Deeply Engaged
13 Published Stories
Deeply Engaged's Books and Stories
He Broke My Spirit, I Soared
Mafia I was the fiancée of the Chicago Outfit’s heir, a bond sealed by blood and eighteen years of history.
But when his mistress pushed me into the freezing pool at our engagement gala, Jax didn’t swim toward me.
He swam past me.
He scooped up the girl who pushed me, cradling her like fragile glass, while I struggled against the weight of my gown in the murky water.
When I finally dragged myself out, shivering and humiliated before the entire underworld, Jax didn’t offer a hand. He offered a scowl.
"You’re making a scene, Eliana. Go home."
Later, when that same mistress shoved me down the stairs, shattering my knee and my dance career, Jax stepped over my broken body to comfort her.
I overheard him telling his friends, "I’m just breaking her spirit. She needs to learn she’s property, not a partner. Once she’s desperate enough, she’ll be the perfect obedient wife."
He thought I was a dog that would always return to its master. He thought he could starve me of affection until I begged for scraps.
He was wrong.
While he was busy playing protector to his mistress, I wasn't crying in my room.
I was packing his ring into a cardboard box.
I cancelled my transfer to UCLA and enrolled at NYU instead.
By the time Jax realized his "property" was missing, I was already in New York, standing next to a man who looked at me like a queen, not a possession. Scars of Betrayal: The Heiress They Tried To Erase
Modern Kelsie's biggest regret in life was getting involved with Judge, the icy Captain. She pursued him for three years, married him for two, thinking she'd warmed a stone, only to be met with nothing. Her mother-in-law disliked her, her husband was indifferent, and a fragile "white moonlight" would occasionally try to get her attention. Until she witnessed Judge and Angelique meeting secretly at a hotel, her heart shattered, and then she discovered she was pregnant. Kelsie sneered, threw down the divorce papers, and decisively ran away, disappearing without a trace. When they met again, she was a successful single mother, surrounded by suitors. In the pouring rain, the once aloof man humbly stopped her car, pleading in a hoarse voice, "Kelsie, come home with me." The car window rolled down, and a little boy, nine-tenths like him, coldly warned in a cute but fierce tone, "Want to date my mommy? Ask me first!" The Ruthless Heir's Five Million Bride
Romance I dragged a bleeding man out of a flooded alley to get the five million dollars he promised me.
He woke up with severe amnesia, so I hid him in my cramped apartment, desperate to secure the cash for my seven-year-old son's life-saving asthma medication.
But while washing his ruined, custom-tailored suit, I found a heavy gold signet ring hidden inside the seam. It was deeply engraved with a vicious falcon gripping a broadsword.
My blood instantly ran cold.
Ten years ago, the ruthless Wall Street billionaire who dismantled my father's company and drove my parents to suicide wore that exact ring.
I had just saved the monster who destroyed my family, and now he was sleeping in my bed, right down the hall from my little boy.
I stood in the kitchen, gripping a heavy butcher knife until my knuckles turned white. He was completely helpless in the next room, burning with a severe infection.
I could drive the blade into his chest right now and finally end this ten-year nightmare.
But then I looked at the astronomical pharmacy bills and the eviction notices pinned to the fridge. Vengeance wouldn't buy my son's next breath.
"I am not interested in you, I am only interested in your money."
I put the knife down, grabbed the medical supplies, and walked into the bedroom to nurse my sworn enemy back to health.
Revenge could wait, but until I got my five million, the devil was mine to keep. The Wife Who Never Loved
Modern For two years, my husband Hunter flaunted his affair, using his mistress's fake pregnancy to torture me. I endured it all for our daughter, trapped in a gilded cage where he expected me to mistake his strangling for passion.
Then his mistress whispered cruel lies to my six-year-old, telling her that her daddy would abandon her for the new baby. My daughter vanished.
While I searched frantically, Hunter was unreachable, still with her. When he finally appeared, he shielded his mistress from my desperate rage, his wedding ring glinting as he pushed me away.
With our daughter still missing, he pleaded with me.
"Krystal, she's pregnant, don't hurt her!"
The years of suppressed anger finally exploded. After our daughter was found safe, I looked him dead in the eye and told him the truth he'd been desperate to avoid.
"I want a divorce, Hunter. I never loved you. I hate you." His Erased Song, Her Reborn Voice
Romance The roar of the crowd was a physical force, pressing in on me from all sides, a wave of sound that vibrated up into my bones.
I moved my mouth, swayed my body, mimicked the gestures – but it wasn' t my voice pouring from the speakers. It was Scarlett' s, a perfect, studio-polished product of technology and longing. My fiancé, the celebrated producer Liam Stone, had turned me into his ex-pop star.
This wasn' t a dazzling comeback, though. Not for me. It was a lie on a colossal scale, a holographic projection of Scarlett overlaid on my body, my voice digitally reshaped into hers. For six months, he' d been systematically erasing me, Ava Green, the indie musician known for raw lyrics and a voice that sometimes broke with emotion.
"Keep going," his voice crackled through my in-ear monitor, icy and sharp. "Don't break character. The modulation is perfect."
