Zhao Da
9 Published Stories
Zhao Da's Books and Stories
He Chose The Mistress, I Took Everything
Mafia On the night of our fifth anniversary, I wasn't drinking champagne. I was standing in the shadows of my husband's study, clutching an encrypted drive I found taped behind our wedding photo.
It contained the blueprints to a life Dante was building with another woman—Sofia Ricci, the daughter of our sworn enemy.
He wasn't just cheating on me. He was using the Port Redevelopment project I had spent two years designing to launder the money he needed to run away with her.
When I confronted him, Dante didn't beg for forgiveness. He looked at me with the cold indifference of a Capo and told me to fix my face for dinner.
The humiliation didn't stop there.
He forced me to share a car with his mistress while my ankle was swollen and throbbing from a fall. He fussed over Sofia’s "delicate" motion sickness while ignoring my pain completely.
"Elena is sturdy," he dismissed.
Sturdy. Like a mule. Like a table he owned.
He even stripped me of my rank, handing my multi-million dollar operation to Sofia simply because she had a "vision" for glass walls.
He thought I was just a compliant wife, a placeholder to keep his books clean while he played house with his true love.
He forgot that while he was the muscle, I was the architect.
So, at the Family Gala, wearing a backless revenge dress, I didn't just ask for a separation.
I threw a glass of champagne in his face and announced to the entire underworld that the accounts were empty.
I didn't just leave him. I took the encryption keys, the money, and his entire future with me. Torn Papers: My Bankrupt Military Husband
Romance Josie woke up gasping in a ransacked 1970s living room, trapped in the body of a notoriously vain, gold-digging wife.
The opulent Sterling family was officially bankrupt and politically dead.
The original host's grand plan was to use her unborn child to extort a massive divorce settlement from her terrifying military husband, Donovan.
But fragmented memories showed Josie the grim reality of that choice: she was destined to be conned, dying penniless and alone in a freezing gutter.
Now, Donovan stood towering before her, his dark eyes filled with absolute disgust.
He tossed a thick envelope of divorce papers onto the glass table.
"Sign them. You leave the child alone, and you walk away."
The ruined family watched with bated breath, fully expecting the spoiled socialite to take their last hidden funds and abandon them to a brutal exile in a Pennsylvania rust-belt factory town.
Josie knew the cold truth. A meager settlement couldn't protect a pregnant woman from DC's ruthless political vultures.
She refused to let that miserable, lonely death become her reality.
Staring directly into Donovan's hostile eyes, Josie picked up the heavy legal documents.
With a sharp, deliberate motion, she tore the divorce papers cleanly in half.
"I'm not getting an abortion, and I am staying as your wife."
She was going to rewrite this destiny, but before they boarded the train to the rust-belt, she had one last score to settle.
She would use her formidable husband to terrorize her hypocritical biological family and take back every penny they stole. His Unwanted Fiancé Is A Genius Heiress
Billionaires Karmen lived suffocating under a tight chest binder and a grotesque silicone scar, forced to disguise herself as her degenerate twin brother, Kem. Her only job was to maintain a fake corporate engagement with the ruthless billionaire Earl Calderon.
But her abusive father suddenly escalated his demands. He ordered her to steal Earl's revolutionary AI patents, threatening to cut off her mother's life-saving medical trust and abandon the real Kem in a locked Swiss psych ward if she failed.
The task was a death sentence. Earl absolutely despised "Kem." He treated her like a repulsive parasite, constantly threatening to break her neck. When he accidentally caught her without her wig, he mistook her for a deranged cross-dresser, forcing her to glue the dirty fake scar back onto her raw, inflamed face in sheer disgust. At home, her father hurled glass ashtrays at her, violently yanking her collar.
"Do whatever you have to do in that bedroom, Kem. I don't care how disgusting it is. Just get the signature."
Trapped between a fiancé who loathed her very existence and a father ready to sacrifice their family for greed, Karmen endured the agonizing physical pain of her disguise. She was exhausted, terrified, and running out of time as her brother's life hung by a thread.
But they all underestimated her. When the Calderon matriarch forced Earl to link his ultra-secure private phone with "Kem" to fake their romance, she unwittingly handed over the master key. Karmen wasn't just a helpless victim; she was the elite hacker Nyx, and she was going to tear their empire apart from the inside. His Starlight, Her Fiery Reckoning
Romance I was the secret lover of my CEO, Kristofer Gordon. He called me his "Starlight," and I, a brilliant but naive software engineer, believed him.
Then he publicly chose his fragile childhood friend, Elenor, revealing I was nothing more than a disposable secret.
The cruelty didn't stop there. He bought my late mother's necklace for Elenor, who taunted me by putting it on a stray dog. When I snapped and attacked her, Kristofer had me arrested and beaten in jail.
Lying in a hospital bed, I learned the final truth from a gloating Elenor: Kristofer had secretly filmed every intimate moment we ever shared, holding the tapes as blackmail.
He wanted to break me. He wanted me to suffer.
But the woman he thought he destroyed died that day. I walked out, set his mansion on fire, and disappeared.
This time, I would be the one in control. The Heiress You Threw Away
Romance "We' re done, Ava." Ethan' s words hit me like a physical blow, shattering the future we' d planned. He stood in the penthouse doorway, a stranger, offering me a bizarre payoff: the absurdly luxurious apartment, a sports car, and ten million dollars.
A "thank you for the past four years," he mumbled, avoiding my eyes, before dropping the bombshell: he was getting married, an arranged family alliance that had "nothing to do with me."
