เรื่องสั้นแนวBias Mafia และนิยาย Regret

My anxiety spiked during our wedding photoshoot. A sharp pain stabbed through my chest. My fiancé, Caius—the Falcone family heir—was helping his adoptive sister, Fiorella, try on my wedding dress. He didn't even spare me a glance. He was on one knee, focused on adjusting the lace on Fiorella’s hem. Before we’d even left the shop, Fiorella posted a selfie in the dress. She was all smiles, my fiancé standing beside her, posed like her groom. Calmly, I pulled out my phone. I sent a message to a painter I keep on retainer. "A royal portrait. The two of them. Old-world style. Use the cheapest materials you can find. I want the frame dripping with fake diamonds. Make it look like trash." I'll have it sent to Fiorella. A wedding present. The note will be simple. "A work of art as priceless as your bond. Best wishes on your wedding."

It took Matteo De Luca ten years to rise from soldier to Don. I fought through all ten beside him. The year we hit rock bottom, I cast aside every shred of pride and knelt before my father, the man who had betrayed my family, just to borrow twenty rounds. Matteo looked at me, his eyes full of pain. I asked only one thing. "The day you become Don, will you let me stand beside you?" He promised me he would. After he finally took his place as Don, I reminded him of that promise. He kept cleaning his gun without looking up. "Things are tense right now. We'll talk about it later." So I never asked again. Then I stumbled across a video on a dark-web forum: Matteo being crowned Don at Manhattan's Round Table Hall. He'd said he was going to Chicago to handle trouble. Instead, he was standing under the lights with my half sister, Isabella Volkov, at his side. Isabella slid the Don's ring, the symbol of his power, onto his finger. Matteo pulled her into an ecstatic embrace. "Thank you for being here at the start of my reign. I'm so happy." Isabella rose on her toes and kissed the side of his neck. "So am I." I shut off the video, wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes, and returned to cleaning my guns as if it were any other night. When I finished, I texted Matteo, "I want twenty rounds." He did not ask why. He had a whole case delivered. I counted out twenty and texted back two words, "Too many." I had those twenty rounds returned to my father, settling a ten-year-old debt. Ten years ago, I traded my pride and dignity for twenty rounds. Ten years later, Matteo used twenty rounds to break his promise to me. There was no place for me at his coronation banquet. And he had no place left in my Brooklyn underworld.

My boyfriend is the heir to Sicily's top mafia clan. To test my loyalty, he never spent a single dime on me during our five years together. Even when we bought condoms, he insisted we split the bill fifty-fifty. Last week, I was in a car accident. To save the baby in my womb, I urgently needed $1,000 for emergency surgery. I called him from the hospital, begging for the money, but he accused me of lying to extort cash from him and hung up. Desperate, I begged every friend and contact I knew. By the time I finally scraped the sum together, a unbearable pain tore through my abdomen—my baby's heart had already stopped beating. After burying my baby, I went back to pack my bags. That was when I accidentally found a birthday gift list he had prepared for his childhood neighbor, Nadia. A luxury yacht, a star named after her, and endless designer goods. Right then, his voice drifted in from the next room as he spoke on a phone call with his underbosses. "Hey Boss, is it true Elena begged you for a grand?" Dante Moretti scoffed arrogantly. "Yeah, and I stood my ground and refused. Nadia is right. Elena is just a helpless orphan who can't leave me. But to enter my family, she has to pass a strict test. It’s almost over. She’ll realize I did all this for her own good." So my five years of devotion, and my baby's life, were nothing more than a twisted test for a repulsive mafia title. Whatever. It didn't matter anymore. The moment the doctor announced my baby was dead, I had already decided to walk away from him forever.

