Reborn: The Mafia Heiress They Abandoned
In my past life, the bullet chambered in the gun on the desk was less lethal than the indifference of the two men standing beside me.
Dante and Matteo were supposed to be the future kings of Chicago, and I was their queen.
But they threw it all away for Sofia—a liar with a pretty face and a fake sob story about a gambling father.
They forced me into a gilded cage, making me serve Sofia like a maid while they played her saviors.
They let me rot in isolation until I swallowed a bottle of pills just to escape the coldness of their neglect.
They didn't even mourn me; they were too busy comforting the girl who would eventually destroy them.
I died realizing that my loyalty was my fatal flaw.
I had worshipped men who saw me as nothing more than an accessory, while they sacrificed their empire for a woman who played them for fools.
But the universe has a sick sense of humor.
It sent me back.
Back to the day that sealed my fate.
The Consigliere pushed the assignment papers toward us—the path to becoming Bosses.
"We are not going," Dante said, looking at me with cold eyes. "Sofia needs us. She is fragile."
In my past life, I begged them to stay.
This time, I stepped forward and picked up the pen.
"I will go," I said, signing my name in sharp black ink.
"I don't need your protection anymore."
Chapters
Share
Chapter 3
Elena POV:
The morning sun was a dull gray, struggling to filter through the smog of the city.
My suitcase stood by the door.
It contained everything I owned.
Two suits.
A gun.
My passport.
And absolutely zero photographs.
I was checking the chamber of my pistol when the door to my safehouse burst open.
Dante and Matteo stormed in.
They carried a volatile energy, dark and suffocating.
Sofia was trailing behind them, sobbing into a handkerchief.
"You vicious bitch!" Matteo screamed.
He threw a notebook at my head.
I dodged it without flinching.
It hit the wall with a heavy thud and fell open.
It was my tactical notebook.
The pages were torn, covered in black marker.
"What is this?" I asked, my voice dangerously even.
"Don't play innocent," Dante growled. He marched over to me, towering over my frame. He used his height to intimidate, a tactic that used to work when we were children.
"You destroyed the notes before giving them to Sofia," he accused. "And you wrote insults about the Don in the margins!"
I looked at the book on the floor.
I could see the handwriting.
It was loopy. Childish.
It wasn't mine.
"Sofia did this," I said.
Sofia wailed louder.
"Why would I destroy the only thing that could help me?" she cried. "She hates me, Dante! She wants me to fail!"
She buried her face in Dante's chest.
He wrapped his arms around her, glaring at me over her head.
"You are sick, Elena. Jealousy has made you ugly."
Matteo kicked my suitcase.
"You are going to fix this," he said.
He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket.
"You are going to go to the Capos. You are going to kneel. And you are going to tell them you wrote those insults."
"And then," Dante added, his voice cold as ice, "you are going to sign a waiver."
"A waiver?" I asked.
"If Sofia fails her exams because of your sabotage, you forfeit your inheritance. It goes to her. As compensation for her trauma."
I stared at them.
They were serious.
They were willing to strip me of my birthright, of my father's legacy, to soothe the ego of a girl who was playing them like fiddles.
I looked at the clock on the wall.
It was 12:15 PM.
My flight was at 2:00 PM.
I reached into my pocket.
I didn't pull out a pen.
I pulled out my plane ticket.
I held it up.
"What is that?" Matteo asked.
"A ticket," I said. "To Rome. One way. Boarding in an hour."
Dante froze.
He released Sofia.
"You're bluffing," he said. "You're doing this to threaten us. To make us choose."
"I am not asking you to choose, Dante. I have already chosen."
I picked up my bag.
Matteo blocked the door.
"You aren't leaving," he said. "Not until you sign the waiver."
I looked him in the eye.
"If I miss this flight, I will call the Don myself. I will tell him exactly why his new recruits are harassing a senior officer instead of training."
Matteo hesitated.
"Senior officer?" he laughed nervously. "You are nobody."
"Check the registry," I said. "My promotion went through this morning."
Dante snatched the ticket from my hand.
He stared at it.
His hands were shaking slightly.
"Elena," he said, his voice dropping. "Stop this. Put the bag down. We can talk."
