Feel-Good Story Mafia Short Stories & Bias Marriage Novels

I married Don Alessandro in secret. The Five Families of Chicago had ruled for generations. And I had married into the most powerful of them. For four years, Alessandro made me promises. One hundred and twelve times. And one hundred and twelve times, he left me standing alone. The first time, his ex‑girlfriend’s father had a heart attack. Alessandro canceled the wedding and stayed with her for three full weeks. The second time, she crashed her Maserati into a fountain in Monaco. Drunk. He flew there overnight and paid off the police chief personally. Every time, right before our wedding, she manufactured another crisis. I begged. I screamed. I put a knife to my own wrist. Alessandro just laughed, pulled the blade from my hand, and fucked me against the nearest wall. “She’s my ex‑girlfriend. You’re my wife. You don't need to be jealous of her.” After the one hundred and twelfth time, I stopped feeling anything. I pushed a piece of agreement in front of him.“Our marriage. Our alliance. Consider it terminated.”

On the day I signed the divorce papers, I was ordered to leave with nothing. When I walked out of the Crane estate, I had twenty-six dollars in my wallet and nowhere safe to go. My phone was nearly dead when a message from an old classmate appeared on the screen, linking to a discreet placement notice. 【Seeking a live-in maternal figure for three children. Room, board, salary, and protection provided.】 I stopped at the word protection. A roof, a meal, and a place the Cranes could not reach me were already more than I had that night. The address led me to the iron gates of an old mansion on Chicago’s Gold Coast. Only after the butler opened the door did I learn who had placed the notice. Dante Bellandi. The Don of Chicago’s oldest Italian crime family. I had only wanted a place to stay. Somehow, I became the legal mother of the three Bellandi children and the contract wife of Dante Bellandi himself. Later, my ex-husband, Sebastian Crane, stood before me with the same careless arrogance and asked, “Do you realize you were wrong now?” Before I could answer, the triplets stepped in front of me. Little Livia clung to my leg, her eyes red. “My mom wasn’t wrong!” Her two brothers stood on either side of her, staring Sebastian down. Dante placed one hand at my waist, his voice calm enough to make the air turn cold. “Mr. Crane, my wife owes no explanation to a man who lost the right to speak to her.”

The second day after I was transferred back to Los Angeles, I ran into someone I used to know on a street corner. She stepped right in front of me, eyes going wide. “Mia? Mia Rossi? Why would you come back now? Dante's marrying Camille at the cathedral in a week.” Dante was my first love, and also the youngest heir to a mafia dynasty on this side of the Atlantic. He'd made me a promise once: that he'd make the entire Moretti family kneel and welcome me in. We had a deal: the day he officially took over as Don would be the day he married me. But his family had other plans. They arranged a match for him: Camille, a princess from one of Sicily's five great families. Pure bloodline, the genuine article. At first, Dante swore up and down she meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. Then I started noticing how he looked at her. Softer every time. Like he was falling. One night, riding home after a shift at the bar, Camille's car came out of nowhere and took me down. The gas tank caught, and half the block reeked of burning rubber and scorched metal. I was pinned under the wreckage, blood seeping from the back of my skull down my neck, warm at first, then cold. Dante was the first one there. He beat the ambulance. The first thing he did was walk past me. He crouched down, lifted Camille out of the passenger seat, and didn't look at me once, just dropped a few words over his shoulder: “I already called an ambulance. Hang tight. Camille's had too much to drink. I need to get her home.” That was the moment I was done with him. Completely, finally done. While he was gone, I discharged myself. I bought the farthest plane ticket I could find that same night and left without looking back. Five years passed. “Mia, you have no idea.” The woman grabbed my wrist, dropping her voice. “Dante spent years turning half of Europe upside down looking for you. You came back at the right time. He still keeps a seat for you every month on his birthday. Camille's too proud for a lot of things,

On my birthday, one of my husband’s subordinates leaned close to him and whispered in Russian, “Sasha has a surprise prepared for you tonight.” My husband smiled at me as he finished cutting my cake. Then, in the same language, he replied, “She has quite a few tricks in bed. I’ll see her later. “Just don’t let Madam find out, or I’m afraid I’ll get thrown out.” Everyone around laughed and assured keep it quiet. None of them knew that I’d been fluent in multiple languages since I was a child. What they also didn’t know was that I’d found the hidden phone he kept in the false drawer, where all the filthy videos of him and Sasha were saved. I didn’t confront him. Instead, I contacted a few remaining connections in the Vegas and had them prepare a new identity for me. In three days, Claire Vega would no longer exist, and he would never have me again.

