Familial Bond Mafia Short Stories & Independence Novels

On our third wedding anniversary, Lorenzo Falcone came back from Sicily with a chest of jewels. Without thinking, he slid the chest toward my sister Vella and told her to pick first. I stared, eyes wide, and the disappointment slipped out before I could stop it: "Lorenzo. It's our anniversary. Don't I get to choose first?" He faltered for just a second. Then he said: "Lily, as a Donna, you should know how to be gracious. You can't always act like a little girl." I'd heard that for over twenty years. Since I was a child, the eldest daughter of the family, I'd long learned to step aside. Give up the horse I loved. Give up my grandfather's keepsake. Give up the chance to study abroad. Give up the voice that should've been mine. My father told me to be sensible. My mother told me to protect my little sister. When I met Lorenzo, I really thought—foolishly—that I was done giving things up. He'd pull me behind him when the gunshots rang out. He'd hold my hand when the nightmares jolted me awake. He'd say it in front of everyone, so sure of himself: "Lily is my only choice." But I was wrong. Not long after we got married, Vella moved in with us. She said she couldn't bear to be apart from me. Lorenzo promised he would treat her like his own flesh and blood, give her a little extra care. But somewhere along the way, extra attention turned into her first—without him even noticing. After she'd made her picks, she handed me the leftover brooch. Old. Tarnished. "This one suits you, sis." I looked at her. Forced a bitter smile. "Take it all. I don't want any of it." Quietly, I slipped my wedding ring off my finger and tucked it into my bag. Three days from now, I'll place it beside the divorce papers on his pillow. And then I'll walk away. From him. From this city that was never mine to begin with.

When I was having a heart attack, my parents, my brother, and my fiancé were all at our family casino—celebrating Eva, our adopted daughter, at her twenty-first birthday, her official debut into the mafia world. The doctor refused to operate without a legal guardian’s signature. So I called them. My father’s assistant answered. “Sorry, Miss. The Don is in the middle of a toast.” My brother and mother let it ring until it went silent. Finally, my fiancé, Adam, picked up. Music roared behind him. I could hear laughter, glasses clinking. “Cecilia,” he said, impatient. “If you can’t even show up for Eva’s party, stop causing trouble. Today is Eva’s debut. Every Don from three territories is here. Whatever drama you’re playing can wait.” I lost count of how many times they chose her over me. So after this call, I stopped calling. I signed my own name. My family thought I’d finally learned to be obedient. But they should’ve known that in our world, silence only means one thing—I was preparing to disappear for good.

In my last life, I single-handedly wiped out a rival gang, winning great honor for the Family. My mother handed me control of her private arsenal, worth hundreds of millions. Before I could even take inventory, the convent orphan my family had adopted quietly changed the codes, and handed the entire shipment to homeless men in slums controlled by our enemies. Staring down my gun, she crossed herself, her face full of pity. "God tells us to love the world, Alessia. Sitting on all those instruments of murder is a sin. I am only atoning for you." I scoffed, but one second before I pulled the trigger, my childhood friend, the Family's top killer, shot the gun from my hand and denounced me as bloodthirsty, cruel, and incapable of empathy. My older brother, the new Don, only sneered and stripped me of my inheritance on the spot. He threw me into the lowest end of the red-light district to wash dishes until the violence had been ground out of me. That same night, addicts from the rival gang cornered me at the end of an alley, stabbed me more than twenty times, then dumped me into the Thames. I opened my eyes, and I was back on the day the orphan girl walked toward the arsenal with my key in her hand.

My little sister was murdered by her kidnappers. I watched it all happen and never said a word about who did it. My mother got on her knees and begged me. I didn't flinch. When my father threatened me with his authority as the Don, I walked away from my place as the Family heir. I moved to a small town down south. Eight years later, I was dying of a terminal illness, and my older sister, Beth Turner, had taken over the Family. Under her, the Turners had become the most powerful mafia family on the East Coast. The first thing she did when she found me was have me dragged back to the Family's tribunal. "Selena Turner, you ungrateful snake. Mia called you her sister for all those years, and you still won't name the kidnapper. "Mia's been dead for years. Don't you feel any guilt at all?!" I was on my knees in the great hall. I couldn't speak. "After all these years, I can finally extract your memories. Today, I'm going to see exactly who you've been protecting. I will avenge Mia." She ordered her men to restrain me and hook up the extractor. On the screen above the banquet hall, a face suddenly appeared. The room erupted into chaos, and Beth's face went deathly pale.

