HAZEL MARTIN
15 Published Stories
HAZEL MARTIN's Books and Stories
Marrying The Enemy: My Ex's Worst Nightmare
Mafia I spent ten years as the ward of Kason Oneal, the ruthless Underboss of the city's most dangerous crime family. He saved me when I was a child, raised me, and made me believe I was his queen.
But the moment his ex-girlfriend, Dalia, returned, the illusion shattered.
Kason demanded I return the jade pendant—the one he had hand-carved for my sixteenth birthday—just so he could hang it around Dalia's neck. To him, I was suddenly nothing more than a placeholder who had kept his bed warm.
The cruelty didn't stop there. He stood by and watched as Dalia shredded my clothes with scissors, laughing at my tears.
When I collapsed on the floor in agony from acute appendicitis, Kason didn't call an ambulance. Instead, he dragged me to a shady clinic, accusing me of faking a pregnancy to trap him. He ordered the doctor to "terminate it" while I was dying of sepsis on the table.
He called me trash. He called me property. He stripped away every ounce of dignity I had left, all to please a woman who was lying to his face.
I realized then that the hero who saved me when I was ten was dead. I was done begging for scraps of affection from a monster.
Trembling, I walked to the phone and dialed the number of the one man Kason feared most—his sworn enemy, Hadley Payne.
"Tell him yes," I whispered into the receiver. "I accept the arrangement. I will marry him."
Kason thought he could break me. Instead, he was about to watch his "property" become the Queen of the rival family. The Alpha Who Killed His Savior Mate
Werewolf I came ashore to save my Fated Mate from a genetic curse, but he locked me in a dungeon for three years.
Alpha Silas believed my kind killed his parents. He drained my blood daily to feed his mistress, Emily, who claimed my essence was the only thing keeping their unborn baby alive.
I endured the silver chains and the acid burns, hoping he would one day see the truth.
But when my ten-year-old brother tried to rescue me, Emily smashed his skull with an iron bar right in front of Silas.
Silas didn't arrest her. He didn't scream. He stood between us, shielding the murderer.
"She was protecting our heir," he said coldly, looking at my brother's small, broken body floating in the tank. "You brought this on yourself."
I held my brother’s corpse as my heart finally shattered. The bond between us snapped, and my body began to dissolve into sea foam.
"I tried," I whispered as I faded into nothingness.
Moments after I disappeared, the laboratory door opened.
Silas’s parents, the ones he thought I killed, walked in alive and well.
At the same time, the pack doctor rushed in, pale and trembling.
"Alpha," he stammered, pointing at Emily. "There is no baby. She has been faking the pregnancy for months."
Silas looked at his living parents, then at the empty pile of sea foam on the floor where his True Mate used to be.
And for the first time, the Alpha screamed. Rejected by the Alpha: The Pregnant Luna's Secret
Werewolf I was eight months pregnant with the heir to the Hayes pack when my husband, Michael, walked into the gala with another woman on his arm.
She was wearing a blood-red dress and reeked of rotting orchids.
In front of the entire Council, Michael looked at me with cold eyes and announced she was his Fated Mate.
He rejected me.
The force of the Alpha Command forced me to my knees, shattering the bond between us.
To protect my unborn son from his cruelty, I told the greatest lie of my life.
"The baby is dead," I whispered to him later. "Your rejection killed him."
Broken by guilt, Michael fell from grace.
My family stripped him of his wealth and status. He became a homeless Rogue, living in the dirt outside our estate walls, just to be near the place he thought his child was buried.
He didn't know that the little boy playing in the garden, the one with golden Alpha eyes, was his son.
He watched over us from the shadows for years, a ghost haunting his own life.
Until the day the woman in the red dress returned.
She held a silver dagger over my son's crib, ready to end my bloodline.
And the man who had once rejected me finally found his redemption.
He didn't hesitate.
He threw his body between the blade and our boy. High Stakes Betrayal, A Winning Hand
Modern My fiancé, Holden, married my best friend, Dominique, in Vegas. Tonight. Just hours before our lavish engagement party was set to begin.
They announced it to our families and friends, calling it a "drunken mistake." Dominique, clinging to his arm, flashed a cheap ring and a triumphant smirk.
She then proposed a high-stakes poker game to "celebrate," a cruel joke designed to humiliate me further.
