Mafia Scars (The Accidental Mafia Queen Book 2)

  Mafia Scars

  Khardine Gray

  Copyright © 2019 by Khardine Gray

  Mafia Scars Copyright © 2019 by Khardine Gray

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design © 2019 by Cover by Combs

  Photography- Eric Battershell Photography

  Cover Model - Johnny Kane

  Editor: Julia Goda at Diamond in the Rough Editing

  This work is copyrighted. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The author asserts that all characters and situations depicted in this work of fiction are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations.

  It is intended for mature readers. All characters are 18+ years of age and all sexual acts are consensual.

  Contents

  Mafia Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Also by Khardine Gray

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Mafia Quote

  “Never hate your enemies, it affect your judgement.” Roberto Gerhard

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Khardine Gray

  Chapter 1

  Amelia

  10 years and 9 months ago…

  I buried my mother today.

  I couldn’t believe it. It actually happened. One of my biggest fears in life. Losing her and going through the living nightmare of burying her. Putting her into the ground and watching everything that I’d ever cherished fade away.

  She was my everything.

  Things weren’t supposed to be like this.

  It was all wrong.

  All of it, every last piece of my life.

  Last year this time, I was so happy. So very happy. I thought I must have been experiencing the epitome of my life.

  Epitome. It was a word Madame Bouglaise used when she told our class how she felt when she first got accepted to the Bolshoi Ballet.

  She’d been prima ballerina for years but told our little group that while that was amazing, what had been best and the highlight of her life, was getting the chance and the opportunity when she was first accepted.

  It was that classic phrase, I know I can do it if I just get a chance.

  That was how I felt as I’d entered the grand halls of Julliard last year at the Lincoln Centre.

  I’d just been told I’d been accepted to start my training there for this coming September. My parents and I had been invited to a ‘Come and See day.’ It was an event Julliard did so the following year’s intake of students could get a taster of what life would be like within its talented walls. I’d loved it. I’d absolutely loved it.

  I knew I could be prima ballerina. I could be the best dancer, the star of any show, but what I relished was the chance.

  The opportunity.

  It was so much the better to have my mother there. I’d never seen her look so proud. She was beaming. Face radiant with happiness and love. Excitement for me.

  Excitement for what I would become.

  I remembered the day so well, but that was all it would ever be. A memory. A memory of what could have been.

  September was only two months away. I looked around my beautiful bedroom, fit for a princess, and tears welled up within me.

  I wasn’t going to Julliard. I couldn’t, not after everything. I thought it would have made a great eighteenth birthday present, since I was going to be eighteen the same week I started. Seemed so trivial to think of things like birthdays now.

  My world had changed and shifted into darkness the day my mother died. Exactly two weeks ago today. I still couldn’t believe it.

  Two weeks ago, I’d come home after hanging out with my friends to see a police car pulled up on the drive. I hadn’t even parked my own car properly. Knowing and feeling something was terribly wrong, I parked next to the police and sprinted inside the house, where I got the news.

  There’d been a shootout at the docks, and my mother had gotten caught in the crossfire.

  I was still having trouble processing the explanation.

  A myriad of questions had raced through my mind when I first heard. Questions that still hadn’t been answered. What was my mother doing at the docks? She had no reason to be there. I couldn’t have begun to conjure up why, and not knowing was killing me.

  But the void of knowledge was the least of my worries. Bigger things had come my way.

  I’d lost one parent, and it seemed that I was on the way to losing another.

  My father was…

  He was beside himself when he first found out about my mother. That was natural and normal. I was beside myself too, and still hadn’t stopped crying.

  But him. God. I’d seen a side of him that I didn’t know existed and that opened my eyes to the truth about my family.

  I thought we’d gained our riches simply from developing and selling real estate. However, something more sinister was at work.

  I saw it happen in movies, heard stories on the news about crime families. The mafia. Mafia families like in The Godfather and Goodfellas.

  What I didn’t know was that I was a part of one.

  I was seventeen years old. I’d lived for seventeen years on this earth and never knew that. Never had an ounce of a clue that something didn’t feel right or seem right. Everything had seemed normal to me until that night when we found out about Mom.

  That same night, men who I’d never seen before, came to the house after the police left. Men who you could tell straightaway were bad news.

