Zaccaria Linn
9 Published Stories
Zaccaria Linn's Books and Stories
His Unwanted Wife: The Genius Artist Returns
Mafia On our fifth anniversary, my husband slid a black velvet box across the table.
Inside wasn't a diamond ring, but a fountain pen.
"Sign the separation papers, Aurora," Ethan said. "Ilene is spiraling again. She needs to see we are over."
I was the wife of the Mafia Underboss, yet I was being discarded for the Family Ward.
Before I could answer, Ilene stormed into the restaurant.
She shrieked that I was still wearing his ring and threw a bowl of boiling lobster bisque directly at my chest.
As my skin blistered and peeled, Ethan didn't rush to me.
He hugged her.
"It's okay," he soothed the woman who had just assaulted me. "I've got you."
The betrayal didn't stop there.
When Ilene pushed me down the stairs days later, Ethan erased the security footage to protect her from the police.
When I was kidnapped by his enemies, I called his emergency line—the one meant for life-or-death situations.
He declined the call.
He was too busy holding Ilene's hand to save his wife.
That was the moment the chain broke.
As the kidnapper's van sped onto the highway, I didn't wait for a rescue that would never come.
I opened the door and jumped into the dark.
Everyone thought Aurora Bruce died on that pavement.
Two years later, Ethan stood outside a gallery in Paris, looking at the woman he had destroyed, finally realizing he had protected the wrong one. Betrayed By Her Seven Protectors
Romance My father raised seven men to be my protectors, my companions, and one day, my husband. As the heiress to a Texas empire, they were sworn to protect me above all else.
But they were all in love with my adopted sister, Savannah.
I discovered their secret in the shadows of a stable, listening to the man I loved, Sterling, tell Savannah that marrying me was just a "small price to pay" to give her the world. My entire life was a lie, a performance for her benefit. They weren't my family; they were parasites, and I was their host.
Their cruelty escalated. Savannah sabotaged my saddle, causing an accident that nearly killed me, and Sterling covered it up. Then, at my 21st birthday party, they broadcast a secret video of me sobbing over him for all of high society to see, completing their campaign to utterly humiliate me.
They wanted to break me down until I was nothing more than a prize to be won. They thought I would shatter.
But as the room descended into chaos, my childhood friend Preston stepped onto the stage, pulling me to his side. His voice cut through the noise, clear and decisive.
"Tonight is about a new beginning," he announced, looking directly at Sterling's stunned face. "Because Clara Beaumont has agreed to be my wife." Ordered To Serve His Mistress: Heiress's Revenge
Modern My fiancé sent me a text ordering me to serve his mistress, unaware that the waitress holding the tray was actually the daughter of the man who owned his soul.
I was working undercover at his club, playing the role of a poor nobody to test his character before our wedding.
But tonight, the test ended in disaster.
His mistress, Jaden, walked in and treated me like dirt. When I brought her drink, she slapped the tray, spilling scalding coffee all over my hand.
The pain was white-hot. My skin blistered instantly, peeling away in angry red patches.
I showed Connor the injury on a video call, expecting protection. Expecting him to be a man.
Instead, he looked at my burned hand and then at his investors. Panic filled his eyes.
"Fix it, Blake," he roared. "Apologize to her."
"She burned me," I said quietly.
"I don't care! Kneel if you have to. Kiss her ring. Just make her happy so I can finish this deal!"
He told the Principessa of the Shaw crime family to kneel to a woman who meant nothing.
He sacrificed his future wife to save face.
Something inside me snapped. It wasn't my heart; it was the leash I had placed on myself.
"Okay," I whispered.
I hung up the phone and dropped it into a pot of boiling pasta water.
Then I turned to the Executive Chef, a former hitman who recognized the lethal shift in my eyes.
"Lock the doors," I ordered.
"And tell my father I'm ready to burn this place to the ground." The Doctor, The Husband, The Lie
Modern My Broadway dreams died with a fall on stage. For three agonizing years, my husband Hudson was my rock, nursing me through what doctors called a career-ending injury.
Then I discovered the truth. My "injury" was a lie, a conspiracy orchestrated by my husband and our doctor, Bethany. They had been slowly poisoning me to keep me crippled and dependent.
