My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret

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.

Chapters

Chapter 4

Faye Hartman POV

The drive to the Lakefront Estate was a funeral procession in motion. Rain lashed against the tinted windows of the armored sedan, blurring the Chicago skyline into streaks of gray and gold, but inside, the air was stagnant, thick with the scent of expensive leather and Joshua's nervous sweat.

In the privacy of the partition that separated us from the driver, Joshua's composure finally cracked. His hand shot out, fingers clamping around my wrist like a vice.

"You're hurting me," I whispered, trying to pull away, but his grip only tightened.

"Listen to me, Faye," he hissed, his face pale in the passing streetlights. "When we walk through those doors, you smile. You nod. You play the part of the devoted Caldwell wife. Do not give me that look—that look like you're walking to the gallows."

"I'm trying," I said, my voice trembling.

"Try harder," he snapped, releasing me with a shove. He adjusted his cuffs, his hands shaking. "Anthony... he isn't like us. He sees everything. He smells weakness. He smells lies like a shark smells blood in the water."

He didn't finish the threat, but the terror in his eyes was enough. It wasn't me he was going to hurt; he was afraid of what he would suffer.

The car crunched over gravel and came to a halt. The Lakefront Estate loomed out of the darkness, a Tudor-style fortress of stone and shadow, guarded by men with assault rifles slung over their chests.

We were ushered into the Great Hall. It was a cavernous space, the black-and-white marble floor reflecting the light of a massive crystal chandelier. The room was filled with the murmur of Capos and Soldiers, the air heavy with cigar smoke and the sharp tang of whiskey. But the moment we stepped further in, the noise died.

Silence swept through the room like a cold wind.

At the top of the grand mahogany staircase, a man appeared.

He didn't walk; he descended with the predatory grace of a panther stalking its territory. He wore a black suit tailored to perfection, emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders. His hair was dark, swept back, revealing a face that was devastatingly handsome but marred by a faint, jagged scar cutting through his left eyebrow.

My breath hitched, lodging painfully in my throat.

Those eyes. Storm-gray. Cold. Dangerous.

The world tilted on its axis. My stomach lurched violently, bile rising to burn my throat.

It was him.

The stranger from the penthouse. The man with the scars on his back. The man I had thrown three hundred dollars at before fleeing into the night.

I had slept with Anthony Caldwell. The Don. My husband's brother.

I wanted to run. I wanted to vomit. But my feet were rooted to the marble as he reached the bottom of the stairs. The crowd parted for him like the Red Sea, heads bowing in deference.

Joshua stepped forward, a plastic smile plastered on his face. "Anthony. Welcome home. It's been too long."

Anthony stopped a few feet from us. He didn't smile. He didn't even look at Joshua's extended hand. His gaze swept over his brother with chilling indifference.

"The books for The Onyx Club are a disaster, Joshua," Anthony said. His voice was a deep baritone, smooth but carrying the weight of a judge's gavel. "Sloppy. Inconsistent."

Joshua's smile faltered. "I—I can explain. The transition has been—"

"Incompetence needs no explanation," Anthony cut him off, his eyes bored. "Shut your mouth. I'll deal with you later."

Joshua shrank back, humiliated in front of the entire hierarchy of the Chicago Outfit. He looked like a kicked puppy, stripped of all dignity. Desperate to deflect the attention, he grabbed my elbow and pulled me forward, using me as a human shield.

"You haven't met Faye," Joshua stammered, his voice high and thin. "My wife."

I forced myself to look up, meeting the gaze of the monster I had unknowingly bedded. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I extended a trembling hand, adhering to the social script because it was the only thing keeping me from screaming.

"It's a pleasure, Don Caldwell," I managed to choke out.

Anthony looked down at my hand. He didn't take it. He let it hang there in the empty air, a public rejection that sent a ripple of unease through the room.

"I don't shake hands," he said simply.