My own pain and defiance surged, a desperate desire to reclaim my sound. When I pushed past the modulation, letting a raw note escape, the hologram flickered violently, and Scarlett' s synthesized voice cracked into static. The crowd gasped.
Liam' s face twisted into a snarl. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Ava? Stick to the plan."
His anger, cold and calculated, filled me with a sudden, overwhelming nausea – a feeling I' d been ignoring for weeks. The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow: I was pregnant.
Trapped, silenced, and carrying the child of the man actively erasing my identity, I knew one thing: I would not be erased. Beyond Betrayal: A Heart's Escape
Romance Three years. Three years of nights blurring into mornings, building a company from nothing with my wife, Chloe. Tomorrow, all that sacrifice would finally pay off with our IPO, making us billionaires and allowing us to finally reveal our secret marriage.
But tonight, my world stopped. I found Chloe in my office, her personal assistant, Liam, his hands on her waist, his mouth on hers. Their whispered words, "So much better than my husband," poisoned the air.
As she pushed him away, she defended me with a furious hiss, calling him a mere "toy" and me her "foundation." Yet, moments later, she pulled him back, her seductive smile returning. The betrayal was clear, but her fierce, confusing defense left me reeling, adrift between anger and a painful, desperate confusion.
My hands shook as I stumbled back to my desk, the words "husband" and "foundation" twisting into a cruel, empty echo. How could she betray me so utterly, yet defend me with such ferocity? What was this hollow space inside my chest?
There was only one way out. My thumb hovered over a number I hadn' t called in years. "Dr. Peterson," I whispered into the phone, "that mission in the Zercian conflict zone… is there still a spot?" The Price of Her Indifference
Modern "Mommy."
That single word, uttered by my five-year-old daughter, Lily, should have been a moment of pure joy. Instead, it detonated the fragile peace I' d clung to for five years, ever since Lily' s mother, Sophia, abandoned us to chase after her ex.
Sophia froze, her plastered-on smile for her new boyfriend, Mark, faltering. I watched in horror as Mark, red-faced and enraged by Lily's innocent affection, lashed out, knocking over a glass and then contorting in feigned agony over a minor scrape on his knee.
Sophia, utterly consumed by placating him, rushed to his side, showering him with a tenderness she had never once shown our child. Then, with chilling indifference, she turned to her security guards and commanded them to lock a sobbing, asthmatic Lily in an upstairs closet. Three days, she declared, Lily needed to "learn a lesson."
My pleas about Lily' s severe asthma were met with her cynical scoff: "You always make things up to get attention." The metallic click of the lock echoed a horrifying finality. I banged on the door, screaming Lily' s name, but to no avail. The guards, under Sophia' s orders, ensured no one went near.
Sometime after midnight, the crying stopped.
I found my little girl crumpled on the floor, blue, lifeless, and not breathing. While I was attempting to revive our daughter in one hospital room, Sophia was miles away in a luxury car showroom, buying Mark two brand-new cars – a "compensation prize" for his scraped knee, celebrating their twisted reunion at Lily' s expense.
How could a mother be so utterly devoid of humanity? How could the woman I once loved, the woman I foolishly hoped would one day return to us, betray our child so completely? I had to know. I had to understand what monstrous depths she was capable of, and how I could possibly escape her toxic grasp. The Reluctant Gift
Fantasy My entire life was a countdown to my sister Clara' s 30th birthday, the day I was to become a spiritual donor to save her from a wasting illness.
I clung to Liam, the man I loved, as my only hope of escape, only to have that hope shatter when he coldly told me I had to go through with the ritual, dismissing my desperate plea that I was too weak.
He forced Momma' s drugged tea on me, rendering me immobile, then dragged me to the prayer cabin where my parents awaited, my body offered up as Clara-who gave a triumphant smirk-stole my life force, leaving me for dead, unceremoniously dumped in a shallow ditch.
How could the man I' d secretly saved ten years ago, giving him half my life in a forbidden ritual to heal him after his logging accident, betray me so completely, not even remembering my sacrifice while unknowingly feeding on my dwindling vitality?
Yet, after Liam and Clara died in a mysterious crash and I was arrested for their murders, a blood-stained letter from Liam revealed the horrifying truth: he had finally remembered my sacrifice and the family's monstrous conspiracy, driving to atone by attempting a reverse ritual with Clara, freeing me to live the life he ultimately gave back to me. The Bride Who Vanished
Romance My entire world revolved around Liam Vanderbilt, the dazzling heir to a New York dynasty, and the boy I'd loved since childhood.
Despite being his family's housekeeper's daughter, I clung to the hope that our deep connection meant something more than just service.
Then fate delivered a cruel blow: a devastating brain tumor diagnosis, leaving me with less than a year to live.
As my life spiraled, the man I adored saw me only as an inconvenience, a "charity case" to be tolerated while he doted on his socialite fiancée, Chloe.
He shrugged off my pain, letting Chloe steal the very screenplay I'd poured my soul into, turning it into her superficial "passion project."
