Cerita Pendek Melodramatic Mafia & Novel Face Slapping

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.

The Norman family had an unwritten rule. Only the Don's daughter could inherit the family business. As the Don's first adopted daughter, I had the whole family on my shoulders: the docks, the casinos, the arms trade, 72 crews, and more. Too bad I didn't know the first thing about the business. So the Don sent his advisor, Oliver, to handle everything for me. Every gun and drug deal crossed my desk, and none went through until I signed off. But in ten years, I never even opened the books. And the golden lion seal, the symbol of the Norman family's power? I'd press it into wax without a second thought. Over time, I had less and less say in the family. There was even a saying going around the family that the golden lion seal was worth less than a penny in the gutter. I didn't care. I kept doing whatever I wanted. Then Oliver decided to marry Mia Nolan. I was happy for him, and I even gave Mia the family's three most profitable casinos as a gift. But after the wedding, she sold all three of them. And that wasn't all. She wanted to freeze my accounts, and she slapped an asset transfer agreement down on my desk. I stared at the bill and the transfer agreement for a long time before it sank in. She doesn't actually think that just because Oliver has run things for me for ten years, the Norman family belongs to him, does she? I'm the one who renews his appointment as advisor every year with the golden lion seal. If I don't stamp it, he's worth less than a dog.

My family's driver, Marco, always brought his girlfriend along when he drove me. I put up with it. His dead father took a bullet for my family once. Until today. I opened the door of my custom bulletproof Cadillac. Someone wrote on the inside of the window in red lipstick: "Stay away from my man, bitch." I wiped the smudge off with a tissue. "What is this?" I asked, my voice dead. Crystal sat in the passenger seat. She glared at me like I was poison. "Can't you read?" she spat. "Stay away from my man, you parasite. Buy your own car, you broke bitch." I watched this circus. I said nothing. Marco rushed to my side. He whispered frantically: "Aurora, she doesn't know I'm just a driver. She thinks... she thinks the whole family business is mine. She loves the power. Please." Then came the ultimate betrayal. "I need to take her to Fifth Avenue first. I'll come back for you later." He drove off in my car. He left me in the dust. I stood there and scoffed. I called Cassian, my brother's top enforcer. "Someone stole my car. And my patience is gone. Find them. I want them alive."

Elena Shaw is the wife of Henry Leone, the current head of the Monraven-based Mafia family in Newshire. She has been married to him for two years, but he has never once slept with her. Late one night, she inadvertently sees Henry relieving his desires while listening to a woman's voice. The voice belonged to Irene Shaw, her adopted younger sister and Henry's ex-fiancee. The year Elena turned 18, a DNA report changed both hers and Irene's fates. Elena is the real heir of the Shaw family, who had been taken at a young age and discarded abroad in Etolia. Meanwhile, Irene is the one who has taken her place in the Shaw family, receiving all of the love and glory that should've belonged to Elena. When Elena is brought back to the Shaw family, she replaces Irene as Henry's fiancee. However, Henry only marries her to take revenge against her for "ruining Irene's life". Even the fact that he had once saved her life turns out to be part of an elaborate lie. After learning the truth, Elena doesn't hesitate to leave. Once she disappears from Henry's world, the usually calm and collected Henry loses his mind.

I gave up ten years of my life and went to prison to protect my sister, Jasmine. In return, she took my baby, claiming my one-night stand with the ruthless mafia king, Dominic Valentino, as her own. Now, she sits on a stolen throne, playing the perfect mafia wife. And I become my son's night nanny. Dominic is lethal, cold, and suspicious of everyone. He married Jasmine out of duty, yet he refuses to touch her. But the moment I step into his house, his eyes lock onto me. He doesn't know I'm the woman who saved his life in a bloody alley a year ago. He doesn't know the baby crying in the nursery is mine. All he knows is that the air burns whenever we are in the same room. My sister thinks I'm just a broken ex-con she can easily crush. She forgot one thing. I didn't just survive prison. I learned how to run an empire in the dark. And I am taking my son, my man, and my throne back.

