Countdown Mafia 단편 소설 & 소설

The day I found out I was pregnant, my husband Dario Vitale's adopted sister Sofia pushed me down the stairs. I lost the baby. And I ended up in a coma. For five years while I slept, he punished her, tormented her, and made her pray for me every single day for five years. But the moment I woke up, everything had changed. Everything that was mine now had Sofia written all over it. My spot. My space. My place in his life. She'd taken over every last bit of it. When I confronted Dario, he didn't even realize how completely he'd already taken her side. "Camila, you're awake now. Sofia's spent five years paying for what she did—isn't that enough? Can we... let this go?" Five years. And in the end, he decided I'd forgiven her for him. The pain in my chest hurt worse than anything my body had been through. The man who used to look at me like I was his whole world—he wasn't there anymore. I called my sister Ayana. "Three days. I'm going back to the Manhattan firm. And I'm never seeing Dario again."

My husband Matteo is the Don of the Moretti family, the kind of man who makes everyone bow their heads. Except when it comes to Chiara, his genius hacker of an adopted sister. She's the one person he can't control. At least, that's what he's always told me. One causes trouble, the other cleans it up. They've been doing it for five years. Until she tampered with my brake system. The car crashed. I nearly died. He didn't show up at the hospital the entire time I was in surgery. After it was over, he rushed in to explain: "Don't blame Chiara. She just thought it'd be fun. She wasn't really trying to kill you." "She knew I'd set you up with the best medical team. She was only trying to scare you." He'd barely finished signing the papers when his assistant told him Chiara was being harassed at a bar. And Matteo rushed off again. What he didn't know was that because of this crash, we'd lost the baby we'd been longing for. But he didn't need to know. In seven days, I was going back to my own family.

Desperate to escape the obsessive pursuit of the Don of the Camorra Family, I booked a late-night flight out of the city. But when I arrived at the airport, the entire place was eerily silent. Every flight had been forcibly grounded, and Lucius was the only person left in the vast departure hall. “I love you more than anything. I can give you the best of everything. Why are you still trying to run away from me?” Madness gleamed in his eyes as he moved toward me step by step and shoved a willow branch into my hand. “Darling, have you ever heard of the Wishing Willow?” “Let’s make a wish together. I wish for you to forget everything that came before me, so from now on, you’ll see only me and love only me.” Before I could react, he closed his hand around mine and snapped the Wishing Willow branch in two. I blacked out. When I opened my eyes again, I had forgotten everything except that Lucius was the man I loved. For three years, Lucius treated me like the center of his world. But now, he had changed. At my birthday party, he brought along a girl who was supposedly his new assistant. She was bright, bold, and full of life, almost exactly like I had been three years ago. I lost to her during a party game, and she pointed cheerfully at my ring finger. “Your diamond ring is gorgeous, Donna. Could I borrow it for a few days?” In the past, Lucius would have shut her down on the spot. But this time, he took her side. “It’s just a ring. You lost the game, so honor the rules and give it to her.” Everyone watched me nervously, waiting for me to make a scene. Instead, I gave a soft laugh, slipped the ring off my finger, and tossed it to her. “Sure. Take it.” Lucius froze. What he didn’t know was that the Wishing Willow’s power lasted only three years. My memories had already returned. He also had no idea that I had already gotten back in touch with my family. In five days, I would leave him for good.

To marry Lorenzo Vincenzo, I gave up my photography career. A dream I had held for ten years. But on our fourth anniversary, I asked my sister Greer to draft the divorce papers. She kept asking, over and over. "Why would you leave Lorenzo? He's the top surgeon at St. Vincent's. Rich, gorgeous. Half the city is dying for a shot at him." I swallowed the bitterness clawing up my throat. "Because of a gift." Greer followed my gaze to the music box on the table. The card was in Elara's handwriting. Lorenzo's junior from med school. [Thank you for flying out to do my aunt's surgery, senior. I know it was a long trip. You worked so hard. The little dancers on this music box remind me of us at graduation prom. Hope you like it, Lorenzo.] That day, my father was in a car accident. I rushed him to St. Vincent's. Only Lorenzo could do the surgery. I searched every floor of that hospital, every corridor. Nowhere. I told myself he must be on a business trip. But no. He had left his post for Elara. The same man who once swore he would never abandon the OR for personal matters. Finally, my father died on the table. Greer pulled me into her arms. "The Vincenzo family owns this city. Their reach is everywhere. Where could you possibly go that he would not find you?" I glanced at the flight confirmation on my phone. "Three days. I am flying to Paris, to a photography studio there. And I will make sure he never, ever finds me."

