The Lie Behind His Perfect Life
For three years, my husband Hudson convinced everyone I was crazy. My parents. Our friends. Even my own therapist.
He said my suspicions were just anxiety. PTSD from our miscarriage. That I needed my medication and a good night's sleep.
But a pink butterfly hair clip in his car told a different story.
It wasn't mine. And we don't have children.
When I confronted him, he sighed with practiced patience—the same sigh he'd perfected over three years of making me doubt my own mind. "It belongs to a client's daughter," he said, reaching for my pills. "Your anxiety is flaring up again."
I almost believed him. I always almost believed him.
But this time, I didn't back down.
I invited his mistress and their three-year-old son to our family dinner.
With the DNA test results in my purse, I was ready to burn his perfect world to the ground.
He thought he could gaslight me forever.
He was wrong.
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Chapter 4
Hudson Hull
I didn't leave.
For three days after Cora's revelation, I slept in my office, claiming I had a major case that required all-nighters. The truth was, I couldn't face her. Not after she'd laid out my entire double life like a prosecutor presenting evidence.
I kept telling myself it wasn't that bad. Affairs happened. Men strayed. It didn't mean I didn't love her.
But the look in her eyes when she'd read that paternity report...
I'd never seen Cora like that. Not even during her worst spirals three years ago. Back then, she'd been frantic, desperate, clawing at reality like a drowning woman. Now she was calm. Still. Like the eye of a hurricane.
It terrified me more than any of her panic attacks ever had.
On Friday, my mother called. "Hudson, what's this about a family dinner? Cora invited us. She sounded... strange."
"Everything's fine, Mom."
"Hudson." Her voice sharpened. "I'm not an idiot. What's going on?"
I closed my eyes. "I'll explain later."
"Hudson James Hull—"
I hung up.
That night, I drove to Bridgett's apartment. She opened the door with Leo on her hip, her face lighting up when she saw me—then falling when she registered my expression.
"What's wrong?"
I pushed past her into the small living room. Toys scattered across the floor. A half-eaten fruit pouch on the coffee table. The evidence of my other life, everywhere.
"She knows," I said.
Bridgett went pale. "Knows what?"
"Everything. The paternity. The apartment. The Wednesday visits." I laughed bitterly. "She had a DNA test done, Bridgett. She took Leo's sippy cup from daycare."
"Oh my God." Bridgett sank onto the couch, clutching Leo. "Oh my God, Hudson. What are we going to do?"
We. Like we were a team. Like I hadn't spent three years lying to both of them.
"I don't know." I rubbed my face. "She wants you at dinner on Sunday. With Leo. In front of both our parents."
"She wants to humiliate us."
"She wants the truth." I looked at Leo—my son, with his mother's dark curls and my gray eyes. Three years old. I'd missed his first steps, his first words, everything that mattered, because I was too cowardly to choose.
"You should go," I said finally.
"What?"
"To the dinner. Bring Leo." I stood. "Let her have her moment. Maybe then she'll agree to a quiet divorce. No public scandal. No destroying my career."
Bridgett stared at me. "That's what you're worried about? Your career?"
"What else is there?"
She laughed—a broken, incredulous sound. "How about your marriage? Your wife? The woman you've been gaslighting for three years?"
"I didn't gaslight her—"
"Yes, you did!" Leo stirred in her arms, and she lowered her voice, but the fury remained. "You told me she was crazy. That she'd never believe the truth anyway. That it was easier to let her think she was paranoid than to actually be honest." Her eyes glistened. "And I believed you. God, I'm as bad as you are."
She stood, carrying Leo toward the bedroom. At the door, she paused.
"I'll come to your dinner, Hudson. But not for you. For her. She deserves to hear someone say they're sorry." Her voice broke. "Even if it's not you."
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8.9
This is my story of how to lose a mob boss in ten days.
I have a
I've been arranged to marry a monster.
Run away? Good idea. Tried that. Didn't work.
Because in my family, my father makes the rules.
And he says this wedding is happening .
But he still has a soft spot for me, his last remaining daughter.
So he offers me a deal.
Take ten days.
Get to know Sasha.
See if you change your mind.
Yeah, right.
Sasha Ozerov is a beast in Brioni.
He's ruthless, flawless, utterly unconcerned with mortals like me.
All he wants is what our marriage would bring
My family's power and the city in the palm of his hand.
But maybe, if I can make him back out of the deal...
I'll keep my freedom.
So I set out to do everything I can to drive him crazy.
I have ten days to make my husband hate me.
What happens if I start to love him instead?
7.1
I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York.
To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen.
But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table.
It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test.
"Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture."
I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking.
He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago.
He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy.
He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go.
He was wrong.
I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don.
And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy.
I wanted to erase him.
I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built.
Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa."
It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul.
On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial.
When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth.
He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife.
Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.