In front of New York's elite, he cruelly bestowed my deceased mother's precious heirloom locket upon Chloe, a final, public humiliation.
His subsequent "romantic" proposal aboard a yacht, complete with a beautiful antique ring, seemed like a dream.
But it swiftly descended into a nightmare when he presented organ donation papers, coldly suggesting I "be a hero" and give my lungs to Chloe.
The man I loved and dedicated my life to was attempting to harvest my body, not out of care, but monstrous calculation.
My heart shattered, reeling from the ultimate betrayal: how could anyone, let alone him, consider such a vile act?
Then, a blinding flash of truth: an urgent email confirmed a catastrophic medical mix-up.
There was no tumor; I was perfectly healthy.
The heartbroken, dying girl vanished, replaced by a woman consumed by a vengeful clarity.
They thought they had broken me, but they had just awakened the storm within. My Bartender, The Billionaire
Romance My wedding to Ethan Vanderbilt marked the grand merger of two powerful American families.
I hoped for love, but our new life began in a cold, silent townhouse.
On our wedding night, Ethan coldly declared our marriage a business arrangement, stating he had "no desire" for me and his heart belonged to his assistant, Tiffany.
The next morning, I overheard him call me a "prude" to her, shattering any last shred of my dignity.
Heartbroken and seeking comfort, a desperate one-night stand unexpectedly left me pregnant.
When I filed for divorce, he shamelessly attempted to coerce me into raising his mistress's child to secure my family's inheritance, then publicly shoved me to the ground in front of a taxi.
How could the man I once hoped to love stoop to such callous, manipulative cruelty, weaponizing his mistress and an unborn child against me?
My once-sheltered life became a public spectacle of betrayal, leaving me questioning everything.
Fleeing to Paris for a fresh start, the quiet bartender father of my child, Liam, shockingly revealed himself as Alexander Sterling, an elusive tech billionaire.
Now, with unexpected power by my side, I return to confront Ethan and Tiffany' s desperate scheme to ruin my legacy, ready to fight for my child and forge a destiny far beyond what any Vanderbilt could imagine, even as their own twisted drama reaches a deadly climax. The Day My Son Gave Me Poison
Billionaires For six years, I was Ethan, an auto mechanic who found amnesiac Victoria.
We built a life, had our son Liam, and a Texas home.
I believed we were a family, forever.
That illusion shattered in a Manhattan penthouse.
Ice-cold Victoria told me our life was over.
Her wealthy mother, Mrs. Sterling, offered ten million dollars and an NDA: sign it, and vanish from their high-society world.
Emotionless, Victoria announced her engagement to Blake Astor, a match "appropriate" for her old money.
My mind recoiled, not just from pain, but from a chilling sense of déjà vu.
This wasn't new.
I remembered the last time: Victoria’s first "amnesia," my desperate pleas, Blake framing me.
My own son, Liam, blank-faced, delivering the "medication" that ended that life in a sanatorium.
Both amnesias were lies – one to use me, the other to discard me.
The bitter taste of betrayal consumed me.
But this time, I wouldn't beg.
I took their blood money.
My hand steady, I signed the NDA.
"Three days," I told Mrs. Sterling, "arrange my flight to California."
They saw a gold digger.
I saw escape, and the fuel to rebuild my life.
Stanford's Computer Science program awaited. He Proposed Again, I Introduced My Husband.
Romance The flashbulbs were blinding, the “Rising Critic” statuette heavy and cold in my grasp.
Outside the hotel, amidst the swarm of photographers, a familiar figure pushed through and knelt before me.
Jake Brown, my ex-fiancé, held open a velvet box, a diamond winking under the harsh lights.
“Emily,” he rasped, a sound I once knew intimately, “Marry me. Again.”
His family materialized behind him, beaming, a well-rehearsed chorus expecting my tears and a trembling, “Yes, oh, yes!”
But they’d forgotten—or perhaps never knew—the full story of how he’d publicly accused me of sabotaging his signature dish.
How he’d whispered lies to the restaurant owner, implying I pilfered expensive ingredients.
How I was fired on the spot, my name dragged through the mud, my culinary dreams torched.
His mother, Carol, tried to paint him as a suffering hero, claiming he’d spent a fortune clearing my name from the food poisoning incident.
Yet, I remembered the real origins: the cheap, peanut-contaminated oil, the plagiarism he later framed me for.
I remembered being left with a shattered wrist in a dark alley, as he walked away, abandoning me to a mob that *he* had stirred against me.
His grand gesture now felt like the ultimate insult, dripping with manufactured sympathy—and unbearable blame.
Three years had been long enough to heal, to rebuild, to find a love that didn’t demand sacrifice, yet they had the audacity to stage this performance.
How could they stand here, rewriting history, when *he* had ripped everything from me?
My voice was even, devoid of the storm that once raged, as I held up my left hand.
A simple, elegant gold band gleamed beside my engagement ring—Noah’s ring.
“Jake and I ended things three years ago,” I stated, my eyes steady.
“And for your information, I’m already married.”
The collective gasp and intensifying flashbulbs signaled that *my* story, the real one, was just beginning. 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.