The Disposable Bride's Deadly Secret Identity
My debt-ridden uncle sold me to the Romero mafia family to save his own skin.
I was forced to marry Emiliano Romero, a man known to the underworld as "The Ghost"—a rumored monster who supposedly tore his last two caretakers apart.
My aunt and cousin delighted in my misery. My cousin came at me with a razor, leaving a nasty bruise on my face, while my aunt bleached my hair to make me look like a cheap, disposable doll.
When the Romeros arrived, they didn't even pretend to want a daughter-in-law.
"The Family needs a nobody whose death won't start a police report."
They just wanted a clueless victim to sign a pre-nup and die quietly. They shoved me down a sterile hallway and locked me inside a fortified, padded cell with a man wrapped in heavy chains.
They all thought they were sacrificing a helpless, terrified lamb to a madman. They laughed at my tears, completely convinced I was just gutter trash waiting to be slaughtered.
But they had no idea I was a highly trained undercover operative.
Listening to their arrogant whispers, the pieces finally clicked. Emiliano wasn't a deranged killer—he was a prisoner being drugged and framed by his own blood.
I drained my uncle's bank account to buy a neurotoxin antidote, dropped my pathetic, trembling disguise, and stepped calmly into the monster's cage.
I wasn't here to be their victim. I was here to save him.
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Chapter 5
Adrienne POV
The armored sedan glided to a halt, the engine purring into silence. The vault-like door was pulled open by Thomas, the cold morning air rushing into the cabin. I kept my shoulders hunched, clutching my cheap sequined purse to my chest as I stepped out onto the gravel driveway.
We weren't at the grand main entrance anymore. Looming before me was the Fortified Annex—a brutalist structure of gray granite and reinforced glass that looked more like a high-tech black site than a part of a mafia estate.
Standing at the top of the stone steps was Blanche Romero.
She wore an immaculate, tailored white suit, her blonde hair pulled back into a severe chignon. She looked down at me with the absolute disdain of a queen inspecting a cockroach that had crawled onto her pristine marble floors.
"M-Mrs. Romero," I stammered, forcing my voice to tremble as I took a hesitant step forward. "I'm Adrienne—"
She didn't let me finish. Blanche descended the steps, her leather-gloved hand snapping out to grip my jaw in a vice. Her perfectly manicured nails dug into my skin as she wrenched my face from side to side, her cold eyes lingering on the dark purple bruise Cammie had left on my cheekbone.
"Her skin is barely passable," Blanche sneered, not to me, but to a maid hovering nervously in the shadows. "But this straw hair... it's a disgrace. Strip it. Dye it back to black. I won't have cheap chemicals shedding on my rugs."
She released me with a shove that nearly sent me stumbling backward.
I let my lower lip quiver, widening my eyes in perfectly orchestrated panic. "W-what about the wedding? Uncle Harlon said—"
Blanche let out a sharp, mocking laugh that echoed off the granite walls. She snapped her fingers. From the shadows behind her, a man in a sharp suit—Mr. Davies, the Family's Advisor—stepped forward, holding a sleek leather folder.
"Wedding?" Blanche mocked, her lips curling into a cruel smile. "The papers were signed by proxy twenty minutes ago. Thomas was the witness. Legally, you are already Emiliano's wife."
She leaned in close, her expensive floral perfume suffocating me. "There is no wedding cake, little thing. Only you, and your duty."
*Your duty.* The words locked perfectly into the puzzle of the murder plot I had overheard in the restroom. She wasn't welcoming a daughter-in-law; she was installing a disposable executioner.
Without another word, Blanche turned on her heel and glided back toward the main house, Mr. Davies trailing behind her like a shadow.
Thomas gestured for me to move. We walked down a long, enclosed glass walkway connecting the main house to the Annex. Outside the reinforced panes, the manicured gardens bloomed in the morning sun—a cruel, mocking contrast to the sterile, echoing marble beneath my cheap sneakers. It felt like a march to the gallows.
At the end of the walkway stood a massive titanium door. Thomas stepped up to the panel, aligning his eye with a retina scanner before punching in a rapid code. The heavy bolts hissed, and the door glided open.
The smell hit me instantly—a clinical, suffocating blend of antiseptic and ozone.
I stepped inside. The walls were lined with seamless white padding. The floor was a dull, gray linoleum. In every upper corner, the red LED lights of high-end security cameras blinked rhythmically, recording every breath I took.
Thomas stopped and pulled a blank white keycard from his jacket, holding it out to me. He pointed down the narrow, blindingly bright corridor to a single, heavy door at the very end.
"Don't go in before he's restrained," Thomas said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "Don't turn your back on him. Don't give him anything he can use as a weapon."
I took the card with a shaking hand, looking up at the massive Soldier.
Thomas paused, his dark, dead eyes locking onto mine. "The last nurse, her fingers were broken one by one."
He didn't wait for a response. He turned and walked back through the titanium door. The heavy steel slammed shut behind me, the locking mechanism engaging with a deafening, final thud that sounded like a tomb being sealed.
I stood completely alone in the sterile white corridor. The terrified trembling in my hands vanished instantly, replaced by the ice-cold calm of my training.
From behind the door at the end of the hall, the heavy, metallic drag of chains scraped across the floor, followed by a low, suppressed growl.
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9.3
I woke up in a freezing, desolate wasteland, my body weak and covered in sores. A mechanical voice in my head informed me that I was a defective rabbit-mutant, and if I didn't conceive within twenty-four hours, I would die permanently.
The terror was suffocating, but the system left me no choice. To survive the brutal cold and the decay of my own heartbeat, I had to force a pregnancy with a stranger.