I was on vacation with my mother at our country vineyard when a message arrived from Ava, my husband's personal secretary. He was the new Don of the Falcone family. The photo showed a woman, bruised and naked, curled up on the floor of a cold cellar. It was followed by a voice message, her tone arrogant: "Helen, is this what you peasants do? Claw your way out of the mud just to leech off the Don?" "Don Lorenzo just acquired this estate, and you have the nerve to let your blind, ill-mannered mother wander in here to freeload? As the Don's personal secretary, it's my job to uphold the Falcone family's dignity." "This is the price for trespassing on the Don's estate!" I froze, my eyes lifting to the other side of the long table where my mother was sipping her red wine, perfectly safe. I zoomed in on the photo. The moment I saw the details, my heart seized. On a pale hand was a familiar ring. It was the heirloom the Falcone Madre never took off. I immediately dialed Ava's number. "Ava, are you insane? That's Lorenzo's mother!" A careless, almost flirtatious laugh came from the other end of the line. "The Don may consider you his property, but he never agreed to take in your dirt-poor family."

I came home after a meeting with the Vitale Family's capos and carried Elena from the front door all the way into the living room. Her legs were wrapped around my waist as she leaned in to kiss me. Just as I was about to kiss her back, I spotted a cream pastry on the table. Elena and I were both allergic to cream. In seven years of marriage, nothing made with cream had ever entered this estate. “Who bought this?” Elena paused for a moment, then tightened her arms around my neck. “Sophia brought it last night and forgot to take it with her.” But in the early hours of yesterday, I’d been at a dock three hundred miles away, watching Sophia sign off on a sealed shipment. That was the moment I knew my Donna had betrayed me.

On the night of our ninth wedding anniversary, my husband—Damian Grant, the man who ruled the mafia by day and once ruled my heart by night—did not bring me roses. He gave the bouquet that should have been mine to Serena Lane, his personal assistant. Beneath the chandelier where we once danced on our wedding night, he turned to me with that same cold charm he once used to whisper sweet nothings in my ear. “She's pregnant.” Finally, everything fell into place. “She's a picky eater. From today onward, you’ll cook three meals a day for her. And no repeats. “She’s sensitive and hates sleeping alone, so you’ll need to move your things into the guest room.” The room fell silent. I did not raise my voice, nor did I shed a single tear. I simply picked up my packed suitcase and walked to the door. The butler tried to stop me, but Damian did not even blink. “She’ll come back.” He lazily swirled the wine in his glass. “She’ll come back crying and begging within three days.” Our guests burst out laughing. They placed a million-dollar bet right in front of me. They were betting on whether I would be back before the night was over, begging Damian to let me back in like a pathetic stray dog with my tail between my legs. However, they did not know I had already received the family heirloom from my real father. I booked my flight to get far, far away from everyone I used to know. This time, I really left.

In the VIP lounge of an underground casino, Maeve, the Falcone family's princess, had been plied with too much hard liquor. Fueled by alcohol, someone goaded her into revealing the most shameless thing she'd ever done to win over the Don. She swirled her glass, pointed at me dealing cards behind the table, and threw her head back with a laugh. "Seven years ago, when Declan was in a coma after a shootout, I took his private phone. And I deleted the distress message that bitch sent him. Every last trace of it. Then I replied in his name: You're a burden. Go die." "You'll never guess what happened next. That idiot stood outside the safe house all night in a downpour, like a stray dog. I almost died laughing…" The room erupted in crude laughter. Only the man enthroned at the head of the table remained silent. The crystal whiskey glass in his hand shattered with a sharp crack. Blood mixed with the amber liquor, trickling over the veins on the back of his hand before dripping onto the carpet. His murderous, bloodshot eyes were locked on me. I calmly dealt the last hole card in front of him and offered a clean, white silk handkerchief. "Don Declan, you should wipe your hand. Blood on the felt is bad luck." After all, some stains never wash out.

My sister, Bella, had a baby in a back-alley shithole. Then she disappeared. A midwife tracked me down using an address Bella left behind. She shoved the newborn at me like a sack of garbage. My parents fell to their knees. Crying. Begging me to take her bastard. Just like that, my future as a promising artist was gone. The neighbors, the priest, my landlord… they all called me a whore. A sinner who had disgraced God. They ran me out of the neighborhood . My life was over. Eighteen years later, Bella waltzed back into my life. A cheap thug with a fake Rolex dangled from her arm. She held my son, crocodile tears streaming down her face. She called me jealous. Accused me of stealing her flesh and blood. Of keeping a mother from her child. And my son? The one I bled myself dry for? The son I poured every last cent into, turning him into a brilliant painter? The son I starved for, so much that I ended up in a hospital bed? The moment he saw his "real" mother, he cast me aside without a second thought. "You pathetic, broke bitch!" he spat. "You stole everything from us! All the happiness that was supposed to be ours!" My parents threw me out like a dog. Bella's thug husband had his men corner me in the red-light district. They pinned me against a wall, their threats vile and clear: Never come back. I had no way out. I threw myself off the Brooklyn Bridge. Then, I opened my eyes. I was back. Eighteen years in the past. Then came the knock. Hell had found my door. I wasn’t going to be the fool who gave everything and got nothing. This time, I took control.

