Healing

Nathan Cole had been overseas on business for two weeks.

The night he came back, he kept me in bed until well past midnight.

Afterward, I could barely lift an arm. It took a while before I noticed the empty box on the nightstand. The last one.

I reached for my phone to order more condoms. I always bought them. Nathan never bothered with it.

This time, just as I was about to pay, he took the ph...

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...

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...

The night of my coming-of-age ceremony, Elodie asked us to sit around the bonfire and talk.

Elodie was my adoptive parents' real daughter. They had brought her home three months ago.

She smiled at me across the fire. "Wren, which academy are you choosing?"

Before I could answer, the four boys I grew up with spoke first.

One by one, they held up acceptance receipts. All four said Silverhaven.

...

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...

"I need you to erase Elena Cavalli completely," I said, sliding an untraceable check across the table.

People say my husband Vito Cavalli broke every mafia code for me. The heir who knelt before all five family bosses and named an ordinary woman his godmother.

For three years, he convinced the world we were in love. He told the press I was why he went legitimate, why he gave up the gun.

But dev...

On the day of my marking ceremony, my mate, Ryan Mercer, is caught kissing my sister, Paige Frost, in the dressing room. The whole pack gets to laugh at my humiliation.

Then Alpha Ethan Vale steps forward. With everyone watching, he gives me his mark.

Once we're married, Ethan couldn't be kinder to me. But we can't conceive a pup. At last, I try IVF, and I finally get pregnant.

He becomes even ...

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...

My attempts to marry Ethan Ward had been derailed exactly seven times.
The first time, Peyton threw him a "surprise" party, and he was too hungover to make our City Hall appointment. 
The second time, she got into a minor fender bender and hysterically convinced him her neck was broken. He rode with her in the ambulance. 
The third time, right as we were signing the papers, she swallowed a bottle ...

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...

Draven Hale had always loved me like drowning — total, breathless, nothing held back.
But the day Lenora Veyra's oncologist stamped terminal across her diagnostic dossier, that devotion changed direction.
He reached into his coat pocket and pressed a capsule into my palm.
A targeted memory-suppressant serum.
"Three days, Vesper," he said. "Lenora's dying. Let me give her a wedding. That's all she ...

“Poppy, I want you to stage a private jet crash for me. That way I can get away from Elias for good.”
When my best friend Poppy heard my request, her jaw nearly hit the floor. She wondered if she’d misheard.
"Are you out of your fucking mind, Molly?" she deadpanned.
"I’m entirely serious." I said, keeping my voice dead flat.
"Molly, you're married to Elias Blackwood." Poppy stood up, running a h...

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?"

In my family, there's a rule: any woman who reaches thirty without getting married must return to the family estate and have her marriage arranged by the Council of Elders.
When I told Dominic Moretti about this, he was sitting on my desk flipping through financial reports.
After hearing me out, he let out a derisive laugh.
"Is the Bennett family some medieval royal house? A bunch of old men get t...

"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...

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 ...