From Tortured Wife To Mafia Queen
I posted a photo of baby shoes to celebrate my pregnancy. Two hours later, my husband was holding jumper cables.
Kaeden, the Mafia Capo who swore to protect me, stood under the buzzing fluorescent lights of the basement.
He didn't look like the man who brought me vanilla lattes. He looked like a monster.
His "fragile" childhood friend, Clemmie, had convinced him that my innocent post was a signal to our enemies.
"Discipline," Kaeden muttered, refusing to look at my weeping face. "She needs to learn the cost of her voice."
He ordered low voltage—just enough to scare me.
But the moment he walked out the door, unable to watch, Clemmie smiled.
"He's not coming back for you," she whispered.
She cranked the dial all the way to the right.
She didn't just want to teach me a lesson. She wanted to stop my heart so she could harvest it for herself.
And my husband had already signed the release forms.
But they made one mistake. They left the cleanup to Alois, the family's most ruthless Enforcer.
He didn't bury me. He saved me.
Now, while Kaeden cries over a fake grave, consumed by guilt, I am watching from the shadows.
Daria Burris died in that chair.
The woman who survived is coming for blood.
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Chapter 4
Daria POV:
The car ride was a dizzying smear of neon lights and agonizing bumps.
Every vibration sent a fresh spasm of nausea rolling through me.
Alois drove with one hand on the wheel, the other pressing a towel hard against the bleeding wound on my arm.
"Don't sleep," he commanded.
"It hurts," I mumbled, my words slurring.
"Good. Pain means you're alive."
He swerved sharply into an alleyway behind a dilapidated veterinary clinic.
Not a hospital.
We couldn't go to a hospital. Kaeden had eyes everywhere.
Alois kicked the back door open, hauling me out and carrying me inside.
The sharp sting of antiseptic mixed with the earthy scent of dog food hit me.
A man in a lab coat rushed out.
He wasn't Dr. Gates.
He was older, his hands shaking.
"Alois? You said you were bringing a dog with a gunshot wound!" the vet stammered, eyes widening.
"Plans changed," Alois growled, depositing me on the cold stainless steel table. "Save her. And the child."
"I'm a vet! I can't-I treat animals, I don't-"
Alois pulled a gun and slammed it on the counter.
"You're a doctor. Figure it out."
The vet swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing, and grabbed a stethoscope.
He ripped open my blouse.
He hissed through his teeth when he saw the burns.
"Electrical," he muttered, horror in his voice. "Who did this?"
"Is there a heartbeat?" Alois asked, cutting through the question.
The vet moved the ultrasound probe over my bruised stomach.
Silence.
My world stopped.
Please. God, please. Take me, but not him.
Whoosh-whoosh. Whoosh-whoosh.
A faint, rapid rhythm filled the room.
I let out a sob that felt like it tore my chest open.
"Fetal heartbeat is distressed but present," the vet said, working with frantic efficiency now. "She's dehydrated. In shock. Severe electrical trauma. I need to stabilize her before her kidneys shut down."
"Do it," Alois said.
He stood by the door, watching the alley, his gun loose but ready in hand.
I looked at him, vision swimming.
"Why?" I whispered.
He turned his gaze to me.
For the first time, I saw something other than cold lethality in his eyes.
I saw a debt.
"Three years ago," he said quietly. "My daughter. Leukemia. The insurance company denied the experimental treatment. You were on the board of the charity."
I blinked, the memory hazy through the pain.
I had signed thousands of papers.
"You pushed it through," he said. "You paid the deductible from your personal account. You didn't know who I was. You just saw a dying girl."
Tears leaked from my eyes, hot tracks on my cold skin.
"She lived?"
"She's seven now," Alois said, his voice softening just a fraction. "She likes horses."
He looked away, his jaw tightening.
"Kaeden threw you away like garbage. But to me... you are the reason my world still spins."
The vet stuck a needle in my arm.
"I'm giving her a sedative," the vet said. "She needs to rest to lower the stress on the fetus."
The room began to tilt and spin.
"Kaeden..." I murmured, the drug pulling me under like a heavy tide.
"Kaeden is dead to you," Alois's voice was the last thing I heard. "You died in a fire tonight, Daria. The woman you were is gone."
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8.6
For six years, Lainey devoted herself to Jeremy, earning only ridicule from their social circle.
Everything changed when she overheard him tell his lover, "She's nothing but a lapdog."
Heartbroken, Lainey found solace with a supposed escort.
People thought it was a ploy to win Jeremy back, but Lainey only scoffed. "He's just a housekeeper's son faking his status. Without me, he's nothing."
Then everyone realized she was the real powerhouse, owning both elite society and the underworld.
Jeremy begged in vain; Lainey never looked back.
Her new man, supposedly a gigolo but secretly high society's elite, kissed her before Jeremy. "Your ex is pathetic."
