Bittersweet Mafia Short Stories & Mafia Novels

When I was three months pregnant, my Don husband’s so-called step sister, Ruby, showed up at my door. Her swollen belly was impossible to miss, “Donna, since my due date is so close, I thought you should know… the Don’s heir is in my belly.” She laid everything in front of me—intimate photos of her and Caleb, records of the weekly money transfers he sent her, even the deed to a mansion. The earliest dates traced back to the time I lost our first baby, when the doctors told me it would be difficult for me to conceive again. All these years, I had been enduring IVF treatments, desperately trying to carry our child once more—while he was fooling around with his so-called step sister. Well, if Caleb wanted another woman so badly, he could have her. I had no intention of staying anyway. I was already planning my leave.

Three days before my wedding, Adrian canceled it for the fifty-second time. He came to the Palermo workshop to approve my gown’s crest embroidery, but the moment I stepped out from the fitting curtain, he snatched up his holster and radio. “Torino bastards smashed Bianca’s vineyard, surrounded the estate. Lia’s terrified, so I have to go. The wedding is off.” Once, I would have stopped him and demanded to know who mattered more to him, me or Bianca. This time, I simply let him go. Thirty minutes later, Bianca posted an Instagram Story: [You’re the only shelter for me and my daughter.] The photo showed Adrian holding Bianca close, with Lia in his arms, calling him Dad. They looked like a real family. My parents sighed. “Seraphina, is the wedding in Hawaii off again? We’ve already sent the invitations to every renowned Italian family. What will this do to the Bellini family’s honor?” I shook my head, tapping the backup invite. "The wedding goes on.  In three days, I’ll still be a bride. Just not Adrian’s."

I never expected my husband, Tony Baldino, to confess that he had cheated on me again. Six months ago, I discovered his affair. The pain was sharp, but I had resolutely signed the divorce papers, only for him to tear them up in desperation, crying at my doorstep through the rain. He swore he would never hide anything from me again, begging for a second chance. Soaked and humiliated, the high-and-mighty don of the Baldino family looked like a child abandoned by his own. Seeing him and feeling the life growing in my womb, I softened and forgave him. However, only half a year later, he betrayed me once more. This time, before I could discover it, he confessed. “It only happened once with Jane. You’re still the one I love. Don’t worry, she won’t take your place as Mrs. Baldino.” His honesty was intact. He hid nothing from me. Yet he had forgotten one thing. When we reconciled, I had made him a promise of my own. “Tony, you should understand by now that I am decisive. Once I make a decision, I will never return. I’d even vanish from your life. This time is the only exception.” Since he refuses to divorce me, I will disappear in another way.

I am a top-notch surgeon. But when my ex-boyfriend —— now the Don of the Blackwood family —— was brought to the hospital injured, even the head nurse advised me against taking the case. Everyone said the Dante Blackwood despised me. Because three years ago—the last time we met—I took off my engagement ring and handed it back to him, then got into the car of Dominic, the Don of Mercer family. But I still put on my white coat and walked in. Not only walked in—I pressed my hand right against his stomach without a shred of hesitation. Before the punch came, it was the killing intent in his eyes. "I told you. Touch me one more time, and I'll break every bone in your body." The interns outside the door were all holding their breath for my safety. I adjusted my gold-rimmed glasses and let out a helpless smile. But the moment I undid the buttons of his shirt, even though his mouth told me to get out, his body couldn't help but tense up.

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.

In my fourth year of becoming the wife to Matteo Costa, the Don of the Costa family, as know as La Rosa Nera, I no longer insist on making our relationship public. He has once told me that he will publicly announce my identity as Donna on our wedding anniversary this year. But ever since Vera Barbieri returns to the country, Matteo never brings this up again. He puts all his attention on Vera and always places all her needs first. He even abandons me on the highway because of a single phone call from Vera while my mother is on her deathbed. My mother never gets to see me one last time before she dies. At this moment, I finally give up on him. I prepare the divorce agreement and book a ticket to leave Nevoli. The day after tomorrow, I will leave this place and leave Matteo to his childhood sweetheart.