My mafia boyfriend, Finn, is always bickering with his childhood friend, Amanda. For my birthday, she brought me a bullet vibe. "Here. For round two, just in case. I know his stamina better than anyone." He tossed a bottle of pale foundation at her. "Slap some more on. Maybe then someone will actually want to touch you." They shoved each other on their way out, slamming the door behind them. The candles on the cake burned down to nothing while I sat alone at the dining table. The first time our families sat down for a formal dinner, she smiled and slipped him a small bottle of lube. "Take it. So you don't make the poor girl suffer." His face darkened. "Better than you crying at night, hugging a body pillow." This time, Finn had arranged a private island vacation. A mutual friend quietly gave me a heads-up, telling me he was planning to propose on a cliff at sunset. After a seven-year marathon, I told myself this was it. The finish line was finally in sight. I dressed meticulously, putting on my most expensive dress, and walked toward the helipad. I pulled open the helicopter door. Amanda was already in the co-pilot's seat. She raised an eyebrow at me. "Chloe, you're here? I'm claustrophobic, so you don't mind if I sit up front, right?" Finn, gripping the controls, turned to look me over. "Chloe, you sit in the back. I'm worried she'll have a meltdown and start scratching and biting. It'll ruin the mood." Before I could say a word, Amanda was already arguing with him. "What's that supposed to mean? You think I'm a burden?" "It's not the first time I've thought so. Why are you being so dramatic today?" Their back and forth was so practiced it felt like a script they had rehearsed a thousand times. In that moment, the exhaustion of the past seven years washed over me. And for the first time, I realized I didn't want to say yes to his proposal anymore.

Reborn as the long-lost Rogers heir, missing for fifteen years, I avoided every chance to bond with my two brothers in this family. When they tossed me Vivi’s discarded, ill-fitting gown for the family gala, I smiled and put it on. When they sent Vivi to get an elite education while ordering me to scrub the utility room, I picked up the mop without a word. When they let Vivi chase love and dumped her rejected suitor on me, I didn’t fight. I accepted her leftovers with a calm nod. This was all because in my past life, I had spent my entire life desperate for my brothers' approval, only to end up despised by everyone for it. When I died in the crossfire of a gangland shootout, my own son pushed my body away in disgust. "Mom, did you really waste your whole life on such a petty fight with Aunt Vivi? Dying for the family would have been a more dignified end. At least then you wouldn't have disgraced our name." I left this world filled with resentment, only to open my eyes and find myself back at the moment I first set foot in the Rogers estate. This time, I'm done fighting. The power, the name, the honor. I'm letting them have it all. I’ve already been accepted into a closed-door medical project. Soon they will never see me again.

I was the Castell family's designated heir in Rosewick, Delmaris, and my older sister Sabrina had been adopted into the family. So she was overprotective of me. She reminded me constantly, "Avery, you're the family's only heir. It's not safe for you to be out in public." Even my dates with Julian Vescari, the Don of the most powerful family in Rosewick, were things she attended in my place. When the grapes ripened at the estate, Sabrina said the crowds made it unsafe. So she went with Julian to pick grapes instead of me. At family banquets, she said there were too many cameras and it made an assassination too easy. So she linked arms with Julian and gave the speeches in my place. Every time she came back, Sabrina told me gently, "As long as I'm standing in front of you, you can inherit everything safely." I always believed she did it for my sake. Until the day before my engagement to Julian. Sabrina was sitting in the dressing room in the gown I'd had made for myself. As I passed the doorway, I happened to see Julian feed her a peeled grape. Sabrina complained sweetly, "I run around handling everything for the two of you and never get a moment to myself, and one grape is supposed to settle it?" Julian answered easily, "You've worked hard. Ask me for anything you want." Sabrina looked him up and down, and then she smiled. The intimacy between them froze me where I stood and sent a sharp pain through my chest. In that moment I finally understood. This boundary-crossing game they called protection had to end.

