Nouvelles Regret Mafia & Romans

My husband, Victor Moretti, is the Don of the most powerful Mafia family in New York. Everyone knows he loves me more than his own life. But no one knows how many things his love forbids. He never lets me swim because he says my eyes are too sensitive to chlorine. He never lets me touch a gun because the smell of gunpowder and the recoil would hurt me. When I tell him I want a tattoo, he refuses that too. “I love every inch of your skin,” he says. “I don’t want anything covering it.” But anyone who has known me for long knows I grew up by the sea. Diving has always been what I’m best at. And getting a tattoo has been at the top of my bucket list for as long as I can remember. That afternoon, I receive a text saying that I have voluntarily given up my place at the Royal Academy of Music. I freeze. Victor told me the Academy had rejected me because I wasn’t qualified. My fingers tighten around my phone as I head straight to the private club to find him. But when I reach the door, I hear a woman speaking inside. “Victor, I just wish my sister were still alive. Then you wouldn’t have to look at her eyes and be reminded of her every day.” My blood seems to freeze in my veins. Five years ago, I underwent a corneal transplant.

Someone had posted a private video on the dark web of the underground world. In the video, a naked woman was sitting on top of a man. The comment section was flooded with messages: “So fucking hot. She’s unbelievably sexy.” My gaze swept across the man’s body, and in that instant, I felt as if lightning had struck me. A black ring glinted on his hand, which was wrapped around the woman's waist. It was the wedding ring my husband Edward, the Don of the Family , and I had designed together.

On our seventh anniversary, Don Leonardo Luciano gave me an eight-carat pigeon's-blood ruby ring. He told me it was a family heirloom, passed from one Donna to the next. "Camilla, I can't give you a wedding yet, but in my heart, you're already my wife." My eyes filled with tears as I slipped it onto my finger. Then I asked my best friend, Nora Bennett, to examine it after her shift at the auction house. She held it under a lamp and slowly turned the stone. A ring of crimson light appeared inside it. "This isn't a natural ruby." "How is that possible? Leonardo gave it to me. It's a family heirloom." Nora frowned. "Really? I heard every piece of Luciano family jewelry bears a gold lion crest. Does yours have one?" I took off the ring and checked. Nothing. Just then, a new story from Victoria Moretti popped up on my feed. She was the daughter of another powerful mafia family. The photo showed her aboard Leonardo's private yacht. And on her finger was a ring identical to mine. A man stood beside her, his face hidden from view. But I recognized the watch on his wrist. I'd given it to Leonardo. Then I saw the caption. "After all this time, you finally put the family ring on my finger."

The day Victor Moretti told me he was the Sicilian Don's heir, he also handed me a bill for everything he had spent on me over the years. "Elena, the Family will never let a woman who came to me for money become its next Donna." He pushed the ledger across the table to me. From the hot dogs we shared when we first got together to the condoms we used the first time we slept together. From the mattress-cleaning bill he had fronted to the hospital bill for my miscarriage. Thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars in total. Every single item, down to the cent. I looked at the man I had loved for five years, swallowed the taste of blood rising in my throat, and kept my voice low. "I have to settle my mother's surgery bill first. I'll pay you back next month." Victor frowned at once. "Camilla was right about you. Women who come from nothing, like you, always have an excuse. I should have listened to her. I never should have broken the rules and gotten involved with you at all. Fine. One month. But you'll pay the same interest rate the Family charges its borrowers." I gritted my teeth but didn't argue. I silently accepted the condition. But the hospital's billing desk had another shock waiting for me. A clerk told me the balance in my account was down to one dollar. The hundred and fifty thousand I had scraped together from every corner of my life to save her was gone. Shaking all over, I called Victor. His tone was as condescending as ever. "I hacked into your account. Camilla Marchetti wanted an antique jeweled necklace, and she was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars short." "It comes to more than what you owe me. Consider the difference payment for the damage you did to my Family's name." With two casual sentences, he had turned my mother's life into a bauble at the throat of a mafia boss's daughter. The call ended. Then a nurse behind me said, "Miss Hayes... you don't need to pay. Your mother... she just took her own life... She said she didn't want to be a bur

On the yacht heading to an island for our wedding, the lower deck suddenly comes under attack by a rival mafia family. A shrill alarm rings across the sea as the yacht tilts violently, sending me crashing against the deck. I press one hand against my barely visible pregnant belly and cling to the railing with the other. Thankfully, I manage to stop myself from going overboard. But my fiance, Don Arturo Venturi, immediately pulls Elena Donati into his arms. With the yacht about to sink, the Soldati shout for everyone to put on life jackets and jump overboard, then swim to the lifeboats. I finally get my hands on the last life jacket, only for Arturo to snatch it away. He puts it on Elena and quickly explains, "Elena can't swim. She needs it more." I have no choice but to cling to a flotation device and fight to stay afloat until a Soldato pulls me from the water. The disappointment weighs so heavily on my chest that I can't even cry. Once I reach the dock, I slip into the crowd and block Arturo on every form of contact.

