The Syndicate's Ghost: Don's Forgotten Queen

The Syndicate's Ghost: Don's Forgotten Queen

Xiao Ye

5.0
Comment(s)
3.1K
View
16
Chapters

For four years, I was the grieving wife of a mafia Don, drowning in the memory of our dead son. My husband, Eli, held me through it all. But a trip to the records office on the anniversary of our son's death revealed a devastating truth. He had another son. A secret family. Worse, I discovered he was with his mistress the day our son died, having dismissed the security that could have saved him. He let me believe it was my fault. When I tried to leave, he brought his mistress and their son into our home, framing me as a madwoman. His mother accused me of hurting the boy, and Eli punished me by locking me in a dark, flooding room-a cruel echo of our son's drowning. To "cure" his new heir of my son's "ghost," they had my baby's grave dug up. On a yacht, Eli held me down as his mistress emptied the ashes into the ocean. Then they left me to die in the water. When I washed ashore, his mistress was waiting to deliver the final, soul-crushing blow. She hadn't scattered the ashes. She'd flushed them down a toilet. I didn't want to escape him. I wanted to erase him. I found a neuroscientist with an experimental procedure and made my request: wipe the last ten years. I didn't want to leave my husband; I wanted to make it so he never existed at all.

The Syndicate's Ghost: Don's Forgotten Queen Chapter 1

For four years, I was the grieving wife of a mafia Don, drowning in the memory of our dead son. My husband, Eli, held me through it all. But a trip to the records office on the anniversary of our son's death revealed a devastating truth.

He had another son. A secret family. Worse, I discovered he was with his mistress the day our son died, having dismissed the security that could have saved him. He let me believe it was my fault.

When I tried to leave, he brought his mistress and their son into our home, framing me as a madwoman. His mother accused me of hurting the boy, and Eli punished me by locking me in a dark, flooding room-a cruel echo of our son's drowning.

To "cure" his new heir of my son's "ghost," they had my baby's grave dug up. On a yacht, Eli held me down as his mistress emptied the ashes into the ocean.

Then they left me to die in the water. When I washed ashore, his mistress was waiting to deliver the final, soul-crushing blow. She hadn't scattered the ashes. She'd flushed them down a toilet.

I didn't want to escape him. I wanted to erase him. I found a neuroscientist with an experimental procedure and made my request: wipe the last ten years. I didn't want to leave my husband; I wanted to make it so he never existed at all.

Chapter 1

Harper's POV:

The day I went to collect a copy of my dead son's death certificate was the day I discovered my husband had another child.

Four years. Four years I had spent drowning in a grief so deep I'd forgotten the very rhythm of my own breath. Four years since I had held my son, Leo.

The trip to the city records office was a ritual, a quiet flagellation I performed every year on the anniversary of his death. The fluorescent lights of the government building hummed-a flat, sterile sound that was the soundtrack to the emptiness inside me.

I slid the request form across the counter to the clerk, a woman with tired eyes and a name tag that simply read 'Brenda'.

She typed my name, then my husband's.

Eli Stark.

Just the name held weight. It silenced rooms. It was a name built on the bones of his enemies, the architect of a criminal empire that stretched across New York, hidden beneath a veneer of legitimate businesses. To the world, he was a titan of industry. To those who knew, he was the Don of the Stark Organization. To me, he was just... Eli. The man who had promised to shield me from his world, the grieving father who held me as I shattered.

Brenda's brow furrowed. "Stark... right. I see him here." She tapped a key. "Okay, so you need a copy of the certificate for Leo Stark. I can do that. But the system is asking if you want a copy for the other dependent as well. Save you another trip."

Ice water didn't just enter my veins; it sloshed, cold and sickening. "Other... dependent?"

She stared at her screen, oblivious. "Yeah. Says here Eli Stark has another child listed. A boy. Cody Sharpe."

Sharpe.

The name wasn't just a name. It was a ghost that had haunted the edges of my life for a decade. Kasey Sharpe. The woman who had tried to crash my wedding, her eyes burning with a desperate hunger as she watched Eli. The woman who always seemed to be there, a shadow in the background of galas and parties, her smile too bright, too sharp.

My phone buzzed in my purse. A text from Eli.

Thinking of you, my love. I know today is hard.

The hypocrisy was so profound a strangled, broken laugh caught in my throat. I snatched the printout from Brenda's hand without another word and moved toward the exit, my legs stiff as stone, my heart a block of ice in my chest.

The address for Kasey Sharpe was on the record. A brownstone in a nice neighborhood. A neighborhood Eli's money had undoubtedly bought.

I parked across the street, my hands shaking on the steering wheel. And then I saw him.

Eli. My Eli. The Don. He was on the front stoop, laughing. He swung a little boy into the air, the child's giggles echoing in the quiet street. Kasey stood in the doorway, her hand resting on Eli's arm, looking at him with an adoration I once thought was mine alone. A perfect little family.

My family was a tomb.

I sank lower in my seat, a spy in my own life. The windows were open to the mild afternoon air. Their voices drifted.

