Charlene
10 Published Stories
Charlene's Books and Stories
The Don's Regret: Choosing The Wrong Queen
Mafia For three years, I was Dante’s shadow, the woman who took a bullet for the heir to New York’s most powerful crime family. I believed him when he said we would rule together.
But while I was bleeding for his empire, he was secretly finalizing a merger to marry Sofia, a pristine Mafia Princess.
I found the encrypted report on his desk. It didn't describe me as his partner. It called me a "useful shield" and a "necessary diversion" to protect his real bride.
When I tried to walk away, he didn't let me go. He humiliated me.
Worse, when Sofia staged a fake attack and blamed me to cover her own lies, Dante didn't ask for proof.
He dragged me out of my hospital bed, fresh from surgery, and hauled me to the estate fountain.
He shoved my head underwater, drowning the woman who had once saved his life, while Sofia watched from the balcony with a smirk.
"You touched what is mine!" he screamed, choosing a liar over the soldier who loved him.
I left that night, bleeding and broken, vanishing into the storm without a trace.
Two years later, I am a celebrated artist in Paris, and the man standing beside me looks at me like I am the sun, not a shield.
Dante stands outside my gallery in the freezing rain, looking ruined, begging for a second chance.
He tells me he knows the truth now. He tells me he loves me.
I look at him, then at the engagement ring on my finger—one given by a man who never had to break me to love me.
"I didn't erase our history, Dante," I say, rolling up the car window.
"I survived it." The Bottom Line: His Suffering
Modern My husband Gabriel's affair with his young protégée, Kaia, had already cost me everything. Our marriage was a hollow shell, and his cruelty had even led to the miscarriage of our child, leaving me broken.
But the day he defended Kaia by slapping my ten-year-old niece, Bea, so hard he ruptured her eardrum, something inside me finally snapped for good.
He stood over her small, unconscious body and screamed, "She deserved it!"
He had already financially ruined my brother and now had brutalized a child-all to protect his mistress.
The man I had loved for sixteen years was a monster.
All the pain and grief I'd carried for so long burned away, leaving only cold, hard resolve.
He expected tears. He expected hysterics. Instead, when I found him at the hospital, I walked straight up to him and slapped him across the face. "My family is my bottom line, Gabriel," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "You crossed it. And now, I will make you suffer." A Love Betrayed, A Future Reclaimed
Modern The phone buzzed, pulling me from a complex guitar passage.
It was Jake' s assistant, frantic: "There' s been an accident. Jake' s at St. Mary' s. He needs a transfusion. You' re the only match."
My world tilted.
I raced to the hospital, heart hammering, and gave my blood, my love, to save him.
An hour later, Jake' s assistant reappeared, looking annoyed.
"It was just a prank," he said, not meeting my eyes. "Jake' s fine. He' s at a party."
My blood ran cold.
I found my discarded blood, half-full, tossed like garbage, next to a service exit.
Then I heard laughter.
Jake, perfectly fine, emerged with Chloe, his childhood friend.
"Did you see her face?" Chloe cackled. "So pathetic."
Jake chuckled, a sound that now turned my stomach.
"She' d do anything for me, Chloe. It' s been three years. I told you I' d make her pay for what she did. For stealing that scholarship."
The scholarship. The red wine on my performance dress. The missed audition. All cruel jokes.
He never loved me. I was a tool, a target in his meticulously planned revenge.
The pain was a physical weight, but beneath it, a cold resolve hardened.
I clutched my phone, a single tear tracing a path down my cheek.
I called my brother.
"Liam," I said, my voice dead. "That offer… to study with the Maestro in Europe. Is it still open?"
"Of course, Liv. Why?"
"I' m taking it. I' m leaving. Tonight."
He thought he had destroyed me. He was wrong. I was just getting started. Five Thousand Dollar Betrayal
Billionaires My father, David Miller, a quiet indie game developer, lay dying in a county hospital, needing a $5,000 surgery.
Meanwhile, my mother, Sarah Jenkins, a tech CEO with her face on magazine covers, poured millions into a startup for her high school sweetheart' s son, Kevin, and bought him a new gaming console.