When I confronted them, they tried to silence me with an overdose. In the hospital, Bethany carved up my body with a scalpel.
To complete their twisted fantasy, they decided she would carry my child, forcibly harvesting my embryos while I was awake on a pain-enhancing drug.
Hudson just watched.
"Just endure it, Emmy," he murmured.
But they didn't break me. I escaped and meticulously erased myself from his world. My final act before disappearing was pressing 'send'-unleashing every piece of evidence to the entire world.
"You took everything from me," I wrote. "Now, I'll take everything from you. Tenfold." A Mother's Reckoning
Billionaires The polo match shimmered with Hamptons elite, a cruel contrast to my jazz singer soul.
Julian, my husband, was, as always, obsessed with his "white moonlight," Scarlett Vance, and her daughter Penelope.
My twin sons, Leo and Noah, just five years old, were the only music in my gilded cage.
Then Penelope, Scarlett's daughter, had a medical crisis, aplastic anemia, needing a bone marrow transplant.
Julian' s words froze my blood: Leo and Noah, my babies, were perfect matches.
He ignored my pleas, dismissing their age, proclaiming them "useful to the family."
He ripped my sons from my arms, forcing them into a dangerous, excessive donation for Penelope, leaving them bleeding and feverish.
While my sons lay dying, he was at a gala celebrating Penelope' s "miraculous recovery."
He called my desperate calls for help "dramatic," then hung up.
With no drivers, no one to help, I scooped my fading boys into my arms, rushing into the pouring Manhattan rain.
I begged a public hospital for help, drenched in their blood, only to be met with news reports of Julian lighting up the Empire State Building in celebratory pink, and witnesses whispering, "Negligent mother."
Then the doctor came.
"They're gone."
My sons, my world, brutally taken by a cold, calculating man who saw them as a resource.
But Julian didn't know his mother, Eleanor Thorne, was about to expose the monstrous lie he' d sacrificed our children for.
He didn' t know this was just the beginning of my reckoning. When Sisterhood Becomes Betrayal
Horror The dream always started the same way: my sister, Sarah, screaming my name, her face twisted in pure terror, pointing at a world where the dead walked.
This time, the screaming wasn't a dream. It was real, coming from down the hall.
"They're coming! I saw them!" Sarah shrieked, convinced her nightmares were prophecies.
My parents rushed to her, cooing about a bad dream, but Sarah insisted it was real, clearer this time, a prophecy of rotting flesh and dead eyes.
I lay in my bed, heart a slow drum, remembering my first life: the foolish concern, the attempts to reason that always ended with their blind siding of Sarah.
My logic was met with her tears, my calm with her hysterics, and our parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, labeled me "insensitive," not understanding how "special" Sarah was.
My efforts to save their retirement, to hide car keys from her "prepper" conventions, led to slaps and silent treatments, to accusations of sabotaging her "survival instincts."
The family crumbled around her delusion, losing their house, savings, everything, and when the apocalypse never came, they blamed me for not believing, for not supporting their perfect, unified front of madness.
They cast me out, and I died alone in a homeless shelter, not from a zombie, but from pneumonia.
Now, I was 22 again, lying in my childhood bed, listening to the prelude of that same disaster, a second chance at a test I' d failed spectacularly.
This time, I knew the answers.
"It' s going to start with the birds!" Sarah yelled, predicting a mass blackbird death event, completely unaware I knew about the city' s planned fumigation.
My parents leaned into her every word, their faces a mix of worry and excitement, while a bitter taste filled my mouth.
I wouldn' t stop her. I wouldn' t save them.
This time, I would watch them burn.
And I would bring the gasoline. Stolen Youth, Reclaimed Destiny
Fantasy The roar of the crowd was the last thing I heard.
I died on a dirty city street, falsely accused, a monster in their eyes.
It all started with a gift for my 25th birthday-an antique smartwatch from Eleanor, my adoptive mother.
It wasn't just a heavy, ornate trinket; it was a life-drainer.
Weeks after I clasped it on, my vibrant youth withered, my hair thinned, my mind fogged.
As I became a frail old woman, Eleanor, terrified of aging, grew younger, radiant with my stolen vitality.
She locked me in the dusty attic, telling the world I' d had a breakdown.
