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My Mafia Boyfriend Called Me Useless & GHOST Showed Up
Novelix
new
Completed
Ethan Russo and Vanessa Reed are the mafia world’s famous Cyber Twins, and both think Ethan’s quiet girlfriend, Claire Morgan, knows nothing about cybersecurity. When Vanessa humiliates her and Ethan chooses Vanessa again, Claire ends their relationship. Hours later, Russo is being destroyed in a public cyber challenge, and everyone blames Claire for the loss. So she finally removes her headphones, takes the empty seat, and logs in under the name no one has seen in years: GHOST. Suddenly, the girl they mocked is the only person who can save them.
Chapters (3)
第1章
My mafia boyfriend and my best friend are Russo’s famous Cyber Twins—and both of them think I’m too useless to understand a word they say.
Ethan Russo can keep almost anyone out of a system. Vanessa Reed can break into almost anything.
And me?
I’m the girlfriend everyone thinks is lucky just to stand beside them.
Whenever the three of us are together, Ethan and Vanessa talk about exploits, access points, and security breaches while I stay quiet.
-
Vanessa glances back at me with a smile.
“Claire, do you know how many people would kill to sit here and listen to us talk?”
Ethan laughs.
“She probably doesn’t understand half of it anyway.”
I say nothing.
I understood all of it when I was eight.
That was also the year I wrote something I was never supposed to write again.
My grandfather made me promise to stay hidden.
So I did.
Until tonight.
The underground cyber challenge has barely reached halftime, and Russo is already down three to zero.
Across the room, Blake Carter leans back in his chair and looks straight at Ethan and Vanessa.
“This is the famous Russo cyber team?”
A few people laugh.
Blake’s smile widens.
“Maybe your family should stick to guns.”
No one on our side says a word.
Vanessa goes pale.
Ethan’s jaw tightens.
I already know exactly what went wrong.
Their opponent disguised probe traffic as normal requests. Russo let it through.
By the time the team noticed anything was wrong, the outer defense was already useless.
I stand.
One step.
That’s all I take before my grandfather’s voice comes back to me.
“Other people fight back and forth.”
His hand was thin around my wrist that day.
“You don’t.”
“You hunt.”
“And once you strike, you don’t leave much behind.”
He had looked at me like he was asking for the last thing I could ever give him.
“Promise me. Unless you have no other choice, don’t do it again.”
So I sit back down.
I lower my head and put my headphones on.
The same song I always use to calm myself starts playing.
I breathe out slowly.
By the time halftime begins, I look like myself again.
Quiet.
Harmless.
Forgettable.
The Russo team files into the private lounge.
No one speaks at first.
Vanessa sits on the couch with her head down.
Ethan stands beside her, rubbing her back.
I twist open a bottle of water and hold it out.
“Drink something.”
Vanessa slaps it out of my hand.
The bottle hits the floor.
“You’re happy, aren’t you?”
I stare at her.
“What?”
She looks up, eyes already red.
“You follow Ethan and me around all the time. You watch everyone praise us. You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?”
I frown.
“Here we go again.”
Her face hardens.
“You’re jealous.”
“No. You lose, and you take it out on whoever’s closest.”
Her eyes flash.
I continue, “You need to learn how to handle pressure. No one is obligated to—”
“Claire.”
Ethan cuts me off.
“Vanessa’s under enough pressure. Let it go.”
Something inside me goes still.
I look at him.
“She lost because she made mistakes.”
My voice is flat.
“That has nothing to do with me. I’m not responsible for her mood.”
A few team members glance over.
One of them mutters, “Easy for her to say.”
Another laughs.
“She doesn’t even understand what happened out there.”
“Yeah. She only gets in here because she’s Ethan’s girlfriend.”
I look at them.
“Eight times out of ten, I’m here because one of you asked me to bring coffee or food.”
No one answers.
I smile without humor.
“You’re real friendly when you’re eating what I brought.”
A few faces tighten.
“But now I’m useless?”
One of them scoffs.
“You think bringing coffee makes you part of the team?”
“No.”
I glance toward the scoreboard outside the lounge.
“But if you moved through a system half as fast as you switch sides, you might not be down three points.”
“Enough.”
Ethan’s voice snaps across the room.
He turns on me.
“Do you even know how many layers Blake’s team used?”
