From Unwanted Ward To Unattainable Queen

I was the orphan Marcus Thorne took in. He was my guardian, my savior, and the man I foolishly fell in love with. But when he caught me sketching his portrait, he didn't see devotion. He saw a mess. He called my feelings "inappropriate" and told his fiancée I was just a "minor household issue" before shipping me off to Italy to get rid of me. He thought I would pine for him. Instead, I erased him. I blocked his number, deleted his photos, and sent him a check for every single cent he spent on me with two words: *Debt paid.* Three years later, Marcus showed up in Florence. He looked wrecked, desperate, and furious that his "property" had walked away. He tried to order me home. He tried to claim he finally loved me. He expected the girl who used to worship him to fall into his arms. But I looked at the man who broke my heart and felt absolutely nothing. "You don't love me, Marcus," I said, stepping back into the arms of a man who actually valued me. "You just hate losing." And for the first time, I watched him crumble while I walked away.

Chapters

Chapter 7

Ellie POV

The silence in the library was heavy, not just quiet, but suffocating.

Marcus's hand was burning through the fabric of my shirt. He held me fast, refusing to let go. His gaze was intense, searching, stripping away the layers of indifference I had carefully built over the last three years.

For a heartbeat, I felt a ghost of the old feeling. That desperate, pathetic yearning to be held by him. To be seen by him.

He leaned in. His head lowered toward mine until his breath mingled with my own. His eyes were half-closed, his expression softened into something that looked painfully like affection.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I was frozen, caught between the past and the present.

"I've missed..." he murmured, his voice rough, drunk on the proximity.

He brushed his lips against my forehead. It was tender. It was intimate. It was everything I had once prayed for.

Then he shattered it.

"Chloe."

The name crashed into me like a physical blow.

The world around me seemed to fracture.

He wasn't holding me. He was holding a placeholder. He was holding a warm body and projecting the woman he actually wanted onto me.

I wasn't Ellie to him. I wasn't even a person. I was just a vessel for his confused lust.

A wave of nausea rolled through me. I shoved him. I shoved him with every ounce of strength I had left.

"Get off me!" I gasped, stumbling back.

Marcus blinked, shaking his head as if waking from a trance. He looked at me, then at his empty hands, confusion clouding his features. "Ellie? I... I thought..."

"You thought I was her," I spat, wiping my forehead where his lips had touched as if it were burned. "You called me Chloe."

His face paled. "No. I didn't. You're hearing things."

"I heard you," I said, my voice shaking with rage and humiliation. "You are sick, Marcus."

"Marcus?"

A sharp voice cut from the hallway.

We both turned. Chloe was standing there. She was wearing a pristine white dress, looking every inch the perfect fiancée. Her eyes darted from Marcus's flushed face to my disheveled hair.

She didn't look surprised. She looked triumphant.

"Well," she said, walking into the room, her heels clicking ominously on the hardwood floor. "I leave for an hour to handle the florists, and I come back to this."

"Nothing happened," Marcus said quickly, stepping away from me as if I were contagious. He smoothed his shirt, composing himself into the cold CEO again. "Ellie fell. I caught her."

"Of course she fell," Chloe said, her voice dripping with poison. She stopped in front of me, looking me up and down with a sneer. "She's always been clumsy, hasn't she? Always falling into places she doesn't belong."

I straightened my spine. "I'm leaving."

"Not yet," another voice boomed.

Richard and Eleanor Thorne, Marcus's parents, walked in behind Chloe. They must have arrived for the wedding preparations. They looked at me like I was a stain on their antique Persian rug.

"We saw that," Eleanor said, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "Throwing yourself at him in his own study? Have you no shame, girl?"

"He grabbed me," I said, my voice tight.

"Lies," Richard scoffed. "We know how you looked at him growing up. It was pathetic then, and it's repulsive now."

I looked at Marcus. I waited for him to defend me. I waited for him to tell the truth.

He looked at the floor.

He said nothing.

He stood there and let them tear me apart. He let them paint me as the seductress, the ungrateful ward, the problem.

Chloe wrapped her arm around Marcus's bicep, staking her claim. "You should go, Ellie. Before you embarrass yourself further. If you stay, I'll make sure everyone in this town knows exactly what kind of girl you are."

I looked at them. The united front. The Thorne family and their perfect bride.

I felt something inside me snap. It wasn't my heart. It was the last tether binding me to this place.

"You're right," I said softly. "I don't belong here."

I grabbed the locket from the shelf where I had dropped it. I clenched it in my fist until the metal bit into my palm.

"I'm going to my room to get my bag," I said. "And then you will never see me again."

I walked past them. I didn't run. I didn't cry.

But as I climbed the stairs, my vision blurred. The tears were hot and silent, sliding down my face not because I lost him, but because I realized I had never, ever had him.

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Cierra Monroe never meant to steal her mother's life. One veil. One signature. One wedding meant to save her family....But lies spoken at an altar don't disappear. Dominic Vance remembers the girl who stood beside him. The way she trembled. The way her eyes lingered. And when the truth comes out, he doesn't let her go. What starts as a secret turns into obsession. What feels like protection becomes control. And love quickly turns violent. Cierra is hunted, locked away, and forced to choose between men who all want her for different reasons. Her boyfriend fights for her freedom. Her protector betrays her trust. And her stepfather decides she belongs to him. Blood is spilled. Guns are raised. Promises are broken. And Cierra learns too late that some vows never end... even when they were never meant to be real. Because not all that glitters is gold. Sometimes... all that glitters is my stepdad.