At our wedding, Julian, the head of the Moretti family, declared his love for me in front of New York’s most powerful crime families. “Here’s to our marriage, my beautiful wife.” A second later, he ripped off my veil and whispered coldly in my ear. “And here’s to our divorce, Claire.” The tears of joy froze on my face. The wedding was supposed to cement an alliance between our families. An encrypted livestream was carrying every moment to the allies who couldn’t attend. As I stared in shock, he pulled Sienna—the woman who managed his family’s books—into his arms. She wore a white Versace gown. The bride’s color. “If you’d just let her have that necklace last week, none of this would be happening.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then looked at me. “Apologize to her in front of everyone, and I’ll let you stay Mrs. Moretti.” Not one person spoke up for me. After my father died, Julian had taken control of my family’s docks. The men who had once raised their glasses to my father now waited for Julian’s approval. But he had forgotten one thing. That necklace was the only thing I had left of my mother. On her deathbed, she had fastened it around my neck herself and made me promise never to give it to anyone. The wedding footage soon spread through New York’s underworld. I became a joke at every family’s dinner table. Meanwhile, Julian took Sienna to formal dinners and seated her in the place that should have been mine. Everyone understood who he was publicly choosing. Three months later, he finally returned to New York after taking Sienna around the world. Walking into the estate, he tossed his coat to one of his men and asked casually, “Has Claire agreed to apologize yet?” The man said nothing. Julian stopped. “Answer me.” “Boss… Claire’s married someone else.”

I came home from a business trip. My daughter Anna threw herself into my arms and held up a hand-strung necklace she had clearly worked hard on. "Mommy, this is the birthday present I made for Mommy Lena. She's going to love it, right?" My heart dropped. Lena was my husband Preston's secretary. My daughter remembered her birthday. She had forgotten that today was mine. It wasn't the first time. She was always attached to Lena, hanging off her arm and asking, "Mommy Lena, when are you and Daddy taking me back to the amusement park?" Even when she ran a fever, the name she called out over and over was Mommy Lena. I corrected her, disappointed. "Anna, I'm your mommy, not Lena." But Anna pushed me away and shouted, "You're the bad mommy! I don't want you! I want Mommy Lena to be my mommy forever!" In that moment I could almost hear my own heart cracking. A second later, Preston shoved the door open. He scooped up the wailing Anna and turned on me. "Winnie, what kind of mother are you? Your child is crying like this and you can't even be bothered! "Anna's right. As a mother you're not half of what Lena is. I honestly don't know what I was thinking when I married you!" I watched their backs disappear down the hall and felt something go out in me. So this was what it had bought me. Six years ago I gave up my name and my claim as heir to the Family, all for love, and what I got in return was the contempt of my husband and my daughter. If that was how it was, then it was time for me to go home to the Family.

My husband, Charles Marino, sent me three videos in a row to let me know where he was. One was from the docks, where he was inspecting a shipment. Another showed him stepping off the cargo ship. The last showed him arriving at the casino. Each video showed exactly where he was. My doctor glanced at my phone and smiled. "Your husband really loves you. He checks in with you all the time. If I remember correctly, he took a bullet for you four years ago." "Men like that are rare these days. He'd never cheat on you, and he'd give his life for you." I folded the pregnancy test results and smiled back. "He's just changed. That's all." Four years ago, during a shootout at the docks, Charles took a bullet for me. Everyone else was falling back, but he charged in and shielded me with his body. The bullet went straight through his shoulder, two finger-widths from his heart. That fight cost me the baby I was carrying. That was also when I decided, deep down, that he was the one. But less than a week later, I went to see him at the hospital and caught him in bed with my best friend, Susie Clarke. To win my forgiveness, he begged me and hit himself over and over. His wound tore open, and blood seeped out. Before they rushed him back to the ER, he grabbed my hand and whispered, "I'd give my life for you. Why can't you forgive me this once?" "Without you, I'd rather be dead." In the end, I gave in and forgave him. From then on, he always checked in to tell me where he was. I tucked the test results into my bag and told the doctor, "It wasn't easy for me to get pregnant. I'm going home early to surprise him." I could already picture how excited Charles would be. But the moment I opened the front door, I froze. The room was a mess. It was the same scene I'd walked in on in that hospital room four years ago. Now it was happening all over again, right in front of me.

