Page 64 of That Time I Accidentally Took Over the Mafia

I pass a table against the wall. A vase of flowers is still fragrant, but I can’t see any color in the soft petals that have wilted, dried, with some crumbled pieces resting on the table’s surface. I stop, trying to look at the framed picture. I see me and one of my parents. I see smiles. It feels happy, but I can’t tell who it is.

The edges of my vision blur, darkening as the details try to hide themselves from me.

The first slap rings out, and I twist my head toward the source. My body tenses as I instinctively wince, feeling the sting of the sound echo through me.

My cheek warms, and I press my fingers to it again. Had he hit me too? Or am I just feeling the pain of this moment with my mother in the memory?

I rub my eyes again. “Focus,” I tell myself as I step through the doorway and see blurred stairs before me. They are wide, lavish, with deep red carpet—the color of blood. The same color I painted my nails.

I fan my hand out before me, looking at them when another slap echoes, and I look up.

“You’ll thank me for this one day,” he barks at her.

I see her now. In vivid detail, my mother. She has medium-length dark hair, lighter than mine and shorter, falling just below her shoulders. Her face is red where she was struck, and I look at my feet, touching my own cheek again.

“You can’t take this from me,” her voice is shaky, but she puts bravado behind it.

Her scream reaches me first, then the thudding of her body falling down the stairs. She jerks and tumbles, powerless, crashing against the hard steps.

I freeze. I can’t look away. I’m rooted to the spot, watching, helpless.

Her arm begins to bleed, and I’m stuck, staring at the white bone protruding from her arm. She’s twitching, her body lying in a curled position, facing me. Her face is already bruising, her lip busted as blood covers her teeth.

She tries to smile at me. Tries to soften what I’m seeing. But that is impossible. “Happy birthday,” she whispers before her eyes close and her head thumps to the floor.

My eyes are wide, and my brow is pinched as I look up at my father. He’s standing at the top of the stairs, breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling in sharp, erratic bursts. His eyes are wild, his face contorted in a way that sends a chill down my spine.

He’s looking straight at me.

The mask he wore, the hero I thought he was—it’s gone. All that’s left is the monster behind it, standing there, looking back at me.

It’s the moment the illusion cracked.

The moment I stopped being his treasure.

My mind is like a flower petal caught in the wind, floating somewhere between what I’ve learned and what I can’t bear to fully accept. The images keep spinning around the revelation, like a hamster on a wheel I can’t seem to stop. The pieces are all there, but the truth is still too heavy for me to wrap my hands around.

My father killed my mother.

There’s no romanticized version of her drowning on a sailboat and leaving behind a daughter and a grieving husband. No storm or two-week search for her that I’ve clung to for years. No—he knew where she was the entire time. He covered up her death like it was just another inconvenience in his world.

Maybe it was an accident. A mistake in the heat of the moment. But the cold truth is still there—he killed her. And I—I was there. I saw it, but I couldn’t understand it. Not then. Not at that age.

I wipe away the sudden sting in my eyes, the feeling of helplessness creeping in, and I find myself closing off thatmemory again. It’s too much. But I know I can’t let it go. Not now. Not when it could have been the beginning of everything.

And that’s where the second part of the puzzle clicks into place.

Maybe Eloise’s rumor wasn’t so far-fetched after all. Maybe my father didn’t just want me out of the way because of any inheritance. Maybe he saw me as a witness to his crime—his biggest regret—and he tried to silence me before I could remember. He knew. He always knew. He was afraid I’d remember and bring his empire down.

Maybe that’s why I was the one he kept closeted all these years—his little insurance policy. The daughter who would never speak out. Because if I had... If I had just understood what was happening... maybe I could have stopped him. But I couldn’t, and I didn’t.

Maybe that’s why the hits started. Maybe he wasn’t just protecting his empire. Maybe he was protecting himself from me.

I shake my head, trying to clear the fog that clouds my mind, but it doesn’t work. All I can see is his face, the man I used to idolize. The man who destroyed my childhood with something so heinous my child’s mind locked it away.

Locked it away in the same manner Luca locks himself away from me.

His presence feels like a weight on my chest, a constant reminder of the distance he’s putting between us, the way he keeps stepping away whenever I try to get closer. His anger, his frustration—they come out in his silence, in the way he shuts down every time I push him.

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