Adelheid Rufo
13 Published Stories
Adelheid Rufo's Books and Stories
Rising From His Broken Mafia Vows
Mafia Mob boss Dante Falcone plucked me off the streets and made me his queen.
I thought I'd married the most loyal man in the underworld, until I caught him with my cousin Lucia.
She was six months pregnant with his child, living in our luxury villa.
After the car accident, I needed a blood transfusion to save our unborn baby.
The blood bank was empty.
Dante had ordered all emergency medical resources redirected to save his mistress.
He signed our child's death warrant with his own hand.
When I woke up to find my stomach horribly flat, my phone rang.
It was Dante, ecstatic because he'd just seen my old pregnancy test results, completely unaware he'd already killed his own heir.
"I'm going to build an empire for our child," he promised.
I didn't say a word.
I hung up, secretly signed the divorce papers, and called my intelligence contact, demanding immediate extraction.
After I disappeared, the untouchable Don finally understood what it meant to lose everything. He burned the world down and swore he'd bring me back. Sold To The Monster: My Silent Nightmare
Modern I’ve spent eighteen hundred days as a silent ghost in the Crawford estate, a place where the air smells of expensive cigars and terror. My father, Senator Jed Bowen, sold me to Alek Crawford to pay off his gambling debts, trading his daughter’s life for a seat in the Senate.
Alek doesn’t just want my service; he wants my complete submission. He tracks my every move through cameras and bruises my skin just to see if I’ll flinch. He thinks he owns me because he holds the contract, and his mother ensures I’m kept in my place with slaps and insults.
When a scandal involving my half-sister and Alek’s brother hit the news, the house turned into a war zone. Alek cornered me in the dark, his hands stained with blood and ink, whispering that I was nothing but a receipt for his family's money. He’s been forcing me to take pills for years, believing they’ve kept me drugged and mute.
"She needs to speak again," he told a surgeon over the phone. "Whatever it takes."
He thinks he’s fixing a broken toy, but he’s actually planning to carve the silence into my throat permanently. He has no idea that I’ve been switching those pills for years, or that I’m more awake and more dangerous than he could ever imagine.
I’ve endured the biting cold and the crushing weight of his obsession, waiting for a single sign that my nightmare could end. Tonight, a secret message reached me in the rain, confirming that the only man I ever loved has finally finished his mission.
Kole is coming back for me.
The contract review is tomorrow, but I’m not planning on signing anything. I’m planning on taking back everything they stole from me, starting with my voice. Healed By Another: Rejecting The Ruthless Don
Mafia I spent a year in a Swiss asylum, swallowing pills to cure a madness that didn’t exist.
It turned out the medication was just sugar.
My insanity was a script written by Jaxon Francis, the Don of New York, just so he could marry a Cartel princess without his ward getting in the way.
When I finally escaped and tried to leave him, his new wife staged her own kidnapping and framed me.
Jaxon didn’t ask for proof. He didn’t look at the evidence.
Instead, he tied a rope around my ankles and dragged me behind a helicopter across the jagged rocks of the Wastelands.
He held his wife close and watched as my skin was flayed and my bones shattered, believing he was executing a traitor.
He left me for dead in the dirt, convinced he had cleansed his empire.
I took the hush money his mother threw at me and vanished, letting Alina Phillips die in that field.
Three years later, I returned to New York as "Echo," the elusive artist the world was obsessing over.
At a charity auction, Jaxon bid one hundred million dollars for a painting of a woman’s scarred back, desperate to buy redemption for the ghost he thought he killed.
He chased me into the rain, begging for a second chance, swearing he had destroyed his wife for me.
I looked at the man who once held my heart and simply smiled.
Then I turned to the man standing beside me.
"Jaxon, meet Darwin," I said, linking my arm through his.
"My husband." The Rejected Healer: Her Rise as the White Wolf
Werewolf I carried a thermal container of stew to my fiancé's private estate, worried he was stressed about our upcoming pack merger.
Instead of a meditation retreat, I walked into a nightmare.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw Ivan playing on the rug with a secret son, while a woman named Kiera watched like a queen.
I froze as I heard Ivan's voice float through the glass.
"Aliana is just a placeholder. She smells like antiseptic and fear. Once I get the territory, I'll reject her."
My heart shattered, but the knife twisted deeper when he laughed about my parents.
"Her folks pay for this villa, Kiera. They know. They prefer a strong alliance over a disappointment of a daughter."
My own parents were drugging me to steal my medical patents. They thought I was weak. They thought I was just a submissive Healer.
