Barr Wettlaufer
4 Published Stories
Barr Wettlaufer's Books and Stories
When His Lies Cost Me Everything
Modern I sacrificed my career as a successful art curator to move to Boston for my husband, Cohen. For three years, he promised my permanent residency was "in process"-a lie that kept me a dependent housewife, trapped in a life that wasn't my own.
The truth shattered my world at the DMV. My marriage certificate, though legally valid, had never been properly filed for spousal immigration benefits-a technicality he had deliberately concealed. Worse, documents I had signed at his request contained statements that branded me with a finding of immigration fraud.
His spousal sponsorship-the very slot meant for me-had gone to his young research assistant, Kenzie O'Brien.
He didn't just betray me; he erased me. He let my visa expire, and the fraudulent statements he'd had me sign triggered a permanent bar from the United States-a trap he had designed from the beginning. That same day, he replaced our apartment lock with a digital access system and locked me out, telling me over the phone, "Kenzie needs entry for lab materials, and I haven't had time to update your access."
He had systematically stripped me of my identity, my career, and my legal status, all while building a parallel life with another woman. He saw me as a powerless, inconvenient truth he could simply discard.
When I confronted him, he called my behavior "unnecessary" and had his office assistant escort me from the building. He thought he had won. But my quiet departure was just the beginning of his very public downfall. He Chose Her Over Our Child
Modern My world shattered twice. First, the ocean claimed my son. Then, the mountain road took another, a direct sacrifice to the man I loved and the woman he chose. In the hospital, beeps marked the emptiness where my second son used to be, echoing the first loss, both involving Holden and Giana.
During the car crash, I was pinned, bleeding, and trapped. Holden, my partner, looked me in the eyes, then chose to save Giana, abandoning me and our unborn child.
Soon, I overheard Holden praising Giana for turning our tragedy into a PR win. His hollow apologies and focus on Giana’s "miracle work" reignited the brutal memory of her push and his past denials.
A decade of sacrificing my life and two children for a man who saw me as a liability left a bitter taste. His choice was clear; only profound abandonment remained.
But this time, I was choosing me. From my profound loss, a dangerous spark ignited: I would not just survive; I would find freedom and make him pay. 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.
From Jilted Bride To Mafia Empress
Xiao Wang For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne.
But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.”
My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love.
He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party." 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. Too Late To Apologize, Mr. Billionaire
Rollins Laman For seven years, I scrubbed floors, cooked books, and hid my identity as the Vitiello heiress just to test if Dante Moretti loved me for me, not my father’s power.
But the massive digital billboard in Times Square froze the blood in my veins.
It wasn’t my face next to his under the headline "The King and his new Queen." It was a cocktail waitress named Lola.
When I walked into the lobby to confront him, Lola slapped me across the face and crushed my late mother's locket under her stiletto heel.
Dante didn't defend me. He didn't even look sorry.
"You’re useful, like a stapler," he sneered, checking his watch.
"But a King needs a Queen, not a boring clerk. You can stay on as my mistress if you want to keep your job."
He thought I was a nobody. He thought he could use me to launder his money and then discard me like trash.
He didn't realize that the only reason he wasn't in federal prison was because I was protecting him.
I wiped the blood from my lip and pulled out a secure satellite phone.
Dante laughed. "Who are you calling? Your mommy?"
I stared him dead in the eyes as the line connected.
"The pact is void, Papa," I whispered. "Burn them all."
Ten minutes later, the glass doors shattered as my father’s military helicopters descended onto the street.
Dante fell to his knees, realizing too late that he hadn't just lost a secretary.
He had just declared war on the Capo dei Capi. 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. No Mercy For My Mafia Fiancé
Juline Walden During a massive syndicate attack, my fiancé, the most ruthless Mafia Capo, locked his grip on my wrist like an iron vice.
He desperately wanted to drag me into a corner panic room to protect Bianca, the innocent underworld socialite he secretly obsessed over.
In my past life, I saved him with my body—and he rewarded me with a crippled leg, years of disgust, and a push off a cliff. He believed her lies, and he murdered me for them.
Opening my eyes again, I was reborn to the exact moment the safehouse was under attack.
This time, I let him walk willingly into his own concrete tomb. Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him
SHANA GRAY I died on a Tuesday.
It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father.
I was twenty years old.
He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant.
He chose her. He always chose her.
And then, I woke up.
Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for.
This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice.
He didn't know he was talking to a ghost.
He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal.
He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder.
That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry.
She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts.
So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie.
I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane.
But I will not be a victim.
This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter.
This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain. 
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