Tragic Love Mafia Short Stories & Mafia Countdown Novels

Two years into my marriage with Luca Mancini, I'd gotten used to waiting. Wait until the accounts were settled—then he'd take me on our honeymoon. Wait until the family meeting was over—then he'd celebrate our anniversary with me. Wait until his men were taken care of—then he'd call the private doctor to see me. I knew how hard it was to sit in the Don's seat, so I never cried or made a scene about it. I even took half the work off his shoulders without being asked. Because of my patience and all the times I stepped back, things between us finally softened. When he was exhausted, he'd lean his head on my shoulder, kiss my forehead, and say: "My Donna, once this busy season is over, I promise I'll make it all up to you." Today was my birthday. He'd promised me half a month ago that he'd spend it with me. I'd booked out an entire restaurant. The cake was cut. I was waiting. But from six to ten, he never showed. Then a photo popped up in my inbox: In the pouring rain, Luca was holding an umbrella, shielding his childhood sweetheart, Anna, tight against his side. The timestamp on the photo read 9:40. Twenty minutes ago. He'd tilted the umbrella over Anna's head, letting the rain soak him through. Then his text came through: "I've got an important meeting. I'll be home late." Looking at that message, I didn't reply "Got it" like the good, understanding wife I always was. I thought I'd gotten used to waiting. I thought if I just cleared every obstacle out of his way, I'd finally get the man who kept his promises. But staring at that photo, my heart sank all the way to the bottom. It was never the waiting I was afraid of. It's just—last month, I was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. This was the last birthday I'd ever have. I stood up, hollow, and walked home alone through the endless sound of rain. The man I'd been waiting for—I couldn't wait for him anymore.

"Where's Donna? Is she asleep?" "My Don... Donna Seraphina has been gone for three days. She told me to give you this." Seraphina Reed. The day I found out I was pregnant, my Mafia husband, Lorenzo, declared in front of the city's elite that our marriage was nothing but my "calculated scheme." I waited anxiously and helplessly for his explanation, but only received a taunting message from his secretary, Victoria. "Your husband isn't coming home tonight. Do you know why?" "Because he's with me, handling some… private business." At that moment, loving him so deeply I would have given him everything, I felt like the world's biggest joke. It turned out everyone thought I married him for money. They bet I would break, they bet I would cry, I would kneel and beg for a scrap of his love. But I didn't. I simply went back to the room, took off my wedding ring, and sealed it in an envelope along with my pregnancy report. Then, I left the cage that had trapped me for ten years. Later, he went crazy looking for me. He turned over every port, locked down every airport, and mobilized the entire family's power. He offered up everything he had, just to beg for my love.

My fiance, Victor Blackwood, is a mafia boss who rules the country's underworld with an iron fist. To the rest of the world, he is the epitome of power. Yet to me, he is the embodiment of love. But I do not realize the cost of loving a man like him. On Valentine's Day, I cook his favorite dishes and wait for him to come home. However, time passes, and his chair stays empty. Uneasy, I go to Queenie Stone's social media page. She is Victor's foster sister. She posts, "All I said was that I felt lonely, and he came right away. "Even when I accidentally spilled wine on him, he didn't mind. Victor is still someone who puts family first, even if it means neglecting his lover. "He never lets me down. I hope things stay that way." In the photo, Victor's shirt is soaked at the waist. Queenie's handkerchief lingers near his most private parts, but he doesn't pull away. He merely looks at her affectionately. I do not make a fuss and give Queenie's post a like. Then, I send Victor a message that reads, "Let's break up." Victor ignores it as always. Later, I discover that when my breakup message popped up, he had said offhandedly, "Vivienne can't live without me. She's just acting out. "If I ignore her for a few days, she'll come crawling back by herself. She's easy to please." What he doesn't know is that I was easy to handle only because I once loved him. But now that I have decided to leave, he cannot make me turn back, no matter how he tries to win me over.

