THE DON'S INNOCENT BRIDE: The Queen He Never Knew
I pointed a gun at my husband and made him sign our divorce papers.
He thought I was too soft to survive without him, he had no idea of the rebel he created. I was about to become his worst nightmare.
Dante Caruso taught me two things: how to love a monster, and how to become one. When I discovered he murdered my family for power, I carefully planned my exit and transformation into the heiress I was meant to be. I transformed from an innocent bride to his worst nightmare, I spent two years building an empire on the ashes of the girl he thought he knew.
Now I'm back. Not as Bella Russo, the wife he's been desperately searching for. But as a force shaking the underworld, the enemy that is systematically destroying everything he built.
He wants his wife back.
I want him buried.
Now the real question is what will be his decision, when he discovers the enemy that is destroying his empire and the woman he's lost are the same person.
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Chapter 10
BELLA'S POV
Sleep didn't come.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the photo of the dead man burned into my mind.
Marco's guard. Dante's soldier. Wearing Vitale colors but bearing Caruso marks.
The evidence was everywhere. The connections are driving more crazy than they should, every signature. Every attack.
Dante had killed my family. Dante was trying to kill me now, all while pretending to be a love sick fool. He might justify the fact that he is doing all this to get be, but who aims a gun at someone they love.
Still, I don't know why I still have doubts, hoping it was false accusations.
I sat up, checking the time. Two a.m. Four hours until dawn. Four hours of my mind spinning in circles.
I grabbed my laptop and pulled up the files again. Everything I'd collected over the past months.
Investigation reports with Dante's authorization. Financial records connecting Caruso to Vitale operations. The timeline that damned him.
And now, Marco's man among Lorenzo's soldiers.
It all pointed to Dante.
But something felt wrong.
Not wrong like I was mistaken. Wrong like I was missing something.
I opened a new document, started writing everything down.
Attack 1: The Warehouse (3 months ago)
- Lorenzo's men
- 15 of my people killed
- How did they know our location?
Attack 2: Supply Route (Last week)
- Lorenzo's soldiers
- Marco's man among them (Caruso tattoo)
- How did they know the route?
Attack Pattern:
- Both times, they knew exactly where to hit
- Both times, minimal Caruso visibility
- Both times, Lorenzo took the blame
I stared at the screen.
Two attacks. Both supposedly Lorenzo. But if Dante was using Lorenzo as cover, paying him to attack me,
how was Lorenzo finding us?
We'd been careful. Changed locations after the warehouse. Limited who knew our movements.
And yet they'd found us twice.
Someone had to be feeding them information, that must be the case. My heart skipped a beat at the thought.
I pulled up the list of people that are around me, those in the compound. There was forty three loyalists originally.
Fifteen died during the warehouse attack, twenty eight left now.
Out of those twenty eight, who could be the Judas.
How many of them were reporting to Dante?
My hands trembled as I scrolled through names.
Tommaso. Lucia. Enzo. Giuseppe. Marco. Antonio. Luca.
Men I'd trained beside. Eaten meals with. Trusted with my life.
Any one of them could be selling me out.
The thought made my stomach turn.
A knock at my door made me jump.
"Principessa?" Lucia's voice. "Your light is on. Are you alright?"
"Come in."
She entered, looking as tired as I felt. "Can't sleep?"
"Can't stop thinking." I gestured to the laptop. "Look at this. Two attacks in a few months. Both times, they knew exactly where to find us."
Lucia sat at the edge of the bed, studying the screen. "You think we have a spy."
"I think we must have. There's no other explanation." I closed the laptop. "We've been too careful for this to be a coincidence."
"Have you told Tommaso?"
"Not yet. I don't..." I stopped myself.
"You don't know if you can trust him?" She asked, turning to look at me sharply, she studied my face as I swallowed my words.
The question hung in the air.
"I trust Tommaso," I said finally. "He knew my father. He's been protecting the Sovereign name for fifteen years. But..."
"But you can't be sure."