The plane touched down in Tripoli at dusk. Behind me, the sky was on fire. I pulled out my phone and typed a message to my husband, Don Vito Hart. [I'm here. I came to bring you home.] No reply. I called his underboss, Enzo Stark. His voice was hesitant. "You… you really went to Libya?" An explosion rattled the terminal windows. My heart slammed against my ribs. "Which district is he in?" A long pause. Then, quieter: "He never left the country." His voice dropped to barely a whisper. "The business trip… it was a lie." The line went dead. A photo appeared on my screen. Time-stamped today. Vito was smiling. Bright, but something behind his eyes looked tired. His arm was wrapped around a woman. They were blowing out candles on a birthday cake. I recognized her instantly. Rosa Quinn. The woman he'd knelt and sworn on his mother's grave never to see again. Three years ago. I still had the scar on my own palm where I'd made him swear. Vito had forgotten. Today was my birthday too. My phone buzzed again. "Sera, the truth is—the Don never ended things with Rosa. We all knew. But you two seemed so happy… no one dared tell you." I read the message twice. Then I slipped the phone into my pocket. There was no need to pretend anymore.

Adrian Vale was the Don the whole city feared, and yet he spent three years chasing me, a girl who waited tables. Then, the night before our wedding, my best friend Nina Ashford and I were taken at the same time. With the cold muzzle of a gun against my forehead, I cried out, my voice shaking, “Let Nina go! She’s innocent!” The kidnapper laughed like I’d told a joke. “Innocent? She’s worth a hell of a lot more than you.” My whole body went rigid. The next second he leaned down to my ear, his smile pure malice. “You really think Adrian’s marrying you because he loves you?” “The day you tried on your wedding dress, he was fucking Nina on your bed.” “And that black ring, the one that stands for the Don’s power? He put it on Nina’s finger a long time ago.” I shook my head, over and over, refusing to believe it. But the kidnapper had already stopped looking at me. He dialed Adrian’s number. “Mr. Vale, you need to make a choice. Your bride, or Miss Ashford. Only one of them walks out of here alive.” “Which one do you choose?” In that instant, I forgot how to breathe. On the other end, Adrian was quiet for only a few seconds. Then he said it, perfectly calm. “Let Nina go.”

My fiancé had spent the past two weeks planning an extravagant birthday party for me. But when I finally arrived at the ballroom, I discovered that everything had been decorated to suit my younger sister’s taste. Even the three-tier birthday cake was made with mangoes, which I was allergic to. When the servers wheeled out the cake, I had barely closed my eyes to make a wish when my sister took it upon herself to blow out the candles. “Claire, you’re always so unlucky. Let me make a wish for you instead. I guarantee it’ll come true!” Julian smiled indulgently as he helped her remove the candles. “Mia’s just a kid at heart. Why hold it against her?” When it was time to cut the cake, my sister once again stepped in ahead of me, taking Julian’s hand and guiding it to make the first cut. Our friends started teasing them. “You two are the real stars of this birthday party, aren’t you?” Mia ducked shyly behind Julian, who immediately came to her defense with a laugh. “Eat your cake and leave her alone. Mia’s shy. Stop teasing her.” Everyone crowded around Julian and Mia, while I was reduced to little more than a background prop. I turned to leave, but just before I reached the door, I heard my sister call out in alarm. “Where’s Claire going? Is she upset?” Julian paused for a moment before answering casually, “It’s nothing. She’s always been the jealous type.” With that, the last shred of hope I had left finally died. I accepted an offer from VELMONT, one of Milan’s leading fashion houses, and booked a flight to Milan for three days later. My engagement party with Julian was supposed to take place that day, but I had no intention of showing up.

On my 28th birthday, Carl Thorne asked me to meet him at the Moon Goddess statue. He specifically told me to wear a wedding dress and said he was finally going to keep his promise and mark me. But when I arrived in my wedding dress, its train trailing behind me, he turned to the crowd and laughed. "See? I don't even have to mark her. One word from me, and she'll come running. I win. The hunting grounds are mine." Then he raised an eyebrow at me. "Vera, I was only joking. The pack still sees you as their Luna, mark or no mark." When I remained silent, Carl grinned. "If you're so desperate to be marked, why not pick someone here?" The crowd burst out laughing. Everyone knew I was Carl's fated mate, that I was hopelessly in love with him and would never choose another. But when I took my new husband's hand and completed the marking ceremony, Carl went white and froze where he stood.