I wiped my tears and unlocked his safe with the admin codes he forgot I installed.
I took the financial records, the fake DNA tests, and the theft agreements.
That night, at his secret son's birthday party, I didn't bring a gift.
I brought a projector.
I played their confession for the entire Council, severed the mate bond publicly, and vanished into the North.
Six months later, a ruined, homeless Ivan crawled into my clinic, begging for the legendary White Wolf to save him.
He looked up, shocked to see me standing there, glowing with silver power.
"You rejected the gift of the Goddess," I smiled, letting my Alpha aura crush him to the floor. "Now, get out." The Lie My Fiancé Created
Horror For three years, I believed my fiancé, Daryl, was my savior. He rescued me after a brutal attack-secretly orchestrated by my own sister, Kenisha-shattered my hands and my dreams of being a concert pianist. He gave me a perfect, protected life.
Then I discovered the truth on his laptop. I wasn't his beloved; I was "Asset: FB-01." A walking collection of prime organs, being groomed until my sister needed a new heart. My heart.
The man I loved became a monster. He forced me to take five pregnancy tests, snarling that he'd "get that thing out" of me himself if I compromised his investment. He locked me in the trunk of his car and later abandoned me on a collapsing rope bridge.
To finally break me, he drowned the stray kitten I'd rescued in the washing machine. "You hurt my Kenisha," he roared. "Now you'll know what it feels like to lose something you care about."
My entire life with him had been a lie. I was just livestock being fattened for slaughter, and my hands-the ones he once called magic-were just a "non-essential component."
After he drained my blood for the sister who wanted me dead, I went home and buried my cat. Then I packed a single bag, booked a flight to London, and vanished. They had created a monster. Now, they were about to meet her. The Framed Heiress's Unyielding Comeback
Romance For ten years, I was my family' s living scandal. After being framed for a crime that nearly destroyed our company, I was cast as the pariah, forced to serve the very people who had stolen my future.
At my parents' 40th anniversary party, the humiliation reached its peak. My brother, the CEO who built his career on my ruin, stood at the podium.
"Can you not do one simple thing without creating a disaster?" he hissed at me in front of everyone. "For one night, can you just try not to be a complete and utter liability?"
His fiancée, the true architect of my downfall, watched with a triumphant smirk. My mother looked on in horror-not at his cruelty, but at the scene I was causing. My father simply turned away in disappointment.
They had all chosen their sides long ago, and I was not on it.
After a decade of absorbing their contempt for a crime I didn't commit, something inside me finally snapped. The guilt, the shame, the silence-it was all a lie I was no longer willing to live.
But I didn't cry. I didn't scream.
I calmly walked out of that ballroom, pulled out my phone, and dialed a number I found online.
A gravelly voice answered. "Mccormick."
"My name is Charlotte Gallegos," I said, my voice clearer and stronger than it had been in years. "I need to hire you." His Healing, Her Vengeful Lie
Fantasy The numb cold started in my fingertips, creeping inward.
I watched Chloe, my wife, her face a mask of impatient fury in the dim tent light.
Outside, a blizzard howled, the soundtrack to my dying.
My miraculous blood, the blood that could heal, drained from my arm, a crimson offering for a dead man.
"More," Chloe demanded, her voice sharp. "It' s not enough. You have to bring him back."
Her childhood sweetheart, Jake Miller, lay frozen nearby, a corpse.
"Chloe, it doesn' t work like this," I rasped, my vision blurring. "I can heal injuries. I can' t raise the dead."
"Liar!" she shrieked, her grief a twisted venom. "You can heal anything! You won' t save him because you' re jealous! It' s your fault he went up that mountain! If you hadn' t forced me to marry you, he' d still be alive!"
The accusation was a sick joke.
I had healed her to repay a debt, a lie used to trap me.
I wasn' t a god, just a medical prodigy.
As my lifeblood pooled, the world faded to black, her hateful face my last sight.
Then, bright, sterile light.
I gasped, eyes flying open in a pristine hospital room.
My hands were whole, warm.
Mrs. Davis, Chloe' s mother, stood by the window, worried but hopeful.
This was the day it all began, the day they begged me to heal their daughter.
I remembered my profound sense of duty, repaying a girl I believed saved me.
That single selfless act led to a year of loveless marriage, resentment, and my own murder.
"Dr. Hayes," Mrs. Davis said, trembling. "We' ve heard about your… gift. They say you can perform miracles."
She stepped forward, hands clasped.