I stumbled through the snow, my fingers turning blue, until I found a massive, wounded Arctic Fox-mutant in a dark cave. He was a Tier-9 predator, dying and radiating the exact heat I needed to stay alive. I threw away my dignity, crawling into his fur to merge our energies, desperate to trigger the life-reset protocol before my time ran out.
I felt like a monster, forcing myself onto a man who didn't even know I existed, just to keep my own heart beating. How could I ever face him if he woke up? Why did I have to be the one to pay the price for this twisted, mechanical ultimatum?
The fusion was a success, but when I woke up the next morning, the apex predator had me pinned under his massive claws, his fangs inches from my throat. I didn't beg for mercy. I stared into his feral, ice-blue eyes and made a deal that would change everything: I would be his anchor, and he would be my protector. But then I dropped the final, terrifying truth: I was pregnant, and he was the only one who could save us.
7.9
He is cursed. She is a slave.
Their forbidden bond will either save their world or set it ablaze.
Caeser Varyn, the formidable Alpha King, is a figure of fear, his very blood tainted by a curse that has claimed every mate the Moon Goddess has given him. His existence is a lonely burden of twisted power, until a single, accidental touch changes everything.
Ava is a ghost in the royal palace-an unseen slave girl with a quiet grace and a hidden power. When the Moon Goddess's mating mark appears on her wrist, Caeser shatters ancient laws and claims her as his own.
Their forbidden union ignites a firestorm, forcing them to flee the burning palace and the outrage of the pack.
Turned out she's gifted by the Moon Goddess and to survive, Ava must master the power she never knew she possessed, expose the traitors who surround them, and find a way to break the ancestral curse.
If she fails, her love will be consumed, and their world will fall to the dark power of a corrupted god.
7.8
Anna Williams never imagined her life would collide with Alexander Knight-the cold, ruthless CEO feared across industries. When fate pushes her into his path, she discovers that power and wealth come with dangerous chains. Bound by a contract she can't escape, Anna must navigate his world of secrets, betrayal, and a passion that burns hotter than she ever dreamed. But behind his icy exterior lies a man scarred by trust and haunted by loss.
Will she be able to melt the billionaire's heart, or will she remain just another possession... claimed by the CEO?
9.2
I woke up suffocating in the dark, only to find my mind trapped inside a tiny, plump, and entirely uncoordinated body.
A cold, mechanical voice echoed in my brain, announcing that I was dead in my original world and had transmigrated into a corporate revenge novel as the six-month-old illegitimate daughter of Edward McClure, the story's ruthless villain.
The system mercilessly outlined my doomed fate. Tonight, my cold-blooded father would abandon me to a state orphanage. By age two, he would officially sign my rights away, leaving me to die miserably at the hands of human traffickers. Outside my nursery, I could hear his terrifying footsteps approaching, his voice devoid of any human warmth as he debated throwing me out like garbage. I was completely helpless, trapped in a baby's body, staring up at a man who looked at me with pure, visceral disgust.
Why did I have to be reborn as the tragic cannon fodder of a tyrant destined to put a bullet in his own head? How was I supposed to win over a severe germaphobe when my unequipped infant reflexes made me literally pee and vomit all over his pristine Tom Ford suits?
"Your ultimate mission is to prevent Edward McClure's self-destruction. Step one: Survive tonight's abandonment crisis."
Hearing the system's terrifying ultimatum, I swallowed my adult panic, forced a pool of pitiful tears into my large eyes, and reached my chubby little hands toward the monster.
7.6
For seventeen years, I was the pride of the Carlisle family, the perfect daughter destined to inherit an empire. But that life ended the moment a DNA report slid across my father’s mahogany desk.
The paper proved I was a stranger. Vanessa, the girl sobbing in the corner, was the real biological daughter they had been searching for.
"You need to leave. Tonight. Before the press gets wind of this. Before the stock prices dip."
My father’s voice was as cold as flint. My mother wouldn't even look at me, staring out the window at the gardens as if I were already a ghost. Just like that, I was erased. I left behind the Birkin bags and the diamonds, throwing my Centurion Card into a crystal bowl with a clatter that echoed like a gunshot. I walked out into the cold night and climbed into a rusted Ford Taurus driven by a man I had never met—my biological father.
I went from a mansion to a fourth-floor walk-up in Queens that smelled of laundry detergent and struggle. My new siblings looked at me with a mix of fear and disgust, waiting for the "fallen princess" to break. They expected me to beg for my old life back, to crumble without the luxury I’d known since birth.
But they didn't know the truth. I had spent years training in a shark tank, honing survival skills they couldn't imagine. While Richard Carlisle froze my trust funds to starve me out, my net worth was climbing by millions on an encrypted trading app.
They thought they were throwing me to the wolves. They didn't realize they were just letting me off my leash. As the Carlisles prepared to debut Vanessa at the Manhattan Arts Gala, I was already making my move.
"Get dressed. We're going to a party."
8.4
I died on a filthy bed in a back-alley clinic.
I willingly sacrificed my own corneas so the Mafia man I loved could see the light of day again.
But my soul was forced to stay behind, watching another woman claim my sacrifice as her own.
Dante reclaimed his throne as the Mafia boss. Believing the lie that I had abandoned him, he unleashed his vengeance upon my family.
"Where the hell is she hiding?"
He shattered my brother's hands and drove my mother to her death. He absolutely refused to believe the fact that I was already dead, convinced instead that I was just cowering from his wrath.
It wasn't until my medical records were thrown right in his face that Dante finally realized whose eyes he was using to look at the world.
The truth drove him completely insane.
He burned the whole world down just to beg for my forgiveness.
"Gianna, please wait for me!"