Cerita Pendek After Death Mafia & Novel Regret

Whenever my brother, Matteo Moretti, screwed up, I was the one who got hurt. Because he was the future Don of the Moretti family. My father, Vittorio Moretti, couldn't bring himself to punish the heir he'd so carefully groomed. So he used my pain to shape him. The first time my brother dipped into the family's money without permission, my father froze my accounts and dumped me alone on the roughest stretch of the Palermo docks. I couldn't pay the protection money, and I was nearly dragged into a warehouse and sexually assaulted. In the end, I only got out of there safely by handing over every piece of jewelry I was wearing. The first time my brother let a traitor go, my father had me locked in a basement with that same traitor. By the time my brother got there, the traitor had broken two of my ribs. But all my father could see was my brother. "Take a good look. Going soft will get your family killed." The year I turned 22, my brother was finally about to take over the family. My father said this would be his last lesson. He staged a fake kidnapping with me as the hostage to teach my brother how to negotiate and make hard choices. But the third time I called begging for help, he was still sitting at the Moretti estate with a drink in his hand. "What's the rush? She'll be fine." Even when gunshots came over the line, my father still had no idea. The people who took me weren't his men. Dad. This time, my brother's last lesson cost me my life. Are you happy now?

I was Sofia De Luca, the only biological daughter of Marco De Luca, the most powerful Don. Then my parents adopted Celeste De Luca as my younger sister, and everything changed. My birthday party could be cancelled because she threw a fit. My place at the elite academy went to her. Even the ruby brooch my grandmother left me was taken away because she said she liked it. On nothing but Celeste's word, my parents branded me a traitor to the De Luca family and personally handed me over to a rival family as a hostage. I endured every kind of torment there. They toured the world with their adopted daughter and lived in luxury. They forgot me completely. It was only when Celeste finally caused a disaster too big to bury that they remembered I existed. But once I was actually dead, the regret drove them out of their minds. If there really is another life, I have only one wish. I hope they learn how to be decent parents. But I do not want to be their daughter again.

Francis Davis gave me the medicine. He said it would save me. I swallowed it and sank into ten years of oblivion. Ten years of loving him. Until one day, he decided he wanted to know whether the sober me still loved him. So he took the medicine away. I never expected hatred and pain to run deeper than addiction. So I jumped from the 18th floor, returning my life to him, and my freedom to myself.

I had lost my memory for three years. I'd been through hell and high water with Adrian Vance for the past three years. He told me we'd grown up together on the same block, two kids who'd fallen for each other young. He told me that once he had a real foothold in the Family, he'd marry me in front of all of Palermo and make the whole city come to watch. I believed him. With a steady trigger hand and a mean streak, I cleared every man who stood in his way. I dragged him up from a nobody bastard son into the inner circle of the Family, one body at a time. Then the day finally came, and what he said was, "I've already asked the Don for his daughter Camilla. It's settled. I'm marrying her." "Camilla's a mafia princess. The Don's pride and joy. Not some no-name orphan girl with nothing and no one behind her. She's the one who can actually lift me up." "Be good, Vera. As long as Camilla never finds out, we can go on the way we always have." "Be good. You mean play your mistress in the dark, is that it?" What Adrian didn't know was that my memory had already come back. My real name was Hale, heir to the Hale family, the one enemy the Marlowe outfit he'd sworn himself to feared most. Childhood sweethearts, princesses, Don. In the end they were all just one more debt I'd settle on my way to paying the Family back in full.

Raffaele Moretti, the Mafia Don, once made me a promise. If I proposed to him fifty-one times on livestream for the whole world to see, he would show up for the fifty-second and finally make our relationship public. But when the night of my fifty-second proposal came, Raffaele was in the Maldives with his childhood sweetheart, Gianna. He bought her an entire yacht just to put a smile back on her face. I became the laughingstock of the internet. Later, he sent me an apologetic message. “Gianna was upset. I only went with her because she needed a change of scenery. That's why I missed it. Don't read too much into this.” “I'll say yes when you propose for the fifty-third time. Then you'll be my Donna.” Sure enough, he arrived at my fifty-third livestream in a perfectly tailored suit. And as he watched, I set fire to all fifty-two letters I had written asking him to marry me. Hidden among them was my liver cancer diagnosis. "There won't be a fifty-third chance, Raffaele." Because in a matter of days, I would be dead.

