His Unwanted Bride, Another Man's Queen

My fiancé, the ruthless Mafia Underboss, tore my dead mother's necklace from my throat and fastened it around another woman's neck. "Diana needs it," Arthur said, his eyes cold. "My blood remembers loving her. It calms her anxiety." He was referring to the bone marrow transplant that saved his life. Diana was connected to the donor, and Arthur believed his new blood made him belong to her. I became a ghost in my own home, forced to watch him crown a usurper. When Diana faked a fall at a gala, accusing me of pushing her, Arthur didn't hesitate. He decided to "discipline" me publicly to teach me respect. He raised the whip. "Arthur, please, I'm pregnant!" I screamed, shielding my stomach. "Don't lie to me," he spat, and the lash came down. I lost our baby on that cold marble floor in a pool of blood. He didn't believe me. He stepped over my body to take Diana to dinner. He didn't stop there. He let my grandmother die in the ER to tend to Diana's bruised nose. He even dug up my grandmother's grave because Diana wanted the view for a garden. I finally fled, vanishing into the night. It wasn't until months later, when he found the autopsy report of our unborn child and the toxicology results proving Diana had been drugging him, that the fog lifted. He tracked me down to a small town, where I was finally healing with a good man. The feared Underboss fell to his knees in the pouring rain, holding the whip he had used on me, shaking violently. "Beat me, Ella," he begged, tears mixing with the mud. "Hurt me. Make us even." I looked at the monster I used to love and dropped his ring into the dirt. "You can't bring back the dead, Arthur," I whispered. "And you are dead to me."

Chapters

Chapter 2

Ella Farmer POV

The sound of tearing paper screamed through the silence of the guest room.

I shredded the sketchbook in half, destroying the charcoal portrait of Arthur I had spent months perfecting.

His eyes in the drawing were full of love-a lie I could no longer stand to witness.

I threw the pieces into the fireplace and watched the flames lick the edges of his face, curling the paper into black flakes before turning him to ash.

Just like he had done to me.

The door opened without a knock.

Arthur stood there, dressed in a tuxedo that cost more than my father made in a year.

He looked impeccable, the lethal prince of the city, but the soul was missing from his gaze. His eyes were glassy, vacant.

"Stop being dramatic, Ella," he said, his voice flat as he adjusted his cufflinks.

"Grandfather is expecting us. It's his seventy-fifth birthday."

"I'm not going," I said, refusing to look away from the fire.

"You are going." He stepped into the room, his presence sucking the oxygen right out of the air.

"You are my fiancée. You will stand by my side."

Diana walked in behind him, wearing a couture red gown that I knew Arthur had paid for.

It was backless, daring, and around her throat, she wore my mother's necklace.

It rested against her skin like a trophy of war.

"Arthur wants me to come too," Diana said, her voice saccharine and poisonous.

"He thinks it's important for the Family to see that he honors the donor's memory."

Arthur nodded, as if this insanity made perfect sense.

We arrived at the Plaza Hotel an hour later.

The ballroom was filled with the city's elite-judges, politicians, and the Capos who ran the underworld.

Don Cornelius sat at the head table, looking frail but sharp as a hawk.

I took my seat next to Arthur, keeping my head high, my face a mask of porcelain indifference.

Diana sat on his other side.

The whispers started immediately.

Arthur stood up to make a toast, tapping his glass with a silver knife.

The room went silent.

"To family," he said, raising his glass.

"And to new beginnings."

He looked down at Diana, smiling a hollow, rehearsed smile.

"To the woman who gave me a second chance at life by connecting me to the man who saved me."

He didn't mention me.

He didn't mention the nights I slept in a chair next to his hospital bed, holding his hand while he screamed in pain.

He forced me to raise my glass.

"To Diana," he commanded, looking directly at me.

My hand trembled.

I drank the champagne, and it tasted like vinegar and ash.

A sharp pain ripped through my stomach, my stress-induced ulcers flaring up violently.

I excused myself, rushing to the restroom, coughing blood into the sink.

When I wiped my mouth and stepped out onto the balcony for air, I heard voices.

"She's still wearing your ring, Arthur," Diana's voice drifted through the open doors.

"It confuses the blood. My lover... the donor... he hates that you're bound to her."

I froze in the shadows.

I saw Arthur leaning against the stone railing, looking confused, heavily sedated.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Prove it," she said.

"Prove that the new blood is stronger than the old promises."

She pointed to his chest, right over his heart, where he had tattooed my initial, 'E', three years ago.

"Remove it."

Arthur hesitated for only a second.

He grabbed a champagne flute from a passing waiter's tray and smashed it against the railing.

The glass shattered into a jagged, lethal shard.

"Arthur, no," I whispered, but the wind carried my voice away.

