Page 7 of Broken Mafia Prince
2
RAFFAELE
Raffaele—10 years old
They say life is beautiful through a child’s eyes, but I don’t think those people have ever seen what I’ve seen. If they did, they’d know that hell doesn’t always come with fire. Sometimes, it’s just the quiet, ugly things that sit with you every day. And trust me, I’ve lived in it long enough to know.
My house is big, bigger than the cathedral church down the road, with gardens that stretch so far you’d think they were trying to escape too.
But it’s not a home—it’s a cage wrapped in gold.
To the world, we are the picture of success: an empire of an estate, a thriving legacy, and respect that borders on fear. But behind those gilded doors, life is anything but beautiful.
Father demands perfection. In everything. From everyone.
Especially from me.
When he looks at me, it’s like he’s measuring something I can’t see. We’ll sit at the long dining table, just the three of us, but it feels crowded with his silence. If my fork scrapes the plate too loudly or my napkin isn’t folded just right, I see it. The twitchin his jaw, the way his fingers tap the table like he’s keeping time until I fix it.
“Straighten your back, Raffaele,” he says without even looking up. His voice is calm, but it’s the kind of calm that makes my stomach twist. I do as he says, but it’s never enough. Nothing ever is.
Mama never speaks at dinner. She keeps her eyes on her plate, quiet and small, like if she shrinks enough, he’ll forget she’s there.
Father’s favorite words?“La famiglia è tutto.”Family is everything.
But to him, “family” just means people who don’t say no. He’s like the sun; you can’t look at him for too long, or you’ll burn.
Mama always used to smile. She had this laugh that felt like spring. But Father doesn’t like spring; he likes winter.
“A woman’s job is to be seen, not heard.”
“A woman doesn’t giggle like a fool,” he’d sneer.
So Mama stopped laughing. She stopped being seen, too.
He doesn’t hit Mama—he doesn’t need to. His cold indifference breaks her in ways a fist never could. He treats her like a prop, a doll meant to smile for the cameras, host his perfect parties, and raise his perfect son.
Over time, her laughter faded. She stopped smiling, stopped meeting his eyes, stopped trying altogether.
I hate him for it. But hating my father was dangerous, even as a child. He had this way of making you feel small without even raising his voice. “Don’t embarrass me,” he’d say.
His words are like knives, leaving cuts no one can see.Father always asks why I use words and expressions I don’t even know the meaning of. But he’s wrong. I learned everything from books—from those worlds far, far away from here.
When I was little, I thought he was a king. Now I think he’s a wolf. Wolves don’t love. They hunt.
Sometimes, when Father’s not home, Mama takes me to the garden. She says the flowers are her little secrets. “They grow because I love them,bambino,” she’ll say with her hands dirty with soil. “Even in the shadows, things can bloom.”
I think she meant herself, because the flowers look just as sad—alive only because she refuses to let them die.
I love the garden. It’s the only place that feels alive. But even there, you can feel Father’s rules. Everything’s in rows, perfect and straight, like soldiers waiting for orders. If something grows wrong, it gets cut away.
“There’s no room for weakness,” Father says.
Failure wasn’t an option in our household. Perfection was the only acceptable standard. Whether it was school, sports, or the way I carried myself at those endless dinner parties he forced me to attend, everything had to be flawless.
My father’s world was cold and calculated, and his view of women reflected that. To him, they were objects—tools to be used, admired, and discarded when they outlived their usefulness. I saw it in the way he spoke to my mother, the way he flirted openly with the women who attended his parties, the way he dismissed anyone who didn’t fit into his vision of perfection.
It was a world of power plays and manipulation, where loyalty was demanded but rarely given. Everyone who stepped foot onto the Gagliardi estate had a role to play, and my father made sure they played it well.
