From Discarded Wife To Scent Queen

My husband, the ruthless Underboss of the Ewing crime family, was terrified of one thing: his dead fiancée’s memory. Or rather, her living sister, Ivana, who used that memory to turn my life into a living hell. To "apologize" for humiliating me at a gala, Corbett brought me a peace offering: a green macaron. "Pistachio," he promised. "Your favorite." I took one bite, and my throat instantly seized. It felt like barbed wire tightening around my windpipe. It wasn't pistachio. It was almond paste. Corbett knew I was deadly allergic. He used to carry my EpiPen on our first dates. As I collapsed to the floor, wheezing and clawing at my neck, a scream ripped from the guest wing. "Corbett! Help! They're posting mean comments about me again!" Ivana. Corbett looked down at me, his dying wife, and then looked toward the hallway where Ivana was crying over Instagram. He hesitated for only a second. Then he pulled his leg away from my grasping hand. "I'll be right back," he said, turning his back on me. "Just... use your pen." He ran to comfort a healthy woman while I crawled across the carpet, vision tunneling, forcing the needle into my own thigh to restart my heart. As I lay there shaking, listening to him soothe her, the last thread of love snapped. I didn't call an ambulance. I pulled a burner phone from behind the vanity mirror and texted the one man Corbett feared more than death—his rival, Don Kain Solomon. "I accept. Get me out."

Chapters

Chapter 1

My husband, the ruthless Underboss of the Ewing crime family, was terrified of one thing: his dead fiancée’s memory.

Or rather, her living sister, Ivana, who used that memory to turn my life into a living hell.

To "apologize" for humiliating me at a gala, Corbett brought me a peace offering: a green macaron.

"Pistachio," he promised. "Your favorite."

I took one bite, and my throat instantly seized. It felt like barbed wire tightening around my windpipe.

It wasn't pistachio. It was almond paste.

Corbett knew I was deadly allergic. He used to carry my EpiPen on our first dates.

As I collapsed to the floor, wheezing and clawing at my neck, a scream ripped from the guest wing.

"Corbett! Help! They're posting mean comments about me again!"

Ivana.

Corbett looked down at me, his dying wife, and then looked toward the hallway where Ivana was crying over Instagram.

He hesitated for only a second.

Then he pulled his leg away from my grasping hand.

"I'll be right back," he said, turning his back on me. "Just... use your pen."

He ran to comfort a healthy woman while I crawled across the carpet, vision tunneling, forcing the needle into my own thigh to restart my heart.

As I lay there shaking, listening to him soothe her, the last thread of love snapped.

I didn't call an ambulance.

I pulled a burner phone from behind the vanity mirror and texted the one man Corbett feared more than death—his rival, Don Kain Solomon.

"I accept. Get me out."

Chapter 1

Jenna Jarvis POV

I lay in the cold center of a bed that cost more than my father's entire life savings, realizing my marriage wasn't just dying; it was being murdered by a ghost.

The scratching at the door started at 2:00 AM.

It was a sound like rats in the walls, but I knew it was something far more vermin-like than a rodent.

Corbett shifted beside me.

His body went rigid, the muscle in his arm twitching against my shoulder.

He wasn't reaching for the gun on the nightstand-the heavy Glock 19 that signified his rank as the Underboss of the Ewing crime family.

He was reaching for his robe.

"She's here," he whispered, his voice thick with a concern that used to belong to me.

I shut my eyes.

I forced my breathing to slow, feigning sleep because the humiliation of witnessing this ritual for the nine hundred and eighty-sixth time was too heavy to bear with my eyes open.

The door creaked open.

Ivana stood there.

Even through my eyelashes, the silhouette was unmistakable.

She was draped in Elenor's silk robe, the peach one Corbett had bought for his late fiancée a week before the car bomb took her life.

She clutched a pillow to her chest, looking small, fragile, and entirely calculated.

"Corbett," she whimpered. "The nightmares. I see the fire again."

Corbett was out of bed before the sentence ended.

