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 6
Alana POV
"Stellen."
The name hung in the damp air of the basement, suspended like a guillotine blade waiting to drop.
Austen froze on the stairs.
His arms, which had been anchoring me tight against his chest, turned to stone.
He looked down at me, his eyes wide, the pupils dilating until they swallowed the irises completely.
For a second, the monster was gone.
Only the terrified boy from the crawlspace remained.
"What did you say?" His voice was a jagged whisper, barely audible over the drumming of my own heart.
My head swam.
The pain in my ribs was a dull roar, drowning out my survival instincts.
I had slipped.
I had shown a card I was supposed to keep hidden until the game was over.
"I..." I stammered, my tongue thick and clumsy. "I saw it."
"Saw what?" He shook me, just a little. "Where did you see that name? No one knows that name."
I had to lie.
If I told him the truth now, while I was broken and bleeding in his arms, he wouldn't believe me.
Or worse, Joyce would twist it.
She would say I stole her diary. She would claim I was trying to steal her glory again.
"An old ledger," I wheezed, closing my eyes against the harsh light spilling from the open door. "In your study. It said Stellen."
The tension in his shoulders didn't ease.
"Liar," he breathed, though the conviction was missing from his tone.
"Austen!"
The shriek tore through the moment like shattered glass.
Joyce appeared at the top of the stairs.
She was clutching her cheek, her face contorted in a mask of fake agony.
"She's manipulating you!" Joyce screamed, pointing a manicured finger at us like an accusation from God. "She attacked me! She tried to kill your savior, and now she's playing the victim!"
The doubt in Austen's eyes vanished.
The boy was gone.
The Don returned.
He looked from me to Joyce, his jaw tightening until a muscle ticked violently in his cheek.
"You are too much, Alana," he said coldly.
He didn't drop me, but he might as well have.
The way he held me changed instantly.
It wasn't protective anymore.
It was a captor transporting cargo.
"I didn't touch her," I said, but my voice was too weak to carry the weight of the truth.
"Enough," he growled.
He carried me up the stairs and set me down in the hallway.
Not gently.
My feet hit the floor, and agony shot up my legs like lightning.
"Go to your room," he ordered. "I need to tend to Joyce."
He turned his back on me.
He walked toward her, reaching out to cup the cheek I had slapped.
The cheek that deserved to be bruised.
Something inside me hollowed out.
It wasn't anger.
It was the finality of a door locking.
I didn't go to my room.
I turned and walked toward the front door.
"Alana," Austen barked without looking back. "Bedroom."
I opened the heavy oak door.
Rain lashed against the porch, a torrential downpour that smelled of ozone and freedom.
I stepped out.
"Alana!"
I kept walking.
I stepped off the porch and into the driveway.
The rain soaked my dress instantly, plastering the silk to my battered ribs.
The cold was shocking.
It numbed the throbbing in my hand.
I walked until my legs gave out, collapsing onto the wet asphalt of the driveway.
I didn't try to get up.
I just lay there, letting the water wash away the blood on my arm.
Darkness took me before he did.
I woke up in the infirmary again.
Austen was sleeping in the chair next to the bed.
His hand was resting near mine, but not touching it.
He looked exhausted.
Good.
I hoped he never slept peacefully again.
I didn't speak to him when he woke up.
I didn't speak to him the next day.
Or the day after.
I became a ghost in my own home.
A week later, I was walking in the garden.
My ribs were still taped, my breathing shallow.
I stumbled on an uneven paver near the rose bushes.
A hand caught my elbow.
"Careful, Mrs. Ballard."
It was the new gardener.
A boy, barely twenty.
He had kind eyes and dirt under his fingernails.
"Thank you," I whispered.
It was the first time I had spoken in seven days.
He smiled. "These stones are tricky when they're wet. Let me help you to the bench."
He didn't grip me.
He supported me.
"Get your hands off her."
The voice was a low rumble of thunder.
Austen was standing on the terrace.
He moved faster than a man of his size should be able to move.
He was on us in seconds.
He didn't ask questions.
He didn't look at me.
He grabbed the boy by the throat and slammed him into the trellis.
Wood snapped.
Thorns tore into the boy's skin.
"Austen, stop!" I screamed.
He didn't stop.
He punched the boy in the stomach, then the face.
The sound of fist meeting flesh was wet and sickening.
"She is mine!" Austen roared, his eyes wild. "You do not touch what is mine!"
The boy slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Austen turned to me, his chest heaving, his knuckles bloody.
He reached for me.
"Did he hurt you?" he asked, his voice trembling with adrenaline.
I didn't flinch.
I stepped forward and slapped him.
It was weak-my hand was still healing-but the impact was enough to snap his head to the side.
"I am not a thing," I hissed. "I am not a possession you can guard with your fists while you sleep with the woman who destroys me."
He stared at me, shock replacing the rage.
"Alana-"
"Don't."
I turned to leave.
Joyce was standing by the fountain.
She had watched the whole thing.
She was smiling.
As I passed her, she leaned in close.
Her perfume was cloying, suffocating.
"He knows," she whispered.
I stopped.
"He knows I lie," she purred, her voice dripping with venom. "He knows I didn't save him. But he chooses me anyway. Because he owes me a life debt, and in his twisted head, paying that debt means destroying you."
She laughed softly.
"You're just the collateral damage, sister."
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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.