Just last night, he' d whispered my name with desperate passion in my small, cheap apartment, making love to me in what I thought was a new beginning. But this morning, he was gone, replaced by a lawyer, delivering "gifts" from "Mr. Hayes." My four years of love, reduced to a transaction.
He thought money could fix this, buy my silence. The irony was crushing. He called me a poor, smart girl, working my way through college on scholarships, having no clue his ten million was pocket change. He didn't know I was Ava Riley, the sole heir to Riley Tech.
Why would the Ethan I knew, the man who despised the arrogance of the rich, agree to a forced marriage? Something was terribly wrong. I stared at the keys in my hand, then at my phone. The heartbroken girl was gone.
"Noah," I said, my voice cold and steady. "I need you to find someone for me. Ethan Hayes. I want to know everything. Especially who he' s engaged to." Betrayed Bride, Vengeful Heart
Billionaires My wedding day. It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, standing side-by-side with my best friend, Sophia, marrying into the powerful Beaumont family.
But then, a scream cut through the music. Isabella Stone, a family friend, pointed a trembling finger at our fathers, accusing them of unspeakable acts.
Just minutes into our new lives, Liam and Ethan Beaumont, our new husbands, turned to monsters. They let their security beat our fathers mercilessly on the cold stone patio, ignoring our pleas, their faces devoid of the love we thought we shared. The sounds of fists hitting flesh, their grunts of pain – it was agonizing.
Then Isabella whispered to us, her voice filled with chilling glee, that our fathers were still alive when they were left to bleed out. Liam and Ethan had actively prevented the ambulance from reaching them, sealing their gruesome fate. My world shattered. My kind, gentle father, dead. All because of a monstrous lie.
In the sterile hospital waiting room, as Sophia and I grappled with the unspeakable truth that our fathers were truly gone, we overheard Liam and Ethan. Their every word dismissed our pain, their only concern being for Isabella, the architect of our devastation. It was then I knew: the love I thought was real was a delusion.
Grief turned to icy rage. A catering assistant, a terrified teenager, offered us a video, undeniable proof of Isabella' s calculated performance. The truth was finally within our grasp. It was time to fight back. Discarded After Thirty Years: His "True Love" Was A Lie
Billionaires I spent three decades by Marcus Thorne's side, his loyal companion, the quiet force behind his empire. My life was a gilded cage, filled with whispered promises and the subtle comfort of being cherished.
Then, at the annual gala, he shattered it all. On stage, he introduced "Isabelle Vance" as his "true love," casting me aside like forgotten debris. He ripped the silk gown he'd designed for me, a brutal symbol of his sudden, chilling contempt.
My fall was instant and brutal. From Thorne Tower's mistress, I became a servant, enduring Isabelle's sadistic whims and Marcus's cold indifference. They subjected me to "mental recalibration," a systematic torture designed to erase my very memories of affection, pushing me into the abyss of Thorne City's dreaded Rehabilitation Center and ultimately, Section Zero.
How could a man I gave 30 years of my life to so readily condemn me to hell? Was every memory a lie? The injustice burned, fueling a tiny, desperate flame within me even as they tried to break my spirit.
Just when all hope seemed lost, a defiant prisoner named Elias offered an unexpected escape. Now, as the truth about Marcus's manipulative "true love" finally shatters his world, he desperately seeks my forgiveness. But I am no longer the woman he discarded; my fight for freedom has truly begun, and this time, it's on my terms. The Blood Bank Bride
Romance For seven long years, I, Ava Chen, willingly served as a human blood bank for Chloe Vance, the sickly heiress beloved by Ethan Cole, the man I secretly adored.
My architectural dreams at Columbia were constantly sidelined, all for the unrequited hope that Ethan might one day see me.
When Chloe desperately needed a life-threatening bone marrow transplant, I demanded Ethan marry me to agree, but during my near-death flatline, his callous words echoed: "If Ava doesn't make it, so be it."
I jolted awake, not truly dead, yet Ethan's chilling indifference had irrevocably shattered my foolish, wasted devotion.
Later, I was brutally beaten by Chloe and her clique, left for dead, and even then, Ethan ordered my critically injured body to be 'drained' for Chloe's blood.
How could I have been so hopelessly deluded, so utterly blind to the callous man I loved, or the manipulative viper he protected?
The stinging reality of his cruel pragmatism, repeated over years, finally pierced through my heartbreak, leaving only incandescent rage.
In that moment of ultimate despair, a cold, unyielding resolve transformed me: no more sacrificing myself for them.
I would reclaim my life, starting with a daring, unexpected act that would ensure Ethan truly received what he deserved, marking my definitive escape from their toxic grasp and a new dawn for myself. 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.
From Jilted Bride To Mafia Empress
Xiao Wang For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne.
But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.”
My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love.
He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party." The Underboss's Wife, Now His Queen
Hydro Therapy 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. 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. His Healing Grace
Keena BLURB:
River never intended to be pulled into the dangerous world of the Mafia, but a single moment of bravery changes everything. In an attempt to save the man who fuels her wildest fantasies, she unwittingly steps into the path of Rico Swavey, the ruthless Mafia Lord with a dark, hidden past.
Rico has built his empire on control and secrecy, keeping his heart locked away. But when River, the doe-eyed woman who sparks something dangerous within him, stumbles into his life, his defenses begin to crumble. Haunted by a crime from his childhood, Rico struggles to accept love, especially from someone like River.
What happens when she becomes a stripper in his club?
Can River break through the walls around Rico's heart? And can Rico forgive himself for the sins of his past to embrace a future with her?
Dive into their world of passion, danger, and redemption in HIS HEALING GRACE.
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."