He unbuttoned his shirt, exposing the tattoo.

With a grimace of pain that looked disturbingly like pleasure, he drove the glass into his own skin.

Blood welled up, dark and thick, running down his chest ruining the pristine white shirt.

He carved the skin away, slicing through the ink, slicing through my name.

Diana watched, breathless, her hand clutching my mother's necklace in ecstasy.

"There," Arthur panted, dropping the bloody glass.

"It's gone."

He looked at the bloody mess on his chest and smiled at her.

I backed away, stumbling into the darkness.

The man I loved didn't just die in that hospital bed.

He had been replaced by a monster.

Continue to next part

Halie woke up to a sharp pain and a terrifying reality. She was in a new body, her face covered in a hideous web of scars, and her spiritual power reduced to a pathetic D-Class. Before she could even process the memories of being framed, her bedroom doors were violently kicked open. Her sister Seraphina sauntered in with a venomous sneer, followed closely by Halie's S-Class fiancé, Jett. "Look at the disgrace of the Avila family. What a waste," Seraphina mocked, throwing a mirror at her bed. "I can't be tied to a cripple. As an S-Class, I have to break our engagement," Jett added, his gaze full of disgust. The nightmare didn't stop there. Her father called, screaming about how she had shamed the family name. He officially stripped her of her inheritance, froze all her accounts, and exiled her to the decaying Southern District to rot. To make matters worse, a cold, mechanical voice suddenly echoed in her skull, warning her of an impending genetic collapse. Without an immediate energy infusion, she would face total organ failure in thirty days. A ruined face, a treacherous family, a world that wanted her dead, and a literal death clock ticking in her brain. The original owner had died in absolute despair, a tragic victim of sheer cruelty. But if they thought she would just sit there and die, they were severely mistaken. Armed with a mysterious system and her brilliant scientist mind from her past life, Halie packed her bags. She chose the craziest survival quest: head to the slums, find the exiled, sterile S-Class "madman" Coleman, and cure him to harvest his life energy. It was time to start her counterattack.

Adventure Horror LitRPG Modern Sci-Fi

9.0

Buried Alive With My Fake Husband

9.0

I woke up in total darkness, the air smelling of stale chemicals and dying flowers. When I tried to sit up, my forehead slammed into solid wood just three inches from my face. I was trapped in a coffin, buried alive next to the cold, stiff body of my fake husband, Cedric. My stepmother, Hermina, had poisoned our champagne at the gala to seize my trust fund, and now she was hosting a lavish memorial service for us right outside the lid. I found a faint, erratic pulse in Cedric's neck, but I couldn't just scream for help. If Hermina realized the dose wasn't lethal, she'd finish the job with a lethal injection under the guise of medical assistance. To survive, I bit my tongue until I tasted blood and tore my hair into a tangled mess. When I finally kicked the lid open and spilled onto the marble floor, I didn't act like a rescued heiress; I crawled like a broken doll, shrieking about poisoned bubbles and "the bad man" while Manhattan's elite watched in absolute horror. The betrayal was suffocating. My own family watched as Hermina tried to sedate me back into silence, playing the role of a grieving saint while her eyes remained cold as ice. Even more shocking was Cedric, who rose from the casket like a predator, commanding the room with a terrifying authority that proved our entire marriage had been a lie. I couldn't understand how many secrets were buried in that house, or why my "boring" husband was suddenly acting like a man who owned the city. After kneeing Cedric in the stomach to break his iron grip, I bolted out into the torrential rain. I didn't care that I was barefoot or that the world thought I was insane. I had the key to my father's secret safe in my hand, and I was going to make sure Hermina paid for every second of darkness she forced me to endure.

Horror Modern Romance

9.6

My Death, His Ultimate Downfall

9.6

For a decade, I was the perfect wife to tech mogul Carson Jarvis. I cleaned up every scandal and endured every affair, trapped by my father's "poison pill" inheritance clause that would leave me with nothing if I divorced him. His latest mistress was pregnant, but that wasn't what finally broke me. It was when he shut down our mansion's power grid for their tryst-and turned off my grandmother's life support. He murdered her. At a charity auction days later, he paraded his new love while she announced her pregnancy. When I confronted her for stealing my money, Carson watched as his guards broke my arm, leaving me bleeding on the floor while he comforted her. He thought I was his unbreakable wife, a possession with nowhere else to go. He expected me to clean up this mess, just like all the others. He was wrong. As I watched him shield her during the chaos of an explosion I secretly arranged, I knew my old life was over. Tonight, the world would learn of my death. And with it, Carson Jarvis would lose everything.

