Cerita Pendek & Novel Cheating Mafia

It is the final day for the high school students to submit their university application forms, and I find out that someone has swapped out my and Ned Nicholson's application forms for Jafferton College instead. In a panic, I hurry off to find Ned to tell him about it, but I end up overhearing a conversation between him and one of his friends instead. "Ned, you promised Miranda Montez that you would both apply for Hale University together. Why did you secretly swap out both your application forms for Jafferton College instead? Aren't you worried that Miranda's going to make a huge fuss about it?" Ned sounds confident as he replies, "She won't. She'll listen to whatever I say. She'll be fine with it as long as she's still in the same college as I am." He pauses for a while before continuing in an impatient voice. "Scarlett Jordan can't get into Hale University. It's beyond her. She's going to be really scared if she has to go to Westward to study on her own, so I promised her that I'd go to the same college she was going to. "I mean, Jafferton College isn't that bad. Miranda wouldn't mind it at all." I stay silent for a long while before leaving quietly, pretending that I never heard a thing. I withdrew my application form for Jafferton College and submitted a new form for Dayward University instead. We made a promise to each other that we would start dating after getting into university. But since he's breaking his promise for someone else's sake, I decide to leave him quietly and go after my own dreams instead.

My best friend, Maya, flew in from Miami for my bachelorette week. My last days of freedom. She insisted on a girls' night in to celebrate, ordering all my favorite takeout. She asked me to hold her mobile phone and wait.Then her phone lit up. A message from some guy. A shirtless pic. Text: I need you tonight. Another photo buzzed through. Sex toys. Bondage gear straight out of a movie. My face burned. My heart hammered against my ribs. I’d just stumbled into her secret life. But the next image made my blood run cold. A close-up of the man's chest. A jagged scar I knew better than my own reflection. It belonged to my fiancé, Luciano Carbone.

The day I learned the family's secretary had been Richard's mistress for three years, I called off the wedding without a second thought. Heartsick, I took a family flight and moved out to the West Coast, only to walked straight into an ambush. When they had me surrounded, Richard appeared out of nowhere and threw himself in front of the bullet meant for me. He ordered his most trusted guards to keep me alive, whatever it cost. Dying, he stared deep into my eyes. "Elise, I have no right to ask your forgiveness. Just live. Live well, and let me love you properly in the next." The sea ran high and wild that day, and they never found his body. By the time the rescue boat pulled me out of the water, I had already cried myself hoarse. After that I lived to eighty, carrying the guilt of him every single day. Then I opened my eyes again and found myself back, before he had ever betrayed me. This time, before I could even speak, he fired Charlotte right in front of me. Apart from family business, his greatest interest was cooking dinner for me. Everyone marveled at it. The Don himself, Richard, loved Elise nearly to the point of madness. And then, the night before our wedding, I heard his thoughts. [I'm finally about to have Elise.] [This time I can't let her find out Charlotte exists.]

At the charity gala, I was about to tell Don Luca Moretti the happy news that I was pregnant. But he cut me off to publicly congratulate his childhood sweetheart, Elena Rossi, on her pregnancy. Elena was single, so I was still wondering who the father of her heir could be when Luca said, “As the baby’s biological father, I couldn’t be more honored...” My ears rang. Then Luca turned to me. “My Donna, on the other hand, has had a much harder time. Four rounds of IVF, and she still hasn’t conceived. But I’m grateful to her for being so gracious about all this.” Elena smiled brightly. “Luca, the results from last week’s checkup are in. It’s a boy. If your Donna can’t give you a child, our two families can share an heir. Wouldn’t that be perfect?” Mocking looks shot toward me from every corner of the room. In that moment, the humiliation nearly swallowed me whole. The month before, Luca had suddenly stopped sleeping with me. Now I knew why: he’d been saving his sperm for another woman. The week before, he’d told me there was trouble at the docks. Then he’d stopped answering my calls and texts. So he hadn’t been negotiating at all. He’d been at the family hospital, accompanying Elena to her prenatal checkup. I had loved Luca for eight years, and for six of them, I’d helped secure his position as Don. Now that power had gone to his head, it was time to remind him exactly who had given him everything he had. I ran a hand over the slight curve of my belly. From today on, the Moretti family would have no claim on me—or anything that was mine.

