From Mafia Pawn To The Don's Queen

It wasn't a gun, but the pen in my hand was going to end my life just the same. Liam, the man I was supposed to marry in a month, pointed to the tablet on his desk. It showed a live feed of my mother’s hospital room. "Sign the confession, Ava," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. "Take the fall for the embezzlement. Or the funding for her ventilator stops in ten seconds." My heart hammered against my ribs. The crimes weren't mine. They belonged to Chloe, his mistress. But Liam Valenti, the Underboss of New York, was sacrificing me to save her. "She's fragile," he said casually, adjusting his silk cuffs. "She can't handle prison. You're strong. You'll survive." With tears blurring my vision, I signed the document. I signed away my career as a lawyer and my freedom to save my mother. Liam snatched the paper like a prize. He didn't offer comfort. He just smirked. "Good girl. The wedding is still on, of course. You'll look beautiful in the ankle monitor." He walked out to celebrate with his mistress, thinking he had won. Thinking he owned me. But he forgot one crucial detail. I wasn't just his fiancée. I was the one who laundered his money. I knew where every body was buried—literally and financially. The moment the door clicked shut, I stopped crying. I pulled out a burner phone and opened an encrypted app. I wasn't going to jail. I was going to war. I typed three words to the one man Liam feared most. "Execute Protocol Zero."

Chapters

Chapter 4

Ava POV

The hospital corridor smelled of antiseptic and impending ruin.

Liam's grip on my arm was a vice, his fingers digging into the soft flesh as he propelled me toward Room 402 like a prisoner to the gallows.

"Give me your phone," he demanded, not breaking his stride.

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

He snatched it from my hand before I could protest.

He unlocked it-he knew my passcode, of course. Possession was nine-tenths of his love language. I had never been allowed secrets. Until today.

He scrolled through the messages, his thumb moving with frantic speed.

I held my breath.

The interface showed nothing.

It was just the dummy screen Nex had installed. No texts to Ethan. No "Protocol Zero." Just mundane reminders, a grocery list, and spam.

Liam frowned, jamming the phone into his pocket.

"You're hiding something," he muttered.

We reached the room.

He didn't knock. He threw the door open so hard it bounced off the rubber stopper.

"Eleanor, I-"

He stopped.

The room was silent.

The bed was stripped to the mattress.

The monitors were dark.

The ventilator was unplugged, the cord coiled with mocking neatness on the hook.

Empty.

Liam stood frozen.

For a second, he looked like a statue, a monument to his own failure.

Then, he exploded.

He kicked the IV stand next to the bed. It crashed to the floor with a deafening clang, rolling wildly across the linoleum.

I flinched.

He saw it.

He spun around, his eyes wild.

"Where is she?" he roared.

"I don't know," I said, forcing my voice to remain steady. "Maybe they moved her for tests."

"Don't lie to me!"

He grabbed my face, his fingers digging into my jaw until I thought the bone might snap.

"You moved her. How? Who helped you?"

"I have no one, Liam!" I cried out. "You made sure of that!"

He stared at me, searching for the truth in my eyes.

Slowly, the realization dawned on him. He had lost his leverage.

The fear in his eyes was visceral. It was delicious.

"You think this changes anything?" he hissed, spittle flying from his lips. "You think because she's gone, you can leave?"

"Yes," I said. "The engagement is over. The blackmail is over."

He laughed.

It was a sound devoid of humor, dry as old bones.

"You are property, Ava. You leave when I say you leave."

He dragged me out of the room.

"Where are we going?" I struggled against him, my bad ankle throbbing with every step as I tried to keep my footing.

"To fix your mess."

He didn't take me to the car.

He dragged me through the service exit and down the connecting tunnel to the adjacent building.

The Research Center.

Also known as "The Lab."

The heart of the Valenti money laundering operation.

We took the freight elevator down to the basement.

The doors opened to a hum of servers and the cool, sterile air of climate control.

Chloe was there.

She was sitting at a terminal, looking frantic, her face pale beneath the harsh fluorescent lights.

"Liam!" she cried when she saw us. "It's gone! All of it!"

"What is gone?" Liam demanded, throwing me toward the desk.

I stumbled, catching myself on the sharp edge of a server rack.

"The laundering codes," Chloe wiled. "The algorithm for the offshore accounts. I tried to log in, and it said 'File Corrupted.' She did it! Ava deleted them!"

I looked at the screen.

