Betrayal

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the duct tape binding my wrists, and the second was that I had been kidnapped by a billionaire mafia boss who grabbed the wrong girl.

I would like to say my first reaction was brave, but it was mostly just panic. I was shoved into a massive stone mansion—the kind with gold columns and chandeliers the size of cars. If I was going to be kidnapped, I hone...

Thirteen years. That's how long I loved Reid Holloway.
When he said he was being bullied, I believed him. When he kissed me on that rooftop, I thought he felt the same. When he asked me to transfer schools with him, I said yes without hesitation.
Then I heard him bragging to his friends: "She'd save her first time for me. Hell, she'd still be thinking of me on her wedding night."
The bullying was ...

Just before Easter, my husband, Ethan Cole, surprised me by arranging a weeklong trip to Switzerland.
In ten years of marriage, it was the first time he had ever planned a vacation for me.
I thought he had finally remembered that I was human, too, and needed a break.
Then, one day, I accidentally overheard a conversation between him and our daughter, Ella.
"Daddy, if you and Sophia have a wedding,...

"Thanksgiving's at Garrett's new place this year!"

My sister Paisley dropped a location pin in the family group chat, followed by a string of party emojis. My fiancé, Garrett, ran a real estate company, and the pin pointed to a model home they'd just finished building.

That evening, I grabbed a pumpkin pie fresh out of the oven and caught a rideshare to the address. When we got there, the driver...

Blake's keeping me locked up in a villa outside the city, with a dozen bodyguards watching me around the clock. They won't let me step foot outside my room.

He once promised Vanessa, the woman he never got over, that he'd give her company shares and his estate. Now she's back after her divorce, pregnant, crying to Blake that I threatened her, told her to give up what he promised, and that I wante...

My boyfriend, Ethan Whitmore, has prosopagnosia. He can't remember faces unless he's looking right at them.
At our wedding send-off dinner, my roommate blindfolded him and challenged him to name three things about the woman he'd loved for four years.
"Big eyes. Small face," he said.
My heart nearly burst with happiness.
Even blindfolded, he still remembered me.
Then he smiled and added, "And there...

My parents raised me for twenty-four years. Then they found out I wasn't their biological daughter.

Their real daughter came home. She'd only been back two years. That's all it took to erase twenty-four.

When kidnappers grabbed us, I used my body as a shield. They beat me until something inside me ruptured. I was dying from internal bleeding, but no one could tell.

My parents wouldn't even look...

Ethan Calloway and I had been together for eight years. Married for three—or so everyone thought.
We had the ceremony. The hospital chapel, the white dress, his boss giving a toast. But we never made it to City Hall to sign the papers. He promised we would. Eighteen times.
Every time, something came up. Or rather, someone came up—his young protégée, Chloe. She needed him at the hospital. She neede...

The five of us wanted to go to a concert.

I used four devices, with every ticketing app I could find open, and managed to get five tickets.

But on the day of the show, when I met everyone outside the arena, my best friend had brought another girl.

“This is Lily, my coworker. She's been a Luke Morgan fan for twenty years!” Jenna said. “When she heard we had five tickets, she asked if we could sp...

My husband, Zachary, chose to save his sister-in-law right in front of the kidnappers.

The kidnapper pressed the gun to my temple and asked, "Choose your wife or your sister-in-law?"

Zachary didn't hesitate. "Let Valerie go," he said.

He actually chose to save his sister-in-law! In that moment, even the baby in my belly seemed to stop kicking.

Later, they locked me in the basement. Drugs to de...

I kept a list. Ninety-eight times my husband chose another woman over me.

Missed birthdays, ruined anniversaries, broken promises—all for his "patient" Sophia, who seemed to have a medical emergency every time we had plans.

"It's just my job, Emma," he would say. "You understand."

Ryan thought he could have his cake and eat it too. He was wrong.

After an incident, I was determined to leave him...

Everyone thinks I'm the wild child of the family, the one who won't fall in line.

Blake's the young king of the business world—rational, cold, always in those perfectly cut suits.

But every night, he's got me pinned underneath him, breathing my name.

He said I was his, but never let me see daylight. Until she came back—my father's mistress's daughter, in her white dress, smiling like an angel.
...

I thought the orchestrated assault was the most profound betrayal of my life. Then, from the shadows of the wine cellar, I heard my husband and his brothers toasting to their success.
"The slow-motion capture of her climax, paired with those broken whimpers... it was cinematic perfection."
"She played her part beautifully. After all, she’s just a Valenti."
I learned the devastating truth: my agony...

Four months pregnant, I went to the bar to bring Connor his wallet, only to overhear a conversation that made my blood run cold.

"She's so controlling. Billy and I can barely breathe," my husband told his friends. "I'm taking Kelsey to the countryside for three months of therapy. I'll just tell Nadia it's a parent-child program abroad."

The worst part? My ten-year-old son Billy would cover for h...

On the night of my college graduation, Sloane Callahan, the biological daughter my Mafia family had only recently brought home, asked me what I planned to do next.

Before I could answer, my four childhood friends spoke up one after another.

One by one, all four showed me documents proving they were moving to California.

Then Graham Whitmore, heir to one of Chicago's most powerful Mafia families...

Eight years after Lucan Altieri left Chicago, he finally came home as the new Don—and to get married.
That same day, I received my final verdict. After eight years of endless dialysis and a rejected kidney, my doctor took my mother aside and told her there was nothing left to try. All the hospital could do now was buy me a little more time.
Mom was helping me out of a cab and into my wheelchair wh...

Three years together, and the texts I'd sent Nolan Garrett could probably fill an entire medical chart.

Pasta or salad for dinner. Rain boots or sneakers when it was pouring. I ran everything by him.

Then one night, right in front of me, he muted my texts.

"Can you grow up a little?" He didn't even look up. "Not everything has to go through me."

After that, I really did stop asking.

I signed ...

The night I graduated from college, Bianca Moretti asked what I was going to do next. My Mafia family had only recently brought their biological daughter home.
I didn't get a chance to answer. The four men I'd grown up with answered first, each taking his turn.
They all had paperwork showing that they were moving to California.
Then Dante Romano, the future head of one of Chicago's most powerful c...

They cropped me out of the graduation photo, and nobody even noticed.
For eighteen years, I was the quiet, easy daughter. My sister Brooke got my clothes, my room, and the center of every picture. Ethan, the boy next door who once watched me nearly die from a peanut allergy, handed me a peanut butter smoothie and called it my favorite.
When Brooke found my full-ride acceptance letter, she called i...

My six-month business trip to Europe was finally over. I decided to surprise my husband Nathaniel by coming home early without telling him, bringing my six-year-old son Lucas straight to his newly opened upscale restaurant.

Lucas excitedly ran toward the children's play area while I scanned the restaurant for Nathaniel, eagerly anticipating our reunion.

Suddenly, a scream shattered the peaceful ...