3088 Book(s) Related to after my ex wife

-WARNING-This story may contain content that some may find disturbing.

“If you can’t satisfy me with your mouth, then you’ll have to satisfy me some other way.”

He ripped off her flimsy clothing and tossed the shredded fabric aside. Visenya panicked as she realized exactly what he was implying.

“Let me try again…with my mouth. I think I c...”

“Quiet!” His voice echoed off the walls of his bedchamber, silencing her on the spot.

This wasn’t the way she had imagined her first time would be. She pictured passionate kisses and gentle caresses from a man who loved and cherished her. Lucian wouldn’t be loving, and he certainly didn’t cherish her either. She had been cursed with a mate who was bent on revenge, wanting nothing more than to watch her suffer.


Ten years had passed since Dragons ruled over the world…since Visenya took her place as Lycan Queen. Vampires were forced into the shadows now that hunting and enslaving humans was punishable by death. The world was finally at peace…until Dragon Lord, Lucian woke from his induced sleep to discover that his entire race had been massacred by Visenya’s father. Visenya is stripped of her kingdom and forced to live out the rest of her days as Lucian’s slave. The cruelest joke of all is, Visenya learns that the mate she has been so faithfully waiting for all these years, is none other than the vengeful Dragon Lord himself.

Consumed by their hatred for each other, is it enough to fight the intense mate bond between them? Will Lucian push Visenya to her absolute limit, just to regret it all in the end?

Brooke Mitchell has everything she’s supposed to want: a multimillion-dollar technology company, a powerful family, and a perfect engagement to wealthy heir Cullen Ardner.

Then she discovers what her perfect life was built on.

Hidden financial records connect Cullen’s family to criminal networks, human trafficking, and missing women, and Brooke’s own company has been used to move the money. Worse, her father’s signature is all over the evidence.

Before Brooke can confront him, he’s murdered.

And someone makes sure every piece of evidence points straight at her.

Now Brooke is the primary suspect, her home has been broken into, and someone is hunting for a secret her father left behind. Just as she prepares to run, FBI Special Agent Weston Foxx appears.

He claims he can protect her.

What he doesn’t tell her is that he was sent to capture her.

Weston has already seen the classified intelligence naming Brooke a corporate criminal, traitor, and possible murderer. He believes the case against her, until Brooke starts tearing apart evidence that looks a little too perfect.

Then armed men come to kill her.

Suddenly Weston has a choice: follow his orders or protect the woman he was sent to arrest.

With Brooke’s fiancé hunting them, federal secrets closing in, and neither sure who they can trust, running together may be their only chance to survive.

Falling for each other was never part of the plan.

My husband, Marco, in his bid for the position of Don, was forced to marry the young widow of the previous Don, Claudia.
Every night, after returning from Claudia’s place, he would hold me and swear, "You’re the only woman I love, Elena. Claudia has the connections I need. Once I have real power and secure my position, I’ll make you my wife in name and in public."
But as I waited for him to rise to power, what started as a political act turned into nights where he simply never came home.
Then, on Christmas, I was dragged to their engagement party—where I was beaten in front of everyone.
Our six-year-old daughter, Sophia, knelt on the floor, crying and begging him, "Godfather, please, let my mommy go..."
But Marco stayed silent.
"It’s okay," I whispered, picking up my wounded daughter. "Mommy’s going to take you somewhere that truly belongs to us."
What Marco never knew was this: I never cared about being the Donna of this small city.
I am the only heir of the Rossi family—the most powerful Mafia family in all of Sicily.

The End Times Came, and I Awakened the Ability to Grow Vegetables

Every time I catalyzed a vegetable, it drained my stamina and life force.

But my sister Lucy needs to eat, and everyone in the camp needs to eat.

So I gave my life to the soil, exchanging life for food again and again.

Cult leader Silas patted my shoulder and said I was God's gardener, that Eden was born because of me.

I thought I had found a home.