We'd been together seven years before Damian Caruso finally agreed to the wedding. Inside St. Patrick's Cathedral, I stood at the aisle in a lace gown, surrounded by the most dangerous mafia elders from New York and New Jersey. Three minutes, and the Don would take his vows and take over the rest of my life. Then he answered a phone call. "Bella got into a car accident. In Brooklyn." Bella. The orphan of a dead servant. The "life debt" Damian owed her. Her needs always came before mine. When a gun was to my head, he was at her therapy. When I nearly went into shock from fever, he missed my call because he was staying the night with Bella, who's afraid of the dark. Now, at our vows, Damian turned to the priest. "Apologies. Something's come up. The wedding is postponed." The room erupted. Young lieutenants laughed openly, their whispers crawling up the aisle. "$100,000 says our future Donna lets the Don go to Bella. She's been trained too well." Damian heard them. His head snapped toward the row of young lieutenants, and the laughter died instantly. No one moved. No one breathed. He turned to the priest. "Apologies. Something's come up. The wedding is postponed." Then he saw me. Something flickered in his eyes—not guilt, not hesitation. Just the calm expectation of a man who had never once doubted I would still be there when he returned. He draped his coat over my shoulders. "Viola, I have to go. You've always been the sensible one. As future Donna, you know how to handle this. Don't let them make a joke of us." Yeah. I used to be so "sensible." For seven years, I swallowed every grievance and cleaned up his messes. "Go. I'll wait here." My voice was calm. He nodded, satisfied, and strode out. The bells rang seven times—seven years of me bleeding for him. When the seventh fell, his car had vanished around the corner. And with it, the last of my hope. Damian thought I'd be waiting, like always. But this time, I was done.

When I was three months pregnant, I walked straight into an ambush. A bullet tore through my arm, and they rushed me to the hospital. By the time it was over, the baby had been torn out of me alive. The surgeon, Mia, passed it off as a tragic mistake. I tore the hospital apart, and my husband, Leon, only looked annoyed. "It's one kid. We'll have another. Why put the doctor through hell over it?" Then I saw the smug woman standing behind him, and it all came together. I smiled at Leon. What he didn't know was that in the gang shootout three months ago, the bullet to his stomach had left him sterile for good. And that baby was the only blood he would ever have.

I'm the Red Rose of the mafia world, notorious for hating to lose. All my life, I competed with Bianca Rossi, the White Rose of the Rossi family. If she outshot me, I practiced until my hands bled at the seams. If an older family member paid her even one more compliment than they paid me at a party, I replaced every dress in my closet that looked anything like hers the very next day. Then she won Luca Bellini too, the man I had wanted for years. On their wedding day, I stood on the second floor of the hotel and watched Luca drink the toasts meant for Bianca. Then he slipped the Bellini family ring onto her finger himself. I refused to lose. I'd saved Matteo Rossi's life, and I used that debt to force him to marry me. He was the brother Bianca respected most. At our wedding Bianca looked furious, but she still had to grit her teeth and welcome me into her family. I thought I had finally won. The man I had schemed my way into marrying actually fell in love with me. For the first time, I put my claws away for someone and began to think of the Rossi house as home. Then Bianca had a miscarriage, and every piece of evidence pointed to me. In front of everyone, Matteo said he believed me. Behind my back, he froze my accounts, mirrored my phone, and had every person close to me investigated. I escaped the Rossi estate, only to be hunted down and killed. My baby didn't survive either. When I opened my eyes again, it was one week before Bianca and Luca's wedding. This time I'm not competing with anyone.

Three years ago, on our wedding night, I walked in on my ex-husband, Filippo, tangled up with his friend Teresa in our marriage bed. Just because Teresa said she was scared, Filippo threw me out of the villa and left me to walk alone through the pitch-dark night for hours. By the next day, the rumor that I'd sold out family secrets had spread through every street in Naples. I became the traitor who'd betrayed the Naples Mafia, and one rainy night, I was driven out of the city. Three years later, after marrying Rafael Vitale, the new Don of the Sicilian Mafia, I returned to Naples to take back the estate my father left me. I never imagined the estate that was mine alone would be used for a trashy swimsuit party. The roses that once stood for my parents' love were being trampled underfoot without a second thought. Before I could stop it, someone shoved me down into the flowerbed. "This is a Naples family gathering. No outsiders allowed!" I looked up, and the jeering hit me. "Well, if it isn't Isabella, the useless ex-wife Filippo kicked off the estate." "I heard she was all over Filippo back then and used her family's power to force him into marrying her. Too bad the wedding had barely ended before she ran off with another man!" "So is she back because the guy got bored and dumped her? Too bad Filippo already runs the Gallo family, and tomorrow some big shot from Sicily is coming for the ceremony" "Plus, Filippo already proposed to Teresa, the Gallos' only daughter. The wedding's next month."