Seven years ago, the Vitale family and the Alberti family forged an alliance through marriage. But on the day of the wedding, my older sister ran away with a cobbler. To keep the two families from turning on each other then and there, my father disowned her on the spot. Then he shoved me, still dressed in my bridesmaid gown, into the dressing room. Half an hour later, I walked out in my sister’s wedding dress and married Jonathan Alberti, the Alberti family heir, a man notorious throughout Sicily for his ruthlessness from a young age. And yet, in the seven years that followed, he never treated me badly. Whenever I got myself into trouble, he cleaned up the mess. Once, someone mocked me at a party for being the bride who had taken my sister’s place. The next day, that man’s body was found floating in the Mediterranean. I thought seven years was long enough for a man to forget the woman he had once intended to marry. Little by little, I fell for him too. Until the day my sister appeared at the gates of the estate, disheveled and desperate, with a six-year-old boy beside her. “My husband is dead. I…” She never even had to finish asking. All the resentment Jonathan had carried over her running away vanished with a few tears. That very night, my sister and her son moved into the estate. Jonathan stood outside her door, watching her. And from the turn of the staircase, I stood watching him. I gave a bitter smile and made a phone call. Now that my sister was back, it was time for the stand-in bride to step aside.

I was seven the first time I pulled a trigger. From 550 yards away, I killed a pirate who was hijacking a shipment. I grew up by the water, and two families claimed me as their daughter. The first was the Salvatore family. Their fake heiress wanted me to take the fall for her on a trafficking charge. I put her in federal prison instead. Life without parole. The second was the Vasiliev family. Their fake heiress got on her knees and swore she wouldn't compete with me. Then she paid someone to kill me. I sent her and the money to the bottom of the harbor. It took a third DNA test for anyone to realize I was the biological daughter of the Macchetti family. The old crime family that controlled a sixth of the East Coast. On my first day back at the estate, Chiara knelt in front of me and pressed a gun to her own temple. "I'm sorry. I've spent all these years in your place. If I'm in your way, I can die right now." My mother's knees buckled. She lunged forward and pulled Chiara into her arms. My brother pointed at me. "Chiara has a serious heart condition. You've been back one day, and you already want her dead?" Even Lorenzo Falcone, the fiancé I was meeting for the first time, spoke up. "If a single hair on her head is harmed, I'm calling off the engagement tomorrow." I walked over, took the gun out of her hand, ejected the magazine, and checked the chamber. It was empty. I crouched down and put it back in her hand. "Next time you fake a suicide attempt, don't forget to load it. "After all... "An unloaded gun is a toy."

I've been a stickler for getting things right since I was a child. Whenever anyone is vague, I keep asking questions until I get to the bottom of it. At the children's home, the director used to say that the crying child gets the candy. I asked, "Why doesn't the quiet child get any? Does a child have to cry to get candy?" The director had nothing to say to that. After I became a lawyer, my supervisor assigned me a case she claimed was guaranteed to win, despite there being no evidence. I asked, "With no evidence at all, how can we possibly win?" "That isn't for you to worry about. Just show up in court on time." I put the file back on her desk. "If I can't get the full picture, I'm not taking this case." After that, none of my colleagues dared dump another hopeless case on me. That changed when my birth parents brought me home to the Rossi Family and threw a belated banquet to formally acknowledge me as their daughter. Bruno, the butler, brought out a case. Inside was a Browning pistol with the Rossi crest set into the grip. "This is the keepsake the Rossi Family commissions for each of its children. Your three brothers each have one. So does Letitia." My father took aim at a vase worth a million across the room and fired a test shot before sliding the pistol toward me. "Yours. " I picked it up. Neither the magazine capacity nor the curve of the grip had been designed for my hand. I couldn't hold it securely. I looked at him. "Father, was this made specifically for me?" "Of course." I lifted it again with my palm up so he could see the gap between my fingers and the grip. "Then why was it designed for a hand smaller than mine? "If I had to use this pistol in the field, the sharp edge at the base would snag when I changed magazines and cost me my best chance to fire." I turned the pistol over so they could see the tiny letters engraved inside the chamber: L.L. "More importantly, those are Letitia's initials." I looked at Letitia. "Or did you swap mine out?"