I say nothing.
“Can you write attack code?”
Still nothing.
His voice gets colder.
“What gives you the right to stand here and tell Vanessa—or any of us—that we’re bad at what we do?”
I look at him for a second.
Then I laugh.
“Ethan.”
His brows pull together.
“Keep talking to me like that and people are going to think she’s your girlfriend.”
The room goes silent.
Ethan opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
Vanessa stands.
Her voice shakes.
“This challenge matters to us, Claire.”
Tears gather in her eyes.
“I said a few things because I’m stressed. Why can’t you just let it go?”
I watch her.
“My pressure. Ethan’s pressure. The whole team’s pressure.”
She presses a hand to her chest.
“You have no idea what that feels like.”
I lift one finger.
“You’re right.”
Vanessa blinks.
“I don’t.”
I look straight at her.
“I’ve never lost.”
第2章
Laughter breaks out around the lounge.
“Of course you’ve never lost,” someone says. “You’ve never even competed.”
Another person snorts. “She says it like she’s actually one of us.”
Vanessa suddenly smiles.
She steps closer, and there is nothing friendly left in her eyes.
“Claire, I’ve wanted to say this for a long time.”
She gestures around the private lounge.
“This is for the Russo cyber team. You’re not on the team. You don’t compete. You don’t even work here.”
Her mouth curls.
“The only reason you’re allowed in is because you’re Ethan’s girlfriend.”
I look at her without answering.
Vanessa’s voice gets sharper.
“So stop acting like you belong here.”
She points toward the door.
“Get out.”
Before I can move, both of her hands hit my shoulders.
I stumble back.
My lower back slams into the edge of the door handle.
Pain shoots up my spine.
I suck in a breath and press a hand against my back.
Ethan moves immediately.
For half a second, I think he is coming to me.
He isn’t.
He steps in front of Vanessa.
“Claire, don’t.”
I stare at him.
He looks at me like I’m the one he needs to watch.
“If you hadn’t kept pushing her, she wouldn’t have shoved you.”
His voice softens slightly, like that is supposed to make it better.
“She still has to compete. She can’t get dragged into anything right now.”
I slowly lower my hand from my back.
It still hurts.
But suddenly, everything feels very clear.
“Ethan.”
He frowns.
“We’re done.”
His eyes widen.
“What?”
“We’re done.”
He stares at me for a second, then lets out a disbelieving breath.
“Because I defended Vanessa?”
I almost laugh.
“Claire, seriously? You’re going to break up with me over this? Right now?”
He shakes his head.
“You’re jealous, and you’re choosing the worst possible time to make a scene.”
I look at him.
“Vanessa’s coffee order?”
His expression shifts.
“What?”
“You remember it every time.”
I hold his gaze.
“You still get mine wrong.”
He says nothing.
“When my parents came to New York, you said you were too busy to meet them.”
His face tightens.
“When Vanessa’s parents came, you started planning a week ahead.”
“Claire—”
“No.”
I cut him off.
“This isn’t about one argument.”
My voice is calmer than I expect.
“You keep forgetting which one of us is your girlfriend.”
The room goes quiet again.
Ethan’s face loses some color.
I reach down and unclasp the bracelet from my wrist.
He gave it to me on our second anniversary.
I set it on the table between us.
“I don’t want a boyfriend who can’t tell the difference.”
I turn toward the door.
Ethan reaches for my wrist.
Vanessa grabs his arm first.
“Let her go.”
Her voice is high and sharp.
“If she wants to break up, let her.”
I stop, but I don’t turn around.
Vanessa continues.
“She was never good enough for you anyway.”
“Vanessa,” Ethan warns.
But she keeps going.
“Don’t chase her. Once we win the second half, she’ll come back on her own.”
Ethan’s hand stills.
That tiny pause tells me everything.
Before anyone can say more, the lounge door swings open.
A staff member rushes in.
“Second half starts in two minutes. Everyone back to the floor.”
The team moves at once.
Ethan looks at me, conflict written across his face.
“Claire, I’m not doing this right now.”
I meet his eyes.
“We’ll talk after the challenge.”
He says it like the breakup is something he can postpone.
Like my decision is just another problem he can handle later.
Then he turns and follows Vanessa out.
The rest of the team files after them.
