Lively
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Lively's Books and Stories
He Chose The Mistress, Losing His True Queen
Mafia I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York.
To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen.
But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table.
It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test.
"Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture."
I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking.
He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago.
He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy.
He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go.
He was wrong.
I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don.
And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy.
I wanted to erase him.
I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built.
Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa."
It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul.
On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial.
When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth.
He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife.
Because the woman who loved him no longer existed. Zero Score: My Escape from the Mafia Don
Mafia For three years, I was the wife of Don Dante Moretti. But our marriage was a transaction, and my heart was the price. I kept a ledger, deducting points for every time he chose her—his first love, Isabella—over me. When the score reached zero, I would be free.
After he abandoned me on a roadside to rush to Isabella's side, I was hit by a car. I woke up in the ER, bleeding, only to hear a nurse shout that I was two months pregnant. A tiny, impossible hope flared in my chest.
But as the doctors scrambled to save me, they patched my husband through on speakerphone. His voice was cold and absolute.
“Isabella’s condition is critical,” he ordered. “Not one drop of the reserve blood is to be touched until she is safe. I don't care who else needs it.”
I lost the baby. Our child, sacrificed by its own father. I later learned Isabella had only suffered a minor cut. The blood was just a “precautionary measure.”
The tiny flicker of hope was extinguished, and something inside me snapped, clean and final. The debt was paid.
Alone in the silence, I made the last entry in my ledger, bringing the score to zero. I signed the divorce papers I had already prepared, left them on his desk, and walked out of his life forever. The Price of His Bitter Regret
Modern Five years ago, my brother Declan stripped me of our family name and cast me out. Now, I was a cocktail waitress with terminal cancer, desperately trying to save enough money for my own urn.
To make the final payment, I got on my knees on the cold club floor to bark like a dog for a drunk man's cash.
My brother saw it all. But instead of helping, his face twisted in disgust. He fired me on the spot, withheld my final paycheck, and swore I'd never work in this city again, stealing my last chance to die with a shred of dignity.
He grabbed my arm, his eyes burning with a cold fire I once thought was reserved for his business rivals.
"I don't care if you die," he spat.
And in that moment, I knew he meant it. The last flicker of hope died. He had taken my name, my health, and my future. Now, he had even taken my death.
So I wrote a letter, revealing the truth he refused to see for five years-about the stolen watch, the woman who framed me, and the cancer eating me alive.
Then, I walked to the river. If I couldn't live with dignity, I would let my death be the final, undeniable truth. The Man Who Broke Her Heart
Romance For ten years, my stepbrother Kason Oneal was my protector. After our parents divorced, he fought to keep me in his home, becoming the only family I had. Everyone knew he cherished me, and my gratitude slowly blossomed into a secret love.
Then, his old high school flame, Dalia Keith, came back.
The man who once kissed me in the dark of my room vanished overnight, replaced by a stranger. I overheard him telling Dalia, "She's just my stepsister. I feel sorry for her, that's all."
He demanded I give back the jade pendant he once worked all summer to buy for my birthday, only to give it to her.
When I asked to move out of the room next to his, he laughed cruelly. "You'll move into the servant's quarters in the basement. That's where you belong now."
The final blow came when he gave an interview to the press, painting me as a clingy, delusional girl. I became the public villain in their perfect love story, a parasite who couldn't let him go.
Staring at a taunting picture Dalia sent of her wearing my pendant, I finally understood. My love was worthless. I picked up the phone and called my biological father. "Dad, I agree. I want to marry Hadley Payne." The Price Of Love, A Life Reclaimed
Modern The New Year's trip was meant to be a fresh start, my final test to prove myself worthy of Chloe Davis' s powerful family. I spent the holiday tirelessly entertaining her restless younger brother, Leo, a frantic effort to be the perfect future brother-in-law.
Then, a single scream shattered everything. When I rushed out, Leo lay twisted at the bottom of a deep excavation pit, buried under steel and concrete.
