Landslide
10 Published Stories
Landslide's Books and Stories
When Love Rebuilds From Frozen Hearts
Mafia 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 Silent Bride's Billion Dollar Contract
Modern My bank account showed exactly $42.18, and my student loan notifications were flashing red. I lived in a sweltering Queens apartment with my Aunt Lydia, where the air was thick with the smell of stale frying oil and the constant threat of being homeless.
Lydia handed me a grainy photo of a man twice my age and told me she had already "sold" me to him. He was a dry cleaner looking for a wife, and in exchange for my hand, he would pay off her credit cards and my debt. If I didn't show up for the date that night, my boxes would be on the curb by midnight.
I arrived at the cafe in a state of panic, my selective mutism making it impossible to even breathe. In the crowded room, I accidentally sat at the wrong table. Instead of the man from the photo, I found myself facing Gerhard Holcomb—the cold, terrifyingly handsome billionaire whose family owned the very museum where I worked. He didn't send me away; instead, he studied my trembling hands and offered me a different deal: a two-year contract marriage, a two-million-dollar payout, and a strict clause forbidding any children.
I signed the papers and moved into his Park Avenue penthouse, thinking I was finally safe. But when I went back to the old apartment to retrieve the only memento of my dead parents, Lydia lashed out, leaving me bleeding from a head wound. Gerhard’s retaliation was absolute—he had her arrested and her building foreclosed on within hours, claiming he was simply "protecting his assets."
As I recovered in his silent, glass-walled home, I saw a call from a famous socialite flash on his phone, and a cold truth settled in my gut. I wasn't just a wife; I was a placeholder, a silent shield used to fend off the women from his past.
I looked at the massive pink diamond on my finger and realized the silence I had lived in my whole life was about to become my most expensive prison. I had traded a life of poverty for a high-stakes game of shadows, and now I had to survive the man who claimed to own me. Her Dying Breath, His Cold Fury
Billionaires My sister Alia was dying. Her only hope was an experimental surgery that cost half a million dollars. With only two weeks to find the money, I had to swallow my pride and go to the one person I hated most: my estranged billionaire brother, Damon.
But I never got to see him. His executive assistant, a woman named Ginger, took one look at my cheap dress and decided I was a stalker. She refused to pass along my message.
She dragged me into a back room, sneering that my story about a dying sister was pathetic. In front of her colleagues, she tore Alia' s life-saving medical records to shreds and threw them in the trash.
She slapped me across the face, poured hot coffee on my chest, and ripped my dress open to humiliate me further.
I lay on the floor, broken and bleeding, while she laughed. All I could think about was the closing window for Alia' s surgery. Every piece of paper she destroyed, every second she wasted, was another nail in my sister' s coffin.
Because of that delay, Alia died. When my brother finally found out what his assistant had done, the grief that should have broken us instead forged something new and terrible. I looked at him and said that jail wasn't enough. We would give Ginger everything she ever dreamed of, just so we could be the ones to burn it all to the ground. Stolen Husband, Stolen Life, Stolen Love
Romance The phone call felt like a death sentence.
"Killed in action."
My husband, David Miller, a decorated Navy SEAL and the love of my life, was gone, leaving me and our five-year-old daughter, Lily, alone.
But then, he walked through the door.
He looked exactly like David, yet it wasn't him. It was Mark, David\'s identical twin brother, a man I knew to be a selfish, lazy bum, now wearing the mask of my heroic husband.
He moved through the grieving relatives, accepting condolences, even letting Grandma Miller sob on his shoulder, all while his eyes met mine with a cold, calculating assessment, daring me to expose him.
The nausea hit me, a wave of realization that this wasn' t grief; it was an act. He wasn\'t here to mourn; he was here to steal David\'s identity, to erase him to escape his own pathetic existence.
And then fear for Lily, blissful in her coloring, replaced my grief. I had to protect her, no matter the cost.
So, I stepped into the role of the devoted, grief-stricken widow.
"David," I choked out, throwing my arms around him, "I thought I\'d lost you. They told me you were gone."
He stiffened, but recovered quickly, his voice a cheap imitation of my real husband\'s.
I played along, even when his girlfriend, Ashley, pregnant with his child, announced their "happy news" at David' s memorial, then demanded our house and savings.
The audacity was sickening, but I feigned despair, exposing their cruel intentions to the shocked family.
Later, in the backyard, I burned David' s belongings – a painful sacrifice. Mark and Ashley watched, enraged, as he remained trapped by the identity he' d stolen, unable to act for fear of exposing himself.
Then Lily, innocent and pure, delivered the first crack in his facade.
"Mommy," she asked, looking at Mark, "Why does Daddy look different? His eyes are mean."
The words hung in the air, a child\'s innocent observation, but for the first time, I saw real fear in Mark\'s eyes. This was just the beginning.
I would make sure he regretted the day he decided to come back from the dead. My Family's Faith, My Bloody Fate
Horror It started on the one-year anniversary of my return, a day meant for joy.
Instead, my family, devout and God-fearing, brutally murdered me.
My brother, my protector, became a "defiler" screaming monster, my father, a man of God, cut off my hand with a rusty saw, and my mother, once overjoyed, called me an "abomination."
They threw my bleeding body into a silo, sealing the hatch, and as I died, I only had one question: Why?
It was the locket. The small, carved wooden locket my sister, Esther, had given me moments before, a "welcome home" gift that instantly turned my loving family into rabid killers.
Somehow, I woke up. It' s the same day, the same anniversary. Esther is coming up the stairs, the locket in her hand, about to give me the gift that will trigger their bloodlust again.