Ten days after giving birth, I told my husband, Ethan Reed, that something was wrong with me. He turned his phone face-down on the coffee table and looked at me for a full three seconds. "Sophia, you just had a baby. It's normal to feel tired." Then he flipped the phone back over and went on texting his office nurse, Serena Blake. That was the last time I brought it up. Everything that happened after that, I assumed was my own fault. That changed when I reached into his coat pocket and felt a collar I'd never seen before. Real leather, brand new, with a round metal tag hanging from it. It wasn't my size.

Dominic De Luca always called me by his ex-girlfriend's name. When he cooked, he would call out from the kitchen without thinking: "Bianca, come set the table." The birthday gifts he gave me came with cards that read: "Happy Birthday to my love, Bianca." At first, I used to get angry. I would hold his face, make him look me in the eye, and correct him over and over: "My name is Clara, not Bianca." Every time, he would apologize, and every time, I would forgive him. I left Boston to be with him. I gave up a promotion and moved to New York to start over, because Dominic said he could not handle a long-distance relationship. I thought that meant he had finally chosen me. Until the night he got down on one knee to propose. He looked up at me and said: "Bianca, will you marry me?" That was the moment I stopped wanting to correct him. I just took out my phone and replied to an email I had ignored for an entire month. I accepted the position in London. Dominic did not know yet. The moment he put my engagement ring on Bianca's finger, I had already decided to resign and leave New York. This time, I would not wait for him to explain. By the time he finally learned to say my name correctly, I would no longer love him.

My father called me to his study to deliver an order. I, Victoria Castellano, was to take my illegitimate half-sister Isabella’s place, to marry the comatose heir of the rival Moretti family and secure a truce. I didn’t cry. I laid my kid gloves on his polished desk and made my three demands. Sever all ties. My mother’s entire legacy. And give my bodyguard, Nicholas, to Isabella. Everyone knew my obsession with him. I loved him until I overheard the truth. He was the hidden Rossi heir, undercover only to protect his precious Isabella. Every time he’d saved my life, he was just guarding his link to her. So I let him go. I won’t tell him I’m marrying someone else. And I’ll never tell him that three years ago, in Lake Tahoe’s freezing depths, the lips that breathed life back into a drowning man—the memory that haunts him—weren’t Isabella’s. They were mine.

I’ve got a killer hourglass figure and siren eyes. In Hollywood, I’m the ultimate sex symbol. But after five years in this town, not a single producer would dare lay a finger on me. Because the man in my bed is Don Vincenzo, the most ruthless mafia boss in New York. Seven years together. Every time we finished, he’d hold me close, kiss me, and carry me to the bathroom to clean me up. I naively thought I’d be the only woman by his side. That I'd even be his Donna. Until the night of my 28th birthday. After the family dinner, I heard him sneer to his underboss: "Chloe is fun to play with, but for my Donna, I have other options." In that instant, I ripped out my cheap, pathetic heart. I became exactly what he wanted: a perfect mistress who only cared about his money. But Vincenzo didn't seem to like that. His dark, dangerous eyes locked onto mine. "Besides this Manhattan penthouse, is there really nothing else you want from me?" I wrapped my arms around his neck, letting out a fake gasp of surprise. "You mean I can pick out a Ferrari, too?"

The night before my wedding, I found out I was pregnant. That same night, I found out my fiancé had already chosen another woman to give him his first child. Adrian DeLuca, heir to a mafia empire and the man who once swore I was the only woman he would ever love, came home carrying her perfume on his clothes and told me, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world, that it was only a medical arrangement. His dead friend’s widow needed an heir, and after I had failed to give him one through sixty-six rounds of IVF, he had decided this was the best solution for everyone. I said nothing. I let him go on preparing the wedding. I let him believe I would still walk down the aisle and become Mrs. DeLuca. But while he was planning our ceremony, I was planning my disappearance. On our wedding day, the estate would still open its doors. The guests would still arrive. The ceremony would still begin. But the bride Adrian DeLuca betrayed would die there. By the time he learned the truth, that I had been carrying his child all along, I would already be gone under a new name, taking his heir somewhere he could never reach.