My fiance, Dante de Rossi, is the heir to a mafia family in Manhorne, and he loves me dearly. Yet, a month before our wedding, he says his family has arranged for him to have a baby with his childhood friend, Isobel de Luca. Despite my refusal to agree to it, he brings it up daily and tries to push me into it. Half a month before the wedding, I receive a pregnancy report. I find out that Isobel is over a month pregnant. I have yet to give Dante my permission. This is when I realize just how fragile our years-long relationship is. I cancel the wedding and destroy everything he has ever given me. On the day of the wedding, I set off for Etolia to further my medical career. I accept a role with an international medical organization, severing all ties with the mafia. From that moment onward, he and I no longer have anything to do with each other!

At the underground black market auction in New York, Lorenzo Moretti won a rare red diamond with a bid so high it made jaws drop. The entire Commission was waiting for the other shoe to drop—waiting to see me become a joke. Because in the Moretti family, every time Lorenzo gives away a diamond, it represents another one of his betrayals. White diamonds are hush money to cover up tabloid scandals. Blue diamonds mean he had a "slip-up" at some wild party. Pink diamonds mean I caught him in his private apartment, rolling in the sheets with another woman with my own eyes. But this time was different. It was a rare red diamond. Everyone guessed the Don was preparing to divorce me. Instead, Lorenzo publicly declared his love. He said this red diamond represented a "Blood Oath"—a symbol of his true heart and loyalty to me. He said that from now on, he would return to the family and pledge his allegiance only to me. Everyone congratulated me on finally taming the Sicilian Wolf. I, however, left the signed divorce papers in the safe, and all alone, I left him forever.

My fiancé is the heir to a mafia empire. For seven years, I believed our love was the one true thing in a world built on lies. Then, on the night of our engagement party, I found him holding another woman — my own half-sister, the daughter of our family’s oldest enemy — whispering words that shattered everything: "I regret everything. Come back to me, and I’ll call off the wedding." I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I made a phone call instead. Three weeks later, on what should have been our wedding day, I erased my identity and vanished from his world. But not before making sure our wedding would be one he — and every family in the underworld — would never forget.

To the world, I was Mrs. Ward—the untouchable queen beside the mafia king of New York, Elias Ward. But I knew my husband never loved me. His heart had always belonged to Harper Dinah. His nephew’s wife. And after that nephew conveniently died, Elias brought her into our mansion, “I just want to take better care of her,” he’d said. And his version of “care” was where he’d throw a man out of a party for daring to flirt with Harper and got her pregnant. Elias likes to praise me in public like I was the perfect wife to him. And I was. I helped build his empire. I was the one who smiled and played nice. I made his casino shine while he hid Harper away like she was something sacred. Because of all that praising, one of his enemies set his sights on me. They took me. Sent Elias a message soaked in blood and threats: Back off. Leave New York. Or your pretty wife dies. Of course, Elias didn’t choose to back off.. “Just wait,” he said over the phone, “They won’t hurt you, Noa. You’re leverage. Just hold on until Harper gives birth. Then I’ll come for you.” Eight months of being held in a filthy hole, starved, beaten, degraded. The gang leader raped me over and over again. And still, Elias never came. Finally, I escaped when they were all drunk. Went home, only find my twins sleeping in the maid’s room, eating scraps while Elias was too busy hosting a party for his newborn. I didn’t confront him, just packed my babies and disappear.

Vincenzo Moretti was Stonehaven’s youngest financial titan— a tech mogul commanding a multibillion-dollar empire, gracing the covers of business magazines as a modern legend. But only a select few knew the truth: he was also the ruthless Don controlling the East Coast mafia. To him, wealth and power were mere chips in a game. And I? I was just another pawn used to stabilize a fragile family alliance. In our ten-year marriage, he slept with my friends, my coworkers… every single person I once trusted. Then one morning, as I took our one-month-old baby for a routine checkup, Sienna Newton, his latest mistress, ran me down with her car. The baby screamed endlessly. I begged her to take us to the hospital, and when Vincenzo arrived, he looked at me with cold disdain. “Isabella,” he sneered, “when did you learn to stage accidents? “Even if you died here, I wouldn’t bat an eye.” Then he took Sienna’s hand and walked away without a backward glance. By the time I was rushed to the hospital, the child in my arms had suffocated. Upon hearing the news, my mother suffered a heart attack. She didn’t survive. I slipped into a coma for two days. When I finally woke up, I found out that Vincenzo never visited. Instead, his father, Renato Moretti, the true king of the Moretti empire, stood by my bedside. I looked at him calmly and said, “Let me go. Whatever I owed your family, I’ve repaid in full with two lives.” Later, that same Don who had once looked down on me knelt before me, begging me to come home. But I was no longer the woman who waited, silent and broken, for his change of heart. I was the Don’s wife who turned away and never looked back.