I distributed the vegetables I grew to everyone in the camp.

Until I discovered the blue-green veins on my sister's arm.

Until I discovered that the bottle of "holy water" I fed her every day wasn't medicine at all.

Until I discovered that my sister had been sent to their altar.

"Evelyn Drake, are you truly set on joining the FBI as an undercover agent?"
The senior officer Garrett stared intently at the elegantly dressed woman before him, his gaze laced with inquiry and faint doubt.
It was his occupational habit, even a special knack, to categorize everyone he met into distinct social ranks—and he was exceptionally good at it, never once misjudging anyone.
In his eyes, Evelyn Drake, with her flawless makeup and platinum-blonde hair all the way down to the roots, was far from cut out to be an agent.
He had seen countless such pampered wealthy wives throwing petty tantrums. Most would make a scene at the front desk, only to be coaxed home meekly by their rich husbands soon after.
If such a delicate lady were admitted into the FBI, he suspected even the Kevlar bulletproof vest alone would chafe her soft skin raw.
Lost in these thoughts, Garrett let out a disdainful chuckle, his tone brimming with scorn. "Are you really sure? You'd give up your lavish lifestyle to become an FBI agent?"
Sensing his contempt, Evelyn took off her expensive wristwatch and slipped it into her handbag, then nodded firmly at him. "I am absolutely certain."

Reborn seven days before the zombie siege, Shen Lie returns to the day he was tricked into a deadly dark web live stream. Betrayed by his wife and trapped as prey for global wealthy viewers, he uses his stunt skills to layout a counter-kill plan, turning every hunter into the hunted and exposing the bloody evil behind the apocalypse game.

My daughter has been blind since birth. On her eighteenth birthday, she finally received news of a matching cornea donor.
Our whole family was so excited we couldn't sleep that night. My husband and daughter eagerly prepared for the surgery, their hearts filled with hope that she would soon see the light.
But I suddenly slammed my hand on the table and, amidst the family's stunned gazes, proposed a divorce on the spot.
My husband's face turned ashen as he demanded harshly, "You want a divorce just because I'm going through with our daughter's surgery?"
I curled the corner of my mouth and enunciated every word: "That's right. Because you're going through with her surgery—this marriage is over."

I am the youngest Don of the Obsidian Family.
After an unexpected rest, my opponent sent me a street racing invitation.
I went to my brother's company to retrieve my car, but was drugged with ether by my brother's secretary.
She told me that no one could seduce her man.
She kicked my stomach, threatened me with a paper cutter to make a vow, and said her future sister-in-law is the youngest Don of the Obsidian Family—if I dared to retaliate against her, I would die miserably.
I looked at her coldly.
Really?
But I haven't agreed to be your sister-in-law yet!

I suddenly awakened the ability to read minds. But I heard my fiancé, Joey Jones, mocking me in his mind: He had already arranged for an assassin to “send me off” at our wedding in the church. What was even more disgusting was that he promised I would become the Donna of the Jones family, but in his heart, he was fixated on his stepmother, Rory—his father’s widow, who was only a few years older than him.
With only three days left until the wedding, I no longer cried or begged for love. Instead, I contacted my first love, Nate, who was a police officer: “How about being the male lead at my wedding?”

At the parents' meeting, the daughter's diary was read aloud: "My father is the Grand Duke of the Night."
The room erupted in laughter.
The mentor, disregarding her daughter's dignity, tore up her diary, while the nouveau riche woman advised me , a liar, to "get out of this neighborhood."
I didn't say anything, I just stood up. Then, their knees were all shattered.

"We are denying coverage for your father's surgery. You can either pay the $240,000 out of pocket, or wait for him to be paralyzed for the rest of his life."
My father was critically injured, the insurance company denied the claim, and the regional director arrogantly threw the denial letter in my face.
I gave a cold sneer and backhandedly slapped my Juris Doctor (JD) dissertation on his desk.