When I begged her for my father' s surgery money, her voice was crisp and distant, dismissing it as "non-essential," while Kevin, celebrating his perfect SAT score, mocked me and offered a measly twenty-dollar bill for my father' s funeral.
How could she watch my father wither and die for five thousand dollars, while lavishing millions on a boy she barely knew, mocking his memory and shattering his legacy?
With the taste of humiliation and grief still fresh, I took the twenty dollars, a down payment on a debt I swore to collect in full. My Wife, My Enemy
Romance Five years into our child-free marriage, a rule my wife Sarah adamantly enforced, she introduced me to Luke and Annie, identical three-year-old twins, claiming they were "ours now."
My heart, longing for a family despite a vasectomy two years prior, a sacrifice for her, soared with a confusing mix of shock and overwhelming hope. I believed she had changed her mind, the silent sadness I carried finally seen.
But that hope shattered when my doctor revealed the devastating truth: my procedure wasn't a simple vasectomy; my seminal vesicles had been completely removed five years ago, leaving me permanently infertile.
Then, a whispered conversation between Sarah and her brother confirmed my worst fears: the twins were Mark' s, her "dying" lover, and my seminal vesicles had been transplanted into him. My love was never enough; I was merely a tool.
The house, once my home, became a battleground of deceit. Sarah, the master manipulator, twisted every truth, using the very children born of her betrayal to isolate and hurt me.
I was a ghost in my own life, watching the woman I loved play happy family with her real obsession, Mark. The pain of betrayal was a physical ache, yet a chilling clarity emerged: her carefully constructed world was about to unravel.
Who was this woman I married? Who orchestrated such a grotesque scheme, using my body, my fortune, to fulfill a twisted fantasy? The innocence of the life I thought I had was brutally stripped away, leaving only a raw, burning injustice. How could I have been so blind?
Lying alone in the guest room, the ashes of my old life scattered in the fireplace, I didn't cry. I made a plan. I wouldn't just leave. I would dismantle her world, piece by piece. The fight for my self-preservation had just begun. When Betrayal Kills Twice
Romance The roaring motorcycles ripped through Montana's quiet air, a sound I knew too well from a life already lived.
I stood on my porch, one hand on my pregnant belly, knowing this wasn't just a day; it was the past crashing into the present, threatening a tragedy I thought I' d escaped.
In my first life, Caleb, my husband, had killed me after his "true love" Amber died.
This time, when the mayor begged me to fetch him, I simply refused, protecting my unborn child.
But Caleb, blinded by obsession, had already spun a wicked lie.
He told Sheriff Brody I was having a jealous breakdown and had contacted the bikers myself.
Brody, Caleb' s loyal friend, believed him.
He handcuffed me, mistaking my pleas for insane ramblings.
Then, in his misplaced fury, he shoved me down.
I fell, a searing pain tearing through my abdomen.
On the dusty ground, I watched a dark stain spread, my baby gone.
Blamed for the town's massacre, for the deaths of innocents, accused of turning traitor by the very man who' d condemned me once before – how could my second chance be so much worse?
But just as despair threatened to consume me, sirens pierced the chaos.
State troopers arrived, armed with a confession: the true traitor wasn't me, but Caleb' s beloved Amber, the biker gang' s mole.
With my innocence revealed, a new, brutal fight for justice had just begun. Too Late For His Savior Complex
Romance My boyfriend Ben and I had been together for seven years.
He was the golden boy of our CS department, always helping everyone.
But then Jessica, a new junior, entered the picture.
His "mentorship" quickly escalated, from late-night, winky-face DMs to public declarations of needing his "heroic" help.
When I expressed discomfort, Ben dismissed me, accusing me of being "sensitive" or "dramatic."
He even publicly sided with Jessica during her fake apologies.
He cancelled our anniversary trip to "save" her hackathon project.
Jessica brazenly flaunted their cozy "study session" on social media, on my birthday.
Campus rumors soon turned into a full-blown smear campaign, discrediting my academic achievements.
