The Mafia Don's Regret: Torturing His True Savior
My husband crushed the metacarpals of my left hand—my drawing hand—with a heavy leather-bound book.
This was Punishment Ninety-Six.
The offense? I had missed a single phone call from my stepsister, Joyce.
According to Don Austen Ballard, ignoring the woman who allegedly saved his life fifteen years ago was akin to high treason.
"Discipline is the highest form of love, Alana," he whispered, watching the violet bruise spread across my skin.
He calls shattering an architect's hand "love."
He believes Joyce dragged him from a burning building when he was a boy. He treats her like a living saint and me like a punching bag to pay his life debt.
But it is all a lie.
Fifteen years ago, Joyce was at a cheerleading camp three towns away.
I was the one in that crawlspace.
I was the one who found the bleeding boy in the dark.
I was the one who called him "Stellen" because he was too terrified to tell me his real name.
He has spent our entire marriage torturing his true savior to please a fraud.
Tonight, the pain finally burned away my fear, leaving only cold resolve.
I didn't cry.
I waited until the house was silent, then I retrieved a burner phone hidden in a false bottom of a box in the bathroom.
I dialed the number of his sworn enemy, Don Dalton Underwood.
"I have the blueprints," I said, my voice steady despite the agony in my hand. "And I have the controlling shares of Ballard Industries. I'm ready to burn his kingdom to ash."
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Chapter 5
Alana POV
I arrived at my father's house looking less like a daughter and more like a car crash survivor.
My ribs were bound tight with tape, restricting every breath.
My hand was a throbbing mess.
Although my dress hid the bruises on my torso, my walk was a dead giveaway.
Robert McNeil opened the door.
He looked at me with unmasked disdain.
"Fix your hair," he hissed. "You look like a stray dog. You're embarrassing the Don."
"Nice to see you too, Dad," I muttered, limping past him into the foyer.
The dining room was set with gleaming crystal and china.
Austen sat at the head of the table.
Joyce sat to his right.
My mother's seat.
Diana, Joyce's mother, was fawning over them like a court jester.
"Alana," Joyce smiled, fingering a massive sapphire necklace. "You made it. Did you trip on the way here?"
"Something like that," I said, gripping the locket in my pocket as if it were a lifeline.
I sat down stiffly.
"Show us your little purchase," Joyce said. "The million-dollar tin can."
I didn't move.
"Show us," Austen commanded, his voice cold and detached. "Since you spent my money on it."
Reluctantly, I pulled the locket out.
Joyce snatched it from my hand before I could react.
"Oops," she said.
She let it slip from her fingers.
It hit the floor with a dull clatter.
Before I could move, she smashed her stiletto heel down on it.
The soft silver crumpled.
The hinge snapped.
"Oh no," Joyce giggled, feigning shock. "Clumsy me."
Something inside me snapped.
The tether that held my sanity to the earth finally broke.
I stood up.
I swung my good hand with everything I had left.
Crack.
My palm connected with Joyce's cheek with a force that vibrated up my arm.
It was the sweetest sound I had ever heard.
The room went deadly silent.
Joyce touched her face, eyes wide.
"She hit me!" she shrieked. "Austen! She hit the Savior!"
Austen stood up, his face thunderous.
"Alana!"
Diana shoved me hard.
I stumbled back, tripping over the edge of the rug.
I fell backwards into a glass sculpture on the side table.
It shattered.
Shards sliced into my back through the silk of my dress.
"Get her out of my sight!" Robert roared. "Lock her in the basement until she learns respect!"
Two of my father's guards grabbed me.
They dragged me toward the basement door.
"No," I pleaded, digging my heels in. "Not the basement. Please."
It was where Robert used to lock me whenever I got better grades than Joyce.
It was dark. Damp.
Full of spiders and memories.
They threw me down the stairs.
I tumbled, landing hard on the concrete.
The door slammed shut above me.
The lock clicked.
Darkness swallowed me whole.
My breath came in short, panic-stricken gasps.
