Meaning:counter Novels & Stories

In the middle of the night, my husband started talking in his sleep. "My little treasure, Daddy's taking you and Mommy to the new house tomorrow." But we were using protection. Where the hell did a kid come from? So I opened his phone. I saw the money transfers to another woman—spent on all kinds of luxury shit and a house. The photo album had pictures of her in a skimpy stripper outfit, a little bump in her belly. The last one was an ultrasound. Four months along, it looked like. I didn't make a sound. Just saved the evidence. They were about to learn the price of betraying a mafia princess.

Five years into my marriage to the Don, Ives Moretti, he left me for dead during a shootout to get his mistress, Isabella, to safety. I woke up three days later in a private hospital room. No apology. Ives was cold. “You’re my wife. You knew the risks. Stop being so dramatic.” Then, he added, “Isabella’s different. She’s fragile. She needed me.” That was followed by three months of the silent treatment. Like always, he expected me to be the one to break, to come crawling back begging for forgiveness. Three months later, I handed the Irish deal to Isabella on a silver platter. The big one I’d spent half a year building myself. Ives thought it was a peace offering. He smiled, a rare, genuine thing these days. “I knew you’d come around. As a reward, we’ll go to Vegas. I know you’ve always wanted to go.” The next day, Isabella whined about being bored, and he broke his promise. He took her to Vegas instead. Told me it was “urgent family business.” This time, I didn’t cry. Didn’t make a scene. Ives was pleased I was being so understanding. He had no idea I was already cutting all ties to the Moretti family. That he’d already signed the divorce papers. I was free.

Felix and I had been inseparable for ten years, and everyone thought we would end up married. When he got into fights at school, I took the blame and got expelled in his place. When he slept with countless women, I delivered birth control pills and breakup money in his place. I had always played the part of the shameless doormat, and everyone believed I loved him more than life itself. But the moment he took over as the heir to his family's fortune, he dumped me. He looked at me with scorn and disdain. "Kathy, maybe once upon a time we were in love, but it's been too long. You're dull, and you've drained away every ounce of my affection. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with you, so get out of my sight. I'm going to marry someone I truly love." Everyone was waiting to watch me fall apart. But when I saw the hospital's proof that my mother had been cured, and the extra hundred million dollars in my bank account, I genuinely smiled. "Fine. I'll leave," I said. The truth was, I had stayed with a player like him only because of a business deal. Now that I had the money, it was time for me to walk away.

During a turf war, I took a bullet for Daniel Wilson. When I woke up in the family hospital after three years in a coma, I discovered that Eva, the showgirl I'd saved from a black market auction, had usurped my place in the Wilson family. My husband Daniel, the family's Underboss, saw that I was awake, and his first words to me were: "The entire underworld recognizes Eva as the woman by my side now. Why did you have to wake up at a time like this?" "Alice and I both love her. She's the one who's been by our side these past three years. And you? You've just been a body in a hospital bed, absent from our lives." "We're through, Sarah." Watching the man I once loved so deeply speak such heartless words, I didn't put up a fight. I simply nodded and gave him what he wanted. But he had no idea the Wilson family was about to burn to the ground.

Matteo Cassimo and I are childhood sweethearts. But he gets assassinated on the day before our wedding. I cry my heart out in front of his grave to the point I faint from exhaustion. When I wake up again, I see a few live comments crossing my vision. "Poor Annie… She's still kept in the dark about the truth." "Seriously, Annie believes everything Matteo tells her. Serves her right for getting duped by Matteo's fake death." "Can someone please tell Annie that Matteo fakes his death to get rid of her, because his mistress finds out he's about to get married and decides to secretly leave him? I bet those two are being lovey-dovey with each other right now!" "Forget about it. Annie has nothing but blind trust in Matteo, after all. Maybe when he finally comes back from the 'dead,' she'll marry him happily again." One month later, the news headlines all over the papers are filled with the explosive news of the impending marriage between me and the heir of the Valente family, William Valente. That's when Matteo's subordinate confronts me. "Our Don has just passed away recently, and yet you're already planning to marry someone else?" I merely chuckle icily in return. "So what if I am? I can't just be a widow at such a young age now, can I?"

'What's that from?' Daniel says, lifting my sleeve a little more to reveal the obvious bruise. Shit I forgot about that one, 'I bumped into my counter last night. You know me, I'm clumsy'. Daniel looks at me knowingly. I have to get to class, but I'll meet you at lunch. My treat.' I say, run off to class. That was a close one. She was compelled to work from a young age in order to support her parents' vices and her own education. She was the neglected child of alcoholic parents. Daily bruising was a reality. She went through a lot of suffering before she found the man who would save her.

Upon discovering I was pregnant, I excitedly rushed to my husband’s company to put our baby down as our insurance beneficiary. However, I was shocked to read my husband’s file. Partner: Victoria Winston Children: Jack Hudson, Sophia Hudson. I froze. The HR manager said the woman was his legally wedded wife and the heiress to the largest hotel chain on the East Coast. Their children were already seven years old. It felt like my world was crumbling down around me. If she was his wife, what was I? His mistress of five years? His friend with benefits? Even more absurdly, I was now pregnant with his child. A child who would never be acknowledged by their father. An illegitimate child. I nodded dazedly. My whole body felt weak. The man I considered my husband was never mine. Even after death, his gravestone would not have my name!

They call me 'Ghost.' The king of mercenaries, feared across the entire black market. But for Madeline, the Godmother of the Chicago Mafia, I walked away from it all. She wanted me by her side, so I became a normal man. We were married for five years. The entire underworld knew she loved me more than life itself. She even had my dagger tattooed next to her family's crest—a permanent mark of loyalty. Until I got the photo from her lover. The bartender was naked, his chest covered in red scratches from her nails. Madeline’s hand, with its red polish, was still on his waist. He’d drawn his name right next to my dagger on her skin. And my wife had let him. "Madeline says I'm the only one who can make her feel like a woman. You can't satisfy her anymore. It's time to make way for a younger man." I didn't reply. I just made a call. "Hello. I need a new identity. And a plane ticket."

For our college graduation trip, I spent a whole week glued to various travel apps, finally snagging a half-price couples' train package. I was just about to share the good news with my boyfriend and call it a night when his message came through. "Anna's going through a breakup. She needs to get away and clear her head. We're gonna use those tickets." "See if you can grab yourself another single ticket. It's not that much anyway - like five or six hundred bucks." For a moment, I was speechless. Before he received the scholarship my dad’s pack had specifically established for him, five or six hundred dollars used to be his entire monthly allowance. After a moment of silence, I picked up my phone: “Dad, prepare a private jet for me. I want to take a trip alone before graduation.”

I dropped off lunch for my husband at the Conglomerate HQ, only to bump into my ex from two years ago. The man who'd ditched me at our marking ceremony to go "take care of his sister." I'd changed my hair, my makeup, everything. But he spotted me in the crowd as if it were nothing. "Elena, I'm back to finish what we started. Happy now?" I felt that familiar knot of doubt in my gut. "Sorry, who are you again...?" He let out a shaky laugh. "Babe, come on. Don't be mad. I didn't mean to leave you hanging. The ceremony back then? Ivy's wolf spirit was too weak. I had to find the Wolf God ruins to pray for her. She's my only sister; I couldn't just watch her fade." "Yeah, the healing took a while. So, I got myself an assignment overseas." "Anyway, I just got her wolf spirit stabilized, and I rushed back to bring you home to the packhouse!" That's when it hit me. This scruffy guy, with the stubble and all… this was my ex-fiancé. No. Did nobody tell him? The night he walked out on me? I married his uncle. Alpha Damian. The Wolf King.