The mafia King's broken princess

Chapter 1

The alley smelled like piss and old garbage, and my shoes kept sticking to something wet on the ground. I did not look down. I never looked down anymore. Looking down meant seeing the bruises on my arms, and I was so tired of counting them.

My ribs ached with every breath. Nico had thrown me into the kitchen counter again tonight because I came home five minutes late from the grocery store. Five minutes. That was all it took for the man I gave up everything for to remind me what I was worth to him.

Nothing. I was worth nothing.

I pulled my jacket tighter around myself and kept walking. The wig on my head shifted a little, and I fixed it with shaking fingers. Wigs had been my life since I was fifteen, since the day my stepmother handed me a bottle of shampoo with a smile and told me it would make my hair shiny. A week later, every strand fell out. Every single one. And instead of crying with me, my sister Gianna laughed so hard she had to hold her stomach.

"Look at her," Gianna had said to her friends, pointing at me like I was some circus animal. "She looks like a naked rat. Even rats have more hair than her."

My stepmother never said a word to stop her. She just watched from the doorway with that thin, satisfied smile. I was the proof of her husband's affair, the stain on her perfect family portrait, and she wanted me ugly. She wanted me destroyed.

The Ferraro family raised me like I was a dog they found on the street and could not legally throw back out. My father never once defended me. Not once. He just sat in his study and pretended I did not exist while his wife and his real daughter peeled me apart piece by piece.

So when Nico Caruso showed up at eighteen with his brown eyes and his warm hands and told me I was beautiful, I believed him. I packed my things and walked out of the Ferraro mansion without looking back, thinking I was finally free.

I was so stupid.

Four years later, Nico had turned me into his personal thief. His punching bag. His pet that he kicked whenever his day went wrong. I had been arrested twice for stealing things he wanted, and every time he bailed me out, he made sure I knew I owed him my life.

I stopped walking when I heard the sounds.

Grunting. The sick thud of fists hitting flesh. A man groaning somewhere deep in the alley ahead of me.

I pressed myself against the wall and squinted into the dark. Three men stood over a fourth, kicking him while he curled on the ground. One of them spat on him.

"That will teach you to stick your nose where it does not belong."

"Hit him again. He is still breathing too loud."

My heart slammed against my chest. Every smart part of my brain screamed at me to turn around and run. But my feet would not move. I knew what it felt like to be on the ground while someone stood over you. I knew that helplessness so deep it made your teeth ache.

I could not just walk away.

My hands were trembling as I pulled out my phone and opened a sound app. I found the police siren clip, turned the volume all the way up, and hit play.

The sound bounced off the alley walls like the real thing. All three men froze, then scattered like roaches when the lights come on. They were gone in seconds, their footsteps fading into the dark.

I waited until the silence felt safe, then walked over to the man on the ground. He was face down, his expensive coat torn at the shoulder, blood on the concrete under his head.

"Hey." I crouched beside him, keeping my voice low. "Can you hear me?"

He groaned but did not answer.

"People are terrible," I whispered, almost to myself. "They hurt you for no reason. They hate you just because you exist. I know how that feels."

I slipped my arm under his shoulder and tried to pull him up. He was heavy, all solid muscle under that coat, and he smelled like something expensive that I could not name. His hand grabbed at my arm, and for a second, his fingers closed around the edge of my wig.

Then I heard footsteps. Lots of them. Fast.

Men in black suits came pouring around the corner, flashlights cutting through the dark. One of them yelled, "Boss! Boss, are you alright?"

Boss.

My blood went cold. I yanked my arm free and ran, my heart in my throat, my legs burning. I did not stop until I hit the main street three blocks away, gasping for air under a streetlight.

It was only then that I reached up and felt my bare scalp.

My wig. It was gone. He must have pulled it off when I ran.

Back in the alley, the man sat up slowly as his men surrounded him. Salvatore, his right hand, knelt beside him with a flashlight.

"Sir, your head is bleeding. We need to get you to a hospital."

But the man was not looking at Salvatore. He was staring at the dark brown wig in his hand, running his thumb across it. A slow, unsettling smile spread across his face. The kind of smile that had nothing to do with kindness.

"Send someone to follow her," he said quietly. "The girl who just ran. Do not approach her. Do not let her see them. Just follow."

Salvatore stared at him. "Sir, you are bleeding and you want us to follow some random girl?"

The man pressed the wig to his nose and breathed in. "She is not random, Sal. She smelled like cheap soap and trouble. Find her."

Salvatore opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. He had worked for this man long enough to know that smile meant something had shifted inside him, and whatever it was, it was not something Sal could talk him out of.

"Yes, sir," Sal muttered, pulling out his phone with an une

asy feeling sitting heavy in his gut.