My Billionaire Ex Or My Mafia Bestie
Torn between the billionaire who broke her and the mafia prince who’d kill to keep her.
Three years ago, Victor Kane—cold, powerful billionaire—shattered Isabella "Bella" Moretti with one cruel sentence:
“You’re too fragile for my world.”
He walked away, leaving her heartbroken on the marble floors of his Manhattan penthouse.
She rebuilt her life in Brooklyn’s shadows, vowing never to return to his glittering, controlling empire.
But Victor doesn’t let go so easily.
Now he’s back—wealthier, darker, more obsessive.
Private jets, diamond collars, whispered commands in the dark: he wants her again.
And this time, he’ll chain her to him forever.
Then there’s Nico Moretti—her childhood best friend, the dangerously handsome heir to New York’s most feared crime family.
The man who’s held her through every storm, buried her secrets, and never once demanded more.
Until Victor reappears.
Nico’s loyalty ignites into raw possession.
His touches burn hotter. His eyes promise violence to anyone who tries to take her.
He’s done waiting in the shadows.
If she won’t choose him, no one else will have her.
Two alphas.
One rules boardrooms with ice and billions.
The other rules streets with blood and loyalty.
Both are dangerously obsessed.
Both will destroy everything to claim her body and soul.
In a deadly game of jealousy, betrayal, and scorching desire, Bella must decide:
Surrender to the ex who once ruined her?
Or fall into the arms of the best friend who’ll burn the world to own her?
One woman. Two monsters. No safe escape.
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Chapter: Chapter 56 — The ResponseVictor's lawyers drafted three versions of the letter before I finally threw all of them out and wrote it myself, sitting alone at the kitchen table late that night while Nico ran security assessments in the next room and Victor made calls to people who could quietly expand Sofia's protection without alerting anyone to why.*Konstantin,**I received your letter. I won't pretend it didn't shake me — thirty-one years is a long time to learn you've been living under a name that was never fully true, and a longer time still to learn why.**I don't know you. I don't know what you want from me, and I won't pretend I trust your motives simply because we share blood. But I'd rather understand the danger you're warning me about than wait for it to arrive on its own terms.**I have a daughter. She is the only thing that matters to me in any of this. If you have information that protects her, I want it. If you have an agenda that puts her at risk in any way, I want to know that too, so I can pla
Last Updated: 2026-09-05
Chapter: Chapter 55 — DiggingSofia's birthday party went ahead exactly as planned two days later — a small, bright chaos of balloons and cake and a handful of other toddlers from her daycare group, Victor crouched on the floor in a suit jacket he'd stopped caring about ruining, Nico filming approximately four hundred photos on his phone like a man trying to memorize every second of ordinary joy before something came to threaten it again. I watched them both and felt the strange doubled weight of the week — genuine happiness sitting right alongside a fear neither of us had said out loud in front of Sofia, the letter locked in Victor's study safe, waiting for us to figure out what to do with it.We didn't get back to it properly until that night, once Sofia was asleep and the last of the balloons had been swept into a corner of the living room."I made some calls," Victor said, spreading a folder across the kitchen table — a new habit of ours by now, the same table where we'd first read Konstantin Volkov's letter,
Last Updated: 2026-09-02
Chapter: Chapter 54 — What the Silence Was HidingWe didn't tell Sofia's party planning stop for the crisis unfolding around it — Victor insisted on that, gently but firmly, arguing that whatever this letter meant, it didn't have to mean our daughter's third birthday got swallowed by fear the way so much of the past two years had been. So the streamers stayed half-hung in the doorway, and somewhere in the apartment a caterer's assistant called about cake flavors, and underneath all of it, the three of us sat at the kitchen table with a letter that had cracked something open none of us had seen coming."I want to know everything," I said. "Before we do anything else. Who the Volkovs actually are. What my mother ran from. I can't make a single decision about this until I understand what I'm actually dealing with."Nico was already on his laptop, the particular focus in his face reminding me of the nights he'd spent tracing Kessler's shell companies two years earlier. "Volkov," he said slowly, scrolling. "There's not much public — which
Last Updated: 2026-08-29
Chapter: Chapter 53 — A Name From BeforeThe letter arrived on a Tuesday, tucked among Sofia's birthday party RSVPs and a stack of Victor's board correspondence, easy to miss except that it had no return address and my name — my full name, including a middle name almost nobody used — written in handwriting I didn't recognize but that made the back of my neck prickle anyway.I opened it standing in the kitchen, Sofia's birthday streamers still half-hung from the doorway where Nico had abandoned the project to answer a work call.*Isabella,**Your mother's name was Renata Volkov, before she changed it. Before she ran. I imagine she never told you that. I imagine she never told you a great many things.**I've watched from a distance for two years, the way I promised her I would if she ever tried to disappear again. I'm done watching.**We should talk. Before someone else finds you first — and believe me, they will, now that your daughter's existence is no longer a secret in certain circles.**— K.V.*I read it three times befor