I hadn't deleted them.

I had encrypted them.

Only I had the key.

"Fix it," Liam ordered me.

"No," I said.

The slap came out of nowhere.

It cracked across my cheek like a whip.

My head snapped to the side. I tasted copper flooding my mouth.

It was the first time he had ever hit me.

I touched my cheek, looking at him. My skin burned, but my resolve turned to ice.

"You coward," I whispered.

"I said fix it!" Liam yelled, his voice cracking. "The Commission is expecting the transfer by midnight! If the money doesn't move, we are dead!"

"She's lying, Liam!" Chloe pointed a manicured finger at me, her hand trembling. "She's trying to destroy us!"

Liam looked at Chloe, then at me.

He chose the lie.

He always chose the lie.

"You want to play games?" Liam grabbed me by the hair, yanking my head back.

"Liam, stop!" I screamed.

He dragged me toward the back of the room.

Toward the main server vault.

"You want to be in control?" he snarled. "Fine. You stay in there until you remember the codes."

He opened the heavy glass door of the server room.

He threw me inside.

I landed hard on the metal grating, the impact knocking the wind out of me.

"Liam, please!"

He slammed the door shut.

The electronic lock engaged with a heavy, final thud.

He stood on the other side of the glass, his face twisted with rage.

"Midnight, Ava," he said through the intercom. "Or I don't open this door."

I scrambled to the glass, pounding on it with my fists.

But then I heard it.

A low beeping sound.

Coming from the server rack behind me.

I turned around.

A small red light was blinking on a device attached to the main hard drive.

It wasn't a standard component.

It was rigged.

I looked at the timer.

Continue to next part

I found out my husband of three years had cheated on me and his mistress is the one who told me-because he didn't have the balls to do it himself. I move out and get a new apartment, a job as a bartender, and try to move on with a broken heart. I wonder where it all went wrong, if I hadn't been enough for him, if I'd been stupid for marrying him in the first place. I'm at work one night when he walks inside-the most beautiful man I've ever seen. He sits at the bar and a forest fire burns between us. I was depressed the moment before he entered, but the second I look at his blue eyes, I forget the dumpster fire that my life has become. I invite him back to my place and it's the most passionate night of my life. I expect to never see him again. I just want him as an anti-depressant-but he wants me all to himself. I just got my heart ripped out of my chest so I want something easy and no-strings-attached, but he wants all the strings because he's hooked. I don't get much of a say in the matter, and that's not surprising when I learn why-because he's the Butcher. The crime lord of all crime lords, the boss that overshadows all of Paris, that makes everyone abide by his rules-or pay. And now I'm his.

Billionaire Mafia Modern

9.5

Discarded Wife: The Shadow Strategist Returns

9.5

I stood in the center of the ballroom, watching my husband accept credit for the massacre I had meticulously planned. To the underworld, Craig Snyder was the King, a strategic genius who had crippled the Russian mafia. To me, he was the man who had just re-gifted my anniversary present—a Patek Philippe watch—to match the diamond bracelet dangling from his mistress’s wrist. The Senator’s daughter, Chanel, laughed at a joke only he could hear, wearing a red dress and a look of naive adoration that used to be mine. When I confronted him, expecting an apology, Craig didn't just dismiss me. He slapped me across the face in front of the city's elite, the sound echoing like a gunshot. He yanked the wedding ring off my finger, drawing blood, and placed it into Chanel’s palm, calling me a hysterical, barren relic. Later, I found the forged documents. He had signed my name to transfer every asset we built together into his sole possession, leaving me with nothing but a hush-money check. He thought I was just a scorned wife. He forgot that I was the architect of his empire. So, I drove my car off a bridge. I let the world believe I was dead. I let him mourn the woman he destroyed while I watched from the shadows, erasing his existence from my accounts. Six months later, at the Global Crime Summit, Craig stood up with a diamond ring, ready to beg my memory for forgiveness. But the doors opened, and I didn't walk in alone. I walked onto the stage holding the hand of his deadliest rival, Felix Tyson. I wasn't there to take him back. I was there to take his kingdom.

Mafia Modern Romance

7.6

Divorce Unleashed Her: The Mafia Empress Awakens

7.6

She was the heir of a criminal syndicate, bred to command the underworld. For seven years she loved the wrong man, serving his family and building their fortune. Her payment was betrayal-his affair with her best friend. During her three-year coma, he hissed, "Don't wake up." They carried on at her bedside, then plotted her death to steal the company. She woke anyway and shattered them, rattling high society as a mafia heir and lethal fighter who ran the black-market economy. He begged. She kicked him aside and chose the man who'd waited a decade-the world's top arms dealer. "I'm yours."

