His Bride Of Revenge
He tilted her chin up, his touch deceptively gentle.
"You're trembling," he whispered, brushing his thumb over her lips, slow enough to make her shiver.
"Is it fear..." His gaze lingered on her mouth. "Or me?"
Her pulse stuttered, betraying her. He was too close, and her body didn't seem to remember which feeling came first, terror or desire.
****
Elena Castellano never thought her father would trade her freedom to keep her safe. But after a violent attack changes everything, she is forced to marry the one man she has every reason to be afraid of, Stefano Bernardo, the ruthless heir to one of Milan's most dangerous families.
To the world, it's a union between two powerful families.
To Stefano, it's the sweetest revenge.
Stuck in a marriage built on deceit and danger, Elena must fight not only for her freedom but also for her life, because Stefano's revenge runs deeper than she ever imagined.
And if she truly wants to live, she must face the truth: the real danger isn't her husband's revenge; it's falling for him.
He married her to destroy her family.
But she might become the death of him - literally.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 2
**Stefano's POV**
I pulled the collar of my coat up tight against the biting cold as I stepped outside the house. Winter had arrived in full force, and the night air stung my face.
I took a long drag from my cigarette, letting the smoke fill my lungs, but it did nothing to ease the tension in my chest.
Headlights suddenly flashed through the darkness. A car with a shattered windshield skidded to a halt in front of me. Two of my men jumped out, their faces pale and eyes darting around nervously as if they were searching for an escape.
John dropped to his knees, trembling so hard I thought he might collapse. “Boss… please… We messed up. We didn't mean for this to happen. It just…” His words were rushing out.
I didn't move. I just let the cigarette burn down between my fingers while I took in their panic.
"Spit it out! What are you actually talking about?”
Enzo stepped forward, breathless and anxious. “It… It was the job with the girl. Everything was going as planned until she…” He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. “She pulled a gun and started shooting at us.”
My jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, and I could feel anger bubbling up inside me. "Go on," I said, not trusting myself to say more.
"We panicked," he stammered, his voice cracking. "So we shot back, just to scare her, I swear. She swerved, and then..." He swallowed, his eyes wide. "We hit her tire, and the car went out of control. We didn't mean it, boss, we didn't." His face twisted, as if he were about to cry.
I took a step closer, locking eyes with him. “Is she alive?”
Neither man spoke. They only exchanged fearful glances.
I reached for my gun, the sound of it being cocked cutting through the silence. “I'll ask one more time. Is she alive?”
John's voice shook with fear. “Boss… I don’t know. We panicked after the crash and left the scene. We came straight back here to report to you…”
I didn't hesitate; the decision was instant. I pulled the trigger. John fell without another word.
"No! Please, boss! Please…” Enzo cried out, dropping to his knees, shaking violently. “It was an accident!”
I stepped forward and crouched in front of him, looking him directly in the eyes. He was trembling with terror.
"I trusted you with a simple task,” I whispered, my voice dangerously calm. “You were only supposed to damage her car enough to send a clear message to Armando Castellano. Enough to make him afraid. Did I ever give you orders to touch the girl?”
"No, boss,” Enzo sobbed, tears streaming down his face. “Please… it was a mistake, boss. Show mercy. I beg you.”
"Mercy?” I said quietly, rising to my full height. “Mercy is reserved for those who follow orders without question.”
I turned to Luca, my most trusted man, who had been watching everything in silence. “Take him to the holding room. Let him spend the night praying that the girl survives. If she dies…” I looked back at Enzo, letting the full weight of my words sink in, “then you will face the full consequences of your failure.”
"Yes, boss,” Luca replied.
My men grabbed Enzo by the arms and began dragging him toward the house. His desperate begging grew fainter as they moved away.
Before he disappeared inside, I called out one final question. “Where exactly did you leave her?”
"Via Pontaccio in the Brera district,” he cried out. “Near Spazio Pontaccio.”
I fumbled for another cigarette, my hands trembling so much I nearly dropped it. This operation was meant to be clean, a simple warning shot to the daughter of Armando Castellano for what he had done to my father. No one was supposed to get hurt. Now everything was complicated.