Holden, my fiancé of years, stood by her side. He even forced me to give up my grandmother's bracelet when I lost a hand, tossing the precious heirloom into a puddle of champagne.
He told me it was just a game, that the bracelet meant nothing.
But they didn't know my secret. I grew up in the underground poker scene. They thought they were playing with a fragile fiancée.
They were about to lose everything to a shark. Escaping The Ruthless Don's Golden Cage
Mafia I stood at the gala, draped in diamonds worth millions, playing the role of the perfect Mafia wife.
But the illusion shattered when his mistress walked in wearing a necklace identical to mine—a cattle brand dipped in gold.
When I confronted them, Liam didn't defend me. He shoved me aside to protect her.
I hit the floor, and as my blood soaked into the white stage, I realized he had killed our unborn child.
But the nightmare didn't end there.
I woke up to find that Liam had ordered me sedated to "manage my hysteria." The complications from his control and the trauma had forced an emergency hysterectomy.
He hadn't just killed his heir; he had stolen my future.
Yet, he still tried to lock me in his estate, convinced he could force me to love him again if he just kept me hidden long enough.
He thought I was broken. He thought I was his property.
He was wrong.
With the help of a doctor who had loved me from the shadows for years, I faked my death and vanished.
Six months later, the great Don found me in a small-town bookstore, falling to his knees to beg for a second chance.
I looked at the man who destroyed me and handed him a single dollar bill.
"Loyalty is the only currency, Liam," I said, quoting his own vow back to him.
"And you are bankrupt." His Secret Wife, My Broken Heart
Romance The pregnancy test showed two pink lines. After four years of a quiet marriage to Carter Leon, we were finally having a baby. I thought this was the final piece of our story.
But when I went to the county clerk's office for a certified copy of our marriage certificate, I was told there was no record of our marriage. Instead, Carter was legally married to Erlene Fulton, my estranged stepsister and his high school sweetheart.
My world shattered.
I was nothing more than a mistress, a placeholder.
Then, my family, including Carter, pressured me to "step aside" for Erlene, who was supposedly dying and wished to die as Carter's wife. I refused, revealing my pregnancy, only to be locked away by my father and stepmother. Carter later convinced me it was all a charade, a performance for a dying woman.
I watched him marry Erlene, a ghost at their grand wedding. He spent his time with her, while I, like a fool, kept believing his lies. Until I overheard Erlene and Carter. He confessed he had always loved her, and that marrying me was just a plan to wound her pride and make her return.
My four years, my devotion, my love-all a calculated move. I was a pawn, and so was my baby. The promises, the soft touches, the shared smiles-all fake.
How could I have been so blind?
How could he be so cruel?
I had to save myself, and my child, from this poison.
I ran, determined to leave the lie behind. From Neglected To New York Queen
Romance "The wedding is back on," my mother' s voice announced, shattering the calm of my Los Angeles penthouse. An arranged marriage to Everette Bryant, a relic from my grandfather' s past, was suddenly my future.
I thought I could lean on Danial and Ismael, my childhood friends, my rocks during a mysterious illness. But a new intern, Judi Coffey, had entered our lives, and something felt off.
Judi, with her innocent facade, quickly became the center of their universe. She stumbled, she cried, she even deliberately broke my award, all to gain their sympathy. Danial and Ismael, once my protectors, turned their backs, their concern solely for her. "Angelina, what's wrong with you? She's just an intern," Danial accused, his eyes cold. Ismael added, "That was harsh. She's just a kid."
Their blind loyalty escalated. Judi' s manufactured crisis, a flat tire, pulled them away, leaving me alone. Later, Danial, enraged by a broken vase, shoved me, causing a head injury. He didn't even notice my allergic reaction, a symptom they once rushed to treat.
How could they forget everything? The bee stings, the shellfish allergies, the times they held my hand in the emergency room. The gardenias Danial planted, now the source of my suffering, went unnoticed.
I looked at their faces, at the two men I had known my entire life, and saw strangers. My decision was made. I burned our shared memories, resigned from my firm, and put my house up for sale. I was leaving them, all of them, for good. The Affair That Cost Everything
Romance My heart sank when I heard, "Three million dollars has been withdrawn from your joint savings account." Gone.
The money, our life' s work, our shared dream, was gone. I knew instantly where it went: to Summer Reed, Liam' s high school sweetheart, the ghost of our marriage.