I stand alone for a moment.
My back still aches where I hit the door.
The bracelet stays on the table.
Outside, the countdown for the second half begins.
I walk after them.
第3章
The second half starts, and Blake’s team immediately doubles the pressure.
This time, they are not testing Russo.
They come straight for the throat.
Ethan handles offense, switching routes again and again, but every one of them gets identified.
Vanessa stays on defense, patching one breach after another, her face getting paler by the second.
The team starts shouting over each other.
“Scan rate is too high!”
“They’re escalating privileges!”
“Backup node is down!”
“We’re losing the middle layer!”
Less than five minutes in, the entire Russo team is already falling apart.
Then the alarm goes off.
The main screen flickers.
When it comes back, the room goes dead silent.
Russo’s core access inside the challenge network has been taken.
Their internal defense map appears next.
Then the team’s training files.
Vanessa freezes in her chair.
Ethan clenches his jaw and slams his fist against the edge of the desk.
The same people who laughed at me earlier are staring at the screen like they have stopped breathing.
“We’re done.”
“They got everything.”
The crowd erupts.
“That was five minutes!”
“Russo didn’t even fight back!”
“This isn’t a match. It’s a wipeout.”
Someone frowns.
“They’re allowed to put internal files on the screen?”
The person beside him answers immediately.
“It’s all inside the challenge environment. If Russo breached Blake’s side, they could expose the same kind of files.”
That ends the argument.
There is nothing else to say.
Russo is losing because Russo is worse.
Blake sits at the main console with a smile that makes no attempt to hide itself.
He is exactly the kind of man New York’s new-money tech world loves: young, rich, brilliant, and loud enough to make sure everyone knows it.
And tonight, he has spent every round proving that the old Russo name does not scare him.
“That was your defense?”
His eyes move straight to Ethan and Vanessa.
“Russo’s famous Cyber Twins?”
He lets out a short laugh.
“That’s it?”
Ethan’s face darkens.
Blake leans back.
“I keep hearing how the Russos have survived everything.”
His smile sharpens.
“Raids. Rivals. Wars.”
He glances at the dead Russo screen.
“Turns out code is what finally makes you look old.”
The room goes still.
Then Blake lifts one hand.
The attacks stop.
“Five minutes.”
He looks across the room at us.
“Find someone worth fighting.”
Silence drops over the Russo side.
Then Vanessa whips around and looks at me.
Her eyes are red.
“This is your fault.”
I stare at her.
She gets to her feet, her voice rising.
“If you hadn’t broken up with Ethan right before the second half, he wouldn’t be distracted.”
She points at me.
“You dragged the whole team down.”
The moment she says it, the others jump in.
“She’s right.”
“We still had a chance before that.”
“She had to pick this exact moment to start a breakup.”
“She doesn’t even understand how much this challenge matters.”
Someone turns to Ethan.
“Ethan, you tell us.”
“Was it because of her?”
Every face in the room turns toward him.
Ethan does not answer right away.
He looks at me.
For one second, I think he might finally say what should be obvious.
That Vanessa made mistakes.
That he made mistakes.
That I never touched a keyboard.
Then he looks away.
His throat moves.
A few seconds pass.
“It affected me.”
That is all it takes.
Something inside me goes cold.
He cannot defend me from Vanessa.
He cannot remember what I drink.
He cannot make time for my parents.
But when his team loses, he can finally give everyone one thing they need from him.
Me.
Someone to blame.
The mood changes instantly.
A technical failure becomes a relationship scandal.
Comments start flying across the live feed.
“Who is that girl?”
“She broke up with him during the challenge?”
“I heard she doesn’t even know cyber.”
“So she’s jealous of Vanessa?”
The crowd starts talking too.
Then someone stands.
“Get her out.”
Another voice follows.
“Stop distracting the team!”
Then more.
“Get her out!”
“Get her out!”
“Get her out!”
I stand near the entrance.
Every eye in the room is on me.
Somewhere behind the shouting, someone mutters,
“They lost and now they’re blaming the girlfriend? That’s pathetic.”
But the voice disappears under the noise.
Then a new comment appears on the live feed.
A second one follows.
Then a third.
The same line keeps getting reposted until it rises to the top of the screen.
If GHOST were here, Blake wouldn’t be talking like this.