"I can't be sure of anyone." The admission tasted bitter. "Dante has resources. Money. He could've gotten to anyone. Threatened families. Paid them off."
"Then we investigate. Quietly."
"How? If there is a mole, they'll know we're looking. They'll warn Dante."
Lucia was quiet for a moment. "Then we set a trap."
"What kind of trap?"
"We feed different information to different people. See which version gets back to Dante." She stood, pacing. "If someone's reporting our movements, we'll catch them."
It wasn't a bad idea. But it would take time we might not have.
"And if Dante attacks before we figure it out?" I asked.
"Then we fight. Like we've been doing."
I looked at the names on my screen again. Twenty-eight people. Anyone could be a traitor.
Or maybe more than one.
"Tomorrow," I said. "We'll talk to Tommaso. Figure out a plan."
"Get some rest, principessa. You can't think clearly when you're exhausted."
After she left, I tried to sleep again.
But my mind wouldn't stop spinning.
I finally drifted off sometime around four a.m.
And woke to the sound of alarms screaming through the compound.
I was up instantly, gun in hand, heart pounding.
Shouts in Italian. Running footsteps. Glass shattering.
"PRINCIPESSA!" Tommaso burst through my door, face grim. "They're here! Dante! Caruso soldiers! We need to move now!"
My blood went cold.
Dante had found us.
Again.
And this time, he'd come himself.
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7.1
"Don't tease me again or else you really want it. There are no safe words in my bed."
He is rumored to know a thousand ways to disarm and pleasure a woman, and I am Olivia, the nymphomaniac.
In a quest for revenge against my childhood bullies, I got locked into an unhappy marriage, with an untamed brother-in-law. Colt Fletcher, the morally-grey, rebel biker is ever excited by danger and prefers life on the edge. And from the moment he laid eyes on me, I became his forbidden want.
I should know better, to steer clear of deadly desires like these but when fate forces us to live under the same roof, share the same boardroom, and every accidental touch burns, my resolve begins to collapse.
But scandals don't stay buried, and my husband is the devil. The price of this betrayal is death. I must choose between my husband who owns my name, and his brother who owns my body.
8.9
They killed her father. Now she's racing straight into the heart of enemy territory.
Mia Chen has one rule, never let them see your face. As the underground racing legend "Ghost Rider," she's untouchable until a rigged race tears off her mask and exposes her identity to the worst possible person. Dax Steele, VP of the Iron Wolves MC, the club that bankrupted her father and drove him to an early grave.
Now she owes $50,000 to men who don't accept apologies, and Dax offers her a deal she can't refuse, race for the Iron Wolves in the inter-club championship, and he'll clear her debt. But working for her enemy means living in his world, sleeping under his roof, and discovering that everything she believed about her father's death might be a lie.
Dax has secrets of his own, evidence that his father was framed, and the real culprit is still out there. He needs Mia's skills on the track and her mechanical genius in the garage. What he doesn't need is the fire she ignites in his blood every time she defies him.
As they dig deeper into the past, attraction sparks into something dangerous. Because in the biker world, loyalty is everything and loving your enemy could get you both killed.
She came for revenge. She stayed for the truth. She'll risk everything for him.
8.0
"I..hate you" I croaked out brokenly, struggling and failing to hold back the tears spilling in waves from my eyes.
"Awwww, is my fat queen crying?" Brandon jested mockingly, laughing as if he had just said something funny.
His friends echoed his laughter, making the tears spill even faster from how embarrassed I was.
Shaking my head, I turned away from his crude handsome face, but was held back by his hands, gripping my hair painfully.
I screamed as he slammed me against the wall, feeling the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
He grabbed my hair roughly, pressing my face harshly against the wall.
"You don't walk out till I am done with you," he gritted out, pressing his body against mine.
"Please.... Stop, please..." I cried out.
"Do I make myself clear?" Brandon snapped, his other hand gripping my waist tightly.
I could feel his hard hot body against mine, and his nails digging painfully into my waist.
"Yes," I whispered, "please let me go."
