Ruin Me,Mafia King

Chapter one My Father's Head For His Debt Gianna's POV The first time I saw the most ruthless man I ever knew. Zayden Brooks, he was pointing a gun at my father's head, right there in the middle of our dining room. It was supposed to be an ordinary Tuesday. I remember that detail clearly, because I had spent the morning arguing with our housekeeper about the flowers for my cousin's engagement dinner, the kind of small, meaningless argument that belonged to a life I didn't know was about to end. I came downstairs to the sound of raised voices and found the dining room already destroyed, chairs overturned, one of the tall windows cracked from something that had been thrown against it. My father knelt on the marble floor, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth while my brothers aimed their guns at the man standing over him. The safety was off. One pull of the trigger, and the Monroe empire would lose its king. I couldn't breathe. Everyone in the underworld knew one thing. Zayden Brooks never pointed a gun unless he meant to use it. "You have ten seconds," he said, his voice frighteningly calm. "Nine." My father laughed through the blood. "You think killing me ends this war?" Zayden smiled. "I didn't come here to kill you, Don Monroe." He lowered the gun. The room seemed to exhale with him. My oldest brother, Rocco, had taken a step forward the moment the guns clicked into place, and two of Zayden's men had swung toward him instantly. He stood frozen there still, his jaw clenched, his gun raised but his feet no longer moving. I could see the sweat at his temple, the way his finger hovered near the trigger without ever quite touching it. Rocco was the bravest person I knew, and in that moment he looked like a boy who had wandered somewhere far beyond his depth. My father frowned, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand as he pushed himself off the floor. He caught himself on the edge of the table, knocking a wine glass onto the floor. It shattered and nobody even looked at it. There were at least a dozen armed men crowded into a room built for quiet family dinners. "Then why are you here?" Zayden's eyes moved past my father, past my brothers, past the wall of armed men, until they landed on me. I was still standing near the doorway, half hidden by the frame, and I remember thinking, foolishly, that he might not have noticed me at all but unfortunately he did. Every hair on my body stood on end. I had heard stories about him my whole life. The Mafia King. The man who took over the Brooks Syndicate at twenty-four and buried every rival who tried to stop him. People said he had never once raised his voice while giving an order that ended someone's life. None of those stories prepared me for the way he looked at me, slow, unbothered, like he was checking a fact he already knew was true. Then he said five words that shattered my world. "I'm here to collect Gianna." "What?" I whispered. I took a step toward my father without thinking, some instinct pulling me toward him the way it always had since I was a child, and one of Zayden's men shifted sideways to block me, not even bothering to look at my face while he did it. I stopped, my heart slamming against my ribs, my hands curling into fists at my sides because there was nothing else for them to do. My father staggered to his feet, one hand braced against the table. "The deal died twenty-five years ago." "I don't care." "She's my daughter." "No," Zayden said. "She's my payment." I stood frozen against the wall. Payment. Like I wasn't a daughter at all, just something my father owed. I searched his face for some sign that he was joking, some flicker of doubt, and found nothing. He said it the way most people discussed the weather. "You're insane," I finally managed, my voice shaking despite everything I did to steady it. "I don't belong to anyone. Least of all you." Zayden turned to face me fully for the first time, and I understood right then why grown men dropped their eyes when he walked past. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't angry either. He just looked at me like the decision was already made, and I was the last one in the room to find out. It should have frightened me more than it did. Instead, something hot and furious rose up under my skin, burning away the fear before it could take hold. "Ask your father," he said, "what the Monroe name was worth twenty-five years ago. Ask him what he promised the Brooks family to save it." I turned to my father, waiting for him to call it a lie. He said nothing. His silence hit harder than a slap. He wasn't denying it. I watched something in him crumble, some final piece of the man I had always believed him to be, and I hated Zayden Brooks a little more for making me see it. "Dad," I said, my voice cracking. "Tell me he's lying." My father wouldn't look at me. Rocco's knuckles had gone white around his gun, his eyes darting between our father and the man waiting calmly in the middle of our home, like he already understood something the rest of us hadn't caught up to yet. "Twenty-five years ago," Zayden said, "your father made an arrangement with mine. My father died before he could collect. I don't plan on making the same mistake." "An arrangement doesn't make me property," I snapped, stepping forward despite the shake in my legs. His eyes tracked the movement, the way you'd watch something you already know you can catch. "Whatever debt exists between our families, it isn't mine to pay." Something flickered across his face, small, almost amused, like my anger interested him more than it worried him. "You misunderstand," he said. "I'm not taking something that isn't already mine. I'm collecting a debt your father is twenty-five years late paying." "And if I refuse?" "You won't." The certainty in his voice made my stomach twist. He spoke as though my answer didn't matter. As though my future had already been decided somewhere I hadn't been invited to, in a room full of men making promises with my life while I was still too young to understand what a promise even cost. "Get out of my house," I said. He studied me another second, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world and planned to spend every bit of it standing there. I refused to look away first. I refused to give him that. "Three days," he said, turning for the door without asking anyone's permission. "Pack whatever you need." "I'm not going anywhere with you." He stopped at the threshold and looked back, still calm, still infuriating. "Ask your father what happens to this family if you don't," he said. "Then decide." He walked out. His men fell into step behind him, boots echoing down the marble hallway until the front doors closed behind them with a heavy, final sound. The second the doors shut, the silence inside the dining room became unbearable. Rocco lowered his gun, his hand trembling as he holstered it. My father collapsed into the nearest chair, his hands trembling, blood still drying at the corner of his mouth. "Papa," I said again, softer this time, because some part of me already knew what I was about to hear. He covered his face with both hands. "Tell me he's lying." His answer came so quietly I almost didn't hear it. "Start packing, Gianna." My chest tightened. "Because in three days..." He finally looked at me. There was nothing left in his eyes. "...you'll belong to Zayden Brooks."