Ruin Me,Mafia King

Chapter three:That wasn’t a request

Chapter three:

Title: That Wasn't a Request

Gianna's POV

"No."

He didn't move. I folded my arms, my heart still hammering from the sight of him standing there like he'd been carved out of the dark, unbothered by the chaos I'd left behind me in that dining room only hours earlier.

"If you think I'm getting into that car, you've completely lost your mind."

Zayden didn't react, not even a flicker. He slipped one hand into his pocket, unhurried, like my refusal was something he'd already accounted for long before he arrived. The quiet way he studied me, patient and unreadable, made me feel like I was the only thing moving in a world he had already stilled.

"I admire confidence," he said, letting the silence stretch a moment before he added, "it usually dies first."

I turned and started walking back toward the gate, my legs shaking with a fury I refused to let him see. