I DON'T WANT HIM BACK
Blurb: She signed the divorce papers. He never signed away his obsession.
Veronica Stanford was the perfect wife-devoted, patient, and hopelessly in love. But when her billionaire husband, Jason Harper, trades her in for her treacherous best friend, Rhea, Veronica's world shatters. Broken and betrayed, she drowns her sorrows in a bar, only to be saved by a dangerously alluring stranger with emerald-green eyes and a lethal reputation: Monte "Four" Zagcanni, the ruthless heir to a mafia empire.
Four is everything Jason isn't-dark, dangerous, and devastatingly protective. When Veronica discovers she's pregnant with Jason's child, she strikes a deal with Four: a fake marriage to shield her from scandal. But what starts as a cold arrangement ignites into a passion neither can resist.
Jason, realizing his mistake too late, wants Veronica back-along with the son he never knew existed. But Four isn't a man who surrenders what's his. And Veronica? She's done being the meek wife.
Betrayal runs deep. Revenge burns hotter.
As secrets unravel-her father's bloody past, Rhea's twisted obsession, and Jason's deadly lies-Veronica must decide: trust the man who destroyed her once, or surrender to the devil who might destroy her forever.
One wants her back. The other wants her forever.
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Chapter 6
My head spun, not from the vodka anymore, but from the sudden, earth-shattering realization that I was pregnant.
I am pregnant.
The words echoed in the small, unfamiliar bathroom, the pregnancy test clutched in my shaking hand.
My heart, which had felt like a dead stone for the past forty-eight hours, suddenly started thumping with manic speed.
A child. A child.
For years, that was the one thing Jason and I fought over. The one thing he desperately wanted, and the one thing I couldn't give him.
I had been devastated when I thought I was infertile. But now, here it was. Proof that I wasn't.
A smile stretched across my face, wide and bright, pushing away the memory of Jason's fists, Rhea's cruel smirk, and the dark, intoxicating allure of the man named Four. None of it mattered now. This changed everything.
This baby Jason's baby, very certainly would save my marriage.
I rushed out of the bathroom, barely registering the strange man, Four, still shirtless and powerful, sitting in the kitchen.
"I need to go," I blurted out, grabbing my expensive handbag that was sitting on the counter.
He stood up, his green eyes narrowed, the movement making the muscles in his chest and arms shift. He was like a piece of dark, beautiful marble, intimidatingly huge.
"Where the hell are you going?" he asked, his voice deep and demanding.
"Home! I'm going home!" I cried, feeling giddy. "I have to tell Jason. I have to tell my husband!"
The smile vanished from Four's face. He walked towards me, and for a second, I felt that strange, compelling pull again, the dizzying effect he had on me.
"The man who beat the crap out of you?" he countered, his voice dripping with cool disapproval. "The one you were raving about, saying he hated you?"
I flinched but shook my head violently. "You don't understand! He only did that because he was angry! He wanted a child, and now... now I can give him one! This changes everything, Four! It fixes us!"
He looked at me with an expression I couldn't decipher contempt, maybe pity.
"You're a fool," he stated simply, but his eyes were blazing. "That kind of hatred doesn't go away with a baby. It only changes its target."
"Stop it! You don't know him!" I snapped. I hated his persistence. I didn't need to hear his opinion. I just needed to get to Jason.
I snatched the keys to my car, which he must have taken from my bag last night, and darted out the door before he could stop me.
I didn't even care that I was wearing the gown he'd laid out for me and not the expensive dress I had been wearing when he drugged me.
I drove frantically back to the mansion, the adrenaline pumping in my veins. I am pregnant. I am pregnant.
I chanted in my head like a desperate prayer.
Roberts wasn't there, so I parked my car, stumbling out onto the perfectly manicured lawn. I flung open the front door and ran through the grand marble foyer.
"Jason! Jason!" I called out, heading straight for the sitting room where he sometimes held informal meetings.
I stopped dead in the doorway.
He was there. Jason, looking impossibly handsome in an open-collared silk shirt, was sitting across from Rhea, my treacherous best friend.
They were leaning over a large, glossy catalogue. A small smile genuine this time, not the forced one he'd given me at dinner played on his lips as he pointed to a picture.
Rhea laughed, a high, tinkling sound that used to comfort me but now grated on my nerves.
"The calla lilies, darling," Rhea purred, touching his hand. "They'll be perfect for the aisle. My aisle."
My blood ran cold. Wedding plans.
I walked into the room, my voice a shaky whisper. "What is this?"
Jason looked up, and his blue eyes were completely devoid of warmth. Rhea just smiled, that cruel, indifferent smirk.