7.9
I stood by Franco for seven years.
I stayed with him from his days as a Brooklyn street enforcer until he became the Underboss of the Moretti family.
We promised to marry the day he fully took over the territory.
Until last month.
I saw Franco tangled up with someone else on the leather sofa of his safe house.
He said she was cold like ice and that the other woman knew exactly how to please a man.
He pinned her down.
I chose to walk away.
I heard the rumors later.
After I left.
Franco lost his mind.
7.6
I spent fifteen years building my husband's mafia empire, coding the complex algorithms that washed his blood money clean.
But on my thirty-fifth birthday, instead of a gift, I received a photo of his hand resting on another woman's thigh.
When I confronted him, Dustin didn't apologize. He brought his pregnant mistress, Jami, into our penthouse and told me to accept the hush money.
"You have nothing except what I give you," he sneered, treating me like a slow servant rather than the mastermind behind his success.
The argument turned violent. He shoved me hard, sending me crashing into a solid oak nightstand.
As I lay on the floor, bleeding and dizzy from a split forehead, I watched the man I loved step over my body to comfort the woman wearing my mother's stolen heirloom ring.
He didn't check my pulse. He didn't call for help. He looked at me with pure disgust and turned his back.
In that moment, the wife died, and the witness was born.
He thought I was powerless because I had no assets in my name. He thought I would fade away quietly.
He forgot one crucial detail: I wasn't just the furniture in his castle. I was the architect.
Every server, every encrypted drive, every hidden account—I owned the code.
I wiped the blood from my face and walked out the door, but I didn't go to a lawyer.
I went to a hardware store and bought a ten-pound sledgehammer.
I wasn't going to just leave him.
I was going to delete him.
8.0
"I..hate you" I croaked out brokenly, struggling and failing to hold back the tears spilling in waves from my eyes.
"Awwww, is my fat queen crying?" Brandon jested mockingly, laughing as if he had just said something funny.
His friends echoed his laughter, making the tears spill even faster from how embarrassed I was.
Shaking my head, I turned away from his crude handsome face, but was held back by his hands, gripping my hair painfully.
I screamed as he slammed me against the wall, feeling the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
He grabbed my hair roughly, pressing my face harshly against the wall.
"You don't walk out till I am done with you," he gritted out, pressing his body against mine.
"Please.... Stop, please..." I cried out.
"Do I make myself clear?" Brandon snapped, his other hand gripping my waist tightly.
I could feel his hard hot body against mine, and his nails digging painfully into my waist.
"Yes," I whispered, "please let me go."
He pressed harder against my body, his hands on my waist tightening.
I could feel his hot breath against my neck, and despite my situation, my body was shamelessly reacting to him.
Loud snickers alerted us to the fact we were not alone.
Brandon released my hair, leaning away from my body, before pushing me forward.
I stumbled, nearly falling to my feet.
"Now run you fat bitch," he yelled, before laughing with his friends.
I hightailed it out of there, crying my eyes out.
Being fat wasn't a problem, her mother always told her, never failing to remind her how beautiful she was.
But for Christy Morris, being fat was a curse.
Especially since college and her arch enemy Brandon made it so.
Forced to babysit her bully and enemy baby sister, Christy's life takes an unexpected turn.
For the worst or better, was still what she was yet to find out.
Find out Christy and Brandon's story in this thrilling novel filled with...
Romance.
Unexpected twist.
And dare I say....
Love.
9.7
She came to kill him.
He made her his queen.
Valeria Romano spent five years with one purpose ... destroy Lorenzo De Luca, the mafia king who murdered her father. She trained in silence, sacrificed everything, and finally had him in her crosshairs on a cold Sicilian night.
Then he showed her the truth.
Her father's killer was never Lorenzo.
It was the man who held her at the funeral. The man she called every week for five years. The man who handed her the wrong name and watched her walk toward the wrong target while he rebuilt his empire on her father's grave.
Her uncle Marco.
Now Valeria is bound to the enemy she came to destroy ... in a contract marriage she didn't choose, inside a world she doesn't yet understand, hunting a man who has been ten steps ahead of everyone for twenty years.
But Marco has never faced a woman who has nothing left to lose.
As the truth unravels and the bodies pile up and the line between hatred and something far more dangerous begins to blur ... Valeria must decide who she is willing to become to protect the people she loves.
Because in Lorenzo De Luca's world, power is everything.
And she is about to become the most powerful thing in it.
Some wars are fought with guns. The deadliest ones are fought from the inside.
8.5
"You are getting married, huh?" A shrill voice asked me from behind. "You don't look happy.'
"It's a complicated situati..." He cut me off.
"I can make you happy."
My eyes darted between his lips and eyes, he noticed my indecision and locked his lips with mine.
While battling with betrayal, Iris melts into a mafia's touch without knowing who he is. Now she must bear all the consequences that follow.