"My daughter, Chloe… she' ll never walk again. But we believe… you can save her. Please, we' ll give you anything."
But my gaze was cold.
I saw the contempt, the venom of my past in her desperate eyes.
I had been a fool.
A naive, sacrificial lamb.
Not again. The Butterfly Effect of Ava
Romance The afternoon sun warmed my art studio, a sanctuary I' d built for myself, far from my chaotic family.
Life was good, my canvas humming with color, ready for final touches.
Then, the phone rang, a cold dread seizing me as Leo' s name flashed across the screen.
He demanded money, as always, his voice a familiar, entitled growl.
Our conversation was sharp, escalating quickly, ending with his chilling threat: "I'm outside your building. Come down here right now, or I'm coming up." A cold fear snaked down my spine; this was my sanctuary, not his to invade.
He was waiting, his face thin and angry. When I refused him, he sneered, calling me "little miss perfect artist," shoving me. I stumbled, caught off balance, and then he shoved me again, harder.
I fell backward, right into the street. Everything happened at once: the screech of tires, a blaring horn, blinding headlights.
A massive force slammed into me, pain exploding through every nerve. Then, only darkness.
I died. But then I opened my eyes. Confined to a tiny, unfamiliar body, in my old childhood bedroom, the calendar on the wall screamed 2007.
I was seven years old again.
It wasn't a dream. It was a second chance. A chance to change everything. A chance to stop Leo from becoming the monster who would one day cause my death. Rewriting Her Destiny
Romance My life as Senator King' s cherished daughter was a meticulously crafted dream.
My future seemed certain: marrying my devoted fiancé, Beau Carter, with my closest 'companion,' Daisy Mae, always by my side.
But behind velvet curtains, a venomous plot brewed.
My brother, Randy, consumed by petty jealousy, and Beau, blinded by ambition, fell under Daisy's insidious, manipulative spell.
Their true, ugly intentions burst forth.
They orchestrated my ruin, a horrifying act of "revenge."
I was cast out, forcibly married to a brutal criminal, stripped of family, fortune, and hope.
Trapped, I endured relentless abuse until I finally died, alone and utterly broken, in a desolate, forgotten place.
In my agony, the truth, sharp as a blade, shattered my illusions.
Randy and Beau, my own flesh and supposed love, engineered my downfall, all for her – for Daisy, the viper I foolishly called 'friend.'
The unfathomable betrayal burned hotter than any physical pain.
How could they?
Why her?
But destiny wasn't done.
My eyes snapped open, a gasp catching, back in my childhood bed, morning sun streaming.
Every horrifying memory of my agonizing future was brutally fresh.
This time, I wouldn't just survive.
This time, the Kings would have their vengeance.
The game has already begun. Ranchland Refuge: Where Love Grows
Romance The recurring nightmare was a constant torment, a horrifying glimpse into my future.
Every night, I watched myself trapped, broken, married to Ethan Vanderbilt, his cruel eyes and chilling smile haunting my sleep as Brittany Miller, his manipulative girlfriend, whispered poison in his ear.
But this time, it hit differently.
I jolted awake, heart hammering, but the terror wasn't just residual dream-fear.
The details were sharper, the pain more intense.
It wasn't just a bad dream; it felt like a memory, a terrifying premonition burned into my soul, a stark warning of the life awaiting me as Mrs. Ethan Vanderbilt.
My familiar East Coast bedroom did nothing to calm the dread.
My engagement, meticulously planned by our influential families and celebrated by society, was no longer a gilded cage – it was a death sentence.
I couldn't breathe. I saw my very spirit withering in a silent, opulent prison, completely at his mercy.
How could my aunt, bound by her powerful Senator husband and their family alliances, only see an "advantageous match" when I saw a monster?
They feared the scandal of breaking the engagement; I feared losing my entire self.
"What's more important?" I choked, "His career, or my life? Because I' m telling you, marrying Ethan will destroy me."
The fear was a cold knot in my stomach, but a desperate, burning resolve ignited.
I couldn't accept this fate. I had relived my end, and I refused to walk that path again.
Looking at my pale, haunted reflection, I whispered, "No. I won't let him. I'll change it."
My desperate fight for freedom began at that very moment. My Fiancée Tried To Steal My Fortune
Modern Seven years. That's how long I'd been with Sarah, building a future, planning our wedding.
Meeting her parents formally was supposed to be a joyous step, a celebration of us.
But at dinner, Sarah casually suggested a terrifying plan: mortgaging or selling the townhouse-the one I paid for-to fund her deceased brother's friend's dubious startup.
