เรื่องสั้นแนว Tragic Love Mafia และนิยายในฉาก Face Slapping

I had broken up with Lorenzo five times, and Gianna had always been the reason. Lorenzo had used our wedding fund to buy Gianna a penthouse in Tribeca. Each time I made up my mind to leave him, he would break down in tears and beg for another chance, promising that it would never happen again. Staring into his love-struck eyes, I always gave him another chance. Today was the day I would pick out my wedding dress and set our wedding date. I waited in the bridal shop from noon until dark, but Lorenzo was nowhere to be found. At ten that night, his friend, Marco, called me. “Naomi, Lorenzo’s in the emergency room. Come quickly–” I cut him off. “Is it because of Gianna again?” Marco stammered an explanation, but exhaustion washed over me. I closed my eyes before uttering in a flat tone, “I won’t be there. Tell him that it’s over between us.”

After my parents dead, I was taken in by one of his closest friends—the Draycotts. Kaelen Draycott, their only son, treated me like I was family. And I, stupidly, fell for him. When I confessed, he called me sick. Evil. Disgusting. From that day on, he made my life hell. He brought women home, loud enough for me to hear everything. Just to remind me where I stood. When it came down to it, he saved his fiancée. Left me to be shot, mocked, and forgotten. I knew what he was capable of. So this time, I made the choice. I’m leaving. And knowing how much he hates me— Let my farewell be the best wedding gift he’ll ever get.

Julian Hayes spent eight years climbing from first officer to captain of the most coveted international routes. I stood beside him for every mile of that climb. For him, I walked away from the Valenti family, the most feared Mafia name on the East Coast. I buried Elena Valenti, and became Lina Vale, the girl who smiled in the cabin while he ruled the cockpit. The day I left, my father stood on the marble steps of our estate and said, "Elena, if you walk out that gate for him, don’t come crawling back." Julian never knew. To him, I was a woman with no real family, no real power, and no life worth asking about. I was the one who memorized his flight schedule, packed his stomach pills, and kept dinner warm until midnight. Once, I asked him, "Can you take me into the sky the way you see it? Just once." He didn’t even put down his fork. "The cockpit is a workplace, Lina. Not a theme park." I said okay and never asked again. Then one sleepless dawn, I found the encrypted album on his phone. More than forty cockpit photos: cloud seas, blood-red sunsets, double rainbows after storms, the Milky Way over the Atlantic. Every one had been sent to the same contact. A teddy bear emoji. The newest photo showed half a sun hanging off the wingtip. His caption read, [Next time you’re off, I’ll put you in the observer seat. Sit on the right. That’s where the whole sky opens up.] She replied, [I’ll hold you to that.] I put the phone back. I didn’t change the password, didn’t delete the album, didn’t wake him up to beg for an explanation. At dawn, I brewed his coffee like always, sat alone at the kitchen island, and drank mine in silence. Then I sent my resignation letter and called a number I hadn’t touched in eight years. I watched the first flight of the morning rise beyond the Manhattan skyline and said, "Papa, I’m coming home." When the line connected, my father’s voice was colder than a gun barrel. "Have you thought it through?"

On the night of my 18th birthday, Enzo Vitale holds me by the waist as he coaxes me to take off my underwear. "Good girl. You have a beautiful body, Isabella. Let me take a good look at you." But just when I'm about to reach my climax, the spotlight is turned on. The floor-to-ceiling mirror in front of me becomes a see-through one-way mirror. On the other side of the mirror shows the faces of all the guests who are here to attend my birthday party. Soon, the racy video of my lustful side is spread all over Newlyn. My reputation gets flushed down the drain overnight, and yet Enzo's reputation remains unaffected. On the night we break up, he leaves me a message. "Your brother had watched my sister getting kidnapped by others back then. Now, it's your turn to have a taste of what it feels like, Isabella. You owe me this much." My older brother, Marco Rossi, is enraged, to say the least. When he tries to demand an explanation from Enzo, he gets his legs broken by Enzo's bodyguards instead. Marco drags his broken legs home. But on his way home, he gets into a car crash due to severe pain and blood loss, reducing him to a vegetable. In order to afford the daily eight-thousand-dollar ICU bill, I become the most famous stripper in Newlyn. For the next three years, I flit between various nightclubs in Newlyn as well as various men's beds. I've been trading my pride and body in exchange for checks. Three years later, I knock on a hotel room's door as usual. The door opens, revealing a man wearing a custom-ordered dark gray suit. It's Enzo. He's thinner now, and his cheekbones protrude even more. His eyes are as glacial as frozen lakes. I smile brightly at him. "Sir, would you like any special services?"