He pressed harder against my body, his hands on my waist tightening.
I could feel his hot breath against my neck, and despite my situation, my body was shamelessly reacting to him.
Loud snickers alerted us to the fact we were not alone.
Brandon released my hair, leaning away from my body, before pushing me forward.
I stumbled, nearly falling to my feet.
"Now run you fat bitch," he yelled, before laughing with his friends.
I hightailed it out of there, crying my eyes out.
Being fat wasn't a problem, her mother always told her, never failing to remind her how beautiful she was.
But for Christy Morris, being fat was a curse.
Especially since college and her arch enemy Brandon made it so.
Forced to babysit her bully and enemy baby sister, Christy's life takes an unexpected turn.
For the worst or better, was still what she was yet to find out.
Find out Christy and Brandon's story in this thrilling novel filled with...
Romance.
Unexpected twist.
And dare I say....
Love.
8.8
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?
7.4
As a princess who could not wield magic, Princess Daphne's only value to her kingdom was her arranged marriage. The task was simple, but when Daphne was kidnapped and brought to the cold mountains of Vramid, she realized that she was in over her head.
She had heard of these cursed mountains before― rocky terrain, freezing temperatures, and the land was ruled by a man feared by many within the continent.
King Atticus Heinvres, the blood-thirsty ruler of the North.
Even though she had never met him before, tales were spread of King Atticus's ruthlessness. Some said he was a monster, others claimed he was the devil himself, but whatever the story was, everyone knew of the man who had powers beyond anyone's imagination. He could topple armies and crumble nations with just one wave of his hand, aided by what others rumored to be a cursed obsidian ring.
No one outside of Vramid had ever met the fearsome king before. Not until Daphne.
However, upon meeting the formidable man, Daphne found out that the king might not really be the monster others had claimed him to be.
In fact, what was hidden under that obsidian shield could just be a diamond in the rough.
―
[Excerpt]
"Now... where should I put you both?" he asked casually, not expecting a reply. "It's regretful that I only have one chandelier."
"Underneath my bed? No, no, too dirty. My dust bunnies don't deserve this," Atticus mused to himself. "The mantlepiece? How about the vanity table? I suppose if I lop off one of your heads I could mount it over... Wife, which head do you want to stare at while you do your hair?"
"Atticus!" Daphne screamed. "I don't want any heads! Let them go."
"Fair enough." Atticus shrugged, and flicked his fingers.
There were two identical cracks as both necks snapped at once.
Daphne gasped, horrified. This man, her husband, had just killed two men with a flick of his finger, as though he was snuffing out candles.
"I told you to let them go!" Daphne cried out.
"Yes, I let them go," Atticus said. Then, his eyes darkened. "To receive divine judgment from the heavens."
8.9
Six years ago, I was given to New York's most ruthless mafia Don as collateral to pay off my father's gambling debt.
After one terrifying, pitch-black night with him, his grandfather framed me for treason and threw me out onto the freezing streets.
They threw me away, not knowing I was pregnant with his triplets.
Now, I only came back to his city to get his signature on our divorce papers so my children and I could disappear to Europe.
But his men ambushed us at the airport and dragged us to his underground interrogation room.
Damien threw a DNA consent form on the steel desk, staring at my fierce five-year-old son with dark reverence.
"Sign the paper. Or I will personally forge him into the sharpest weapon this family has ever seen."
I was trembling with absolute terror.
He believed the lies that I had sold his family's secrets and abandoned his firstborn heir for money.
I didn't understand why this monster wouldn't just let me go, but I couldn't let him drag my innocent babies into his violent hell.
Just as I tearfully picked up the pen to surrender, the room plunged into darkness, and a digital threat hijacked his monitors.
My other five-year-old son had hacked the Don's network, starting a 60-second countdown to wipe out all his billions.
Damien was forced to yield, but when the steel doors opened, his severely traumatized, silent six-year-old heir walked in—and immediately curled into my arms.
Damien stared at us in shock, then slowly tore my divorce papers into pieces.
"The deal is off."