My squadmates falsely accused me of being a vampire. They poured scalding water over me claiming it was "holy water," spiked my meals with garlic extract, and even splashed me with stinking goat blood. In the end, their madness drove them to plunge a sharpened cross straight into my heart...

On my first day as an intern at the zoo, the old director assigned us animals to care for.
In my previous life, my classmate Jack chose the easy-to-care-for African elephant, while I was forced to take on the brutal Siberian tiger.
A month later, the apocalypse struck, and the Siberian tiger successfully evolved, leading me to escape the encirclement.
Jack's elephant, however, couldn't outrun the mutated species and was torn to pieces. Driven
by jealousy, the surviving Jack incited a mob to brutally beat me and the giant tiger to death, dismembering and cannibalizing us.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the animals were assigned.
Jack had already taken the Siberian tiger, pushing the elephant to me, and I knew he had also been reborn.
But what he didn't know was that the Siberian tiger he had devoured was also reborn with me.

My own sister is my husband -Alpha’s mistress.

She needed a liver transplant,

So he killed pup.

What's even more ironic,

On the day I found out I was pregnant,

I ran into my husband accompanying her for her prenatal examination.

My pup is gone.

How can the people responsible for his death deserve happiness?

Feeling the new life growing inside me,

I will make sure they pay for their actions.

On the third day of the outbreak, I sat in my company’s executive conference room, gripping the red toy car I bought for my six-year-old son.

Outside the door were zombies filling the building. Beside me were six executives still breathing only because I was.

They wanted meetings. They wanted to wait for rescue. They wanted to chain me with morality.

But I wanted one thing—my son was still in daycare. Three days. No one went for him.

At dawn, I opened the door they’d barricaded shut.

I can shoot. I can clear a path. I will carve my way through to bring him back.

Anyone who stands in my way dies.

In my previous life, I chose the werewolf and gave birth to the Arbiter, only to be burned alive by the younger sister I loved most.
When I was reborn, I knelt before the Oath Stone, handed my marriage pact to her, and watched her gloat in triumph before choosing Sylas, the elf everyone else avoided.
Everyone was waiting to see me make a fool of myself—until the day of the wedding, when he came carrying a gown blessed by the Sacred Tree, lowered his eyes to me, and said, "In this life, I will never fail you."

A gang boss ground my treasured staff into dust with one boot. “A gutter-bred bastard from the slums, and you’re hiding something this delicate? Cripple him. Let him learn who runs this turf.”
I stared at the silver-white powder on the floor. It was the last relic my brothers left me.
I once swore these hands would be used only to save people, never to kill again.
But today, even the heavens refused to allow it.
I lifted my head slowly. The elven ears I’d kept lowered in submission rose one by one in the dark, sharp as a wolf’s.
“You’re asking me who runs this turf?”
My fist snapped out and caved in the boss’s nose.
I twisted backhanded. Three elite enforcers had their bones shattered in an instant, collapsing like sacks of rotten meat.
I grabbed the boss by the throat with one hand and hoisted his two-hundred-pound body into the air, eyes cold as if I were staring at a corpse.
“Three years ago, when I laid down the rules in this district, you didn’t even know where you were playing in the mud.”
“My things are not for you to touch.”

For five years, my marriage was nothing but a lie, a perfect show Aiden staged for the entire family.
I loved him for more than a decade. And for his lover, he threw our five-year-old daughter, Chloe, into the basement to be fed to his Dobermans.
All because Chloe accidentally shattered an antique crystal cup, a so-called love token between Aiden and his precious Sophia.
I dropped to my knees and begged. He looked at me like I was nothing and said Family rules matter more than blood.
When I carried my daughter’s mutilated body out of that basement, fireworks were exploding on the rooftop above, celebrating his grand confession of love to Sophia.
He froze my accounts. And on the day of Chloe’s funeral, he took her to a concert.
I was holding my daughter’s ashes, trapped, desperate, with nowhere left to go when a message from an unknown number appeared. A car was waiting at the side gate. It was Daniel, my childhood friend.
Only after I disappeared with my daughter’s ashes did Aiden finally realize the truth—that the “sweet, innocent” Sophia was the real killer of his own child.

