Discarded Love, The Reaper's Regret
My husband, Dante Moretti, the feared Underboss, signed the divorce papers I slipped him without a glance. Too busy texting his true love, Sofia, he was blind to the annulment decree ending everything. The Reaper couldn't see the death of his own marriage.
For three years, I was Elena, his silent wife, the "Caged Canary," cleaning his messes while meticulously planning my escape from our loveless world.
He dismissed me for Sofia's every whim, publicly shaming me after a past love letter was read, then abandoning me again for her fake crisis.
That night, he violently shoved me against a wall, leaving me bleeding and concussed, rushing instead to protect Sofia. Discarded and injured, my invisible love became a weapon against me.
His crushing blindness, the cold realization I was a mere placeholder, fueled a profound injustice. How could he be so lethal, yet oblivious to his wife, favoring the one who betrayed him?
With chilling resolve, I uploaded Sofia's confession, initiated a massive financial transfer dismantling his empire, and staged my own death. Under a new identity, I fled to San Francisco, ready to build my power, far from his bloody, deceitful world.
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Chapter 3
Elena Vitiello POV
The heavy thrum of the music pulsed through the floorboards of the VIP lounge. It was a private club, supposedly neutral ground for the Families, but tonight the Morettis had rented the entire top floor.
I sat next to Dante on the crushed velvet sofa. His arm was draped along the back of the seat behind me-never touching me, but aggressively claiming the space.
It was a territorial display. This is mine. Do not touch.
The room was thick with smoke and the sharp clink of expensive crystal. The Capos were laughing, while the soldiers stood like statues by the doors. It was a celebration of the alliance anniversary.
"Alright, bring it out!" someone shouted over the noise.
A heavy wooden box was heaved onto the central table. The Time Capsule.
Five years ago, during a truce party, the younger generation of the Families had written letters to their future selves. It was a stupid tradition, something Sofia had insisted on back when she was the center of Dante's world.
I felt a prickle of cold sweat break out on my neck. I had forgotten about this.
"Let's see who predicted the future!" Marco, one of Dante's soldiers, laughed as he cracked the seal.
He pulled out a folded piece of paper. "Sofia... wants to be a movie star."
Laughter rippled through the room. Sofia wasn't here yet. She was always late.
Marco reached in and pulled out another one. He unfolded it, and then he froze.
He paused. He looked at me, then at Dante. The drunken grin faded from his face.
"Read it," Dante commanded, taking a slow sip of his whiskey.
Marco cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. "It's... it's from Elena."
Dante glanced at me. I stared straight ahead, my nails digging crescents into my palms.
"Read it," Dante repeated, his voice lower, leaving no room for argument.
Marco unfolded the paper completely. His voice was hesitant. "I don't know if he will ever see me. I am just a shadow in the corner of the room. But today, he looked at me. He saved me from the riot in the East End. He doesn't know my name, but I know his. I love him. I love Dante Moretti. I pray that one day, I can be the one to wash the blood from his hands, even if he never loves me back."
The silence in the room was absolute. It was heavier than the bass, louder than the shouting had been moments before.
I felt stripped naked. Five years ago, I was a naive girl with a diary. Now, those words hung in the air like a confession of a crime.
Dante slowly set his glass down. He turned his head to look at me. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were wide, stunned. It was the first time I had ever seen him look truly struck, like he had been punched in the gut.
He opened his mouth to speak. "Elena..."
My phone didn't ring. His did.
It shattered the moment like glass. Dante flinched. He looked at the screen.
He didn't answer it immediately. He looked at me again, searching my face, looking for the girl who wrote that letter.
The phone rang again. And again.
"Boss," Marco whispered, the tension palpable. "It might be urgent."
Dante answered. He put it on speaker.
"Dante! Help me! Please!" Sofia's voice shrieked through the quiet room. "They have guns! I'm at the warehouse district! They're going to kill me!"
The shock vanished from Dante's face. It was replaced instantly by the mask of The Reaper. The beast woke up.
He stood up so fast the table shook. "Marco, get the team. Now."
