Unscramble Tragic

Three years ago, I broke up with my girlfriend—Audrey Hades—while she was on the verge of going bankrupt. Immediately after, I got engaged to her biggest rival, Clara Sterling. Later, she turns into a celebrated and adored rising star of the business world. She allows people around her to mock and label me as a gold-digger who leeches off rich women. But what she doesn't know is that I've been dead for three years.

The year the Rossi famiglia falls, my personal Underboss, Lorenzo Santoro, rises to power—becoming the Don and seizing control of the underworld. Once, I was the untouchable Principessa. He was the Soldato, ready to die for me at a moment's notice. For something as trivial as a paper cut on my finger, he would drop to his knees with red-rimmed eyes, blowing on it for half an hour. Now, to earn a smile from his new flame, Elena Marino, he forces me to sign a contract and makes me his live target. He watches with indifference as I am battered and bloodied under a hail of bullets. During a blast-resistance test, shattered glass slices the corner of my eye, but Lorenzo merely looks on. "The once-delicate Principessa Rossi can't even handle a little pain?" During attack-dog training, I am bitten to the bone, yet he shields a trembling Elena instead. "Animals don't know any better. Why are you holding a grudge against a dog?" Then comes the real kidnapping. To save Elena, who is desperate to become Donna, he personally cuts off my escape. "This is just a drill, Isabella," he scoffs. "Stop acting like it's real." On the surveillance monitors, flames engulf me as I take my final breath. A bloodstained termination contract is delivered to him. "Don Santoro, I return the life I owe you." Only then does the man who believes he rules the world finally lose his mind.

When I went to the hospital for a checkup to see if my fourth IVF attempt had succeeded, I saw Daniel Cooper, who was supposed to be on a business trip. He was carefully supporting a young, beautiful woman as they walked out of the obstetrics and gynecology department. Her belly was unmistakably round, and she looked like she was ready to give birth at any moment. Daniel froze for just a second before stepping in front of her, shielding her from me. He explained, "Abby, the Cooper family needs an heir to carry on the lineage. Once the baby is born, everything will go back to the way it was." I heard the certainty in his words. So I smiled, nodded, and quietly tucked my test results away as he stared at me in surprise. On the day she gave birth, I left the divorce papers on the kitchen table and walked out of his life for good.

In the dark water dungeon, Leonard hung me up and tied me in a very humiliating position. "Do you know why you're punished today?" His eyebrows knitted together, his eyes filled with uncontainable disgust. I knew that his obsession with cleanliness had flared up again. Enduring the humiliation, I allowed him to whip me, just to atone for my sins and ask for his forgiveness. As the mate to the Alpha of Mooncrown Pack for the past five years, I was long used to such a thing. However, when I learned that he was going to sell me into becoming a sex slave after five years together simply because of a remark from his first love, Serina, I realized then that the humiliation he had inflicted on me over the past five years was entirely fabricated. Due to his promises, I believed he was my destined mate, endured his severe obsession with cleanliness, and forgave all the harm he had done to me. I thought I could win back his heart as long as I waited. It turned out that everything was a meticulously plotted attack. The pain severed me from my past; I could no longer tolerate or compromise, so I left. However, he frantically searched for me, begging me to be his Luna and desperately pleading for my forgiveness.

In the seventh year of my relationship with Ruby Carrington, she picks me up from work in the heavy downpour one evening. When I open the door to the front passenger seat, I notice a puddle of water on the seat. A strand of short hair is there as well. Ruby grips the steering wheel without even looking at me. "I just dropped off an intern from the project department at his home. He didn't bring an umbrella with him, so he was drenched." As I sit on the damp seat, I feel my heart slowly going cold as well. "Ruby, you knew very well that I'm severely germaphobic." Ruby just chortles in response. Her tone is filled with impatience and exhaustion. "It's just a seat, isn't it? He's younger and funnier than you, not to mention he's also more handsome than you even when he's drenched in the rain. "I tried having a relationship with him. Being with him is definitely a lot more interesting than with you. But I'll still marry you, though. As long as you pretend not to know anything about my affair, we can keep this relationship going." Rain continues streaking down the window outside, and yet, I find the air inside the car even more suffocating than the rain itself.

