Rising From Ashes: The Don's Lost Queen

In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my private photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times. Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my private photos all over the internet. I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars. That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me. After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition. "Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you." Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again. In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch. But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby. Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice. "Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child." Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago. When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing. "She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time." At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago. I looked at him and nodded. "Don't worry, this will never happen again."

I was sitting in the obstetrics clinic, rubbing my four-month bump, when a livestream popped up on my phone. It was my husband, Xander, exchanging vows with my illegitimate half-sister, Rissa. The caption read: "The Commission never ratified your marriage. You're just the incubator." My husband and my father had sworn they were at a critical mafia sit-down. But there they were on the screen, laughing. I called Xander. He answered, thinking he was slick, but he forgot to mute the room. "Two more years of acting like a saint," I heard him sneer to his men. "Fucking her is a chore. But she's worth fifty million in clean assets." My marriage was void. My child was considered a bastard by the Mafia code. When I confronted them later at the gala, Rissa threw herself to the ground, screaming that I attacked her. Xander shoved me. Hard. I hit the table, and as blood trickled down my legs, he didn't even look at me. He scooped Rissa up and stepped over my bleeding body like I was trash. They froze my accounts. They hunted me down to a cheap motel, planning to kill me once I signed over the trust fund. I was cornered by a mob in a dirty clinic, waiting for the final blow. But it never came. A hand caught the metal chair mid-air. Killian Qiro, the most dangerous man in Chicago, stood over me. "Who dares?" he growled, his eyes dark with lethal promise. "Who dares call a Qiro child a bastard?" He picked me up from the dirt. "Xander is a dead man walking," he whispered against my hair. "He just doesn't know it yet."

Prostitution wasn't exactly the future Ariella pictured for herself. But a series of unfortunate events landed her in a brothel she couldn't escape. Until he came in. His name is Killian Morozcov. He moved liked he owned the world and planted bullets in the heads of men who looked at him the wrong way. He came into the brothel and left with her, and no matter how much she pleaded, he refused to tell her why. In Ariella's experience, she's learnt that you either stab someone in the back or they'll do it to you. Yet Killian showed her a side of humanity she'd never seen before and her defences fall, leading to a love that they both knew couldn't last. he was an heir to a Mafia kingdom, and she was a girl from a brothel with no familial backing. their love was doomed the moment Killian saved her. especially since he saved the wrong girl. he'd gone to the brothel thinking Ariella was his lost sister, Stella Morozcov. he'd been wrong and in the process of continuing his search for Stella he grew attracted to Ariella. so much that he felt that he couldn't breath without her. Their love is built on nothing but pain and deceit...skeletons rotting in their closets. They both have secrets that could tear them apart. But the past is a funny thing... no matter how much you run from it, it always guns you down in the end.

I was the adopted daughter of the wealthy Ruiz family, but the moment their true heir appeared, I was thrown away like trash. Not long after being kicked out, my adoptive father and uncle hired a hitman to stage a fatal car crash on Mulholland Drive. Pinned under an overturned Porsche with a shattered leg, I watched the hitman point a suppressed pistol between my eyes. "The Ruiz family sends their regards." Before this, my reputation had already been completely destroyed by a director, a pop idol, and a reality TV star, leaving me blacklisted and universally hated. My adoptive family didn't just want me ruined; they wanted me permanently silenced to tie up loose ends. The hitman pulled the trigger, and the original Alicia died in despair, tasting only rain and blood. Until her last breath, she didn't understand. Why did the family she loved treat her like a disposable object? Why did those three men maliciously frame her and turn the world against her? Opening my eyes again, the fear was gone, replaced by an ancient, cosmic indifference. I, the Arbiter, had taken over this deceased vessel. Moving faster than the human eye, I crushed the hitman's steel gun with my bare hand and turned his soul into dust. Looking at the memories of those who wronged this girl, I signed a contract for the very reality show they were starring in. Since I borrowed this body, taking out the trash is a required courtesy.

I was the Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me. But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest. The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me. They didn't. Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her. They let me burn to keep her warm. When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages. That was the moment Elena Vitiello died. I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York. By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring. "You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them. "Burn for it."

She married the devil. Then she divorced him. Now she carries his child. All Isabella Lorenzo wanted was to protect her family, and she thought marrying the ruthless and feared Luca Moretti... heir to the Moretti crime empire would be enough, but she was wrong. Instead of protection, her father was brutally executed and her heart left shattered in a million pieces. Two years later, she has managed to move on from the past and rebuild her life in the shadows. Every feeling of emotion was buried in her past, but they soon reignite after a reckless night with a masked stranger... a stranger that happens to be Luca Moretti. Now she's pregnant, and Luca will do anything to get her back. But forgiveness is not something that exists in her heart anymore... will she be able to fully heal, or will her urge for revenge burn everything down?