Mature Mistress

Everyone knew I, Isabella Marino, was Vince Moretti's greatest weakness—the one thing the mafia boss would never tolerate being touched. Years ago, when I was kidnapped, Vince disarmed himself at gunpoint, risking death to get me back, even paying his entire fortune for my ransom. To keep me from harm, he walked a razor's edge, navigating danger at every turn. After I got pregnant, he waited on me hand and foot, barely letting my feet touch the ground. There were rumors that he kept a pampered mistress outside—some woman he spoiled rotten. I never believed them. But then she flaunted herself in front of me. To beg for my forgiveness, Vince cut off his own finger. The next day, that woman slapped her pregnancy test results in my face, sneering, "Vince wanted a baby with me so badly, he just couldn't help himself!" I was already frail. The shock and rage sent me into a miscarriage.

On the streets of Milan, our nanny, Fiona, livestreamed my son’s limited-edition sneakers. A few days later, she shockingly transformed into my son’s stepmother. I overheard Anthony telling Fiona, “Once Francesca signs the divorce papers, all her assets will be ours.” Anthony was the man I had loved for ten years and had defied my family to marry. I took a step back, pretending to break down in tears, trembling as I told him I would give him anything as long as he didn’t go through with the divorce. What they didn’t know was that I had just dialed the number I hadn’t called in ten years. In a low voice, I said, “Father, the game is over. Your heiress, the principessa, is coming home.”

Silas Jordan drew lots, which resulted in me being chosen as his wife. He hated me for getting his childhood sweetheart killed. Hence, he tortured me to death. But after I died, deep remorse overwhelmed him. After I returned to the past, I first rigged the lottery to help him get together with his childhood lover. However, there were endless new comments on the screen. They were from readers of the novel I was trapped in. [Based on the plot, the male lead will pick the female lead. Then, the male lead’s childhood lover will kill herself. When the female lead gets tortured to death, the male lead starts regretting it. But why would this miserable novel change when the female lead rigged the lottery?] It was because I no longer wished to marry him again.

My Alpha, Ryan Larson, had never once acknowledged me as his mate. On my birthday, I was kidnapped by rogues and poisoned with wolfsbane. I was still carrying Ryan's pup. In agony, I reached out to him through our mind-link. "Fiona had a nightmare. I only came to keep her company. You're pulling tricks again! It's disgusting," he yelled impatiently. My organs felt like they were being shredded apart. At that moment, I finally gave up all hope for him. With the last of my strength, I sent him one final message through our mind-link. "Ryan. Let the Moon Goddess be my witness. You will lose the one you love forever!"

After being married to Nathan Baldwin for five years, news of him making a home for a young woman in a hotel gets out. The whole world knows of her existence. He doesn't want her to be known as a mistress, so he comes to me with a divorce agreement. "Mr. Price helped me in the past. He asked me to take care of Jenny before his death. I can't not do anything now that everyone thinks she's a homewrecker." I'm not surprised—Jenny Price has always been his first choice for the past five years. When Nathan came to me about this in my past life, I broke down and had a screaming match with him. I refused to get a divorce. Even after I became severely depressed, he doggedly believed I was merely putting on an act because Jenny said I didn't look like I was sick. He thought I was pulling tricks to avoid the divorce and lured me into a trap. He made it seem like I was the one having an extramarital affair. Then, he took me to court to have the divorce enforced. Only then did I understand that I would never compare to the debt he thought he owed Jenny's father. I took my life in a moment of despair. When I open my eyes again, I don't hesitate to sign the divorce agreement.

At graduation, I invited my classmates to attend my engagement party, but what I didn’t expect was the total meltdown one of my classmates had when she saw my engagement photos. She strutted over, full of herself, and demanded that I take off my dress so she could use it to polish her shoes. I blinked in confusion, thinking she must have lost her mind. I laughed and suggested she head over to the campus clinic to get checked out. Instead, she exploded, pointing a finger right in my face as she started yelling. “You leech! How dare you wear something so expensive?” she screamed. “You’ve been spending all of my boyfriend’s money on your filthy clothes! Have you no shame? Get down on your knees and apologize, or I guarantee you'll regret it. Who knows where you'll end up tomorrow? Maybe in the hands of some trafficker?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Who would’ve thought that my fiancé, whose tuition fees I paid for, had the nerve to keep a secret mistress behind my back?