The ultimate betrayal came when Ben weaponized my deepest trauma against me, calling me "paranoid."
Then he actively sabotaged my career and punished my best friend for defending me.
My heart shattered.
How could the man I loved for seven years become this cold, cruel stranger, so blind to manipulation?
I was heartbroken, but a cold anger ignited.
I wouldn't just sit there and watch my life crumble.
I quietly gathered every piece of evidence against Jessica's malicious scheme.
I poured all my shattered energy into securing the most coveted internship in tech-the very one Ben had always dreamed of.
The truth, and my triumph, were about to be revealed. Seventeen Again: The Day Everything Changed
Young Adult I died peacefully in my eighties, only to shockingly wake up seventeen again, still in my childhood bedroom. It was college application day, and everything felt eerily familiar, especially my lifelong dream with best friend Jack and boyfriend Kevin: Princeton, shared dorms, and a future intertwined.
But the comfort shattered an instant later. Kevin and Jack, my supposed "constants," calmly announced they were ditching the Ivy League. Their new plan? State University, staying local, all to "support" Brittany, the head cheerleader—a non-entity in my previous life—who claimed her family was in crisis.
The betrayal hit like a physical blow. Suddenly, my meticulously organized SAT notes, the very tools of *my* ambition, were handed over to Brittany without a second thought. They paraded her scores, reveling in *her* success, while publicly dismissing my shock and mocking my sudden declaration of choosing UC Berkeley. At the graduation party, they treated Brittany like royalty, their arms around her, their attention solely hers, while I became an irrelevant outsider. The yearbook, a symbol of our unbreakable bond, bore their dismissive scrawls, cementing my abandonment.
How could the boys who were my rocks, my future, obliterate *our* shared dream for someone they barely knew? Why did their chivalry translate into such a profound betrayal of me? The sheer injustice and confusion were a cold knot in my stomach.
But I wouldn't let their misplaced heroism define me. No longer the girl who silently absorbed their choices, I clutched my Berkeley acceptance, booked a one-way flight, and definitively chose my own destiny. This time, I was playing for myself. 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. The Underboss's Wife, Now His Queen
Hydro Therapy I stood outside my husband's study, the perfect mafia wife, only to hear him mocking me as an "ice sculpture" while he entertained his mistress, Aria.
But the betrayal went deeper than infidelity.
A week later, my saddle snapped mid-jump, leaving me with a shattered leg. Lying in the hospital bed, I overheard the conversation that killed the last of my love.
My husband, Alessandro, knew Aria had sabotaged my gear. He knew she could have killed me.
Yet, he told his men to let it go. He called my near-death experience a "lesson" because I had bruised his mistress's ego.
He humiliated me publicly, freezing my accounts to buy family heirlooms for her. He stood by while she threatened to leak our private tapes to the press.
He destroyed my dignity to play the hero for a woman he thought was a helpless orphan.
He had no idea she was a fraud.
He didn't know I had installed micro-cameras throughout the estate while he was busy pampering her.
He didn't know I had hours of footage showing his "innocent" Aria sleeping with his guards, his rivals, and even his staff, laughing about how easy he was to manipulate.
At the annual charity gala, in front of the entire crime family, Alessandro demanded I apologize to her.
I didn't beg. I didn't cry.
I simply connected my drive to the main projector and pressed play. He Erased Me, I Erased Him First
Lan Zhen On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news.
He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city.
The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.”
For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets.
My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me.
So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts.
He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked.
He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree.
He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies. The Mafia King's Runaway Genius Wife
Huo Wuer I was married to the Dark Don of New York, but to the Trevino family, I was just collateral.
While I was suffering from agonizing acute appendicitis, my husband forced me out into the freezing rain just to watch him parade his mistress in front of the city's elite.
When I handed him the annulment papers and begged for my freedom, he coldly burned them to ashes right in front of my face.
He watched me collapse on the floor in blinding pain, completely ignoring my deathly pale skin.
"Stop this pathetic performance. If you aren't ready for the gala by seven, I will throw your grandfather into a state facility."
