Third-Person POV

To celebrate landing our biggest client of the year, the company rented out the entire terrace of a beachside bar.

When it was time for the team photo, the only open spot left was next to my boyfriend, Harrison Kent.

I'd barely moved over when he waved toward the back of the crowd. "Lacey, come stand here."

Lacey Monroe was my best friend. She squeezed in beside him with a smile. The second the...

Every anniversary, my boyfriend pretends to propose to me—just because his adopted sister thinks it’s hilarious.
One year, the ring box held nothing but a "Dream on" note. Another, he dropped to one knee—just to tie his shoe. Last year, he finally slid a real ring onto my finger. The band was lined with silver. While I screamed, he and Myrtle laughed themselves breathless. In the ER that night, he...

My fiancé, a ruthless mafia Capo, always had a convenient excuse for his betrayals.

Any trace of another woman was scrubbed clean.

Exhausted by the gaslighting, I planted a lipstick in his car just to see how deep the deception went.

When I confronted him, he put his phone on speaker.

The whole family stepped up to cover his tracks.

My brother claimed it was misplaced by my best friend. My be...

I thought I was the happiest woman in the world... until I clicked on that video.

The moment the screen lit up, my entire world came crashing down.

The woman on the bed was Calista - that girl who grew up with us since we were kids. And that hand caressing her skin was wearing the wedding ring I had personally put on Matteo's finger.

"I've missed you so much..."
"You drive me crazy, baby..."

T...

For three years, I smelled like nothing for my Alpha.
Scent blocker on my wrists and throat, every time another Alpha walked into the room. "Until it's official," Knox said. Until he marked me.
When the war's over. He promised me eighteen times.
I drank wolfsbane in his place at every feast. I drew the maps that won his war, then watched him stand up and take the thanks.
The morning after the wa...

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...

On our fifth anniversary, my Mafia Don husband kissed my cheek, then switched to Corsican to tell our adopted daughter how much he enjoyed getting her pregnant piece by piece.

He didn't know I spoke seven languages. Corsican included.

He didn't know that in three days, I would vanish — no body, no trail, no goodbye.

When I disappeared, he lost his mind.

Now it was my turn to teach hi...

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...

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 ...

I sat alone at our engagement dinner, having waited for eight long hours.

When my phone finally buzzed, Jasper sounded rushed.

"Lira? I'm so sorry. Things went sideways on my end. Your parents didn't stick around, did they?"

I stared at the melted ice in the champagne bucket.

"No," I said, my voice hollow.

He sighed. "Let's push it to next week, alright? I'll call your parents tomorrow and ex...

Out on a pack hunting run, a grizzly mauled me, and I was rushed straight to the infirmary.
The last thing I remembered clearly was the scent of pine and blood before everything went dark.
Now I was awake, bandaged, and staring at a man who looked ready to fall apart.
Watching my boyfriend Ryan spiral into a blind panic beside my hospital bed, a mischievous thought popped into my head. I'd play a ...

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...

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...

"I saved you. Now you're mine."

Five years ago, Matteo De Luca took a bullet for me. Ever since, I willingly stayed hidden as the secret lover of New York's most ruthless Mafia heir.

He claimed the shadows were the only way to protect me from rival families. I believed him—right up until his former flame, Serena, returned to the city.

Suddenly, his protective instincts shifted. He left me al...

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 ...

I waited ten years for Ethan.
He was in London getting his PhD.
I was back in the States, teaching.
I taught alone, moved alone, sat alone in the ER with an IV in my arm.
He said that when he came home, he'd marry me.
But the day he came home, he brought her with him. The woman who'd followed him all the way to London.

I was once the most exquisite rose in New York's underworld.
Leander Castello's wife. The mafia godfather's treasured queen. The woman everyone envied.
I thought he would be my salvation, my forever.
Until he snapped me in half with his own hands and threw me into the filthiest pit like trash.
He said he needed to teach me what betrayal costs.
So I was handed over to the Mexican cartel boss, Carlo...

For eighteen years, Ethan Caldwell was the person I trusted most. Then, on the night meant to celebrate my future, he handed me another woman's hotel key and asked me to protect her reputation.

I gave him one final chance: meet me at the airport and choose our promised trip. Instead, he lied about a car accident while I watched him wrap a matching scarf around Vanessa Reed's neck.

By the time Et...

To celebrate his startup's funding, my boyfriend Liam forced me to eat a cake baked by his female best friend, Mia.

I immediately smelled peanuts. He knew I was deathly allergic, but he pressured me to take a bite anyway.

When the reaction hit—my throat closing, hives burning my skin—I reached for my EpiPen.

Mia snatched it first.

She turned my only lifeline into a party trick, tossing it in t...