I snatched the ticket back with a sharp, violent motion.
Cardstock is sharp.
The edge sliced his finger.
A drop of blood fell onto the floor.
I stepped around him.
"Do not block my path to power," I whispered.
I walked out the door.
The black SUV was waiting.
The driver opened the door.
I climbed in.
I didn't look back.
But as the car pulled away, I saw them in the rearview mirror.
They were standing on the sidewalk.
Dante was looking at his bleeding finger.
Matteo was looking at the empty street.
And for the first time, they weren't looking at Sofia.
You may also like
8.0
Elva used a spare key card to quietly enter the hotel penthouse, only to find her boyfriend of two years panting heavily on the king-sized bed with her own cousin.
Instead of showing remorse, her cousin shamelessly mocked her background, while her ex aggressively lunged at her to destroy the photographic evidence she had just captured.
"You think you can just walk away? Warren already made the deal. By next week, you're being shipped off to marry that fifty-two-year-old crippled freak from the Ramirez family!"
Her ex spat the words to threaten her, and the nightmare only escalated when Elva returned to her uncle's estate, where Warren confirmed he was indeed selling her off for a business connection.
Her family eagerly joined the abuse, threatening to permanently freeze her late mother's trust fund and even plotting to secretly drug her morning milk so she couldn't fight back when the groom's family arrived.
They looked at her like a pathetic, orphaned burden they could bleed dry, fully expecting her to drop to her knees, cry, and accept her miserable fate without a single word of defiance.
But they had no idea that just hours ago, Elva had already signed a marriage certificate with Bronson Ramirez, the undisputed billionaire king of the dynasty, and she was stepping into the living room ready to watch their greedy world burn.
8.7
Ada was eight months pregnant, sitting peacefully in her husband's Manhattan estate, looking at a baby nursery catalog.
Suddenly, her husband's mistress, Jacklyn, walked in, threw an ultrasound photo on the table, and locked the door.
Before Ada could process the betrayal, Jacklyn dragged her to the top of the marble staircase and threw herself backward just as Desmond walked through the front doors.
"She pushed me, Desmond! She tried to kill our baby!"
Desmond looked at Ada with absolute hatred.
He ignored Ada's breaking water and her agonizing screams for help, leaving her to miscarry on the freezing floor while he rushed Jacklyn to the hospital.
He sent Ada to a brutal federal prison for three years, where she was tortured and left with a body covered in horrific scars, mourning the baby she was told died at birth.
When Ada was finally released, Desmond destroyed her cousin's company to force her back to his estate as a lowly maid.
But when Ada saw Jacklyn's three-year-old son, her world stopped.
Right in the center of the little boy's palm was a faint crescent moon birthmark.
It was the exact same mark Ada had kissed on her own lifeless baby's tiny hand before the doctors took his body away.
How did her dead child become Jacklyn's little prince?
Looking at the woman who stole her life and the husband who threw her in hell, Ada clenched her scarred hands and swore she would tear their world apart to get her son back.
9.6
For four years, I played the part of the perfect, pathetic wife to my billionaire husband, Damian Nunez. Bleeding from a gunshot wound I took to secure a multi-billion-dollar deal for his company, I dragged myself to our penthouse, ready to finally end the charade.
I found him in our bedroom with another woman-Hayleigh, the one the world called his true soulmate.
He didn't notice the blood soaking my clothes and pooling at my feet. He just looked at me with pure disgust.
"You're dripping water on the rug."
He mocked me when I handed him divorce papers, threatening to send me back to the gutter I came from. He had no idea our entire marriage was just a sick game he played.
I later learned it was all for a college bet. He endured four years with me just to win a sports car by tricking the "poorest girl on campus" into marrying him.
I signed away every right to his fortune and walked out. He thought I was leaving with nothing.
But when I stepped into the armored Rolls-Royce waiting for me, I wasn't an orphan anymore. I was the heir to the Carlisle fortune, and I was going to make him pay for his arrogance by destroying everything he had ever built.
9.5
I returned to New York with a broken suitcase and exactly three hundred and forty-two dollars in my bank account. My mother was dying in a public hospital, and the only treatment that could save her required a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit I didn't have.