Last Updated: 2026-08-29
Chapter: Chapter 52 — Two Years LaterThe penthouse didn't look like a penthouse anymore. Somewhere in the past two years it had quietly transformed into a home — a scatter of small shoes by the door, crayon drawings taped to the refrigerator at exactly the height of a determined toddler's reach, a corner of the once-pristine living room permanently colonized by a small kitchen playset Victor had bought against his own better judgment and Nico had assembled at midnight, swearing softly the entire time."Mama, look!" Sofia announced, holding up a drawing that was, as far as I could tell, three overlapping circles in aggressive shades of purple. She was eighteen months old and already possessed of a confidence that suggested she understood exactly how thoroughly she ran this household, despite technically being the smallest person in it."Beautiful, baby," I said, crouching down to inspect it properly, because in this house, all of Sofia's artistic output received the reverence typically reserved for gallery openings. "Is t
Last Updated: 2026-08-27
Chapter: Chapter 51 — What Comes AfterThe weeks that followed felt strange in their ordinariness, like a held breath finally released after months of bracing for the next blow. Kessler's arrest made the financial press in careful, sanitized language — "irregularities in shareholder acquisitions," "an ongoing federal investigation" — none of it capturing the reality of a man who'd funded two wars and nearly put a bullet through Victor's chest in his own penthouse. Delacroix issued a quiet statement distancing himself from "any association" with Kessler's activities, and within a month his hostile positioning against Victor's company had simply evaporated, replaced by something almost like wary respect between two men who'd once been enemies and were now, if not friends, at least no longer actively trying to destroy each other.Nico's uncle disappeared from the city entirely sometime in the third week — not arrested, not confirmed dead, just gone, the way dangerous old men sometimes were when the money and muscle that had p
Last Updated: 2026-08-25
Rejected Then Ruined
**Synopsis:**
Mira Ashwood was nineteen when Alpha Kade Sterling rejected her in front of the entire pack — his mate, cast aside as "too weak to lead beside him." Broken and exiled, she vanished into the wild, presumed dead by everyone who once knew her.
She wasn't dead. She was becoming something else.
Taken in by the Ironclaw rogues — a mercenary pack that answers to no one — Mira spent three years erasing every trace of the girl who begged for a place she was denied. Now she returns to Ashwood territory under a false name, sent to collect on a debt the pack can't afford to ignore. She wants nothing from Kade. Not his throne, not his apology, not his regret.
But the rejection bond never fully broke. And the moment Kade Sterling looks into her eyes, he knows exactly who's standing in front of him — even if she won't admit it herself.
As old wounds resurface, a rival pack led by the ruthless Selene Cross moves to exploit the cracks in Ashwood's leadership, and Mira's skills become the only thing standing between the pack and war. Kade must face what his weakness cost him. Mira must decide if the girl he destroyed still exists somewhere beneath the woman he can't stop wanting — and whether she's willing to risk everything to find out.
Some rejections don't end a story. They start one.
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Chapter: Chapter 5: What the Fire RemembersThe dinner ended late, Selene Cross departing with a parting smile that felt more like a warning than a farewell, and Mira excused herself before Thorne could corner her with more questions she didn't want to answer. She made it as far as the courtyard before the night air hit her properly, cool and pine-scented, and she stopped there instead of going straight back to the guest room, needing a moment before she trusted herself around anyone else.The training yard sat empty in the moonlight, the same yard she used to watch from the fence as a girl. She walked toward it without entirely deciding to, drawn by some old muscle memory, and found herself standing at the same worn rail, hands resting on wood that had been replaced at least once since she'd last touched it but somehow still felt exactly the same under her palms."Couldn't sleep either?"She didn't jump — three years of training had burned that reflex out of her — but her pulse spiked hard at the sound of Kade's voice behind h
Last Updated: 2026-08-29