Three days ago, Julian Sinclair promised me to my face that he would propose to me tonight, at the family dinner. So when the ballroom doors swung open, every eye in the room turned to me, all of them already knowing why. Someone raised a glass, smiling like they already knew the secret. "Congratulations in advance, Donna." I stood there in the crowd, my fingertips trembling a little, waiting for Julian to come to me. But once he was inside, he walked right past me, straight up to Chloe Ross. And then, in front of everyone, he pinned the underboss's silver badge to her chest. "You did good work on the East Harbor cleanup." The room went still for a beat, and then the applause broke out. Chloe looked up at him, her eyes red, as if she'd finally been handed the place that was meant to be hers. I stood frozen, feeling my smile crack apart on my face, piece by piece. Only then did Julian seem to notice something, and he turned back to me. "Don't overthink it." "Tonight belongs to Chloe. Spoiling her moment with a proposal wouldn't be right." "At the next family dinner, I'll hand you the black ring in front of everyone." I looked at him and let out a soft laugh. Julian didn't know. There wasn't going to be a next time. My engagement banquet with the head of the Vaughn family was set for next week.

My father was critically ill. I begged my fiancé to keep his post-wedding promise—to withdraw emergency funds from the medical trust fund he had sworn to protect me forever. He refused. The next day, he announced his engagement to Pera. Overnight, I became the laughingstock of everyone. In my deepest despair, my childhood friend Seamus— The heir to a long-established Mafia family— Knelt down in the park and proposed to me in front of everyone. That night, he transferred a large sum of money to my account. I said yes without hesitation and rushed to the hospital to pay for my father's treatment. But he never woke up again. The hospital said he had suffered "unexpected complications." Everything after that—the lawyers, the funeral, all the arrangements—was handled by Seamus. Under the Mafia family's protection, everything went smoothly, and my father was able to be quietly buried. The wedding proceeded as planned. Years later, I overheard a conversation between him and the doctor who treated my father. “Seamus,” the doctor said in a low voice, “You tampered with the organ allocation priority list. You delayed Shirley’s father’s transplant so that Pera’s father could receive an organ transplant in time. You falsified the urgency level. Do you know what will happen if this is exposed?” “The list itself was legal,” Seamus replied after a pause. “I just…adjusted the urgency level.” “You committed medical fraud,” the doctor said sharply. “You ruined his only chance to live. All for Pera. Don’t you regret it?” “I don’t regret it,” Seamus answered without hesitation. “I would do anything for her. Even my life, even the honor of the Mafia family.” “Throughout our marriage, I’ve been trying to make up for everything I owed Shirley. That should be enough.” My vision blurred. Only then did I finally understand— The woman he truly loved was always Pera. "If that's really the case," I thought numbly,"Then I should leave."

The day my only brother was cornered in a dockside warehouse by a rival mafia family, I knelt on the carpet of Damian's study and begged him. "Lend me ten men. I only need to hold until dawn, and the men I hired can get up here from the south side." He took a drag on his cigar and scoffed, "Ten men? Do you know how many people have eyes on that shipment on the north side tonight? My men aren't here to wipe up your messes." My knuckles went white where I had hold of the hem of his trousers. My phone screen lit up. A message about my brother taking a bullet, the blood a blurred smear of red. I was about to beg again when I heard him place a call over my head. His voice went soft, the way you'd soothe a child. "Go pick up the west-side shipment yourself. I'm giving you fifty gunmen to back you up. Don't be scared. If we lose men, that's on me. You just come back safe." That was the adopted sister he'd taken in. When he first brought her home she'd stuttered when she spoke. I let go of his trouser leg and got up off the carpet without a sound. Damian finally looked down at me. He smiled and wiped my tears away with his thumb. "That's more like it. Don't come crying to me every time the wind shifts. Handle your own family's business yourself. That's how the Moretti family works." I nodded calmly, walked out of the study, and dialed a number I hadn't called in a long time. "Dad, you were right. Giving up my place as a mafia princess for a man from some small family wasn't worth it. I'll marry the Don of the Gambino 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.