The Gambino family's highest decree: every Don must be married before taking office. So the moment I came back from studying abroad, my father sent me to intern at the family company run by my fiancé, Ethan Clark—to prepare me for taking over family operations, pave the way for me to become the next Don of the Gambinos, and, you know, build some chemistry between us while we were at it. The first day I walked in, I saw a woman holding court, surrounded by everyone, with everyone deferring to her, calling her "Mrs. Clark" with practiced reverence. She tore up a two-hundred-million-dollar contract, and they all applauded. She spotted the ring on my finger, and they all reached out to take it off for her. I didn't flinch. Didn't panic. "Do you know who can wear this ring?" She scoffed. "An intern. What's the big deal? Take it off." I smiled. This ring is the heirloom of the Gambino heir. Anyone who touches it without permission doesn't live to tell the story. I pulled out my phone and dialed Ethan right in front of her. "Your 'Mrs. Clark' is trying to take my family ring. Care to explain?"

My husband Christian Messina's assistant has been blowing through my money like it's water. At the underground auction, she laughed in my face and called me a useless trophy wife. So I cut her access. She got humiliated at checkout, and the club's security locked her up for a full day and night. When Christian found out, he froze my card on my birthday. Told me I'd better figure out how to pay, or I'd be stripping down and crawling out on all fours in front of every mob higher-up in New York. What he doesn't know? I'm the heiress to the biggest mafia empire in the country. The Moretti name? That's mine. And everything he has right now—every turf, every dollar, every scrap of power? I put it all in his hands. Quietly. Behind his back.

The old Don was killed in an ambush by a rival crew. At the mass, Vito, the new Don, stood at the very front of the church. I'd rushed back from a job and barely made it. There were only two spots left in the church. One was right next to the new Don. The seat for his wife. The other was at the very end of the guest line. I figured, without even thinking about it, that the spot beside him was mine. So I walked straight toward Vito. But he looked right past me. "Sofia." He lifted his chin, just slightly. "Come up." Around me, the family elders and the heads of the different crews started whispering. "The next Don's wife is a beautiful woman." "Look at those two. They just fit." Vito took the gilded crest plate from the altar and placed it in Sofia's hands. I turned around and walked to the very end of the line. Stood there. Didn't say a word. The entire service, he never once looked back at me. Even the small life growing inside me felt like a cruel joke right now. Maybe it was time to leave. Me and my unborn child.

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.

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!

Three months into our marriage, I was cooking dinner when I noticed that every plate, bowl, and cup in the house was smaller than standard dinnerware. That slight difference mattered. Every time I lifted a bowl or wrapped my hand around a cup, I had to adjust my grip to the tighter curve. I held up two bowls of different sizes and asked Damian Moretti why. He said they had simply been custom-made for the Family. That night, a torrential downpour left me stranded at the station after I finished handling Family business. Across the street, inside a restaurant, Damian held a bite of steak to the lips of the young woman opposite him, then gently wiped the sauce from the corner of her mouth. The young woman was the Family's new secretary. One look at the custom dinnerware in front of her, and I understood everything. So that smaller size had been designed for her. I checked my phone. "It's pouring. My old wrist injury is acting up, and I can't hold an umbrella. Can you come get me?" I had sent that message three hours ago. Nothing had come back. He never let me ride in his private armored car or appear at his side at society dinners. In public, he always kept his distance. "As Don, I have to keep my public and private lives separate. The Donna can't draw too much attention, or my men will talk." He held to those boundaries of his so faithfully. It turned out the boundaries only applied to some people. Through the rain, I saw a small plaque on the front passenger seat: CECE ONLY. And suddenly, I no longer wanted to stay in this marriage.