Last night, I overheard Liam on the phone, promising Summer our money, saying, "Of course, it' s our money. Chloe' s and mine. But she' ll understand. Your well-being is the most important thing."
He had tricked me into signing "investment papers," draining our future for his old flame. I felt pathetic, a walking bank account for his true love.
When I returned to our apartment to grab my last things, I found Summer already moved in, wearing my robe, eating dinner cooked by my husband. He even made her favorite dish, forgetting I was allergic to garlic. He then put her in our bed, saying it was "just for a few days."
I finally understood; I was just a prop in their reunion. Liam blamed me, called me "possessive." He then revealed Summer' s husband was abusive, and she had nowhere to go, trying to excuse his betrayal.
The office gossiped about Liam' s affair, his spending company money on Summer, taking her to Paris while I managed our home, his career, and built my own.
How could he do this? How could his devotion to her erase six years of our life, our dreams, our unborn child? What kind of monster pretends to care while actively destroying everything we built?
I wouldn't stand for it. I packed my bags, smashing our wedding photo, and called my estranged brother, Ethan. "I' m coming home," I whispered. This was over. I was getting a divorce. The Surrogate's Secret: A Mother's Vengeance
Modern My phone buzzed with the perfectly captured picture: my husband, Andrew, beaming with the surrogate and their newborn, a son I' d paid a fortune to bring into this world.
I typed a lie: "He's beautiful, I'm so happy for us."
I was a spectator to my own life, my body a continuous failure after six miscarriages, each a tiny ghost in our silent house.
Then, the call came: my eight-year-old niece, Madisyn, was in a terrible accident and needed B-negative blood-my rare type.
But when I offered to donate, Andrew, his family, and even his wife, panicked, refusing my help.
The doctor's chilling whisper shattered my world: "The resemblance is uncanny… Madisyn is your daughter, isn' t she?"
My first "miscarriage" wasn't a miscarriage; it was a kidnappingorchestrated by my husband.
Andrew confessed, not with remorse, but with monstrous casualness: he' d given away our child to his infertile brother to save their "family line."
He even dared to gaslight me, blaming my grief and rage for ruining the "perfect family" he' d built with another woman.
When I confronted him again, he shoved me, leaving me burned and abandoned on the floor after Madisyn staged a horrifying attack on the new baby and framed me.
My heart, already shattered, turned to ice.
Andrew would never believe me; he didn't want to. He had decided long ago who I was-the "unhinged wife"-and nothing I said would change his narrative.
Screaming inside, I signed the divorce papers, picked up the pieces of my life, smashed the symbols of our shared past, and called the most ruthless lawyer on the East Coast.
This wasn't just a divorce; it was a war. I was getting my daughter back, and I was going to make him pay for every stolen child. Framed: The Dancer's Reckoning
Romance My new, hostile stepfamily was hardly a welcome wagon as I fought for a coveted dance scholarship at Northwood University.
Then, my world truly started to unravel.
My crucial audition music mysteriously vanished, thanks to my stepsister Isabelle, whose cruelty was just warming up.
Days later, campus security "found" stolen exam papers and Isabelle' s diamond bracelet meticulously planted in my room.
Overnight, I was branded a thief and an academic cheat, suspended from school, my reputation shattered, my scholarship dreams utterly crushed.
How could everyone so readily believe such convenient lies, turning me into a pariah, a target for the university' s whispers?
How could "evidence" so perfectly frame me, leaving me isolated and utterly out of options?
My anonymous blog, "The Campus Muse," where I poured out raw truths about integrity and overcoming adversity, became my last desperate refuge.
What I didn't realize was that the voice I found there – a voice speaking truth into the echoing chamber of false accusations – was about to resonate deeply with an unexpected ally, setting in motion a chain of events that would expose Isabelle' s calculated malice and fight to reclaim my name. The Husband She Left For A Call
Romance For five years, I, Ethan Miller, was the steady anchor in Sarah's life, a well of quiet devotion for a love she never truly reciprocated.
Our marriage was a beautiful, empty shell, and I, her husband, felt increasingly like a ghost she barely saw.
Then Mark Vance, her college flame and unaddressed obsession, reappeared.
The facade swiftly crumbled.
My gut clenched discovering her hidden shrine of his photos, and watching her eyes sparkle for him, while for me, they were always flat.
The final, devastating blow came with finding a positive pregnancy test – and Mark's intimate email to her, discussing "our baby" and a shared future.
