Zaccaria Linn
9 Published Stories
Zaccaria Linn's Books and Stories
His Unwanted Wife: The Genius Artist Returns
Mafia 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. The Doctor, The Husband, The Lie
Modern My Broadway dreams died with a fall on stage. For three agonizing years, my husband Hudson was my rock, nursing me through what doctors called a career-ending injury.
Then I discovered the truth. My "injury" was a lie, a conspiracy orchestrated by my husband and our doctor, Bethany. They had been slowly poisoning me to keep me crippled and dependent.
When I confronted them, they tried to silence me with an overdose. In the hospital, Bethany carved up my body with a scalpel.
To complete their twisted fantasy, they decided she would carry my child, forcibly harvesting my embryos while I was awake on a pain-enhancing drug.
Hudson just watched.
"Just endure it, Emmy," he murmured.
But they didn't break me. I escaped and meticulously erased myself from his world. My final act before disappearing was pressing 'send'-unleashing every piece of evidence to the entire world.
"You took everything from me," I wrote. "Now, I'll take everything from you. Tenfold." Ordered To Serve His Mistress: Heiress's Revenge
Modern My fiancé sent me a text ordering me to serve his mistress, unaware that the waitress holding the tray was actually the daughter of the man who owned his soul.
I was working undercover at his club, playing the role of a poor nobody to test his character before our wedding.
But tonight, the test ended in disaster.
His mistress, Jaden, walked in and treated me like dirt. When I brought her drink, she slapped the tray, spilling scalding coffee all over my hand.
The pain was white-hot. My skin blistered instantly, peeling away in angry red patches.
I showed Connor the injury on a video call, expecting protection. Expecting him to be a man.
Instead, he looked at my burned hand and then at his investors. Panic filled his eyes.
"Fix it, Blake," he roared. "Apologize to her."
"She burned me," I said quietly.
"I don't care! Kneel if you have to. Kiss her ring. Just make her happy so I can finish this deal!"
He told the Principessa of the Shaw crime family to kneel to a woman who meant nothing.
He sacrificed his future wife to save face.
Something inside me snapped. It wasn't my heart; it was the leash I had placed on myself.
"Okay," I whispered.
I hung up the phone and dropped it into a pot of boiling pasta water.
Then I turned to the Executive Chef, a former hitman who recognized the lethal shift in my eyes.
"Lock the doors," I ordered.
"And tell my father I'm ready to burn this place to the ground." Betrayed By Her Seven Protectors
Romance My father raised seven men to be my protectors, my companions, and one day, my husband. As the heiress to a Texas empire, they were sworn to protect me above all else.
But they were all in love with my adopted sister, Savannah.
I discovered their secret in the shadows of a stable, listening to the man I loved, Sterling, tell Savannah that marrying me was just a "small price to pay" to give her the world. My entire life was a lie, a performance for her benefit. They weren't my family; they were parasites, and I was their host.
Their cruelty escalated. Savannah sabotaged my saddle, causing an accident that nearly killed me, and Sterling covered it up. Then, at my 21st birthday party, they broadcast a secret video of me sobbing over him for all of high society to see, completing their campaign to utterly humiliate me.
They wanted to break me down until I was nothing more than a prize to be won. They thought I would shatter.
But as the room descended into chaos, my childhood friend Preston stepped onto the stage, pulling me to his side. His voice cut through the noise, clear and decisive.
"Tonight is about a new beginning," he announced, looking directly at Sterling's stunned face. "Because Clara Beaumont has agreed to be my wife." When Sisterhood Becomes Betrayal
Horror The dream always started the same way: my sister, Sarah, screaming my name, her face twisted in pure terror, pointing at a world where the dead walked.
This time, the screaming wasn't a dream. It was real, coming from down the hall.
"They're coming! I saw them!" Sarah shrieked, convinced her nightmares were prophecies.
My parents rushed to her, cooing about a bad dream, but Sarah insisted it was real, clearer this time, a prophecy of rotting flesh and dead eyes.
I lay in my bed, heart a slow drum, remembering my first life: the foolish concern, the attempts to reason that always ended with their blind siding of Sarah.
My logic was met with her tears, my calm with her hysterics, and our parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, labeled me "insensitive," not understanding how "special" Sarah was.
My efforts to save their retirement, to hide car keys from her "prepper" conventions, led to slaps and silent treatments, to accusations of sabotaging her "survival instincts."
The family crumbled around her delusion, losing their house, savings, everything, and when the apocalypse never came, they blamed me for not believing, for not supporting their perfect, unified front of madness.
They cast me out, and I died alone in a homeless shelter, not from a zombie, but from pneumonia.
Now, I was 22 again, lying in my childhood bed, listening to the prelude of that same disaster, a second chance at a test I' d failed spectacularly.