For six years, I used countless offshore trusts and hidden laundering pipelines for Dominic. I turned him from an East Side underboss into the undisputed king of New York's underworld. Then came our wedding anniversary. He got attacked. He woke up remembering nothing about me. I searched frantically for the family doctor to find a cure. That same night, I walked in on him. He had his newly hooked-up art curator, Sienna, pinned against the floor-to-ceiling window, taking her from behind. She moaned breathlessly, begging for power. Dominic gripped her jaw, laughing in her face. "Relax. I put on this trauma amnesia act. I told them my brain got rattled and I only know you as my wife. It gives me an excuse to strip Camilla of her financial power and lend it to you for a few days. She won't even have a reason to throw a fit. Look at her. Didn't she fall for it today?" The next morning at the family round table, he put on his little show without blinking an eye. Right in front of the council, he slammed the table and swore he didn't know me. With his own hands, he ripped the black diamond signet ring of the matriarch off my finger and shoved it onto his new girl's hand. He ordered me out of the inner circle. A room full of armed outlaws waited to laugh at my breakdown. I didn't even twitch an eyebrow. I gave up all my authority on the spot, turned around, and walked downstairs. Dominic assumed I was blind to his game. He still thought I was the obedient tool on call, waiting for him to snap his fingers once his memory came back in a few days to coax me back home. He had no idea. The St. Petersburg godfather pushed a sixty-million-dollar high-purity diamond wash onto us. The drop deadline hits in three days. That lockbox and darknet routing recognize my voiceprint alone. Without me holding the line, those accounts are the death warrant for the entire Corvin family.

The Cecil family has a century-old rule: on the day a daughter marries, her father gives her a list. It lists the names of twelve bodyguards her father has trained for her since she was a child. They will serve the bride for life as her last line of defense in her husband's household. My twin sister Valentina and I married on the same day. At the ceremony, she held the contract, which was covered in red handprints. Our father patted her shoulder. "I chose every one of them for you. If anyone mistreats my darling girl, these men will make them pay." Our mother beamed. "Valentina will always be the treasure of our family." All I received was a single flimsy, worthless sheet of paper. It didn't even bear a seal. "Father, where is my list?" His gaze darted away for a moment. Then he looked back at me, his expression brazen and self-righteous. "Your sister is marrying Don Moretti's oldest son. The Moretti family is one of Sicily's most powerful Mafia families. Of course she needs more men. "I added your twelve men to her list. She needs twenty-four guards to make sure no one looks down on the Cecil family." Our mother backed him up. "The outsider you're marrying can't even fire a gun. Why would you need bodyguards? Stop thinking only of yourself." I looked at the worthless sheet of paper and smiled bitterly. In their eyes, I was nothing more than a disposable pawn.

The five major mafia families in Neopolis had an unwritten rule. None of the core family members was allowed to marry a commoner, but the heir to the Colombo family, Adrian Colombo, had fallen in love with me. Adrian openly defied his family's committee for me but ended up being slapped a hundred times in public as his punishment. He was also forced to drink whiskey with glass pieces mixed into it. While getting his stomach pumped at the hospital, he smiled and comforted me, "Don't cry, Ella. I'm willing to accept any punishment as long as I can be with you." After that, Don Colombo finally agreed to let Adrian marry me, but on one condition. He had to give his family a new heir by having a child with his deceased older brother's fiancée and his sister-in-law, Cecelia Gambino. Adrian agreed to the terms in order to marry me. He told me that we could be together forever after Cecelia gave birth to an heir. After that, he slept with Cecelia 99 times until she was pregnant. I thought we could finally be together, but Adrian told me apologetically that Cecelia was pregnant with a girl. The heir of the Colombo family had to be a boy. So, he slept with Cecelia another hundred times before she was finally pregnant again. Just when I thought I could finally marry Adrian, his daughter with Cecelia ingested cyanide by accident, and everyone thought I was the culprit. I was forcefully sent to the convent for one year. Adrian looked at me angrily. "How could you hurt my daughter, Ella?! She's innocent! How could you be so cruel? I'm so disappointed in you." He did not believe me! I felt a sharp pain in my heart. It felt like it was being torn apart. I was suddenly reminded of how he had made a promise to me in front of God. "Ella, I swear I will only love you in this life." When he was punished by his family for me, he said, "Ella, I'm willing to suffer any punishment just to be with you." Every time we slept together, he would kiss me over and over. "Don't leave me, Ella, or I'll die." However, when he stood next to Cecelia and carried their daughter in his arms, they looked like a real family of three. I was suddenly tired of everything. Adrian, from now onward, your name would never again appear in my prayers. From now onward, we would live as though we had never met each other and we had never been in love. I would set you free.

