Yuan Xiluo
12 Published Stories
Yuan Xiluo's Books and Stories
From Trash To Treasure: Masked Heiress
Mafia I was the invisible failure of the Goff family, hiding my medical genius behind a report card full of Fs and a slumped posture. One rainy night, I found a man bleeding out in a dark alley behind the school gymnasium, a knife protruding from his gut.
To keep the police from digging into my secrets, I dragged the dying stranger to my bedroom and stitched him up using a hidden surgical kit. I thought I was being careful, but my cousin Cleora caught a glimpse of the blood and immediately alerted my fiancé's wealthy family.
By morning, my world collapsed as my future in-laws stormed the manor, throwing an annulment agreement at my feet. They called me a "loose woman" and "million-dollar trash," while my own housekeeper gleefully testified against me. At school, the word "SLUT" was spray-painted across my locker in jagged red letters, and the boy I was supposed to marry looked at me with nothing but cold revulsion.
I didn't understand why they were so eager to destroy me before even asking for the truth. I was the one who had spent years protecting this family's reputation, yet they were throwing me to the wolves over a single misunderstanding. I felt a surge of cold fury as I realized my loyalty had been met with nothing but betrayal.
Everything changed when the "dying" stranger finally walked down the stairs, shirtless and bandaged, revealing himself as Braylon Lancaster, the most powerful man in the city. He didn't just defend me; he froze my fiancé's entire family fortune with a single phone call.
As my in-laws fled in terror, a courier arrived with a five-carat pink diamond from the head of the city's most dangerous crime syndicate. The note read: "The debt is acknowledged." Suddenly, I wasn't just a failure anymore-I was the most sought-after woman in the underworld. The Echo She Chose To Erase
Modern I was Aegis's top operative, betrayed by my fiancé, Hazen, and the very woman I had rescued and mentored, Bianca.
They conspired against me, framing me as unstable and jealous. Hazen, the man I was supposed to marry, chose to believe her calculated lies over my raw pain, even after he caught them together.
He pushed me, causing a head injury, and then publicly condemned me when I tried to expose Bianca's manipulation. My own partner, my friends, everyone I had saved and fought alongside, turned against me, siding with the "fragile" victim she pretended to be.
Hazen's final betrayal was the coldest. He had me tortured, then left me broken in a cell, all to protect Bianca's fabricated innocence. "You are a liability, Echo," he had said, his eyes devoid of love, "a dangerous, unstable liability."
I was left with nothing, my spirit shattered, my entire life a lie. The accusations, the abandonment, the sheer injustice of it all-it was a poison I couldn't live with.
So I did the only thing I could. I walked into a clandestine clinic and had them erase it all.
Now, I am Evelyn, a quiet bookseller in Vermont. I remember nothing. And today, three years later, a man with haunted eyes just walked into my shop and called me by a name I don't know: "Echo?" The Billionaire's Disguise: Rising From The Ashes
Modern I spent two years sweating on construction sites, hauling drywall and mixing cement, just to give Brittni the normal life she said she wanted. On our anniversary, I sat in our dark kitchen with a plate of homemade fettuccine and a one-carat diamond ring I’d saved six months of wages for, waiting for her to come home.
Then my phone pinged. An Instagram notification showed Brittni at a luxury rooftop gala, a bottle of Dom Perignon on ice, and a wealthy socialite’s hand resting possessively on her waist. She was wearing the expensive red dress I bought her for her birthday—the one she told me was "too fancy" for our simple dinner dates.
The caption read, "Back with my queen," and Brittni had replied with a single red heart. Minutes later, she texted me: "Stuck at a late-night board meeting, babe. Don't wait up. Love you!" I looked at the cold, congealed pasta and the jagged scar on my ribs from my time in the special forces, realizing the last two years were nothing but a lie built on her pity and my desperate need for normalcy.
I didn't scream or throw my phone. Instead, a strange, predatory calm washed over me—the "Ghost" persona kicking in to shut down the noise of heartbreak and focus on mission parameters. I was done being the "simple builder" who worried about rent while she used me as a placeholder until a "better" man came along.
I walked to the closet, pried up a loose floorboard, and pulled out a gold signet ring bearing the Hubbard family crest—the symbol of the multi-billion-dollar empire I had rejected five years ago. I dropped the modest engagement ring into the trash on top of the wasted pasta and dialed a number I had sworn never to call again.
"It's time, Harve. I'm coming home."
