Innocent

That wedding in Rome was the last time I ever saw him as his “stepsister.”
I was the Roxie family’s only daughter. After my father remarried, my mother and I moved into the Corleone estate, and from that day on, Elias became my stepbrother—also the one obsession I should never have touched.
Out in public, he was always calm and controlled. At home, though, one line from him “Don’t call me brother”...

Two years ago, my best friend Maddie knelt in front of me, crying as she borrowed $50,000.
The very next day, she vanished off the face of the earth. No explanation, no apology, not even a single text message.
I was left carrying her toxic debt. I lost my fiancé, and I lost my ability to trust anyone.
Until one late night, a call came in from an unknown number originating in an abandoned mining di...

My brother Soren is a figure skating prodigy. Every dollar in our house, every hour, every scrap of attention — all his.
Me? I'm the kid who doesn't need to be seen.
The night before Nationals, I told my mom my stomach hurt so bad I could barely stand. She said I was making trouble. Dad told me to take a painkiller and tough it out. Then they loaded up the car and drove two hundred miles to watch ...

I'm dead.

Died that rainy night, desperate because I couldn't scrape together five thousand dollars to save my dog.

Liam laughed at me over the phone—my childhood friend told me to quit the sob story. His new girlfriend Sarah said I should get on my knees and beg if I wanted her to toss me some scraps. They had no idea every dollar I owed those loan sharks was to cover up Liam's hit-and-run.

My...

Our clan worships the Spider Goddess.
To keep this face, every girl in our bloodline must sacrifice a truly evil man every ten years.
Just two weeks before my twentieth birthday, my mom asked me again over the phone:
"Sweetie, is it really that hard to find a sufficiently bad guy in a place like Ashfield?"
Right now, I’m looking at my boyfriend, who just handcuffed me to a bed. He’s laughing, nego...

Someone posted a positive pregnancy stick next to my student ID on the school's anonymous forum.
By first period, eight hundred people thought I was the campus slut. By lunch, the lacrosse captain stood up in the cafeteria and told everyone he was the father. By Friday, my full-ride scholarship was frozen and the dean told me to "keep a low profile."
I've never even kissed anyone.
Margaux Aldridge...

Ten years ago, I sat in the witness stand and told the court my beloved Uncle Arthur was a monster.

My testimony sent him away for twenty years and made my father Robert a hero.

For a decade, I lived inside the perfect world my father built around me — safe and warm and suffocating. Then one afternoon, digging through boxes in the basement, I found Buster's old collar. My golden retriever. The d...

I bought my five-year-old son a Captain America shield for his birthday.

But when I landed in New York, the hospital called.

"Your son died during the medical procedure your husband authorized."

Marcus had signed Axel up as a living donor. For his mistress's kid.

While our baby bled out on the operating table, Marcus was cutting birthday cake with his new family.

Even used Axel's favorite Sup...

I loved Julian for ten years, carving every sweat-stained day into my love for him.
He once said I shined brighter than any gold medal.
Yet in five short minutes, he handed my dream, my glory, and my whole world to a scheming transfer girl.
Betrayed, discarded, and broken on the fencing strip, I lost my first love and everything I fought for.
Until the retired cold Olympic champion stepped out of ...

On the night before my sister's bone marrow transplant, my parents confiscated my EpiPen and locked me in the attic.

Their "genetic consultant" warned them that the medication would contaminate the stem cells meant for my sister.

I had eaten the meal they provided—one secretly laced with lethal traces of nuts.

The resulting anaphylactic swelling was suffocating me completely.

I fra...

When the pain started, my mother-in-law called me a monster, then drove off like a madwoman. My doctor slit his own throat in front of me. My husband locked me away "for my safety."
I thought they didn't want my baby. That they were horrified by the child I carried.
But I was wrong.
The thing growing inside me was never my child at all.

My cousin stole thirty thousand dollars from our dying grandmother.
Not for an emergency. Not for bills.
For liposuction.
Then she told everyone I did it. Said I was jealous of her figure — that I'd drained Grandma's cardiac surgery fund because I wanted to look different. And the terrible part is, everyone believed her. My boyfriend. My uncle and aunt. Every single person who'd watched me grow up...

While I was being kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in the horse stable of our own family farm, my all-powerful chaebol fiancée was helping my green tea younger brother try on wedding attire.
Before dying, with my broken, blood-stained finger, I dialed the last desperate call for help.
On the other end of the phone, her tone was filled with scorn and impatience: "Vincent, can't you even tolerate a...

Seven years. Seven bonding ceremonies. Seven times a pack of feral strays charged through the territory on the full moon and tore into me before the marking could take.
I thought the Moon Goddess had cursed us.
Then I woke up in the pack hospital and heard my Alpha whispering to her — the delicate white wolf he called his "sister."
"Next time you let them in, could you tell them to go easier? I'm ...

I am the wife of a mafia boss.

When a rival family raids our estate, I take the fatal bullets meant for my sister-in-law.

When my husband, Vittorio, arrives, I give him a weak, relieved smile.

Instead of helping me, he points the muzzle of his gun right between my eyes.

"The perimeter alarms didn't trip," his consigliere, Lorenzo, says. "Only an inside job. Boss, this marriage was a tr...