"Every time we make love, I make Sera turn around. From behind, she looks the most like Luna ." My hand froze on the door handle. Through the small glass window, I stared at the face of the man I had loved for three years. He had only ever seen me as a substitute for someone else. In that moment, I felt something inside me shatter. I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't burst through the door and demand an explanation. I just turned around and walked back downstairs. My legs felt strange, as if they belonged to someone else. I called Professor Lumiere and accepted her invitation to go abroad. My voice was steady. She couldn't tell that I was dying inside. Later, when Felix chased me all the way to Europe and stood in front of me with red-rimmed eyes, telling me he truly loved me— I gently pushed his hand away. "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't love you anymore."

The day I got my terminal cancer diagnosis, I stumbled upon a hidden album on my mafia husband’s phone. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-six intimate photos. All of the same woman. None of me. Three years into our marriage, all of New York still feared Damian Moretti. Even as his only legal wife, I never dared ask about the blood on his cuffs—or the stranger’s perfume clinging to his skin late at night. I used to think he was simply born cold-blooded. Until I saw her on his screen, wearing his shirt in a secret penthouse I didn’t know existed, smiling freely in his arms. The cruelest part? The timestamp on the last photo was from two hours ago—the exact moment I was sitting alone at the hospital, signing my own Do-Not-Resuscitate form. When Damian walked out of the bathroom, he caught me staring at the screen. No guilt. No panic. He just walked over, took the phone from my frozen hand, and hit delete without a flicker of emotion. “Stay out of things that don’t concern you,” he said flatly. “Forget what you saw.” Before the screen could even go dark, it lit up again with a text message: Damian, you left your shirt in my bed again. Whatever was left inside me finally shattered. I pushed the prepared divorce papers toward him. “Sign them,” I said quietly. “I’m setting you free.” Damian’s gaze turned lethal. In one swift motion, he pinned my wrist against the headboard, the heavy Moretti signet ring on his right hand digging brutally into my bone. “Don’t test my limits, Vivian,” he murmured, leaning over me, his voice low and merciless. “Moretti marriages only end with a funeral.” I met his icy stare and didn’t say another word. He had no idea I only had three months left to live. The funeral he asked for was already on its way.

I had fallen in love with my father’s friend—the man I was supposed to call “uncle,” Kael Viremont. For a while, I thought he loved me too. We even had this silly little promise—that if I turned twenty-seven and still want to be with him, then we could be together, publicly. Five days before my twenty-seventh birthday, I overheard him saying he’d never liked me. That he was going to marry his childhood sweetheart. And as if that wasn’t cruel enough, he was planning to use the wedding to cut me off for good. So I did the one thing I should’ve done a long time ago—accepted that he and I would never belong to the same world… and disappeared from his life for good.

It is our fifth wedding anniversary, and Andrea Pietranera—my husband and the Don of the Pietranera Famiglia—reserves the whole top-floor restaurant just for me. He pulls me close by the waist as the melodious violin music plays in the background, leans down to kiss my earlobe, and whispers that tonight belongs to just the two of us. I look up with a smile and reach into my pocket, my hand brushing against the paper inside—my pregnancy test report. Just as I'm about to say something, Andrea's phone, lying on the edge of the table, lights up with a new message from a contact saved as "E." "I'm pregnant." Andrea stiffens for a moment, then quickly flips his phone over. He smiles gently and says, "I have some urgent Famiglia matters I need to deal with at the moment. I will make a quick call and be right back, Amore." He stands up and walks down the hallway, disappearing around the corner. He deliberately lowers his voice, but I can still hear him clearly. "I'll accompany you for your prenatal checkup tomorrow." He returns a moment later. He then smiles and gently kisses me on the cheek. He has arranged fireworks for me just outside the window—yet as they bloom, my heart is gradually withering. I return to my seat after the fireworks display and down the glass of red wine. I then take out my phone and message my mentor. "I want to be part of the confidential project you told me about last time." "You sure about this, Carina? If you sign the NDA for this project, you'll be wiped from all public records and have no contact with the outside world for at least five years." "I've thought this through. I'll report for duty by the day after tomorrow evening at the latest."