As the most cold-blooded and ruthless Mafia don, Twain Hall had doted on me like the apple of his eye for ten years.
But on the very day we were discussing our wedding, the ring his subordinate delivered had another woman's name engraved on it—not mine.
I pretended not to notice and turned to Twain.
"Did they bring the wrong ring? Who's Dorothy? I've never heard of her."
Twain's expression didn't change. He pulled me into his arms with that familiar, indulgent look.
"My people weren't careful. Made a fool of themselves."
"I'll have them exchange it right away. Can't keep my queen waiting."
I smiled. But the moment I turned away, my face went cold. I dialed a number.
"Didn't you say you'd pay any price to marry me? Twain Hall betrayed me. I want his head!"

I’m just a blind woman whose sight was stolen by the mist.

And yet, for his ambition to become the Alpha King, I begged my brother Mason to venture deep into the forest and bring back the Moon Goddess’s Mark.

On Christmas, I carried that Mark in one hand and my pregnancy report in the other, my heart practically bursting with joy.

Then I caught my husband tangled up with Rory—the Omega who stayed by my side every day.

What shattered me most was this: my son’s death was never a surgical accident.

It was Andrew who wanted to give the heart of my son, Ethan, to Rory, who was sick with heart disease. He lied and told me those papers were for Ethan’s treatment, and tricked me into signing my name.

He mocked me, saying a blind woman couldn’t survive without him. But he didn’t understand what a mother’s resolve looks like.

I called my ex-fiancé, the strongest Alpha—Henry—the man I betrayed, the man who still waited for me. He became my only salvation. The Moon Goddess’s Mark I never go

An S-Rank [Thunder Tyrant]?

I watched coldly as the "good brother" who had betrayed me in my past life strutted around, stealing my woman and humiliating my F-Rank skill.

What he didn't know was that every time he channeled his lightning, his talent was draining his lifespan. In our past life, I was the one who used my skill, [Status Reset], to restore his life force time and time again.

Reborn for another lifetime, I decided I was done playing the saint.

When the crimson behemoth shattered the dome, Brad laughed maniacally, summoning a storm of lightning. But in an instant, the fierce backlash turned his arms into brittle charcoal, shattering in pieces across the ground. I stepped over his rolling, mutilated body and picked up a piece of rusty scrap metal.

"Reset."

The dead rust was eradicated. The scrap metal instantly reverted to a fully charged, high-frequency combat blade.

Gripping the blade in one hand, I faced the overwhelming tide of corpses and carved out a path of blood.

After Grandpa passed away, he left two inheritances behind.
One was an underground shelter costing over a hundred million yuan.
The other was a crumbling old house on the brink of collapse in the village.
My younger sister Su Rou rushed to pick the underground shelter first, so I settled for the old house.
No one expected an extreme cold apocalypse to descend just days later.
Su Rou moved into the shelter with her boyfriend.
But her boyfriend leaked the gate password, attracting a mob of thugs.
Su Rou was reduced to their plaything, trapped in a fate worse than death.
As for me, I discovered the old house’s cellar connected to a natural underground hot spring. I managed to survive by sheer luck.
When Su Rou heard the news, she was consumed by envy. She led the thugs straight to me, forcing me to take her place.
"Sister, you’ve always been the nicest to me since we were kids. You’ll save me, right? You take my place and serve them instead."
I could no longer endure the humiliation. I set fire to the place and died alongside them all.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the very moment we chose the inheritances.
Seeing Su Rou pick the run-down old house without the slightest hesitation, I knew she had also been reborn.
I bowed my head to hide all my emotions, then silently chose the underground shelter.
My dear sister… that drafty, ramshackle old house is nowhere near as wonderful as you think it is.

