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. 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." 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." 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. 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. 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 Enforcer's Jilted Princess
Bone Possolo Tomorrow was my wedding day to Jason Brennan, the heir to a powerful Mafia family.
My family, the Falcones, had even taken in an orphaned girl, Elena, treating her like my own sister.
But in my nightmare of a past life, I choked on my own blood, poisoned by the arsenic Elena slipped into my food every day.
As I lay agonizingly close to death, Jason stood over me with a cold laugh, holding Elena in his arms.
"We just needed the Falcone wealth, Bella. And the docks."
Then came the gunfire. I was forced to watch them slaughter my father and my brother, tearing my family out by the roots.
After my death, Elena even spread vicious rumors that I was a barren spinster, twisting their foul betrayal into a tragic tale of noble sacrifice to completely destroy my legacy.
The metallic tang of my own blood was so real I could still taste the ash.
I didn't understand why the girl my family sheltered for eight years would repay our charity with such venom.
And I understood even less how the man who swore to love me could orchestrate my brutal murder without a shred of hesitation.
Bolting upright in bed, drenched in cold sweat, I realized I had returned to the night before my wedding.
This time, I wouldn't just cancel the engagement. I would hand their treason directly to the Mafia's most terrifying Enforcer, and watch them burn. Reborn Heiress: Claimed By The Dark Don
Hen Bu I spent three years hating Damien Castillo, the ruthless mafia Don who kidnapped me from my engagement party and ruined my reputation.
But in the end, it was my perfect fiancé, Julian, and my sweet half-sister, Sophia, who slipped the deadly poison into my wine.
As the venom burned through my veins in that freezing cellar, I watched Julian smile. He and Sophia had orchestrated my brutal death. She had been sleeping in his bed all along, intentionally miscarrying his bastard child just to frame me as 'impure' and strip me of my family's protection. My own father used me as a political pawn, letting them throw me away like garbage.
And Damien? The monster I had fought and despised for years marched straight into a suicide ambush for me. He was riddled with bullets, turning his body into a human shield just to buy me a few more seconds of life.
"Touch her and you die."
I died in that blood-soaked basement, clutching his lifeless body, suffocating on my own blind trust. Why did I ever believe the golden boy who betrayed me? Why did I fight the only man who truly loved me?
Opening my eyes again, the stench of copper and mold was gone, replaced by the scent of Cuban cigars and black silk.
I was back in 1928, on the exact night Damien stormed my engagement party and locked me in his penthouse.
This time, when the ruthless Don approached me, I didn't scream or run back to my killers. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. The Mafia King's Substitute Bride
Western Rose The space between them disappeared. She arched into him, tilting her head as his lips traced a slow path down her jaw, then lower.
Goodness, she wanted more.
***
Valentina De Luca was never meant to be a Caruso bride. That was her sister's role-until Alecia ran off with her fiancé, leaving behind a family drowning in debt and a deal that couldn't be undone. Now, Valentina is the one offered up as collateral, forced into marriage with Naples' most dangerous man.
Luca Caruso has no use for a woman who wasn't part of the original bargain. To him, Valentina is nothing more than a replacement, a means to reclaim what was promised to him. But she isn't as fragile as she seems. And the more their lives tangle, the harder she is to ignore.
Everything begins to go well for her, well, until her sister returns. And with her, the kind of trouble that could ruin them all. Under Mafia Protection
chavontheauthor When Jimena, a young single mother with a dark past and a violent ex she's desperate to forget, crosses paths with Alessio Fanucci, a dangerous mafia heir, her world is turned upside down.
All she wanted was to get by working as a maid at the Fanucci mansion and to keep her distance from the three infamous Fanucci brothers as much as possible.
Things take a turn when the oldest brother and heir, Alessio, breaks off his arranged engagement with his ex and urgently needs a new one. Alessio, cold, ruthless, dominant, and not someone anyone talks back to, sees the quiet Jimena as nothing more than his pawn. Meanwhile, she sees Alessio as nothing more than another monster she needs to escape. As they spend more time together, the lines between fake and reality begin to blur, and they discover they have more in common than they initially thought.
Tensions rise when Jimena's ex returns, threatening her new comfortable life and the secrets she’s been withholding. He is out for revenge and is determined to go to any length for it, even if that means forming an alliance with the Fanuccis' enemy, who happens to be the family of Alessio’s ex.
With a war, untold truths, and feelings at stake, will Jimena’s newly formed bonds keep standing, or will everything around her crumble?
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. The Ugly Substitute Bride of the Mafia King
Finn Mercer My adoptive family, the Castillos, treated their biological children like royalty, but used me as a disposable pawn.
To secure a mafia alliance, they forced me to take my beautiful sister's place and marry Don Damien Moretti, a man rumored to be a ruthless, bloodthirsty monster.
They thought they were sending me to my execution. At our engagement banquet, my mother and sister deliberately gifted me a cheap, counterfeit gown to humiliate me in front of New York's elite.
When I publicly exposed their lie, my father demanded I apologize. My mother even raised her hand to slap me in front of everyone.
"You are a vicious curse! You ruin everything!"
They eagerly waited for the Don to execute me on the spot for embarrassing them.
I had spent years secretly saving their company from bankruptcy and supplying the underground experimental drugs that kept my brother's mafia career alive.
Yet, they threw me to the wolves without a second thought, disgusted by my very existence.
But they didn't know that just an hour before the banquet, I had saved a bleeding, masked stranger in a dark alley-who turned out to be Damien Moretti himself. Too Late, Mr. Capo: Your Wife Is Gone
Mo Yufei "Happy Anniversary," my husband said, sliding the separation agreement across the mahogany desk.
It was the eighteenth time in five years I had signed these papers.
Matteo De Luca, the most ruthless Capo in New York, checked his Rolex with cold impatience.
"Sign it, Sera. Bianca is on the ledge again. She needs to see we're over, or she jumps."
Bianca. The ward. The broken bird. The woman whose fragile psyche dictated every moment of my marriage.
I signed my name, and he left me alone on our anniversary to save her. Again.
But saving her wasn't enough.
When Bianca pushed me down a flight of marble stairs in a fit of jealous rage, shattering my spine and leaving me paralyzed, I thought Matteo would finally choose me.
I was wrong.
I woke up in the hospital to find him holding her hand, not mine.
"The security footage has been wiped," he told me, his voice void of emotion. "We cannot have a scandal. You fell, Sera. That is the story."
He erased the truth. He erased my pain.
He protected the woman who crippled me over his own wife.
Two months later, he wheeled me into a gala, playing the doting husband while I sat in the chair that was my prison.
He didn't know I had a burner phone hidden in my velvet dress.
He didn't know that tonight, the obedient wife was going to die on the pavement, and a ghost would rise in her place.
I looked at him one last time and dropped the phone in his lap.
"I hope she's worth it."