My mother-in-law’s final wish was simple—she wanted one last trip to Hawaii, to bask in the warmth of the sun before her time ran out. But her son, Vincent, didn’t see it that way. He thought I was manipulating her, using her as an excuse to drag him on a vacation he didn’t want. So, out of spite, he refused to grant her dying wish. I begged him. Pleaded. Swallowed my pride and all the hurt his accusations brought. After relentless persuasion, he finally relented. I thought, at last, I could give Lucy the happiness she deserved. But on the day we were set to leave, Vincent was nowhere to be found. And that same day, Lucy suffered a heart attack. She passed away with only me by her side—never getting to feel the warmth of the sun on her skin one last time. And then I saw it. A picture. Vincent, tagged at a luxury resort with his ex. The caption from her read: Thank you for abandoning your job to take me on this trip. You’re the best. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even confront him. I just packed my bags and left. And this time? Vincent found out about the truth and begged me to stay.

My mother, Vivienne Freeman, was the Donna of Freeman Family. She had her senior engineers develop an advanced lie detector. It looked like a bracelet, and my sister and I each wore one. Whenever I lied, my band flashed red. It could supposedly catch me even when I merely thought about lying. From then on, the band seemed able to read my mind. Even when I kept my mouth shut, it still flashed red. Then Mom would find some way to punish me. I told her countless times that I had never lied, but she refused to believe me. She would not let me question technology she had personally approved. Pointing to my sister's dark band, she demanded to know why it never flashed and why I never told the truth. The day the Family caught a traitor, Mom took my sister and me to watch his execution. A gunshot rang out, and blood spread across the ground. The sight of it made me feel faint, so I begged Mom to let me leave. My band flashed red. My sister picked up a gun and smiled at me. "Mom, Sophie's band is flashing again. She must be figuring out how to deceive you!" Mom glared at me and forced the gun into my hand. "You're the Don's daughter, yet you're a coward, you're frail, and you lie. You don't deserve to be my daughter. Take the gun and shoot him!" The blood made it hard to breathe. My heart raced, strength drained from my body, and I began to suffocate. Even as I started to collapse, Mom kept accusing me of being a coward compared with my sister and a shameless liar. The world spun. Tears ran down my face as pain racked my body. Mom, I never once lied to you, not aloud and not in my thoughts. I never will.

On my tenth birthday, my parents, the Don of the Falcone family and his wife, were murdered in a targeted hit. Because they took a sudden detour to pick up my custom birthday gift, they drove right into a rival syndicate's fatal ambush. My brother, Vincenzo, blamed my childish demands for their deaths. When Vincenzo took over as the new Don, his first act was to banish me to a remote convent to do hard labor. For eight whole years, he never visited me once. When I died on the operating table in the family hospital, he was standing guard right next door. He was watching his adopted sister, Lucia, get a heart transplant. He had saved her from a street shootout years ago. Just before I lost consciousness, I heard him comforting Lucia through the wall. He told her not to be afraid and promised to save her. The last words he ever said to me were, "Are you faking a cough or fainting this time? Do not bother me unless you are actually dead!" Twenty-four hours later, a nurse finally found my body lying in a pool of blood. No one ever came to claim me. What my brother didn't know was that my heart would keep beating inside Lucia's chest forever.