I hid behind the study curtains, heart racing with a fragile, trembling joy. In my hands: an ultrasound photo—two heartbeats—and a no-limit black card. Alessandro had given it to me last night, his lips on my neck, calling me his Donna, his queen. Tonight, I was going to tell him about the twins. "The Petrov family needs to see my good faith," his voice drifted in, smooth as velvet. "Vittoria arrives Thursday. I’ll announce the engagement then." My blood froze. "What about Elena?" someone asked. "She’s been with you three years. She manages the books, dug that slug out of your side herself. Is this fair to her?" "Elena?" He leaned back in the leather chair, cigar smoke curling around his jaw. "She’s like a trained hound, Salvatore. After the Rossi family got wiped out, I pulled her from the gutter, gave her a gun and a bed. Have you ever seen a hound leave its master? I could kick her, and she would lick my boot and ask for another." My nails sank into my palms, crumpling the ultrasound. "Aren’t you afraid she’ll leave?" Marco, his Capo, asked. Alessandro paused. Then he said: "She would die for me without question. How could she ever leave?" Those words struck my chest like two 9mm rounds. I didn't wait. I ran through the cemetery, past the tombs of dead Dons, and hurled that card into the Hudson. I vanished into the night with his heirs in my womb and three years of lies in my throat. "I'm sorry, my babies," I whispered to my belly. "Mommy was a fool." But I wouldn't be a fool anymore.

It took me ten years to become the right hand to Damian Costello, the Consigliere of the Costello crime family. From a nobody to the woman wearing his engagement ring. But two weeks before the wedding, I decided to throw that ring away. Everyone in the family knew how hard I had fought all these years just to stand by Damian's side. I gave up the chance to become a top trader on Wall Street, willingly becoming Damian's assistant, his shadow. This man was infamous for his coldness and exacting nature, keeping everyone at arm's length. So I hid my sharp edges, spending a decade wearing down his icy exterior with gentleness. I cleansed the blood from every dollar he made. I became a necessity to him, as essential as the air he breathed. I thought that after ten years, I had finally made my presence indispensable. And finally earned what looked, to outsiders, like a glimmer of his affection. The family's notoriously aloof genius actually remembered my birthday. He even made an exception, letting me spend the night in his private study when I was unwell. He didn't even push me away when, emboldened by wine, I pressed a kiss to the side of his neck. If the Don's daughter, Isabella, hadn't returned from Italy, I might have kept playing my part, clinging to that false dream forever. But sadly, there are no ‘ifs’. I am going to give up everything here and leave you.

Grant, the heir to the Bennett family, had been my protector for over a decade. He taught me how to fire my first shot and saved me from every attempt on my life. After someone slipped drugs into Grant's drink at the family gathering, he stumbled into my room, and his icy control shattered. His hands found my waist as he pulled me close, his lips brushing against my ear as he whispered my name. A single night of drugged passion left me pregnant with his child. When my twin sister, Claire, found out, she left a note and disappeared, heartbroken. After that, I was cast as the cold-hearted villain who drove her own sister away. Grant personally forced the contraceptive potion down my throat and exiled me to the lawless territories beyond our family's control. To make me atone, he abandoned me to fend for myself in that desolate land. I was eventually killed in the crossfire of a mob war. As I lay dying, my mind was flooded with memories of Grant. The troublemaker he always called me was finally gone. He must have been relieved. When I next opened my eyes, I had returned to the morning after that disastrous night. This time, without hesitation, I drank the contraceptive potion myself.

The Five Families Commission chose whom the Valenti heir could marry. His wife had to bring the family a powerful alliance. I had no family name, ports, or votes to offer. To be with me, Nico Valenti broke his engagement to the Donatis and offered to surrender his inheritance. At his family trial, five capos broke his ribs with gunstocks, and Salvatore Valenti shot him through the left shoulder to force him to renounce me. With blood soaking through his shirt, Nico still looked up at me beyond the door and smiled. “Don't be afraid, Tessa. You're the only one I want.” In the end, the Commission compromised. Once Nico fulfilled his duty to the family, he could leave Chicago and they would no longer interfere with us. But before he surrendered the Valenti succession, he had to give the Donati family a heir. Nico promised that once the child was born, he would sign away his inheritance and take me out of Chicago. First, I waited while he followed the Commission's schedule with his former fiancée, Alessia Donati. Each time he returned, he held me and called it a transaction. Their first child was a girl. The Commission refused to recognize a daughter as the primary heir, so Nico returned to Alessia until she became pregnant again. “Wait a little longer,” he told me. Just when I thought the ordeal was finally ending, their daughter, Gia, drank milk laced with a concentrated dose of digitalis at her baptism. The bottle had come from the clinic where I used to work. Everyone decided I had poisoned her. They locked me overnight in the freezer of an old Valenti slaughterhouse. Before the iron door closed, Nico stood outside, his eyes bloodshot. “I told you to wait.” His voice held no warmth. “Gia is only a child. Why would you hurt my daughter?” My daughter. The words entered my heart like a rusted blade. I dug my nails into my palms until blood ran between my fingers. When the freezer opened the next morning, I released my mangled hands. This time, I was done waiting.