Seven years into our engagement, Riccardo Mazzoni turns our wedding into a mock divorce ceremony as some kind of sick joke. Instead of screaming or throwing a fit, I simply stand there, calm and silent. And just like that, I'm completely done with him. His men all around us erupt in laughter. "Elena Leone, the Don is just messing with you. You're not actually mad, are you?" I don't say a word. The laughter dies down, and the church becomes dead silent. Riccardo drops his smirk, walks up to me, and gently strokes my cheek. "What's wrong, Elena? Are you really mad?" As I look up to meet his gaze, I suddenly remember the conversation I overheard between him and his men last night. "Don Mazzoni, are you really going through with this? Aren't you afraid Elena will leave you if you make a fool out of her?" Riccardo lets out a scoff. "I promised Sofia Coppola I'd prank Elena at our wedding. Once the prank is over, I'll make it up to Elena with the most extravagant wedding imaginable. "She's been with me for seven years. We love each other too much for her to leave me." Right now, I just stare at him. I then tear off my veil. "A divorce ceremony, huh? Then by all means, continue."

My husband, Don Axel Thorne, died protecting me in a mob war. I was his widow for six years, until I turned thirty. The old guard of the Family told me it was time to move on. My friends told me to let him go. Even in my dreams, his bloody hands would cup my face, begging me to live again. So I agreed to an arranged marriage. But first, I went to his grave for one last goodbye. I’d just left the cemetery when a post appeared in my feed. [Thanks, hubby, for the six-year anniversary gift! A fifty-million-dollar penthouse in Miami!] My blood ran cold. My hands shook. The phone nearly slipped from my grip. In the photo, the man I buried six years ago was slipping a massive diamond onto another woman's finger. The background was a lavish penthouse. His style. I put my people on it. We had the location in minutes. Drove straight there. I knocked, the door opened, and I froze. The woman standing there was Seraphina. His adoptive sister. The one the Family exiled six years ago for her obsession with him.

While my corpse was rotting in the morgue, my fiancé, Ron Corleone, was comforting my murderer. Lisa Corleone sobbed as she said, “After we were kidnapped and brought here, Wendy disappeared. We don’t know if she managed to escape. It was all my fault. If I hadn’t insisted on going out with Wendy…” Ron’s face was ice cold. “The future mistress of the Corleone family actually abandoned my sister and fled on her own. If she dares to come back, I’ll break her arms and legs and turn her into a maggot that only deserves to live in the dark!” In fact, I did die in some random corner with my limbs broken. The truth about my death made Ron, who had vowed to make me regret my existence, crazy.

Six years into our marriage, Matteo Moretti slid a marriage pact across the table to me. My sister's name was at the top. Lucia Belardi, sixteen, unable to speak since birth. The lower-right corner of the document bore the Moretti Family's black seal, and beside it, Matteo's own signature. "The Volkov family has agreed to a ceasefire," Matteo said from behind the wide walnut desk in his study. "Ivan Volkov will marry Lucia. Once the wedding is done, the guns on the northern route will go silent, and our shipments held at the docks will be released." Cold crept into my fingers. "You agreed to hand my sister over to a sadist, just to save Viola?" Three days ago, Viola Conti had publicly humiliated one of the Volkov women at a cocktail party. The Volkovs seized her and threatened that unless the Moretti Family surrendered a girl of equal standing, Viola would disappear for good. "Viola's father took a bullet for me, and she treated over thirty of our men during the dock shootout six years ago." He looked up at me, his black shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, exposing old scars on his wrists. "The Moretti Family owes her. Lucia will be the wife of the Volkov heir, not a hostage." I slapped him across the face. I picked up the letter opener from his desk, cut through the gold chain, and threw the severed chain onto the marriage pact. On our wedding day six years ago, he had fastened the chain around my neck himself. The pendant bore the Moretti and Belardi names on either side. He had told me that as long as the chain held, we would never be apart. He glanced at the broken chain, a brief crease forming between his brows. "Once this crisis is over, you'll understand. This is the choice that costs us the least." "Matteo, Lucia may be the one you're sending away today, but from this moment on, you're sending me away too."