Just like that, the Davis family turned on me. Chloe's father, purple with rage, screamed, "This is your fault! You were supposed to be watching him!" Chloe stood behind him, her face a mask of horror and blame, refusing even to look at me. Their influence was a weapon, brutally efficient. Overnight, my family's construction business was ruined, contracts canceled, loans called in. A week later, two men ambushed me, beating me until my bones cracked, kicking my leg until something snapped, smashing my face into a brick wall.
I woke up in a public hospital, disfigured and permanently limping, alive but utterly broken. To add insult to agony, the news blared, showing Chloe Davis marrying my best friend, Mark Johnson-the city' s new golden couple, smiling for the cameras. My betrayal was complete.
I couldn' t comprehend how my life had been so utterly decimated, all hinged on a supposed accident and baseless accusations. Why me? Why this brutal, undeserved fate?
Just as I was about to jump from the city' s tallest building, a voice cut through the wind: "Don't do it!" It was Sophia Anderson, the mysterious tech mogul, offering a salvation I never expected, a second chance I desperately clung to. But salvation doesn't always look like promised heaven. The Woman Who Reclaimed Life
Fantasy The antiseptic smell was the last thing I remembered.
In my "other" life, the one that ended in blood and despair, I died from late-stage cancer in an unpaid hospital bed.
My parents, Sarah and Robert, cried. They held my hand, promising to take care of everything, just as they had for years while I diligently sent them money for my health insurance.
But they lied. The money was gone, squandered on a secret life.
My father finally broke, confessing they' d adopted a son, Liam, channeling all my money to him, building a new family on the foundation of my slow death.
The betrayal shattered something inside me. The weight of the kitchen knife, my mother' s scream, then nothing.
Until I blinked.
Sunlight streamed through my bedroom window. My husband, David, slept beside me. My body felt healthy, a full year before Dr. Evans' death sentence.
A terrifying, undeserved second chance.
I remembered the insurance renewal notice I' d ignored yesterday because I trusted them. This time, I wouldn't.
When I called my mother, her usual syrupy sweetness faltered. "Oh… perfectly fine if you handle that yourself," she said, before asking for another twenty thousand dollars for renovations.
I gave it to them, a ticket to the truth.
Then came the photo: a blurry, half-demolished kitchen, and in the corner, a bright blue, brand-new plastic dinosaur. Liam already existed.
The confusion lifted, replaced by a cold, sharp purpose. The hunt had begun. Surviving Eleanor: A Daughter's Rebellion
Horror The smell of grain and something sour-a barn in my suburban kitchen-was the first sign of something deeply wrong with my seemingly normal life with my mother, Eleanor.
Standing over the blender, humming an unsettling tune, she poured what looked like chicken feed into it, her eyes wild with a grim, fanatical determination.
"It's for your own good, Sarah," she explained, utterly calm, "The curse from your past life, when you were a neglected pig, is still holding you back. This will cleanse you."
My stomach lurched; this wasn' t the first time she' d spouted Mrs. Gable's charlatan nonsense, but the ritualistic "cleansing" had never been this tangible.
"I am not drinking animal feed," I said, my voice shaking with disgust. "This is insane."
Her composure shattered. "You will drink it!" she shrieked, lunging at me with the sloshing blender jar, pinning me against the wall as the world went dark.
I gasped, sucking in the familiar, acrid smell, my eyes snapping open to find myself on the kitchen floor, my mother still humming, the bag of chicken feed unopened.
I scrambled up, touching the back of my head-no blood, no pain, just the impossible, terrifying realization: I had died, and now I was back.
"Mom, what are you doing?" the words escaped me, a ghostly echo of a conversation that had already occurred.
Her face held the same fanatical expression, as she began, "It's for your own good, Sarah. Mrs. Gable was very clear-"
"No," I cut her off, the phantom pain in my skull too real, "Stop."
Then came the final blow, a chilling announcement that shattered any remaining hope: "I've already found a man for you. Mark will be here any minute. He's a good, strong man. He knows what to do with a difficult woman like you."