After I was kidnapped by my Family’s enemies, I was left with severe PTSD. I couldn’t stand the noise of intense sound. On our wedding day, my husband, the Mafia Don Andre, swore before God that he would create a world of silence for me. For five years, he never wore any device that made a sound. He even ordered that no gunshots were to be heard anywhere in Sicily, losing several major deals because of it. Until my best friend Alice returned to Sicily and openly played rock music inside the estate. The terror of being kidnapped came rushing back. I crawled onto the floor, begging and apologizing over and over. Tears mixed with the blood running down my face as I kept hitting my head against the ground. Half an hour later, the music stopped. Alice held up her phone, laughing so hard she could barely stand. “Oh my God. She actually thought she was being kidnapped again.” Andre recorded my humiliation with a phone in his hand while laughing and comforting me. “Alice said this is exposure therapy. After a few more times, you won’t be afraid anymore.” My brother stared at me through the screen and scolded me from the other side. “Monica, look at yourself. How can you possibly be worthy of being a Donna?” My entire body was drenched in sweat. My hair was covered in blood, and I couldn’t even stand. I stared at the note in Andre’s hand, and realized. Last month, he was the one who replaced my noise-canceling headphones with headphones that played nothing but loud noises. Last week, he was the one who took me to that noisy bar. The silence he once built for me was now being destroyed by his own hands. Slowly, I pushed myself up from the floor. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I simply looked at him.I no longer wanted to remain in his world.

I was operating on my husband, Don Cassius Vitelli, when I removed a bullet lodged less than an inch from his heart. He'd refused general anesthesia just so he could stay on the phone with his childhood sweetheart, Mia Russo. He'd insisted on local anesthesia instead. "Stitch faster," he ordered, gripping his phone and fighting not to tremble. Watching him wince in pain, I fought to keep my nerves in check as I pulled out a document and slid it in front of him. "It's a consent form for your post-op medication. Standard procedure." I looked at him. "Sign it, and I'll take care of the rest." Cassius didn't hesitate for a second. Cassius had fought his way to the top and he trusted no one. He normally double-checked everything, down to the supply lists. But he was so focused on Mia's soft breathing over the phone that he signed the document without even looking at it. He had no idea he'd just signed divorce papers. I'd followed him for seven years. For three of them, I'd been his secret wife, the woman he could never show to the world. In 15 days, I would finally be free.

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.

At the candlelit dinner for our tenth anniversary, my husband, Rian Ruthven, ditched me after getting a call from Chloe, a rookie accountant. He left me with a single sentence: "Finish your food and head home." No hesitation, no concern. Strictly business, as if I were just his subordinate, not the wife who had loved him for ten years. A few hours later, I found out he left simply because Chloe's kid had a fever. She had no friends and could only call her boss, Rian. Rian’s explanation to me was: "I just felt bad for her. It's not easy raising a kid alone." I just found it absurd. Since when did the famously ruthless Godfather of the Ruthven family have such a bleeding heart? It suddenly hit me that in the ten years I'd been with Rian, I was his wife in the shadows; to the rest of the world, I was just his CFO. When I ran a 104-degree fever and asked for time off, all I got was a cold text: "Recover quickly. The business needs you." A wave of exhaustion washed over me. I quietly drafted my resignation and divorce papers.

My husband, Dante, the Consigliere of the Falcone family, and I hated each other more than any two people on earth. He hated me for tearing him away from the woman he loved. I hated him because his heart had never been mine. We shared a bed for seven years, but the words we exchanged most were not of love, but of venomous curses. But on the night a rival family's motorcade stormed the estate, everything changed. I remember the firefight lighting up half the city. Dante threw himself in front of me, shielding me with his body. "Survive," he said, his voice as steady as ever. He drew his gun. As he turned to face them, a hailstorm of bullets erupted. As armor-piercing rounds tore through his vest and slammed into his body, he turned to look at me. It was the only time in seven years he had ever looked me in the eye. His large frame barred the doorway, stopping any gunman from crossing the threshold. "If there's a next life, promise me this, Principessa. Let me protect the one I was always meant to." That night, the glory of our family turned to ash, and the streets ran red with blood. As our enemies closed in, I triggered the explosives in the car. The flames consumed everything. When I opened my eyes again, I was walking into my father's study. "The family in Ashpoint needs a bride to seal a truce," I said, meeting the gaze of my father, the Don of the Falcone family. "I'll go." In my past life, he died believing he had failed my half-sister, Sofia. This time, I wouldn't let that regret haunt him. I would take Sofia's place and board the flight north. Let Sofia stay. Let Dante protect the woman he was meant to protect. But why, when he lifted the white veil of the woman he loved in this life, did he regret it?