I married Dario Vellari in place of the true Salvatore heiress. Dario was the only heir of the Vellari Famiglia, the one with the severe PTSD. Five years of marriage. He never slept with me. Then Bianca came home from Boston, the real heiress, and everything changed. In front of her, Dario reined in his temper. The rooms he had never let me enter, the things he had never let me touch - Bianca walked through them as if they were her own. I thought, then, that I was finished caring for Dario. But after I left, he scoured every corner of the northern hemisphere looking for me. Said if the bride wasn’t me, he would never marry at all.

After my sister lost her husband, our family arranged a new marriage for her. This arrangement was meant to solidify the alliance with the Castellanov family. As it turned out, the chosen groom was Nicola. He was the twin brother of my husband, Matteo. On the night we learned the news, both Matteo and I could not sleep at all. Early the next morning, I heard Matteo call Nicola in the study room. “Nicola, I really don’t want to spend my whole life missing my chance with her. Please. Do this one thing for me. Don’t worry. Lina is clueless. She’ll never find out that you’re pretending to be me. “Elena never met you. Even if I pretend to be you for a few days, she won’t notice either. Please, let’s swap places for one week. Just one week. I just don’t want to live with any regrets.” He begged for a long time before Nicola finally agreed to switch identities with him. Matteo was relieved. I was relieved as well. What Matteo never knew was that I, too, had been hiding a secret of my own.

The day Lorenzo got kidnapped by a rival family, I found out I was three months pregnant. I took the million dollars his father offered, and I ran. The next time we met, I looked him in the eye and told him I'd been a mole for the rival family the whole time. He was chained up in a cellar, staring at me through the iron bars utterly despairing. He said he'd kill me himself, and then grind my bones to dust. Seven years later, when I saw him again, there was a beautiful woman on his arm. They were getting married. And I was so far down I had to beg him for a loan. He pulled out a thick stack of bills. Lit it on fire right in front of me. He said he'd rather burn it than give it to some whore feeding another man. He didn't know I was begging because my son was dying. His son too.

The day I came back to the Bennett family as the real heiress, Romina, the fake one, looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and said she wanted to give the engagement back to me. "Don't bother. I'm already seeing someone." I rested a hand on my barely noticeable belly and said, half joking, "If you feel that bad about it, how about you just cash me out instead?" The words had barely left my mouth before a few lines of text drifted across my vision. [lmaooo the villainess is still scheming for money at a time like this. can we please skip ahead to the part where the male lead puts her in her place.] [I came for the sweet romance between the lead and the fake heiress heroine, not some side character throwing a fit because she's got a baby bump to wave around] [spoiler from me! the villainess gets thrown out of the family, the lead ends up hating her, and she dies in childbirth. throwing confetti!] I clicked my tongue. How could I possibly cling to a strange man? Then footsteps came from behind me. Romina walked over, crying, and introduced me. "Orlando, this is my sister, Ophelia. The engagement was supposed to be hers." I turned around, and my whole body went rigid. It was the patron who'd kept me for five years, the father of the child I was carrying.

Everyone in New York knew Damian Moretti loved his wife. He removed anyone who questioned my place beside him. After five failed rounds of IVF, I finally saw two lines on a pregnancy test. That same day, I learned my husband already had a one-year-old son. Yet Damian still held the test in trembling hands and looked at me with the wonder of a man becoming a father for the first time. He touched my still-flat stomach and said, “We waited six years for this child.” I almost laughed. We had not been waiting together. I had been enduring injections, procedures, and one failed treatment after another while Damian was secretly raising another woman’s child. He had given the boy the medallion passed down through generations of Moretti men, along with a private home, guards, and a family trust. Damian had not replaced me. He had simply built another family in secret and decided I never needed to know. So I stopped waiting. I boarded a plane that would soon disappear over the Atlantic. Damian believed he could keep his wife, his son, and every lie under his control. He was wrong. This time, he would lose the only weakness he had ever admitted to having.