Escaping the Pawn, Ensnaring the Don
"My father sold me to a sixty-year-old monster to clear his gambling debts. So, I made a desperate gamble of my own."
Seventeen-year-old Isabella Rossi has two choices: become the broken plaything of a sadistic mafia Capo, or do the unthinkable. She chooses the latter. Sneaking into a high-end speakeasy, she slips an aphrodisiac into the whiskey of the deadliest man in New York—Damien Falcone, the ruthless Underboss of the Falcone family.
Her plan was simple: steal his seed, secure his protection, and run.
But you don’t drug a predator and expect to walk away.
When Damien wakes up, he doesn’t kill her. Instead, he claims her.
"You intercepted a delivery meant for my enemy. Turns out, it was you. Now, you are my Collateral."
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Chapter 6
Isabella POV
The heavy oak door swung open. Luca stepped into the study, the polite, professional mask of a Commission emissary firmly in place. Then, his eyes landed on the leather chair. On Damien. On me.
He stopped dead. The color drained from his face. "Izzy?"
The childhood nickname hung in the heavy, cigar-scented air like a death sentence.
Panic screamed in my veins, but survival demanded a performance. I didn't pull away. Instead, I forced my muscles to relax, pressing my back flush against Damien's hard chest and deliberately hooking my arm around his thick neck. I offered Luca a cool, dismissive smile.
*Leave, Luca. Please, just leave.*
The act didn't fool Luca—his eyes widened with horrified realization—but it ignited Damien. The arm around my waist tightened into a steel trap, bruising my ribs. He was a predator sensing a threat to his territory.
Damien’s amber eyes flicked to a crystal decanter on the side table. "Pour me a whiskey," he ordered me, his tone leaving no room for argument.
It was a test. A public display of obedience. But if I acted like a terrified prisoner, Luca would try to save me and sign his own death warrant.
I looked from the decanter back to Damien and let out a practiced, spoiled sigh. "I'm not a servant, Damien," I pouted, lacing my voice with shallow entitlement. "I thought you brought me here to enjoy myself."
Audaciously, I settled my weight back onto his lap.
Damien’s eyes flashed with sudden, violent anger, but beneath it, a flicker of dark amusement danced. "Insolent girl," he growled. His large hands gripped my hips, physically pushing me off his lap. I stumbled slightly, but before I could catch my balance, he leaned in, his breath hot against my ear. "Don't go far. Wait outside the door."
I smoothed my skirt, gave Luca one last bored glance, and walked out into the dimly lit, wood-paneled hallway.
The heavy door clicked shut, but it couldn't entirely block the sound of the men inside. I pressed my back against the wall, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"I've known her since she was a child," Luca's muffled voice bled through the wood, tight with suppressed panic. "If she's being held against her will, I beg you to let her go."
Damien’s scoff was a low, dangerous rumble. "You have feelings for her, Viti?"
"She's like a sister to me."
"Fine," Damien said, his voice dripping with chilling mockery. "Go ask her yourself. See if your precious Izzy wants to trade these walls for a tenement slum. The choice is hers."
The door opened. Luca stepped into the hallway, his eyes immediately locking onto mine. He closed the distance, his hand reaching out to grab my arm. "Izzy, what is happening—"
"What is this trash doing here?"
A furious, shrill voice cut through the corridor. Bianca Carbone stood at the end of the hall, flanked by two massive guards. Her beautiful face was twisted into a mask of pure contempt. She ignored Luca entirely, her venomous glare fixed on me. "I should have known he'd pick up a rat from the gutter."
She is the Mafia Princess of the Carbone family and Damien Falcone's former fiancée.
Before Bianca could take another step toward the study, Damien’s massive frame filled the doorway. His face was thunderous, his aura suffocatingly dark.
"Leo," Damien said, his voice lethally calm.
Leo 'The Bear' Gallo stepped out from the shadows.
"Remove Miss Carbone from my property. Now."
"Damien, you can't—" Bianca sputtered, but Leo unceremoniously grabbed her arm, dragging the enraged Mafia princess down the hall and out of sight.
The silence that followed was deafening. Luca turned back to me, his eyes pleading. "Izzy, listen to me. I can get you away. My family has a place upstate. We can hide you, give you a new life. Please."