He went to her, his bare feet silent on the plush carpet, and wrapped his arms around the woman who made my life a living hell.

"I've got you, Ivana," he murmured, his hand stroking her hair. "I promised Elenor I'd protect you. I'm here."

He guided her toward the chaise lounge in the corner of our master suite.

This was the sanctity of a Made Man's bedroom, a place where Omertà should have extended to the sheets, a fortress no outsider should breach.

Yet here she was: the sister-in-law, the manipulator, the snake in the garden.

I lay still, my fingernails digging into the Egyptian cotton sheets.

Corbett Ewing was a man who commanded legions of soldiers, a man who could order a hit on a rival with a nod of his head.

But in this room, he was a puppet dancing on the strings of a dead woman's memory.

He settled her down, tucking a blanket around her legs with a tenderness that made bile rise in my throat.

"Is she asleep?" Ivana asked, her voice raising just enough to ensure I heard it.

"Yes," Corbett whispered. "Keep your voice down. She had a long day at the lab."

"She smells like chemicals," Ivana said, wrinkling her nose. "It triggers my migraines."

I didn't smell like chemicals.

I smelled like L'Heure Bleue and the distinct, metallic tang of misery.

I possessed the "Nose," a genetic gift from my father, the late Consigliere.

I could smell the cyanide in a glass of wine from across a table, and right now, I could smell the distinct, cloying scent of Ivana's triumph.

Corbett didn't defend me.

He just sighed. "Try to sleep, Ivana."

I waited until his breathing evened out, watching him sit in the chair beside her, guarding her sleep while his wife lay alone.

I slipped out of bed, silent as a shadow.

I retreated to the en-suite bathroom and locked the door.

The click of the lock was the loudest sound in the world.

I sat on the cold tile floor and pulled a burner phone from the hollow space behind the vanity mirror.

One new message.

The position in Grasse is yours. The lab is ready. Neutral territory. My protection is absolute. - K.S.

Kain Solomon.

The Don of the rival family. The man Corbett hated more than the Feds. The man who looked at me not as a piece of furniture, but as a weapon.

I stared at the screen.

Leaving a Mafia marriage wasn't a breakup; it was a death sentence.

But staying here was a slow suicide.

Suddenly, a scream shattered the silence of the suite.

"Jenna! Get off me! Help!"

My blood ran cold.

I wasn't even in the room.

I shoved the phone back into its hiding spot and unlocked the door, throwing it open.

Ivana was thrashing on the chaise lounge, clutching her throat, her eyes wide with theatrical terror.

Corbett was shaking her shoulders. "Ivana! What is it?"

"She tried to strangle me!" Ivana shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the bathroom door where I stood, frozen. "She came out of the dark and choked me!"

It was a lie so blatant, so physically impossible, that I almost laughed.

I had been locked in the bathroom. The distance was twenty feet.

Corbett turned to me.

His eyes were dark, devoid of the logic that made him a successful racketeer.

"Jenna," he growled, his voice dropping to that lethal register he used for enemies. "What did you do?"

"I was in the bathroom, Corbett," I said, my voice steady. "The door was locked. You heard the click."

"I heard you moving," he snapped. "She's shaking. Look at her."

Ivana sobbed, burying her face in his chest. "She hates me because I remind you of Elenor. She wants me dead."

"Apologize," Corbett demanded.

I stared at him.

This man, who had sworn before God and the Commission to cherish me.

He was looking at his wife and seeing a monster, while holding the devil in his arms.

"No," I said.

"Jenna," he warned, stepping toward me. "She is fragile. She is Elenor's blood. Apologize for scaring her."

"I didn't touch her."

"Apologize!" he roared, the sound vibrating through the walls.

I looked at his hand, clenched into a fist at his side.

I looked at Ivana, who was peeking out from his chest with a dry, smirk-twisted mouth.

The flame inside me, the one that had kept me warm through three years of neglect, flickered and went out.

It was replaced by a cold, dark void.

