air in our suburban home became suffocating.
Her sharp voice, accusing me of getting lost and being "not a real man," was a familiar prick, but when she scoffed at my profession and questioned my ability to provide, I felt the familiar burn of frustration turn into a deep, internal ache.
My wife, Olivia, usually my shield, tried to protect me, arguing with her mother, claiming Martha's alleged brain tumor made her unpredictable.
But then, a chilling comment slipped from Martha' s lips: she asked Olivia why she hadn't called from Miami, not New York, where her business trip was supposed to be.
Olivia quickly dismissed it as her mother' s confusion, but a sliver of doubt, sharp and cold, lodged itself in my mind.
This wasn' t just Martha' s cruelty; something darker, more insidious was at play, shaking the very foundation of my trust.
Later, my seemingly harmless neighbor, Mark, offered cryptic warnings about "protecting the throne" and people "sneaking in the back door."
His knowing smirk, coupled with Martha's strange slip, began to twist my unease into a sickening suspicion.
I had to know. I had to know if the quiet life I' d built, the love I cherished, was nothing more than a carefully constructed lie. Fifteen Years: His Turn To Play
Modern The sleek leather of my 50th-floor office chair felt real, the hum of the AC familiar. I was Andrew Scott, Wall Street rising star, not ex-con '734'.
Then, the intercom buzzed. My assistant, voice tight with panic: "Mr. Scott, it's Ryan Clark...about Jenny...an accident."
A physical blow. The exact same words. Fifteen years in a concrete box, the taste of stale bread, followed by the blinding Hamptons sun, Jenny-my dead wife-laughing with Ryan, their son looking exactly like him. The final memory: a dark New Jersey alley, the smell of garbage and my own blood. It wasn't a nightmare; it was my life, and it ended.
But I wasn't dead.
My heart pounded, not with fear for the woman I loved and our unborn child as it had before, but with a cold, hard rage. They had played their game, and I had lost everything.
Now, it was my turn. And this time, I knew all their moves. The President's Downfall: A Second Chance at Revenge
Romance The cold gurney, the execution chamber ceiling, then a familiar, hateful face: Kevin, my ex-fiancé, the President.
He was there to watch me die, bloodshot eyes, rumpled suit, looking deranged.
Treason, they said. A lie so colossal it had already swallowed my father, my sister, my entire family.
His whispered words were a final, chilling insult: "I found her, you know. Crystal. She was happy. You took her from me. You murdered the woman I loved."
My vision blurred as the lethal cocktail burned, my tongue heavy with the truth I couldn't speak – that I' d saved Crystal, not hidden her for myself.
His face, twisted with a grief entirely his own twisted invention, was the last thing I saw before blackness swallowed me.
Then, a gasp tore from my lungs, and I was bolt upright in my own silk sheets, sunlight streaming into my Georgetown townhouse.
My phone buzzed. Kevin. The date on the screen made my blood run cold: today was the day he was supposed to run off with Crystal Vance.
My "first life" had begun its nosedive on this very day.
This time, it would be different. This time, I knew the enemy. And this time, I would not be merciful. Freedom's Price, Love's Reward
Romance For five years, I was Jessica Blackwood' s executive assistant. My life was a gilded cage, controlled by her tyrannical father, Arthur. My arranged marriage to Liam Walker, his Head of Security, was a cold, unconsummated sham; we were strangers under one roof.
Driven to despair by Arthur' s control over her dreams of motherhood, Jess and I planned the unthinkable: fake our deaths. But the night before my staged "accident," Liam, my stoic husband, showed an unexpected vulnerability, leading to a passionate connection that upended everything.
I faked my death and began our "free" life in Aspen with Jess. Then, a shock: we were both pregnant-Liam' s child for me. Our perfect escape now felt too managed, a new, subtle prison. Soon, news broke: Jess was "institutionalized" for a mental breakdown.
Fury and despair consumed me. Arthur had viciously re-trapped Jess, aiming for her unborn child. A gnawing question plagued me: Was Liam part of this new cage? Was our passionate night merely a calculated manipulation? Had our defiance been utterly futile?
Heavily pregnant, I vowed to return and dismantle Arthur' s empire, freeing Jess at any cost. But on my journey, my car was ambushed. The masked man was no stranger. It was Liam, revealing a shattering truth about our past and the true identity of our enemy. They Forged The Shadow
Fantasy I, Aurora, last heir of the Sunstone, stood ready for my Unity Ceremony with Ethan, leader of the Stormriver, a sacred bond prophesied to secure our lands. I believed in our shared duty, even in a slowly blooming love for him.
But at the altar, Ethan publically scorned me, declaring his "true love" for my trusted aide, Sylvie, shattering our alliance and the very foundation of our world.
The Council, dazzled by his reckless display of power and Sylvie' s fabricated innocence, abandoned me and my lineage, allowing Ethan to devastate our Sunstone Valley, extinguishing my peoples' light and our sacred Sun-crystals. Then, as I prepared for my crucial Solar Renewal, he shattered my power core and entombed me alive in a collapsing mountain.
