Family

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...

On my due date, my husband Matteo locked me in an underground freezer at minus ten degrees.

The Torrino family's unbreakable rule: the first-born male inherits the entire mafia empire. My sister-in-law Jennifer and I were both pregnant, our due dates only one day apart. To ensure his brother's child was born first, Matteo made this insane decision.

"My brother and Jennifer's baby has to come fir...

In our family, fairness was the one rule nobody broke.

My brother Brody and my sister Raegan are twins.

Growing up, if one of them got an extra cookie, the other would tear the whole house apart.

To keep the peace, Mom and Dad split everything down the middle. Half went to Brody, half went to Raegan.

Which meant nothing in this house was ever mine.

I was the third kid. The one my parents neve...

Nico Castellano knelt in front of thirty made men to save my life. Everyone in Chicago knows the Don’s son would die for his wife.

So nobody thought to tell me about the girl in the apartment on Lake Shore Drive.

They talked about her right in front of me. In Italian. They were sure I’d never understand a word.

They were wrong.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t make a scene. I paid a man on Halsted to...

Due to his grandmother's dying wish, Leonard, the hospital's most eligible cardiac surgeon, was forced to marry the nurse who secretly loved him—me. Through six years of hidden marriage, we pretended to be mere colleagues at the hospital while he remained utterly cold toward me and our daughter Vera. When his first love returned, I watched him reignite his passion for another woman and my heart di...

When I was eight, my older sister pointed a finger in my face and told me I'd been adopted out of foster care.

I went crying to our parents. With their arms around her, they nodded.

“Yes. Your real parents didn't want you.”

After that, I stopped competing with her for affection. I didn't dare ask for new clothes. I took over the housework and fought for the highest grades in my class, terrified...

In order to rush to comfort his assistant whose apartment was leaking, Richard signed his name hastily without even glancing at the documents on the table.
I put away the divorce agreement with a wry smile.
When he and my son completely disappeared, he finally panicked.
Three months later .
He knelt down on the streets of Chicago in despair, begging me to remarry him.
My six-year-old son looked co...

They played ninety-nine pranks on me to break my brother. For the ninety-ninth, I gave them a corpse.

For three years, I was the secret girlfriend of Damien, heir to the Bloodmoon Pack and my brother’s sworn enemy. For three years, I was his hidden toy, and I sat through ninety-eight cruel “pranks” without ever knowing they were pranks.

When they planned the last one, locking me alone in a conde...

My husband abandoned his asthmatic daughter in a freezing shed because she allegedly "scared" his mistress's dog.
"It's just an hour," he said.
But by the time he opened that door, he had lost his daughter, his wife, and his mind.
Read to find out how a broken mother takes her ultimate revenge.

On the way to the hospital to deliver my baby, rain was coming down in sheets.
Suddenly, my husband slammed on the brakes. He'd spotted his ex-girlfriend standing in the downpour with her child.
"She's struggling as a single mom. I'm just going to help her carry those groceries upstairs. Ten minutes, tops."
Clutching my belly through the contractions, I begged him, "But I'm about to give birth. I'...

At my wedding, I stood up to tell my groom how much I loved him.
I didn't even get through the first line.
He grabbed the cake beside him and smashed it into my face.
My ex-boyfriend stood up in the audience, clapping. "Cut! That's a wrap!"
Then he grinned at me. "Hazel, you actually bought it?"

"The Draganovs are moving on Celeste tonight. I'm taking her to the safe house. We'll do the claiming after this, Orla. I promise."
That's what my husband said the seventh time he chose Celeste over me.
Celeste. The girl he'd loved since before he had a wife to ignore.
The first time, she heard footsteps outside her window at two in the morning. Rafael sent his whole detail to sit on her house and...

"What if she finds out the baby she suffered so much to conceive is actually ours? Will she lose her mind?"

My stepsister giggled, snuggling into my husband’s embrace.

I stood outside the cracked door, completely frozen.

My husband was holding her tight, enthusiastically picking out names for the baby growing in my belly.

My own mother scoffed from the side. "Relax. That idiot will never f...

On what should have been the happiest night of my life, I discovered a brutal truth—my fiancé Asher, whom I'd loved for seven years, was having an affair with my sister Janet in a storage room. Even worse, they were plotting to take everything from me!

"That idiot still thinks I'm the helpless little wolf pup from the orphanage who needed her protection... She has no idea I now prefer cunning wom...

All my life, my family said Lucia needed more because I was stronger.
My pony. My celebrations. My mother's time. Whenever my twin wanted something, I was expected to give it up.
Our Mafia Family induction was supposed to be different. We were both Don Romano's daughters. We were both supposed to receive a crown.
Instead, Lucia's custom crown held both our diamonds while mine sat tarnished and emp...

In the ten years I was with Chase Holloway, I got used to him "forgetting" things.

The night he proposed, he showed up empty-handed and said the ring was still at the jeweler's. The day we went to City Hall for our marriage license, he dug through every pocket of his coat and said he'd left his paperwork at home. On our wedding day, he didn't show up at all.

I found out later he'd been in the ba...

My water broke in the basement where my mafia husband had locked me up. Upstairs, doctors were waiting on his brother's widow.

I begged him over the guard's phone to let me go to a hospital. He heard me crying. Then he told the guard to keep the door shut until her baby was born.

I pressed a hand against my belly. Our daughter was still moving.

When footsteps stopped outside the cell, I called ...

My mother gave me her kidney. The price was my husband.
As the orderlies wheeled me toward surgery, Mom gripped my hand and begged through her tears: “Promise me you'll divorce Ansel. Your sister needs him.”
My husband had already signed the papers. “Give me one year,” he said. “Once Tam's back on her feet, we'll get remarried.”
I survived the operation. I signed away my marriage. Then I vanished ...

"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...

I chose Adrian Cole for a strategic marriage because he understood boundaries.

For three years, he never gave me a reason to regret it.

Then his new assistant fed him from her fork, took my seat in his car, and appeared on his arm at a charity gala while society reporters called them a perfect match.

I gave my husband three chances to remember that I was his equal. He used every one—then adm...