The day I died, my cousin Theo Valenti was being named heir to the Valenti family. And I was wearing his suit, riding in his car, and luring the killers away from him. When I was seven, Dad chopped off my long hair and trained me to walk and talk just like my cousin. I even had to shoot like him. Theo was the only heir to the main branch. My parents had handed me over to take his place whenever danger came knocking. When someone tried to kidnap him, I got in the car instead. When someone was waiting to ambush him outside a party, I walked out the front door in his place. Over 13 years, I took two bullets for him and was kidnapped three times. Every time Mom saw me hurt, all she ever said was, "Nothing can happen to your cousin." Dad would give me a rare pat on the shoulder. "Daisy, being chosen as Theo's stand-in is an honor." When I was little, I actually believed him. Dad hardly ever praised me. The only time he ever straightened my tie was when he sent me into danger. Then he'd warn me not to embarrass the family. I thought that if I proved myself worthy of that "honor," one day they'd look at me the way they looked at Theo. The night Theo turned 21, our rivals found out which route he'd be taking. So I put on his suit and went out in his place one last time. My cousin made it to his succession ceremony safe and sound. I got shot. Blood soaked through the suit fast. I called Dad. "Dad, I'm at North Hill. I've been sh—" "Daisy, wait another half hour." Dad cut me off. Deafening applause filled the background. "Your cousin's ceremony isn't over yet. We'll come get you when it's done." Then he hung up. They all thought I'd wait for them, the way I had for 13 years. Only this time, I didn't last long enough.

I've died on my wedding day. When I'm in the middle of getting cruelly tortured by the thugs, my parents, older brother, and my fiance are all comforting my younger adopted sister, Arianna Capuano, who's bawling her eyes out. Before I die, I've called them for help. But Diego Atzori, my fiance who's the next Don of the Atzori family, sounds extremely angry at me when he picks up the call. "Carlotta Capuano, Arianna's life is more important than our marriage! Stop putting on an act just to attract attention!" The call goes dead. My life is also entering its countdown. I can only lie in my own puddle of blood, my body broken and mutilated, until I stop breathing entirely. No one can find me at home. They think I'm just throwing a tantrum because the wedding has gotten canceled. Perhaps I've chosen to run away from the altar just so I can attract their attention. What they don't know is the fact that I've never left home. In fact, I've died in the basement of my own house. I died right beneath their feet.

I died five years ago. Now my husband, the Don of our Mafia family, wants me to take the fall for his sister again—this time for accidentally killing a British noble's heir during an arms deal. He's holding a fake confession letter with my forged signature, storming into my old apartment in the rust district, only to find it empty. Frustrated, he grabs the corner store owner downstairs, demanding to know where I am. The owner pauses, wiping his hands on his apron, calmly tells him: "Serafine? She died five years ago." "Heard it was retaliation from a rival family during the gang war. They ambushed her in an alley... shot her over a dozen times. She died immediately." My husband, Lucien, refuses to believe it. Convinced the owner is on my payroll, hiding me to help me escape his reach. He scoffs, his eyes filled with scorn: "Oh, so what? Because I called her out for messing up that last job, now she's throwing a tantrum?" "You tell her, if she doesn't come back and take the fall in three days, I'll revoke her grandmother's 'special family protection'! Let the old woman rot!" With that, he storms out, his rage still simmering. The owner watches him leave and sighs, shaking his head. "There's no grandmother left to protect... That woman passed away not long after Serafine did... couldn't survive the winter without our family's medical supplies and protection..."

My husband is the Don of the entire New York East Coast Mafia. For ten years, I dimmed my own light to be his perfect silent partner, the dutiful wife who gave him the perfect heir. I thought we were the lovers who wou ld die for each other. Then came a mere associat. My husband and son had formed an alliance with the woman who seem want to take my place. But they just said, "Elena, you have the crown and the kingdom. She has nothing but us. Be generous." So, to make her smile, my husband trampled on my dignity again and again. To please her, my son affectionately calls her "Mom." In their eyes, I was the iron wall, the woman who would swallow any insult for the sake of the family honor. Until the fire. My husband locked me inside the burning room, to let me "reflect" on my jealousy. He didn't know that the fire didn't kill me. But it burned away the last ash of my love for him.

