Pampered By The Ruthless Mafia Boss

I was a top medical prodigy with a bright future and a loving fiancé, until my mother's heart failed and she desperately needed life-saving treatments.

But my own father refused to pay the $12,000 medical bill. Instead, my fiancé kicked me out of our shared home to marry my stepsister Sabrina, and my father used his money to buy her a brand-new Porsche.

I later discovered the horrifying truth. My father had deliberately framed my medical mentor, completely destroying my career, just to get a half-million-dollar payout from the Russian mob to clear his gambling debts. He traded my future and my mother's life for a luxury car and a lavish wedding for his stepdaughter. Left with absolutely nothing, I was forced to sell my silence and become a governess for New York's most ruthless mafia Don just to keep my mother alive.

Sabrina even sent me a cheap, scratchy bridesmaid dress, demanding I stand behind her at the altar to watch her marry my ex.

"You need to stand behind me in a cheap dress and watch me win. Because if you don't, Father will cut off your mother's life support."

They thought they had crushed me into the dirt, expecting me to be their submissive victim forever.

But they didn't know the terrifying mafia king had already handed me the irrefutable evidence of their crimes. On the day of the wedding, I threw that cheap dress in the trash, put on a custom black haute couture gown, and walked into the grand ballroom on the arm of the Don.

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Chapter 1

Serena POV

The bill for my mother's heart medication is due by tomorrow's dusk: twelve thousand dollars, in cash. If I fail, the underground doctors will simply let her die. This fact is a small, cold stone in my gut, the reason I now stand in a corridor lit by a single, flickering bulb, staring at a syndicate recruitment flyer.

The flyer itself, a flimsy sheet of paper, is secured by a strip of yellowed tape to the peeling concrete wall of the off-the-books clinic. The air around me carries the sharp bite of cheap bleach layered over old blood.

I read the numbers again.

Fifty thousand dollars a month. Room and board included. Governess to a four-year-old boy.

Only syndicate money looks like this. Only the mafia pays a fortune for silence and obedience.

I pull my phone from my coat pocket. My hands are numb from the wind that whips off the East River, a damp chill that seeps into the bones, but my chest feels entirely hollow.

Three days ago, I had a home. A fiancé. A clear path toward a career in pediatric medicine.

Now, I have nothing but a dying mother in a heavily guarded ICU room just down this very hallway.

Zane's voice, from a few nights ago, still echoes in my memory. We were in our shared safehouse when he cast me out. He is a low-ranking associate, a man whose ambition to become a Capo has corroded everything human in him. He told me my usefulness had expired. His next words were the announcement of his marriage to my stepsister, Sabrina.

I can still see the living room, every piece of furniture painstakingly chosen by me. I watched Sabrina emerge from the bedroom in a wedding gown-a garish thing, bought with the funds meant for my mother's surgery. She had offered a thin, triumphant laugh, telling me I had only been warming her bed.

There were no tears. I only looked to my father, Silvio, who stood near the door, his shoulders held in a permanent, cowardly slump. He owes half a million dollars to rival factions, the predictable end for a degenerate gambler. He had looked at me then, his eyes pleading, and told me to step aside. He swore Zane's bride-price would cover everything.

It was a lie. Not a dime went to my mother. The money vanished into the maw of his debts, the remainder handed to Sabrina for a down payment on a Porsche.

My world had already been collapsing. My mentor, Dr. Carlo Rossi, was ruined by an anonymous whistleblower, his name dragged through the mud for malpractice he did not commit. As his sole protégé, my own career was poisoned by the association. In one swift motion, I had lost my family, my fiancé, my future.

I push the memories down, tamping them into a cold, hard knot in my stomach. I cannot afford to feel the ache of that betrayal right now.

I look at the phone number on the flyer and tap out the digits.

The line rings twice before a woman answers. Her voice is crisp, professional, and entirely devoid of warmth.

"State your business," she says.

"I'm calling about the governess position," I say.

There is a brief pause on the line.

"How old are you?" she asks.

"Twenty-four," I reply.

"That's too young. The boy requires specialized care. We need someone with experience."

The phone's cheap plastic casing lets out a faint creak under the pressure of my thumb, its screen's edge pressing a pale crescent into my palm.

"I have a Master's degree in Clinical Medicine from Columbia University," I say, my throat so tight I have to force the words past the constriction. "I minored in child psychology. I was the sole protégé of Dr. Carlo Rossi. I am highly trained in pediatric pathology, and I am entirely accustomed to discretion."

The line goes completely silent.

The name of my mentor carries a certain gravity in the underworld. Dr. Rossi saved countless syndicate lives before my father ruined him.

"You are Dr. Rossi's student?" the woman asks. Her tone loses its flat, administrative quality, replaced by a sharp edge of interest.

"Yes," I say.

"Why are you applying to be a governess?"

"Because I need the money," I say. "And I know how to keep my mouth shut."

I hear the faint sound of a pen scratching on paper over the line.

"The Marcello Estate," the woman says. "Tomorrow at nine in the morning. Arrive at the main gates. Do not be late."

The call disconnects.

I lower the phone. The corridor holds nothing but the scent of chlorine, yet a dull drumming reverberates deep in my ears, making the very veins in my throat pulse in time with it.

The Marcello Famiglia.

They are the most powerful mafia family in New York. And their Don, Lucian Marcello, is the most feared man in the city. Rumors say he killed his first man at sixteen. That he dismantled an entire rival faction in a single night without lifting his own weapon. That no one who has crossed him has ever been found.

I just invited myself into the devil's house.

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