Her parents enthusiastically agreed, openly admiring the 'visionary' friend, David.
They dismissed my shock as "selfishness," accusing me of caring "always about money."
Sarah herself rolled her eyes, questioning my "support."
Then, they ambushed me at my college, publicly humiliating me with baseless accusations of emotional abuse and fraud.
My career, built on years of hard work as an adjunct professor, hung by a thread.
How could the woman I loved betray me so utterly for mere convenience and blind family loyalty?
Were my life savings, my future, so easily disposable to them?
The injustice burned, revealing a deep-seated contempt I never truly saw.
I cancelled the wedding, ready to fight for what was mine.
But just as her CEO prepared to reprimand me, a sleek black car pulled up, and a quiet man stepped out, about to expose a secret that would shake their world to its core.
They had no idea who they were really dealing with. Obey the Monster, But Let's Revenge
Romance My family was crumbling, clinging to the last vestiges of a once-great name.
My upcoming marriage to Ethan was supposed to save us, his new money cushioning our fall.
But rumors painted Julian Thorne, a reclusive tech billionaire, as a monster who ruined women, and his people chose my beautiful half-sister, Hailey, as his next "companion."
Then Ethan, my fiancé, panicked, pulling me into a desperate elopement.
In a cheap motel room, he revealed his true plan: I was to pretend we'd been secretly married before Hailey's selection.
He needed me as a convenient shield, a deniable wife, so he could keep Hailey, and her potential connection to Thorne, on a string.
My stomach churned; this wasn't love, it was a transaction.
Back home, my family, desperate to "save" Hailey, demanded I support Ethan's lie, threatening to cut off funding for my cherished art project.
They called me "strong" when they wanted me to bear their burdens, to be a doormat.
The disgust was a bitter taste in my mouth, realizing I was just a pawn in their cruel, self-serving games.
Why was I always the one sacrificed, always the "strong" one meant to suffer in silence?
The thought of living Ethan' s fabricated life, a life of quiet humiliation and deceit, suddenly felt infinitely worse than facing any rumored monster.
A cold fury rose in me, sharp and clean.
I would not be their pawn, their disposable currency.
Looking my father dead in the eye, I declared, "If Hailey is too delicate for Mr. Thorne, then I will go in her place."
I' d rather face a monster with my eyes open than be a fool' s secret. Living In The Haunted House
Fantasy Because I was greedy for a cheap place to live, I moved into a haunted house. The old beggar downstairs warned me in terror, "Miss, this house is haunted, you can't live here!" I smiled and reassured him, "It's okay, I'm even poorer than the ghosts, so if I move in, I'll be the one causing trouble." He didn't know that I've been able to see ghosts since I was young, and just last night, I stayed up late giving psychological counseling to a ghost. You might like
Rejected by the Son, I Chose the Don
Rabbit On my wedding day, my father sold me to the Chicago Outfit to pay his debts. I was supposed to marry Alex Moreno, the heir to the city's most powerful crime family. But he couldn't even be bothered to show up.
As I stood alone at the altar, humiliated, my best friend delivered the final blow. Alex hadn't just stood me up; he had run off to California with his mistress.
The whispers in the cathedral turned me into a joke. I was damaged goods, the rejected bride. His family knew the whole time and let me take the public fall, offering me his cousins as pathetic replacements-a brute who hated me or a coward who couldn't protect me.
The humiliation burned away my fear, leaving only cold rage. My life was already over, so I decided to set the whole game on fire myself. The marriage pact only said a Carlson had to marry a Moreno; it never said which one.
With nothing left to lose, I looked past the pathetic boys they offered.
I chose the one man they never expected.
I chose his father, the Don himself.
My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret
Rabbit My marriage to Joshua Caldwell was a prison sentence. I was a Hartman trophy, sold to the powerful family who had destroyed mine.
Then I discovered he was cheating. His mistress was pregnant with the child he denied me, and he was stealing my secret song lyrics to build her career. When I confronted him, he called me a spineless liability and threatened to destroy what was left of my family.
To make matters worse, a one-night stand with a stranger turned out to be with my husband's brother, Anthony Caldwell-the Don of the city. He knew all of Joshua's secrets and used them to trap me in a twisted game, seeing me as nothing more than an asset.
They both thought I was a broken doll they could control.
I wrote a song for his mistress, a beautiful execution with a single, impossible note I knew would destroy her voice.
She sang it, and now her career is over.
