Page 8 of Broken Mafia Prince
The only light in that dark, twisted world was my mother.
In the gardens, she’d tell me stories about her life before she met him. She’d laugh softly, her voice warm and full of longing, as she talked about simpler times—times when love wasn’t measured by power or wealth.
Those moments were the only thing I looked forward to.
Her kneeling in the dirt, her perfectly manicured hands covered in soil, tending to the flowers my father couldn’t have cared less about.
I never told her, but I didn’t care about the flowers. I just liked hearing her voice and seeing her smile. In those moments, she wasn’t the sad, silent woman my father had turned her into. She was alive.
But those moments never lasted. My father would return, and the walls would close in again.
Looking back, I think that’s when I started to understand what it meant to live in a gilded cage. Everything looked perfect from the outside, but inside, it was cold, empty, and suffocating.
“You’ll inherit this empire one day,” he says. “Act like it.”
Empire. That’s what he calls it. To me, it’s just a shadow that swallows everything good.
I don’t want it. I don’t want the rules, the fear, the power that makes people bow their heads when Father walks by. I don’t want to be like him.
But Father says boys are destined to become their fathers. I think that’s the most terrifying thing he’s ever said to me.
Mama says the flowers are proof that love can grow anywhere. But I don’t think love grows in this house.
Sometimes, at night, I sit in the dark and wonder if things will ever change. If Mama will laugh again. If I’ll ever be free of Father’s shadow. But deep down, I know the truth.
Wolves don’t let you go. They keep you until there’s nothing left to fight with.
“Checkmate,” I tell Mama. We are in the living room, playing chess. I always look forward to games with her, especially today.
Her dark eyes go wide as she glances from the board to me and back again. “Impossible. You must have cheated. We have to play again.”
I smile at her, amused. “That’s what you said the last two times, and I still beat you again and again. When are you going to admit that I’m the king of chess?”
The corners of her mouth press into a smile, and it feels like a win to me.
I like it when my mother smiles, but her smiles are becoming even more rare, and they only happen when it’s just me and her. When Father is around, she becomes a robot, emotionless and with no life, and it makes my stomach feel uneasy to see her like that.
“I know you’re cheating, and I’m going to prove it,” she mocks and glares at me. “On your feet, soldier. It’s time for a compulsory search.”
I dissolve into laughter and end up knocking the board over, chess pieces scattering all over the floor. Since she taught me how to play a few months ago, I realized I have an uncanny knack for the game. I love nothing more than seeing the pieces in my head and strategizing five moves ahead.
“Where’s your search warrant?” I ask, smiling.
“It’s right?—”
She’s interrupted by a knock at the door, and we exchange glances, our earlier smiles wiped away, replaced by a tension that snaps tight in the room.
“Master Raffaele, the Don wants to see you in his study,” says the voice outside the door, causing my body to tense further.
Judgment day—the day I dread the most.
I don’t go to school like all the other kids. I’m homeschooled now, but it wasn’t always like this.
When I failed one course in middle school, it wasn’t just a slip-up—it was a catastrophe.
Not because I got an F, but because a B was just as bad. In my father’s world, even the slightest imperfection is an unforgivable sin.
It was the start of all things sad for me. I had aced the midterms, but the exam… I don’t even remember what went wrong. Maybe I misread a question, maybe I got cocky. Whatever it was, I came home with a grade that wasn’t “good enough.”