I've failed to conceive despite being married for two years. Initially, I think it's because there's something wrong with me. I take various medications and undergo treatment. The night that I want to ask my husband, Sebastian Lockwood, to go for a check at the hospital, a voice appears in my mind. "He's not Sebastian! Sebastian's already been dead for three years!"

I supported Ethan Mitchell and loved him for eight whole years. I thought I concealed my feelings well, but little did I know that after Ethan became a business magnate, the first thing he did was send me to a ladies’ finishing academy. He looked at me coldly, his arms wrapped around his fiancée. "When you've rid yourself of those filthy thoughts, then you can come out." A year later, I finally forgot him completely. However, Ethan came to regret everything.

"There's a foreign object lodged in the patient's lower region. Due to the unique circumstances, we need the patient's next of kin to sign the consent form for an extraction procedure." My body stiffens when I see the name on the consent form. "I'm Renee Becker's next of kin." It's Liam Cassidy who says that. He's the first love of my wife, Renee Becker, who has been away for a month, claiming she's off on a business trip. Liam doesn't recognize me. He takes the pen and signs the consent form. In the section to mark his relationship to the patient, he writes the word "husband". After passing the pen back to me, he grips my hand tightly and beseeches me, "Doctor, you must do everything you can to help her. She's carrying my baby." As I wrench my hand back from him, my wedding ring slips off and falls onto the floor.

I am a firefighter. A beam crashes onto me in the middle of a burning building. At the same time, my oxygen is about to run out. I writhe and struggle as much as I can to reach for my backup oxygen canister, only to feel my fingers brushing over a bottle of water instead. When I turn around, I see my wife, Leah Sawyer, giving the last backup oxygen canister to her new mentee, Roderick Wyndham. I begin calling out to her via a walkie-talkie. "Leah, I'm being pinned down right now, and my oxygen's running out! Where is the oxygen canister?" As Leah shields Roderick behind her, she replies impatiently, "I've already given it to Roderick. It's his first time inside a burning building, so he's frightened. Having an extra canister on him gives him a sense of security. "You're already a veteran firefighter, so you can just think up a way to resolve your situation. Don't go around wasting precious resources." I can feel thick smoke infiltrating my lungs at that moment. Feelings of asphyxiation soon overwhelm me. "My leg is broken, so I can't move at all! Without oxygen, I won't be able to hold out till I get rescued!" But Leah merely chortles in response. "Stop playing the pity card! Every time we're out on a mission, you're always the cowardly one who's terrified of dying! You have zero sense of dedication at all! I shouldn't have let you join the firefighting squad, to begin with! "What's the use of you clinging to the equipment? Giving it to the newbies is the best way of maximizing its value!" I can only smile bitterly in response. Using what's left of my strength, I switch to a public channel and begin reporting to the command center. "For the record, Captain Leah Sawyer deliberately tampered with the essential rescue equipment in order to protect Roderick Wyndham, causing me, a fellow firefighter, to be trapped in a deadly situation. "I hereby request the immediate activation of the Firefighter Emergency Evacuation Act. Also, I formally charge Leah with gross negligence and attempted homicide."

I spent five years as Dominic Santoro’s wife in name only. Five years hidden behind closed doors, buried under his sheets, erased from his world. When he finally agreed to take me back to Chicago—to stand beside him, to be seen—I thought I had won. I bought a new dress. Soft. Elegant. Worthy of a Don’s woman. The night before we left, he looked at me through the mirror and said calmly, “Take the makeup off. Change into pants.” I asked why. He adjusted his cufflinks like I was nothing more than background noise. “Juliana Lancaster is back. Tonight is our engagement.” Russian Bratva. Lancaster blood. A marriage alliance. Seeing my silence, he laughed—careless, cruel. “What’s with that look? Didn’t we agree on this when we married? Brotherhood. Loyalty. No love.” Then he turned, eyes sharp and mocking. “Victoria Miller… you didn’t actually fall in love with me, did you?” I stood there, frozen. Because inside the inner pocket of his tailored suit— was my pregnancy report. And the Don of Chicago had no idea the woman he was about to sacrifice was carrying his heir.