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Chapter One
Savina’s POV
I sat up in my bed, the thunder roaring outside shaking the walls of the house. The lightning flashed outside the storm, picking up momentum as it hovered over the city.
I always loved the rain. There was something eerily calming about it.
I rubbed my eyes and reached for my phone. I scrolled through the messages I had from my friends, then pulled the blankets off my body.
I hadn’t wanted to come back for the summer, but my father had insisted that I make the trip back from Washington. I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss college. When I was there, I wasn’t Savina Baratelli, the Mafia Princess. I was simply Sav, a girl majoring in art and philosophy. I was the complete opposite of what this calloused world had made me.
My naked feet padded against the marble floors as I made my way downstairs. I always likened the estate to a golden cage. White marble floors, tall white limestone pillars, and large floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed a view of the outside world.
I had grown up on the Baratelli estate, and to some it might have felt too cold and uninviting, but for me… it had always been home.
I could pinpoint where all the milestones in my life had taken place: my first kiss, my first fall, the first time I rode a bike on my own, the first time I watched my older brother Fede become a man with his First Bleed—meaning, his first kill.
All the young boys in the syndicate had to carry out an execution of a traitor that had been found guilty of committing crimes against the organization before they could climb up the ladder. It was a sort of rite of passage.
All those moments ran through the walls of this place.
I traced my fingers over the frame of the family portrait that hung at the top of the stairs. Even in the dim lighting of the hallway, I could still see the shine in both my parents' eyes as we all stared at the camera.
My father was king of New York, not just the city but the State. His territory was vast, and the roots he had set in place ran deep into the sewer systems. The Baratelli DNA ran through the roads and walls of this State. Everyone knew who Antonio Baratelli was. Politicians feared him, his enemies despised him, and the general public both loathed and praised him. But one thing these groups all had in common was that they respected my father. He had built an empire out of nothing, and never once had he lost his ways. He stuck to a code, one that kept his honor and valor intact. The code had three main rules, and you never swayed from them: rule one, no child should be harmed, for they are innocent; rule two, never shoot a man in the back, because it's indication of cowardice; rule three, blood means nothing in the Family scheme. Only thing that matters is loyalty, and respect.
My father trusted very few people, and those he did trust could be counted on one hand. He protected his people ferociously and spoke with bullets often. There was no room for second chances to him. He was the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of guy, and that was how he had raised both my brother and me. Fede would take over the business after my father stepped down, but dad still thought it necessary to teach me the ways of the syndicate. He didn’t discriminate against my gender like most Mafia Heads did. He believed both a girl and a boy should earn their position in this life.
I took the first step and walked down the stairs. My heart felt a little uneasy as I made my way to the foyer. Something didn’t feel right. Usually, there would be a guard posted at the door, but for some reason the large wooden door was unguarded today.
You’re thinking too much, I told myself, trying to calm my raging heart. The estate may as well have been a fortress. Not even Superman himself could break into this place.
I stepped onto the floor of the foyer and turned to go in the direction of the kitchen, but stopped on my tracks when I heard the sound of glass breaking from the opposite side of the hallway. Then I heard the undistinguishable sound of a gun going off.
I flinched, but instead of turning and running away, which would be any human reaction to such a situation, I bolted in the direction of the gunfire.
As I sprinted down the hallway towards the sound, I could feel the dread seeping deep into my bones. If there was gunfire in the house, that could only mean one of two things: there either was an execution in motion, or someone had broken into our home and going after my father.
I raced down the hallway and saw the door to my father’s study left slightly ajar.
“Dolg byl vyplachen,” a strange voice said from inside.
I didn’t know what they had said, but I knew the language enough to know that it was Russian.
My blood ran cold.
Without thinking it all the way through I barged into the study in a panic, the blood-curdling scream that left my body startling the man in the black attire. His face was turned away from me, his body looming over my brother and father’s still bodies. Their chests didn’t rise and fall anymore, no matter how long I stared at them, willing them to. The blood that oozed from their bodies confirmed what I already knew to be true.
I pressed my heart-shaped pendant necklace which doubled as a panic button to notify all the guards on standby that there was something wrong.
Two seconds later, the house alarm blared through the walls. This room was going to be flooded with guards soon enough, but by the time they got here it would be too late. It had already been too late, because my father and brother were... I couldn't say it.
I stood there still as stone, unable to do anything. My eyes were glued to my father and brother's bodies lying on the floor with blood pooling around them.
The intruder looked over his shoulder, his ice-frosty blue eyes staring at me with intrigue and curiosity. I had never seen his face before, but the mark on his neck was one that I had engraved in my mind from the time I was a little girl.
The three-horned bull—a Bratva mark that belonged to a specific family. A long-forgotten Russian family that had been driven out by my father.
“Poka my ne vstretimsya snova,” he said, smirking, and without another word he rushed toward the broken window and bolted.