Heat flooded my cheeks. I slowly lowered my hand, humiliated, feeling the weight of a hundred eyes on me. Joshua shifted uncomfortably beside me, but he didn't dare speak.

Anthony took a step closer, invading my personal space. He towered over me, his scent—rain, expensive cologne, and danger—enveloping me, triggering a visceral memory of his skin against mine.

He tilted his head, his eyes locking onto the modest pearl earrings I had swapped for the diamonds.

"Lovely pearls," he murmured, his voice dropping so low that only I could hear him over the ambient noise of the room returning to life.

He leaned in, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, a lover's proximity for an executioner's message.

"You owe me three hundred dollars."

My blood turned to ice. He pulled back, his face an impassive mask, leaving me standing in the wreckage of my life, knowing that the most dangerous man in the city held my darkest secret in his hands.

Continue to next part

I was the Alpha’s Fated Mate, but to Jacob, I was nothing more than a tool to soothe his rage with my piano music. He paraded Kassandra around as his true love, treating me like a servant in my own home. When Rogues attacked our territory, Jacob had to make a split-second choice. He chose to save Kassandra, believing her lie that she was pregnant with his heir. While he protected her, Kassandra looked me in the eye and stomped on my hand—crushing the bones and destroying my ability to play the music that kept the pack sane. I left the pack that night, broken and alone. It took Jacob weeks to discover the truth. Kassandra was never pregnant; she had been taking birth control for years and stealing millions from the pack treasury. Realizing he had sacrificed his true mate for a liar, Jacob destroyed Kassandra and came crawling back to me. He found me in Vienna, healed and rising as the powerful White Wolf Luna. He knelt in the dirt, slicing his own arm with a silver blade, begging for a chance to bleed for me the way I had bled for him. He offered me his Alpha title, his fortune, and his life. I looked at the man who had once been my entire world and felt nothing but a cold, hollow silence. "I don't hate you, Jacob," I said, turning to the man who truly loved me. "I just don't care."

Mafia Romance Werewolf

9.0

From Unwanted Wife To Unreachable Queen

9.0

The day my guardian, Dante Moretti, announced his engagement was the day I started planning my death. Not a literal one, but the death of the girl who had orbited his world for ten years. He was the Don of the Moretti family, the man I'd secretly loved since I was a child. But with his new fiancée, Sofia, on his arm, he began to erase me. He even forgot my severe allergy, gifting me a watch that would blister my skin. He had ripped apart the diary where I confessed my love for him. "I am your guardian," he'd spat. "Do not ever cross that line again." Yet one night, drunk and stumbling, he crashed his mouth onto mine, his hands roaming my body as he pushed me against the wall. He groaned, but the name that escaped his lips wasn't mine. "Sofia..." When I screamed my own name—Elara—he shoved me away in horror. He wasn't horrified by his betrayal, but by the fact that he'd kissed the wrong woman. That was the final straw. I took the acceptance letter to a university in Toronto that I had kept hidden like a prayer. I called my estranged father and booked a one-way ticket. This time, I would burn my old life to the ground and leave nothing but ashes behind.

Mafia Modern Romance

7.1

His Mafia Queen, My Substitute Heart

7.1

My perfect marriage to Don Dante Moretti, the most powerful man in the New York mob, ended the moment my father died. I was twenty-four, pregnant with his heir, and I believed I was his queen. But for two days, while I planned a funeral alone, my husband was unreachable. Then a friend sent me a photo. Dante in London, his hand tangled in the hair of the woman beside him. It was my cousin, Valentina. He came home with lies about a dead phone and a difficult summit. That night, I found his private journal, and my world disintegrated. He had married me because I had "Valentina’s eyes." I was a substitute. Our unborn child wasn't a product of love. It was a project. A girl he planned to name Elena, after Valentina, calling her a "perfect, tiny piece of the woman I can never truly possess." I wasn't his wife. I was a stand-in. The love I felt for him didn't just die. It was murdered. The next morning, I slid a folder across the kitchen island. "Donation forms," I said. He didn't even look before scrawling his signature on what were actually our finalized divorce papers. His arrogance was my weapon. As he slept beside me that night, smelling of lies and my cousin, I made an appointment at a private clinic. He wanted a legacy? I would give him nothing.