The smell of mold triggered it.
Flashback.
Fifteen years ago.
The crawlspace.
The choking smoke.
The boy bleeding next to me.
"Don't let them find me," he had whispered, his voice trembling.
"I won't," I had promised. "I'm your Little Star. I'll shine for you."
I curled into a ball, rocking back and forth on the cold floor.
"I won't let them find you," I whispered to the empty room.
Time dissolved.
I didn't know how long I was down there.
Suddenly, the door at the top of the stairs exploded inward.
Light flooded in.
Austen stormed down the stairs.
He looked frantic.
"Alana!"
He scooped me up into his arms.
He smelled like rain and gunpowder.
"I've got you," he said, his voice rough. "I'm here."
He was playing the hero again.
Saving me from the hell he had allowed to happen.
I was delirious with pain and fear.
I looked up at his face.
The shadows made him look like the boy in the crawlspace.
I reached up and touched his cheek with a trembling hand.
"It's okay," I whispered, my voice slurring. "You're safe now, Stellen."
Austen froze.
He stopped halfway up the stairs.
His body went rigid as stone.
He looked down at me, his eyes wide with shock.
"What did you call me?"
"Stellen," I murmured, closing my eyes. "Your real name. The one you only told the Little Star."
I felt his heart hammer against my chest.
Joyce had never known that name.
Nobody knew that name.
Only the girl in the crawlspace.
The girl he had been torturing for five years.
"Alana?" his voice broke.
But I was already drifting away, leaving him alone with the truth that was about to destroy him.
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7.5
The Duke was standing in the middle of the room, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted to one side. It was a relaxed, casual pose, and yet the way he looked at her was anything but casual. The deep midnight of his eyes burned and he radiated a subtle, sensual energy that made the air around him crackle.
He looked like a man who'd never heard the word 'no' in all his life. Unluckily for him, 'no' was the only word she had.
"There's no reason why I should stay," Anna clasped her shaking hands together in an effort to still them. "I'm not marrying you."
His gaze flickered, his mouth curving slightly, and she had the disturbing thought that far from putting him off, her insistence was only inciting him further.
"But you haven't heard my proposal yet," he said mildly. "Isn't that why you're here?"
"I don't need to hear it. I already know that my answer will be no."
"Of course. But you can hardly tell your father that you heard me out when you haven't, in fact, heard me out.... Anna."
8.0
I posted a photo of baby shoes to celebrate my pregnancy. Two hours later, my husband was holding jumper cables.
Kaeden, the Mafia Capo who swore to protect me, stood under the buzzing fluorescent lights of the basement.
He didn't look like the man who brought me vanilla lattes. He looked like a monster.
His "fragile" childhood friend, Clemmie, had convinced him that my innocent post was a signal to our enemies.
"Discipline," Kaeden muttered, refusing to look at my weeping face. "She needs to learn the cost of her voice."
He ordered low voltage—just enough to scare me.
But the moment he walked out the door, unable to watch, Clemmie smiled.
"He's not coming back for you," she whispered.
She cranked the dial all the way to the right.
She didn't just want to teach me a lesson. She wanted to stop my heart so she could harvest it for herself.
And my husband had already signed the release forms.
But they made one mistake. They left the cleanup to Alois, the family's most ruthless Enforcer.
He didn't bury me. He saved me.
Now, while Kaeden cries over a fake grave, consumed by guilt, I am watching from the shadows.
Daria Burris died in that chair.
The woman who survived is coming for blood.
9.2
I stood on the tarmac clutching white magnolias, watching the man I loved hand his loyalty to the woman born to destroy me.
Dante Cavallaro, the Ruthless Underboss, didn't just leave me for Sofia Moretti.
He revealed that for two years, I wasn't his lover. I was a human shield.
The heavy iron bangle he forced me to wear wasn't a gift for my protection.
"It's a Malocchio anchor," he sneered as I lay paralyzed on the floor. "It drains the wearer's luck to keep Sofia healthy. You are just the filter."
