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EMMALEIGH LOADER
Copyright © 2023 by Emmaleigh Loader
All rights reserved.
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.
PROLOGUE
Alessia
“Shattered - Trading Yesterday” – The Age of Information
“I warned you about playing with the trash, Alessia,” my father growled as my heart hammered inside my too-small chest. The events of the last half hour were still too much for me to digest. I couldn’t understand how we’d been playing so carefree and without burden only to end up here, with a blade to my best friend’s throat.
Tremendous horror washed through me as I stared into those safe ocean blues.
He pleaded with me not to fight for him, not to let my father see an ounce of weakness, but I couldn’t help it.
I couldn’t help the vulnerability that bled through my desperate tone, while I pleaded with my father not to take away the only good thing in my life. “Daddy, please. Daddy, don’t. We’re just friends. He’s my friend, Daddy. Just a friend!”
I had known him for almost two years. We were five when we met and he’d been my light ever since. The only one who knew me without actually knowing me. My family was well known in Ravensdale. In all of Devilwood County for that matter. Friendships were either forced or faked.
But not with him.
The dirty boy from all those years ago.
I had run into the woods that bordered our property late one evening. Needing an escape, a moment to not be the disappointing heir to the bloodied throne and just be a child. I’d spent all day in lessons. Learning something my mother called proper etiquette. It was so tiresome, even now I remembered how desperately I wanted to be anywhere other than there. Despite being the only child, I knew I was never to inherit all that my father had. My father never kept it quiet how much my mother disappointed him. That no matter how much he ‘rutted’ her brutaly, in order for her to give him a son, it never worked.
I wasn’t sure what rutting meant, but I knew brutality.
It hadn’t happened yet, the wanted son, and I was unsure if it ever would. So this sad world, would be all that I’d know.
This emptiness inside of me that left me feeling so disconnected and alone. My parents loved me, at least I always thought they had until this very moment.
Luigi and my mother were both stuck with me and I, them.
It became too much to always be prim and proper.
To never dirty my dress when all I wanted to do was tear it to shreds. I preferred trousers. It made it so much easier to move around.
My mother would’ve had a hernia if she’d seen my white gown sullied that night. But I didn’t care, I just needed to be free. Anywhere other than in that too-stuffy room, with those all-too-scary men. My father was holding a meeting and it seemed that one of the men had brought their young son who had the same idea of getting out of there in mind.
I had only seen him or his family in or around my home that one time. I never knew who the family was or why they were there, but that didn’t matter because we had each other.
He was my only true friend, and when I was with him, we could do anything that we pleased. I’d often flee the compound of my father’s kingdom with one of my father’s men. He was like an uncle to me and the only person who allowed me some sense of independence. Every time I begged and pleaded, he had no choice but to give in and take me into town. We’d play for hours and then Ronnie would get me all cleaned up and back to looking like the perfect princess before he returned me back to my parents as if I hadn’t left peace only to return to hell.
My family was dangerous, that I’d known since the moment I’d been born, but until this very second, I’d never seen my father’s hatred and indifferent frown of disgust aimed at me.
I might not have been his true heir—a female born to lead was unfathomable—but I’d thought he loved me. I really did.
“He is so much more than that, Alessia. The fact you don’t know it, speaks volumes. Blacks don’t have friends. That, my dear, is the cost of power.”
I felt cold.
Icy bone-brittle fingers wrapped around my heart in a brutal vice and I forgot how to breathe. My chest constricted and I thought I’d faint right there and then. I couldn’t let that happen though, I needed to see this side of my father. I needed to see all of him and remember it so I’d never let my guard down around this monster again. It was so very clear to me now, how much I’d truly been blind.
“It’s okay, Lessie. Don’t look. Close your eyes. It’s okay.” He had been the only grace I’d found in this sick world of darkness. He didn’t have any ties to the mafia, to this family. If he had, I’d have seen him more than that one time. Seen his family.