I took the fall for my husband over an illegal arms deal and spent three years in federal prison. By the time I got out, he already had a child with another woman. On the day of the christening, I calmly handed him divorce papers. Everyone said I had lost my mind—that I was declaring war on the Nelli family. I was perfectly clear-headed. Before I went in, my husband, Silvio Nelli, held my hand and swore he would never betray me as long as he lived. But the night before my release, I dreamed that he wiped out the Thorne family for that woman and took everything I had. I died beside my parents' bodies while he held that woman's child. In the end, he was the only one who came out ahead. Now the child from my dream was real. I wasn't going to wait for the nightmare to come true. I would take back everything my three years in prison had bought him. Then I'd make him pay in blood.

Eight years into the Cappello family, and only today did I discover there's a meeting room beneath the estate. Half an hour ago, my husband Julian put on his coat and said he was heading to the New Jersey docks to handle a smuggling shipment. Five minutes after he left, the estate's internal line rang. It was Julian's driver, asking if he should have the car washed. It had gotten dirty from yesterday's rain. Julian never rides in anyone else's car for long trips. If he'd gone to New Jersey, his driver should be behind the wheel right now. I went down to the second-level basement garage. His car was still there. The emergency stairwell beside it was inexplicably open. I followed it down and found a meeting room. Through the half-open door, I saw my mother-in-law Elena pouring whiskey for Mia, the girl I'd taken in from the slums out of pity the year I married into the Cappello family. "Mia, you're taking over the Brooklyn docks starting next week." "Julian will help you clean up all the dirty accounts." The Brooklyn docks. I'd taken two bullets for this family to secure that territory. And now my mother-in-law was handing it to Mia like it was nothing. And Julian, the Cappello heir, my husband, was standing right behind Mia, both hands resting on her bare shoulders. Around the long table sat my father-in-law Victor, Elena, Mia, the family's legal director, and two heads of the operations team. With Julian, that made seven. Every core member of the Cappello family was in that room. Everyone except me.

My name is Elena Valesi Moretti. I'm a Brooklyn mob bride, a pawn in everyone's game. My father Enzo traded me for an alliance. My sister Isabella played the saint while secretly selling our baby sister Sofia to the Bianchi family behind closed doors. And my husband, Dante Moretti—the man with winter in his eyes who whispered “Try to run, I’ll break your legs” on our wedding day—he married me because when I was fifteen years old, I once pointed a gun at him inside a burning building. The only rule in this marriage was simple: stay out of his way. I spent three years breaking it. I sat in on council meetings and memorized every traitor's secret. I stood and watched a man's finger be severed to teach my own brother the price of betrayal. I turned myself into a blade. Then I uncovered the truth—Dante knew everything from the start. He knew my father had planted a mole inside his inner circle. He knew my sister was a trafficker's broker. He knew the woman he married was meant to be disposable from the very beginning. But there's one thing he never accounted for. He didn't marry a lamb. He married a wolf who learned how to draw blood. Now someone is trying to sell my little sister, and I have six weeks to stop it. I'm going to beat this man at every game he ever taught me.

One second before the ceremony was set to begin, my groom, Alvin Mercer, suddenly turned and walked out. "Lillian, Hannah's exhibition is falling apart. She's home alone right now and I have to be with her. We'll reschedule the wedding." Hannah Deneuve was the maid's daughter he'd grown up with. I caught him by the cuff. My voice came out flat and cold. "Alvin, this is the sixth time you have called off our wedding for her. If you walk out that door today, you and I are finished." But Alvin flung my hand off. "Enough! We can get married any time. Hannah needs me right now!" He left without looking back, and my heart slowly went cold. The priest clutched his Bible, visibly uncomfortable, and quietly asked me whether the ceremony should continue. I looked past a room full of stunned guests, straight at the man sitting in the corner of the very last row. "Of course. "Just with a different groom."