I've been married to the prince of the underworld for ten years and have endured countless life-or-death situations by his side. My hands, once trained to play the piano, are covered in calluses from holding guns and stained with blood. But at 28, my husband ends up falling for a young woman from the slums. She's as delicate and pure as a chamomile. She's his well-kept little secret—until I run into them at the woman's prenatal appointment one day. I storm up to him, demanding an explanation, only for him to nonchalantly hand me divorce papers. "Sonia is a devout follower of the church and can't have a child before marriage. I must make an honest woman out of her. Sign these, and you'll get 40% of the company's shares." I refuse to do as told, so he corners me. In the end, he has my crippled younger brother tied up and forced under a hydraulic compression machine. "Sign the papers, Maeve, or watch your brother become a human mince pie. The choice is yours." I fall on my knees and beg him to stop. As the machine turns on, my hands fly to my aching lower belly, and I scream as I lose consciousness. When I wake up again, I'm back in the hospital, in the same spot where I ran into my husband and his mistress at her prenatal appointment. This time, I don't confront him. Overnight, I make arrangements with a sanatorium abroad, get divorced, and run away from home. Yet the moment I truly disappear, my husband loses his mind.

The day my family went bankrupt, my fiancée left me and married her first love. I didn't argue or make a scene. Instead, I married Sharon Tomlinson, the woman who had confessed to me when I was at my lowest. After we got married, I took care of Sharon for seven full years while she was paralyzed from the waist down. The day she finally stood up again, I accidentally overheard her speaking Aurelian with her best friend at the dinner table. "Sharon, are you really planning to spend your whole life with him? Aren't you worried you'd hurt your brother's feelings?" Sharon peeled a shrimp for our daughter, Tasha Holden, and answered unhurriedly, "What are you talking about? I know how to deal with them both. I could never bear to make Curtis sad." "Same for me. I like Uncle Curtis. He's handsome, while my dad's an ugly freak," Tasha chimed in beside them, also in Aurelian. They didn't know I spoke the language. Fine. I was sick of Sharon's undercooked pasta, anyway. I would never eat it again for the rest of my life!

After my 99th failed confession of love to Jim, my parents grounded me for two weeks. "You've embarrassed yourself enough over that illegitimate son from the Larson family," they snapped. "Has he ever even spared you a proper glance?" "Stay home and reflect. We've already arranged your marriage to the Shaw family. The wedding will be in two weeks." However, I didn’t give up. I was so determined to see Jim, no matter what. Only to walk in on him locked in a deep kiss with his precious first love in a private room. "Jim, you really know how to play," one of his friends laughed. "If the Cunningham family's heiress catches you like this, she'll probably lose her mind again." "Seriously, you've turned Ella down so many times, and now that she's grounded, you haven't even sent her a message. Aren't you afraid she'll finally give up on you?" Jim just scoffed with disdain and said calmly, "What's there to be afraid of? Everyone in the capital knows Ella is obsessed with me. Who else would want her but me?" "If I hadn't needed her to get back into the Larson family, I never would've postponed my engagement to Rowena in the first place."

I spent six months and a quarter million dollars to secure a week in Sicily. But when my husband’s childhood obsession, Chiara, cried nostalgia into his ear, Dante didn’t hesitate. He removed my name from the armored motorcade roster and replaced it with hers. He told me to take a commercial flight alone through rival family territory—a route where three associates had “disappeared” last month. The entire famiglia supported Dante’s decision without a single thought for my safety. So I changed my itinerary. I boarded a plane to Monaco instead of Palermo. I spent three months at the roulette tables, ignoring their frantic calls. That was when the famiglia started to bleed…