"Dante," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
He didn't hear me. He was already moving, checking the clip in his handgun. He was a blur of lethal motion.
"Stay here," he barked at me over his shoulder. "Don't move."
He ran out the door, his soldiers swarming after him. The room was suddenly empty, save for a few confused waiters.
I walked to the balcony. The rain had stopped. I looked down at the street.
I saw Dante burst out of the club entrance. I saw him pistol-whip a bouncer who was too slow to get out of his way. He jumped into his car, tires smoking as he peeled out.
I watched him go.
He had heard the depth of my soul, the raw, bleeding truth of my love for him. And the moment another woman cried wolf, he left me in the silence.
He didn't rush out to save family. He rushed out because he couldn't breathe if she wasn't breathing.
I took the letter from the table. I tore it in half. Then in half again.
I dropped the pieces into an ashtray and lit them on fire.
"Goodbye, Dante," I whispered.
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8.3
EDEN
8.3
Elianila, an AI Architect, is part of an elite team tasked with designing a global system meant to prevent threats, manage disasters, and distribute resources to vulnerable regions. After five years of tireless work with her colleagues, she uncovers disturbing anomalies, code-named, X-variables, that flag individuals according to criteria she never programmed.
As Elianila digs deeper to understand what the X-variables measure and where their origin, she finds herself in direct conflict with the authorities. Soon, the System marks her and her daughter as threats - targets to be eliminated.
With a small band of colleagues and dissidents, Elianila goes on the run, hiding in places beyond the Systems reach. As they evade surveillance, they race against time to warn others, expose the truth, and fight back against the omnipresent authority of the System.
9.7
Sienna woke up in a hospital room, her body screaming from a severe car accident. Through the glass, a man paced with violent rage, a dark shadow she felt absolutely nothing for.
Her friend Julia burst in, eyes bloodshot, dropping a bomb: "He didn't even try to help you." Dante, Sienna's fiancé, had protected another woman, Valeria, in the crash, leaving Sienna to burn alive.
Her past life unspooled – seven years sacrificed, an architecture degree abandoned, all to serve Dante. Her phone was a shrine to him: his photos, his "taboos," and even "Valeria's preferences," with no trace of Sienna herself.
But amnesia brought no heartbreak, only a cold, calculating fury. She felt disgust for the "idiot" she'd been, stripped of dignity. The memory loss was a release, a blank slate.
With chilling resolve, Sienna deleted every trace of Dante. Ripping out her IV, she declared, "The wedding proceeds." Not for love, but as a weapon: "I need to take back everything that belongs to me before I disappear."
9.2
For four years, I was the Silvercrest Pack's biggest joke—a scentless, wolfless Omega who somehow became the Alpha's Luna.
I thought I was just naturally defective, until our fourth anniversary, when I overheard my husband Adrian talking to his Beta.
"I’ve been having the kitchens slip a silver-based compound into her meals since the day I marked her."
He confessed the poison was meant to suppress my inner wolf and keep my womb permanently barren. He only married me as a power play to make his highborn mistress, Seraphina, jealous. While I wept over my empty cradle and apologized to his family for my broken body, he was using pack funds to buy her custom luxury goods, tossing me the leftover wrapping paper. When I finally confronted him about the silver and tried to leave, he flew into a feral rage. He violently smashed my head against the marble vanity, leaving me bleeding on the floor, and locked the bedroom door behind him.
I lay there in the cold, staring at the pool of my own blood. My entire life, my endless pain, and my unborn pups were nothing but a cruel, calculated joke to the man who was supposed to be my Mate.
But Adrian didn't know I wasn't just a brainless Omega.
I wiped the blood from my face, climbed down the balcony trellis into the freezing rain, and pulled out an encrypted burner phone.
"The cage is broken. Initiate Phase Two."
7.2
Elara Vex had everything-a flawless ice core, the title of prodigy, and a place at the pinnacle of the High Tower. But in one brutal night, it was all ripped away. Her mentor tore the core from her chest. Her fiancé drove a sword through her back. Her own sister smiled as she bled out on the cold marble floor.