Every year on Dante Moretti's birthday, they played a game. Whoever drew the ace of spades could order anyone to do one thing. The first year, Sofia Cavarro poured red wine over my head. She was the Cavarro family's precious princess, and no one had ever dared to cross her. So that night, she smiled and told me to kneel and lick the wine off the tips of Dante's shoes. The second year, she hung a price tag reading "three million dollars" around my neck and let everyone guess whether Dante's purchase of me had been worth it. Dante sat on the sofa with his glass of wine, watching them jeer with a smile. Because everyone knew I was the woman he'd bought at an auction seven years ago. And I loved him, so I endured it, time after time. This year, Sofia drew the ace of spades again. She didn't make me kneel. She didn't give me a new punishment. She simply handed me a ring and told me to put it on her finger myself. That was how I found out. In one month, Dante was going to marry her. For the first time in seven years, I asked to leave. Dante laughed. "Elena, have you forgotten? I paid for you. "No matter who I marry, it doesn't change the fact that you belong to me." He was certain I had no family, nowhere to go. He was certain that as long as he didn't let me go, I would never be able to leave his side. But three days later, twenty black sedans surrounded the Moretti estate. The man who made the entire Sicilian Mafia tremble stormed in and knocked Dante to the floor with a single punch. He held up the price tag, his eyes red. "My precious daughter, the one I've spent twelve years searching for... "How could she have ended up here, a slave for seven years?"

My husband Charles always had selective amnesia. Anything that had to do with me, he would forget, then promise he'd make it up next time. On my thirtieth birthday, I prepared an elaborate dinner at home and waited for him and our family to come celebrate. But the hour came and went, and no one showed up. Burning with a high fever, I went out to look for Charles and called everyone else. Isabella's voice was warm with laughter. "Charles is here with me picking out your birthday present. We'll be back soon." My best friend said, "Traffic is awful. I ran into Charles on the way, so we're heading over together." Even my own brother told me, "I ran into an old friend with Charles on the road and we got to chatting. Don't worry." Last was our son, coaxing me in his little voice. "Daddy's buying me fresh bread!" Everyone was telling me Charles was right there with them. Everyone was telling me he'd gone all out for my birthday. What they didn't know was that I had watched Charles walk into an upscale restaurant with his arm around another woman. He pulled out her chair like a gentleman and handed her the menu. I stood outside in the rain, soaked to the bone, and every last hope in my heart died. A husband who couldn't stay faithful? I was done.

My adopted sister, Bianca, screwed up. Big time. It was at a charity dinner. Hosted by the Vitiellos. The most powerful Mafia Family on the East Coast. She spilled hot coffee on the Vitiello boss's sister. Right into her eyes. Almost blinded her. Massimo went ballistic. He’s the cold-blooded Don who runs the whole damn coast. He wanted a hostage from our family, the Costas. Within five days. Or it was war. My mother grabbed my hands. Her eyes were red and filled with pain. “Bianca didn’t mean it. She’s terrified. She’s hiding in her room, shaking so hard she can’t breathe. Valeria, you're tough. You can survive this. Just go to Massimo for a few days. I swear I'll get you back.” My twin brother sighed. “That Don is a psycho. Bianca is too delicate. She wouldn’t last a day. You’ve always been the strong one. Just… do this for her.” Even my fiancé, the man I’ve been engaged to for years, held me. He whispered, “Baby, just take the heat for her. Once this all blows over, I’ll give you the biggest wedding you’ve ever dreamed of.” What a joke. I wasn’t even at the party. But I was the one paying the price. So I gave them what they wanted. I walked right into the Vitiello estate. And then they regretted it. They cried, and begged me to come back.

As the Vitano princess, I was promised early on in an arranged marriage to the Rosso Family. But when the time came to exchange our families' tokens, I was bedridden with a high fever and had to ask my younger sister, Rosa, to deliver mine in my place. The Rosso heir, Adrian Rosso, took a liking to her and insisted she be the bride instead. Just six months after the wedding, her husband beat her to death in a drunken rage. My father and my brother decided it was my fault Rosa died. They stopped speaking to me and treated me like I didn't exist. Then, during an arms deal at the port, we were ambushed. My father stayed behind to cover our retreat and took two bullets meant for me. My brother used every last ounce of his strength to shove me into the helicopter. I reached for him, but there was no room left on board. "Valentina, if we could do this all over again, I'm begging you, don't let Rosa go in your place." He let go and vanished into the fire. When I opened my eyes again, it was the day my family had sat down to discuss the arranged marriage. My brother, who had always spoiled Rosa beyond reason, did something completely out of character. He shut her down the moment she volunteered for the marriage. He had been reborn too. This time around, we were both going to make up for the regrets of our past lives.

