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 7
Isabella POV
The cab ride away from The Onyx Club was suffocating. Hudson's fingers dug into my arm, his chest heaving with a mix of terror and misplaced rage. I kept my gaze fixed on the passing streetlamps of Chicago, ignoring his erratic muttering. I didn't need to look at him; my mind was miles behind us, lingering in the penthouse we had just fled.
Even though I wasn't there, the memories of my past life painted the scene with brutal clarity. Right now, Frederick 'Freddie' Solis—the Falcone family's snake-eyed Consigliere—was standing before Don Damien Falcone. Freddie would be laying out my life like a ledger: the daughter of a ruined legitimate family, the heavy dowry that bought my marriage to an Associate, and Hudson's pathetic gamble to trade me for a seat at the table. I knew Damien was listening in that terrifying, absolute silence of his, his dark eyes judging Hudson's worth. And I knew Hudson had already been found wanting.
But the swift execution I expected didn't come.
Days bled into one another inside the Higgins townhouse. The walls, paid for by my dowry, felt like a velvet-lined cage reeking of Hudson's cheap cologne and my own lingering gardenia perfume.
Hudson was unraveling. The silence from the Falcone estate was driving him mad. He paced the halls, jumping at every knock, desperate for the promotion he thought he had bought with my flesh. To soothe his bruised ego, he tried to reclaim his territory—me. Every night, he approached our bed with that sickening, entitled gleam in his eyes. And every night, I used my daughter as a shield.
Josie is crying, I would say, slipping out of his grasp. She needs her mother.
Hudson couldn't argue without looking like a monster. More importantly, his underlying fear of what the Don might do if he bruised his new possession kept his hands tied. He was forced to sleep in his study, leaving me alone in the dark.
Standing before the brass-rimmed mirror in my bedroom, I traced the line of my jaw. I practiced the fragile, shattered smile that had hooked Damien on the stairs. It was Adela's smile. Freddie had taught me how to mimic the Don's dead ghost in my past life, molding me into the perfect, compliant pet.
But my reflection mocked me. The timeline was wrong. By now, Freddie should have sent his men to collect me. Damien's inaction was a glaring deviation from the past. Had I overplayed my hand? Was the Don's paranoia stronger than his obsession? A cold knot of unease tightened in my stomach. I couldn't afford to be passive. If Damien Falcone was changing the rules of the game, I had to adapt. I would not be a victim again; I would be the architect of my own Vendetta.
A timid knock broke my concentration. "Ma'am," the maid murmured through the door. "Mr. Higgins is asking for you in his study."
I smoothed the skirt of my dress, masking my cold calculation with a veil of wifely obedience.
Hudson's study was a monument to his mediocrity, suffocating under the stench of stale cigars and cheap whiskey. When I pushed the heavy oak door open, I found him standing by the bar cart. His hands were shaking so violently that the amber liquid sloshed over the rim of his crystal glass, soaking into the lapel of his tailored suit.
He didn't even bother to curse. He just stared at the stain, his chest rising and falling in shallow, panicked breaths. When he looked up at me, his eyes were bloodshot, swimming with a pathetic, desperate anxiety. The silence from the Don was breaking him.
"Hudson?" I asked softly, playing my part.
He closed the distance between us, his sour breath washing over my face as he grabbed my hand. His grip was painfully tight, his knuckles white. He was a drowning man trying to anchor himself to the only thing he thought he still owned.
"Isabella," he rasped, his voice trembling with a sickening mix of fear and forced authority. "You're my wife. I need you to stay in our bed tonight. Leave Josie with the nanny. I need you with me."
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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."