Don Vincent White and I were known as soulmates. Everyone in the city said so. But our wedding never happened. Every time we tried, something got in the way. Bad weather. Scheduling conflicts. Emergencies. Three years ago, Vincent had to leave overseas to handle urgent family business. Before he went, he kissed my forehead and said, "I promise this is the last time. Wait for me." I believed him. So I waited. One thousand, ninety-five days. Ten days ago, he finally came back. I thought the three-year wait was over. I thought we would finally have our wedding. Then last night, I overheard him talking to his underboss, Marco Blue, outside his study. "You're really going to marry Miss Black? What about Vivian and the boy? Luca is over two years old now. He's your own son. This won't stay hidden forever." "Back when Vivian was pregnant, you made up every excuse to delay the wedding. But if Miss Black ever finds out—" Vincent's eyes cut like a blade. "Sophia must never know. My wife will only ever be Sophia. Tell Vivian to watch her mouth and keep that child in line." Luca. Two years old. His own flesh and blood. So while I spent three years waiting for him to come home and marry me, he already had someone else. A child over two years old. I stumbled back to the bedroom. Hands shaking, I called my grandfather. "Grandfather, I'm ready. I'll take your place and become the Donna."

On the day my boyfriend, Antonio Vinci, proposes to me, his adoptive sister, Lucia Falcone, remarks on a whim, "How romantic. It makes me want to get married now as well." On the very same night, Antonio gives me an agreement. "You should leave. Here's a 50-million-dollar compensation. I'm going to get married soon." If this were to happen in the past, I'd have kicked up a huge ruckus and threatened to take my own life if Antonio didn't marry me. But now, I just ask for another 50 million dollars calmly. When I'm about to sign the agreement, I hear Antonio talking on the phone in another language. "Thank goodness I gave Daniela a marriage agreement. Otherwise, she'd seriously think I'd break up with her. I knew that Daniela would be perfect as my wife. She's obedient and docile, just like a loyal mutt. "As for Lucia, I can give her everything but a legitimate position by my side." My hand pauses momentarily. Then, I scribble Lucia's name on the agreement. What Antonio doesn't know is that I have an ongoing bet with Lucia. If I can ensnare Antonio's heart in ten years, she will back out of our relationship. If I fail to do so, I'll disappear permanently from their lives.

Everyone warned me never to fall for Dante Moretti. They said he was the ghost of the Velasco family—an underboss who ordered hits without blinking, his heart colder than the barrel of his gun. But when he bent me over that mahogany desk, his mouth against my ear commanding me to say his name, I was stupid enough to think that was possession. It took me an entire year to see the truth. The photographs locked in his study drawer were never of me. The woman in white waiting for him in the cathedral district on Sunday mornings was never me. The girl who took a bullet for him, the one he called his "salvation"—her name is Elena Abate. And Elena happens to be my stepmother's daughter. My father is trying to sell me to a half-dead Agosti heir for five hundred million to save the family. My stepmother is scheming to erase me from existence entirely. And the man I thought would burn this city to the ground for me? On the day I needed him most, he was lifting Elena up a flight of stairs, cradling her like something sacred. They all thought I was just a pawn to be moved around their chessboard. They were wrong. If Dante can't let go of his precious white moonlight, his "salvation," then I'll become someone else's "widow." If Elena believes she's already won this game, I'll let her watch from the front row as a woman with nothing left to lose burns it all down. My name is Serafina. Remember it. Because I am about to become the reckoning none of them saw coming.

The year I returned to the Moretti family, everyone expected the biological daughter and the adopted daughter to fight for their place in the family. But Gianna was different. She was the first to learn sign language so she could communicate with me. She knew I hated sitting with my back to a door. She also knew I didn't want anyone asking why I still refused to speak after two years back home. That night, at a charity gala, my father was supposed to sign an agreement that would end our family's involvement in the port's illegal operations. Instead, Luca Vitale stormed in with representatives from eight families and proposed a toast to my father. He took one sip and collapsed. A second later, the ballroom screen lit up. Gianna's payment to a pharmacist and chat messages mentioning "Dad's wine" had been used to make it look like she'd bought drugs to murder our father. She really had made that payment. She handed over her phone for everyone to see, but the original messages had been deleted, and she couldn't recover them. Luca gave us ten minutes: hand over Gianna or hand over the port. All the while, Luca's doctor stood beside my father with a syringe in his hand. He refused to say where he'd gotten it. My mother told Luca, "You can have the port. You can't have either of my daughters." Gianna pulled away from her anyway and walked straight to Luca. All she asked was that he let our father go to the hospital first. As she passed me, she signed with trembling hands, "Don't tell them about your past for my sake." I stared at the syringe. I'd seen that same medical kit at the clinic in Malta. I'd also seen what happened to patients once they became bargaining chips. If Gianna was willing to go that far for me, then I was willing to risk everything for her, just this once.

