Page 103 of Merciless Queen

My brother admitted something last night. Something that really says he’s adapted to Papa’s training as well as I did. Maybe even better. Depends on your definition of “better” and “cruelty.”

What’s crueller?

Selling your fifteen-year-old daughter’s virginity for political and financial gain, or paying a group of men to kidnap your son and his girlfriend and rape her repeatedly, all to make a point to him about his mandatory enlistment into the Bratva?

Dimitri doesn’t know the whole thing was a set-up, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time until he does. That boy is a natural killer. He’s proficient at the training, which is why he runs from it.

This time, it’ll be my brother who’s doing the running.

August 16, 2015

The young Mancini boy took control of his Family.

Let’s see how this goes. If I were him, I’d seek revenge.

April 4, 2020

Been some time.

For a while, I lost this journal. Or maybe I hid it from myself.

It’s been five years and the attacks haven’t stopped. The Mancini Family’s grown stronger under Zeno’s leadership and, while admitting this is unfaithful to the history of my organization, he’s stronger than us.

Thanks to spies stationed in Italy, I know when he’s coming for me, so I disappear at the right time. Vanessa’s away at school and Ivan manages the businesses in my absence, so it allows me to go into hiding for a couple of months, before re-emerging for a short while, playing Pakhan and Papa, before doing it all over.

The other Families are not helping this time. I’ve played my cards with Serafina, and none of them want Vanessa as a wife.

Fuck.

I need someone outside the Cosa Nostra and the Bratva. The next strongest organization is the New York Famiglia. Vanessa can marry the boss’s son, Erico Rossi.

May 10, 2020

There’s a complication with Erico Rossi. He’s already married to a nobody from Canada. It’s an easy fix if he turns down my offer and refuses to switch wives; his willdisappear. The next time I resort to jotting anything down in this journal, Vanessa should be a Famiglia wife and the young Mancini will be destroyed.

The glowfrom the full moon has replaced the sunlight that bathed the office when I began my search, marking the passage of time. Now, with only the lamp in the corner of the room, I’m sitting in a dimmed room, surrounded by useless books.

All of them were useless except for the one not even stored on the shelves. The one in my lap. The one that detailedeverything.When I assumed they’d be a madman’s ramblings, they turned out to be so much more. They were the emotional descent from who he began as and who I knew him to be.

Every villain has a backstory, and mine was bred from love lost. From a mother who died, to a father who trained him in villainy. A wife who he fell for, despite trying to keep his icy heart in the freezer, to a daughter who shared the wife’s features, and it hurt to care for her. His backstory is a testament to the complexity of human beings.

Not sure how long after I finish reading that the journal falls shut on my lap, like a spell book binding itself with magic after its user got what they needed from its pages.

Papa knew about Serafina. Within the pages are details of an agreement I presume Zeno has no clue about. A marriage contract that signs his sister to another Cosa Nostra capo. The same sister he’s spent years keeping away from mob life, all for her ending to be that of a mafia daughter.

This will kill him. It could spark an internal war within the Cosa Nostra because Zeno would definitely fight to keep Serafina free from a contractual marriage.

I have to tell him.

This isn’t about him and me, or the war I called a ceasefire on. It’s about the sister we share.

I flip the journal back open, going to the first few passages about his family, and Mama. He spoke about her so little throughout my life, but it’s insightful the way his mind crumbled after her death. She was the last straw after his own mother. Then began the slow descent of villainy, the loss of sanity.

And the end of his love for me.

My fingers stroke over the January 20, 1998 passage.I’m utterly in love with her. Never thought such a tiny creature could hold so much power over me.

It’s cruel to think, maybe if Mama didn’t get killed, I might have had a father who cared. He might have been a person who didn’t kidnap and rape his enemy’s wife, ignore his other daughter until she had a use, and sell off my virginity.

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