Mafia Modern Romance

8.3

Fake Amnesia, Real Betrayal: I Left, He Crawled Back

8.3

In the fifth year of Irene Shaw's marriage to Ethan Hart, he was involved in a car accident and lost his memory. No matter how she tried to prove that they had once loved each other, Ethan still insisted on a divorce. His reasoning was hard to refute. "If I really loved you as much as you claim, how could I forget you?" The childhood sweetheart who had once cut him off without hesitation had now become his sole emotional anchor. He looked at Irene coldly. "Since you know this is a mistake, why not end it cleanly?" The hands that had once refused to let her go now recoiled from even her lightest touch. Disheartened and exhausted, Irene signed her name and pushed him completely out of her life. Not long after, Ethan stopped her in the rain, his eyes red from crying. "Irene, don't leave me. You said I'd never lose you." As the car window slid shut, the arm around her waist tightened instinctively, and someone spoke before she could. "Drive on. Irene said she doesn't know him." She lowered her gaze, feeling a serene detachment, "I really don't know him."

Mafia Modern Romance

7.6

He Faked Death, I Married The Don

7.6

I was arranging white lilies on the cold marble of my husband's grave when I saw a ghost. Walking through the cemetery gates was a man who looked exactly like my dead husband, Dante. Logic said it was his twin brother, Matteo. But a wife knows the slope of a man's shoulders. She knows the arrogant tilt of his chin. My husband hadn't been blown up in a car bomb three years ago. He had faked his death to steal his brother's rank, his fortune, and his mistress. For three years, I had forced our son, Leo, to kiss a photograph goodnight. We lived in a damp, peeling apartment, surviving on the "charity" of the Family. Meanwhile, Dante was living in a mansion, driving cars that cost more than my life, playing house with another woman. When he came to our cramped apartment to drop off the monthly "pension" money, pretending to be Uncle Matteo, he didn't look at me with love. He looked at his watch. When Leo ran to hug him, shouting "Papa," Dante peeled the boy's small arms off his expensive suit like he was removing a piece of lint. "Don't call me that," he snapped. "I am your Uncle." My grief turned into ice. He chose another woman's comfort over his own son's hunger. I grabbed Leo's hand and walked out the door. "You walk away, and you get nothing!" Dante shouted after me. "You'll be on the street!" I didn't stop. I walked straight to the black SUV idling at the curb. The window rolled down, revealing Salvatore Vitiello. The Don. The most lethal man in the city. "Get in, Elena," he commanded. I opened the door and slid onto the leather seat next to the devil himself. As we drove away, leaving my husband in the dust, I realized I had just traded a liar for a killer. And I didn't regret it for a second.

Mafia Modern Romance

8.3

Revenge Is Sweet: Marrying His Worst Enemy

8.3

I was staring at the two pink lines on the plastic stick, trembling with the terrifying joy of carrying the heir to the New York underworld’s most ruthless faction. Then the intercom buzzed, and a voice splintered my world. "The little art student actually thinks I'm going to marry her? It was just a game to pass the time while you were in Europe, Estella." I froze. My boyfriend, Holden, was in the next room, laughing with the daughter of his rival. He explained that I was just a "clean civilian image" he needed to secure a business deal. Now that the deal was signed, he was dumping the "stray" to marry the "Queen." I tried to run, but freedom only lasted forty-eight hours. Holden didn't just break my heart; he turned my terror into content. He kidnapped me, tied me to a chair at the edge of a cliff, and forced me to choose between my life and his new fiancée's. Then, he pushed me off the edge. As gravity snatched me, I heard him laughing. I landed on a stunt airbag. It was just a "social experiment." A sick prank for his amusement. "Don't be so dramatic, Kenia," he called down. "It's just a game." He thought I was broken. He thought I was just a prop in his life. But he forgot that I knew his secrets. I dragged my injured body to a payphone and dialed the one number Holden told me to fear—the rival Don, Gael Simpson. "It's Kenia," I whispered, clutching the receiver like a lifeline. "I'm calling in the debt."

Action Mafia Romance

From Mafia Pawn To The Don's Queen

Chapter 4

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