Looking at his earnest, honorable face, a sharp, agonizing pain ripped through my chest. This was the life I could have had. Safety. Decency. But the reality of Bianca's hatred and Damien's lethal possessiveness had just been laid bare. If Luca helped me, he would die.
I had to sever this tie. Completely.
I forced a cruel smirk onto my face, my fingers rising to trace the cold, heavy ruby necklace at my throat. "Go back to the country, Luca?" I scoffed, injecting every ounce of materialistic poison I could muster into my voice. "And do what? Milk cows? I like it here. I like the jewels, the dresses... I like the power."
Luca recoiled as if I had slapped him.
"He gives me everything I want," I continued, each word a dagger driven into my own heart. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to wait for my master."
Devastation washed over Luca's face. The girl he knew from Little Italy was dead to him.
Damien stepped fully out of the study, a faint, cruel smile playing on his lips. He had watched the entire execution. "Leaving so soon, Viti?" he mocked. "You should stay for dinner."
Luca stiffened, his posture rigid with defeat. He turned to leave, but he couldn't stop himself from glancing back at me one last time. "Will... will she be joining you?"
Damien’s smile vanished instantly. He looked at me, his amber eyes stripping away my humanity until I was nothing but an object.
"She is my *Collateral*," Damien stated, his voice dropping to an arctic chill that froze the blood in my veins. "She doesn't have a seat at the table. She eats when and where I tell her to."
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7.2
Title- A Name Without A Past
Author- Abraham Tejiri Onojighofia
Genre: Psychological Suspense Romance / Crime Thriller
Tagline: Memory lies. Danger doesn't..
Larry awakens in an abandoned hospital with no name, no past, and no memories-except one. A woman's face. Her voice. Her presence. The single image floating in the hollow wreckage of his mind is so sharp, so undeniable, that he knows she matters. He doesn't know who he is, but he knows he must find her.
Moments after he escapes the hospital, someone tries to kill him.
Driven by instinct and the one memory he trusts, Larry follows the fragment of recognition until it leads him to Ella Morgan, a composed and fiercely intelligent homicide detective. But instead of relief, he's met with confusion. Ella has never seen him before. According to her, he is a stranger.
But danger arrives before either of them can walk away.
A sudden attack convinces Ella that Larry is not lying-someone wants him dead. And the attempt on his life mirrors the recent string of unsolved murders she is investigating. Against policy and against her better judgment, Ella takes him under temporary protection. Immediately, unsettling cracks begin to appear in her certainty.
Larry recognizes places connected to the case.
He reacts to threats with a trained instinct he can't explain.
And his fragmented flashbacks seem tied to secrets Ella wasn't supposed to uncover.
As they race to piece together his missing identity, a darker truth begins to emerge. Larry's amnesia is no accident. Evidence points to a covert operation, a covered-up crime, and powerful enemies determined to bury the truth permanently. His erased memory may hold the key to a conspiracy that reaches into the police force, the city's elite-and Ella's own past.
With each step closer to the truth, the connection between them deepens. Larry feels drawn to her with an unshakable certainty that defies logic, while Ella fights the pull of a man who may be the missing link to her most dangerous case yet.
But as Larry's memories begin to return, so does a chilling realization:
Ella wasn't just a face in his mind. She was the last person he tried to protect before everything went dark.
Now, the enemies hunting Larry have turned their sights on her.
In a deadly race against a faceless adversary, Larry and Ella must unravel the past he's forgotten before it destroys them both. Because the silence Larry woke up with isn't empty-it's hiding a witness, a secret, and a truth someone is willing to kill to keep buried.
And the closer the truth gets, the more dangerous remembering becomes.
7.1
He doesn't believe in love.
He believes in ownership.
Lucien Vale built his empire the same way he destroys his enemies-quietly, strategically, without mercy. To the world, he's the youngest billionaire in Europe. To those who cross him, he's something far darker.
They call him The Devil in a Suit.
When struggling art conservator Amara Rossi unknowingly restores a painting tied to one of Lucien's most dangerous secrets, she becomes collateral in a war she never saw coming. To protect her-and control the damage-Lucien does what he does best.
He claims her.
What begins as a contract meant to silence her turns into an obsession neither of them expected. Amara refuses to be owned. Lucien has never been denied.