My twin sister, Bianca, tried to kill herself because I was better than her at school. Apparently, my success triggered her. So my parents sent me away from the Bellini estate. “Only until the college decisions come out,” Mother promised. “Then you can come home.” Behind her, my brother, Dante, helped Bianca choose her new armored Bentley. My boyfriend, Luca, stood beside them, holding Bianca’s favorite white roses. “If anything happens, call us, Valentina.” I did. A month later, a drunk man showed up at my door and wouldn't stop pounding. I locked myself in the bathroom and called my family again and again. Every call was declined. Near dawn, Mother finally texted. Sorry, sweetheart. We were celebrating Bianca’s birthday. Seeing your name might have upset her. After that, I stopped asking for help. The last college decision arrived, but they still wouldn’t let me return. Then, at our eighteenth-birthday gala, the Bellinis presented Bianca to New York as their beloved and only principessa. Mother sent me another message. Your sister still needs time. Please wait. This time, I was done waiting. They didn’t know I had already accepted my offer from MIT. I was leaving the Bellini family behind.

For as long as I could remember, I knew my mother, Isabella, hated me. She once threw me into the basement, leaving me to rot in the dark or crawl out on my own. But I was hard to kill. Even after nine days of starvation, I still clawed at the bottom of the door until all ten of my fingers were bloody. At seven, I taught myself how to fight back against her. When she locked me out, I shattered the champagne tower at a family dinner. If I couldn't be happy, no one could. When she had her guards pin me to the ground to teach me a lesson, I secretly locked her precious son, Leo, in the attic. I listened to him cry until his voice went hoarse. I stubbornly fought against her like this until I was twelve. Until they brought my newborn sister, Rosie, home. I stood by the crib, clumsily changing the soiled cashmere blanket for the tiny pink bundle. Isabella barged in and slammed me hard against the wall. Behind the disgust in her eyes was fear. "What are you trying to do to my daughter?" "I knew it! You're the spawn of that Barone bastard. You're up to no good!" "Why don't you just die and do this family a favor!" In that moment, I finally understood. Clutching the back of my bleeding head, for the first time, I didn't fight back. It was also the first time I actually agreed with her. My birth, from start to finish, was a dirty mistake. I really did deserve to die.

According to the Moretti family's rules, my twin sister Chloe and I were supposed to inherit our grandmother's trust when we turned eighteen. But the night before the trust was unlocked, my mother came to us with red-rimmed eyes and told us the family was three million dollars in debt. We needed to pay it off immediately. My fiancé Damian held my hand and moved our wedding date up to the end of the year. He promised we'd face it together. That night, Chloe and I both signed the waiver. Three days later, I got my Harvard acceptance letter with a full scholarship. I rushed home early to share the news—and walked straight into the living room projector still running. On the screen was a group chat I'd never seen before. It was called "Protect Chloe." [Did she sign?] [She signed. She voluntarily gave up her inheritance. Everything belongs to Chloe now.] [That's what Chloe deserves. Vivian's the older sister. She should be the one to give in.] [She doesn't need that much money anyway. She'll have the Salvatorre Donna title soon enough.] Because I was born ten minutes before Chloe, my parents had always favored her. And now, even my fiancé had chosen her side. I didn't say a word. I confirmed my Harvard enrollment and booked a flight to Boston. They thought I'd do what I always did—get angry, cry, then come crawling back. But this time, I was really done with them.

The night before Halloween, my sister, Ryn, dumped a whole bucket of paint on me. I was in my wedding dress, the one for my wedding in just a few days. In an instant, it was ruined. Ryn just howled with laughter. "Sorry, Briony, but you look like some kind of clown that just crawled out of the sewer." Mom laughed right along with her. "Oh, Ryn, always the life of the party." With my head dripping paint, the world started to spin. Tears welled up in my eyes. Dad just impatiently told me to come to the table. "It's just a joke. You walk around with that long face all day. Ryn was just trying to get a smile out of you." I couldn't hold back the tears anymore. I turned to my fiancé, Gideon, hoping he'd stick up for me. But his head was down, sending money to Ryn's account. "Fifty grand. A bet's a bet." He saw me looking and flashed his phone. "Ryn bet me you'd cry in under a minute. I bet on three. You couldn't even hold out that long for me?" The whole room erupted in laughter again. I just stood there, frozen. At sixteen, Ryn wrote "IDIOT" on the back of my shirt, and the whole class laughed at me for a semester. At twenty-one, she tripped me at a party, sending me face-first into a giant cake. I became the family joke. Every time I got mad, they'd just laugh and ask, "What, you can't take a joke?" This time, I just felt so tired. All these years, I wasn't a daughter, a sister, or a fiancée. I was just a toy to keep Ryn entertained. That's when I decided. I would take the company's transfer to Zurich. I would leave this place. And I would leave them all behind.