Three years ago, my husband, my parents, and my adopted sister faked their deaths to test whether I had married into the DeLuca family for love or for power. They cut off my money, took my home, and left me and my son with nothing. Three years later, they came back. My husband stepped out of a black Rolls-Royce, looked down at me, and said, “Evelyn, you passed the test.” What he didn’t know was that my son was already dead. And I was dying too.

Matteo’s childhood sweetheart, Sofia, was trapped between the floors of an elevator for forty minutes. Convinced that I had been jealous of Sofia, Matteo personally locked me inside the family restaurant’s walk-in freezer. “The despair Sofia felt, you need to feel twice over.” My teeth chattered from the cold as I hugged myself and desperately explained, begging him to let me out for the sake of our marriage. But Matteo took the emergency key and locked the freezer door. “Only when you learn to behave yourself are you worthy of continuing to be my Donna.” With stiffened hands, I pounded on the door until my knuckles cracked, my blood freezing into dark ice on the floor. Six days later, he came to open the door with Sofia and issued his order as though bestowing charity. “The punishment is enough. Come out and apologize to Sofia.” But in the cold air that rushed toward him, there was only my purpled, rigid corpse.

Three years ago, Isabella Moretti was the sole heir to the Moretti family, the most powerful of New York's five crime families. She was supposed to inherit the Moretti name and most of the business flowing through New York Harbor. A Mafia shootout changed everything. To save her husband, Matteo De Luca, she deliberately drew the enemy away from him. Matteo got out. But Isabella was shot in the shoulder and captured by the kidnappers. They wanted information about Moretti operations. For three years, they tortured her to get it. She was carrying Matteo's child at the time. She did not know she had already been written off. She kept believing the husband she loved would come for her. The truth was that for three whole years, nobody came. She escaped by faking her death and made it back to New York alive, only to find that she had lost everything. Her loving parents were dead, while the husband she adored was rushing to bury her with his lover and their children at his side!

Vito and I had been giving each other the silent treatment for three days, and he never once reached out. With the Family’s enemies hunting me, I hid under a bridge and called him. “Vito, the Colombos are after me. Can you come save me?” Vito said coldly, “Antonia, are you playing the victim again? “I’m in the middle of a Family meeting. Don’t bother me!” The footsteps outside the bridge came closer. I said quietly, “I’m not lying.” He scoffed. “Fine. Wait for me, then.” I curled up under the bridge. The Colombos’ men shot me in the chest. Right up until my breathing stopped, Vito never came...

My adopted sister, Sofia Leone, was the orphaned daughter of my father's most loyal right-hand man, Enzo Bellini. She'd just been diagnosed with kidney failure. Just because our blood types matched, my family ordered me to give her one of my kidneys. I refused and fought them on it for three months. Everyone in the Leone family called me cold and selfish behind my back, saying I'd rather stand by and watch my own family die. The day Sofia came out of emergency surgery, my brother, Dylan Leone, came to my room looking exhausted. He was the future Don of the Leone family. "Sofia's still so young. Her life is only just beginning. "It's just one kidney. It won't really affect your health. Aria, please. I'm begging you." The moment he finished, Sofia called him, sobbing. "Does Aria still want me dead? Maybe I... wasn't meant to live?" Dylan's voice was soft as he comforted her, but his eyes were full of grief. "Don't talk like that. I'll find a way, I promise." When I was in middle school, I was kidnapped by another family. Dylan stormed in alone to rescue me and took three bullets. Then he carried me out on his back while I shook uncontrollably. "As long as I'm around, nobody's ever going to hurt my little princess." Now he'd forgotten that I had a clotting disorder and couldn't safely undergo major surgery. Just then, my doctor, Matteo Conti, texted me my test results from the day before, along with a warning. "Ms. Leone, you have severe bleeding in your digestive tract. You need to be admitted right away!" As Dylan kept telling me how much Sofia was suffering, I suddenly felt so tired. "Fine, Dylan. I'll give it to her."