Chapter: Chapter 4: Old GroundMira spent the walk back to the guest quarters rebuilding every wall Kade Sterling had cracked in that room, brick by careful brick, the way Rurik had taught her — name the fear, set it down, pick up the work instead. By the time she reached her door, Rhea Voss had returned, cool and composed, the terror underneath locked back where it belonged.She didn't get to enjoy the peace for long."You're the new Ironclaw woman."The voice came from down the hall — young, male, careful in a way that immediately made her wary. She turned to find a wolf close to Kade's age leaning against the wall outside her door, arms crossed, dark hair and a face that was almost, but not quite, unfamiliar.Then it clicked, and her stomach dropped.Damon. Kade's younger brother. He'd been fourteen the day of her rejection, all elbows and awkward silence, the kind of boy who watched everything and said almost nothing. He'd cried, she remembered suddenly — one of the only wolves in that hall who had, standing ne
Last Updated: 2026-08-27
Chapter: Chapter 3: TreasuryThe guest quarters were smaller than the room she'd had as a child, tucked into the west wing of the pack hall where visiting dignitaries and traders usually stayed. Mira set her single bag on the narrow bed and stood at the window for a long time, watching the last light drain out of the training yards below, where a handful of young wolves were still running drills in the dusk.She recognized none of them. Three years was long enough for an entire new generation of pups to grow into fighters, long enough for the world to keep turning without her in it. That should have felt like relief. Instead it sat in her chest like something stolen.She made herself stop watching and pulled the treasury folder Priya had left on the desk, flipping through pages of numbers by lamplight until the ache in her chest had something else to focus on.Ashwood's finances were worse than she'd expected. The border war seven months ago — Kade's father's old rival pack testing the succession, probing to see
Last Updated: 2026-08-27
Chapter: Chapter 2: Ashwood TerritoryThe border smelled the same.That was the first thing that hit her — before she saw a single tree she recognized, before the old stone marker that split Ironclaw's neutral ground from Ashwood territory came into view. Pine and woodsmoke and something underneath it, some particular mineral scent to the soil here that she'd never smelled anywhere else in three years of crossing half the continent for Rurik's contracts.Mira stopped the car a quarter mile from the checkpoint and sat there for a moment with her hands on the wheel, breathing it in through the cracked window, and reminded herself that the girl who used to run through these woods barefoot in summer didn't exist anymore. She'd buried that girl in the training yard at Ironclaw, one broken bone and one bloody lesson at a time.The name on her papers was Rhea Voss. Ironclaw debt collector, five years' experience, no known pack affiliation. It wasn't even a difficult lie — Rurik had built her a whole clean history, references and
Last Updated: 2026-08-26
Chapter: Chapter 1: The RejectionThe pack hall smelled like pine smoke and blood-oath wine, and Mira Ashwood would remember that smell for the rest of her life, whether she wanted to or not.She stood in the center of the circle, in the white dress her mother had sewn by hand, and she watched Kade Sterling's jaw tighten the way it always did right before he said something he couldn't take back."Kneel," Elder Thorne said. Not to her. To Kade. It was tradition — the Alpha knelt before his mate at the completion ceremony, sealed the bond in front of the pack, and it was done. Forever. No pack in three hundred years had broken a completed bond.Which was exactly why Kade hadn't knelt yet.Mira had told herself, all morning, that the hesitation meant nothing. Alphas were proud. Ceremony made even confident men stall. She'd smoothed the front of her dress fourteen times in the mirror and practiced the smile she was going to give him when he finally looked at her the way he used to look at her when they were sixteen and hi
Last Updated: 2026-08-24
Pregnant For My Husband's Enemy
Ten years of devotion. Five years of marriage. One night to destroy it all.
Evelyn Vance thought her husband, Julian, was her soulmate—until she discovered she was nothing more than a bargaining chip. To save his failing empire, Julian commits the ultimate sin: he "gifts" his wife to his most hated rival, the cold and ruthless billionaire Killian Blackwood, for a single night of negotiation.
Julian told her it was just a dinner. He lied.
Killian Blackwood has spent a decade building an empire out of spite, driven by a singular, dark obsession: the woman his enemy stole from him. When Julian hands Evelyn over on a silver platter, Killian doesn't just plan to take his revenge—he plans to claim what was always meant to be his.
One night of calculated passion leaves Evelyn shattered and Julian triumphant. But the victory is short-lived.
The betrayal has a heartbeat.
When Evelyn discovers she’s pregnant with Killian’s child, the power dynamic shifts. Julian is desperate to hide the scandal, willing to go to lethal lengths to keep his "perfect" reputation. But Killian is no longer watching from the shadows. He is coming for his heir, and he’s coming for the woman he never stopped wanting.
As Julian’s regret turns to madness and Killian’s obsession turns to protection, Evelyn must decide: Does she run from the man who sold her, or find sanctuary in the arms of the monster who bought her?