"Luca,” I ordered, “call emergency services. Report an accident on Via Pontaccio. Do it anonymously.”
Luca nodded and made the call without hesitation. Once he was done, I crushed the cigarette under my shoe.
"Let's go."
We got into the car and followed at a distance. I remained silent, staring out the window with my jaw clenched, my hand resting on the gun in my lap.
We parked on a side road with a clear view, staying out of sight, as I watched to see where the ambulance would go so I could determine which hospital they'd take her to.
The girl was merely leverage, a tool to shake Armando Castellano, the man responsible for my father's death. My goal was to instill fear, not grief.
Elena Castellano's car was badly damaged, with crumpled metal and broken glass everywhere. I saw them carefully pull her from the wreckage and place her on a stretcher. Even from this distance, she looked deathly pale, with blood visible on her clothes.
"Oh no…” I muttered under my breath. My chest tightened with unease.
This wasn't the plan.
I had partnered with Raffaele Lorusso for a calculated move, not this.
"You can't die tonight,” I whispered, gripping the gun tighter.
If she died, everything would change. Her father would come for blood, and my carefully constructed path to revenge would be destroyed before it even began.
I was definitely not ready for that. Not yet.
Luca stood beside me, his face calm, but his body was tense. “What do we do now, boss?”
I kept my eyes on the ambulance as its doors slammed shut. “Follow them.”
We jumped back into the car. The tires screeched as we pulled onto the road behind the ambulance. I stared straight ahead, my jaw hurting, as my thoughts raced so fast I couldn't catch any of them.
"You're not supposed to die,” the thought screamed inside my head. I clenched my hands into tight fists until the sharp pain of my nails digging into my palms was all I could feel.
I have plans for you.
If you die, my revenge fails.
You may also like
7.5
The Duke was standing in the middle of the room, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted to one side. It was a relaxed, casual pose, and yet the way he looked at her was anything but casual. The deep midnight of his eyes burned and he radiated a subtle, sensual energy that made the air around him crackle.
He looked like a man who'd never heard the word 'no' in all his life. Unluckily for him, 'no' was the only word she had.
"There's no reason why I should stay," Anna clasped her shaking hands together in an effort to still them. "I'm not marrying you."
His gaze flickered, his mouth curving slightly, and she had the disturbing thought that far from putting him off, her insistence was only inciting him further.
"But you haven't heard my proposal yet," he said mildly. "Isn't that why you're here?"
"I don't need to hear it. I already know that my answer will be no."
"Of course. But you can hardly tell your father that you heard me out when you haven't, in fact, heard me out.... Anna."
7.7
Not only was I drugged, blinded and assaulted. I was deceived into carrying a baby by a stranger I never knew. Then he appeared and took my child away.
I was sent to a militia by the father of my child. I thought I was rescued but I was recruited to be a weapon for killing. Who was manipulating me, I didn't know. The answers were far from what I knew.
Forced to blend into the world that I could never believe I would be to, a place where brutality reigned, kill or be killed was the only language. I have survived but he has to pay for everything he did to me, because I believed every phase of my life was set by him and him alone. Have I really survived?
Who would have thought, he existed twice in the same world? Do I really know who I should take revenge on? Him or the person I would sacrifice everything for?
Was my mother the one who orchestrated everything? What kind of pawn am I?
8.2
For three years, nineteen-year-old Ella Campbell rotted in a freezing psychiatric isolation room.
Her billionaire family didn't visit her once, only pulling her out today to force her to publicly apologize to Ashlyn, the perfect sister who had framed her.
At Ashlyn's glamorous engagement gala, Ella was treated worse than a stray dog and forced to watch her childhood sweetheart propose to her sister.
When Ella showed no jealousy, her brother Ivan dragged her onto a dark balcony and nearly choked her to death.
Her mother didn't even check if Ella was breathing, merely ordering a makeup artist to paint thick concealer over the dark purple handprints on Ella's neck so the family's stock price wouldn't drop.