"I'm sorry," I said, my voice hollow.

Corbett relaxed, thinking he had won.

"I'm sorry," I repeated, looking directly at him, "that you are too blind to see you are sleeping with a corpse."

Continue to next part

Title: 365: The Architecture of Yearning Five years. That's how long Sebastian Moretti has been a ghost, haunting the streets of London in search of the girl with green eyes who shattered his cold, Sicilian heart. To the world, Sebastian is the "King of Shadows"-a man of ice, blood, and absolute power. But in the silence of his private villa, he is a man hollowed out by a single, obsessive memory. He didn't just want a woman; he wanted the soul of the girl who didn't even know his name. When he finally takes her, he gives her a choice that feels like a sentence: 365 days to fall in love with him, or she goes free. Elara Vance was a woman of logic, a quiet architect building a life out of glass and steel in London. She never expected to be the centerpiece of a mafia king's obsession. She should hate him for the gilded cage he's built for her. She should run from the darkness that follows him like a shroud. But as the days bleed into nights, the lines between captive and queen begin to blur. Behind Sebastian's terrifying dominance is a raw, agonizing yearning that pulls at Elara's soul. In the heat of the Sicilian sun and the unfiltered intimacy of the midnight hours, she discovers that the man who stole her is the only one who truly sees her. As a Russian war looms and betrayals surface from within, Elara must decide: is she a prisoner of his walls, or the architect of his heart? In a world where every touch is a claim and every kiss is a battle, 365 days might not be enough. Because once the monster falls in love, he doesn't just want your time. He wants your forever.

Horror Mafia Romance

9.7

He Broke Her Heart, She Broke His Bank

9.7

I was the architect of my husband's legitimate empire, the queen to his throne as the Don of a powerful crime family. Our home was our sanctuary, our bed the one sacred place he always returned to. But in the middle of the night, I woke to a woman's moan coming from a guest room that was supposed to be empty. The space beside me was cold; my husband, Brendan, was gone. The woman's voice belonged to Kiya, my protégée—a girl I’d mentored like a sister. Through the door, I heard him call me "a piece of furniture that sleeps soundly." I heard him tell her she possessed something I didn't. Then, a video confirmed the ultimate betrayal: a four-year affair, a pregnancy, and his casual dismissal of me as a business arrangement. He called me a title, but he called another woman's child his heir. He had broken the one rule that held our world together, turning my life's work into ash. He thought I was just a fixture in his grand design, a brilliant mind he could control and discard. He was wrong. There was only one way to escape this agony. I would have every memory of him surgically cut from my mind, erase him from my soul like a cancer, and disappear so completely that not even a ghost of me remained.

Mafia Modern Romance

8.0

He Chose The Mistress, I Took Everything

8.0

On the night of our fifth anniversary, I wasn't drinking champagne. I was standing in the shadows of my husband's study, clutching an encrypted drive I found taped behind our wedding photo. It contained the blueprints to a life Dante was building with another woman—Sofia Ricci, the daughter of our sworn enemy. He wasn't just cheating on me. He was using the Port Redevelopment project I had spent two years designing to launder the money he needed to run away with her. When I confronted him, Dante didn't beg for forgiveness. He looked at me with the cold indifference of a Capo and told me to fix my face for dinner. The humiliation didn't stop there. He forced me to share a car with his mistress while my ankle was swollen and throbbing from a fall. He fussed over Sofia’s "delicate" motion sickness while ignoring my pain completely. "Elena is sturdy," he dismissed. Sturdy. Like a mule. Like a table he owned. He even stripped me of my rank, handing my multi-million dollar operation to Sofia simply because she had a "vision" for glass walls. He thought I was just a compliant wife, a placeholder to keep his books clean while he played house with his true love. He forgot that while he was the muscle, I was the architect. So, at the Family Gala, wearing a backless revenge dress, I didn't just ask for a separation. I threw a glass of champagne in his face and announced to the entire underworld that the accounts were empty. I didn't just leave him. I took the encryption keys, the money, and his entire future with me.