  Dad tried to get me to stay in my room, but I needed him. I went to my room, but came back downstairs to hear raised voices.

  Dad was saying that he was going to kill someone, and the men had been reeling off names.

  I heard one of them say agent.

  I didn’t think they meant to actually kill anyone, but something told me that I was wrong.

  I hid in the closet in the room next to my father’s office until they left and I was sure he’d gone up to bed. After that, I took the chance to sneak into his office that was always, always off limits.

  I’d thought it was because he was particular, but it wasn’t.

  I snooped around, getting sucked in by the pull of curiosity. I snooped until I found a secret button under the rim of his mahogany desk and watched in complete shock as his bookcase opened up, revealin
g rows of guns, grenades, and other weapons I couldn’t describe.

  The shock made me careless because the drumming of my heart deafened me, so I didn’t hear him come up behind me, catching me in the act of snooping.

  We had such a big argument. Such a terrible argument. However, it was more him freaked out that I’d found out about his secret and yelling at me, telling me that I shouldn’t have invaded his privacy and that I needed to keep quiet about it. All the while I kept asking him why he had the guns and what it all meant.

  The night had ended with me going to my room in tears, in pain.

  Things weren’t the same after.

  And they still weren’t.

  I was in my room now, waiting. Waiting for I didn’t know what. We’d come back from the cemetery four hours ago, and night had fallen.

  My door opened, and Millicent came inside. She’d been my nanny and our head housekeeper since I was born. I was too old for a nanny now, but she still took care of me like always. Truthfully, she was the one thing that kept me going in this whole nightmare.

  She carried a tray with milk and cookies like she used to when I was little. She’d always end her shift with the notion, and often the cookies were ones she’d made.

  I forced a smile I really didn’t feel.

  “Amelia, please eat these,” she pleaded.

  I was already so thin, and I hadn’t eaten properly since Mom’s death. A nibble here and there of bread maybe. Other than that, I didn’t have an appetite for anything.

  My eyes fell to the softness of the plush cream carpet that surrounded my feet. I was sitting by the window with my knees hugged to my chest, just watching nothing outside.

  I couldn’t eat the cookies, as great as they smelled.

  Millicent came up to me with them and set the tray down on the nightstand next to me.

  “I’m not hungry,” I told her.

  She lowered herself to the ground, sitting in front of me. “I used to be able to bribe you with a story or two when you were little.”

  “Those days are long gone.” There was so much on my mind that I wanted to talk about. I’d shunned everyone. Friends and family alike, for what little family I had.

  Day by day I’d pieced various things together.

  My uncle and cousin had been shot a few years back. My mother had been caught in a crossfire. I found an army’s worth of guns in my father’s office.

  Today was when I came to the conclusion of the truth.

  Today, as I’d watched my father mourn my mother, and he’d barely looked at me.

  “You have to eat something. How else will you be strong enough to go to Julliard?” She tried to sound hopeful. Talking about the one thing I’d spent my whole life working towards should have instilled something positive in me, but it didn’t and wouldn’t.

  “I’m not going,” I told her. Sadness filled my voice.

  She gasped and reached out to touch my arm. “Amelia, no, you must. Your mother would have wanted you to.”

  “I can’t.” Dancing was tied to my emotions. Happiness and sadness.

  What they weren’t tied to was loss. Of course, loss was an emotion too. Sadness at its depth.

  Having experienced it and the numbness it brought with it, I could say that it was something that sucked the life out of you. It attacked your soul and killed everything inside a person that made them who they were.

  It did that and replaced it with something else. For me that was vengeance, and right now, I felt that my father had something to do with my mother’s death. He might not have pulled the trigger or been with her at the time, but I’d seen and heard enough to know he’d had a hand in it.

  “Amelia, dancing is you, and you are dancing. I’ve never seen a more beautiful dancer. It comes from deep inside you. You mustn’t abandon it.” She gave my hand a gentle squeeze.

  “Thank you for your kind words.” It was all I could say, although I had so much more I wanted to talk about.

  I wondered… Did she know about Dad? Had she seen the guns too, or anything else that hadn’t seemed right in the house?

  Millicent didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would be okay with it. She was sweet and loving. Kindness in abundance rippled from her.

  No… I didn’t think she knew. Dad had an office in the city that he worked from. He never usually conducted business here. Not that I knew of anyway.

