Page 96 of Ruined By the Mafia Kings
“Freedom looks good on you, Ty,” I told my reflection with a snort. “Really bringing out that ‘one step from death’ glow everyone’s after these days.”
The shower sputtered to life, producing water that could generously be described as “lukewarm” if you were an optimist, which I decidedly was not. Still, it was enough to wash away the nightmare sweat and give me a moment to reset my brain. I leaned against the tile wall, letting the water run over my face as memories of that night two months ago rushed back persistently.
The gunfire. The chaos. The mad dash through the industrial district, hiding in abandoned buildings when my lungs burned and my legs threatened to give out. The week I spent sleeping in shelters, jumping at every shadow, before I remembered this place, my childhood apartment in a neighborhood I’d left behind years ago.
My mother had kept paying the rent even after we moved, unable to let go of her first home in the city. After she died, my father had continued the payments, a sentimental gesture we couldn’t afford but he maintained anyway. When his debt mounted, this was one of the first expenses he cut. But Mrs. Patel, the no-nonsense landlady who’d run this building for over thirty years, had kept the apartment off the market for months.
When I showed up on her doorstep, looking completely disheveled, she’d handed me the keys without question. “Your mother would want you to have a safe place,” she’d said, her sharp eyes assessing me from behind thick glasses. The rent was below market value, “For Elena’s boy,” she insisted, as if my mother’s memory was worth more than actual money in her bank account.
It was the perfect hiding place. No one associated with my father or De Luca knew about it. My past here had been effectively erased when we moved away during my childhood. If anyone was looking for me, and I wasn’t convinced anyone still was, they’d never think to look in this run-down building in a forgotten corner of the city that time and urban development had collectively decided to ignore.
I shut off the water and toweled dry, avoiding my reflection this time. The nightmares were getting worse, not better. Always the same theme—being hunted, being found, being claimed. Sometimes I was running through endless corridors that shifted constantly. Sometimes I was frozen in place, my feet apparently superglued to the floor.
“Stop it,” I told myself firmly, wrapping the towel around my waist with more force than necessary. “They’ve forgotten you by now. You’re just another omega they used and discarded. A breeding vessel that didn’t deliver the goods. Yesterday’s news wrapped around today’s garbage.”
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it left a hollow feeling in my chest that I refused to examine too closely.
I dressed quickly in the cleanest clothes I could find—a pair of old jeans, a faded t-shirt with a band logo I couldn’t even identify anymore, and a hoodie that had seen better days. My wardrobe options were limited these days. Turns out being on the run from the mafia doesn’t leave much room for fashion considerations. Who knew?
The small kitchenette was spotlessly clean—one advantage of working as a dishwasher was that I’d become fanatical about cleanliness at home too. My father would be proud, if he knew where I was. If he was even still alive. Another thought I refused to examine too closely.
I opened the refrigerator, expecting the usual depressing emptiness, maybe a half-empty jar of peanut butter and somequestionable milk, but was surprised to find a covered dish that hadn’t been there last night. Unless I was now experiencing memory lapses on top of everything else, which, given my luck, wouldn’t be surprising.
Mrs. Patel must have let herself in again. She did that sometimes—left food, tidied up a bit, mothered me from a distance. I should have been bothered by the invasion of privacy, but it was hard to be upset about free food.
I peeled back the foil to find some kind of casserole that smelled incredible. My stomach growled loudly.
As I ate standing at the counter—because why sit down when you can uncomfortably hunch over?—I noticed other small changes in the apartment. A book I’d left on the coffee table was now neatly stacked with the others. The blanket on the couch had been folded. There was even a small vase of flowers on the windowsill that definitely hadn’t been there yesterday.
“Mrs. Patel’s really outdoing herself,” I murmured. The woman was a force of nature despite her age. I’d seen her haul garbage bags twice her size and fix leaky pipes with nothing but a wrench and creative cursing that would make a sailor blush. Still, the flowers were a surprisingly soft touch for a woman who once threatened to evict a tenant for playing music after ten p.m.
The restaurant kitchen was already chaotic when I slipped in through the back door at six thirty a.m. Line cooks shouted orders aggressively; servers rushed in and out with plates balanced precariously on their arms, and the head chef, Mike, barked instructions that everyone pretended to follow while doing exactly what they wanted anyway.
I made my way to the dish pit, my domain. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it paid cash under the table, no questions asked. No paperwork meant no trail for anyone to follow. The manager, Reynolds, an alpha with a permanent scowl thatsuggested his face had frozen that way after years of practice, had made it clear that my position came with conditions.
“You stay in the back,” he’d said when he hired me. “No contact with customers. We got alpha clientele who don’t need to be distracted by omega scent.”
Translation: You’re less than human, so stay out of sight where you won’t contaminate the air that important people breathe.
I’d swallowed my pride and taken the job anyway. Pride doesn’t pay rent, and principles are cold comfort when you’re sleeping on a park bench.
“You’re late, Hart,” Mike called as I tied on my apron, which was stained with the remnants of a thousand meals I’d never get to eat.
“By two minutes,” I replied, checking the industrial clock on the wall. “And I’m pretty sure those two minutes were spent appreciating your sunny personality from the doorway. Your aura of joy and goodwill is just so overwhelming, I needed a moment to prepare myself.”
Mike’s lips twitched, fighting a smile he’d never admit to. “Just get those breakfast dishes done before the lunch rush hits. And try not to break anything today.”
“That was one plate, three weeks ago,” I protested. “Are you ever going to let it go?”
“Not in this lifetime,” he replied, but there was no real heat in it. Mike was an asshole, but at least he was an equal-opportunity asshole, treating everyone with the same level of contempt regardless of secondary gender.
I saluted sarcastically and got to work, falling into the mindless rhythm of scrape, rinse, load, repeat. The work was mind-numbing but physically demanding—by midmorning my back ached intensely, and my hands were red despite the heavy rubber gloves that made me feel awkward and clumsy.
A wave of fatigue hit me so hard I had to grab the edge of the sink to stay upright. What the hell? I’d been tired before, exhaustion and I were practically roommates at this point, but this was different. This was overwhelming weakness.
“Just what I need,” I said, splashing cold water on my face. “Some exotic dishwasher’s disease. Probably fatal. Probably painful. Probably not covered by the health insurance I don’t have.”
“Hey, omega boy.”