I was engaged to Silas, Don of the Vance Famiglia, yet in the annual family portrait, I was shoved into the back corner. Standing right beside him was Camilla, his most trusted Capo. He sighed impatiently. "We have plenty of photos together, Scarlett. Missing one won't kill you. You're the future Donna. Stop being so petty." I swallowed my pride and gave up my spot. But my compromise bought me nothing. The necklace meant for me ended up around Camilla's neck. His plus-one to galas became Camilla. His excuse was always the same: "She's a vital part of the syndicate. You shouldn't compete with her." So, I gave him exactly what he wanted. I stopped being petty. I shredded the wedding planner I had poured my heart into, trashed our photos, and left New York for good. And suddenly, the cold, calculating Don was tearing the city apart looking for me.

My fiancé, Orlando, was a mafia captain. Three years ago, he got caught in a shootout, and someone tried to kill him. I took the bullet for him without thinking twice. The wound left me so weak that I spent most of my days stuck at home. Afraid I'd get hurt again, Orlando brought in a maid named Cecilia to look after me and act as my stand-in. Whatever was meant for me, she tried it first to make sure it was safe. Little by little, she got everything before I did. First to break in my heels. First to sleep in my wedding bed. Even the trip to Iceland I'd waited years for—she went with Orlando first, in my place. When the accident happened at the shopping center, Orlando still carried Cecilia into the emergency stairwell first. A falling stone column crushed my ankle. Lying in that hospital bed, I finally lost it. Orlando only frowned at me. "Nadia, stop making a scene. Cecilia is just your stand-in. She faces the danger first so you can stay safe." He sounded so sincere. He took my hand and pressed it to his lips. "Nadia, try to understand how hard this is for me. I can't let you get hurt again. I just can't." That devotion of his made me give in one more time. I never imagined that even at my own wedding—the day that mattered more to me than anything—Cecilia would wear my wedding dress before I did. I can make do with something secondhand. But I don't want a secondhand man.

My mafia boyfriend, Silas Vale, didn’t recognize me when I dragged myself back to him after being tortured and shot by his rival gang. He was too busy holding Amy—his childhood sweetheart—in his arms. “Get this woman away from me,” he snapped at his guard. “Amy’s afraid of blood.” I’d lost so much blood I genuinely thought I might die that night. But luckily, a stranger passed by and rushed me to the hospital. When I finally recovered enough to walk, I went home—only to find Silas there, completely unconcerned about the fact that I had disappeared for almost a week. And Amy was there too. Her clothes were scattered across the floor. I didn’t confront Silas or say anything. I just pulled out my phone and called my brother. “You said you are moving to Italy? I’m coming with you.” If Silas couldn’t cherish me the way he was supposed to… then I’d vanish from his world for good this time.

I am the sole heir of the Corsini family, the biggest mafia family in North America. The first Don left behind one ironclad rule: blood comes before everything. But ever since I was a kid, I've fainted at the sight of blood. Even the smell of gun oil makes me sick. So my father chose Arthur Cole, who had once saved my life, to sit at the negotiating table for me. He'd serve as acting Don, one year at a time. Every Christmas Eve, I had to press my signet ring into the wax before he could run the family for another year. In those ten years, I never once interfered in family business. Everyone thought the annual seal was just a formality. Then Arthur fell for Vivian Miller, a senator's daughter. But her family looked down on him for coming from the mob. So I signed over our most profitable shipping company to Vivian as a gift. Only then did the senator give his blessing. Before the wedding, Vivian sweetly told me we'd be real family from then on. But not long after the wedding, she threw an agreement at me. She wanted to marry me off to a Mexican drug lord. "Marrying General Juárez is the only way you can be of any use to this family." I looked at the agreement and laughed. They'd forgotten who really ran this place. Christmas Eve was five days away. This year, I was planning to pick a new Don.

I have a secret. When I was a child, I became very sick. When I finally woke up, I realized I could see the true colors hidden in people's hearts. Candy pink meant tenderness. Magenta meant desire. Pale gold meant longing for something you could never have. Slate blue meant lies. Dark brown meant hurt and resentment. At our engagement party, when my fiancé, Luca Vitali, kissed me, I saw the room fill with soft candy pink. But a second later, a wave of vivid magenta rushed in and swallowed the pink completely. I looked up in shock. His arms were around me, but his eyes were fixed on someone at the far end of the banquet hall. It was his childhood sweetheart, Charlotte. I thought it was just my imagination, until he pulled Charlotte into a dressing room. He kissed the side of Charlotte's neck. "After the wedding, I'll send Nicole overseas. You know I'm only marrying her because I promised my father. Please, Charlotte. You're the only one I want to be with." After five years of loving him, I finally realized I had been nothing more than a stepping stone to him. I turned around, canceled the wedding, and vanished into the rainy night. From that moment on, I would be someone they could never hope to reach.