Mafia Modern Romance

9.6

My Best Friend's Dad Married Me

9.6

When the boy I had loved in silence for five years dropped to one knee and proposed to the very girl who had bullied me, the entire room burst into laughter at my expense. "That fat, ugly Lydia Prescott actually thinks she has a shot with a mafia boss?" In a single night, I became the city's favorite punchline. I fled in humiliation. The next time I appeared, I had transformed. The weight was gone, and so was the ridicule. I stunned everyone into silence. Miles Calloway begged through tears for another chance, but I simply slipped my arm through the arm of the mafia godfather beside me and smiled. "Sorry. I'm married." The man rumored to be cold-blooded and untouchable pulled me closer and declared with chilling certainty, "Lydia is my wife." The room erupted. Only my best friend, Annie Sinclair, gasped, "Lydia, you seriously locked down my dad?"

Mafia Modern Romance

7.3

Reborn From Ashes: The Mafia Bride's Revenge

7.3

I was the daughter of a loyal Mafia Capo, arranged to marry the Underboss of the Moretti family. But I gave my heart to his brother, Marco, who promised to break the betrothal and protect me. When I went into premature labor in a freezing, abandoned warehouse, Marco didn't come to save me. He sent my cousin, Caitlin. With a mocking smile, she told me Marco despised my "filthy Irish blood" and that my pregnancy was just a temporary amusement. Then, she pulled out a hunting knife. She pinned me down, sliced my abdomen open, and smothered my newborn baby right in front of my eyes. "He agreed that this inconvenience needs to be removed," she whispered. She revealed that she and Marco had orchestrated my father's murder to secure Mafia shipping routes. Then, she casually knocked over a kerosene lantern, locking the heavy metal door to let me and my dead child burn to ash. While they headed to a high-society gala to celebrate my "accidental" death and their new power, I lay in the roaring flames. As the fire blistered my skin and I held my baby's lifeless body, my suffocating despair froze into a razor-sharp rage. My entire life, my family, and my love had been built on their calculated lies. But they made one fatal mistake. I didn't die in that inferno. I dragged my ruined body out of the ashes, wrapped myself in a blood-soaked coat, and walked straight into their celebration banquet to become their goddamn reckoning.

Action Mafia Romance

7.5

Reborn Heiress: Pampered By The Ruthless Don

7.5

The man smiling in the silver frame on my vanity was the very same man who, in exactly three months, would wrap his hands around my throat. I knew this because I had already died. I had felt the freezing, silty water of the Hudson River fill my lungs while Alexander watched the life drain from my eyes, his mistress laughing in the background. I had hovered like a ghost above my own funeral, watching the betrayal continue even after my death. My mother, the perfect Mafia widow, stood stoically next to my killer, unaware she had sold her daughter to a butcher. My fiancé checked his watch, bored, waiting to liquidate my inheritance. But then I saw him. Darrian Golden. The Don of the rival clan. The enemy. He stood in the pouring rain, his expensive suit soaked through, staring at my coffin as if the world had ended. When the earth hit the wood, he didn't just cry; he roared in primal agony. My fiancé killed me, but my enemy was the only one who mourned me. "The Commission is waiting," my mother’s voice snapped the timeline back into place. She stood in my doorway, demanding I set the engagement date to secure the territory. She saw a charming Capo; I saw the rat who had cut my father's brake lines. In my first life, I was a trembling bird. In this life, I was the match that would burn the cage down. I smashed the photo frame against the marble table, the sound cracking through the room like a gunshot. "Contact the Golden Clan," I commanded. My mother went pale. "He is a savage, Azalea. He butchers men for sport." "Tell Don Golden that Azalea Kidd is offering a parley," I said, looking out the window at the city that would soon be ours. "Tell him I am offering the only thing he has ever wanted: Me."

Billionaire Fantasy Mafia

From Discarded Wife To Scent Queen

Chapter 1

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