I lay there, my face buried in the sticky remnants of my mother's tattered genitals, her exhausted body slumped against me like a conquered trophy. The room reeked of semen, feces, and sweat—our dorm buddies had long since left, laughing hysterically. Sophie's thighs trembled near my ear, her thick labia still twitching, spilling the group sex cocktail onto my lips. My heart raced, and I froze. She saw me watching that filthy show—her facade as an elite lawyer had crumbled, reduced to a slut who drank urine and licked asses for her roommates.

“Mmm…Ethan?” Her voice choked, her throat hoarse from the passion, her breath hot on my forehead. There was no anger—only a shameful desire. “Baby…you’ve tasted it all…through me. Lick deeper. Mommy needs her good boy now.”

Damn. The line is blurred. Should I grit my teeth and run? Or jump in and be the first to eat? Her hips rubbed against me, forcing my tongue inside. There was nowhere to escape. This was our new hell—heaven.

Everyone said I’d traded five years of my youth and my unwavering devotion for an engagement that every woman envied.
My fiancé, Felix Smith, seemed to believe it, too. He gave me pearls, promised me a bright future, and wrapped me up in a web of tenderness, layer after layer.
Until that afternoon, when he held me close, yet used a language he thought I didn’t understand to weave the perfect "wedding" con over the phone.
That was the moment I finally realized: over these five years, who had he really been looking at through me? And every pearl he ever gave me, whose tastes was he remembering?
When the elevator failed and darkness crashed down, the person he protected on instinct wasn’t me.
When the wind howled across the empty outskirts, the person he chose to abandon was me.
I’d been learning how to love him, how to become a proper bride. In the end, what I learned was how to exit quietly, out of his world with Serena.
Only when I slipped off that pearl ring did I understand—
Some love stories, from the very beginning, are nothing but long letters written to someone else.

"Jake? You sick fuck. Paid for this? His hands inside me?"

Sophia's voice cracked over the intercom, her oiled ass clenching around the masseur's pumping fingers. Live feed burned: her thighs quaking, pussy gushing slick down the table edge. I gripped the chair arms white-knuckled, cock straining—half rage, half blaze.

"Babe... yeah. Full service. Watch you cum harder," I rasped into the mic, voice raw. "Tell him—deeper or stop?"

Tech's eyes flicked to the camera, smirking as he curled two fingers inside her, thumb circling her clit. She bucked, moan ripping free. "Fuck... don't stop. Deeper—wreck me. Jake, you watching? Perverted cuck."

"Every thrust," I growled. "His fingers owning your tight pussy. Bigger rush than mine?"

Her head snapped up, doe eyes locking the hidden lens—pure fury melting to feral hunger. "Hell yes. Stretch me wider. Tell him flip me—fuck me raw while you beg."

Tech froze, glancing my way. My nod sealed it. "You heard her. Pound my girl. Make her scream your name."

He flipped her prone—tits spilling free, legs splayed wide. Cock out, thick and veined, he notched her dripping folds. "Ready to cum for a stranger, Sophia?"

"Do it," she hissed, hips grinding up. "Show Jake what he's missing."

He slammed home—her wail echoing both rooms. Relationship shattered. Door to real breeding? Kicked wide open.

My name is Jack Morris, a bottom-rung janitor on the docks.
Every day, people walk all over me, and I live on moldy bread.
Until one day, an old man I saved handed me a photograph. "This is my granddaughter. She's being held at the Black Swan Casino."
That used to be my place. Ten years ago.
Her father was a brother who died in my place.
I was once the king of the underground.
And now, at the banquet celebrating the tenth anniversary of my death, they're treating that old man's granddaughter like a toy.
If my disappearance only made those animals more brazen...
Then they can finish that drink and celebrate their own deaths next.