This time, I knew the answers.
"It' s going to start with the birds!" Sarah yelled, predicting a mass blackbird death event, completely unaware I knew about the city' s planned fumigation.
My parents leaned into her every word, their faces a mix of worry and excitement, while a bitter taste filled my mouth.
I wouldn' t stop her. I wouldn' t save them.
This time, I would watch them burn.
And I would bring the gasoline. Stolen Youth, Reclaimed Destiny
Fantasy The roar of the crowd was the last thing I heard.
I died on a dirty city street, falsely accused, a monster in their eyes.
It all started with a gift for my 25th birthday-an antique smartwatch from Eleanor, my adoptive mother.
It wasn't just a heavy, ornate trinket; it was a life-drainer.
Weeks after I clasped it on, my vibrant youth withered, my hair thinned, my mind fogged.
As I became a frail old woman, Eleanor, terrified of aging, grew younger, radiant with my stolen vitality.
She locked me in the dusty attic, telling the world I' d had a breakdown.
My only hope, Bethany, my ex-boyfriend' s fiancé, found me.
She helped me escape, or so I thought.
She live-streamed my chaotic flight, twisting a narrative: I was a fraud, mentally unstable, stealing from Eleanor.
The crowd, incited by her online posts, saw a villain, not a victim.
They closed in, their rage contorting their faces.
Bethany watched, a triumphant smile on her face, as my life drained away for the second, and final, time.
But death was not the end.
Floating in a void, I saw Eleanor and Bethany toasting with champagne, celebrating my demise.
The injustice burned through me, a rage so pure it could tear the universe apart.
They had taken everything.
Then, I woke up.
Gasping for air, my skin smooth, my hair thick and dark-25 again.
It was my birthday, the day it all started.
This time, the watch wouldn' t be for me.
This time, I was going to offer the "life-drainer" to Bethany.
I would watch Eleanor and Bethany, two predators bound by vanity and greed, tear each other apart.
This time, I would not be the victim. A Mother's Reckoning
Billionaires The polo match shimmered with Hamptons elite, a cruel contrast to my jazz singer soul.
Julian, my husband, was, as always, obsessed with his "white moonlight," Scarlett Vance, and her daughter Penelope.
My twin sons, Leo and Noah, just five years old, were the only music in my gilded cage.
Then Penelope, Scarlett's daughter, had a medical crisis, aplastic anemia, needing a bone marrow transplant.
Julian' s words froze my blood: Leo and Noah, my babies, were perfect matches.
He ignored my pleas, dismissing their age, proclaiming them "useful to the family."
He ripped my sons from my arms, forcing them into a dangerous, excessive donation for Penelope, leaving them bleeding and feverish.
While my sons lay dying, he was at a gala celebrating Penelope' s "miraculous recovery."
He called my desperate calls for help "dramatic," then hung up.
With no drivers, no one to help, I scooped my fading boys into my arms, rushing into the pouring Manhattan rain.
I begged a public hospital for help, drenched in their blood, only to be met with news reports of Julian lighting up the Empire State Building in celebratory pink, and witnesses whispering, "Negligent mother."
Then the doctor came.
"They're gone."
My sons, my world, brutally taken by a cold, calculating man who saw them as a resource.
But Julian didn't know his mother, Eleanor Thorne, was about to expose the monstrous lie he' d sacrificed our children for.
He didn' t know this was just the beginning of my reckoning. 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. Burned by Poison, Saved by the Devil
Gale Kaaya My cousin Hailey paid a dock worker to assault me just to ruin my engagement.
To survive the military-grade aphrodisiac she poisoned me with, I stumbled into a walk-in freezer and threw myself onto the only source of cold I could find-a man paralyzed by unnatural hypothermia.
It was a desperate, primal exchange of my heat for his ice just to keep my heart from stopping.
But when Hailey threw open the heavy iron door, leading my fiancé and the entire Bolton family to witness my "shame," her triumphant grin instantly vanished.
She hadn't caught me with a low-life thug.
She had caught me straddling Demetrius Maddox, the ruthless Iron King of Chicago.
The air in the room dropped to absolute zero. My grandmother screamed in horror, and my father turned the color of ash.
Hailey, blinded by jealousy, tried to double down. She pointed a manicured finger at the deadliest man in the city and called him a "nameless muscle" I picked up to defile the family name.
She didn't realize she had just signed her own death warrant.
I didn't cower. I realized this was the only chance to survive the family that wanted me dead.
I walked up to the Devil himself, my body still humming with the poison, and looked him in the eye.
"Kill me, and the cold inside you wins," I whispered, knowing he was dying from the inverse of my own poison. "I am the only doctor who knows how to cure you."