My classmate Bianca and I have the same taste. She wants every man I’ve ever dated. She says I’m too naive. That I don't see how powerful men think. She calls it “testing” them for me. She says she’s helping. Then she sleeps with my boyfriend. Then she rubs it in my face. “See? I told you that you can’t handle them. These men are sharks. If it wasn’t for me, you’d have been eaten alive by now.” I choked on my rage. I said nothing. This time, I went behind her back. I went after the king of New York's underworld. When she found out, she made her move. But she has no idea. This man isn't my endgame. He's the trap I set for her.

When I was six, a car crash wiped out most of my memory. My foster parents told me my parents had died that night. They said they had taken me in, given me their name, their home, and the protection of one of New York's most powerful families. So I spent twelve years proving I deserved to stay. I cleaned up my younger sister Bianca's messes, handed her the credit for my work, and locked every trophy I earned in a wooden archive box because my success made the family's real daughter uncomfortable. Then, at eighteen, I ordered a certified birth record for my student visa. The clerk looked at me and said, "Your parents have always been Vittorio and Elena Romano. There's no adoption on file." I had never been an orphan. Bianca knew. My relatives knew. The family attorney knew. Even the old butler who carried me home from the hospital knew. For twelve years, everyone had played a part in the same lie. So I hid the birth certificate and kept playing the grateful adopted daughter. I fixed Bianca's speech, prepared her heir's gala, and smiled while my family erased my name one last time. They had no idea I'd already booked a one-way flight out of their lives.

The Volkovs. The most brutal family in Russia. Their Don was holding our arms deal hostage. He wanted the De Luca princess. Isla. My adopted sister. I was their biological daughter. The blood heir they found in the slums twenty years too late. But Isla was the one they actually loved. The news broke. My mother walked into my room for the first time in forever. “Aurora, my best girl. You know how fragile Isla is. If she marries him… that man will break her. He’ll kill her.” My fiancé, Julian Caldwell, heir to the Caldwell family, made me a candlelit dinner. He held me, kissing me softly. “You’re so much stronger than her, Aurora. Please. Do this for her. I’ll give you a private wedding. Just us. Even if I can’t marry you for real, you’ll always be my wife.” Even my father—a man who never smiled at me, the Don of the De Luca family—actually slid a blank check across the desk. “Take her place instead of Isla. Name your price. Anything you want.” They were so sure I’d say yes. Because I’d always been that pathetic girl. Desperate for their approval. Willing to do anything. But not this time. I was done. I looked at the blank check and laughed. “A blank check? Not even close. I want one hundred million dollars. And a blood contract that cuts all ties. Forever.” They had no idea. I wanted more than that. In seven days, I was going to give them a gift. I wanted their lives.

The night before I left the Family, the five of us who grew up together played pool. To make sure delicate Chloe won, my own brother purposely blocked my shots. My boyfriend, the heir to the syndicate, willingly gave up his chance to turn the game around, and my childhood friend shoved a thirteenth penalty shot into my hand. "She's great at pool. What's the big deal if she loses a few rounds?" "It's just a game. Don't be such a sore loser." They gave all their attention to Chloe, completely forgetting tonight was supposed to be my farewell party. No one even cared to ask which part of the Family territory I was about to take over. I touched the plane ticket to Sicily inside my suitcase and swallowed everything I wanted to say. If they only cared about letting her win. Then this time, I would just walk away from the table forever.

Ever since she was two, Elara Vane became her twin sister's personal blood bank after the girl was diagnosed with a rare genetic defect. Doctors predicted her sister wouldn't live past eighteen, so her parents and brother doted on her, putting her first in everything. They even blamed Elara, accusing her of "stealing" her sister's nutrients in the womb, claiming it made her sickly. In her past life, no one in the family loved her. Only her fiancé, Dante, truly stayed by her side. But Elara never expected Dante's love had its own agenda. Until her sister accidentally fell off a cliff and needed a full blood transfusion. Dante signed the consent form without hesitation, sending her to the operating table to be the donor. As her blood drained and her consciousness faded, Elara swore that in another life, she would never be her sister's blood bag again! The next time she opened her eyes, she was back to the day after her engagement to Dante...