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Chapter: Chapter 27: The Rules He SetsThe cooking lesson lasted three hours and produced a passable boeuf bourguignon and one significant argument.Not a bad argument — not the kind with damage in it. The kind that happens between two people who are both precise and both certain and have arrived, for the first time, at a question they answer differently. It started over the wine — specifically, over whether I was allowed to add it before the vegetables had properly caramelised, which Killian held was critical and which I held was a matter of interpretation."It is not a matter of interpretation," he said, with the patience of a man explaining something load-bearing. "The caramelisation creates the base. If you add the wine before—""The wine deglazes," I said. "That's the point.""The deglaze happens after the fond develops," he said. "The fond requires—""I know what the fond requires," I said. "I'm saying the timing is flexible."He looked at me across the kitchen island with the expression of a man encountering genuine
Last Updated: 2026-09-05
Chapter: Chapter 26: The Morning After the BeginningI woke differently on Friday.Not dramatically — no flood of revelation, no new quality of light through the curtains. Just the particular awareness, arriving before full consciousness, that something had shifted in the architecture of the world and my body knew it before my mind caught up. I lay in the guest room in the dark and pressed my hand to my stomach and thought: *yesterday happened. That was real.*It had been real. Soft and certain and entirely decided, the way I had said it would be when it was time. Two hands on his face and the library going quiet around us and his hands finding mine and the long, patient exhale of something that had been waiting for the correct conditions and had finally, unhurriedly, arrived.We had not made anything strange of it afterward. That had been the thing I was most grateful for — the absence of drama in the aftermath, the way he had simply held my hand for a while on the small sofa and then made dinner and we had eaten it at the kitchen isla
Last Updated: 2026-09-02
Chapter: Chapter 25: The Thing Julian DidThe silence broke on a Thursday.Three weeks and four days since the article. Two weeks since the annulment. Nineteen days, by Marcus's count, since Julian had made any visible move — no press, no legal maneuver, no call through back channels. Just the deep, particular quiet of a man who had gone somewhere inside himself and closed the door.Marcus had been watching the silence the way you watch a weather system — tracking it, measuring its pressure, waiting for the moment it shifted. He called at seven in the morning while I was still in the kitchen with my first tea and said, with the controlled efficiency of a man delivering something he wished he wasn't: "Julian has filed a paternity application."I set the mug down."Not a custody claim," Marcus said quickly. "Not yet. A paternity application — a request for a court-ordered DNA test to establish biological parentage of the child." He paused. "It was filed yesterday evening. We received the notification this morning.""He said he
Last Updated: 2026-08-30
Chapter: Chapter 24: The Jealousy BoneIt arrived on a Wednesday, three weeks into the new thing, without warning.I was in the library when I found the photograph. Not looking for it — not looking for anything in particular, just moving along the shelves with the idle curiosity that had become my primary mode in the hours between breakfast and lunch, pulling things out and putting them back, learning the collection the way you learn a new language, through immersion and repetition and the occasional word that stops you completely.The photograph was inside a book — a history of twentieth century architecture, slipped between two pages as a bookmark and forgotten there, or left there deliberately, which amounted to the same thing. I almost missed it. I was replacing the book on the shelf when it slid out and fell and I caught it automatically, turned it over, and looked at it.A woman. Dark-haired, striking, with the kind of face that photographs well from every angle. She was laughing at something off-camera, her head tur
Last Updated: 2026-08-27
Chapter: Chapter 23: What Twelve Weeks Looks LikeThe second week of the new thing had a different texture than the first.Less careful, somehow. Or careful in a different way — not the wariness of two people navigating an unknown terrain but the attentiveness of two people who have begun to learn the map and are now moving through it with increasing confidence. Small things shifted. The distance between us at the kitchen island shortened, not dramatically, just by degrees. He started leaving the study door open when he worked. I started leaving the library door open when I read. The open doors meant nothing and meant everything, the way small adjustments between people always mean more than their physical reality.Margot noticed. She said nothing, which was its own form of commentary.Marcus noticed. He said even less, which was simply Marcus.Audrey called on Tuesday and asked, with the direct precision of a woman who had waited long enough, whether I was happy. I stood at the library window with the phone to my ear and thought abo
Last Updated: 2026-08-25
Chapter: Chapter 22: The Rules of the New ThingThe hand-holding lasted four blocks and then we were back at the tower and Marcus held the door and the moment passed into the ordinary — the elevator, the penthouse, the resumption of the day. But it had happened, and we both knew it had happened, and the knowing sat between us for the rest of Friday with the particular weight of something that has been named without words and cannot be unnamed.Killian did not make it strange. This was the thing I kept noting — the way he received each new development between us with a steadiness that was not indifference but its opposite, the steadiness of a man who had been afraid of exactly this and was now that it was arriving choosing to be present for it rather than managing it from a careful distance.He made dinner. I set the table, which I had not done before, the small domestic claiming of a space that was beginning to feel genuinely shared. We ate. We talked — about Diana's reaction, about Audrey's marmalade, about the foundation I was be
Last Updated: 2026-08-22
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