Demetrius tightened his hand around my throat, his dark eyes assessing my worth.
"Prove it," he growled.
I turned back to my trembling cousin and signaled the enforcer to hand me the whip. 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." Betrayed, I Married the Feared Cripple
Hu Minxue Three days after my fiancé publicly dumped me for my stepsister, the Supreme Don issued a command that silenced the entire estate.
I wasn't being cast aside. I was being sold to Damien Russo.
The "Broken Don." A crippled, scarred monster rumored to have murdered his last two wives.
My adoptive mother, Elena, didn't cry for me. She smirked.
To her, I was finally being disposed of.
She was so confident I was walking to my death that she decided to loot my corpse before I even left.
She forged documents to steal my entire inheritance—my biological mother’s trust fund—to pay for my stepsister’s lavish wedding to my ex.
"She won't need money where she's going," my stepsister laughed, wearing a dress bought with my stolen funds.
They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter.
They thought I was too weak, too stupid, and too afraid of the monster to fight back.
But they made a fatal mistake.
With my aunt’s help, I didn't just find the proof of their embezzlement; I found a weapon.
I’m not running from the monster. I’m going to marry him.
And when I hand him the evidence that the Herrera family stole from his bride, he won't be my executioner.
He will be my vengeance. Reborn, I Wed the Untamed Playboy
Bone Possolo On my wedding day to Julian Moretti, the future Mafia Don, I was deliberately sent to the wrong penthouse.
My half-sister Sofia had crawled into my fiancé's bed, leaving me to be discovered by the family's exiled, alcoholic cousin.
In my past life, I was shattered by this orchestrated betrayal. I cried and begged when Julian publicly humiliated me, choosing his illegitimate mistress over his rightful bride.
I played the perfect, dignified Mafia wife for years. I swallowed his insults, ignored his infidelities, and accepted my ruined reputation to keep the peace.
But my blind obedience only paved the way for my murder. Julian discarded me, and I was poisoned to death so Sofia could steal my crown as the Mafia Queen.
Until my agonizing last breath, I didn't understand. I had honored our families' blood alliance flawlessly.
Why was I the sacrificial lamb while they were rewarded for their treason?
Opening my eyes again, I was back on the dark leather sofa, suffocating in my heavy silk wedding dress.
This time, I didn't shed a single tear.
I grabbed a heavy brass letter opener, marched straight into the Don's main study, and slapped the Underboss across the face in front of the entire family.
"A Valdez woman does not share her husband," I declared coldly. "To honor the alliance, I will marry Dante."
If they wanted to make my humiliation a fact, I was going to make it a funeral. My Cold Heart: Rejecting The Mafia Boss
Jia Zhong My husband, the Outfit’s most feared Consigliere, stood up and buttoned his suit jacket.
He had just convinced a jury that Sofia Moretti was innocent.
But we both knew the truth: Sofia had poisoned my mother over a spilled martini on her Valentino dress.
Instead of comforting me, Dante looked at me with cold, dead eyes.
"If you make a scene," he whispered, gripping my arm until it bruised, "I will bury you in a psychiatric ward so deep even God won't find you."
To protect the Family alliance, he sacrificed his wife.
When I tried to fight back, he drugged me at a gala.
He let a private investigator take photos of me, naked and unconscious, just to have leverage to keep me silent.
He paraded Sofia around our penthouse, letting her wear my dead mother’s shawl while I was banished to the staff quarters.
He thought he had broken me.
He thought I was just a nurse’s daughter he could manage.
But he made a fatal error.
He didn't read the "committal forms" I handed him to sign.
They were divorce papers, transferring his assets to me.
And the night of the yacht party, while he toasted to his victory with my mother's killer, I left my wedding ring on the deck.
I didn't jump to die.
I jumped to be reborn.
And when I resurfaced, I made sure Dante Russo burned for every sin. 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 Bastard Bride's Vow of Mafia Vengeance
Anywho My father arranged a marriage for my half-sister, Emmalee, with Don Damian Griffith, the ruthless "King of New York." But Emmalee, in love with a penniless lawyer, refused and, weeping, pointed at me, the illegitimate daughter, offering me as the sacrifice.
My stepmother packed cheap plastic pearls and copper chains, and my father coldly told me to "bleed quietly" if the Don decided to cut me.
"Don't think you've won, Isabell," Emmalee hissed, handing me a shimmering emerald gown, the signature color of the Don's volatile mistress-a clear death trap. Why did my own family want me dead?
As the armored car pulled away, I dumped the green silk, put on a dress of pure ivory, and fastened our family's stolen midnight-blue sapphires around my neck. They thought they were sending a lamb to the slaughter, but I was walking into the lion's den with a hidden blade.