The Discarded Mafia Princess's Ruthless Return

Serafina POV

The sun was a pale smear in the sky when I slipped through the back gate toward the corner pharmacy.

I needed something for the pain; the cramps in my stomach were a twisting blade, making the world tilt on its axis.

I slid my debit card into the ATM, a prayer forming on my lips. The screen bled a violent red.

INSUFFICIENT FUNDS.

My life's savings—a paltry two hundred dollars—had vanished. The Falcones had severed my last lifeline.

I walked back to the sprawling Falcone estate, my hands empty, a weight settling in my chest.

The main living room was a tableau of obscene wealth. Isabella was sunk into a velvet sofa, tearing the paper from a mound of cheap jewelry boxes with a manic energy.

Carlo and Rosa stood nearby, their faces fixed in smiles of grotesque pride.

"Useless leech," Carlo's voice cut through the air the moment he saw me, his smile evaporating. "Where have you been? The floors in the west wing are a disgrace."

My gaze drifted past him, landing on the pile of designer bags beside Isabella, then to the new diamond watch that glittered on her wrist.

"You froze the account just to watch me squirm," I said to Isabella, my voice a low tremor. "You didn't need the money. You didn't buy these trinkets with my savings. You just wanted to destroy my only means of escape."

Isabella smirked, flicking a scrap of torn ribbon onto the plush Persian rug.

"Everything in this house is mine," she purred, a cruel light dancing in her eyes. "Including your pathetic little hoard."

A wire inside me drew taut and snapped. I raised my hand, my body lunging forward, the need to wipe that smug, entitled look from her face overriding all else.

I never reached her.

Before my palm could connect, a boot slammed into my ribs.

The force of Carlo's kick sent me airborne. I collided with the glass coffee table, and it exploded into a constellation of sharp-edged fragments.

Isabella immediately threw herself to the floor, clutching an uninjured arm and letting out a thin, theatrical shriek.

"Papa!" she wailed. "My arm! She broke my arm!"

She was squeezing her eyes shut, forcing out thick, unconvincing tears.

Carlo did not call the family doctor. He seized me by the hair, hauling me up from the wreckage of shattered glass.

"You will carry your sister to the compound clinic," he spat, his face inches from mine, his grip twisting tighter. "Now."

A warm trickle of blood was already tracing a path down my leg from a deep gash, but I had no choice. I clenched my jaw, bent down, and felt Isabella's weight settle on my back.

The clinic was a mile away, set across the vast, sun-scorched expanse of the dirt training grounds.

Each step was a fresh agony, the sun a hammer against the back of my neck.

"You are nothing," Isabella whispered into my ear, her breath hot and sour.

I did not answer, my world reduced to the task of placing one foot in front of the other.

Isabella's hand moved, pulling a stiletto-sharp pin from her coiled hair. With a sudden, vicious thrust, she drove it into the soft flesh between my shoulder blades.

A gasp tore from my throat as a bloom of white-hot pain erupted in my back. The earth's gravitational pull seemed to triple in an instant. I tried to lock the joints of my thighs, but the muscle fibers mutinied against my will. A moment later, rough gravel slammed into my cheekbone.

Isabella landed nimbly beside me, brushing nonexistent dust from her pristine dress.

The crunch of boots on dirt announced Carlo's arrival. He looked down at me, his face a mask of utter detachment as my blood soaked into the soil.

"Leave her," he said to Isabella, his voice flat and cold. "Let the dirt claim her."

He turned without another glance, his arm protectively around Isabella, and walked away.

I lay there for what felt like an eternity, a prisoner of my own broken body, until the sun bled away below the horizon. The night air, sharp and cold, crept into my wounds, a cruel balm to the fire of the pain but not to the despair that anchored me to the earth. Much later, the sound of boots returned. Two guards, their faces impassive, marched into the gloom, hoisted my limp form between them, and dragged me back to the estate, dumping me onto the stone floor of my cell.

Long after midnight, the groaning protest of the heavy iron door echoed in the cell.

Carlo stood in the doorway, a hulking silhouette flanked by two strangers: a man with the yellowed, rotting stubs of teeth and a woman swathed in foul-smelling rags.

"Your true parents," Carlo's lip curled, his finger pointing at the low-level associate, Sal Maroni. "Pack your things. You leave with them tonight."

Sal stepped further into the dim light, his mouth splitting into a grotesque smile that did not reach his eyes.

I looked at the man who claimed to be my father—this Capo who had raised me for seventeen years, who had just watched me bleed in the dirt and walked away—and I understood with perfect, chilling clarity: he was not done with me yet. Whatever came next, whatever this yellow-toothed stranger had in store, it was only another chapter in Carlo Falcone's lesson. The question was whether I would survive to read the last page.