This wasn't just a curse; it was a cage. I had to get out. When Home Becomes A Battlefield
Modern I was just an ambitious architect, chasing a prestigious fellowship that would define my career.
But then the email came, and my world blurred: the fellowship was awarded to my husband' s best friend, Ethan, who had no business getting it.
My mother-in-law, Debra, beamed with feigned sympathy, calling it "God's plan" for me to focus on "a family," while my husband, Andrew, nodded along, smugly implying my career was an obstacle.
It wasn't just losing a fellowship; it was discovering they had "accidentally" unplugged my laptop, erasing hours of work, and Andrew had allowed his mother to give away a $3,000 bottle of Scotch meant to save my promotion.
The final, horrifying blow came when I overheard Andrew tell Debra he' d get me pregnant "even if I have to do it behind her back," just to make me "settle down and be a proper wife."
They thought they had me trapped, a pawn in their twisted game of family.
They had no idea that their cruel little "plan" had just awakened a cold, precise fury they couldn't even begin to imagine. My Wife's Silent Witness
Romance My wife, Isabella, was my entire world.
I' d given her my kidney, saved her life, sacrificing my burgeoning career as a concert pianist without a second thought.
Our love was my masterpiece.
But after a minor car crash, she woke up claiming amnesia, her eyes hollow, devoid of any recognition for her husband.
My place was immediately usurped by Julian, her manipulative childhood friend, and I became nothing but a nuisance.
At a dinner he hosted, with a chilling smirk, Isabella coerced me, a man with a life-threatening peanut allergy, into eating poisoned food.
As my body convulsed and I choked for air, she stood by, watching me die on the restaurant floor, her laughter mingling with Julian's as I slipped into darkness.
As a helpless ghost, my torment only deepened.
I witnessed her utter callousness towards my corpse, then Julian' s brutal physical assault and cold-blooded deception of Eleanor, my beloved mother-in-law, the only soul who fought for me.
The pain of betrayal was eclipsed only by profound confusion: how could the woman I saved become such a monster?
Then, a shocking truth emerged from hospital security footage: Isabella' s amnesia was a calculating lie, and Julian was a murderer, caught red-handed.
An icy, terrifying resolve ignited in her eyes, transforming her.
Now, a merciless game of vengeance begins, and Julian, the architect of our collective ruin, is about to face a reckoning far worse than death. Unscripted: My Own Story
Romance My life with Jake was supposed to be a rom-com: I, the supportive girlfriend, he, the brooding game developer destined for greatness.
But our apartment was a toxic mess of his empty energy drinks and my growing resentment, as the rent-paying backbone of his "genius."
Strange, unsolicited “viewer comments” glowed in the air around me, always excusing his messes, validating his outbursts, and telling me how to be the "perfect" partner.
They echoed in my ears the night Jake threw a tantrum over a hot dog, shattering our matching mugs and leaving me cut and bleeding, while the comments screamed that he was just "hangry" and "passionate."
After Jake publicly flaunted his "support crew" and I lost my major freelance job due to the "difficult" reputation he manufactured, I was drowning in a narrative everyone else seemed to believe.
Why was my life so chaotic, and why did everyone, even my own parents, act like I was the problem?
Fleeing in despair, I stumbled upon a shocking truth: My entire life, every argument, every emotional manipulation, was a meticulously crafted "script" by a "Relationship Architect" named Mark Taylor, designed to make me the perfect, submissive character in Jake's "hero's journey." His Ex, My Hell
Romance For five years, I was Mrs. Davenport, cleaning up after my husband's one-night stands and enduring his casual cruelty.
Call it a gilded cage, but this mansion was my prison, bought by my sacrifice: I was the secret medical lifeline keeping him, Ethan Davenport, alive.
Our cruel contract was nearing its end, just three months left.
Then, Chloe, his perfect ex-girlfriend, waltzed back in.
