Page 108 of That Time I Accidentally Took Over the Mafia

Three Months Later

So, that’s the story of how I accidentally took over the mafia.

I solved the mystery surrounding my mother’s death, resolved my daddy issues, and amassed a fortune the likes of which I could never have imagined.

Jax, Luca, Enzo, and I jumped into action immediately. The mess my mother left behind was monumental—like trying to untangle a knot that just kept getting bigger.

Around thirty years ago, a family war broke out between the Romano’s and the Caputo’s when the head of the Sicilian’s challenged my grandfather for control. The war was bloody and divided the city. After the Caputo’s emerged victorious, retaining their hold over their territories, unification became their priority. My mother was betrothed to my father in hopes of ending the feud forever.

The Sicilian empire was distributed among Caputo allies, including Enzo’s family, which acquired the members’ club in Butte—still sporting the Romano family crest.

My mother, however, staged her death and rebuilt the Sicilian mob from the ashes of the war, making it just as powerful as the Italians and they’ve remained completely out of sight, until the time was right.

She was supposed to be dead. The Sicilians, gone. No one ever had any notion to even consider either possibility the cause of all this trouble.

If she hadn’t been a ruthless, murderous psychopathic cunt, it might have been impressive.

Now, combining both empires, the Italians are at the top of the criminal world, and I am their queen.

Something about that night at the lodge, eating pizza with my men, made everything come rushing back. Memories I had blocked out since I was six. Memories of my mother’s cruelty and manipulations that shaped everything.

My mother wasn’t the victim—I’d been wrong all along. My father wasn’t the abusive one; she was. I saw the truth, the twisted games she played, the self-inflicted injuries she used to manipulate him.

“You made me do this. You always make me do this,” I recalled my father saying.

That day was my sixth birthday. She had missed it again. My father made excuses for her, as he always did, convincing me that she really did love me—she was just busy. Lying to his treasure, justifying a mother who had never wanted her child.

That night, I heard my mother’s voice and went to see if she had a birthday present for me. Their fight escalated, as it always did. She began hitting herself, slamming her body against the wall, trying to create a bruise. I stood there in the doorway, frozen, my little mind unable to process the bizarre scene.

She locked eyes with me in the reflection of the mirror and smiled—a chilling, toothy grin, bloodied from her self-inflictedwounds. My father faced me, but he hadn’t seen me yet. Her body blocked his view of me.

She arched her back, swung her arms, and threw herself down the flight of stairs. She didn’t even try to stop herself. Tumbling and flipping, she landed at my feet.

Her arm was broken, the white bone sticking out of her skin. I looked up at my father, who stared back at me in horror, knowing what I had witnessed. “Happy Birthday.” She said with a bloody mouth before she beat her head against the ground.

My father rushed me out of there, begged me to stay in my room.

An ambulance came for her. My father brought me out of my room, delivering me to the table with a cup of hot chocolate because I was shivering. The next morning, he woke me with a teddy bear. I clung to it a few weeks later when she disappeared.

After all these years, I finally understood why he shielded me. He was scared for me. We grew apart. The assaults, the hidden war always took him from me. My mother organizing hits or raids on important days like my birthday, made sure she tormented me too in all of this.

I grew to hate him. And he let me hate him.

He thought keeping me distant would protect me from the war’s reach. In a way, he did what Jax, Enzo, and Luca tried to do—pushed me away, thinking it would keep me safe.

If only I could go back in time, I’d ask him to protect his treasure by keeping it close, never letting me go.

When we moved into the estate, I found journals my father had written to me. I spent hours in his closet, surrounded by his things, reading his thoughts, and mourning him, the relationship we never had. Some entries were advice on running the mafia, on being a good boss. Others poured out his regret—for the mother I had, for the father he wasn’t.

I couldn’t leave that closet; for weeks, I would end up in there at some point in the day, huddled on the floor with a journal or clutching a suit jacket and crying.

I knew we needed to clear his things out but I felt like I was getting to know him in there, surrounded by his scent and it panicked me thinking about losing it.

I had nothing else from him.

Enzo brought in specialists who tested the air and took samples. A week later, he handed me a custom candle that smelled just like my father’s closet—a perfect blend of old cigars, expensive cologne, and leather. Now, I burn one every day in my home office.

Cleaning up the mafia empire wasn’t easy. There were betrayals to uncover and “conversations” to be had—Jax and Enzo handled those. They were my guard dogs, protecting me from the mess my parents left behind.

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