Trauma

I saved a dying mobster three years ago. Vincent Ricci—New York's most feared Godfather.

He decided I was his. Private jets, five-million-dollar proposals, the whole nine yards. I fell for it.

The night before our wedding, his enemies took me. Three days of torture left me blind. Everyone said he'd never marry damaged goods. He married me anyway and spent three years treating me like a queen.

...

I thought I had the perfect life.

A mansion in Westport, a successful husband, a beautiful daughter. Sixteen years of marriage that seemed unbreakable.

Until I found another woman's watch band in my husband's car.

Until I discovered that woman was my daughter's soccer coach.

Until I realized my nine-year-old daughter was helping her father lie to me.

Some betrayals strike like lightning. Othe...

Ryan loves me deeply—at least that's what everyone says. Seven years together, we look like the perfect couple to outsiders. But only I know he's betrayed me three times.

The first time was three years ago. His brother died saving him, leaving behind his widow Sophia—Ryan's unforgettable first love. He married her behind my back. When I found out, I completely fell apart. I have dignity. I refuse...

I had just pulled the teddy bear cookies from the oven when my daughter Dora ran into the kitchen.
"Dora, sweetheart! Mommy's special cookies are ready!"
But the moment she saw the cookies, her face went white as a sheet. She screamed "Get away! Get away!" and bolted from the room.
I was completely stunned. Just then, Herbert walked through the door.
"Try one and tell me what's wrong," I said, poi...

A single solo trip changed Evan’s life forever, one he never imagined would lead him into the hands of the ruthless mafia boss, Iosif. Forced into his world, Iosif becomes Evan’s worst nightmare, leaving scars Evan can never forget.

Just when Evan finally begins living an ordinary life again, Iosif returns, this time as his savior. But salvation comes with a price. Iosif’s love is obsessive, poss...

I died on the day I was supposed to marry Grayson.
Because my sister Delilah had her heart "broken," my family decided to bring her to our farm in Ashwood to heal through horseback riding. The wedding was postponed.
I lay in the stable at the Clarke family farm, dialing my mother's number with blood-covered fingers.
All she said was: "What kind of game are you playing now? You think if you act pit...

A witch prophesied at my birth—I carried special blood, I could bear the strongest children.

Two Alphas I'd loved for ten years—the Wolf King's sons—swore they'd protect me forever.

Then she showed up. Maggie. My cousin. All wide-eyed innocence, claiming she had the same gift.

Suddenly, I was the jealous one. Every trap was mine, meant to hurt her. Every wound on me was fake. She cradled the si...

When my husband pushed the divorce papers in front of me for the hundredth time, demanding I sacrifice myself for my sister, I didn't cry or make a scene. I simply signed my name, willingly giving up the man I'd loved for eight years to Ivy.

A few days later, Ivy got drunk and drove into a state senator's only son during a street race, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Once again, I st...

The mafia boss chose me as his decoy—a body double for the woman he loves.

Eight years. Three bullets, one car crash, one explosion. The doctor said ten more minutes and I would've died on that operating table when they took my kidney. I gave him a son. He let me play "the boss's wife" in public.

Until he cleared every obstacle for her and decided to marry her.

Her wedding photos replaced mine ...

My fiancé and I held twenty-one weddings. I put on my wedding dress twenty-one times, only to crawl out of pools of blood each time.

Car accidents. Shootings. Explosions. Fires.

Everyone said I was cursed, that I was bad luck for my husband.

I was the only fool who believed they were accidents.

Until the twenty-second time.

That day, covered in blood, I escaped from an ambush back to headquar...

I once loved Ryan deeply and helped him become the Alpha, only to be rewarded with chains in a dungeon and the mocking laughter of him and his mistress.

Fate gave me a second chance—I woke up reborn on the morning of the mate selection ceremony. There he was, still ordering me around in front of everyone, expecting me to play the obedient servant.

Everyone tried to convince me that Ryan, the man...

The day the IVF succeeded was when I realized Michael had deceived me all along.
He had only used me as a surrogate for my sister.
When I confronted him, he tested me, forcing me to kill someone. "Afraid to pull the trigger? Doesn't seem like my kind of woman," he sneered.
I tried to run, but he caught me.
He kept me locked away, forced me to eat foods I was allergic to until I needed my stomach p...

I never imagined that the most humiliating secret of my life would be laid bare in a flimsy tent in the middle of nowhere.

Even less did I imagine that the person witnessing my unraveling would be Sebastian. He’s the CEO of a top-tier conglomerate, my direct boss, and, most damningly, my ex’s stepfather.

A freak accident left us stranded in the jungle late at night. Inside that cramped, suffocat...

On my daughter’s 100-day celebration, I found explicit messages between my husband and his secretary.
During our fight, he “accidentally” pushed me off the second floor, trapping me in a wheelchair forever.
He fired the secretary and cared for me personally, winning everyone’s praise and pity.
Only I knew he took secret late-night calls, his eyes full of disgust when he looked at me.
Until his mis...

At the school's field day, my six-year-old son pointed straight at me and shouted for everyone to hear, "I'd rather be alone than with her! She's the worst mom in the world!"
He hated that I couldn't afford expensive toys, hated that we lived in a tiny apartment, hated that I was just a useless woman.
Then he turned and ran straight into the arms of the woman who destroyed my family, calling her n...

To marry me, my fiancé Sebastian Knight said he wanted his childhood friend Isabella to be our surrogate.

I agreed. Because I couldn't have children, and the Knight family desperately needed an heir.

After Isabella "successfully" got pregnant, Sebastian became a completely different person. He started making her nutritious meals, accompanying her to prenatal appointments, even memorizing every f...

No one knew I was an addict.
Not to alcohol, not to drugs, but to the rawest, dirtiest kind of union.
To keep up the facade of this respectable job, to stop myself from turning into some desperate, heat-crazed stray begging for a man’s touch on the street, I had to swallow those little blue pills every day.
Until that damn blizzard trapped me with thirty hockey players reeking of sweat and test...

I severed our Mate Bond with my own hands.

In that moment, I lay unconscious, bleeding under the silvery moonlight, while he knelt some distance away, clutching his chest as if he had been hollowed out.

Once, he shielded me from nine silver stakes, only to crown another woman; he placed my protective pendant around her neck, then cast me into a water prison. He professed, “I love only you,” yet ...

At twenty-nine, Dominic Brooks owns this city's underworld.

This year, I'm pregnant again. Finally.

But on our daughter's death anniversary, he doesn't show. Five hours. Nothing.

I find him at our casino with some girl draped all over him. The same girl I pulled out of a trafficking ring two years ago.

She's laughing loud enough for everyone to hear. "His wife won't stop crying about that dead...

Three years ago, I devoted my family's entire fortune to rescue my husband from the mire of impending bankruptcy. I once believed this was a mutual journey of love, until that day revealed the chilling truth — I had merely been nurturing a self-consuming wolf.
The metallic scent of blood still hung in the air of the delivery room when he signed the document relinquishing life support, trading ou...