His mistress even mocked my illness, handing me raw oysters with a victorious smirk while he looked at me with pure disgust.
I finally understood that in this gilded cage, my life meant absolutely nothing to him.
If I stayed, I would die here—either from a ruptured appendix or from his suffocating cruelty.
So, I took a heavy dose of painkillers, threw my diamond ring into the river, and emptied the family's hidden safe.
When he finally cornered me in a dark alley to drag me back, I shoved the real annulment papers into his chest.
"Touch me, and I will scream until every rat in this city hears me."
I stepped into the getaway cab, taking the master copies of his smuggling ledgers with me.
It was time to burn his empire to the ground. Reborn From Fire: The Ex-wife's Revenge
Lunacy Heidi gripped the sterile hospital bedsheets as violent contractions ripped her body apart.
The heavy door opened, but it wasn't the doctor. It was Brigette, wearing the exact custom wedding dress Heidi had spent six months designing for herself.
Brigette held up her phone on speaker. When the doctor warned that a natural delivery would kill the mother, Christian Page's voice echoed through the room, ice-cold and devoid of any warmth.
"Prioritize the Page heirs. Let her die."
The man she loved had just signed her death warrant over the phone.
Brigette stole her newborn twins, dragged her to an abandoned warehouse, and poured gasoline over her bare legs.
Flicking a lit cigar into the puddle, Brigette left Heidi tied to an iron pillar to burn alive.
But as the flames formed a deadly circle around her, Heidi's body convulsed with a terrifying truth.
In the heart of the blazing inferno, she miraculously gave birth to two more babies she didn't know she was carrying.
Using her own back as a human shield against the falling embers, she survived the fire, but the ultimate betrayal burned deeper than her ruined skin.
Four years later, Heidi returned to New York with a reconstructed face, two brilliant children, and a terrifying new identity as the world's top underground surgeon.
When Christian, entirely unaware of who she was, signed a waiver begging her to save his dying grandfather's life, Heidi looked into his desperate eyes with absolute, clinical boredom.
"The game starts now," she said coldly. 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. 
/1/104084/coverorgin.jpg?v=771898a73dcce57e436f0e22a001feb2&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/100497/coverorgin.jpg?v=4bd58701ffa9594f2ec942042ebd5ead&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/95228/coverorgin.jpg?v=ca75c593557d646deab6235054b3d8dc&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/86156/coverorgin.jpg?v=573f8905fca8c60444d48cff9a7c95dd&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/85415/coverorgin.jpg?v=0882e4408e9fc0a58c963d3318c51e7f&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/84541/coverorgin.jpg?v=2960a63ae886734237d2d778fc373abf&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/83466/coverorgin.jpg?v=6f7329edd9c8bb0c19583566ad925faa&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/82856/coverorgin.jpg?v=a0bee0ee6ce782c0b40922e7ea3e5a8f&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/80359/coverorgin.jpg?v=56cc15b5e84bfeab337599cae37bf556&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/18475/coverorgin.jpg?v=ec2fc761e18a81f3687719cec6c940a4&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/106756/coverorgin.jpg?v=97365198d2e42e4794a57a69368cfbf7&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/106734/coverorgin.jpg?v=ad31772fc52e3d09094837705a47a1fa&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/113925/coverorgin.jpg?v=60ea1640555f80a8c470c131977a94d0&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/113819/coverorgin.jpg?v=d82a9e32c30dc605d2e5b296243cbfcd&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/110488/coverorgin.jpg?v=c25300fa61415699c302b1bcb977c6b9&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/114174/coverorgin.jpg?v=58b43c00acdc183a5fd7255a87763358&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/114016/coverorgin.jpg?v=2e3f70979c2d78dc472378d56787846c&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/112674/coverorgin.jpg?v=dda8b8af5de57fbfb8c1da8b8c5c898a&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/113268/coverorgin.jpg?v=77266589df21140eae2d74d76824e4f1&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/110543/coverorgin.jpg?v=ab7208b3df86eff70fb7110559887de0&imageMogr2/format/webp)