But behind Lucien's cold precision is a man forged by betrayal, raised in violence, and taught that love is a weakness exploited by enemies. And behind Amara's defiance is a woman who has spent her life surviving powerful men.
Their chemistry is volatile. Their power dynamic intoxicating.
Their connection? Terrifyingly real.
Because the devil doesn't fall in love.
He possesses.
And when Lucien realizes he would burn empires for her, the question isn't whether he can keep Amara-
It's whether she can survive being claimed by him.
7.8
She once called him her husband.
Now, she calls him a devil.
After catching her husband in his ex's house one too many times, she walked away,pregnant, broken, and done.
Four years later, fate laughs when she runs into him again, more powerful, colder, and dangerously obsessed.
He wants her back, but not for love. For revenge. For reasons buried beneath his arrogance and her silence.
But as she fights the pull between hate and desire, she learns something terrifying
The devil she runs into might not be the same man she divorced.
He's darker, hungrier... and this time, he's not letting her go.
7.9
Ten minutes. That was how close I was to handing my fiancé the keys to a three-hundred-million-dollar empire built on my code.
But when I walked into the office, his mistress was sitting in my chair, spinning the pen I bought him for our anniversary.
Caleb didn't even look up. He told me the investors wanted stability, not a pregnant woman. He called our unborn child a "liability" and ordered security to escort me out of the building I paid for.
I went home to pack, only to find a burner phone hidden in the closet. The texts were brutal. He called me an "incubator." He said once the deal was signed, he’d take the baby and dump the "nerd."
When he caught me with the phone, he didn't apologize. He dragged me by my hair and threw me into the soundproof panic room to keep me quiet until the deal closed.
"Caleb, please! I'm bleeding!"
I pounded on the steel door until my hands were raw. But he just locked it and went to eat pizza with his mistress.
Alone in the dark, on the freezing concrete, I felt the life inside me slip away. He hadn't just stolen my company; he had killed my child.
He thought I was broken. He thought I was just "the help." But he forgot one thing: I built the security system he was trying to sell.
Three days later, I rolled my wheelchair into his victory press conference, flanked by his biggest rival.
"Do you trust your new code, Caleb?"
"Because I wrote the backdoor. And I just opened it."
8.1
On my wedding day, the wedding planner looked at me with pity in her eyes.
She told me the groom had called with a last-minute request. He wanted the name on the floral arch changed from "Elena" to "Sofia."
Five years of loyalty to Dante Romero, and I found out he was planning a "secret" ceremony with his mistress an hour before ours.
He claimed she was dying of cancer. He said it was her final wish to be a bride, and that as a good mafia wife, I should understand. He swore it was just charity.
But I had seen the texts where he called me "furniture."
I had watched him step over my body when I fell down the stairs at a club, just so he could leave with her.
And this morning, I watched Sofia walk into the hotel lobby wearing *my* custom French lace wedding dress, smirking as she clung to his arm.
Dante thinks I'm crying in the bridal suite.
He thinks I will sit in the front row of his "fake" wedding and wait for my turn like a dutiful puppet.
He is wrong.
I wiped my tears and picked up my phone. I didn't cancel the wedding date. I just changed the location to the ballroom next door.
And I changed the groom.
As Dante says his vows to his mistress, I am walking down the aisle to meet the only man the Romero family fears.
The Reaper.
9.5
On her second wedding anniversary, Andrea Reed discovers the ultimate betrayal.
Her husband wants a divorce. Her stepsister is his mistress.And the family empire she protected is nothing more than a prize they've been plotting to steal. Before she can fight back, Andrea is pushed off a cliff-pregnant, broken, and filled with regret.
But death isn't the end. She wakes up five years in the past. Her father is alive. Her inheritance is still in her hands. And the man who killed her is smiling like he's in love.
This time, Andrea won't be naive. She plays the perfect fiancée while secretly collecting evidence, turns traps into public humiliation. She lets her enemies destroy themselves from within.
And when a powerful, dangerously enigmatic billionaire-Samuel Kingswell-crosses her path again, Andrea realizes something even more terrifying than betrayal: In her first life, she chose the wrong man.
In this life, she will choose power and revenge, make them beg before they fall. Because this time, the woman they tried to kill is no longer a victim.
She is the hunter.