The motorcade was dispatched before I even hung up. As I stepped into a blacked-out Cadillac and watched the $50 million deposit hit my account, I realized how small Brittni’s world truly was. She thought she was trading up for a Rolex and a social media tag, but she was about to find out that the man she just ghosted was the heir to the very empire that owned her future. From Asylum to Empire: Her Sweet Revenge
Modern The scent of lilies still clung to my clothes, a cloying reminder of my daughter Shannon' s tiny casket, yet it was the stench of betrayal that truly choked me. At her graveside, I saw Harlow Faulkner, my closest friend, standing too close to my husband Antonio, her hand possessively on his arm.
Then, Antonio hissed, "Francesca, darling, not now," his smile pasted on for onlookers, but his eyes were ice. He' d brought me breakfast in bed, protected me from critics, built an empire with me. Now, he was a stranger.
My accusation ripped from me: "You left her alone, Harlow! You left my baby alone, and she died!" Harlow whimpered, "It was SIDS, a tragic accident." Antonio roared, "You're making a scene!" He then revealed the nanny cam was "broken," confirming my darkest fear: he knew. He was part of it.
When Antonio' s hand instinctively went to Harlow' s stomach, whispering, "Is the baby alright?" my world shattered. He had a new family. He was erasing Shannon, erasing me.
They sent me to an institution, electroshocked and drugged me, then forced me to sign divorce papers. But as I lay broken, a cold, diamond-sharp resolve hardened within me. He thought he could erase me. I would remember everything. Broken Promises, A Vengeful Heart Returns
Modern I was the daughter of the East Coast's most powerful mob boss. For six months, I was blackmailed into being the secret lover and informant for the FBI's golden boy, Kaiden Walter. But just as I fell for him, he announced his engagement to a senator's daughter on national news.
He called our relationship a "political arrangement" and told me I was just collateral to keep my father in line.
His new fiancée then publicly humiliated me, calling me "trash."
I had sacrificed everything for him, even the secret child we might have had, only to be used and discarded like a toy he got tired of. Was I ever anything more than a job to him?
The shame of my public disgrace killed my grandmother. My father, seeing my world destroyed, took his own life to give me a new one. He faked my death, gave me a new identity, and left me a fortune. Anya Chambers was dead, but Anna Russo was just beginning her revenge. From Ashes: The Unwanted Wife's Return
Mafia For five years, I was the wife of Jace Sharpe, the city's untouchable "Golden Boy." I was a loyalty consultant paid ten million dollars to make him fall in love, but I was the one who ended up genuinely falling for him.
Then his old flame, Fallon, reappeared. When I told him I was pregnant with our child, his face became a mask of stone. Fallon smirked from the steps of his private jet.
"The baby has come at the wrong time," he said, his voice as cold as ice. "It must be aborted."
He had his men drag me to a clinic. As the anesthetic took hold, I heard him give a final, cruel order to the doctor: "A hysterectomy. I want to ensure there are no more… inconvenient surprises."
He destroyed my body and our child for another woman. Lying in that sterile room, my love turned to icy hatred. I reached for a burner phone I hadn't touched in years and sent a single message to a mysterious contact. The reply was instant: "I'll pick you up in fifteen days." A Price For Her Ambition
Sci-fi The final line of code glowed emerald on my holographic interface, my AI masterpiece complete. Tomorrow was the launch, the culmination of years, ready to redefine my legacy.
Then, Sarah, my co-founder and the woman who' d been by my side from the start, walked in.
"I''m pulling out," she stated, her voice flat, abandoning our company just hours before launch.
It was for Alex, her struggling protégé, an untalented kid whose AI was built on ethically questionable data.
"You''re throwing all of this away for him?" I asked, a cold dread washing over me, knowing his project was doomed to fail.
"I''ve already built one successful company; I can do it again with Alex," she shot back, adding, "Don''t be so jealous and ruin Alex''s big break! He has potential, real potential, more than you give him credit for."
Just as I opened my mouth to protest, a terrifying news ticker flashed across my smart glasses: BREAKING: Tech mogul' s partner sabotaged; protégé' s AI caused widespread privacy breaches, leading to the mogul' s downfall and public disgrace!
The future, my ruin, flashed before my eyes.
I swallowed my protest. A new, chilling plan formed: I would let them fail, show them exactly what they' d given up.
I leaned back, a calm smile on my face. "Okay. I''ll help you liquidate your shares and join Alex." The Substitute Wife's Revenge
Romance "I' m sorry, Ms. Davies, but there seems to be a problem."
The government clerk's words hit me like a physical blow. Liam and I were so excited, registering our baby' s birth early, making it all feel real.
Then she said it: "Mr. Liam O' Connell is already married. His marriage to a Ms. Sienna Reed was registered six months ago."
My world shattered. Married? To someone else? My cherished marriage certificate was a fake. The man who' d told me he' d searched for me every day during my year-long amnesia, the man who swore he only waited for me, had found a replacement. He had looked me in the eye and lied.