My body began to rot from the inside out, my nerves dying one by one.
When I was finally on my deathbed, unable to move or speak, Dante didn't cry for me.
He cried because his tool was broken.
He forced the cursed bangle onto his own wrist, begging the universe to keep me alive so I could continue to suffer in Sofia's place.
"Please," he sobbed into my sheets. "Don't leave me alone with the bad luck."
I used my last breath to make a wish—not for him, but for my freedom.
I closed my eyes and died.
Exactly one hour later, Dante's phone rang.
It was his father.
"Sofia just collapsed," he said. "Her heart just stopped."
I was the vessel.
And now that I was gone, the poison had come home to the King.
7.4
MAFIA DESIRE
7.4
In the city where power was inherited through bloodshed and silence, love was the most dangerous liability of all.
She emerged from the shadows like a secret the underworld had failed to bury-elegant, unreadable, and far more lethal than she appeared. Every step she took echoed with intention. Every smile concealed a calculation. Men underestimated her. They always did. And they always paid for it.
He was young, brilliant, and already feared. A rising king in a world that devoured the weak, carrying ambition like a loaded weapon. He didn't trust easily, didn't hesitate, and didn't believe in fate-until her presence began to unravel everything he thought he controlled.
Their connection wasn't born of innocence or chance. It was forged in danger, sealed by secrets, and fueled by a hunger neither of them dared to name. In a world ruled by betrayal, they found something far more terrifying than enemies-each other.
Because when desire collides with power, and love becomes a threat, survival is no longer guaranteed.
And in the mafia, nothing is more deadly than wanting what you're not supposed to have.
8.7
Synopsis:
She thought she could forget him by morning. She was wrong.
Catherine Moretti wanted to escape her past.
As the daughter of a powerful mafia boss, her life was full of danger, lies, and control. So she ran, hoping to start over, far from the world she was born into.
But one reckless night turned her life upside down, just to find out later she's pregnant with the hot Italian stranger's baby, the one she spent the night with!
Now, she's pulled back into the mafia world, only this time, into Nico's.
She ran from one mafia king... and ended up in the arms of his enemy
However, Nico isn't the kind of man you walk away from.
And in his world, one night can turn into forever.
7.8
Elena Voss was sold like a debt receipt.
Her greedy aunt and uncle handed her over to Damien Blackthorn-New York's untouchable billionaire tech mogul by day, ruthless Mafia Don and Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack by night-to settle a family debt they never asked her to pay.
The moment their eyes met in that rain-soaked alley, the fated mate bond ignited like wildfire. For one reckless night, he claimed her body and soul, whispering "mine" against her skin while the Moon Goddess sealed their destiny.
Then came the betrayal.
On their first anniversary, he paraded his pureblood fiancée through their penthouse, let her kneel for him in the study while Elena watched from the shadows, and divorced her in front of the entire pack.
"Wolfless trash," he snarled. "You were never more than payment."
Heart in pieces and two tiny heartbeats growing inside her, Elena fled. She vanished into Seattle's gray drizzle, changed her name, cut her hair, and built a quiet life as a single mother. She swore the Blackthorn name would never touch her twins-Leo and Luna, the secret heirs he didn't even know existed.
Five years later, the children's first uncontrolled shifts rip through their small apartment like lightning. The only place that can teach them control and keep them hidden from rival packs is back in New York-back under Damien's shadow.
The Alpha Don who once threw her away is now obsessed.
The fated bond never died; it only waited. He feels her every laugh, every tear, every protective growl she gives their children. He'll burn his empire, his alliances, and his pride to drag her back.
But Elena isn't the broken girl he discarded anymore.
She's a mother with claws.
A luna who learned to bite.
And this time, if he wants her forgiveness, he'll have to beg on his knees.
Pregnancy. Divorce. Secret babies. Billionaire alpha. Mafia power plays. Revenge that burns slow and sweet.
Some bonds can't be broken.
Some rejections come with claws.
And some second chances are paid for in blood.