In New York’s Upper East Side, there were two heirs. One was a speed-obsessed daredevil dominating the racetracks, the other was a brilliant actuary who controlled the flow of capital. Born into powerful families and polar opposites in temperament, yet they grew up side by side as each other’s only best friend. They had fought over girls and bickered endlessly over racing bets. However, at fifteen, there was one thing they did in perfect unison. They each put on the same roughly carved bronze badge. They were trinkets Mia had idly made during a craft class, marked only by a faint “M” scratched on the back. Back then, Mia was seated in the last row of the classroom. Her background was a complete mystery to everyone. Yet they wore that badge for ten whole years. Whether standing on the F1 podium or locking in billion-dollar trades at the exchange, the cheap little badge on their chests never changed. Until Ella showed up. She was the cherished daughter of a rising conglomerate family. She hand-stitched two gold-thread fabric patches and gifted them to them. The patches looked so ordinary they looked like the kind of trinket you would find three for a dollar at a flea market. And yet, they both replaced their bronze badges with her plain patches. Mia did not say anything. She simply folded away an old newspaper clipping with a photo of the three of them smiling together. That night, she called her father in Sicily. Her voice was emotionless. “Papa, I accept the marriage arrangement.”

All of Sicily knew that the mafia boss Ethan Moretti loved me more than his own life. Yet on the day of our seventh scheduled marriage registration, Ethan stood me up again. He sent a message explaining it was an urgent business trip. I had already been waiting for him at City Hall for five hours. Just as I was about to leave, I received a video from his childhood sweetheart, Bianca. On the other side of the world, under a sky full of falling meteors, he took off his own coat and draped it over Bianca’s shoulders, then carefully tightened her collar: “Happy birthday. This is my gift to you.” In the video, his assistant hesitated before reminding him: “Don, today is the day you and Miss Clara Nolan are supposed to register your marriage…” Ethan dismissed it casually: “I love her so much, and she loves me just as deeply. What’s one more day of waiting?” “A meteor shower missed is gone forever. Registering a marriage can be done any day.” So it wasn’t a business trip. He had chosen to spend Bianca’s birthday with her. The City Hall clerk looked at me with pity: “Ma’am, would you like to reschedule?” I smiled and shook my head. “No need.” This time, I would not wait for Ethan any longer.

Everyone in New York knew I was the Godfather’s heart. Gavin Whitestone’s heart. He loved me for ten years. He’d fly into a rage if I so much as got a paper cut. But he’s the one who gave me these three scars. The first time, he pulled every doctor to treat Sofia, the girl who took a bullet for him, and ignored the shrapnel tearing into my side. The second time, he was drugged and fucking Sofia in his bed. When I walked in on them, he shoved me aside, desperately carrying her to the hospital. The third time, he took my father's last gift to me—a revolver—and gave it to a pregnant Sofia, just to make her smile. He told me, “It’s all for the baby. Once the baby is born, we’ll go back to how we were.” But this time, I didn't forgive him. I threw away every gift he ever gave me and vanished without a trace. And that’s when the untouchable Godfather finally broke.

I took a bullet meant for my uncle, Don Matteo Doria. His mother, Maria Doria, was so moved by what I'd done that she suggested I marry Matteo. But when I woke in the ICU, I learned he was about to get engaged to a young starlet, Claire Russo. When I showed up at their engagement party, every guest expected me to cause a scene. After all, I was the girl the Doria family had spoiled rotten. Matteo ordered his men to protect Claire, then pointed his gun at me. "Vivian, Claire is my old friend's daughter. I won't let you hurt her." Instead, I handed Claire a gift. "I was immature before. This is a little welcome gift for you, Claire." The room went dead silent. Matteo slowly lowered his gun, his eyes full of surprise. I smiled at Matteo and pretended I was fine, even as the pain tore at my heart. "Since you're marrying someone else, give me back the necklace my father left me. "From now on, I'll stay out of your life." In my last life, I caused a huge scene at the engagement party and used Maria's promise to force Matteo to marry me. Without his protection, Claire was murdered by people who were after her parents' inheritance. For the next three years, Matteo kept me locked away on his empty estate while he drowned in grief over Claire's death. Even when I got into a car accident on the way to the hospital and lost the baby, he never came to see me once. Now that I'd been given a second chance, I knew better. I would never chase after Matteo's love again.