How could the very people I was sworn to protect, including the man I considered my dearest, fall so utterly blind to a manipulative lie, sacrificing everything for a power-hungry charade?
They thought they had buried a guardian, but they merely forged the Shadow. I did not die in that tomb; I was reborn as the formidable Shadow Sovereign, and now, armed with terrifying darkness, I will make every betrayer regret their choices. When Memories Lie
Fantasy Thanksgiving. I was back home in rural Vermont, sifting through our old attic, looking for ornaments.
Then I found it: a Polaroid of a 10-year-old me with a boy named "Cousin Leo," a cousin I’d never heard of, who then vanished from the photo right before my eyes.
My family insisted Leo was real, eagerly anticipating his arrival, but their stories about him were a chaotic mess of contradictions—tall, short, professor, contractor, living everywhere and nowhere. They had no photos, no contact info, nothing tangible. Yet, strange toys appeared, my niece claimed he visited, and an unseen voice called from our empty porch.
Was I losing my mind, or were they all caught in some bizarre, shared delusion? They blamed my childhood memory gaps, conveniently dismissing the chilling inconsistencies only I seemed to see. The warm, familiar holiday turned cold, filled with an unsettling unease.
As their cheerful "memories" curdled into whispers of strange encounters and empty eyes, I realized this wasn't just confusion—something far darker was at play, and I was the only one who could unearth the truth about this phantom cousin. 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. Burned by Poison, Saved by the Devil
Gale Kaaya My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement.
To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia.
It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping.
But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished.
She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug.
She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago.
The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash.
Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name.
She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant.
I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead.
I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye.
"Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you."
Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth.
"Prove it," he growled.
I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip. To Ruin Him, I Married His Rival
Rabbit Andrew Hebert, the man who promised to protect me, stood on a stage and announced his engagement to my tormentor. It wasn't just heartbreak; it was a business deal. He was selling me to a creditor to cover his gambling debts.
The applause of the powerful families was a death sentence, each clap sealing my fate as collateral. Andrew had paraded me here just to show everyone I was an asset to be liquidated, while his new fiancée smirked at me from the stage.
I was trapped, with no money and no one to turn to. The man I loved was leading me to the slaughter.
But as I fled into the library, a voice emerged from the shadows, deep and dangerous.
Damien Maddox. The Dark Don. The only man Andrew feared.
He offered me a different kind of cage, one with the power to burn Andrew's world to the ground.
With nothing left to lose, I looked the devil in the eyes.
"Take me with you." 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. 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. Reborn, I Wed the Untamed Playboy
Bone Possolo On my wedding day to Julian Moretti, the future Mafia Don, I was deliberately sent to the wrong penthouse.
My half-sister Sofia had crawled into my fiancé's bed, leaving me to be discovered by the family's exiled, alcoholic cousin.
In my past life, I was shattered by this orchestrated betrayal. I cried and begged when Julian publicly humiliated me, choosing his illegitimate mistress over his rightful bride.
I played the perfect, dignified Mafia wife for years. I swallowed his insults, ignored his infidelities, and accepted my ruined reputation to keep the peace.
But my blind obedience only paved the way for my murder. Julian discarded me, and I was poisoned to death so Sofia could steal my crown as the Mafia Queen.
Until my agonizing last breath, I didn't understand. I had honored our families' blood alliance flawlessly.
Why was I the sacrificial lamb while they were rewarded for their treason?
Opening my eyes again, I was back on the dark leather sofa, suffocating in my heavy silk wedding dress.
This time, I didn't shed a single tear.
I grabbed a heavy brass letter opener, marched straight into the Don's main study, and slapped the Underboss across the face in front of the entire family.
"A Valdez woman does not share her husband," I declared coldly. "To honor the alliance, I will marry Dante."
If they wanted to make my humiliation a fact, I was going to make it a funeral. My Cold Heart: Rejecting The Mafia Boss
Jia Zhong My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket.
He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent.
But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress.
Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you."
To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife.
When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala.
He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent.
He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters.
He thought he had broken me.
He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage.
But he made a fatal error.
He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign.
They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me.
And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck.
I didn't jump to die.
I jumped to be reborn.
And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin. The Bastard Bride's Vow of Mafia Vengeance
Anywho My father arranged a marriage for my half-sister, Emmalee, with Don Damian Griffith, the ruthless "King of New York." But Emmalee, in love with a penniless lawyer, refused and, weeping, pointed at me, the illegitimate daughter, offering me as the sacrifice.
My stepmother packed cheap plastic pearls and copper chains, and my father coldly told me to "bleed quietly" if the Don decided to cut me.
"Don't think you've won, Isabell," Emmalee hissed, handing me a shimmering emerald gown, the signature color of the Don's volatile mistress-a clear death trap. Why did my own family want me dead?
As the armored car pulled away, I dumped the green silk, put on a dress of pure ivory, and fastened our family's stolen midnight-blue sapphires around my neck. They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter, but I was walking into the lion's den with a hidden blade.