The tyrant mafia's weakness

Chapter 1: The Strike of Disaster The copper taste of blood and the heavy, suffocating smell of burning wood spread throughout the mansion like a disease. Chaos had taken over. The maids had already deserted , fleeing for their lives through the back doors, leaving the family completely unprotected as the estate crumbled. The attack had been a sudden, terrifying flash of shattered glass, the brutal shouts of strange men, and the sound of cold gunshots echoing down the long, marble hallways. In a desperate panic, Marcus’s mother grabbed him by the shoulders. Her hands were shaking violently as she shoved him into the hidden, cramped secret passage built behind the office wall. She looked at him one last time, her eyes wide with terror, and screamed at him to run into the forest and escape. Before he could even call out to her, she closed the heavy door shut, locking him in the darkness. Marcus stayed completely still where he stood. The air inside the passage was dusty and cold, and his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped animal. He pressed his face against the wood, peering out through a tiny, hidden spy hole to see what was happening in the office. Then, he saw it. A gun was pointed directly at his father, who was kneeling helplessly on the hardwood floor, injured beyond recognition from the brutal beating he had already taken. In the far corner of the room, his mother was backed against the wall, crying silently as another weapon was pointed directly at her chest. The masked men started speaking in a rapid, harsh Italian. Their voices were angry, demanding something Marcus couldn't understand. His father grew more and more agitated, spitting back words in defiance, refusing to break. And then, Marcus heard the sickening, deafening blast of a gunshot. His father slumped heavily to the ground, motionless. "Ahhhh!" A piercing, shattered scream tore from his mother’s throat. Breaking away from the guard, she rushed blindly to his father’s side, begging him to open his eyes, to wake up, to look at her. Warm tears streamed down her cheeks as she hugged his unmoving body close to her chest, trying to shield him even though it was too late. The masked men kept speaking in swift, cold Italian, completely unbothered by her grief. Without warning, one of them delivered a sharp, brutal kick straight into his mother’s back, knocking her away from the body. They grabbed her by her hair, violently yanking her head backward. Deep inside the dark passage, Marcus felt a blinding, hot rage building up in his chest. His fingernails dug into the wood until they bled. He wanted to scream, to burst through the door, but he was completely frozen as he watched them pull her hair back again, delivering multiple swift, cruel slaps across her face. New tears filled her eyes, mixing with the dust and blood on her skin. Then, Marcus heard it—another loud, merciless gunshot. A ghostly hole opened right in the middle of her forehead. Slowly, the strength left her body, and she fell backward onto the floor, dark blood immediately pooling around her head. Marcus stared at his mother’s side, completely paralyzed as the light slowly, permanently dimmed from her beautiful eyes. "Ahhhhhhh!" An agonizing, broken scream tore from Marcus's throat, echoing loudly inside the narrow, hidden passage. The masked men heard the noise. They froze, turning their heads quickly toward the secret wall with their weapons raised. Realizing they were approaching, panic cut through Marcus's grief. He scrambled to his feet, turned away from the spy hole, and broke into a frantic run. He fled through the narrow back exit of the passage, bursting out into the freezing night air. Without looking back at the burning mansion, he sprinted blindly into the deep, pitch-black woods, leaving the nightmare behind him as the darkness swallowed him whole.