When Elara wakes, she's years in the past, mere hours before her core is scheduled to be stolen. This time, she won't be anyone's sacrificial lamb. She shatters her own core with forbidden blood magic and forges something far more terrifying in its place-a bottomless, ravenous Chaos Core that devours magic itself.
Now, branded a worthless cripple and cast into the deadly Abyss, Elara is pulled from the darkness by the outcasts of Elysium Academy-a school for heretics, psychopaths, and everything the Tower despises. Under the tutelage of a reclusive principal who knew her murdered mother, Elara will master her forbidden power and uncover the Tower's darkest secrets.
When the Five Academies Ranking Tournament arrives, Seraphina Vex stands in the arena, draped in white saintess robes, ready to claim ultimate glory. She doesn't know that a ghost from her past has clawed her way back from hell. She doesn't know that Elara is coming-and this time, the prodigal sister isn't asking for mercy. She's bringing chaos.
7.3
Clara came home from a fourteen-hour board meeting to the sound of a piercing scream in the playroom.
When she rushed in, she found her husband, Chadwick, kneeling on the floor in a panic.
But he wasn't looking at their five-year-old son, Leo, who had a massive bleeding welt on his forehead.
Instead, Chadwick was trembling as he held the nanny's daughter, Autumn, who barely had a microscopic scratch.
"She needs ice. And antibacterial ointment," Chadwick snapped, carrying the nanny's daughter away and leaving his bleeding son behind.
From that moment, the nightmare only escalated.
Chadwick ordered Clara to cook a three-hour meal for the nanny's kid, threw away Leo's favorite toys because Autumn sneezed, and even secretly took the nanny and her daughter on Leo's promised Disney trip.
The final humiliation came at the Met Gala.
Right before their sponsor speech, Chadwick received a frantic call from the nanny claiming Autumn was having a panic attack.
He abandoned Clara in front of hundreds of flashing cameras, sprinting out of the ballroom.
Clara stood completely alone, the humiliation eating through her veins like acid.
She couldn't understand how a father could call the nanny's kid his "little princess" while watching his own son cry.
Why was he treating his own flesh and blood like garbage just to play savior to another woman's child?
Suddenly, the blinding camera flashes were blocked by a massive shadow.
Erasmo Chase, the heir to New York's largest financial dynasty, stepped out of the darkness and shielded her.
"A man like that is unworthy of your grief, Ms. Best," he whispered, pressing a silk handkerchief into her trembling hand.
Looking at the sharp profile of the powerful man beside her, Clara's shock hardened into a lethal, cold fury.
She was going to dump her family's shares, crash the board, and make Chadwick lose absolutely everything.
8.0
For ten years, I played the safe, "wolfless" emotional support animal for my werewolf best friend, Finn, secretly loving him while he chased his toxic ex.
When she got engaged to a rival Alpha, he dragged me across the country to crash the mating ceremony, only to abandon me at the airport.
His terrifying older brother, Alpha Knox, picked me up instead and shattered my world with one sentence: Finn had always known how I felt, and he intentionally weaponized my devotion.
To prove how little I meant to him, Knox orchestrated a cruel test at a seedy Rogue club.
While I sat right next to Finn in a sticky booth, Knox sent over a stripper.
"You don't mind, right, Sloane? It's just a gift," Finn slurred.
Without hesitating, he let the stripper straddle him right in front of me, burying his face in her neck to chase away the pain of his ex.
A decade of my blind loyalty turned to ash in that smoke-filled room.
I hated my defective, wolfless biology, but I hated him more for treating me like a stray dog begging for scraps.
Why did I waste my entire youth protecting a male who didn't even see me as a woman?
Suffocating on shame and fury, I fled to the cramped club bathroom to hide.
*Click.*
The deadbolt slid into place, and the intoxicating scent of a violent thunderstorm and spent gunpowder swallowed me whole.
Alpha Knox Crawford stood against the locked door, his merciless eyes pinning me to the sink.