He Was Doomed to Die Until I Married Him
Ten days before our scheduled wedding, my fiancé, Capo Leo Gallo, came to my family's estate in the pouring rain.
He didn't come to comfort me over my parents' recent deaths. He came to tell me that his mistress, Angelica, would remain by his side and hold the real power in our home. I was to be his wife in name only.
He wanted to publicly humiliate me and steal my family's Brooklyn docks.
In my past life, I didn't realize Leo and his family had actually orchestrated the brutal ambush that left my parents dead in a pool of blood.
I endured his insults, only to be locked away in a gilded cage while they used my six-year-old brother, Luca, as a hostage.
They drained my mother's trust fund, elevated his mistress to rule my home, and eventually sent my little brother and me to our miserable graves.
They thought I was just a powerless orphan they could easily crush.
They thought I didn't know the absolute truth behind the massacre that ruined my family and crippled the Don's eldest son, Damien Moretti.
Opening my eyes again, I was back in the cold drizzle, listening to his arrogant demands.
"As you wish, Leo," I said, burying my burning need for vendetta beneath a mask of hollow defeat.
The moment he left to celebrate his victory, I turned to my loyal maid.
"Send a message to the Mafia Queen. Tell her I am breaking my engagement to Leo. I wish to marry her crippled son, Damien, instead."
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Chapter 4
Isabella POV
Leo's grip tightened on my wrist, his nails digging into my skin. "You vicious *puttana* (whore)," he repeated, his breath reeking of stale liquor and wounded pride.
I looked down at his trembling hand, then up into his bloodshot eyes. I didn't flinch. "The Don didn't humiliate you because of me, Leo," I said, my voice a deadly calm. "He humiliated you because you are incompetent. You lost the docks the moment you thought you could outsmart Luciano Moretti."
Leo raised his free hand, his face twisting into a violent snarl. Luca let out a sharp breath, pressing his small body harder against my legs, his tiny arms still stretched out to protect me.
"Leo, enough!" Angelica’s sharp voice cut through the tension. She stepped forward, her manicured hands wrapping around his raised arm. "Not in public. You are making a spectacle of the Gallo name."
Leo hesitated, his chest heaving, before shoving my arm away with a disgusted scoff.
Angelica smoothed her pristine skirt and turned to me. Her eyes gleamed with a predatory, calculating light that completely betrayed her peacemaker act. "We are willing to be reasonable, Isabella," she said, her tone dripping with fake pity. "To compensate for the public embarrassment you've caused Leo today, we will assume control of the Brooklyn docks and your mother's trust fund. It is the least you owe him."
"She owes me everything," Leo spat, adjusting his lapels.
I watched them storm out of the shop, the heavy glass door slamming behind them. My pulse hammered, but not from fear. Angelica’s behavior was entirely contradictory. She had stopped Leo from hurting me, yet she was obsessively fixated on my family's assets. A woman as selfish as Angelica didn't care about Leo's bruised ego. She wanted something specific hidden within the Falcone legacy.
*
That night, the Falcone study was suffocatingly quiet. I bypassed the velvet boxes of my mother's diamonds and spread my father's shipping routes, warehouse deeds, and my mother's pharmaceutical contracts with the Rossi company across the mahogany desk.
I studied the documents until my eyes burned. What was Angelica looking for? A hidden smuggling route? A secret ledger detailing the Five Families' black-market trades?
The papers offered no immediate answers. But as I gathered the files and locked them inside my father's heavy iron safe, a cold certainty settled over me. Whatever secret lay buried in my family's empire, Angelica Russo would never touch it.
*
Enzo POV
The air in Damien Moretti’s room was a stagnant pool of whiskey, iodine, and despair. Heavy velvet curtains suffocated the moonlight, leaving the space in perpetual twilight.
I stood beside his wheelchair, a silent shadow fulfilling my duty. Damien sat motionless, his hollow eyes fixed on the dark wall. He looked like a corpse waiting for a casket, but he was still my Underboss.
My voice was a low, emotionless monotone as I delivered the day's report. I spoke of Don Luciano’s decree, the humiliating gifts delivered to the Gallo Social Club, and the confrontation on Fifth Avenue.
Damien didn't blink. He hadn't reacted to a single word in months.
"Leo Gallo cornered her in the tailor shop," I continued, keeping my posture rigid. "He was violent. But the boy, Luca Falcone, stood to protect his sister. He is six."
Silence stretched, heavy and absolute.
Then, a millimeter of movement. Damien’s index finger, resting on the armrest, twitched.
The sound that followed was like dry leaves scraping against stone—a voice destroyed by disuse and agony.
"Isabella..." Damien rasped, his chest rising with a shallow, painful breath. "Did she kneel?"