"Veronica," Jason said flatly, as though I were an annoying interruption. He stood, picking up a sleek manila envelope from the table. "Timing is everything, isn't it? I was just finalizing the date. The prenup for the second marriage, that is."
He tossed the envelope onto the table. It slid across the glossy surface and stopped right in front of me.
Divorce papers. Signed by him.
"I told you it was over," he said, his voice cold and indifferent. "Now sign."
I didn't look at the papers. I didn't look at Rhea. I looked only at Jason, my heart pounding with a painful mix of hope, fear, and desperation.
"I'm pregnant," I choked out.
The room fell silent. Rhea's smile faltered, her blue eyes widening in genuine surprise. Jason didn't move.
"What did you say?" Jason asked, his voice low.
"I'm pregnant, Jason! We're having a baby!" I cried, rushing towards him, reaching for his arm. "It fixed us, right? We fixed it! We can throw those papers away. We can be a family!"
He didn't take my hand. He looked down at my face, and for one heartbreaking second, I thought I saw a flicker of emotion, maybe even hope.
Then, the coldness returned, harder and sharper than before.
"A baby?" he scoffed, pulling his arm away. "After three years of trying and failing, you suddenly get pregnant a few days after I serve you divorce papers? Who is the father, Veronica? That thug you spent the night with at the bar?"
Did he stalk me?
My eyes widened in shock. How did he know about Four?
Rhea recovered quickly. "Don't be naive, darling," she said sweetly. "She's desperate to keep you. It's probably a pathetic lie."
"It's not a lie!" I screamed, tears streaming down my face. "It's yours, Jason! It has to be! I love you! This is what you wanted!"
Jason just leaned down, his face inches from mine, and delivered the final blow, his voice dangerously soft.
"I wanted a child from a loyal wife. And I'm certainly not going to raise a possible bastard from some lowlife you picked up in a dive bar. Sign the papers, Veronica. I have a wedding to plan. With a woman who is ready to give me an heir."
Loyal? Look who's talking about loyal
I was shattered.
Utterly and completely shattered. He didn't deserve me, he didn't deserve this child. He had traded me for a traitor and now denied my gift out of cold spite.
I walked back to the table, picked up the pen, and with a shaking hand, signed the papers. I was done being the meek wife.
"You can have the name, the houses, the money, everything," I whispered, throwing the pen down. "But you will never see this baby."
Well, Four was right
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7.1
I was the Architect who built the digital fortress for the most feared Don in New York.
To the world, I was Brendan Wiggins’s silent, elegant Queen.
But then my burner phone buzzed under the dinner table.
It was a photo from his mistress: a positive pregnancy test.
"Your husband is celebrating right now," the caption read. "You are just the furniture."
I looked across the table at Brendan. He smiled and held my hand, lying to my face without blinking.
He thought he owned me because he saved my life ten years ago.
He told her I was just "functional." That I was a barren asset he kept around to look respectable, while she carried his legacy.
He thought I would accept the disrespect because I had nowhere else to go.
He was wrong.
I didn't want to divorce him—you don't divorce a Don.
And I didn't want to kill him. That was too easy.
I wanted to erase him.
I liquidated fifty million dollars from the offshore accounts only I could access. I destroyed the servers I had built.
Then, I contacted a black-market chemist for a procedure called "Tabula Rasa."
It doesn't kill the body. It wipes the mind clean. A total hard reset of the soul.
On his birthday, while he was out celebrating his bastard son, I drank the vial.
When he finally came home to find the empty house and the melted wedding ring, he realized the truth.
He could burn the world down looking for me, but he would never find his wife.
Because the woman who loved him no longer existed.
7.5
On the morning of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I found a cream-colored document tucked inside my husband's suit pocket.
It was a twenty-million-dollar asset transfer for his former receptionist, Carmen. But what made my blood run cold was the contingent beneficiary: Leo, my newborn son who the hospital claimed was kidnapped twenty-three years ago.
When I confronted Devonte, he didn't even try to explain. He handed me a fake Cartier watch, canceled all my credit cards, and publicly called me delusional.
The next day, he moved Carmen into our mansion and emptied all our joint accounts into offshore trusts.
"If you don't sign these papers and walk away, I will have you committed," he threatened, his mother nodding in agreement.
They had orchestrated the kidnapping of my baby, hiding him with the mistress while I spent half my life sedated and screaming in grief. Now, to keep his secret, Devonte was going to lock me in a psychiatric ward and bury me in debt.
I didn't understand how the man I loved could be such a monster. Why did he steal my child? What else was hidden in that confidential adoption file?