It took Matteo De Luca ten years to rise from soldier to Don. I fought through all ten beside him. The year we hit rock bottom, I cast aside every shred of pride and knelt before my father, the man who had betrayed my family, just to borrow twenty rounds. Matteo looked at me, his eyes full of pain. I asked only one thing. "The day you become Don, will you let me stand beside you?" He promised me he would. After he finally took his place as Don, I reminded him of that promise. He kept cleaning his gun without looking up. "Things are tense right now. We'll talk about it later." So I never asked again. Then I stumbled across a video on a dark-web forum: Matteo being crowned Don at Manhattan's Round Table Hall. He'd said he was going to Chicago to handle trouble. Instead, he was standing under the lights with my half sister, Isabella Volkov, at his side. Isabella slid the Don's ring, the symbol of his power, onto his finger. Matteo pulled her into an ecstatic embrace. "Thank you for being here at the start of my reign. I'm so happy." Isabella rose on her toes and kissed the side of his neck. "So am I." I shut off the video, wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes, and returned to cleaning my guns as if it were any other night. When I finished, I texted Matteo, "I want twenty rounds." He did not ask why. He had a whole case delivered. I counted out twenty and texted back two words, "Too many." I had those twenty rounds returned to my father, settling a ten-year-old debt. Ten years ago, I traded my pride and dignity for twenty rounds. Ten years later, Matteo used twenty rounds to break his promise to me. There was no place for me at his coronation banquet. And he had no place left in my Brooklyn underworld.

In the underworld, power is paid for in blood and betrayal. And I was born to rule. I survived the back alleys of the Bronx. Then I was adopted by two different mafia families. The first family's fake daughter cried. She wanted my territory. I smiled. I crushed her. I took every illegal casino and smuggling route in Brooklyn. The second family's fake heir slit his wrists for pity. I yawned. I took his black Amex. And the keys to the armory. I won. Clean. Both times. I sent those two idiots to the most dangerous prison on the East Coast. At twenty, a bloody DNA report showed up. Turns out, I'm the long-lost daughter of the Callahans. The biggest Irish mob in Boston. My first day at the Callahan estate, the adopted daughter in her innocent white dress knelt at my feet. She clutched her chest, trembling. "Sister, my heart is weak. I won't live long. All these years, I've been using the family's best black market medical resources. They even spent a fortune from the off-the-books accounts to find me a new heart." "I feel so guilty. If you think I stole your place, I can just die right now." My biological mother, Eleanor, screamed. She threw herself over the girl, holding her tight. Shaking and sobbing. My biological brother, Victor, slammed his gun on the table. He pointed it at me. "She has a serious heart condition. It's your first day and you're already trying to kill her?" Even my fiancé—some political match arranged by the old-timers—laughed coldly. "She sheds one tear, and the arms deal between our families is off. For good." I didn't flinch. I walked over, slowly. Knelt down. My fingertips wiped away her fake tears. I scanned her heaving chest. Then I leaned in close to her ear. My voice was a low, mocking whisper. "Don't be scared, sweetie. I'd never kick you out." "After all—" "I’ve seen a lot of fake sisters. Your acting is the absolute worst. You won’t last a week."

My twin sister and I were supposed to celebrate our succession on the same night. Beth Moretti would inherit the family's weapons business in Naples. Her portrait towered over the banquet hall on a massive screen as the elders gathered around her, showering her with praise. Our parents, Vincent Moretti and Elena Moretti, couldn't have looked prouder. "Beth has always been exceptional. She was at the top of her class, won countless awards, and was already managing the family stables at eighteen." I stood alone in the corner, completely ignored. By the time anyone remembered me, the gala was almost over. One of the elders happened to spot me. "What about Monica? What will she be taking over?" My parents froze. For a moment, neither of them had an answer. Beth gave a small laugh. "Nothing important, I think?" Everyone laughed with her. I kept quiet. I had apparently been put in charge of the family armory, though no one had even bothered to tell me themselves. My father finally looked my way. "At least she stays out of trouble. That's good enough." Of course I stayed out of trouble. They had sent me to boarding school when I was four and left me to grow up on my own. I learned early how to take care of myself because no one else would. During school breaks, my parents would take Beth on vacation while I stayed behind. To them, I had always been the daughter they could forget. So yes, I was easy. I had learned a long time ago not to expect anything from them. After the gala, I went looking for my family. They were nowhere to be found. Then I learned they had already gone home with Beth. I took a deep breath, pulled up the Turner family's invitation from two months ago, and typed, "I accept." Then I booked the earliest flight out. This family had forgotten me for years. Now they could forget me for good.

I've always been terrible with directions. No matter where I go, I end up lost. Seraphina didn't buy the whole "born this way" excuse. So she roped in my foster brother Gabriel and my childhood friend Lucas, and they decided to put me through "training." For the border patrol exercise, they drove off with the tactical SUV ahead of time, took my phone, and left me stranded alone at the subway entrance—right in the middle of gang territory. They said it was to sharpen my sense of direction. I opened my bag and found a note from Seraphina: "We've walked this escape route with you twice. I know Carone's blood will find its way to the safe house, Leah!" "We'll be waiting at the mansion." I stared at those words, and suddenly this whole childish "training" felt hollow. Truth is, not memorizing the tunnels wasn't even a big deal. What hurt was being left behind—over and over again. So I went home and applied for Zurich. Ten days later, I was gone. And only when I was already across the ocean did they realize what they'd lost.