I stared at the man I had sworn my life to, feeling a strange, unfamiliar tightness in my chest.
"No, Underboss," I answered softly. "She never did."
In the suffocating darkness, the faintest ghost of a smile touched Damien Moretti’s lips.
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7.6
Cierra Monroe never meant to steal her mother's life.
One veil. One signature. One wedding meant to save her family....But lies spoken at an altar don't disappear.
Dominic Vance remembers the girl who stood beside him. The way she trembled. The way her eyes lingered.
And when the truth comes out, he doesn't let her go.
What starts as a secret turns into obsession.
What feels like protection becomes control.
And love quickly turns violent.
Cierra is hunted, locked away, and forced to choose between men who all want her for different reasons.
Her boyfriend fights for her freedom.
Her protector betrays her trust.
And her stepfather decides she belongs to him.
Blood is spilled.
Guns are raised.
Promises are broken.
And Cierra learns too late that some vows never end... even when they were never meant to be real.
Because not all that glitters is gold.
Sometimes... all that glitters is my stepdad.
9.1
Waking up with a cold, scaly hand wrapped around my throat wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was realizing I'd transmigrated into the body of Terra Mason—the most despised woman in the entire Enclave. She drugged high-level beast-men and forced them into life-binding bio-contracts. She locked an aquatic warrior in a dry basement until his organs failed. She treated the most lethal males in the city like broken toys.
Zev, the Level 6 serpent who's currently choking me, would rather blow up his own heart than spend another day as my slave. His affection metric? Negative ninety. His trust? Zero.
Then my system activates: the Kore AI. It gives me exactly 500 credits, a medical nano-gel, and a recipe for neutralizing the radioactive poison in mutant meat. Real food. In this world, that's worth more than gold.
I save Rhys, the dying aquatic male everyone left for dead. I season a slab of purple mutant steak until Sam, a battle-scarred grizzly shifter, groans at the taste—and his trust points finally tick above zero. When my backstabbing ex-best friend tries to steal my males and destroy me, I don't scream or throw a tantrum like the old Terra. I dismantle her with the truth.
But earning their trust means more than grilling meat. A scorpion swarm ambushes us at midnight. Sam throws himself between me and a stinger the size of my arm. As he stands over the corpse, fur receding from his claws, he stares at me and whispers, "You were testing me."
Yes. I was. Because in this world, the weak don't survive. And I refuse to be weak again.
Four beast-men. Four contracts. One system. And a whole lot of steak. Let this dystopian wasteland know—I'm not the monster they remember. I'm worse. I'm the one who's going to feed them until they'd kill for me.
7.7
Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate.
I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo.
The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives.
My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked.
To her, I was finally being disposed of.
She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left.
She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex.
"She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds.
They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter.
They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back.
But they made a fatal mistake.
With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon.
I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him.
And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner.
He will be my vengeance.
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."
8.1
A slow-burn romance about love, loss, and becoming worthy of the heart you almost lost.
Julien Moreau has everything-money, charm, and women who fall for him too easily.
What he doesn't have is the ability to stay.
In Paris, he is known for loving without commitment and leaving without explanation. Hearts break behind him, and he never looks back.
Until Amélie Laurent.
She is different.
She doesn't chase him.
She doesn't beg for love.
And when she realizes Julien isn't ready to love honestly, she does the one thing no woman before her has done-
She walks away.
What follows is not a chase, but a reckoning.
As Julien is forced to face the emotional damage he has left behind, he learns that love isn't about desire or charm-it's about responsibility. And Amélie learns that loving someone should never cost her self-respect.
In a city where romance is everywhere, two hearts must decide:
Is love something you run from...
Or something you grow into?
Hearts Don't Break in Paris - They Teach is an emotional, slow-burn romance filled with self-discovery, redemption, and a love that chooses honesty over fear.
7.4
MAFIA DESIRE
7.4
In the city where power was inherited through bloodshed and silence, love was the most dangerous liability of all.
She emerged from the shadows like a secret the underworld had failed to bury-elegant, unreadable, and far more lethal than she appeared. Every step she took echoed with intention. Every smile concealed a calculation. Men underestimated her. They always did. And they always paid for it.
He was young, brilliant, and already feared. A rising king in a world that devoured the weak, carrying ambition like a loaded weapon. He didn't trust easily, didn't hesitate, and didn't believe in fate-until her presence began to unravel everything he thought he controlled.
Their connection wasn't born of innocence or chance. It was forged in danger, sealed by secrets, and fueled by a hunger neither of them dared to name. In a world ruled by betrayal, they found something far more terrifying than enemies-each other.
Because when desire collides with power, and love becomes a threat, survival is no longer guaranteed.
And in the mafia, nothing is more deadly than wanting what you're not supposed to have.