Five years after my younger brother Luca and my fiancée Elena were killed in an ambush, I arranged my own burial at sea. I was pressing the engraved nameplate onto my custom urn when my father, Don Salvatore Leo, walked into the room with a cigar between his lips. "Antonio, you don't need to go to the docks to mourn them this year. They're not dead." My fingers went white around the nameplate. Then the hidden door in the safe room opened from the inside. Luca walked out with Elena in his arms, casually spinning the emerald ring I had once given her around his finger. "I won the bet," he said, lazy about it. "I told you we could live right next door to him for five years and he'd never figure it out." Then he leaned toward Elena, pitching his voice so it landed exactly where he wanted it. "So tell me. The family heir's seat should be mine now, shouldn't it? Hm?" The woman who had once cried over me and sworn she would marry me, after I took a bullet for Luca and was sent onto the operating table, now rested coldly against his chest. She looked at me with disgust. "He was just stupid. He really believed we were dead." So the safe room connected straight through to the house next door. No wonder my father had used the excuse of reinforcing it to keep me out all these years. I really had been a fool. Right up to the end, I was still thinking about what flowers to bring to the water for them.

I could see the countdown above a person’s head when they had already decided to leave their partner. The day my father’s countdown hit zero, he slapped a lawyer’s letter on the breakfast table and walked out on my mother and me. The day my best friend’s countdown hit zero, she finally threw her parasite of a boyfriend out of her apartment and changed the locks before sunset. That was why I’d always been terrified of seeing a countdown above my fiancé, Lucian Bellandi. Luckily, for seven years by his side, the space above his head had stayed clean. Lucian was the youngest Don the Bellandi family had ever seen. He owned the docks, the casinos, and half the South Side’s dirty money, yet he saved every soft part of himself for me. Until last month, when he picked me up after a family auction. I looked up and saw blood-red numbers stabbing into my eyes. [702 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes.] Less than two years. My heart tightened like a cold hand had closed around it. I started searching for an answer like a woman losing her mind. Had I done something wrong? Then, during a blizzard by the lake, we ran into Mia Crane at the back entrance of the Bellandi Hotel. Lucian had just brought her into his charity foundation as a new assistant. Snow clung to her hair and lashes. She was shivering from head to toe, but her smile was bright and painfully innocent. Lucian pulled a black silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. His face was calm. There was nothing openly improper in the gesture. But in that exact second, the countdown above his head jumped. [327 days, 4 hours, 47 minutes.] More than three hundred days, gone. And I knew I had found the reason.

"Good afternoon, ma'am. You just walked out of Boston City Hall looking absolutely radiant. Any special occasion to celebrate?" "I'm getting divorced." "I'm sorry to hear that. Would you mind telling me what happened?" "He's been bedding his late right-hand man's sister. In my art studio, on my yacht, across my private study desk, and even on the grand piano in our living room. He thought I didn't know." "I can't imagine how much this hurts. I'm so sorry for what you're going through. Where are you heading now?" "The hospital. Prenatal checkup." ... The interview went viral within hours for her calm, unflinching recounting of the betrayal and the shocking contrast between her glamorous mafia wife identity and her devastating situation. It didn't take long for netizens to dig out my identity, and the entire world now knows the woman in that video is me. Elena, Donna of the Moretti family. Three years ago, Vincenzo Moretti, the undisputed Don who ruled Boston's underworld with an iron fist, threw me a wedding that made headlines across the nation. Back then, everyone envied me, calling me the luckiest woman alive. But now? That interview had been online for nearly two days, and Vincenzo was still lost in his little love nest. By the time Vincenzo finally bothered to watch the video his men had forwarded to him, I was already in New Zealand. The whole world knew I was leaving Vincenzo Moretti. He was the last person on earth to find out.