My wife was pregnant with his child, right there in our home, and he was claiming paternity.
The humiliations piled on: she introduced me to Mark as someone who "helps with things," ditched my award ceremony for his event, and callously abandoned me in a hospital bed for his phone call.
My life, my very existence, was systematically erased from her world, replaced by him.
How could she be so oblivious, so savagely dismissive of the man who had poured his soul into making her happy?
The silent anger gnawed at me, a cold, hard certainty solidifying deep within.
This was no longer just grief; it was a profound disgust for the sheer scale of her betrayal.
So, while she was busy celebrating her engagement to Mark—on our fifth wedding anniversary, no less—I sent her a video.
In it, I calmly laid out every lie, every deception, every cruel slight.
Attached was the signed, finalized divorce decree.
Our cooling-off period was over.
Our marriage was a relic.
I was done.
And I was leaving. The Unbroken Heiress
Romance Ava Thompson, a New England political heiress, thought she had it all: a glamorous wedding to rising D.C. star Ethan Cole, a picture-perfect union of two prominent families.
But the silence in their grand Washington house, and Ethan' s constant devotion to Chloe, his adopted sister, hinted at a different truth.
One night, that truth exploded.
Ava overheard Ethan confessing their marriage was merely "a means to an end" and she "meant nothing" - his fierce loyalty belonging solely to Chloe.
Her heart shattered, the beautiful facade of her life crumbling around her.
Ethan openly dismissed Ava' s pain, choosing to protect Chloe' s malicious acts, including Chloe' s chilling confession to murdering Ava' s best friend, Maya.
Using his family' s immense power, Ethan ensured Chloe walked free, twisting reality to frame Ava and threaten her loyal assistant.
The ultimate betrayal came during a disastrous yacht event when Ethan instinctively saved Chloe first, leaving a helpless Ava to drown in the turbulent Chesapeake Bay.
How could the man she loved, the man who was supposed to be her partner, abandon her so ruthlessly?
Why was he so blindly devoted to a sister who was clearly a manipulative sociopath?
Pushed to the brink, utterly broken by the profound injustice and the cold reality of her expendability, Ava collapsed.
But as she healed, a cold, unshakeable resolve built within her.
She would uncover the full truth behind Ethan' s warped loyalty to Chloe and fight for the justice Maya was denied.
Ava, the dismissed wife, was coming for them, ready to dismantle a powerful family, one secret at a time. The Five-Year Contract's End
Romance My five-year contract marriage to Ethan Cole was finally over.
Five years of polite estrangement, a polished cage built on a merger of empires.
I had signed the divorce papers, ready to escape to Austin, chasing a desperate echo of what I'd lost.
My fiancé, Michael, had died five years ago, and now, a musician named Noah Evans, his spitting image, offered a fragile hope he could bring a piece of him back.
But Ethan' s manipulative stepsister, Chloe, had other plans.
Consumed by a twisted possessiveness for Ethan, she launched a campaign of terror against me.
First, a poison attempt, then a brutal kidnapping, and finally, a chilling plot to throw me off a cliff.
Each escalating attack was met with Ethan' s blind indulgence, his desperate attempts to protect Chloe at all costs, leaving me brutally exposed and utterly alone.
Why couldn't he see her true nature?
Why did he always choose her over basic decency?
My life was a constant dance with death, fueled by Chloe' s deranged jealousy and punctuated by Ethan' s hollow apologies.
I clung to Noah, an unwitting lifeline in this nightmare.
Then, during Chloe's final, explosive act of madness, Noah made a choice.
He sacrificed himself, pushing me to safety as the world erupted in flames.
As he lay dying, he revealed a truth that shattered my carefully constructed world: "Michael... Michael was my older brother."
Suddenly, the desperate echo became a profound connection.
My anonymous benefactor for years, the boy I unknowingly sponsored, was Michael' s flesh and blood, a man who loved me not merely as a proxy, but for who he was.
With Chloe gone and Ethan finally facing his own devastating regrets, I chose a new path.
A path not away from loss, but towards a genuine, healing love with Noah.
Ethan, adrift in his remorse, was left with only the bitter taste of everything he' d so carelessly lost. The Billionaire's Grave Mistake
Romance My beloved Mike was dying. So when a mysterious "Program" offered a cure, I agreed to their impossible demand: marry arrogant billionaire Ethan Vanderbilt in a highly publicized ceremony.