Pushed to the absolute brink, I refused to be his victim.
When his goons came to my temporary apartment to drag me away, I turned to the rugged union electrician who had just fixed my lights.
"If you need a husband to keep you out of a psych ward, I'll marry you," he said, offering himself as my legal shield.
I took his hand. It was time to tear my husband's perfect life apart.
8.7
My new boss is gorgeous, arrogant, and filthy rich.
The only problem?
He doesn't know he's also the father of my baby.
Six years ago, I was supposed to get married.
But the night before the wedding, my groom-to-be showed me sides of himself I'd never seen before.
I might've died in that hotel room...
If Mikhail Novikov hadn't burst in to save me.
Handsome, strong, capable knight in shining armor-sign me up, right?
WRONG.
Because Mikhail wasn't just the hero I never knew I needed...
He was also way more dangerous than I ever could've known.
But for one night, I let myself do something I never should've done.
It was worth it-several times over, if you catch my drift.
In the morning, though, I did the reasonable
I RAN.
For six years, I keep running.
Until I walk into work one day, and find my new boss waiting in my office.
Guess who?
And guess what he does when finds out about our baby?
7.5
He wasn't supposed to notice her.
She wasn't supposed to want him.
And her daughter definitely wasn't supposed to fall in love with him first.
"He's not just dangerous," she whispers to herself . "He's the kind of man who ruins your life slowly... and makes you thank him for it."
He rides loud.
He loves hard.
And once he wants something, he doesn't let go.
"You don't get to look at me like that," she tells him.
His smile is slow. Predatory. Certain.
"I already did," he says. "And now you're mine."
She's a single mother barely holding it together.
He's a biker king with blood on his hands and loyalty carved into his bones.
Their worlds should never touch.
But they collide anyway.
"You think I don't know what you're doing to me?" he growls.
Her back hits the wall. His body cages her in.
"You think I'd touch you if I didn't plan to keep you?"
This isn't a sweet romance.
It's raw. Possessive. Unforgiving.
The kind of love that marks you.
"Mummy," her daughter says softly, holding his hand.
"Can he stay forever?"
He shouldn't want them.
But the idea of leaving them hurts worse than any knife.
"I don't share," he tells her in the dark.
"Not my bike. Not my club. And definitely not my woman."
One kiss turns into hunger.
One night turns into obsession.
And one choice could burn everything down.
"If you climb on my bike," he warns, voice low and lethal,
"you don't get off unchanged."
7.4
I was the wife of Damien Valenti, the most ruthless mafia Don in Chicago.
But to cement his power and marry a rival family's daughter, he exiled me to the slums without a single dime.
"Stay not as my wife, Izzy, but as my whore."
That was his final ultimatum before dumping me out of his black SUV like trash.
Terrified of losing me, my five-year-old son, Angelo, secretly hid in the car to follow me.
Two days later, in a squalid Indiana motel, Angelo caught severe pneumonia.
I had no money and no doctor. In sheer desperation, I sliced my own wrist with broken glass, pressing my bleeding arm to his pale lips, begging him to drink and live.
But my little boy died in my arms.
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, Damien was sipping vintage champagne with his new bride, casually dismissing the life of his own flesh and blood.
The grief turned me into a monster. I spent twenty years clawing my way through the underworld to destroy his empire, only to die with a bullet in my chest.
I gave him my absolute devotion, yet he traded our family for political power without a single ounce of hesitation.
Opening my eyes again, I was back in that hellish neon-lit motel room.
Angelo was burning with fever and fighting for air, but he was still breathing.
This time, I wasn't the naive girl who loved Damien Valenti. I was a woman holding two decades of their darkest secrets, and my vendetta had just begun.
8.8
For three years, I swallowed a bitter pill daily, suppressing my royal white wolf bloodline for a normal life as the Alpha's Luna. That morning, my husband Santino coldly announced a crucial announcement, then entered our grand hall with another woman, declaring, "Alessia, she will be living here from now on."
She was pregnant, he announced, carrying our late Beta's child-yet her neck was unmarked. My scoff met his furious Alpha dominance, threatening my title, forcing my bow as he settled her into the suite next to ours.
Her sickening scent soon permeated my private study. Later, I found him intimately grooming her in the kitchen-a sacred act for mates-while he snarled mental insults, branding my jealousy pathetic.
Watching his hands violate our vows, a slow, cruel smirk pulled at my lips. My three-year marriage was officially over. I had already paused my royal trust fund's capital, then severed our mind link with a chilling declaration: "Don't touch me with the hands that just touched her."