While I was pleading with the billing department, I ran into my billionaire ex, Gannon Sharpe, and his cruel fiancée, Aleta. Without a second thought, Aleta slapped me so hard my lip split, kicking my belongings across the floor and calling me a gold-digging thief in front of the entire staff.
I looked at Gannon, the man I once loved more than my own life, hoping for a shred of mercy. Instead, he looked at me with pure revulsion and told me I belonged in the gutter. He believed the lies his grandfather told him—that I had abandoned him after his car crash and vanished with millions.
He had no idea I was the one who actually pulled him from that burning wreckage, or that I was currently skipping meals in a moldy motel just so our secret son could have formula. He called me "disgusting" and walked away, leaving me to rot.
I wanted to scream that I was the genius scientist who wrote his company’s core algorithms, and that the child he didn’t know existed was shivering with a fever only blocks away. But the ironclad NDA I signed to save my family kept me silent, even as Gannon looked at me like I was something he’d stepped in.
Desperate for health insurance to save my mother and son, I took a bottom-tier data entry job in the basement of Gannon’s own tower, intending to stay invisible. But when a billion-dollar error threatened to bankrupt his empire, I couldn't stop myself from hacking the system to fix the code.
Now, the man who hates me is standing in my cubicle, demanding to know how a "dropout" knows his most guarded secrets. Gannon is finally digging into my past, and he’s about to find out exactly what—and who—I’ve been hiding for the last four years.
7.4
Helena woke up in a sheer silk slip, trapped inside the romance novel she had read the night before.
She was the doomed villainess.
And she had just executed the most pathetic plot in the book: hiding in the closet to seduce her cold, ruthless legal guardian, Hayward.
It was the exact move that got the original Helena thrown out on the street to die.
"Helena, your time is up. Get out."
Hayward's freezing voice came from the other side of the door.
He didn't just reject her. He threatened to strip her of her trust fund and permanently lock her in a psychiatric ward.
Everyone in the massive estate despised her, treating her like trash.
To force her to break, Hayward exiled her to the company's worst design department, a graveyard for corporate failures.
At the same time, her innocent step-sister, the novel's female lead, was being cornered and harassed by a predatory manager.
Helena was suffocating under the original owner's ruined reputation.
She was surrounded by hostile eyes, everyone just waiting for her to throw a tantrum and completely self-destruct.
Why should she be forced to pay the ultimate price for the original villain's deadly mistakes?
Instead of screaming or begging, Helena wrapped herself in an oversized coat and played the perfect, submissive lunatic to survive.
She completely flipped the script and took the terrified female lead under her wing.
When that manager tried to lay a hand on her new sister, Helena didn't hesitate to crush his foot with her stiletto.
7.1
I lay paralyzed on stiff white sheets, a prisoner in my own skin, listening to the rain lash against the window like nails on a coffin. My father, Elmore Franco, didn't even look at my face as he checked his clipboard. He just listened to the steady, monotonous beep of the heart monitor-the only thing proving I was still alive.
Without a hint of remorse, he pulled a pen from his pocket and signed the Do Not Resuscitate order. My stepmother, Ophelia, stepped out from behind him, wearing my favorite pearl necklace and smelling of cloying perfume. She leaned close to my ear to whisper the truth that turned my blood to ice.
"It was the tea, darling. Just like your mother. A slow, tasteless poison."
She chuckled as she revealed that my fiancé, Bryce, had a two-year-old son with my sister, Daniela. My inheritance had been funding their secret life for years, and now that the money was secure, I was an inconvenience they were finally scrubbing away. As my father yanked the power cord from the wall, the beeping died, and the darkness swallowed me whole.
I was being murdered by my own flesh and blood, used as a bank account until I was no longer needed. I died in that sterile room, drowning in the realization that every person I ever loved was a monster who had been waiting for me to take my last breath.
Then, I gasped. I woke up in a luxury hotel suite surrounded by silk sheets, five years in the past-the very morning of my wedding. Next to me lay Basile Delgado, the "Wolf of Wall Street" and my family's most dangerous enemy. In my first life, I ran from this room in a panic and lost everything. This time, I looked at the man who would eventually destroy my father's empire and decided to join him.
"I'm not leaving, Basile. Marry me. Right now. Today."