When the apocalypse came, I became one of the military's failed experiments—defective, useless, a waste of space who only knew how to fix machines.
My so-called brother Kane used the camp leader access I got for him to trade away the comms gear I nearly died to secure for a bottle of whiskey. He drained my bone marrow dry to keep me in the dark, then dumped me out in the wasteland to die.
After that, he pinned every bit of luxury and waste on me—
while my little sister didn't even have the medicine she needed to stay alive.
That night, dragging my crippled body behind me, I reached into the substation.
Kane, do you remember what kind of genes were in those five hundred milliliters of bone marrow?

There are too many ways of taking revenge on a woman. But he chose marriage. In the past three years, he acted like a ruthless husband, treating her coldly, and even more worse, humiliating her. Even when she was pregnant, he tried to force her to give it up, to retire from film field, to expel her from her country.

The global freeze descended, and the apocalypse arrived right on cue. I seized all the critical supplies and evacuated first, leaving "the perfect base" behind for the two traitors who backstabbed me. They thought it was heaven, but little did they know that the entire fortress was a precision trap constructed of deception, scarcity, and despair. As the outdoor temperature plummeted to minus eighty degrees, I sat by the window, roasting venison and watching them through high-definition infrared, coldly observing as they lost their humanity in the desperate fight for a single bowl of sawdust.

When the apocalyptic red rain fell, my brother and I both awakened spatial abilities.

He awakened a space as vast as a mansion and was hailed by the entire family as their savior.

While I only awakened a "suitcase" and was ruthlessly drained of all my assets by my parents to support my brother, then kicked out of the house.

They mocked me cruelly: "We don't keep deadweights. Go wait for death in the 70-degree furnace outside!"

What they didn't know was that my brother's space had no preservation function—his stockpile of premium ingredients would soon rot into a pile of maggot-infested meat.

But my suitcase had upgrade attributes!

While they fought each other over a sip of putrid green water in the 200-degree hellscape,

I sat in the "Eden" I had created, watching herds of cattle and sheep, drinking ice-cold fresh milk.

I begged my mom for ten dollars, but she smashed my head with a frying pan instead.

The next day, my mother posted on a forum asking:
"Hi everyone. My eldest son lied about the end of the world just to get ten dollars. I want to ask, how can I sell him on the underground black market to pay off his younger brother's $20,000 debt?"

The moment I saw that post, any remaining love I had for them died instantly. I snapped my phone's SIM card in half.

What she didn’t know was that a world-ending acid flood would descend upon New York tomorrow.

I had begged so bitterly for that ten dollars just to trigger the Ten-Million-Fold Return System to build a three-billion-dollar Doomsday Ark.

Since she didn’t want it, I gave the throne of the Ark Queen to the female classmate who casually tossed me some charity.

Betrayed to death by my own brother, I was reborn before the apocalypse descended.
He rushed to seize the god-tier [Copy] talent first, leaving the trash [Purification] talent for me.
He thought that with this talent, he'd have no worries and reign supreme in the apocalypse.
Meanwhile, I quietly closed the last door of my fortress.
He didn't know that his prized copying ability had a fatal flaw.

In my last life, my parents favored my younger brother. They promised him to the angel who would remain on the surface, and shoved me to an abyssal demon.
When the apocalypse came, the angel burned through her divine power and fell. I took my family in out of kindness, and they repaid me with a bowl of poisoned soup.
When I opened my eyes again, our whole family had reincarnated.
This time, my parents couldn’t wait to push my brother into the demon’s arms, dreaming of living off him inside the abyssal lair.
I watched them sign the shadow contract like they were grabbing a priceless treasure, then took the rejected holy-light angel without hesitation.
They had no idea the Abyss’s shelter is paid for in flesh and blood.
But an angel’s loyalty can raise an iron divine kingdom that never falls, even in this world-ending flood.