Mafia Modern Romance

9.0

Protected By The Enforcer: My Ex-Husband's Regret

9.0

The rejection letter from the private security school arrived on a Tuesday. It stated clearly that the single slot allocated to my son, Danny, had been filled by another boy. My husband, a high-ranking Capo, had signed away our son’s protection to make room for his mistress’s bastard. He sneered at me, calling Danny "soft," and sent him to an unguarded cabin in the north to toughen up. Three days later, the Russians took him. When the courier arrived, there was no ransom demand. Just a package containing a shred of blue cotton with a green T-Rex, soaked in black, stiff blood. Tom didn't shed a tear. He poured a scotch, stepped over me as I wept on the floor, and blamed me for coddling the boy. Overwhelmed by the silence of a house that would never hear my son's laughter again, I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills to escape the pain. But the darkness didn't last. I woke up gasping, my heart hammering against my ribs. Sunlight hit my face. "Mommy?" Danny stood in the doorway, wearing his dinosaur pajamas, whole and alive. I looked at the calendar. It was May 15th. The day the letter arrived. The grief in my chest calcified into cold rage. I knew about the skimming. I knew about the fake widow status. I knew exactly how to bury my husband. I picked up the phone and dialed the one number no wife was ever supposed to call directly—the Enforcer. "I have evidence of treason," I said. "And I'm bringing the proof."

Mafia Modern Romance

8.4

Reborn: The Mafia Captive Wife's Revenge

8.4

Eleven years ago, Damien Falcone pulled me from the freezing waters, and I thought I was marrying my savior. Instead, he orchestrated my absolute ruin by forging evidence to frame me for selling a vital mafia bootlegging route to the FBI. Under the guise of saving me from the family's brutal death sentence, he stripped away my future as his Mafia Queen. He dragged me to New York and locked me in a gilded penthouse cage. For eleven years, I rotted away as his secret prisoner until my failing body finally gave out. As I collapsed in the freezing New York snow, he caught me, his hands trembling as he held my dying body against his chest. "No, Fia, stay with me. I did it to keep you alive. I had to—" I didn't want to hear his monstrous lies anymore. I had given him all my love, and he repaid me with a tomb. Loving him was the only unforgivable sin I ever committed. "I pray... we never meet again." When the howling wind faded, I opened my eyes to the heavy stench of rust and lake water. I wasn't dead. I was back in the cramped cabin of a cargo freighter, exactly sixteen years old again. It was the very night my jealous cousin sent an assassin to carve up my face and void my marriage to the Falcone family. This time, I quietly gripped the heavy oak slat under my mattress.

Action Mafia Modern

7.9

The Love I Don't Deserve

7.9

My name is Vivian Nelson, and I am raising my son on my own. Life has knocked me down more times than I can count, yet I still cling to hope because my child is everything to me, even while his illness threatens to take him away. The surgery costs more money than I could ever hope to save, but walking away was never an option. When my world felt like it was closing in, I forced myself to ask my boss, Carlos Rogers, for help. I never expected his answer. He was willing to support me, but his help came with a condition I never imagined. Left with nowhere else to turn, I agreed to Carlos's proposal. I had no idea how I would look my son in the eye later on, but life has never been kind or easy to me, and I have learned that survival often demands painful choices. Luck finally showed me some mercy when the surgery succeeded, and my precious boy slowly began to heal. Carlos carries himself with confidence and authority, while I have always believed I am not worthy of love. Because of that, I assumed our connection would stay strictly professional. He, however, does not see things the same way, and little by little, he finds his way past my defenses and into my heart.

Action Mafia Romance

My Husband's Brother Owns My Secret

Chapter 4

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