Now the Don has summoned me to Chicago, not knowing the woman he thinks is his asset is the one who just burned his brother's world to the ground. Burned by Poison, Saved by the Devil
Gale Kaaya My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement.
To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia.
It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping.
But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished.
She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug.
She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago.
The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash.
Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name.
She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant.
I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead.
I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye.
"Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you."
Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth.
"Prove it," he growled.
I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip. To Ruin Him, I Married His Rival
Rabbit Andrew Hebert, the man who promised to protect me, stood on a stage and announced his engagement to my tormentor. It wasn't just heartbreak; it was a business deal. He was selling me to a creditor to cover his gambling debts.
The applause of the powerful families was a death sentence, each clap sealing my fate as collateral. Andrew had paraded me here just to show everyone I was an asset to be liquidated, while his new fiancée smirked at me from the stage.
I was trapped, with no money and no one to turn to. The man I loved was leading me to the slaughter.
But as I fled into the library, a voice emerged from the shadows, deep and dangerous.
Damien Maddox. The Dark Don. The only man Andrew feared.
He offered me a different kind of cage, one with the power to burn Andrew's world to the ground.
With nothing left to lose, I looked the devil in the eyes.
"Take me with you." Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles
Dorine Koestler I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved.
He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again.
"Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion.
That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports.
For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian.
In return, he treated me like furniture.
He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste.
I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home.
So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco.
I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage.
But I underestimated Dante.
When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat.
He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away. Betrayed, I Married the Feared Cripple
Hu Minxue Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate.
I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo.
The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives.
My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked.
To her, I was finally being disposed of.
She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left.
She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex.
"She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds.
They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter.
They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back.
But they made a fatal mistake.
With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon.
I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him.
And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner.
He will be my vengeance. His Vow Broke, Her Empire Woke
Hei Baidong I was the perfect Mafia wife, my dowry the foundation of my husband's ambition. I paid for his Yale degree, his tailored suits, and the very mansion he called his own. My reward? He paraded his mistress into my bedroom and declared her his second wife, expecting me to silently finance their affair.
They thought they had broken a merchant's daughter. They forgot I was raised by wolves.
Armed with a blood chit—a life debt owed to my family by the most feared man in Chicago—I walked into the lion's den. I went to Damien 'The Wraith' Falcone, the Dark Don who rules the Outfit with an iron fist, to demand a simple annulment.
But the King of Chicago isn't interested in simple transactions. He saw the steel beneath my silk, the vendetta burning in my eyes. He granted me my freedom, but at a price: my allegiance. Now, I'm a pawn in his lethal game of thrones, caught between a treacherous husband I swore to destroy and a ruthless Don who looks at me with a terrifying, possessive hunger.
In a city built on loyalty and betrayal, I'm about to teach them all that a queen's wrath is the deadliest weapon of all. My Cold Heart: Rejecting The Mafia Boss
Jia Zhong My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket.
He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent.
But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress.
Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you."
To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife.
When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala.
He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent.
He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters.
He thought he had broken me.
He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage.
But he made a fatal error.
He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign.
They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me.
And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck.
I didn't jump to die.
I jumped to be reborn.
And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin. Reborn, I Wed the Untamed Playboy
Bone Possolo On my wedding day to Julian Moretti, the future Mafia Don, I was deliberately sent to the wrong penthouse.
My half-sister Sofia had crawled into my fiancé's bed, leaving me to be discovered by the family's exiled, alcoholic cousin.
In my past life, I was shattered by this orchestrated betrayal. I cried and begged when Julian publicly humiliated me, choosing his illegitimate mistress over his rightful bride.
I played the perfect, dignified Mafia wife for years. I swallowed his insults, ignored his infidelities, and accepted my ruined reputation to keep the peace.
But my blind obedience only paved the way for my murder. Julian discarded me, and I was poisoned to death so Sofia could steal my crown as the Mafia Queen.
Until my agonizing last breath, I didn't understand. I had honored our families' blood alliance flawlessly.
Why was I the sacrificial lamb while they were rewarded for their treason?
Opening my eyes again, I was back on the dark leather sofa, suffocating in my heavy silk wedding dress.
This time, I didn't shed a single tear.
I grabbed a heavy brass letter opener, marched straight into the Don's main study, and slapped the Underboss across the face in front of the entire family.
"A Valdez woman does not share her husband," I declared coldly. "To honor the alliance, I will marry Dante."
If they wanted to make my humiliation a fact, I was going to make it a funeral. 
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