My husband's childhood sweetheart took the Cullinan I gave him for a midnight joyride. One person ended up critically injured. He wired half a million euros from the family account to hire a fall guy, then flew her to Switzerland for a ski trip. I called him from outside the operating room, desperate. "Your father is dying. Authorize the surgery, now!" He laughed, her head on his shoulder in the video call. "Using my father's health to lie? Sofia, you've crossed a line." The line went dead. The heart monitor flatlined. Later, at his father's funeral, he raged, swearing to find the killer and make them pay. I looked at the gathered family elders, then pointed at the trembling woman behind him. "The killer is right there. The one you paid to protect."

I hid who I was. The daughter of the Don. The boss of all bosses. In Brooklyn, Killian and I were just a regular couple. Madly in love. The day I showed him the pregnancy test—two pink lines—he loosened his blood-stained collar. His voice was rough. “I’m marrying the New Jersey syndicate’s daughter. In three days. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral.” “The Russos were nobodies ten years ago. Her father has the muscle and the ports I need to win this war. The ink is dry. And… to get the first weapons shipment… we slept together.” He saw me freeze by the bed. His rough fingers touched my cheek. “I’ll buy you a penthouse on Long Island. The most secure one. You and the baby will be safe. For life.” I slapped his hand away, stunned. “So I’m just your secret? Your mistress? Hidden away forever?” Killian looked away, his jaw tight. “She’s a mob daughter. She plays the part. But you get everything else. My money. My life. It’s all for you and the baby. Just not the ring.” My heart seized. So that's what I was to him. His dirty little secret. “What if I told you… my family could help you too?”

The Moretti family had one unwritten rule. To officially take the reigning Donna’s place, the Don’s new lover had to command her three times publicly—and be obeyed without question. The day Raffaele Moretti brought Gianna into the council chamber, she gave me her first order. “Take off your wedding ring and put it on my finger.” The entire family waited for me to lose my mind. After all, I had fought at Raffaele’s side through eight years of bloodshed and helped the family’s bastard son become its Don. Everyone was certain I would never bow to Gianna. But without a word, I slipped off the ring and slid it onto her finger as every capo watched. Raffaele leaned back in his chair at the head of the table, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. “Sofia, you’ve finally learned to obey. It’s good to see you understand your place.” I lowered my gaze and said nothing. What Raffaele didn’t know was that my memories had returned a month ago. I was the long-lost sole heir to the De Luca family, the most powerful of Sicily’s Five Families. In three days, my family was coming to take me home.

When I first moved to New York at 21, I got involved with a man much older than me. We had to keep our relationship a secret. He was rich, powerful, and used to getting his way. He had an entire crime family behind him. And yet, no one knew how to make me happy better than he did. I was the one who ended it. That day, he didn't ask me a single question. He just had Walter Russo, the family lawyer, bring me a check big enough to pay off my father's debts and let me start over. After that, we went our separate ways. Two years later, I took a job at the Moretti family's hospitality company. On my first day, I learned that he didn't just run the business. He was the one calling the shots for the entire Moretti family. At a party out of state, I got drunk and knocked on his door again. That was how we ended up tangled together for another five years. On the night of my 28th birthday, he kept me in bed until the early hours. When I reached under the pillow, my fingers brushed against a jewelry box. I opened it. It was a diamond ring. A smile broke across my face. "So you finally remembered how long my grandmother's been nagging me to get married?" Alex Moretti lowered his head as he lit a cigarette. At my words, his hand stilled. Two seconds later, he looked up at me. "Nora, the ring isn't for you." My smile froze. He blew out a stream of smoke. His voice was calm, as if he were simply stating the terms of a done deal. "Next week, I'm getting engaged to Claire Valenti."