"You have to be more careful, Eli," Kasey was saying, her voice a low purr. "She's more fragile than ever today."

"I know," he said, his voice the same deep timbre that used to soothe me to sleep.

"I still can't believe it worked," Kasey whispered, moving closer to him. "That business trip excuse. You, dismissing your best soldiers, my god. All to spend the afternoon with me."

Time stopped.

That business trip excuse. The day Leo died. Eli was supposed to be in a meeting. He'd told me he was closing a deal, that he needed his top men with him. He had dismissed the security detail at our lake house. He said it was for privacy. A quiet family weekend.

But he wasn't on a business call. He was with her.

Our son, the heir to the Stark empire, had wandered off while I was inside for five minutes. He had slipped into the water. If the guards had been there... if Eli had been there...

He let me believe it was my fault. For four years, he let me wear that guilt like a shroud, holding me while I cried, telling me we would get through it together. He watched me die inside, day after day, all while he was building a new life with her.

My grief wasn't a shared burden. It was my prison. And he was the warden.

I drove to the cemetery, the world a blur of green and gray. I knelt at Leo's grave, the small headstone cold beneath my trembling fingers.

Leo Stark. Beloved Son.

The love I had for Eli, the all-consuming devotion that had defined my adult life, didn't just fade. It curdled. It twisted into something cold, solid, and sharp-a diamond of pure, perfect hatred.

My phone rang again. Not Eli this time. The screen read: Dr. Casey Long.

My old mentor. A man from another life, a life of science and labs and quantifiable facts. A life before the Starks.

I answered, my voice a raw, broken thing.

"Casey?"

"Harper? I... I was just calling to see how you were. I know what day it is."

Tears I didn't know I had left began to fall. Tears not of grief, but of pure rage.

"I need it," I choked out, the words tearing from my soul. "The procedure. The experimental one you told me about."

A pause on the other end of the line. "Harper, we're not there yet. It's not ready."

"I don't care," I whispered, my eyes fixed on my son's name carved in stone. "I want to forget. I want to forget everything."

Continue Reading

Other books by Xiao Ye

More
The Husband Who Broke Me

The Husband Who Broke Me

Romance

5.0

Liam once bought me an island and filled a gallery with my art, showering me with a love so grand it felt like magic, a devotion I mistook for safety. Then, one Tuesday, it shattered. "Chloe is pregnant," he stated, his adopted sister, the one who called me 'sis,' and the child was supposedly his. I watched, numb and disbelieving, as he dismissed my pleas, his eyes cold as ice, twisting reality to protect her reputation above all else-our marriage, our family, even our infant son, Leo. His twisted logic knew no bounds; he forced me into an impossible lie, threatening to destroy me if I refused, transforming our home into a gilded cage where I was trapped, a hostage to his obsession. The nightmare deepened when Chloe, in a sickening act, diluted Leo's life-saving medicine, causing his death; yet, Liam, blinded by his loyalty to her, believed her teary lies over my anguished truth, leaving me utterly alone in my grief. As if that wasn't enough, she desecrated Leo's ashes with cat litter, and Liam, with terrifying calm, forced me to clean the vile mixture with my bare hands, shattering what little spirit I had left. The final insult came at a charity gala: Liam, to satisfy Chloe's cruel whim, forced me-severely allergic-to eat shrimp, causing me to collapse as he publicly announced Chloe's fake pregnancy, erasing my existence. His betrayal led to my brutal assault by his enemies, orchestrated by Chloe, where Leo's ashes were scattered, and in utter despair, I consumed the last dose of an experimental amnesiac, praying for oblivion. Three years later, I am Anya, a flower shop owner in France, my past a blank slate, living a peaceful life with Ben, the kind doctor who has grown to love me. But the past is not done with me yet. Liam arrives, a ghost of his former self, consumed by a desperate need for redemption, unraveling the fragile peace I've built and dragging me back to a history of trauma, betrayal, and a dead child I cannot remember, yet feel with every fibra of my being.

Reborn To Ruin: The Jilted Heiress's Revenge

Reborn To Ruin: The Jilted Heiress's Revenge

Modern

5.0

I lay on a mildewed mattress in a run-down motel, my body trembling from withdrawal. Once the most feared "Gossip Queen" in Hollywood, I was now a forty-three-year-old ghost staring at a cracked mirror, waiting for the end. The door clicked open, and Brittany Potts stepped in, looking immaculate in a beige trench coat that cost more than my life. She didn't come to help; she tossed a waiver of marital assets onto my bed and handed me a cup of coffee laced with something that smelled like bitter almonds. She laughed, telling me my husband, Bennet, was already in the Bahamas celebrating my death. I froze when I saw the sapphire pendant around her neck—my mother’s necklace, which had vanished the day she died. As the poison began to burn through my chest, Brittany leaned in and whispered her final secret: she was the one who cut the brake lines on the car that killed my father when we were teenagers. My entire life had been a lie. The pills, the scandal, the bankruptcy—it was all a masterpiece of betrayal orchestrated by the two people I trusted most. I died on that filthy floor, suffocating on my own rage and the taste of chemicals, praying for a single chance to make them pay. But when I opened my eyes, the pain was gone. I was sitting in my old bedroom, the morning sun shining on a calendar that read September 15, 2024. My mother’s voice, warm and alive, called me for breakfast from downstairs. I was eighteen again, back in my senior year at Crestview Academy, and the monsters who destroyed me were still pretending to be my friends. This time, I’m the one who holds the shears.