The clock was ticking. I endured public humiliations, the callous indifference of my forced fiancé, and the cruel games of his venomous ex-girlfriend, Chloe Astor.
After she framed me for theft, Ethan furiously canceled the wedding. Desperate, I humiliated myself, begging, even kneeling to lick Chloe' s shoes, all to keep Mike's lifeline intact. Ethan, provoked by a new slight from Chloe, reignited the wedding plans into a grotesque spectacle of revenge.
The ceremony finally happened, but just as the vows were complete, Ethan abandoned me at the altar, rushing to his "distressed" ex. As I lay there, broken, a message confirmed Mike was stable, my contract fulfilled. My public "suicide" was my ultimate escape, a final act in his world.
But death wasn't the end. Haunted by my fall, Ethan discovered the horrifying truth: I wasn't just his fiancée, I was an operative in a fabricated reality, and his entire world was a staged "narrative." Now, consumed by a desperate, possessive love he never knew he had, he' s accepted a suicidal "new task" from "The System" to cross dimensions and reclaim me. He thinks I'm his. But I'm building a new life with Mike, the man I loved enough to fake my death in another reality. And he's about to find out how truly impossible that reunion will be. 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. Luciano's Forbidden Desire
Betty_Kris She's sin wrapped in a nun habit.
He is the devil who makes her want to confess.
Luciano Moretti, the mafia's most feared enforcer, kills without hesitation, prays to no god, and bleeds for the Cosa Nostra.
Sister Elizabeth has spent her life behind church walls, burying her desires under layers of penance and prayer. She is supposed to be untouchable-a quiet, secluded nun devoted to faith.
But when she finds him bleeding on the altar one night, their worlds collide in a sin neither heaven nor hell can cleanse.
He's meant to marry her sister to seal a deal between two mafia empires.
She's meant to keep her vows and distance.
But temptation has a cruel sense of humour...
Because he's the last man she should want.
She's the only woman he can't have.
But one touch, one look, and everything sacred begins to crumble.
Luciano does not seek salvation. Instead, he lures her into a dangerous path, one that includes everything she is meant to avoid, and everytime she whispers "forgive me, Father," her soul sinks deeper into him.
As bloodlines clash and loyalty turns to betrayal, Elizabeth learns that the war outside the chapel isn't the only one she must survive. Because Luciano's world is built on violence and secrets, one of which binds her fate to his in ways neither of them saw coming.
Desire clashes with devotion.
Duty turns to betrayal.
And when they're both drowning in a love so forbidden, not even God can save them. Married To My Mysterious Ex-Con Husband
Flying Free My father bailed a violent ex-con out of prison just to force me into a marriage with him. I stood in a filthy Bronx hallway, my Vera Wang gown dragging through the grime, knowing this was the price for my mother’s life. If I didn't marry the man behind the steel door, the wire transfer for her hospital ventilator wouldn't go through the next morning.
The man, a scarred giant named Dock, treated me with cold contempt, telling me he didn't touch things he didn't want—and he didn't want a "Jacobson." I thought I had hit rock bottom, tied to a criminal while my family lived in luxury. But the nightmare was just beginning.
When I tried to return my wedding dress to pay for rent, my sister Janie and stepmother found me. They laughed as security dragged me out of the boutique, calling me a "charity case." When I finally crawled back to our family manor to beg for the money my father had promised, Janie revealed the horrific truth. She had liquidated my mother’s medical trust to fund a waterfront real estate project.
"Get out and let your mother rot," she screamed, throwing a glass of ice water in my face before having guards dump me in the dirt. I knelt on the gravel, wet and bleeding, realizing my own flesh and blood had signed my mother's death warrant for a profit. I had nothing left—no money, no home, and a husband who was supposed to be a monster.
I didn't understand why they hated me so much, or how I would survive the night. But then, a black car screeched to a halt in front of me. Dock pulled me inside, his eyes burning with a lethal coldness I’d never seen in a common thug.
As he wiped the blood from my hands, he picked up a encrypted phone and gave a single command.
"Initiate Project Titan. I want the Jacobson Group insolvent by Friday."
I looked at the man I thought was a broke felon, realizing I hadn't just married a stranger—I had married the most dangerous man in the city, and he was about to burn my family's world to the ground. 
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