My husband, Adriano Moretti, the Don of the Moretti famiglia, brings a three-year-old boy back to the estate. Adriano's mother, Vittoria Moretti, calls for a family meeting. In front of all the core members, she announces that the boy will be raised by me. She says he is the only surviving bloodline of her late eldest son, Luca Moretti. Vittoria says, "It's very chaotic out there right now. His birth mother can't protect him. Lucrezia, if you don't take him in, he won't survive the winter in Sezarro." My heart goes out to the little boy, and I take him in. In the next seven years, I personally raise Antonino into the finest child in the Moretti famiglia. I tell Adriano I want a child of our own. However, he keeps coming up with the same excuse. "Antonino is Luca's only son. I'm afraid that if we have a child, he'll feel like we don't love him anymore. We can have our own child once he's old enough to understand. There's no rush." Thinking about all the hardships Antonino has endured since childhood, I feel sorry for him too and never bring it up again. When Antonino is ten, he has a sudden asthma attack that lands him in the hospital. When I arrive outside his room at the private hospital, I hear Vittoria say, "Lucrezia doesn't have a child of her own yet. With Antonino by her side all these years, she got to experience being a mother. "But if she finds out Antonino is your biological son, will she still devote all her resources and energy to raising him?" Adriano remains silent. That night, I go to the Moretti famiglia's archives alone. After searching for a long time, I finally find Antonino's birth records that are hidden away. On his birth certificate, I see the name written under the birth father column—Adriano Moretti. It turns out that the child I've been raising for seven years as the orphaned son of Adriano's deceased brother is actually his illegitimate child all along. Seven years ago, I brought that child into the Moretti famiglia. Seven years later, I cross my own name off the family registry and walk out of the Moretti estate alone.

From the age of ten, every dollar my parents spent on me became a debt. Tuition. Clothes. Food. Even medical bills. By eighteen, I had signed one hundred and ninety-nine promissory notes. But Camilla—the daughter of the man who died protecting my parents—received everything for free. They gave her my bedroom, my inheritance bracelet, a Manhattan apartment, a Maserati, and eventually even the attention of my fiancé, Nick. My parents called it repaying her father’s sacrifice. They called my suffering “heir training.” On the eighteenth birthday Camilla and I shared, I was seriously injured in a car accident. While my family celebrated her aboard a Caribbean yacht, I begged them for three thousand dollars to pay for emergency surgery. They accused me of inventing the accident to ruin her party. Then Mom told me to sign another promissory note. That became number two hundred. I finally understood that no amount of obedience would make them choose me. So I gave myself seven days to repay every cent, surrender the DeLuca name, and end my engagement.

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?"

I had been secretly dating my brother’s best friend, the heir to the Moretti family, for seven years, and I was planning to propose to him at the family banquet. Following his location, I found him at a drinking party, only to overhear their laughter through a crack in the private room door. “Vito, your Cinderella is back. What are you planning to do with the little stand-in?” The room fell silent for a few seconds. Then another underboss sneered. “Vito’s got some nerve. You even dared to touch the most beloved princess of the current Sicilian Mafia Don. Now that you’ve had your fill of sweetness, Lucia has come back…” “She left so heartlessly back then. She deserved to be pissed off with a replacement!” The next day, Vito took me to Lucia’s welcome-back banquet, putting on an extravagant show of affection for me. But when Lucia rushed into the rain with tears in her eyes, he shoved me aside and chased after her in a panic. Covered in soup stains and burns, I went home and opened the secret door he had never allowed me to enter. Photographs of him and Lucia, once inseparable, covered the desk. My heart turned to ash as I picked up the encrypted line to my brother in Sicily. “Brother, I’ve thought it over. About the arranged marriage in Chicago—I agree!”

When an attacker threw acid at my face, Mom was attending my cousin Celeste's family induction ceremony. But that day was my eighteenth birthday too. As I lay dying, I used the last of my strength to send her a voice message. [Mom, help me... I'm on the West Side. Someone is trying to kill me.] Her reply came almost immediately. [Stop using these tricks to compete with Celeste for attention, Emilia. I know exactly what you're like.] That same night, the Don summoned Mom back to the Romano estate to investigate an unidentified body found on family territory. The victim's face had been destroyed. Chemicals had eaten away the fingerprints on both hands. Mom led the security team through three days and nights of investigation. From the evidence, she concluded that the victim had been tortured for hours and had died fighting, terrified and utterly without hope. She cursed the killer's cruelty and swore she would make him pay. But she never recognized the body lying in front of her as the biological daughter she hated to mention. Me.