My mother is the Royal duchy and I am her sole heir. My mother was once deceived by my father, which nearly bankrupted our family. That bastard father of mine disappeared without a trace, taking the fortune he'd stolen from my mother and running off with his mistress. To prevent me from falling for the same kind of man in the future—to keep me from being fooled and robbed blind—my mother adopted two war orphans. She planned to raise them as potential husband candidates for me. But mother never knew the truth. These two men appeared respectful and obedient to her arrangements on the surface. But privately, they were both infatuated with my maid Josie. They constantly neglected me and made my life difficult, all to win her favor. My favorite, Marcus Reed, even gave up his own last name. He changed it to Josie's—Marcus Thompson. The betrayal cut deeper than I'd expected. Before mother died, she asked me the question I'd been dreading. "Which one do you want to choose as your husband?" But I had heard something interesting lately. There was a mafia heir—Vincent Rossi—who was notorious for his violence. He'd killed innocent people. Years of brutal fighting had left him severely injured. The doctors said he had less than six months to live. The mafia Rossi family wanted to marry him to a noblewoman before he died. I didn't hesitate to reach out to him. I offered an alliance through marriage. To my surprise, the Rossi family agreed. But on my wedding day, Marcus and the other candidate burst into the ceremony. They begged me to reconsider. "Please, don't do this!" Marcus shouted, his face desperate. "You can't marry him!" I stood there in my wedding dress, looking at the two men who had spent years ignoring me for my maid. Now they wanted me back? How interesting.

On the third anniversary of our son's death, I stood outside the cemetery chapel, holding a bunch of white daisies. From inside, I heard the voice of Giovanna Valeri, my mother-in-law and the former Donna of the Valeri family. "Sooner or later, you'll have to accept that the boy is gone. "But Aria's baby is a Valeri by blood. The family must recognize him as one of our own." I froze outside the door. I'd found Aria abandoned by the roadside when I was a child and taken her home. I couldn't bear the thought of her freezing or starving, so I took her in and raised her like my own sister. And now she was pregnant with my husband's baby. Inside, there was a long silence. Then Niccolo spoke, his voice low. "Tomorrow, I'll call the elders together and make it official. Aria's baby will be recognized as a Valeri. "Don't... tell Elena about this yet." The browning petals were cold to the touch, reminding me of Leo's lifeless body in my arms three years ago. That day, my husband, Niccolo Valeri, had looked at me with red eyes and made me a promise. Our son would not die for nothing. Leo would always be his only child. Three years. That was all it took for him to break his promise. And I was the one person he wanted to keep in the dark.

The entire New York mafia world knows that Don Alessandro of the Rossi family takes a brutal punishment from the Council every year just to marry me. Because the Rossi family has a strict rule: all marriages must be approved by the Council. Yet, for three years in a row, Alessandro submitted our marriage application, and every time, it was rejected! The first year, he was locked in solitary confinement for three days and nights. The second year, his back was whipped raw. The third year, he even knelt in a torrential downpour to beg for their mercy. I always thought it was my fault, that I just wasn’t good enough to meet the Council's standards. It wasn't until the fourth year that I found out all those rejection letters from the Council were forged by Alessandro himself. And the reason was Mia—his secretary who had been secretly obsessed with him for years. "Mia has been by my side for eight years. She took a bullet for me. She held me and cried, saying the day I get married would be the darkest day of her life." "I love Jane, but I just can't bear to hurt Mia." "It just means marrying Jane a little later. She loves me so much, she won't mind." But he was wrong. Even though my heart was breaking, I didn't want this kind of love anymore. I called my father: "Dad, I'm ready to come back to Italy and marry the Don of the Caruso family."