Returning home, I found her clothes in his closet, her bracelet in his jewelry box. Then, I heard his voice, soft and intimate on the phone, telling 'her' I suspected nothing. "She' s just… a substitute. A shadow. She looks like you, that' s all." A wave of nausea washed over me, mixing with the sharp pain of my pregnancy apps notifications.
He said he was off to a crisis in Chicago, but I drove to the luxury condo he' d once mentioned. There, I watched him kiss Sienna, a deep, passionate embrace he hadn't given me in months. This wasn't just cheating; this was a deliberate, long-term deception orchestrated for my family's money. All the while, my baby, our baby, was growing inside me, tainted by his lies. The man I loved saw me as nothing but a means to an end.
My heart breaking, I was left to wonder: how could I have been so blind? What kind of monster had I loved? He Broke My Leg, I Broke His Empire
Mafia The blizzard howled, tearing through my truck, through my bones. My leg, shattered by Ethan's enforcers, throbbed, a familiar pain mirroring the betrayal in my heart.
My phone screen flickered, a cruel final joke, announcing Ethan had just won "Family Values Politician of the Year."
The photo showed him beaming, his arm around Brittany, and a little boy, their adopted son, wearing my Daisy' s bracelet. The one I' d made for her before Ethan sold her to child traffickers.
My life, this wretched string of Ethan' s deceits, flashed before my eyes. I' d sold off my family' s historic ranch, acre by precious acre, to fund his political ambitions, only to be branded "uncivilized" for the calloused hands that built our legacy.
He' d given my only insulated coat to Brittany, called me hysterical for a post-birth hemorrhage while giving my life-saving medicine to Brittany for a "migraine."
Then, the county fair. To pay off a campaign scandal, he' d arranged for Daisy to get "lost," selling our daughter.
When his deal went sour, he' d used me as a shield, promising to tell me where she was if I protected him. I fought like a cornered animal, and they broke my leg. He never told me.
Dying in this snow, watching the man who destroyed everything receive an award, with my daughter' s bracelet on another child' s wrist?
The injustice was a suffocating shroud. Why did he hate me so much? How could he be so cruel? What kind of monster sells his own child?
Then, darkness. And a gasp. I jolted awake, not in a blizzard, but in Brittany' s lavish home, pregnant. Pregnant with Daisy. This time, things would be different. No Longer Sponsored
Sci-fi My full scholarship to Princeton had just arrived, a bright promise of four years alongside Chloe and Maya, the girls my family had sponsored since childhood, whom I saw as my own sisters.
But their smiles shattered when they announced their "dream" was deferring Princeton to follow a delinquent quarterback named Jake to South Valley State.
My phone, unsettlingly prophetic, flashed a dire warning: block them, and they'd sabotage my Ivy League future; soon, I realized their "love" was a cold calculation to use my family's wealth for Jake, leading me to secretly cut their financial ties, a move that spiraled into them physically attacking me before Jake shoved me into the path of my parents' arriving car.
As my bones shattered and I lay bleeding, the ultimate betrayal wasn't just the physical pain, but the chilling realization that the girls I'd always protected were capable of such ruthless manipulation.
Now, with my parents suddenly witnessing their true colors and my own future hanging by a thread, those "sisters" would learn that their carefully orchestrated scheme had just triggered their own spectacular downfall. The Heiress Lost, The Billionaire Found
Romance My life used to be picture-perfect, complete with a brilliant scholarship student named Liam who tutored me, quietly becoming my everything.
I was the privileged girl who bought him new glasses and shared my lunch, seeing past his poverty to the smart, kind soul within.
Then, overnight, my family lost everything.
Our mansion, our cars, my college fund-gone.
I swallowed my pride, working a grueling sales job, fighting to pay for Boston State, while old bullies like Bryce sneered at my downfall.
Just when I thought I was hitting rock bottom, Liam reappeared.
He was no longer the skinny kid but a polished, confident man, the heir to a billionaire father he' d never known.
He helped my struggling dad and even sent me money, yet a strange distance lingered, especially with the stunning Elena always by his side.
Did he only see me as a charity case now, a relic from his past? Was all our shared history just a debt to be repaid?
But then, as I finally tried to move on, dress on, ready for a hopeful new date, he stood on my doorstep.
His eyes raw, his voice unsteady, he admitted, "I can't stand it. I'm in love with you. I have been since Northwood." 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. The Capo's Scarred Wife: A Vicious Comeback
Sofia Wade I was the Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me.
But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest.
The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me.
They didn't.
Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her.
They let me burn to keep her warm.
When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages.
That was the moment Elena Vitiello died.
I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York.
By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring.
"You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them.
"Burn for it." 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. His Discarded Gem: Shining In The Ruthless Don's Arms
Temple Madison For four years, I traced the bullet scar on Chace’s chest, believing it was proof he would bleed to keep me safe.
