Strong Female Lead

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...

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...

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...

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?"

"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...

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 ...

At the company gala, in front of everyone, the man I'd been with for ten years asked me if he could have the first dance with the new intern.

I didn't argue.

I didn't make a scene.

I stepped aside, turned around, and walked out.

For ten years I'd been there.

The tiny apartment with no heat. The credit card debt I helped him pay off. Every rung of the ladder he climbed to get where he is.

I...