My husband Dante, Don of the Moretti family, was killed in a gang crossfire. I was devastated, because the same day, I’d also found out that my IVF injection had worked. I was pregnant. The Moretti didn’t want me to spiral. So they called in Dante’s twin brother, Ash Moretti, to help around. I felt both guilty and grateful until I overheard them talking in the study. “It was Ash who died. Why would you make us tell Harper it was you?” His father asked. Dante’s voice. “I only married her because you promised me the Don’s seat.” Then Gianna’s voice. “Dante had given her a child. That alone should’ve been enough.” So. It wasn’t my husband who died. It was his brother. And my husband and his sister in law thought this was his clean exit. As he wished, I gave it to him. When the doctor told me the fetus had less than a ten percent chance of survival, I agreed to terminate. And along with reclaiming everything else I had once given the Moretti, I walked away from his life—for good.

After I got pregnant, Severin Voss went from a ruthless Don to a devoted husband who cooked for me. He cut off all contact with Vivian Lane and banished her from Voss territory. He had never liked children, yet now he shadowed the estate's most experienced housekeeper every day, learning how to care for a baby. He even learned how to cook for an expectant mother. He had a prenatal meal plan tailored to my needs and prepared every dish himself. It was as if he'd never had anything to do with Vivian, as if we were still as close as ever. When my mother came to visit, she marveled, "There's never been a Don in all of Sicily who's such a family man. "You should consider yourself lucky to have married him. Stop dwelling on his past mistakes." I smiled and agreed, then ate the lunch Severin had made just for me. An hour later, I was rushed to a private hospital, doubled over in pain. By the time I came out of surgery, my baby was gone. Three days later, Severin returned from a business trip, looking exhausted and travel-worn. A blissful smile still lingered on his face. "Honey, I learned some new pregnancy-friendly recipes. They're even more nutritious than the old ones. If you stick to them, I know your delivery will go smoothly. "I'll start making them for you tomorrow, okay?" When I didn't respond, Severin's gaze finally dropped from my pale face to my flat stomach. In that instant, his smile vanished.

I had lost my memory for three years. I'd been through hell and high water with Adrian Vance for the past three years. He told me we'd grown up together on the same block, two kids who'd fallen for each other young. He told me that once he had a real foothold in the Family, he'd marry me in front of all of Palermo and make the whole city come to watch. I believed him. With a steady trigger hand and a mean streak, I cleared every man who stood in his way. I dragged him up from a nobody bastard son into the inner circle of the Family, one body at a time. Then the day finally came, and what he said was, "I've already asked the Don for his daughter Camilla. It's settled. I'm marrying her." "Camilla's a mafia princess. The Don's pride and joy. Not some no-name orphan girl with nothing and no one behind her. She's the one who can actually lift me up." "Be good, Vera. As long as Camilla never finds out, we can go on the way we always have." "Be good. You mean play your mistress in the dark, is that it?" What Adrian didn't know was that my memory had already come back. My real name was Hale, heir to the Hale family, the one enemy the Marlowe outfit he'd sworn himself to feared most. Childhood sweethearts, princesses, Don. In the end they were all just one more debt I'd settle on my way to paying the Family back in full.

At the top of the dark web’s most heavily encrypted bounty board was a contract on the wife of Chicago’s most powerful crime boss. **Make Valentina survive one hundred attempts on her life before she dies. Progress: 79/100.** In the past three months, I’d survived a man-made avalanche, nerve gas, and an electrified swimming pool. Every time, my husband, Damian, had dragged me back from the brink, covered in blood. He’d even driven out everyone in the family who suspected me of killing his mistress. I was so grateful I burned the divorce papers I’d already signed. I looked forward to our anniversary, when I planned to tell him I was five months pregnant with his heir. Then, hoping to help him find the traitor in our ranks, I used my highest-level access to break into the account behind the bounty. Damian’s private encryption key appeared on the screen. Beneath it was a voice message from him. “Claudia spent a hundred seconds knowing her plane was going down. This is only number seventy-nine. Leave Valentina breathing every time. She doesn’t get to die that easily.” “On our anniversary, seven days from now, blow up her private jet. Let her pay for Claudia’s life.” So he had believed it was me all along. I stared at the screen for ten minutes. Then I cleared my browsing history and called a cleaner who specialized in making people disappear from the underworld. On our anniversary, I slipped the ultrasound image of our five-month-old baby into Damian’s jacket pocket. On the plane, I left a woman’s body in my place, fitted with dental work that matched mine and wearing my wedding ring. One second before the fire started, I escaped through a maintenance hatch beneath the cabin and detonated the main fuel tank. I heard that when the plane burst into a rain of fire over the tarmac, the man who had ruled Chicago for ten years vomited blood on the spot. Then he fell to his knees with the ultrasound image in his hands—the baby’s tiny form already visible—and stayed there all night.