His gun-roughened hands burned against my waist, every breath laced with the cold, unyielding possession that had made him the most feared Cosa Nostra Don in all of Sicily. A shrill ring sliced through the haze. He answered in guttural Sicilian. It was the dialect I’d learned years ago to fit into his world, so I caught every word. His consigliere was screaming down the line at him for filing a valid, legally binding marriage license with Sofia Lombardi, the woman who’d abandoned him when a bomb left him mute for seven years. Luca’s order was cold as a trigger pull. “Secure the original license in the family vault. Draw up a forged, null-and-void marriage license for Isa to keep her compliant.” In the eyes of the law, of his entire crew, I was nothing but his mistress. After seven years of laying down my life for him, I’d been reduced to nothing but his mistress. Another call flashed. Luca turned to me, the lie already shaping his mouth. “Family matters. The guards will see you home.” Without a word, I stepped out into the Palermo night, my hands shaking as I dialed his mother, Anna Vitali. “I’ll take your fifty million euros. I’ll leave Luca. For good.” Anna once said Luca and I were worlds apart. I had to admit she was right. This time, I want to leave with dignity.

Marcello, the Don of the Valence family, has severe PTSD. He’s cold, and he pushes everyone away. But I can hear his thoughts. I know about the possessiveness hiding under that cold front. When he says, “Stay away from me, I don’t want to see you,” what he’s really thinking is: Lilian, don’t go. Don’t leave me. I really need you. Six years of marriage, and I’m used to him never meaning what he says. But tonight, at the family banquet, his assistant is on his arm again, instead of me. I ask Marcello, “She’s standing where the Don’s wife should be. You got nothing to say about that?” Impatience flashes across Marcello’s face. “You’re twenty minutes late, Lilian. You have no right to question me.” “Either go stand in a corner, or get the hell out of my estate. Now.” A second later, his thoughts crash into me: Lilian. Get mad. Slap her. Scream that you’re my wife. Prove you love me. I need to feel secure. But this time, seeing the smirks on everyone’s faces, I’m just… tired. I take off the diamond ring, the one that marks me as the Don’s wife. “Since there’s no place for me here, let’s get a divorce.” Perfect timing. The hospital is sending me to London for a placement. I leave tomorrow.

Married seven years, and after my husband Nathaniel broke another promise to me over his new assistant, I set a glass jar on my nightstand. Every time he broke a promise, I dropped a coin inside. Ten disappointments. That was the final line I drew for myself. The first coin was for the anniversary he forgot entirely, all for her birthday. The third coin was for the date night he promised me, then turned around and took his men to clear out a whole venue for her birthday party. The sixth coin was for the time I got shot by accident, and he just told me to bandage it myself while he carried her into the hospital in his arms. By the ninth coin, Nathaniel finally noticed the jar. He picked it up, gave it a shake, and joked: "Audrey, this is dangerous. The last one, you have to remind me. I can't lose you." So when the tenth time came around, I made a point of reminding him before I left. Our seventh wedding anniversary. Nathaniel promised he'd be home before eleven. At eleven-thirty, Victoria sent me a photo. Nathaniel, sitting in the pet ER with her ragdoll cat in his arms, still wearing the shirt I'd ironed for him that morning. Then she sent a voice message. "It's your anniversary today, Don. If you don't head back soon, that coin jar on Donna's nightstand is going to be completely full." On the other end, Nathaniel laughed. "So what if it's full? She's not going anywhere." "I gave her power, status, gave her everything. She's crazy about me. You think she'd dare leave?" A two-second pause in the recording. Victoria let out a dry laugh. "Really?" I laughed too. I loved him too much, so I was willing to put up with anything. But in the end, that just became something he took for granted. I slid the diamond ring off my ring finger and placed it in an envelope, along with ten cold coins. Nathaniel, there really was no "us" anymore.