The Prank That Shattered Love

The Prank That Shattered Love

Romance

5.0

The world came back in a rush of white. White ceiling, white sheets, the sterile smell of antiseptic. My head throbbed. I was in a hospital. My fiancé, Cameron, rushed to my bedside, his face creased with worry. I decided to play a prank, pretending I had amnesia. "Who... who are you?" I whispered. His relief evaporated, replaced by a calculating look. He showed me a picture of another woman, Hannah Nichols, an intern at his family's company. "She's the woman I love," he said, his voice flat. "But you and I are getting married. Our families have an agreement. A business merger. It's too important to fail." My mind reeled. The man I loved was telling me our entire relationship was a lie. I felt a surge of fury. "Then call it off," I snapped. He grabbed my wrist, panic in his eyes. "If this merger falls through, my family is ruined. Hannah... she's very fragile. The stress would destroy her." My life, my love, my future-it was all just collateral damage in his pathetic, selfish drama. I was nothing more than a business deal. The witty, proud Alicia England, heiress to a tech empire, reduced to a bargaining chip. Later, I heard him on the phone, his voice soft and tender. "Don't worry, Hannah. It's all under control. She has amnesia. She doesn't remember a thing. Love me? Of course, she loves me. She's been obsessed with me since we were kids. It' s almost pathetic." My heart shattered. He thought I was a broken, forgetful fool he could manipulate. He was about to find out how wrong he was.

You'll also like

Sexy Behind The Mask

Sexy Behind The Mask

Ellie Wynters
4.5

She hides behind ugly suits and fake names. He's done trusting women. When they meet in a masked sex club, neither realizes they've been fighting each other across boardroom tables for eighteen months. At Taylor Industries, she's Joy Smith-the frumpy CFO who drowns her curves in shapeless polyester and wearing a wig. At home, she's the forgotten wife of a cheating lawyer who hasn't touched her in so long she's starting to wonder if she's broken. When she finds hot pink lace panties stuffed in her couch cushions...definitely not hers, it's not heartbreak she feels. It's freedom. Grayson Taylor doesn't do relationships anymore. Not after walking in on his actress fiancée with another woman. Now he channels everything into hostile takeovers and board meetings, especially the ones where his overcautious CFO fights him on every goddamn acquisition. Joy Smith is brilliant, infuriating, and funny when he pushes all her buttons. But Honey is tired of being invisible. Tired of never having felt real pleasure. So, when her best friend gives her the details of The Velvet Room-Manhattan's most exclusive masked club-she promises herself just one night. One night to find out if her husband's right, if she really is frigid, or if she's just never been touched by the right hands. She doesn't expect the masked stranger who claims her the second she walks in. Doesn't expect the chemistry that ignites between them, the way he makes her body sing, or the orgasms that leave her shaking. Doesn't expect him to hand her an email address with one command: "Only me. No one else touches you."

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
The Syndicate's Ghost: Don's Forgotten Queen The Syndicate's Ghost: Don's Forgotten Queen Xiao Ye Mafia
“For four years, I was the grieving wife of a mafia Don, drowning in the memory of our dead son. My husband, Eli, held me through it all. But a trip to the records office on the anniversary of our son's death revealed a devastating truth. He had another son. A secret family. Worse, I discovered he was with his mistress the day our son died, having dismissed the security that could have saved him. He let me believe it was my fault. When I tried to leave, he brought his mistress and their son into our home, framing me as a madwoman. His mother accused me of hurting the boy, and Eli punished me by locking me in a dark, flooding room-a cruel echo of our son's drowning. To "cure" his new heir of my son's "ghost," they had my baby's grave dug up. On a yacht, Eli held me down as his mistress emptied the ashes into the ocean. Then they left me to die in the water. When I washed ashore, his mistress was waiting to deliver the final, soul-crushing blow. She hadn't scattered the ashes. She'd flushed them down a toilet. I didn't want to escape him. I wanted to erase him. I found a neuroscientist with an experimental procedure and made my request: wipe the last ten years. I didn't want to leave my husband; I wanted to make it so he never existed at all.”
1

Chapter 1

22/10/2025

2

Chapter 2

22/10/2025

3

Chapter 3

22/10/2025

4

Chapter 4

22/10/2025

5

Chapter 5

22/10/2025

6

Chapter 6

22/10/2025

7

Chapter 7

22/10/2025

8

Chapter 8

22/10/2025

9

Chapter 9

22/10/2025

10

Chapter 10

22/10/2025

11

Chapter 11

22/10/2025

12

Chapter 12

22/10/2025

13

Chapter 13

22/10/2025

14

Chapter 14

22/10/2025

15

Chapter 15

22/10/2025

16

Chapter 16

22/10/2025