Mafia Modern Romance

8.7

Destino o casualidad

8.7

In a world where power and blood dictate every move, a chance encounter disrupts the rigid hierarchy of the criminal underworld. This modern mafia romance follows two souls caught between the loyalty they owe their families and the undeniable pull of a forbidden connection. As dangerous secrets emerge and rivalries ignite, they must decide if their meeting was a stroke of luck or a predetermined fate that could lead to their ultimate ruin.

Mafia Modern Romance

8.7

Escaping The Ruthless Don's Golden Cage

8.7

I stood at the gala, draped in diamonds worth millions, playing the role of the perfect Mafia wife. But the illusion shattered when his mistress walked in wearing a necklace identical to mine—a cattle brand dipped in gold. When I confronted them, Liam didn't defend me. He shoved me aside to protect her. I hit the floor, and as my blood soaked into the white stage, I realized he had killed our unborn child. But the nightmare didn't end there. I woke up to find that Liam had ordered me sedated to "manage my hysteria." The complications from his control and the trauma had forced an emergency hysterectomy. He hadn't just killed his heir; he had stolen my future. Yet, he still tried to lock me in his estate, convinced he could force me to love him again if he just kept me hidden long enough. He thought I was broken. He thought I was his property. He was wrong. With the help of a doctor who had loved me from the shadows for years, I faked my death and vanished. Six months later, the great Don found me in a small-town bookstore, falling to his knees to beg for a second chance. I looked at the man who destroyed me and handed him a single dollar bill. "Loyalty is the only currency, Liam," I said, quoting his own vow back to him. "And you are bankrupt."

Action Mafia Romance

8.0

Pregnant And Running From The Mafia Don

8.0

For five years, my husband kept me in a dog cage because he believed I murdered his fiancée, my stepsister Kinsley. He stripped me of my dignity, my name, and my humanity, all to avenge a woman who wasn't even dead. When Kinsley finally returned, alive and smiling, I thought my nightmare was over. Instead, she framed me again. Right in front of Courtland, she pushed my little brother down the stone steps of the estate. I held my brother's broken body in the rain, screaming for help. But Courtland just stood there, shielding Kinsley under his umbrella, looking at me with cold indifference. He chose the monster over his wife. That night, I realized love wasn't enough to save me. So, I stood on the edge of the hospital roof and let gravity take me. I wanted him to mourn. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to burn. Three years later, at a gala in New York, the Ice King dropped his champagne glass. He stared at me—the woman in the red dress, the fiancée of his rival. I looked him dead in the eye and smiled like a stranger. He cornered me later, his voice trembling with rage and obsession. "Death is the only divorce in my world, Anastasia. And you are still very much alive."

Mafia Modern Romance

8.8

Reborn Heiress: Claimed By The Dark Don

8.8

I spent three years hating Damien Castillo, the ruthless mafia Don who kidnapped me from my engagement party and ruined my reputation. But in the end, it was my perfect fiancé, Julian, and my sweet half-sister, Sophia, who slipped the deadly poison into my wine. As the venom burned through my veins in that freezing cellar, I watched Julian smile. He and Sophia had orchestrated my brutal death. She had been sleeping in his bed all along, intentionally miscarrying his bastard child just to frame me as 'impure' and strip me of my family's protection. My own father used me as a political pawn, letting them throw me away like garbage. And Damien? The monster I had fought and despised for years marched straight into a suicide ambush for me. He was riddled with bullets, turning his body into a human shield just to buy me a few more seconds of life. "Touch her and you die." I died in that blood-soaked basement, clutching his lifeless body, suffocating on my own blind trust. Why did I ever believe the golden boy who betrayed me? Why did I fight the only man who truly loved me? Opening my eyes again, the stench of copper and mold was gone, replaced by the scent of Cuban cigars and black silk. I was back in 1928, on the exact night Damien stormed my engagement party and locked me in his penthouse. This time, when the ruthless Don approached me, I didn't scream or run back to my killers. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him.

Action Billionaire Mafia

8.3

The Jilted Mafia Heiress Takes It All

8.3

I stood at the altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the daughter of New York’s most feared Don, ready to lower myself to marry a common soldier. Then, a toddler in the front pew shrieked, "Daddy." Liam didn't squeeze my hand for reassurance. He dropped it like it was a branding iron. In front of five hundred of the criminal elite, he ran down the aisle, scooping up his secret child and the mistress who had been blackmailing him. He left me standing there, humiliated and alone. Three months later, the "Jilted Princess" title still clung to me. Yet, Liam had the audacity to bring her to my father's birthday gala. Sarah, wearing a dress far too tight and a smug smile, cornered me in the middle of the ballroom. She wanted to twist the knife. "He hates you, you know," she screamed, loud enough for the Dons and Capos to hear. "He says sleeping with you was like sleeping with a statue. He chose real love! He chose a family!" The room went deathly silent. Liam looked at me with pity, thinking he had won. He thought I was broken. He thought I was alone. I took a slow sip of my champagne and set the glass down. "I am not alone, Sarah," I said calmly. I turned toward the shadows near the entrance. "Ethan?" I called out. The crowd parted instantly for the scarred, lethal man who stepped forward—The Ghost of Chicago, the most feared Underboss in Europe. He walked over and wrapped a heavy, possessive arm around my waist. "I’d like you to meet my husband," I told a horrified Liam. "And our daughter is waiting upstairs."

Billionaire Mafia Modern

From Unwanted Ward To Unattainable Queen

Chapter 7

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