On my twentieth birthday, my father presented me with courtship gifts from the heirs of allied families. I had grown up with these men, and he told me to choose one to marry. I calmly shook my head and rejected them all. In my previous life, I chose Gabriel, the man I loved the most. Shortly after our wedding, I became pregnant with his child. But from then on, Gabriel became a completely different person. Whenever I handled family business, he publicly dismissed my decisions. Whenever I secured control of crucial West Coast ports, he outright overturned my agreements. Whenever I wanted to promote loyal members, he accused me of being too soft and a poor judge of character. Gradually, everyone began to see me as just a fragile trophy wife who depended on a man. Until one day, I walked in on him drinking and laughing with a few mafia heirs in an exclusive club. "Gabriel took the biggest hit for us. He pretended to like Kiara all these years and had to humor her every day." "It was worth it. Once she got pregnant, she had no energy left to run the family." "Once her sister Mila wins over the capos, the entire family will belong to her." Fueled by despair and anger, I went into premature labor and bled to death. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of my engagement. My father placed those gifts representing power and marriage in front of me once again. "Have you made up your mind? Which one will you choose?" I looked at the diamond necklaces, custom gown catalogs, and limited-edition perfumes in the boxes, and smiled softly. "None of them." "I heard our business on the West Coast took a hit. I want to go there, expand our territory, and put our family back on top." This time, I will personally take back everything that belongs to me. I just did not expect that Gabriel had returned to the past too.

After losing my unborn baby, I finally rid myself of every habit Matteo Cassano hated. He spent entire nights with Seraphina. I stopped calling. He didn’t go home for several days, I stopped waiting. Even when I fractured my leg in a car crash, I simply told the doctor, "Don’t let him know." Yet, Matteo began to feel uncomfortable with my changes. He hated my composure, asking why I had turned so indifferent. I never told him that I had already filed for divorce, and accepted the invitation to a top-secret medical research project in Zurich. In seven days, I would cut off all communication with the outside world completely. Matteo assumed I was merely throwing a fit. He was confident that I would return to him sooner or later, just as I had countless times before. When the divorce decree arrived at the Cassano Manor, he finally realized I had taken everything with me and canceled all my contact info. The woman who once wept for him if he was even an hour late coming home would never look back at him again.

The night my family’s rival gang stormed the mafia ball, I was taken as leverage. My boyfriend, Nolan, and my closest friend, Riven, stood only steps away. But they chose to shield my cousin, Anna, instead. I was being saved by a secret man hours later—bruised, shaken, and already forgotten. No one asked what had been done to me. Nolan only said, “Anna was scared. She needed us more.” Days later, Anna invited me to her birthday party. I went out of courtesy—only to watch her cast me as the villain of her story. Nolan and Luca stood by her, protecting her again. That night, I said yes to the marriage alliance my family had prepared years ago. When I left the city, Nolan finally texted—angry, wounded, offended. “You’re really leaving?" I replied with just one line. “You’re more than welcome to my wedding.”

I've been in a three-year relationship with Antonio Bianco, the successor of the Bianco family. Everyone knows very well how much he loves me. But everything has changed the moment Antonio's older brother passes away, leaving behind his newly-widowed wife, Rosetta Serra, who's also pregnant. Antonio heeds Augusto Bianco's last wish by taking great care of Rosetta. He even ditches me at the altar numerous times for her sake. On our 51st wedding, Antonio still ends up leaving with Rosetta, who keeps crying her heart out. I just gaze at the way Antonio scrambles to come up with a new excuse. I notice how skillfully the wedding planning company is cleaning up the wedding venue in advance. I also spot the flash of a provocative smile Rosetta has shown to me behind Antonio's back as she links arms with him. Suddenly, I feel like a total joke for being with such a man over the past three years. When the hotel manager gives me the bill, he asks casually, "When will the 52nd wedding be held, Ms. Marino? We can make the preparations in advance." "There's no need for a wedding anymore," I respond with a smile. "Even if a wedding is to be held, the groom won't be the same person anyway." After leaving the hotel, I dial the number of the person in charge of the International Medical Organization. "Hello, I'm Cecilia Marino. I'd like to accept your invitation to join your organization, and I can leave anytime soon."