My Husband Sold Me to the Don
My husband, Hudson Higgins, used my dowry to buy his way into the Chicago underworld while his family treated me like a servant in my own home. I endured their insults for the sake of my five-year-old daughter, Josie.
But then, the unthinkable happened. I found Josie's small, lifeless body by the garden fountain, while my sister-in-law Karly and mother-in-law Eleanor stood by, complaining about their party plans.
"She was just too naughty," Karly sneered, adjusting her pearls over my dead child.
When I turned to Hudson for help, he looked at me with dead eyes and told me it was just her fate. In that moment of absolute grief, I remembered the words of the ruthless Don Damien Falcone: "Your husband is a man who knows how to close a deal."
The truth sliced through me like a blade. Hudson hadn't just ignored the Don's interest in me; he had actively sold me to the Devil of Chicago to buy his seat at the table. He let his family punish me for the very sin he committed.
I had lost everything-my dignity, my mother, and now my baby-all sacrificed for a man who traded his wife's body for power. The sorrow in my chest evaporated, replaced by a scorching, blinding thirst for a blood vendetta.
After lunging at Hudson and feeling the world explode into white, I opened my eyes to find myself back in the winter of 1928. It was the exact night the nightmare began, and Don Damien Falcone was walking toward me in his penthouse.
This time, I won't be the broken bird in his gilded cage. If Hudson wants to use me to climb the ranks, I will use the Don's dark obsession to burn the Higgins family to the ground.
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Chapter 3
Isabella POV
Surviving the aftermath of the penthouse had required every ounce of my willpower. Now, twenty-four hours later, the air in the private booth of The Onyx Club was thick with the scent of expensive cigars, aged whiskey, and the faint, sickeningly sweet notes of my gardenia perfume.
Red velvet walls absorbed the jazz music from the speakeasy's main floor. Hudson Higgins, my husband and a mere Associate desperate to climb the ranks of the Falcone family, sat across from me, practically vibrating with smug satisfaction.
He poured champagne—a drink I despised—into my crystal flute. "To our bright future, mia bella (my beautiful)," he murmured, reaching across the small table to cover my trembling hands with his.
His touch made my skin crawl. I had to force down the bile rising in my throat, burying the agonizing memory of my daughter Josie's cold, lifeless body. I kept my eyes downcast, painting the perfect picture of a broken, terrified wife. "Yes, Hudson," I whispered, my voice hollow.
He smiled, a greasy, self-satisfied smirk. He thought he had won. He thought selling me to the Devil of Chicago had secured his rise from a lowly street-level earner to a made man. I let him stroke my knuckles, cataloging every arrogant twitch of his jaw, every weakness I would later exploit for my Vendetta (revenge). I would let him play the doting husband, all while I carefully measured him for his coffin.
Dinner concluded with me playing the obedient doll. As we stepped out of the booth and approached the grand, sweeping marble staircase of the club, the raucous laughter and clinking glasses of the speakeasy abruptly died. A suffocating silence fell over the room.
Don Damien Falcone had arrived.
He moved like a dark god descending upon mortals, flanked by his most lethal Soldiers and his trusted Capo. The massive crystal chandelier above cast harsh light on the brass railings, but shadows seemed to cling to Damien's tailored black suit. Every man in the vicinity bowed their heads in absolute submission.
Hudson immediately puffed out his chest, stepping forward with a sickeningly eager grin. "Don Falcone, it is an honor—"
Damien didn't even blink at him.
He walked right past my husband as if Hudson were nothing more than a stain on the plush red carpet. The Don's pitch-black eyes were locked entirely on me.
My breath hitched as he stopped inches away. The sheer size of him, the radiating heat and the dangerous scent of mint and gunpowder, overwhelmed my senses. Slowly, deliberately, he raised a large, calloused hand. His knuckles brushed against my cheek, a touch so intimate and possessive it sent a visible shockwave through the watching crowd.
He was branding me. Right in front of my husband, he was claiming his property.
Hudson stood frozen, his face draining of color as his last shred of masculine pride was publicly eviscerated.
Damien leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. "My driver will pick you up tomorrow night," he murmured, his deep voice a dark promise that vibrated straight to my core.
He pulled back, his thumb lingering on my lower lip for a fraction of a second, before he turned and continued up the marble stairs. Halfway up, he paused, glancing over his shoulder. His predatory gaze pinned me in place, a silent warning that I belonged to him now.
Beside me, Hudson's fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were white, his breathing ragged with humiliated rage. The ride back to our house was going to be suffocatingly silent, the air thick with the fragile remnants of his shattered ego.
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8.9
Three years after I buried an empty casket for my husband, I found him alive in a grocery store parking lot.
He was rubbing a stranger's pregnant belly, smiling a soft smile I had never seen in our years of marriage.
My husband, the ruthless Don of Chicago, had become "Arthur," a gentle man with no memory of the empire he ruled or the wife he left behind.
To protect his happiness, I swallowed my agony and lied.
"I am his cousin," I told his pregnant fiancée, Mia.
I brought them home to his estate, enduring the torture of watching him give her the tenderness that used to belong to me.
But my mercy was rewarded with cruelty.
Dante looked at me with cold, unfamiliar eyes and slapped divorce papers onto the table.
"Sign them," he demanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "I want to marry Mia before the baby comes. I want a fresh start."
He didn't know I was dying of a heart defect caused by the stress of grieving him.
He didn't know I stalled for two weeks not for money, but because I wanted to be buried with his name.
I died the morning the deadline arrived, taking the secret of my love to the grave.
Ironically, that very night, a bullet grazed his temple during an ambush, unlocking the memories he had lost.
He remembered the peach orchard. He remembered our blood oath. He remembered that I was his soulmate.
