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 5
**Stefano's POV**
When I walked into the office later that night, the silence swallowed the click of the lock behind me. I loosened the knot of my tie and poured a generous drink, watching the amber liquid catch the low light as it filled the glass. I needed the familiar burn to chase away the restless energy that had been building inside me all evening.
The weight of the day pressed on my shoulders: the meeting with Armando, the sight of Elena's bruises, and the carefully laid plans that were finally beginning to move. I took a small sip, letting the warmth spread through my chest, but it did little to ease the familiar empty feeling in my chest.
Then I heard the click of heels behind me.
Lucia Romano.
She entered the room. Her red dress clung to her figure, and the heavy scent of her perfume filled the air.
I looked at her, keeping my expression neutral. “You did well.”
Lucia's smile didn't reach her eyes as she gripped the back of the chair, her knuckles turning white.
"You told me to warn you the moment Elena went out alone. I did what you asked." She clenched her jaw and held my gaze, her eyes blazing with anger. “She was supposed to be eliminated. Why is she still breathing?”
The anger in her words was sharp, but beneath it I heard the hurt and the jealousy she couldn't hide. I watched her briefly, letting the silence grow between us.
She shifted her weight, and I could see the question in her eyes, the way she wanted me to say something, anything at all.
“Are you truly going to marry her? After everything I've done for you and all we've been through?” she asked, her eyes welling with tears, as her voice broke on the last word.
“What we've been through,” I said flatly, “was never about love.”
She took a step closer, her breathing uneven. “You told me she was nothing. You said she was only meant to be a warning to her father. So why is she still here, Stefano? Why are you tying yourself to her?”
"She was never supposed to die.” I held her gaze, my voice cold and steady. "I just needed Armando to be afraid. Elena is very useful to me.”
“And me?” Her voice dropped to a whisper, trembling with vulnerability. “What am I to you, then?”
I set my glass down on the desk and stood, towering over her. “You're mine, Lucia. But you don't get to question what that means or demand more than I'm willing to give.”
She stared at me, her face tight with pain. "You always think ten steps ahead," she whispered, "but do you even feel anything anymore?"
“Feelings get in the way,” I said with a faint smile. “They cloud judgment and destroy plans.”
She closed the remaining distance between us. Her fingertips traced the line of my jaw. “Maybe feeling something is what keeps us human, Stefano.”
I caught her wrist and pulled her closer. “You knew exactly what this arrangement was from the beginning. You wanted power and influence too.”
“I wanted you!” she retorted.
The room fell silent, thick with tension, and I noticed the quick flash of desire in her eyes.
She pressed against me, her lips met mine in a kiss filled with frustration and longing. What started as anger quickly turned into raw passion. We gave in completely, losing ourselves as clothes were quickly shed in a rush of need. I lifted her onto the desk, papers scattering across the floor as we lost ourselves in each other.
In that instant, Elena flashed into my mind, her fierce glare, those burning blue eyes filled with challenge.
Why was she haunting my thoughts now?
My every move was desperate as I tried to force Elena out of my mind.
“I love you so much, Stefano,” Lucia moaned against me.
I froze mid-motion. The word ‘love’ caught me completely off guard, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. For a brief second, something uncomfortable twisted in my chest. I forced myself forward, driving harder and faster, more urgently, until all I heard was the sound of our ragged breathing.
When it was over, Lucia sat on the edge of the desk, breathing heavily, her hair falling over her face, while I slowly buttoned my shirt, watching her chest rise and fall.
She lifted her head, meeting my gaze, her eyes filled with sadness. “When this is all over,” she asked softly, her voice laced with hope, “once you've destroyed them, will I truly be yours? No more pretending, no more secrets?”
I stepped closer, lifting her chin with my fingers. “You will get what you deserve, Lucia.”
She hesitated, her expression shifting. “And Elena? If marrying her is what makes your plan work, what will happen after the marriage?”
I turned and looked at her over my shoulder. "Elena will learn who really controls her. It's the only way to make her father pay for what he did to my family.”
Her jaw tightened, and for a second I thought she might say something sharp, but she just pressed her lips together and turned away.
The sound of her heels on the floor was the only answer I got.
As she reached for the door, my voice cut through the silence: "Don't let your guard down in that house,” I warned her. "Elario is clever."
"I've done this for three years." Her eyes flashed with frustration. "They still haven't found out. You should trust me more.”
She left without another word, the door clicking shut behind her.
I walked to the window, staring at my reflection in the glass. “She'll marry me,” I murmured. “Then she'll help me destroy her father with her own hands.”
Her father's betrayal had shattered my family, leaving a wound that only revenge could heal. I must finish this, not just for power, but for justice for my father.
“The Master's move.” A faint smile touched my lips.
I opened the desk drawer and pulled out a file. Elena Castellano's photo stared back at me, her eyes sharp and full of life.
“Maybe it would have been better if you hadn't survived…” My thumb traced the outline of her face. “Now you will pay for your father's sins.”
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.