8.5
Delphine Yenla has learned one thing the hard way; love doesn't just hurt, it breaks you in ways you don't recover from. So she stopped believing in it. She chose independence, control, and a life where no one could get close enough to hurt her again.
And for a while, it worked.
Until Wilson Dan walked into her world.
Cold, composed, and impossible to read, Wilson is the kind of man who never loses control. He does not get involved. He does not make mistakes. And he never lets anyone get close enough to matter.
But she doesn't realize... Wilson is not the kind of man you resist twice.
People don't challenge him.
Delphine does.
From their very first encounter, something shifts. The tension between them is immediate, sharp, unsettling, impossible to ignore. And from the moment he notices her, walking away stops being a choice. Every conversation feels like a quiet battle. Every glance lingers longer than it should. And the more they try to stay in control, the more everything begins to slip.
But this is not just about attraction.
There are things Wilson isn't saying.
Things Delphine is starting to notice.
And people around them who are already watching... and waiting.
What began as resistance quickly became something she cannot control.
Because this is not just about feelings.
It is about power. It is about position.
And Delphine may already be standing somewhere she doesn't understand,
somewhere she cannot simply walk away from.
Is she getting closer to Wilson...
or already too deep to step out?
When control finally breaks, one truth becomes impossible to ignore:
Some hearts don't just fall in love.
They fall into something they may not survive.
7.9
"You are wet, Red. I can smell your juices already." He said. I wanted to deny it but I knew he was right. The sides of my thigh were already clammy. How could he tell from afar?
"No, I need to sleep. I told you I have a presentation tomorrow, right? I'm tired, I want to rest a bit." I replied.
"You'll do that when I get a release. I'll make sure to be fast about it," he replied. I stood rooted on the same spot without moving. I knew he was just being civil with me. It was only a matter of time before he dragged me to his side.
"Unless maybe you want me to call the others?" He asked but I could tell he was threatening me. Calling the others would end in me not getting any rest at all.
"No, please," I replied walking obediently to his side.
*****
Three men, one naive woman.
Ziyana never knew her life would turn in the most dramatic way. She enjoyed the life of a princess until life happened.
From being hated by her blood to suddenly being sold to a spoilt Mafia Lord. She thought she could navigate through it but there were two more brothers!
Ruthless. Domineering. Voracious.
The Niccolo Brothers' lives were full of danger and envy but these men never wanted her out of their sight.
Would Ziyana be able to cope in the midst or run for her life before she get used to them?
7.6
I am the wife of Julian Falcone, a powerful mafia boss, but my title in this house is nothing but a joke.
When our car broke down in a deadly blizzard, Julian rushed to the scene, only to bypass me entirely.
He wrapped his heavy coat around his fragile cousin, Livia, and put her in his only available passenger seat.
"Livia's constitution is too weak to survive this cold. I have to take her back first."
He left me to freeze in the pitch-black car for the entire night.
When his men finally dragged my half-dead body out the next morning, they openly mocked me, calling me a piece of "collateral" that the boss wouldn't care about as long as I was breathing.
Back at the estate, Julian didn't even ask if I had survived the frostbite. Instead, he stormed into my sickroom, demanding I treat his mistress with respect just because my absolute silence had hurt her feelings.
His grandmother then publicly humiliated me for failing to provide an heir, while Livia flaunted the custom diamond bracelet Julian bought to soothe her "fright" from the storm.
I finally understood. He didn't marry me out of honor to save my fallen family. He just needed my aristocratic Rossi blood to legitimize his new-money mafia empire.
I was never a wife. I was a transaction he was willing to let freeze to death.
When his men delivered a heavy diamond necklace to buy my submission, I didn't cry or beg.
I dropped the blood diamond into the deepest drawer, and began to plan my escape.
9.4
I spent the night with a stranger...
Who got me pregnant...
And turned out to be my boss...
Whoops, sorry, did I say "boss"? I meant a MOB boss.
To be fair, I didn't know he was my boss when I slept with him.
I thought he was just the kind stranger offering me a place to stay.
But one night in Misha Orlov's hotel room got me way more than I bargained for.
It got me champagne that tasted like starlight.
Satin sheets as soft as a dream.
And a man with silver eyes who showed me how it felt to come undone.
And then, in the morning...
He was gone.
That's I needed to get my life together anyway.
After all, my ex-not-quite-husband (it's a long story) just emptied all our bank accounts and disappeared, taking my home and my money and my job with him.
So I'm starting from a blank slate.
I find myself a new apartment.
A new job.
And I put both Misha and my husband behind me.
At least, I thought I did.
Until Day 1 of orientation.
When I learn that Misha Orlov is my new boss.
That's bad enough.
What's worse is what came next.
A car crash.
A doctor's appointment.
And two pieces of unsettling news.
Congratulations, the doctor says. You're pregnant.
Congratulations, Misha says. You and I are getting married.