Winning The Week

For three years, wolfless Wren Ashford endured a toxic dynamic with Alpha Silas Deveraux, who glorified her brokenness while keeping her on a leash of shame and possessive pleasure. But when Silas loses a devastating hockey game after five consecutive years of winning, his debt is paid in bodies—and Wren is the prime currency.

A month before I was set to present my life’s work—the Moonlight Therapy—Marcus, my Alpha and fiancé of five years, asked me to give the entire research project to his old flame, Isabella. I refused. He spent the entire month trying to convince me, insisting he was only fulfilling her dying wish. Then, two weeks before the presentation, a link from a friend arrived. That’s when I discovered Isabella was already promoting my research online as her own. He had never intended to ask for my permission at all. In that instant, I chose to sever our five-year bond. What Marcus didn’t know was that the core research he’d stolen was critically flawed. On the very day Isabella presented that faulty data to the world, I walked through the doors of the Boston Werewolf Medical Institute instead. I never looked back.

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.

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.

Everyone called Mia a shameless whore. However, the one trailing behind her was the youngest don of the Yorick family, James. He hand-washed her lace camisoles, broke three ribs for her, and even with his face covered in blood from a beating, he could still smile at her. One night, after too much drinking, the underboss he trusted most leaned down beside him. His face was full of disdain. “Boss, Mia is a disgrace to all of us! A woman like that, how could she ever be worthy of you?” James suddenly laughed. His eyes went terrifyingly blank. The cigar between his fingers glowed faintly in the dark. “Back then, before I secured my position, I was young, greedy for power. To get my sister-in-law that antique necklace she wanted, I took advantage of Mia being drunk and took pictures of her myself… “Ten dollars a copy. I sold thirty thousand of them. Things blew way out of control… I owe her.” James took a long drink of whiskey while his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Thankfully… she will never know. I will spend my whole life making it up to her, treating her twice as well.” He did not see the private room door quietly close the moment he said those words. Mia turned around with a blank expression on her face and walked into a small clinic on the corner. She laid down on the operating table. He would never deserve to know that he had once been a father, if only for a moment. That whole lifetime he planned to spend making it up to her, she did not want it anymore.

I was eighteen when I got together with Sam Bennett. We were in love for two years—at least, that was what I thought—until I found out I was nothing more than a stand-in for someone else. After a huge fight, we broke up. Not long after, Paxton Gibson, the warm and caring senior who had always looked out for me, began pursuing me passionately. He was persistent, unwavering, and so sincere that I finally let down my guard and accepted him. Just when I thought I had finally found true happiness, I overheard a phone call between Paxton and Sam. “Don’t worry, Leah trusts me completely. Take good care of Georgina. The surgery will happen soon.” In the end, when I really did disappear, they changed their minds. “Leah, come home with me, please?” I smiled, at peace with myself. “But I haven’t had a home for a long time.”

"Sign the papers, Serenity. I don't love you." Those were the last words Jackson said to me before he threw me out of his villa. He chose his first love over his pregnant wife. I left with a broken heart, hiding the secret of the twins growing in my belly. Five years later, I returned as a top jewelry designer. But why is my ex-husband blocking my way, looking at my children with red eyes? "Serenity, are they mine?" I smiled coldly. "No, Mr. Billionaire. They call another man Daddy now."

I spent five years by Casey Fusco's side, turning him from a beggar in the slums to a mafia Don. On the second day he put on the family ring, his first love came knocking on our door with an ultrasound report. Casey pushed the divorce papers toward me with a sorry look on his face. "She's pregnant. I have to give her the position of Donna." My brethren tried to talk me out of doing something foolish, since I had nearly lost my life while trying to help him climb up the ranks. But contrary to their expectations, all I did was sign the papers calmly without making a fuss. "Congratulations on having your wish come true, Don Fusco."

"Gabriella, are you really going to fly abroad and leave Owen behind?" In the quiet cafe, Gabriella Candola puts down the spoon in her hand. She then looks at Anne Lockwood, her best friend, sitting across from her at the table, who wears a flabbergasted expression. In a casual tone, she replies, "We're already divorced." "Divorced?" Anne never expects to hear such shocking news coming from Gabriella's lips. As soon as the shock passes, she begins lamenting about the injustice on Gabriella's behalf. "And Owen actually agreed to the divorce? You treated him so well over the past three years! Even if his heart were made of ice, it'd have melted by now, right? Does he really not have any feelings for you?" Gabriella just smiles in return, a glint appearing in her eyes.

My best friend and my husband, Lorenzo Bartoli, fought every time they met. Lorenzo was the Don of the family, while my best friend was his Consigliere. She always fiercely opposed his most ruthless, high-risk decisions. Tempers explode every single time. But there was one rule that they both agreed on without any hesitation. No one was allowed to touch me. Because of them, no one in the city dared to cross me. Until the fifth month of my pregnancy, when I went down to the basement vault to organize Lorenzo's guns for him. I opened the safe to see stacks of letters, hundreds of them, all unsent. I picked one up. The moment I opened the letter, cold dread overwhelmed me. The receiver of the letter wasn't me. [My dearest Sofia…] I quickly scanned downward to the final lines of the letter. [If I don't make it back alive, everything in the Swissie accounts goes to you. As for Vittoria, she's a good woman, but I have never loved her.] With trembling hands, I tore open the rest of the letters like a hysterical woman. Three hundred of them in total. Every single one was addressed to Sofia Finzi. Sofia was not a stranger. She was my best friend.