Her arrival wasn't a gentle reunion; it was a wrecking ball designed to finish what Ethan's neglect had started.
She smeared my name, orchestrated a public humiliation, and then watched, smiling, as Ethan, fueled by rage and alcohol, dragged me to a damp, cold cellar.
He tore apart my most sacred possession-my fiancé's diary-then brutally killed my loyal dog, Buddy, right before my eyes.
As I bled, collapsing into unconsciousness, I heard his ex's venomous whisper: she'd had all my precious memories of him incinerated.
They had taken everything.
My dignity, my love, my last connection to a life I cherished.
My heart was a hollowed-out space, suffocating under a mountain of grief and betrayal.
How could a human being be so cruel, so blind, to the sacrifices I'd made to keep him alive?
But on the day our notorious contract officially expired, I walked out.
With nothing but the clothes on my back and a one-way ticket to a remote Pacific Northwest retreat, I finally chose myself.
It was time to disappear, to burn away the past, and somehow, exist again. In Love With My Ex's Uncle
Modern On the day of the wedding, Brendan left me and went to find his true love. When I called him, he, who had always been gentle to me, showed impatience for the first time, saying, "It's just a wedding, I'll make it up to you when I get back." Feeling disheartened, I suggested calling off the wedding. Brendan thought I was just being stubborn, and in the face of friends' advice, he said, "It's okay, when she calms down, she will come find me." It wasn't until Edrence, the prince, posted our marriage certificate that Brendan suddenly went crazy and came knocking on my door. When he saw the man who opened the door, he was slightly stunned. And I, standing behind the man, with a blush still on my face, leaned forward and asked, "Nephew, what brings you to see your auntie so late?" You might like
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. The Unwanted Bride Becomes The City's Queen
Breeze I was the spare daughter of the Vitiello crime family, born solely to provide organs for my golden sister, Isabella.
Four years ago, under the codename "Seven," I nursed Dante Moretti, the Don of Chicago, back to health in a safe house. I was the one who held him in the dark.
But Isabella stole my name, my credit, and the man I loved.
Now, Dante looked at me with nothing but cold disgust, believing her lies.
When a neon sign crashed down on the street, Dante used his body to shield Isabella, leaving me to be crushed under twisted steel.
While Isabella sat in a VIP suite crying over a scratch, I lay broken, listening to my parents discuss if my kidneys were still viable for harvest.
The final straw came at their engagement gala. When Dante saw me wearing the lava stone bracelet I had worn in the safe house, he accused me of stealing it from Isabella.
He ordered my father to punish me.
I took fifty lashes to my back while Dante covered Isabella's eyes, protecting her from the ugly truth.
That night, the love in my heart finally died.
On the morning of their wedding, I handed Dante a gift box containing a cassette tape—the only proof that I was Seven.
Then, I signed the papers disowning my family, threw my phone out the car window, and boarded a one-way flight to Sydney.
By the time Dante listens to that tape and realizes he married a monster, I will be thousands of miles away, never to return. Marrying His Rival: The Ex-Fiancé's Nightmare
Moria Anninger I was the "Caged Canary" of the underworld, a biological asset designed to merge two crime families. My fiancé, Bryant Barnes, didn't love me. He loved the power I brought, and he loved his mistress, Kalia.
The night Kalia broke into my penthouse and stomped on my hand, crushing the bones and my fashion career, Bryant didn't help me. He told the police she was my guest and warned me not to embarrass him with a cast.
That was just the beginning. When Kalia lied about feeling unsafe, Bryant dangled me off a balcony. When she faked a kidnapping, he locked me in an industrial freezer for six hours until I turned blue. And when I fell into the marina, he swam right past me to save her, leaving me to drown in the freezing water.
He destroyed my body and my dignity for a woman who was stealing my designs and faking a pregnancy. He thought I was just a broken obligation he could discard.
But he made a fatal mistake. He didn't make sure I was dead.
I dragged myself out of the water and made a call to his greatest rival.