Standing under the blinding stage lights in a shapeless gray dress, facing three hundred mocking Wall Street executives, Ella was supposed to be the broken, obedient psycho the Campbells needed.
"I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused."
She was supposed to end the apology there and bow to her abusers, but Ella didn't shed a single tear.
"My only regret is that I didn't insist on waiting for the police to arrive that night. I deeply regret that I didn't demand a full, legal toxicology report to prove to everyone exactly what happened."
As the ballroom erupted into suspicious whispers and her paralyzed twin brother finally saw the violent bruises hidden beneath her makeup, Ella's counterattack against the Campbell family officially began.
7.6
Jocelyn Yang lived in the grand Turner Mansion, not as a guest, but as a prisoner. Ever since her father's death, the ruthless billionaire Elam Turner forced her to atone for sins her father never committed.
On her nineteenth birthday, a male classmate secretly sent her a diamond necklace. Elam, who had flown back from London overnight, flew into a psychotic, jealous rage at the sight of another man's gift.
He mercilessly crushed the delicate necklace into the marble floor with his custom leather shoe.
"Did you forget what you are?" Elam hissed, dragging her into a pitch-black storage room. "You take gifts from other men behind my back?"
He pinned her to the dusty floorboards and violently assaulted her. The next morning, a wire transfer of $500,000 hit her bank account. He had humiliated her, broken her spirit, and was now casually trying to buy her silence. Later, when a broken bike left her walking miles through a freezing rainstorm, he just shoved scalding tea into her bleeding hands.
"Look at you," he sneered. "You look like a stray dog ruining my floors."
Jocelyn curled up in the cold, her lips bleeding and her heart shattered. She couldn't understand his terrifying obsession. If he hated her so much, why did he refuse to let her go? Why did he look at her with such manic hunger while systematically destroying her life?
Staring at the massive sum of hush money on her phone, a desperate spark of vengeance flared in her chest. Jocelyn wired every single cent back to Elam's account. She picked up her charcoal pencil, vowing to win the upcoming art competition and buy her escape from this monster forever.
7.2
I went to the bank to set up a trust fund for my twins, only to have the manager look at me with pity.
"Mrs. Dunlap, the trust requires the *biological* mother's signature."
I froze. I *was* their mother. Or so I thought.
That day, I learned my husband, the most powerful Mafia Don on the coast, had used his ex-lover’s frozen eggs.
For six years, I wasn't his wife. I was just the incubator.
When his "true love," Iliana, returned from exile, my life disintegrated.
My children, poisoned by her lies, pushed me down the stairs and called me "just the nanny."
Gavyn didn't help me up. He stepped over my bleeding body to take his "real family" out for ice cream.
But the ultimate betrayal happened on a windswept cliff.
Staged by Iliana, we were both tied up, allegedly rigged to explode.
Forced to choose who to save, Gavyn didn't hesitate.
He cut Iliana loose.
"You did this to yourself, Alex," he said, driving away with the children, leaving me to die.
He thought he was leaving behind a corpse.
He didn't know I had skimmed ten million dollars from the household accounts.
"Cut me loose," I told the hitman, transferring the money. "And tell him the ocean took me."
Two years later, the Don is on his knees in my garden, begging for a second chance.
Too bad he has to get through my new fiancé first—the head of the rival cartel.
7.6
Synopsis:
Diana, a twenty-nine year old brilliant young lady and a successful fashion designer. She was grateful she had been able to achieve everything she had without any support.
But there was a void inside of her. She wanted to get married.
She couldn't bear the fact of entering into the big chapter thirty without a life partner. She met David at a business conference meeting. He asked for her number.
She hesitated thinking he wasn't going to stay like the others. She decided to give him a chance and went on a first date with him only to realise that he was serious and wanted to marry her.
What Diana didn't know was that David was pretending all along. He was never interested in her as a person.
During a public awards ceremony, David brings Eleanor, a celebrity who is his new business partner, onto the stage. He dedicates his award to her, claiming she was the "sole inspiration" for his success.
Later that night, he tells Diana that he has already signed the divorce papers. His cold dismissal shatters her, but in the aftermath, a clear-headed determination sets in.