This time, I refuse. But Esther is cunning, and soon, I'm dodging my family's crazed attacks, desperately trying to expose their dark beliefs to the authorities. They look at me like I' m simply a troubled girl with an overzealous family.
Knowing the law won't stop their fanaticism, I have no choice but to use their own twisted faith against them, no matter the cost, to finally break free. The Girl Who Refused to Be Broken
Young Adult My whole life was about getting out of this blue-collar town.
Ivy League scholarships were my ticket, and I lived and breathed SAT prep.
My best friend, Bree Van Doren, struggled with her studies, her family's hardware store failing.
She always said I made it look so easy.
Then Bree suggested a "study retreat" at her remote family cabin in the Adirondacks.
After she handed me a bottle of water, that's the last thing I remembered before darkness.
I woke up on a dirt floor, head pounding, in a filthy shack.
This was no cabin; this was a nightmare.
The Petersons, a rough, menacing family, treated me like an animal.
Then Bree appeared, her face shockingly cold, flatly admitting she sold me to them.
For a few hundred bucks and a beat-up snowmobile, my "best friend" had erased her academic competition.
I was to "keep Cletus company."
Sold. Like an object. For a snowmobile.
Every Ivy League dream I had, reduced to ash.
Panic clawed at my throat. How? Why?
Even my own cousin, Jake, seeing me bruised and desperate, didn't recognize me.
But a silent scream of "NO" echoed in my mind.
I would not break.
I was Sarah Miller, and my formidable grandparents, Eli and Agnes Miller, would find me.
And when they did, Bree Van Doren would pay. My Wife, The Monster
Romance My seven-year-old daughter, Lily, just died from leukemia.
Grief consumed me, but my wife, Vicky, told me it was the will of fate-the experimental Swiss treatment simply failed.
We buried our sweet girl.
But then, hours later, I overheard Vicky' s voice, surprisingly light, from her study.
She was on a video call, laughing with her best friend, Chloe.
"He' s back, Chloe! Julian! His big project in Dubai went bust."
Vicky giggled, then scoffed, "Honestly, Lily' s illness was such a drain. Julian doesn' t need to know I had a child, especially one so sick."
Then came the words that ripped my world apart: "I found a clinic in Switzerland, very discreet. Euthanasia."
My heart, already shattered, was pulverized.
Vicky had killed our daughter.
And now, with Lily barely cold in her grave, Vicky was parading Julian, her old flame, through our home, mocking my life' s work, and quickly erasing Lily' s every trace.
She painted me as an unstable, grieving fool.
She vowed to destroy me, to ensure I got nothing.
How could the woman I loved, the mother of my child, be such a monster?
How could I have been so blind?
But the pain wasn't just mine; it was Lily' s, a horrific injustice.
I wouldn't let them erase her.
I would fight back, for Lily' s legacy, for the truth, and green the world with the "Oasis System" she loved, whether Vicky and Julian liked it or not. The Dull Wife's Masterpiece
Romance At 35, architect Emily was on top of the world. Her firm just won a major contract for a downtown skyscraper, and she was celebrating a successful career, building dreams one blueprint at a time.
Then came the text. Not for her, but for her husband Ethan. It flashed on his iPad: "My Little Muse. Is the show over? I bought you your favorite vinyl." Show? He was rehearsing.
A chilling comment from her best friend echoed: Ethan had said Emily was "dull," like "a book he’d read too many times." Her trembling hands unlocked his devices. What she found was a sick tapestry of lies: cutesy messages, secretive Venmo payments to a "Sophia M.," and social media posts flaunting his custom guitar pick and even his vintage watch.
The dashcam footage confirmed it all—intimate kisses with a very young "Little Muse" while he was supposedly "rehearsing." This wasn't just a fling; it was a brazen, calculated betrayal, a sickening echo of his "dull" remark.
Every shared memory twisted into a lie. Had their entire life together been a farce? How could the man she loved debase her so utterly, all for a cheap thrill? When Ethan announced a "band tour" that was actually a luxurious Miami getaway with his mistress, a cold rage set in. He thought she was numb, easily discarded? He was about to learn that an architect could build more than skyscrapers—she could construct the perfect downfall, ready to serve him a dose of reality he’d never forget. Possessed By An Octopus
Modern After breaking up with the movie king, I went diving and ended up getting sprayed with ink by a giant octopus.
In that moment, I was invaded by the octopus's genes.
This creature has nine brains, eight tentacles, and three hearts.
My IQ skyrocketed instantly, and the romantic mindset that had troubled me for years was replaced by a new career-focused mindset.
This time, I could finally distinguish who truly cared for me and who was just putting on a facade.
I fired my angelic bitch of a manager and took control of everything myself.
When I argued with netizens, I could take on a hundred of them at once.
Later, the movie king called me again:
"You respond to netizens pretty quickly, but why can't you see my messages?"
I sincerely replied:
"Sorry, but my IQ is too high now; you're a bit beneath me." 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. 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. 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." 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. 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. My Triplets' Daddy Is A Heartless Mafia
Itsme "It was just one night stand, and now I'm pregnant with triplets? Gosh!"
Josephine Jade never thought that she would have to run away from her own family while pregnant. She was alone, without money, without connections, with three fetuses in her stomach. How can she survive?
However, Josephine couldn't give up now, until she managed to reclaim her arbitrarily seized property and get back at everyone who tried to get rid of her.
A sick child, a past crush that comes back, a mysterious eccentric man, and a family that hates her, will weave together the journey of Josephine Jade's new life.
"You have no right to separate me from my children, you bastard! I will survive and you will submit to me. Just watch!"