My only hope, Bethany, my ex-boyfriend' s fiancé, found me.
She helped me escape, or so I thought.
She live-streamed my chaotic flight, twisting a narrative: I was a fraud, mentally unstable, stealing from Eleanor.
The crowd, incited by her online posts, saw a villain, not a victim.
They closed in, their rage contorting their faces.
Bethany watched, a triumphant smile on her face, as my life drained away for the second, and final, time.
But death was not the end.
Floating in a void, I saw Eleanor and Bethany toasting with champagne, celebrating my demise.
The injustice burned through me, a rage so pure it could tear the universe apart.
They had taken everything.
Then, I woke up.
Gasping for air, my skin smooth, my hair thick and dark-25 again.
It was my birthday, the day it all started.
This time, the watch wouldn' t be for me.
This time, I was going to offer the "life-drainer" to Bethany.
I would watch Eleanor and Bethany, two predators bound by vanity and greed, tear each other apart.
This time, I would not be the victim. 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. 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. 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." When Love Rebuilds From Frozen Hearts
Landslide On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news.
He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city.
The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.”
For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets.
My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me.
So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts.
He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked.
He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree.
He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies. 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." Married To My Mysterious Ex-Con Husband
Flying Free My father bailed a violent ex-con out of prison just to force me into a marriage with him. I stood in a filthy Bronx hallway, my Vera Wang gown dragging through the grime, knowing this was the price for my mother’s life. If I didn't marry the man behind the steel door, the wire transfer for her hospital ventilator wouldn't go through the next morning.
The man, a scarred giant named Dock, treated me with cold contempt, telling me he didn't touch things he didn't want—and he didn't want a "Jacobson." I thought I had hit rock bottom, tied to a criminal while my family lived in luxury. But the nightmare was just beginning.
When I tried to return my wedding dress to pay for rent, my sister Janie and stepmother found me. They laughed as security dragged me out of the boutique, calling me a "charity case." When I finally crawled back to our family manor to beg for the money my father had promised, Janie revealed the horrific truth. She had liquidated my mother’s medical trust to fund a waterfront real estate project.
"Get out and let your mother rot," she screamed, throwing a glass of ice water in my face before having guards dump me in the dirt. I knelt on the gravel, wet and bleeding, realizing my own flesh and blood had signed my mother's death warrant for a profit. I had nothing left—no money, no home, and a husband who was supposed to be a monster.
I didn't understand why they hated me so much, or how I would survive the night. But then, a black car screeched to a halt in front of me. Dock pulled me inside, his eyes burning with a lethal coldness I’d never seen in a common thug.
As he wiped the blood from my hands, he picked up a encrypted phone and gave a single command.
"Initiate Project Titan. I want the Jacobson Group insolvent by Friday."
I looked at the man I thought was a broke felon, realizing I hadn't just married a stranger—I had married the most dangerous man in the city, and he was about to burn my family's world to the ground. Too Late For Regret: The Mafia King's Runaway
Tangye Wanzi I watched my husband, the most feared Capo in New York, sign away our marriage with the same cold indifference he usually reserved for ordering a hit.
The nib of his Montblanc pen scratched against the paper, drowning out the rain hitting the coffee shop window.
He didn't bother to read a single word.
He thought he was signing routine shipping manifests for the family business.
In reality, he was signing the "Dissolution of Union" papers I had hidden beneath the cover sheet.
He was too distracted to check. His eyes were glued to his encrypted phone, frantically texting Sofia—the widow, the tragic beauty, the woman who had haunted our marriage for three years.
"Done," he grunted, tossing the stack into his armored SUV without even glancing at me.
"Business is concluded, Elena. We leave."
Moments later, his phone rang with her special emergency tone.
His demeanor shifted from cold boss to frantic protector instantly.
"Driver, divert. She needs me," he roared.
He looked at me with zero affection and ordered, "Get out, Elena. Luca will take you home."
He kicked me out of the car into the pouring rain to rush to his mistress, completely unaware he had just legally granted me my freedom.
I stood on the curb, shivering but smiling for the first time in years.
By the time the Don realizes he just signed his own divorce, I will be a ghost in San Francisco.
And he will have nothing left but his shipping logs and his regret. 
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