  But then… what did I really know?

  She leaned forward, kissed my forehead, and stood up to go. “Call me if you need me. I’m just on the end of a line, and I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  I nodded even though I had no intention of calling her.

  About half an hour after she left, I made my way down to Dad’s office. The door was closed, but I opened it and went in.

  He sat behind his desk, hands holding his head. His gaze met mine as I walked in, leaving the door open.

  “I want the truth,” I demanded. Everything inside me had reached a boiling point, and I was ready to explode. “Mom died because of you, didn’t she?”

  A tear ran down his cheek, answering my question and making my heart sink.

  “I didn’t know she would be at the docks. She was never supposed to be anywhere near there, and no one was supposed to die.”

  I’d heard there were four other deaths. The shootout had been between the feds and these guys.

  Dad was talking like he knew more than everyone else did.

  “What does it all mean? What did you do?” I started crying again, unable to conceive what it all meant.

  He stood up and came around to me, towering over me with his height. “Amelia, my darling, you must never speak to anyone about this. Never, please.”

  “Why? What if I went to the cops now and told them it was you?” I didn’t care anymore. My father had been the apple of my eye. My hero. My parents to me were the best a girl could ask for, and they’d treated me as if I was the most important thing in their world. My father had, however, managed to destroy the vision, showing me it was all a façade.

  “I don’t care about me. I care about you. There is more to this that you will not understand. You can hate me if you want, but I will protect you until the day I die. I will love you until I draw my last breath. All I ask is that you don’t ask anyone any questions, and you mustn’t speak of any concerns you have.”

  At that I started sobbing. “Dad…She died because of you?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then explain it to me.”

  He shook his head, and a solemn expression filled his face. “No, amore mio. No. The less you know, the better. It will protect you. I would rather have you hate me than know the truth.”

  “The guns, the deaths. Uncle Antonio and Cousin Bernardo died by guns too. Are we part of the mafia?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again.

  The sound of the front door being opened with force and footsteps interrupted us.

  Three large men wearing black suits rushed inside. They had the standard criminal look. Hardened and fierce.

  “Boss, we have trouble. Tag needs your help. There’s a fed on...” The man stopped talking when he saw me.

  The look on my father’s face immediately chastised him.

  “Boss?” I breathed, barely audible, but Dad heard me.

  “Go to your room, Amelia, and stay there.”

  “We buried Mom today. I need you.” Fresh tears streamed down my cheeks.

  “I’ll be back. Go to your room and stay there. Go,” he barked.

  I moved, leaving them, but I stopped at the top of the stairs and listened.

  “Feds are asking questions, and Tag needs your help to get out of town,” the man who’d been speaking before continued.

  “I’ll arrange transport,” Dad replied. “Did you get the agents on the list?”

  “All dead except Peterson.”

  “Leave Peterson to me. He’s mine. I’ll cut off his head myself for his carelessness.”
>
  I clamped a hand over my mouth. Dad was talking about killing someone.

  I watched them walk into the passageway ready to leave. Dad was the last one. He stopped, almost instinctively, and looked up the stairs toward me.

  I was standing at the top, where the banister curved to go on the next rung of steps. It was a place where I could have hidden better if I’d gone more into the curve, but I’d failed to do that. So, he saw me. He saw me and gave me a hardened look, knowing I’d listened in on the conversation.

  He cut his eyes away from me and continued with the men, closing the door behind him.

  I went back to my room, looked out the window, and saw a host of men standing outside. While some went away in the cars, some stayed and stood on guard at the entrance to the drive.

  Guarding the house, guarding me.

  I cried myself to sleep and stayed in my room for the next two days. Millicent came by on several occasions trying to get me to eat.

  I refused everything.

  I couldn’t eat and could barely focus. I was sure the two were intertwined, but I didn’t care.

  Every day felt worse, and there were all these strange men around I didn’t know.

  Saturday came, and I decided to eat. It was after dinner time. I made myself a sandwich, which I gobbled down, and another, which I ate just as fast.

  The doorbell rang, and I left the kitchen to answer it.

  A dark-haired man stood outside.

  “Hi, I’m Agent Peterson with the FBI. I’m looking for—” He didn’t even get the words out of his mouth properly before one of the men I’d seen work with my father grabbed him.

  Where did he come from so fast? I never saw him.