The annual Family dinner was in full swing, the clink of glasses and hum of conversation filling the air. Paige, never one for a kind word, stumbled over, a glass of wine in her hand, her breath reeking of cheap booze. "You know," she said, a sly, knowing grin on her face, "I used to be jealous as hell of you. He's a Capo. He runs a whole borough." "A lot of good that's done you, huh? Still stuck in the slums, where gunshots are your nightly lullaby." I heard the mockery in her voice. The list for the Family's secure compound was out, and once again, my name wasn't on it. I held my own glass, my voice steady. "They're Family rules. Not even Dean can break them. A Capo's wife still has to toe the line." She let out a sudden, sharp laugh. "Five years ago, when the first group moved, your name was at the very top of the list! Dean crossed it off himself. Five years in a row, all to build that pristine reputation of his..." Before she could finish, one of the dock enforcers nearby clamped his hand over her mouth. I glanced around the room. The men and women who had been flirting and laughing just moments before now avoided my gaze. Only Dean remained as he was, sitting ramrod straight, not a flicker of shame on his face. He held a half-smoked cigar between his teeth, his voice low and gravelly. "What she said is true. I approved the placements for the compound." "They're for the widows of our brothers who bled and died for this Family. They need a safe place more than you do." "Let others fight and claw for survival. You are my woman. A Capo's wife. You have to understand what it means to see the bigger picture." I smiled, but tears streamed down my face. So that was it. So, does our son have to be an orphan on paper, the child of a fallen hero, to finally get a private doctor and a safe home?

I was supposed to be the pampered youngest daughter of the Falcone crime family. My fiancé was Lorenzo, the heir to the Caruso dynasty. I had three brothers who were the most feared men on the streets. But everything changed the moment my long-lost older sister returned. "Isabella was kidnapped by our enemies when she was three. She went through hell until the family found her at eighteen. Why can’t you just cut her some slack?" "Elena, if Isabella hadn't gone missing, the Don would never have had you just to fill the void. You owe her your life. What right do you have to compete with her?" Time and again, I stepped back into the shadows for my sister. But on the night before my wedding, Isabella called Lorenzo. "Lorenzo... I’m at the Old Port docks. There’s a strange car here and three men just got out... I’m so scared..." Lorenzo didn't even wait to hear the rest. He slammed on the brakes and kicked me out of the car in the middle of a torrential downpour. I clung to the door of that black Maybach, begging him. "Lorenzo, it’s the night before our wedding. This is rival turf." "Just this once, for the sake of the family’s reputation, can’t you choose me?" Lorenzo grabbed my wrists and shoved me away. "If anything happens to Isabella, I swear I’ll send you to hell myself!" But those "three men" Isabella mentioned? They were actually our three brothers, who were only there to watch the ocean and set off fireworks with her. That night, my three brothers and my fiancé were at the seaside, showering her with affection. And I died in an abandoned slaughterhouse on the edge of the city. This time, I finally gave way to my sister completely. But tell me—when you saw my corpse, why were you all crying?

On Christmas Day, news arrived that Lucas and my father had been killed. “The Rossetti family ambushed them on the road. The Don was shot dead. Nothing was left of the others.” Before we could even begin to grieve, the sound of gunfire erupted outside. Mom immediately ordered the doors and windows locked, then shakily handed out deadly pills. “If we fall into their hands, all they’ll do is torture us. We might as well end it now…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence, but the others understood. One by one, they swallowed their pills. I took out the dagger Lucas had given me as a token of our love and plunged it into my chest without hesitation. The next moment, I heard someone say, “Don’t you think Hailey has taken her prank too far this time? I can’t believe the Don is actually playing along with her.” “Better a prank than a real tragedy. When they come back tomorrow, they’ll surely apologize.” I closed my eyes in despair. Their apologies would come too late.