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Chapter 1

Myra

The house was unusually quiet when I came home. Shards of glass littered the ground that leads to the stairs. Fear raced down my spine when I thought of my mother. Where is she? Why is glass everywhere like this?

With wobbly steps, I walked up the stairs, heading to my mother’s room. The moment I swung the door open, the scent of alcohol harassed my nose and then I see my mother sprawled on the floor with a bottle of whiskey in her hand.

I look upon her lifeless form and know that she doesn't even know that I am there. Her brunette hair is like a bird’s nest, tangled and tousled.

“Mom…” I rush to her side and hunker down. Before I can touch her, her eyes snap open.

“Myra? You…are…here.” She stutterered

Seeing her like this scares the shit out of me because it doesn’t always end well for me.

“Mother?” The word hangs in the air when my mother's face distorts into a snarl.

“You!!!” She grits out. I have to go, I tell myself when my mother stumbles to her feet, her eyes blazing. “I hate…seeing you. You have his eyes…” She stutters while I shake my head, tears running down my cheeks.

I crawl backward, watching her movement. I thought I had seen an opportunity to escape when my mother whirled towards her nightstand but I was mistaken.

Just as I reach the door handle to swing it open, my nerves racing like I had run a marathon, I feel the slash of a whip at my back.

Thwack!!

“Mother!” A scream rips from my mouth as I fall to my knees. Another whip lands on my back, adding more pain to the one I already feel.

No. No. I gasp inside me, my mind whirling.

“Stop, Mom. Please…” Warbled cries vibrate from my lips. My mother, seeming to get her senses back, stops. I hear the whip landing on the floor and her dry voice echoes.

“Myra…? My God, Myra? What…did…I do?” She rasps, coming over to hold me. I pant as well as she does. My face buried into her slender shoulder.

“I’m…so sorry, Myra…” She gushed, fingering my hair while I cry in pain. When I pull back, I see my mother’s lashes covered with tears.

I opened my mouth to speak but realizing again her eyes have dilated into devilish black orbs. Instantly, she tightened her hands on my neck, choking me.

I sputtered a cough. “Ka-hak. Ka-hak.”

“Mom…” I choked out the words as her obsidian black eyes watch me. With a crazed look on her face, she spews. “Go to hell with me!”


My golden eyes shot open, and I pop up from my bed, my heart roars, and my head pounds like a drum. I dart my trembling hands over my face, realizing it’s wet. Is it my tears or sweat? I have no idea. These dreams always haunt me.

I never had a smooth childhood experience. Unlike others, my life has been hell living with my psychotic mother and dangerous father who always locked us up in a dark room.

I come from the Buonarotti family. One of the biggest mafia families in Scilly. From the tales my mother told me, I was the child she never wanted to have. I’m a product of rape.

My father, Enzo Buonarotti, was the ruler of our crime family. He had this unhealthy obsession for my mother who was his youngest brother’s wife back then.

That obsession drove him to kill his own brother and take my mother hostage. Every night under my father’s roof brought my mother pain. She was used as his sex toy, a situation that later resulted in her having me.

My father died tragically, but the truth was that he was poisoned to death by my mother.

I always reminded her of my father, hence my mother ended up punishing me. When I was ten years old, my mother lost her sanity again and ended up locking me in a dark closet like my father always did to us.

She said she was tired of seeing me. My sharp green eyes reminded her of the man she hated the most.

I was so afraid of being in the dark. I cried out, begging my mother to let me out.

My voice grew hoarse from crying, my fingers bled from how I scratched on the door, wanting a way out.

Fear has never been so strong in me as it was that day. I spent what looked like an eternity before my savior arrived. Leon Giordano, my stepfather.

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