Horror Modern Romance

9.6

My Dying Wish: A Fiancé's Betrayal

9.6

My family and fiancé begged me to donate my last remaining kidney to my twin sister, Kyleigh. They didn't know I was already dying. My fiancé, Axel, gave me an ultimatum. "Donate the kidney, or I'll break our engagement and marry Kyleigh. It's her dying wish." I agreed, only for them to frame me for plagiarism with my own thesis, forcing me to confess on camera. They never knew I was the one who secretly saved our father with my other kidney five years ago-a sacrifice Kyleigh had stolen all the credit for. As they wheeled me into the operating room, they celebrated with Kyleigh, promising her a future built on my death. I was already a ghost to them. But I died on the table. The surgeon, seeing the old surgical scar and the poison riddling my body, walked out to face them. "This wasn't a donation," she announced, her voice cold as steel. "This was murder."

Horror Mystery Romance

7.3

My Mad King's Love, Forever Mine

7.3

For a thousand years, the Vora beastmen have been cursed by a madness-a burning sickness in their blood that only one thing can soothe: the legendary 'Blood-Blessed,' a human female whose very scent is a living cure. When a virus wiped out nearly all females, their desperate hunt for this mythical girl turned into a brutal conquest. They crushed our fallen human kingdoms, reducing us to breathing meat under their cruel "Livestock Codex." To save my little sister from being branded for their elite breeding auction, I took her place in the male-only death draft. Disguised as a boy, I was thrown into a pitch-black labyrinth, a living sacrifice meant to feed their ultimate nightmare: the feral, half-dragon Mad King. He tore our steel cage apart like wet paper. I pressed my back against the freezing wall, watching in horror as he slaughtered the screaming men around me. He ripped the filthy coat from my body, exposing my true gender. As his crimson eyes locked onto my throat and he opened his jaws for the kill, my rage burned away my fear. I was a pureblood heiress of a dead empire, but I would not die cowering like an animal. I gripped a shard of glass, ready to aim for his eye. But as he lunged, the glass sliced my palm. The moment my blood hit the air, the legend became my reality. The sweet, intoxicating scent that flooded the dark wasn't just my pheromones-it was the living cure. The terrifying, apocalyptic tyrant froze mid-strike. He dropped his massive body to his knees, his fangs retracting as he gently, desperately licked my bleeding hand. His chaotic red eyes darkened with an absolute, world-ending obsession as he pulled my fragile body against his burning chest. "Mine." I was meant to be his final meal. They called me the Blood-Blessed. He called me his Queen.

Fantasy Horror Romance Vampire

9.4

The Fallen Heiress's Debt to the Billionaire

9.4

I was once the princess of the Upper East Side, but now I’m just "debt wrapped in pretty skin." To keep my father alive in a federal penitentiary, I signed a contract I didn't fully understand. I thought it was about restoring my family's name, but producer Barnett Orr treated it like a bill of sale for my soul. Inside his limousine, the air smelled like gasoline and fear. Barnett didn't want a star; he wanted a victim. He bruised my jaw and ripped my vintage silk gown to shreds, laughing because he knew I couldn't fight back without signing my father's death warrant. "Don't forget who owns you, Felicity," he whispered. When he dragged me into Dewitt Knight’s penthouse party, I was a walking disaster. I huddled in Barnett’s oversized jacket, my lip bleeding and my spirit shattered. The elite crowd didn't see a victim; they saw a fallen girl selling herself for a role. A former rival poured red wine over me, and the room erupted in cruel laughter while Barnett told everyone he was just "testing my commitment." I looked up at the balcony, locking eyes with Dewitt Knight. He was a god in a bespoke suit, looking down at me with cold, lethal disgust. He didn't see the bruises or the desperation. He only saw a transaction he found beneath him. "So the rumors are true," he said, his voice cutting through the music. "The Aguilars really will do anything for money now. Even this." I was trapped between a monster who wanted to break me and a man who thought I was trash. No one cared that my father's life depended on my silence. When Barnett cornered me in a guest room later that night, his belt jingling like a death knell, I realized no one was coming to save a girl like me. I fought back with a crystal vase, shattering it against his shoulder, but I was drowning in my own terror. Just as Barnett lunged for my throat, the door was kicked off its hinges. Dewitt stood there, finally seeing the blood on the carpet and the map of purple bruises on my bare back. He chased the monster away, but I didn't feel safe. I locked the guest room door, wedged a chair under the handle, and slept with a silver letter opener pressed against my skin. When I crept into the kitchen at midnight and found him waiting in the shadows, I aimed the blade at his heart. "In this house, no one hurts you," he promised, his voice a low velvet rumble. But in a world where I had already been sold once, I knew that even protection came with a price I couldn't afford to pay.

Billionaire Horror Modern

His Unwanted Bride, Another Man's Queen

Chapter 2

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