I was the odd one out in the Chicago mob. Other men's women spent their time fighting for affection, clawing for power, watching out for the homewreckers. Not me. I spent mine cleaning up after my boyfriend, Don Vincent Maro. His political rivals — I squared away. His brother's messes — I handled overnight. The women he kept on the side — I dealt with personally. Last month it got worse. He asked me to go chase off a man who'd been hanging around Sofia, his new girl. Sofia pouted. "Elena really can do everything." Vincent said, "That's why I keep her around." Sofia asked, "Won't Elena be upset?" Vincent paused. "Her? She's used to it." Seven years. No title in the Maro family. No public acknowledgment. Just one function — fixing things. This time, I was tired. I slid the last stack of documents across to Vincent. He signed them one after another without looking up. When he was done, he asked: Anything else? I said: No. It's all handled. What he didn't know was that at the bottom of that stack was the document terminating every identity I held inside the Maro family. The moment his pen touched that page, I no longer belonged to the Maros. And I no longer belonged to him.

The day before my wedding, I was insulted by two men. In my defense, I ended up killing one and injuring the other. My fiancé at the time, Alexander, who was supposed to protect me, abandoned me during the trial. I was sentenced to two years in jail. When I was finally released two years later, I discovered that my ex-fiancé had already married my best friend, Isabella. And Isabella? She didn’t just ‘steal’ my fiancé—she took the doctor position that was supposed to be mine too. I had nowhere to go, and in my most desperate moment, Eric Graves appeared at my door. As the most powerful mafia leader in NYC, Eric used his influence to ensure no one would speak ill of my past. He also proposed to me, confessing that he'd always had feelings for me and wanted to marry me. I believed he was my knight in shining armor, my true love. The first four years of our marriage were perfect—at least, that’s what I thought, until the day I overheard a conversation between my husband, Eric, and his right-hand man, Adam. “Boss, you were so clever to let those scums harass Evelyn. If it weren't for that, Miss Isabella would never have had a chance with Alexander.” Eric’s teasing voice followed, “I just wanted to scare her for a bit. Never thought she’d kill one of them and end up behind bars.” Adam sounded confused. “But Miss Isabella is already married now. Why would you still keep that whore around after she got out of prison?” “Because,” Eric paused, “I have to make sure she doesn’t run back to Alexander or disturb Isabella.” The laughter that followed shattered my heart. All those memories of Eric saving me from humiliation? They were all a lie. He was the one who made my life fall apart, just to make sure Isabella could live happily ever after. Wiping away the lingering tears, I dialed Eric’s biggest rival in NYC, Caleb Nightshade. "Do you still want to wipe Eric out of New York?”

On our third year wedding anniversary, Ricardo Gambino finds me in the estate located far beyond the city's boundaries. As he clutches a pregnancy report, he finds it difficult to suppress the smile on his face. "I have good news for you, Isabella!" Ricardo exclaims excitedly. "Lucia is pregnant! It so happens that you're infertile, we'll have her give birth to the baby, and you can raise them! After that, I'll make sure to send Lucia away. You, on the other hand, shall remain as my wife!" Ricardo's tone is starting to drift. He sounds like he's done something amazing for me and wants me to compliment him. But I merely look at him as though he were a jester. What Ricardo doesn't know is that he's the infertile one. Also, we've already gotten divorced from each other. At that moment, I receive a new text on my phone. Then, I see a photo of an ultrasound report regarding the first trimester of a pregnancy. "Isabella, we're having triplets." The next text pops up immediately. "I shall marry you in three days."