My fiancée and I had been together for ten years. In everyone's eyes, we were the perfect couple. After she saved my life, with tears in my eyes, I made her a promise: "In this lifetime, I'll do 100 things for you." On the eve of our wedding, we decided to climb a snow-covered mountain. An unexpected avalanche struck, and we were stranded at a local farmhouse. Her first love, who was the expedition leader, was injured while trying to save her. In the confusion, he accidentally took an aphrodisiac rather than a painkiller. My fiancée, who had always seemed so traditional and reserved, did not hesitate. She began taking off her clothes, saying she needed to "help" him. Everyone waited for me to explode in rage. Instead, I calmly stepped aside. Three promises remained. Once they were fulfilled, Yvette Jenkins and I would owe each other nothing. However, then it would be time for me to return… and take over my mafia family.

After being dumped for the 99th time for being a “chatterbox,” I finally met my soulmate, Lysander Thorne. As the Mafia godfather, he was a man of few words, but listened to every single word I said with rapt attention. His proposal shattered the curse that had doomed me to a hundred rejections. But, I discovered a fatal flaw in Lysander after we got married. Whatever he spoke to me, he never exceeded ten words. I thought it was his stoic personality until I gave a hand to a girl being harassed by a thug at the bar. At the police station, the girl asked, “Has your husband not arrived yet? My friend will pick me up and you can leave with us.” The next second, I saw Lysander rushing in, looking utterly disheveled. “Elara Thorne! Why do you stir up trouble on your very first day back home? You've got wings of your own now, haven’t you? Did I ever tell you to stay safe firstly when something happened? Stop being so impulsive!” It turned out Lysander could get emotional. How ridiculous! When Lysander entered, his eyes were solely fixed on Elara. I looked at him with a blank expression, and wordlessly walked out of the police station.

Within 30 days, Niccolò Romano and I registered for divorce 18 times. The first time, Niccolò's adopted sister stole my research results, but he hired a lawyer to fight for her. Afterwards, he held me and coaxed, "If something happens to Lia, no one will dare to hire her in the future. I'm just helping her." The second time, while my plane was in distress, he was traveling around the world with Lia. His tone was helpless: "Lia has depended on me since she was little. I only look after her like a younger sister." The last time, Lia was pregnant with a child no one would claim, and he took responsibility for it. Faced with my accusation, he just sighed, a bit tired: "Lia's career is just starting to take off. If someone blackmails her with the child, her life will be ruined." "You're a woman too. Can't you understand?" This time, I didn't cry or make a scene. Instead, I calmly signed my name on the divorce agreement that he had signed in a fit of pique some time ago. Then I called my professor: "I've thought it over. I'm willing to go with you to Iceland to do research."

For three years running, Matteo always had a reason to push the engagement date back, all because he was certain I could never want anyone but him. The first year, his parents refused to let him marry a poor girl like me, and the engagement was shelved. The second year, he lost the engagement rings I had made myself. No rings, no ceremony. The third year, he "forgot" to tell his parents the date and only told them at the last minute. There was too little time, they could not get there, and the engagement was shelved again. This year, though, none of those earlier "accidents" happened. There was only one exception. On the day of our engagement, the gown my mother had sewn for me stitch by stitch before she died somehow ended up on my stepsister, Capucine. She let her cat climb up the skirt and bite and claw at it until the lace was full of holes. Matteo did not scold her. He soothed her in a gentle voice instead. "It's fine. If it's ruined we'll just have another one made. It's an old dress, it's not like it's anything special." He ignored my red, swollen eyes. "The gown is gone now, so it looks like the engagement will have to wait until next year." I let out a cold laugh and stepped forward to strip the gown off Capucine. "Three times is enough. There won't be an engagement next year either." What he did not know was that before she died, my mother told me a secret she had kept for twenty years. I was never some poor girl. I was the only daughter of a Sicilian mafia family. My real father had found out where I had ended up, and he was already on his way to bring me home himself. Since this engagement was not going to happen, I had decided to go home with him.