Mga Maiikling Kuwento at Nobelang Detective Mafia

My family, the Cosimos, has been locked in a blood feud with the Romanovs for twenty years. My father, the Don, and Don Romanov once got into a fistfight at someone else’s wedding, tearing each other’s black suits to shreds. “My son would rather be sealed in a concrete-filled oil drum than go anywhere near your daughter.” “Even if every man in America dropped dead, I still wouldn’t let my daughter have anything to do with your family.” But they didn’t know that Leon—the sole heir to the Romanov family—and I had kissed each other’s lips raw.

At 11:00 AM, my husband, Silas Vexille, slowly drowned in our indoor thermal pool. At the time, I was having my usual morning tea with the other mafia wives in the estate's back garden. The pool room was directly above the garden, barely a dozen feet away. Originally, if I had gone back to the main house at 11:00 as usual, I would have had plenty of time to save him. But as fate would have it, Victoria Harrison insisted on inviting us over to her nearby home to see her new pink diamond. At 11:20 AM, my daughter April and I pushed open the doors to the pool room. By then, Silas was already gone. At the lavish funeral, I was devastated, fainting several times. The mourners murmured in sympathy. "Don Vexille and his wife always had such a beautiful marriage..." "Yeah, what is she going to do now that the Don is dead?" Silas's mother, Martha—a tough woman who ran a Texas farm alone after her divorce—flew in overnight. Under the watchful eyes of everyone present, she walked straight up to me. Her expression was stone-cold, and she spat out every word: "You are the one who murdered my son."

I fought my sister, Anna, for two lifetimes to become the Donna. In my first life, I got what I wanted. I became Lorenzo's woman. People said he loved me as if I were the air in his lungs. When he learned that I loved to dance, he bought an entire ballet company to keep me onstage. Then he broke my legs. He confined me to a wheelchair and displayed me like an ornament. One day, he brushed his fingers across my face and finally told me the truth. "I've seen enough dancing," he said. "And the one I truly love was never you." I died in that room, swallowed by despair. In my second life, I stepped aside and gave the Donna's seat to Anna. "You go," I told her. "The one Lorenzo really loves is you." I believed that choice would save us. I believed Anna would have the happy ending I never did. Five years later, they sent her back. Her legs were intact this time, but she couldn’t move them either. Lorenzo no longer treated her as a person. He had turned her into a ballerina statue, encased in plaster and posed at what he called her most beautiful moment, frozen in place. His men delivered the message without a trace of feeling. "He got tired of watching the younger sister dance," they said. "So he preserved her at her most beautiful." When I opened my eyes again, I found myself in my third life. Once more, the Don's men delivered a ballet invitation. Anna and I stared at it. The same question burned in both of us. If neither of us was the one he loved, then who was Lorenzo really watching?