We’ve been married for five years. Then, she got pregnant with someone else's child.
In front of everyone, she said: "Ethan doesn't want this baby. You've always wanted one, right? Fine, take it and raise it."
In that moment, I finally understood: she wasn’t incapable of loving someone—she simply never saw me as a human being.
I took off my wedding ring, left it on the tray, and bought a one-way ticket to the North. My family said I wouldn't survive in the frozen North; she said that without her, I was nothing.
Three years later, she tracked me down using the GPS hidden inside that ring. She pushed open the door to my attic room, finding only a note I’d left: "Don't look for me. We're square."

At the family banquet, a power-hungry male special assistant projected a dimly lit bed photo onto the massive screen. He claimed he had slept with my wife—the heiress to the family—and demanded I walk away from the marriage with nothing.
While all the relatives were waiting for me to become the laughingstock, my eyes landed on a red rose burn scar in the corner of the photo. I couldn't help but laugh out loud.
He hadn't even turned on the bedside lamp. He had no idea that the woman he had just slept with was actually the wife of a psychopathic serial killer.

In my past life, I personally dug up two alien meteorites, handing the blue one that granted "Frost Mastery" to my childhood friend, Mike. He repaid me by sealing me inside an ice wall, cursing me to "die like a piece of trash" in the minus 70-degree blizzard.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the initial blast site.
This time, I didn't even spare him a glance; I stuffed both meteorites into my pocket.
I transformed a missile silo into a doomsday bunker, brought my parents inside, and stockpiled ten years' worth of supplies.
When Mike arrived with a gang of thugs to smash my door down, I stood in the warm command center, watching half his face rot with frostbite on the monitor.
I didn't open the door.
This time, I am sending back the despair of my past life tenfold.

In my last life, a friend I’d trusted for ten years drove a knife into my heart over a single biscuit. When I opened my eyes again, we had both been reborn—right before the extreme freeze arrived.

He was convinced the apocalypse had come. He borrowed from loan sharks, rented a massive warehouse to hoard supplies, and even crowned himself king during the icebound period, killing without mercy.

But he didn’t know the truth:

This disaster would end completely after only thirty days.

While he taunted me like a madman, I didn’t expose him. I calmly requested thirty days of paid leave from my company.

This time, I’ll sit in a warm, climate-controlled room and watch—when the state machine restarts on day thirty—how he drops to his knees and sobs in despair.

At the Morello family’s Christmas dinner, I stood beside Vincent, waiting for him to announce our engagement.
Instead, in the very next second, he walked in holding a little boy and claimed him as his son.
And the woman he said he was going to marry? Scarlett Morello. The one he had always introduced as his “sister.”
The whole room erupted in applause. I stood there frozen, like a nail hammered into the floor.
Later, in his study, he took my hand and said, “Scarlett is dying. Late-stage breast cancer. She only has six months left. After she’s gone, I’ll marry you.”
But there was no guilt in his eyes. No love, either.
Then he told me to go to his villa that afternoon, to take care of the woman who was supposedly “dying.”
I opened the photo he sent me. Scarlett was lying in a hospital bed, pale-faced, an IV in the back of her hand.
A professional tennis player who had been playing in an exhibition match three weeks ago, and who had dropped three grand at Louis Vuitton on Fifth Avenue just five days ago.
But sure. She was “dying.”
At three in the morning, I was curled up by the front door of my apartment, crying so long I lost track of time.
Then my phone lit up. A text from an unknown number:
[Elena, I’m downstairs. When we were kids, you told me that once I controlled the docks on the East Coast, you’d marry me. The docks are mine now. Does that promise still stand?]
I pulled back the curtain and there he was. Ethan Vitale, my first love, leaning against the door of a black Cadillac, lifting a hand in a lazy wave.
Three years ago, when he left New York, he was only a Capo.
Now, he was the Don of the Vitale family.
He didn’t rush me. Didn’t pressure me to come downstairs.
He came for one reason only, to let me know he was back.
I wiped away my tears and texted back:
[It still stands.]
Because I wanted to see for myself just how long that woman could keep up her act.