Marrying The Enemy: My Ex's Worst Nightmare

I spent ten years as the ward of Kason Oneal, the ruthless Underboss of the city's most dangerous crime family. He saved me when I was a child, raised me, and made me believe I was his queen.

But the moment his ex-girlfriend, Dalia, returned, the illusion shattered.

Kason demanded I return the jade pendant—the one he had hand-carved for my sixteenth birthday—just so he could hang it around Dalia's neck. To him, I was suddenly nothing more than a placeholder who had kept his bed warm.

The cruelty didn't stop there. He stood by and watched as Dalia shredded my clothes with scissors, laughing at my tears.

When I collapsed on the floor in agony from acute appendicitis, Kason didn't call an ambulance. Instead, he dragged me to a shady clinic, accusing me of faking a pregnancy to trap him. He ordered the doctor to "terminate it" while I was dying of sepsis on the table.

He called me trash. He called me property. He stripped away every ounce of dignity I had left, all to please a woman who was lying to his face.

I realized then that the hero who saved me when I was ten was dead. I was done begging for scraps of affection from a monster.

Trembling, I walked to the phone and dialed the number of the one man Kason feared most—his sworn enemy, Hadley Payne.

"Tell him yes," I whispered into the receiver. "I accept the arrangement. I will marry him."

Kason thought he could break me. Instead, he was about to watch his "property" become the Queen of the rival family.