My world fell apart over an encrypted link from the dark web. My husband, Don Marcello, was there on our marriage bed, pounding into another woman. All the top bosses in North America were watching. He held her in his arms, laughing about me. His fragile, naive little trophy wife who could never leave him. Even the live chat was a stream of insults. Calling me the useless wife who couldn't even get her husband into bed. But the worst part? The way he acted when I found out. He grabbed my chin. Told me the whole disgusting betrayal was just "an act to keep our allies happy." He even let his mistress brag about it to every socialite in the city. My humiliation became their afternoon entertainment. And me—the good wife who washed the blood from his shirts, the woman he decided was too weak to survive without him—I had to smile at family dinners. He didn't know. When he crushed my loyalty like trash under his heel, I had already started making my move. He thought this was his game to win. His hostile takeover. But when the hammer clicks back, Marcello will understand. His "sweet little wife who only knows how to paint" is the one holding the blade to the entire North American underworld.

I'm Sicily's best-known assassin and Don Donatello Vicari's secret wife. At night, Donatello and I made love all over the estate, leaving traces in every room. By day, all he gave me were cold orders. I carried them out from the top of a bell tower, killing whoever caused trouble for the family. We never made our marriage public. He said that was how he protected me. But I'd had enough. I'd realized I would always be hidden away, never acknowledged as his wife. All I could do was watch my husband grow close to another woman, Gia Ferrini. That day, I had a woman in a red dress in my scope. I was about to pull the trigger when he quietly stopped me. "Let her go. She's never been part of the family business." The stray bullet tore into the market below. People turned to look, and my cover was blown. But he just raced down to help the woman in red to her feet, leaving me to face the danger alone. That was when I realized his talk of protecting me was just an excuse. I wasn't the one he cared about. I didn't want to stay in Sicily as his secret wife anymore.

Dominic De Luca always called me by his ex-girlfriend's name. When he cooked, he would call out from the kitchen without thinking: "Bianca, come set the table." The birthday gifts he gave me came with cards that read: "Happy Birthday to my love, Bianca." At first, I used to get angry. I would hold his face, make him look me in the eye, and correct him over and over: "My name is Clara, not Bianca." Every time, he would apologize, and every time, I would forgive him. I left Boston to be with him. I gave up a promotion and moved to New York to start over, because Dominic said he could not handle a long-distance relationship. I thought that meant he had finally chosen me. Until the night he got down on one knee to propose. He looked up at me and said: "Bianca, will you marry me?" That was the moment I stopped wanting to correct him. I just took out my phone and replied to an email I had ignored for an entire month. I accepted the position in London. Dominic did not know yet. The moment he put my engagement ring on Bianca's finger, I had already decided to resign and leave New York. This time, I would not wait for him to explain. By the time he finally learned to say my name correctly, I would no longer love him.

At our seventh anniversary gala, my husband, Alexander Rossetti, had gifted me the city's one of a kind Rose Manor. I was kissing Alexander. That's when his Capo, Romeo, stepped up with his wine glass, lowering his voice in pure Sicilian dialect with a teasing grin: "Don, the Jasmine Manor for Elena's all settled, identical to the one you gave to Donna." Alexander let out a chuckle. He shot back in Sicilian, casual as ever: "What can I say? She begged me in bed, said she wanted the same thing as her sister. " He kissed my cheek as he spoke, gazing at me with all the warmth in the world, while telling his men: "Don't say her name. If my Donna finds out, we're all in deep shit." His men exchanged knowing smirks, raised their glasses to him, and swore up and down they'd keep their mouths shut. He kissed my cheek, and didn't notice my smile had frozen solid. Maybe Alexander was too smug. He forgot one thing. My grandmother came from one of the oldest families in Sicily. I understood every single word they said. Fireworks burst overhead. Alexander said: "I love you, Olivia. We'll be together forever." I hugged him back, but behind his back, I pulled out my phone, opened the weapons research invitation that Santoro Institute had sent me days ago, and hit "Accept." Three days from now, I would vanish from his world completely.

I'm getting married. But Ryder, my boyfriend of seven years, has no idea. He recently hired a new assistant, Blair, and has been swamped ever since. The two of them are the toast of the high-society circuit, a perfect power couple frequently seen at galas and parties together. To celebrate a major project Blair landed, Ryder booked an entire restaurant for a celebratory dinner. During the dinner, Blair intentionally swapped my lemonade for a strong cocktail. Unaware, I took a large sip. Ryder just watched, smiling playfully as he asked, “How is it, baby? How does it taste?” He forgot. He forgot that I have a deadly alcohol allergy. My throat swelled shut faster than I could have imagined. As I collapsed, the only sounds were my own gasps for air and a porcelain plate shattering on the floor. That night, I lay in the family's private medical wing. When I opened my eyes, the oxygen mask was still pressed to my face. I nodded at my mother. The arranged marriage. I agreed to it.