My sister came back after being kidnapped. She had no memory of what had happened. She saw the photos on my wall and became convinced that my boyfriend, Don Colton Turner, was hers. She hid under our bed. When Colton and I started getting intimate, she crawled out and accused us of cheating on her. She pulled out a grenade and screamed, "You've betrayed me! Neither of you is walking out of here!" Just as she was about to pull the pin, my mother lunged at her, grabbed the grenade, and threw it out the window. But Beth wasn't done. She pressed a gun to her temple and threatened to kill herself. In her mind, she was Colton's Donna, while I was his secret lover. My mother rushed forward to grab the gun just as Beth pulled the trigger. My mother died on the spot. After that, Beth tried to kill herself almost every day. Colton eventually packed his bags and said wearily, "We should have slept in separate rooms. If we had, your mother would still be here. I'll take her to the house outside the city for now. Once she's stable, I'll move back. That way, she can't hurt you again." I simply nodded. Part of me was even grateful that Colton had thought everything through so carefully. Then one day, I went to a private hospital for a prenatal checkup. As I walked out with the report in my hand, I froze. My supposedly dead mother was standing there, gently stroking Beth's hair. "A healthy baby. When it's born, it'll look just like Colton." Colton laughed. "Better if it looks like Beth." My mother nodded, satisfied. "At least all that acting wasn't for nothing. Once the baby is here, I can stop worrying." The blood drained from my face as my heart pounded against my ribs. So it had all been a lie. After they left, I forced myself to calm down, walked back into the hospital, and scheduled an abortion.

Before our wedding, my fiancé, Carlo Vitale—the youngest Don on the East Coast—held a church ceremony with my stepsister. He said, "According to Mafia rules, only the woman who completes the wedding ceremony with me and receives the blessing of all the family is my true wife. "So even if your sister Elena is carrying my child, she's nothing more than a mistress." After the priest's blessing, they exchanged rings. I stood outside the church, watching through a curtain of rain as he kissed another woman. My face was white. I had loved Carlo for twelve years, from the ages of sixteen to twenty-eight. However, he had only ever had my stepsister, Sophia, not me, in his heart. I chose to let him go. Later, I left for Europe. All I left Carlo was a notice of our broken engagement and a parting gift. For some reason, the man who had always treated me with indifference seemed to have aged ten years overnight.

The night before I was supposed to stand beside Lucius Corleone at the altar and become his wife, he sent me a message. Sienna was pregnant. According to the family code, her child would be the first legitimate heir to the Corleone name. So Lucius ordered me to leave Sicily for three years—and tell everyone I had broken our contract first. For eight years, I had been his shadow. I wiped away his blood, buried his crimes, protected his business, and waited for the day he would finally bring me into the light. But now, he said Sienna belonged in the sunlight. I stared at the message, my hands still burning from scrubbing away the evidence of his latest murder. Then I typed back one word. "Understood." A second later, Sienna's official wedding announcement appeared on the Corleone family's private network. Apparently, she couldn't even wait until morning to wear my ring.

I ran into my ex-boyfriend at a friend's birthday party. He was now the Godfather of the Barzan family. He looked handsome and polished, and he'd arrived with his gorgeous fiancée on his arm. She smiled at me and said, "If you hadn't broken up with him back then, you'd be the lady of the Barzan house—the Godfather's wife." Across the table, his arm around her, Nico wore a cold expression. "Why bring up the past? We ended things ages ago. You're my fiancée, the future matriarch of the family." Under the crowd's watchful stares, I quietly covered the scar on my wrist and forced a tight smile. "Right… it's been such a long time."

I was Don Victor’s secret wife for five years, hidden away like a dirty little secret. He made me a promise. Give him an heir, and he’d show me to the world. I’d be the Donna everyone envied. But there was a catch. A lie. His doctor told me I was barren. Victor held me while I sobbed, kissing my face. "Baby, we can still do IVF. I want a child from you. Only you." So I took the pain. Five years. 999 needles. I was finally pregnant on Christmas Day. I ran to his office to share the news, only to find him buried deep inside another woman. Julia. A Mafia princess from another family. The betrayal hit me. I turned to leave, tears in my eyes, but then I heard a truth I couldn't escape. "Don't you worry, my princess. The baby in Maria's belly? It's ours. Your egg, my sperm. She’s just the perfect vessel." My hand trembled. I backed away, silent. Then I made a call. A lawyer. "I don't care what it costs. I want a divorce from Don Victor."