On our anniversary, he told me to wear white because "tonight changes everything." I walked into the gala thinking I was getting a ring.
Instead, I stood frozen in the center of the ballroom, drowning in silk, watching him slide his mother's sapphire onto another woman's finger.
Karyn Warren. The daughter of a rival family.
When I begged him with my eyes to claim me, to save me from the public humiliation, he didn't flinch. He just leaned toward his Underboss, his voice amplified by the silence.
"Karyn is for power. Ember is for pleasure. Don't confuse the assets."
My heart didn't just break; it incinerated. He expected me to stay as his mistress, threatening to dig up my dead mother’s grave if I refused to play the obedient pet.
He thought I was trapped. He thought I had nowhere to go because of my father’s massive gambling debts.
He was wrong.
With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and texted the one name I was never supposed to use.
Keith Mosley. The Don. The monster under Chace's bed.
*I am invoking the Blood Oath. My father’s debt. I am ready to pay it.*
His reply came three seconds later, buzzing against my palm like a warning.
*The price is marriage. You belong to me. Yes or No?*
I looked up at Chace, who was laughing with his new fiancée, thinking he owned me.
I looked down and typed three letters.
*Yes.* Too Late, Mr. Don: The Wife You Buried
Cinderella's Sister I went to the family lawyer for a routine travel clearance. Instead, I was handed a divorce decree. The ink was three years old.
While I had been playing the role of the dutiful Capo's wife, Dante had secretly divorced me the day after our fifth anniversary.
Twenty-four hours later, he legally married the nanny, Gia, and named her cruel-eyed son as his heir.
I returned home to confront him, only for the boy to throw boiling tomato soup on me.
Dante didn't check my burns. He cradled the boy and looked at me with pure, drug-fueled hatred, calling me a monster for upsetting his "son."
The final blow came in a parking garage. A car sped toward us.
Dante didn't pull me to safety. He shoved me into the vehicle's path, using my body as a human shield to protect his mistress.
Lying broken on the asphalt, I realized Aria Vitiello was already dead to him. So, I decided to make it official.
I arranged a private flight over the Atlantic and ensured there were no survivors.
By the time Dante was weeping over the wreckage, realizing too late that he had been poisoned against me, I was already in France.
The Canary was dead. The Reaper had risen. Marrying The Ex-Fiancé's Ruthless Mafia Brother
Nero Daniels My fiancé left me standing alone at the podium during our rehearsal dinner to rush to the side of a woman whose only illness was a desperate need for attention.
He humiliated me in front of the heads of the Five Families, abandoning our alliance to scoop his "dying" mistress off the floor.
I didn't cry. I didn't run. I walked straight to the head table, to the most terrifying man in the city—his older brother, the Don.
"The Woodward family owes me a husband," I declared calmly.
An hour later, I was married to the Capo dei Capi. But my ex-fiancé didn't accept his demotion.
He kidnapped me, strapping me to a chair in a soundproof basement.
For three days, he drained my blood pint by pint to "save" his mistress, Jaidyn, who watched me fade while she casually ate an apple.
"Take another bag," she ordered, smiling at my agony. "She still has too much fight in her."
As the cold crept up my chest and my vision blurred, I realized I was going to die for a lie, drained dry by a madman.
Then, the steel door detonated.
Through the smoke and debris walked my husband, not with a ransom, but with a serrated knife and a promise to burn them alive. 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. Mistaken Identity: Loving The Wrong Twin Sister
Tabbie Platt I replaced my twin sister in a marriage contract to the ruthless Mafia Don, Donovan Blackwood.
For three years, I was a ghost in his home, silently enduring his coldness while he flaunted his mistress, Chloe.
On the very last day of our contract, Chloe staged an accident.
Donovan didn't hesitate.
He forced me to drain my blood to save her life.
Then, to prove his loyalty to her, he drove me to the cliffs and pushed me into the freezing ocean.
He even locked me in a cellar infested with spiders—my deepest phobia—because she lied and said I threatened her.
He thought he was punishing the spoiled, arrogant Isabella.
He didn't know he was breaking Ava, the woman who had silently memorized his allergies and waited up for him in the dark every single night.
When I finally took my fifty million dollars and vanished, I left behind nothing but the divorce papers and a photo revealing the truth.
He tore the city apart, destroying my family to find me, only to realize he had tortured the wrong woman.
Now, he is standing on my porch in the pouring rain, staring in horror at the simple wooden ring on my finger given to me by another man.
He falls to his knees, begging for a chance to love the wife he tried to destroy.
I look at him, feeling absolutely nothing.
"It's too late, Donovan," I say, locking the door. "You killed her."