When Damian was eighteen, he could barely afford a decent dinner. Still, he spent half his first commission on the cheapest silver ring in the store for me. He slid it onto my finger, his expression stern. "Wear this for now. When I have a real name, I'll get you a better one." I laughed at how cheap it was, then hid my hand behind my back and refused to give it back. Later, he did get a name. He was the Moretti family's long-lost heir, the man destined to lead its vast empire. But I never got that better ring. Five years ago, on the night a gang war broke out, I dragged a badly wounded Damian out of the fire. I never made it out myself. When he woke, huge pieces of his memory of me were gone. Cecilia Russo sat beside his hospital bed and told him I had despised him for being poor, betrayed him, and even sold the location of our old safe house to the enemy. She also told him she was the one who had saved him. Five years later, my ghost appeared in the final family trial he had to face. By then, another wedding ring sat on his hand. Cecilia was his wife. When his memories returned, he lost his mind.

I had always known my family hated me. Or maybe more accurately—they hated me for taking their real daughter’s place for so long. When they finally found Lily, their real daughter and sister, Matteo, the brother I grew up with, told me to disappear. Father, Don Kane, never looked at me twice again, no matter how hard I tried. Mother treated me like I was invisible. But they never let me leave. They made me stay and suffer. One day, Lily did something horrible, and they threw all the blame onto me. I was locked away in an asylum. When I was finally released two years later, the Kane came looking for me again, smiling as they called me their real daughter after all. A little too late for that, don’t they think?

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.”

On Halloween, my mafia husband's assistant, Chloe Ferri, knocked on my door with her son, Ron. "Trick or treat!" When I turned around to grab the candy, Ron slipped in behind me and poured honey all over the floor. Then he charged straight into me. The floor was slick, and I went down hard. My rounded belly slammed into the corner of the table. Pain ripped through my whole body. The color drained from my face, and within seconds the hem of my dress was soaked with blood. But my husband, Oliver Marino, ran to the frightened, wailing boy first. Luca Ferri, one of Oliver's longtime men, had taken a knife meant for Oliver and died. Ever since, my husband had kept Luca's widow, Chloe, at his side as his assistant. From then on, Chloe and her son came first in everything. When the hurricane made landfall, Oliver got Chloe and Ron to safety first. While I was scrambling for cover, a falling billboard slammed into my arm. On our wedding anniversary, he left me standing in the freezing wind for four hours, all because he had to go fix Chloe's broken bread maker. Once, because Ron said he hated the smell of my perfume, Oliver even dumped me in the middle of nowhere and made me walk 19 miles along a mountain road to get home. And now he was ignoring me again, rushing to that kid instead. Something inside me died for good. If he wanted so badly to take care of another man's wife and kid, then fine. I'd step aside.

Everyone in Chicago said the same thing: Leonardo Rizzo, the cold, ruthless Don of the Rizzo family, had vanished. It had started a month earlier, when Esme Vale, the most famous fortune teller in the city, told us our marriage was like the moon. "When your marriage shines brightest, a stranger will enter your lives, and it will go dark for good, like the moon swallowed by an eclipse." After that, Leonardo stopped directing the family's gang wars. He stopped going down to the docks to oversee the shipments. He never left the house anymore. He never left my side. He cooked every one of my meals himself and picked out everything I wore. His fear of losing me had become an obsession. All that nervous energy made me laugh. "Leonardo, look at you. Who could possibly come between us?" But Leonardo looked down and pulled me into his arms. "Julia, forgive me for being paranoid. I went back to see that fortune teller. "She drew a card that meant rebirth. She said that if I ever betrayed you, you'd cut all ties, take a new name, and disappear. "And then I'd never find you again..." He looked so lost that, for a second, I didn't know what to think. But it passed. I laughed and put my arms around him, and after that I made a point of clinging to him even harder than he clung to me. Not long after, I got pregnant. When the pregnancy test results came back, Leonardo swept me up and spun me around and around, overjoyed. I thought we could finally put that terrible prophecy behind us. Until the next day, when I nearly lost the baby and was rushed to the ICU.