He ran to my brother’s gates, screaming my name, blood pouring down his face, desperate to beg for forgiveness.
But my brother just stood there, blocking the entrance to the cemetery with a cruel smile.
"She waited for you every single day," he spat.
"And you killed her."
7.8
Growing up as the maid's daughter in the glittering, suffocating Collins mansion, Nora Macie has perfected the art of being invisible. Enter Asher Collins. Rich, ruthless, and infuriatingly untouchable, unfortunately for Nora, her stepbrother has always had the power to ruin her with a single word.
The moment a private video she never intended anyone to see is accidentally sent straight to Asher Collins. Except Asher doesn't expose her. He becomes curious... and dangerously invested.
He will remake her. Not just into someone noticed, but into someone unforgettable, someone who commands attention the moment she walks into a room.
Suddenly, the boys who never knew her name are watching her. Through it all, Asher remains in control... or at least he should be.
Because the closer Nora gets to becoming everything he designed, the harder it becomes for him to remember that she was never meant to be his.
*
His fingers lifted, brushing lightly along the side of her throat. "I think you've been lying to yourself," he said. "Because your body already knows what it wants."
Her breath faltered. "I swear, I'll kill you if you don't back the hell up."
And then, without giving her the chance to retreat, he closed the final inch between them. "I would much rather you kiss me."
7.3
I was the daughter of a loyal Mafia Capo, arranged to marry the Underboss of the Moretti family. But I gave my heart to his brother, Marco, who promised to break the betrothal and protect me.
When I went into premature labor in a freezing, abandoned warehouse, Marco didn't come to save me. He sent my cousin, Caitlin.
With a mocking smile, she told me Marco despised my "filthy Irish blood" and that my pregnancy was just a temporary amusement.
Then, she pulled out a hunting knife.
She pinned me down, sliced my abdomen open, and smothered my newborn baby right in front of my eyes.
"He agreed that this inconvenience needs to be removed," she whispered.
She revealed that she and Marco had orchestrated my father's murder to secure Mafia shipping routes. Then, she casually knocked over a kerosene lantern, locking the heavy metal door to let me and my dead child burn to ash.
While they headed to a high-society gala to celebrate my "accidental" death and their new power, I lay in the roaring flames.
As the fire blistered my skin and I held my baby's lifeless body, my suffocating despair froze into a razor-sharp rage. My entire life, my family, and my love had been built on their calculated lies.
But they made one fatal mistake. I didn't die in that inferno.
I dragged my ruined body out of the ashes, wrapped myself in a blood-soaked coat, and walked straight into their celebration banquet to become their goddamn reckoning.
7.1
"You're mine now, Brittany." He whispered in my ears. I froze. I don't remember telling him my name.
Zayne...Zayne...oh God. Now, I remember why his name sounded so familiar...but it was too late, I thought as I lost consciousness.
__
Brittany's life has been full of heartbreaks and pain, from her father's death to her mother's manipulation and abuse, while using religion as a weapon.
She grews up with fear, guarding her virginity like a cloak because of her mother's constant words in her ears.
Until she meets Zayne, known throughout New York as the CEO for his ruthlessness, he turns out to be Mafia too.
Zayne claims her as his refusing to let her go. Will Brittany grow to love him and give him a chance after what he did to her?
What happens when she's the only one who can save him from enemies flocking around him?
__
"I'm letting you go, doll." He mumbled as he held on to me, his eyes growing weak.
My heart twisted in my chest as tears fell down my cheeks.
No... "I don't regret a thing. You taking me was the best thing that ever happened to me."
8.4
For seven years, I have been the submissive commoner wife of Julian, the New York Mafia boss.
When he finally realized what he had ruined and stabbed himself with a dagger, begging for my forgiveness, I simply turned and walked away.
I endured his endless betrayals and cruelty for only one reason: he paid for my grandmother's life-sustaining treatment.
But while he was busy buying diamonds for his new mistress, the pressure of his emotional abuse caused me to lose our child.
His mistress broke into my grandmother's hospital room and threw explicit photos of her and Julian in my grandmother's face. My grandmother died from shock.
Julian knew nothing about this.
“Go home, Sienna. You’re pregnant. Stop making a scene, or I’ll cut off your grandmother’s medical bills tomorrow.”
When I found him, he arrogantly thought I was just throwing a tantrum.
He didn't know our child was gone.
He didn't know that my grandmother had passed away.
In front of all his men, I poured a glass of whiskey over his head, left the signed divorce papers on his table, and then boarded a one-way flight to Germany.
I will leave him forever.
9.0
I spent a year scrubbing floors in my fiancé’s club, hiding my identity as the daughter of the Capo dei Capi.
I needed to know if Connor Bishop was a King worth merging empires with, or just a puppet.
The answer came walking in wearing a neon pink dress.
Jaden Juarez, a civilian he was infatuated with, didn't just treat me like a servant; she deliberately poured scalding espresso over my hand because I refused to be her valet.
The pain was blinding, my skin blistering instantly.
I video-called Connor, showing him the burn, expecting him to enforce the code of our world.
Instead, seeing his investors watching, he panicked.
He chose to sacrifice me to save face.
"Get on your knees," he roared through the speaker. "Beg her pardon. Show her the respect she deserves."
He wanted the daughter of the most dangerous man on the East Coast to kneel to his mistress.
He thought he was showing strength.
He didn't realize he was looking at a woman who could burn his entire world to ash with a single phone call.
I didn't cry. I didn't beg.
I simply hung up the phone and locked the kitchen doors.
Then, I dialed the one number everyone in the underworld feared.
"Dad," I said, my voice cold as steel. "Code Black. Bring the papers."
"And send the wolves."