On the night of our grand merger, I walked onto the stage wearing royal blue instead of white. I rolled up my sleeve to reveal the scars he gave me, looked him dead in the eye, and grabbed the microphone.
"I hereby terminate my engagement to Bryant Barnes. And I am proud to announce my betrothal to the true King of this city." 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. 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. Too Late For Regret: The Mafia King's Runaway
Tangye Wanzi I watched my husband, the most feared Capo in New York, sign away our marriage with the same cold indifference he usually reserved for ordering a hit.
The nib of his Montblanc pen scratched against the paper, drowning out the rain hitting the coffee shop window.
He didn't bother to read a single word.
He thought he was signing routine shipping manifests for the family business.
In reality, he was signing the "Dissolution of Union" papers I had hidden beneath the cover sheet.
He was too distracted to check. His eyes were glued to his encrypted phone, frantically texting Sofia—the widow, the tragic beauty, the woman who had haunted our marriage for three years.
"Done," he grunted, tossing the stack into his armored SUV without even glancing at me.
"Business is concluded, Elena. We leave."
Moments later, his phone rang with her special emergency tone.
His demeanor shifted from cold boss to frantic protector instantly.
"Driver, divert. She needs me," he roared.
He looked at me with zero affection and ordered, "Get out, Elena. Luca will take you home."
He kicked me out of the car into the pouring rain to rush to his mistress, completely unaware he had just legally granted me my freedom.
I stood on the curb, shivering but smiling for the first time in years.
By the time the Don realizes he just signed his own divorce, I will be a ghost in San Francisco.
And he will have nothing left but his shipping logs and his regret. Too Late: The Spare Daughter Escapes Him
SHANA GRAY I died on a Tuesday.
It wasn't a quick death. It was slow, cold, and meticulously planned by the man who called himself my father.
I was twenty years old.
He needed my kidney to save my sister. The spare part for the golden child. I remember the blinding lights of the operating theater, the sterile smell of betrayal, and the phantom pain of a surgeon's scalpel carving into my flesh while my screams echoed unheard. I remember looking through the observation glass and seeing him-my father, Giovanni Vitiello, the Don of the Chicago Outfit-watching me die with the same detached expression he used when signing a death warrant.
He chose her. He always chose her.
And then, I woke up.
Not in heaven. Not in hell. But in my own bed, a year before my scheduled execution. My body was whole, unscarred. The timeline had reset, a glitch in the cruel matrix of my existence, giving me a second chance I never asked for.
This time, when my father handed me a one-way ticket to London-an exile disguised as a severance package-I didn't cry. I didn't beg. My heart, once a bleeding wound, was now a block of ice.
He didn't know he was talking to a ghost.
He didn't know I had already lived through his ultimate betrayal.
He also didn't know that six months ago, during the city's brutal territory wars, I was the one who saved his most valuable asset. In a secret safe house, I stitched up the wounds of a blinded soldier, a man whose life hung by a thread. He never saw my face. He only knew my voice, the scent of vanilla, and the steady touch of my hands. He called me Sette. Seven. For the seven stitches I put in his shoulder.
That man was Dante Moretti. The Ruthless Capo. The man my sister, Isabella, is now set to marry.
She stole my story. She claimed my actions, my voice, my scent. And Dante, the man who could spot a lie from a mile away, believed the beautiful deception because he wanted it to be true. He wanted the golden girl to be his savior, not the invisible sister who was only ever good for her spare parts.
So I took the ticket. In my past life, I fought them, and they silenced me on an operating table. This time, I will let them have their perfect, gilded lie.
I will go to London. I will disappear. I will let Seraphina Vitiello die on that plane.
But I will not be a victim.
This time, I will not be the lamb led to slaughter.
This time, from the shadows of my exile, I will be the one holding the match. And I will wait, with the patience of the dead, to watch their entire world burn. Because a ghost has nothing to lose, and a queen of ashes has an empire to gain. 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." 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. 
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