Rollins Laman
9 Published Stories
Rollins Laman's Books and Stories
Too Late To Apologize, Mr. Billionaire
Mafia For seven years, I scrubbed floors, cooked books, and hid my identity as the Vitiello heiress just to test if Dante Moretti loved me for me, not my father’s power.
But the massive digital billboard in Times Square froze the blood in my veins.
It wasn’t my face next to his under the headline "The King and his new Queen." It was a cocktail waitress named Lola.
When I walked into the lobby to confront him, Lola slapped me across the face and crushed my late mother's locket under her stiletto heel.
Dante didn't defend me. He didn't even look sorry.
"You’re useful, like a stapler," he sneered, checking his watch.
"But a King needs a Queen, not a boring clerk. You can stay on as my mistress if you want to keep your job."
He thought I was a nobody. He thought he could use me to launder his money and then discard me like trash.
He didn't realize that the only reason he wasn't in federal prison was because I was protecting him.
I wiped the blood from my lip and pulled out a secure satellite phone.
Dante laughed. "Who are you calling? Your mommy?"
I stared him dead in the eyes as the line connected.
"The pact is void, Papa," I whispered. "Burn them all."
Ten minutes later, the glass doors shattered as my father’s military helicopters descended onto the street.
Dante fell to his knees, realizing too late that he hadn't just lost a secretary.
He had just declared war on the Capo dei Capi. His Substitute's Billion-Dollar Secret Empire
Billionaires For five years, I secretly built my boyfriend, Connor Tate, from a broke musician into a celebrated tech CEO. I was the silent angel investor who funded his entire empire, all while pretending to be the simple girlfriend who could barely pay her own rent.
Then he brought home Katerina, a woman from his past who looked eerily like me.
She began a slow, deliberate invasion of my life-wearing my clothes, using my things, stealing his affection. When I finally fought back, he decided to teach me a lesson.
He had me kidnapped, bound, and thrown onto the stage of a grimy underground auction. He watched from the shadows as leering men bid on my body, only stepping in at the last second to play the hero and put me back in my place.
He thought he had broken me. But then he delivered the final, soul-crushing blow, admitting the truth I never saw coming.
"Harley was a substitute," he whispered to Katerina, not knowing I could hear. "Because she looked like you."
He believed I was a helpless dependent he had created. He had no idea that as he spoke, our divorce was already being finalized. I picked up my phone and dialed a number he never knew existed.
"Killian," I said, my voice calm and steady. "I'm ready. Let's get married." From Workhorse To Queen: My Reign
Modern For seven years, I was the secret weapon behind my fiancé Josh Palmer's political career. I was the ghostwriter, the strategist, the one who used my family's hidden resources to make him a star.
On my way to our engagement party, a news alert flashed across my phone. Josh was on live TV, announcing his engagement to a famous anchor, Kassandra Dixon.
When I confronted them, Kassandra mocked me, calling me a "useful workhorse" before her bodyguards beat me to the floor.
But her true cruelty was finding my late mother's journal.
She ripped it to shreds and ground the pieces into the marble with her stiletto.
In that moment, staring at the tattered remains of my mother's memory, the naive girl who loved him died.
They made a fatal mistake. They thought they had broken a powerless girl, but they had just awakened a queen. My name is Aurora Tyler, and my reign was just beginning. Helene Richard: The Truth Unveiled
Modern For ten years, I was the perfect wife to Wall Street heir Garrett Wise. I was the polished GNN anchor who cleaned up his scandals, all while his family paid for my mother's mounting medical bills.
But when a photo of him draped over my on-air rival went viral, I finally had enough and served him divorce papers.
His revenge was brutal. He had me fired, framed for taking bribes, and publicly humiliated on my own network.
Even my own son was turned against me, calling me a "bad mommy" after his grandmother and Garrett's mistress poisoned his mind.
Trapped in our penthouse, Garrett offered me a disgusting deal to stay as his quiet, compensated wife while his mistress, Daphne, faked a pregnancy to secure her place.
That's when I discovered the cruelest irony: I was actually pregnant with his child.
As he lunged at me, his hands reaching for my throat, I grabbed the nearest weapon.
"You did this," I whispered, looking him dead in the eye.
Then I plunged the silver letter opener into my own stomach, sacrificing our unborn child to ensure he would carry the guilt, and I would finally be free. The Inferno Of His Betrayal
Modern At my tenth anniversary party, my tech CEO husband, August, declared his undying love for me in front of hundreds of cameras. But as he held my hand, I knew the truth: he'd been having a decade-long affair with the movie starlet, Krystal, standing in the crowd.
When I announced my wish for a divorce on stage, the party descended into chaos, and a fire suddenly erupted.
As the flames grew, August didn't look at me. He pushed me aside and ran to save Krystal from a falling light fixture, leaving me trapped under a collapsing chandelier.
He abandoned me to die in the inferno he created.
I watched him cradle his mistress, his back turned to me as the fire consumed everything. He never looked back.
But just as the chandelier snapped, a powerful force slammed into me, pulling me from the flames. It was my estranged brother, Cass, a man I hadn't seen in years.
Later, at the hospital, August didn't ask if I was okay. His only concern was the damage to his company's stock. "You're fine, aren't you?" he sneered. "Krystal was actually hurt. She's fragile."
That was the moment the woman who loved him died.
"Fine," I said, my voice chillingly calm. "I'll deny everything and save your reputation. But on one condition." I activated a hidden clause in our contract, one he'd dismissed years ago, giving me a massive portion of his company. The real war had just begun. Curator of My Own Life
Modern The plane ride felt endless, but a rush of excitement washed over me, eager to see my Uncle Julian, the man who' d raised me since my parents died.
