Multiple Identities Marriage Short Stories & Novels

For seven years of my marriage to Damian Moretti, my daughter and I were so poor that every night we collected empty bottles from the alley behind a bar. Every time Ella traded the bottles in for change, she would ask me, "Mommy, do we have enough saved to go to the aquarium with Daddy yet?" Damian always said we had no money. Then, on the day I finally saved enough for three tickets, I arrived at the aquarium only to find him at the entrance holding his ex-girlfriend's hand, with her son in his arms. A staff member stopped us. "Sorry, Mr. Moretti has reserved the entire aquarium for a private event tonight." A bodyguard in black stepped up beside Damian and bowed his head. "Don, the car is ready." The truth was that my supposedly penniless husband, the man who claimed he could not afford his own daughter's ticket, had reclaimed the Moretti Family long ago and become New York's new Don. It was not that he had no money. He simply refused to spend any of it on us. Later I took my daughter and left New York, and the Vitale Family found me. I inherited the family's ports, took control of the Atlantic Shipping Alliance, and became a Donna before whom countless mafia families bowed. Damian, eyes red, begged me to come home. I only pushed the divorce papers across to him. "Damian, I am already home. And you were never my family."

Of the three daughters-in-law in one of New York's oldest and wealthiest families, I was considered the most useless. Vera Hawthorne, married to the eldest Hawthorne son, was a world champion hacker. Catherine Hawthorne, married to the second son, was one of Wall Street's fiercest M&A lawyers. They talked code and securities law. Me? I cared about the latest jewelry on Fifth Avenue and afternoon tea at the Plaza. I couldn't even watch a chef prepare a lobster without getting teary-eyed. Everyone saw me as Arthur Hawthorne's pretty, useless wife. He'd spent five years spoiling me rotten. I didn't mind. All I wanted was a quiet life as Mrs. Hawthorne. What they didn't know was that I wasn't born delicate. I'd just had enough of a life where I woke up reaching for a gun and slept with one eye open, watching for assassins. Five years ago, I faked my death, disbanded my inner circle, and married Arthur, who had no idea who I really was. That worked fine until a fund began aggressively shorting Hawthorne Tech, trying to force Arthur to hand over his quantum chip patents. Vera couldn't trace the offshore accounts. Catherine filed for an emergency restraining order, but someone pulled strings to have it denied. Then gunmen from New York's four crime families stormed into the boardroom. By the time I got there, Arthur had a gun to his head. He refused to sign. They pistol-whipped him until his face was covered in blood, but he never stopped shielding me with his body. "Don't be scared. Close your eyes." I stared at the blood on his face. A laugh escaped me, cold and humorless. They'd beaten my husband like this. How was I supposed to live a quiet life as Mrs. Hawthorne now? I set down the lunch bag, snapped the gunman's wrist, and slammed him onto the conference table. The room went dead silent. I pinned him down with one foot and dialed an encrypted number I hadn't used in five years. "Tell the four families. "The Night Owl is back."

I was Orion Blake's pampered trophy girlfriend, treasured above everything else. Everyone in his organization thought I had nothing going for me but a pretty face and a killer body. Orion's right-hand woman, Diana Reyes, resented me most. She saw me as nothing more than a useless trophy girlfriend, and she never tried to hide it. No one knew that this supposedly useless trophy girlfriend had someone even more powerful protecting her: my father, Edmund Sorrentino, the mafia Don who ruled the East Coast. But I was sick of the scheming and backstabbing within my family. I wanted no part in another power struggle, so I chose to stay with Orion and remain his pampered trophy girlfriend. That arrangement worked until the gangs that had always operated independently suddenly joined forces against Orion and tried to strip him of control. "Orion, be smart. Swallow your pride, hand over your shipping routes, and give me your woman. Do that, and I'll let you live." The man speaking was Rhys Kessler, Orion's longtime enemy. He looked me up and down, making no effort to hide the naked lust in his eyes. It turned my stomach. Orion ordered his men to take me to safety, but just before I boarded the boat, I insisted on going back to him. Facing a wall of guns, I calmly activated my family's private line and called my father, the Don. "The West Coast keeps tearing itself apart. It's time you stepped in and took control of this mess. "Within 20 minutes, I want them to understand exactly who they've crossed."

The doctor said my husband Ethan had dual personality. His primary personality was gentle and devoted. His alter — "Axel" — was reckless and wild. In five years of marriage, every time Axel surfaced, he'd fall for a different woman. Each time, I'd have to pull out our marriage certificate, walk him through our love story from the beginning, just to bring Ethan back. This time, Axel had set his sights on the new dance instructor. I dropped what I was doing at work, ready to go collect him from the psychiatrist's office — same as always. But outside the treatment room, I heard him on the phone with one of his buddies, laughing: "What can I say — I'm a hell of an actor. Five years and she still hasn't caught on." "Besides, why settle for the wife at home when there's so much more fun out there?" The panic I'd been feeling went very, very still. I pulled up my lawyer's number and texted him: Get the divorce papers ready.