Best Mafia Novels

I was tracing the gold paint on my own tombstone when a hand tapped me on the shoulder. It was Clayton. The same man who, five years ago, had left me bleeding out in a ditch because he didn't want to be late for my sister's engagement party. "Die quietly, Ivy," he had said over the phone before hanging up. Now, standing over my grave, he dropped his cheap plastic flowers in shock. "Ivy? You're... we buried you." They hadn't buried me. They had buried an empty box to save face, mourning a "troubled" daughter they had actually discarded like broken trash the moment I became a liability. Clayton's shock quickly turned to that familiar, arrogant anger. He accused me of faking my death for attention. He told me I was sick for putting the family through such pain. He even reached out to grab my arm, intending to drag me back to my father to apologize. "You're coming with me," he spat. "You owe us an explanation." But he made a fatal mistake. He thought he was talking to Ivy Dillard, the soft girl who cried when she skinned her knees. He didn't notice the town car waiting at the curb, or the man stepping out of it. Before Clayton's fingers could graze my coat, a hand made of steel caught his wrist. Collin Richardson, the most feared Capo in Chicago, stepped between us. "Touch my wife again," Collin whispered, his voice promising violence. "And you lose the hand." I smiled at the terror draining the color from Clayton's face. I didn't come back from the dead to explain myself. I came back to bury them.

For seven years, I was the architect of my fiancé's criminal empire and the strategist behind his every move. I was Dante Gallo’s unofficial Consigliere, his partner in everything but name. Tomorrow, I was finally supposed to marry him and take my place as the queen to his throne. But on the eve of our wedding, a single text message sent by mistake detonated my life. It was a photo from Dante, showing a platinum wedding band on his hand. The message read: “Married this morning. She’s safe now.” My gaze fell to the engagement ring on my own finger. It was the identical band, just smaller. The engraved initials ‘D.I.’ didn’t stand for Dante and I. They stood for Dante and Isabella—his childhood sweetheart. My entire relationship was a lie; I was just a shield to protect his one true love. He dismissed my discovery as a "tantrum." Then, his new bride began taunting me, sending a picture of them tangled in bedsheets with the caption: "Loser." They expected me to break. They thought I would shatter. They were about to find out just how wrong they were. I forwarded the picture to Isabella’s fiancé, a man far more dangerous than Dante. "Your fiancée is in Suite 8808 at the Grand Hyatt," I told him. "I'll meet you downstairs. We're going to crash their party."

I found out my husband of three years had cheated on me and his mistress is the one who told me-because he didn't have the balls to do it himself. I move out and get a new apartment, a job as a bartender, and try to move on with a broken heart. I wonder where it all went wrong, if I hadn't been enough for him, if I'd been stupid for marrying him in the first place. I'm at work one night when he walks inside-the most beautiful man I've ever seen. He sits at the bar and a forest fire burns between us. I was depressed the moment before he entered, but the second I look at his blue eyes, I forget the dumpster fire that my life has become. I invite him back to my place and it's the most passionate night of my life. I expect to never see him again. I just want him as an anti-depressant-but he wants me all to himself. I just got my heart ripped out of my chest so I want something easy and no-strings-attached, but he wants all the strings because he's hooked. I don't get much of a say in the matter, and that's not surprising when I learn why-because he's the Butcher. The crime lord of all crime lords, the boss that overshadows all of Paris, that makes everyone abide by his rules-or pay. And now I'm his.

I drowned in freezing pool water, the mocking laughter of the elite Savage family echoing in my ears. When I opened my eyes, I was an eight-year-old orphan again, right on the day those monsters came to adopt me. Terrified of repeating my hellish past, I ran down the hallway and desperately grabbed the shirt of a random, dumpy IT guy, begging him to take me instead. I thought I had chosen a weak, boring suburban dad to hide behind. But I was completely wrong. My new mom greeted me with a ceramic tactical knife hidden in her apron. My clumsy dad sliced dinner ribs with the terrifying precision of a seasoned hitman. My ten-year-old brother was a dead-eyed sociopath who immediately calculated my bone density. They were a family of lethal underworld monsters, yet they frantically pretended to be a normal, pathetic household just for me.

In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my private photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times. Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my private photos all over the internet. I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars. That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me. After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition. "Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you." Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again. In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch. But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby. Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice. "Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child." Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago. When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing. "She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time." At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago. I looked at him and nodded. "Don't worry, this will never happen again."

Rose was so naive that she didn't know Jonah, her ex-fiancé, was cheating on her even before her wedding day. On the night before her wedding, she caught him cheating on her with the last person she would ever expect him to be with, Rebecca. Out of anger and spite, she cursed at them and left, then went and got herself drunk and made out with a mafia don, who, oblivious to her, was her fiancé's stepbrother and his boss. On the day of the wedding, she stormed in and canceled it, calling Jonah out. After the embarrassment, Jonah vowed to make her life miserable. She tried to get a job, but it was almost impossible because of the influence Jonah had. So she went to the greatest mafia don that her friend Lucy recommended to her. When she went to ask for his help, the don turned out to be the mysterious man who had been showing interest in her, but she had kept declining. Unbeknownst to her, he was her ex-fiancé's boss and stepbrother. She asked for his help, and he offered it, of course, but on one condition.that she would be his mistress !.