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. 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. When Love Rebuilds From Frozen Hearts
Landslide 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. Too Late For Regret: The Mafia King's Runaway
Tangye Wanzi I watched my husband, the most feared Capo in New York, sign away our marriage with the same cold indifference he usually reserved for ordering a hit.
The nib of his Montblanc pen scratched against the paper, drowning out the rain hitting the coffee shop window.
He didn't bother to read a single word.
He thought he was signing routine shipping manifests for the family business.
In reality, he was signing the "Dissolution of Union" papers I had hidden beneath the cover sheet.
He was too distracted to check. His eyes were glued to his encrypted phone, frantically texting Sofia—the widow, the tragic beauty, the woman who had haunted our marriage for three years.
"Done," he grunted, tossing the stack into his armored SUV without even glancing at me.
"Business is concluded, Elena. We leave."
Moments later, his phone rang with her special emergency tone.
His demeanor shifted from cold boss to frantic protector instantly.
"Driver, divert. She needs me," he roared.
He looked at me with zero affection and ordered, "Get out, Elena. Luca will take you home."
He kicked me out of the car into the pouring rain to rush to his mistress, completely unaware he had just legally granted me my freedom.
I stood on the curb, shivering but smiling for the first time in years.
By the time the Don realizes he just signed his own divorce, I will be a ghost in San Francisco.
And he will have nothing left but his shipping logs and his regret. Too Late, Mr. Capo: Your Wife Is Gone
Mo Yufei "Happy Anniversary," my husband said, sliding the separation agreement across the mahogany desk.
It was the eighteenth time in five years I had signed these papers.
Matteo De Luca, the most ruthless Capo in New York, checked his Rolex with cold impatience.
"Sign it, Sera. Bianca is on the ledge again. She needs to see we're over, or she jumps."
Bianca. The ward. The broken bird. The woman whose fragile psyche dictated every moment of my marriage.
I signed my name, and he left me alone on our anniversary to save her. Again.
But saving her wasn't enough.
When Bianca pushed me down a flight of marble stairs in a fit of jealous rage, shattering my spine and leaving me paralyzed, I thought Matteo would finally choose me.
I was wrong.
I woke up in the hospital to find him holding her hand, not mine.
"The security footage has been wiped," he told me, his voice void of emotion. "We cannot have a scandal. You fell, Sera. That is the story."
He erased the truth. He erased my pain.
He protected the woman who crippled me over his own wife.
Two months later, he wheeled me into a gala, playing the doting husband while I sat in the chair that was my prison.
He didn't know I had a burner phone hidden in my velvet dress.
He didn't know that tonight, the obedient wife was going to die on the pavement, and a ghost would rise in her place.
I looked at him one last time and dropped the phone in his lap.
"I hope she's worth it." 
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