Landslide
8 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. 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
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. His Discarded Gem: Shining In The Ruthless Don's Arms
Temple Madison For four years, I traced the bullet scar on Chace’s chest, believing it was proof he would bleed to keep me safe.
On our anniversary, he told me to wear white because "tonight changes everything." I walked into the gala thinking I was getting a ring.
Instead, I stood frozen in the center of the ballroom, drowning in silk, watching him slide his mother's sapphire onto another woman's finger.
Karyn Warren. The daughter of a rival family.
When I begged him with my eyes to claim me, to save me from the public humiliation, he didn't flinch. He just leaned toward his Underboss, his voice amplified by the silence.
"Karyn is for power. Ember is for pleasure. Don't confuse the assets."
My heart didn't just break; it incinerated. He expected me to stay as his mistress, threatening to dig up my dead mother’s grave if I refused to play the obedient pet.
He thought I was trapped. He thought I had nowhere to go because of my father’s massive gambling debts.
He was wrong.
With shaking hands, I pulled out my phone and texted the one name I was never supposed to use.
Keith Mosley. The Don. The monster under Chace's bed.
*I am invoking the Blood Oath. My father’s debt. I am ready to pay it.*
His reply came three seconds later, buzzing against my palm like a warning.
*The price is marriage. You belong to me. Yes or No?*
I looked up at Chace, who was laughing with his new fiancée, thinking he owned me.
I looked down and typed three letters.
*Yes.* Too Late, Mr. Don: The Wife You Buried
Cinderella's Sister I went to the family lawyer for a routine travel clearance. Instead, I was handed a divorce decree. The ink was three years old.
While I had been playing the role of the dutiful Capo's wife, Dante had secretly divorced me the day after our fifth anniversary.
Twenty-four hours later, he legally married the nanny, Gia, and named her cruel-eyed son as his heir.
I returned home to confront him, only for the boy to throw boiling tomato soup on me.
Dante didn't check my burns. He cradled the boy and looked at me with pure, drug-fueled hatred, calling me a monster for upsetting his "son."
The final blow came in a parking garage. A car sped toward us.
Dante didn't pull me to safety. He shoved me into the vehicle's path, using my body as a human shield to protect his mistress.
Lying broken on the asphalt, I realized Aria Vitiello was already dead to him. So, I decided to make it official.
I arranged a private flight over the Atlantic and ensured there were no survivors.
By the time Dante was weeping over the wreckage, realizing too late that he had been poisoned against me, I was already in France.
The Canary was dead. The Reaper had risen. The Capo's Scarred Wife: A Vicious Comeback
Sofia Wade I was the Chicago Outfit's princess, and Luca and Matteo were my sworn protectors. We had mixed our blood at ten years old, promising that nothing would ever touch me.
But that oath turned to ash the night Sofia Ricci aimed a Roman candle at my chest.
The firework slammed into my shoulder, igniting my silk dress instantly. As I rolled on the concrete, screaming while the flames ate into my skin, I waited for my boys to save me.
They didn't.
Instead, I watched through the smoke as they rushed to Sofia. They wrapped their jackets—the ones meant to shield me—around the girl who had just set me on fire, comforting her because the "kickback" had scared her.
They let me burn to keep her warm.
When I woke up in the hospital with permanent scars, they brought me a letter of apology from her and defended her "accident." They even cut their palms to pay her debt, ignoring the fact that I was the one in bandages.
That was the moment Elena Vitiello died.
I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I simply packed my bags and defected to the one place they couldn't follow: the arms of Dante Moretti, the lethal Capo of New York.
By the time they realized their mistake and came crawling back to beg in the rain, I was already wearing another man's ring.
"You want forgiveness?" I asked, looking down at them.
"Burn for it." Marrying The Rival: My Ex-Husband's Despair
Fonz Nadherny 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. Runaway Nurse: The Mafia King's Remorse
Hu Minxue For seven years, I served as the eyes for Dante Vitiello, the blind Capo of New York.
I pulled him back from the edge of madness, tending to his wounds and warming his bed when everyone else had given up on him.
But the moment his vision returned, the years of devotion turned to ash.
In a single phone call, he decided to marry Sofia Moretti for territory, dismissing me as just "the maid's daughter" and a "comfort" he intended to keep as a mistress.
He forced me to watch him court her.
At a gala, when a chaotic accident caused a tower of champagne glasses to shatter, Dante threw his body over Sofia to protect her.
He left me standing there, bleeding from the glass shards, while he carried her away like she was porcelain.
He didn't even look back at the woman who had saved his life.
I realized then that I had worshipped a broken god.
I had given him my dignity, only for him to treat me like a disposable bandage now that he was whole.
He arrogantly believed I would stay in the penthouse, grateful for his scraps.
So, while he was out celebrating his engagement, I met with his mother.
I signed the severance agreement for fifty million dollars.
I packed my bags, wiped my phone, and boarded a one-way flight to Australia.
By the time Dante came home to an empty bed, realized his mistake, and began tearing the city apart to find me, I was already a ghost. His Unwanted Wife: The Genius Artist Returns
Zaccaria Linn On our fifth anniversary, my husband slid a black velvet box across the table.
Inside wasn't a diamond ring, but a fountain pen.
"Sign the separation papers, Aurora," Ethan said. "Ilene is spiraling again. She needs to see we are over."
I was the wife of the Mafia Underboss, yet I was being discarded for the Family Ward.
Before I could answer, Ilene stormed into the restaurant.
She shrieked that I was still wearing his ring and threw a bowl of boiling lobster bisque directly at my chest.
As my skin blistered and peeled, Ethan didn't rush to me.
He hugged her.
"It's okay," he soothed the woman who had just assaulted me. "I've got you."
The betrayal didn't stop there.
When Ilene pushed me down the stairs days later, Ethan erased the security footage to protect her from the police.
When I was kidnapped by his enemies, I called his emergency line—the one meant for life-or-death situations.
He declined the call.
He was too busy holding Ilene's hand to save his wife.
That was the moment the chain broke.
As the kidnapper's van sped onto the highway, I didn't wait for a rescue that would never come.
I opened the door and jumped into the dark.
Everyone thought Aurora Bruce died on that pavement.
Two years later, Ethan stood outside a gallery in Paris, looking at the woman he had destroyed, finally realizing he had protected the wrong one. I Married My Ex-Fiancé's Ruthless Older Brother
EVA PINK I was a Vitiello, sold to the Morettis to secure an alliance. For five years, I quietly loved Dante, counting down the minutes until our wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
But it ended with a single text three minutes before the ceremony.
"Stay at the apartment. Sofia is awake. Don't make a scene."
His ex-girlfriend, the love of his life, had woken from a coma with no memory. Just like that, I was erased.
For thirty days, I waited in the shadows while Dante played hero to a woman who didn't remember him. He told me he was protecting her fragile mind.
But then I found the truth.
I stood outside the doctor's office and heard Dante refuse a treatment that would restore Sofia's memory.
"If she remembers, she might leave again," Dante told the doctor. "Elena will wait. She's a good soldier. Let me have my fantasy."
He wasn't protecting her. He was keeping her broken to feed his ego, banking on my submission. He thought I was furniture he could put in storage.
He was wrong.
I didn't go back to the apartment. Instead, I dialed a number every made man in New York feared.
"Matteo," I said to Dante's lethal older brother, the King of the underworld.
"I am done waiting. I want to be a Moretti bride. But not Dante's." 
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