I pictured his welcoming smile, the scent of turpentine, the way he' d call me his "little artist."
But the grand foyer greeted me with an unsettling silence instead of his usual classical music.
Then I saw them: Julian, his hands covering a woman' s visibly pregnant stomach, his head bent, whispering, before a slow, tender kiss that shattered my world.
My suitcase, filled with paintings for him, crashed to the marble floor, but the expected scream or tears never came.
Instead, a chilling calm settled over me as I simply nodded, congratulating them both, while Julian stared, expecting a scene I' d given him countless times in another life.
That vivid phantom memory, a brutal replay of past heartbreak where I' d screamed, pleaded, and ultimately lost everything – my art, my self-respect, my will to live – became my shield.
It was a ghost, a warning. This time, I wouldn' t make the same mistake. This time, I chose to let go and disappear from a life that was never truly mine. The Unwanted Man's Triumph
Modern My wife, Vicky Sterling, delivered the news over breakfast as casually as she' d asked for more coffee: she was pregnant, and the father was Julian Vance, her personal trainer, who was also moving into our penthouse today.
I felt the last thread snap.
She told me I' d be moving into the guest room, as Julian preferred the master suite.
This was just the latest in eight years of humiliation, where I' d gone from architect to trophy husband, then just… Ethan.
My family' s firm had been saved by hers, but it cost me everything.
When I tried to leave, her contempt was a familiar sting, reminding me I was nothing without her.
The final insult came when Julian, a preening narcissist, lunged for my grandfather' s Purple Heart, the only thing of true value I owned, and it shattered.
Then, the real torture began: Vicky, concerned only for Julian' s barely scratched nail, forced me to undergo a horrific skin graft, even as my own head bled from hitting a table.
Later, Julian framed me for kidnapping myself, and Vicky, believing him, then locked me in a burning cellar.
How could the woman I once loved, the one who controlled my entire life, be so utterly cruel, so blind to the monster she embraced?
Lying there, choked by smoke, I realized this life was a charade.
But then, a glimmer of hope: my old housekeeper, Maria, opened the door, and I heard Olivia' s voice, a promise of freedom in Austin.
I was done. 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 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. 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." 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. 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. 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." Revenge Is Sweet: Marrying His Worst Enemy
CHRISTINE ROBINSON I was staring at the two pink lines on the plastic stick, trembling with the terrifying joy of carrying the heir to the New York underworld’s most ruthless faction.
Then the intercom buzzed, and a voice splintered my world.
"The little art student actually thinks I'm going to marry her? It was just a game to pass the time while you were in Europe, Estella."
I froze.
My boyfriend, Holden, was in the next room, laughing with the daughter of his rival.
He explained that I was just a "clean civilian image" he needed to secure a business deal. Now that the deal was signed, he was dumping the "stray" to marry the "Queen."
I tried to run, but freedom only lasted forty-eight hours.
Holden didn't just break my heart; he turned my terror into content.
He kidnapped me, tied me to a chair at the edge of a cliff, and forced me to choose between my life and his new fiancée's.
Then, he pushed me off the edge.
As gravity snatched me, I heard him laughing.
I landed on a stunt airbag. It was just a "social experiment." A sick prank for his amusement.
"Don't be so dramatic, Kenia," he called down. "It's just a game."
He thought I was broken. He thought I was just a prop in his life.
But he forgot that I knew his secrets.
I dragged my injured body to a payphone and dialed the one number Holden told me to fear—the rival Don, Gael Simpson.
"It's Kenia," I whispered, clutching the receiver like a lifeline. "I'm calling in the debt." 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. 
/1/100250/coverorgin.jpg?v=1e1cc879a2a9ec09824fc48dab606c09&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/94258/coverorgin.jpg?v=7b930f636137de074a3ac4afa123fb77&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/103291/coverorgin.jpg?v=cfb5356b153b74949bab2cb5046d0cad&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/100725/coverorgin.jpg?v=400a27dc54926dcfd576d031b4ca6983&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/100037/coverorgin.jpg?v=59558e012155a80e4af823b58153449d&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/94336/coverorgin.jpg?v=9d740d92c2b331deccfae891a506194a&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/84895/coverorgin.jpg?v=46a956a2e8f6ab0c16304ca297a673b0&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/81250/coverorgin.jpg?v=20260106195024&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/0/61269/coverorgin.jpg?v=4bbae366ea6c0479718a25b2f648cfc3&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/100248/coverorgin.jpg?v=b1dec4753a5c9ea677f050c0b517bc01&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/100249/coverorgin.jpg?v=a570494f3c22659a84b85b8169022ad7&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/104523/coverorgin.jpg?v=7719b1d28102636322258cb433c8fe50&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/100385/coverorgin.jpg?v=d2377f2e89744f564e672d62cce9c375&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/104479/coverorgin.jpg?v=96b08700bb860257b3b14ca84fd299f4&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/104544/coverorgin.jpg?v=26ef0bf83d2e61fa75b0006ea049ca2b&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/104516/coverorgin.jpg?v=695762d7f669fe295cdc0620e8a99576&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/104542/coverorgin.jpg?v=3510d406ba8cc92963fe28d55a089a68&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/104846/coverorgin.jpg?v=8ceeac3e4d968450fecccda0df8f2ce8&imageMogr2/format/webp)
/1/103295/coverorgin.jpg?v=5a85eea5bcf3152988e3005eb5809fb2&imageMogr2/format/webp)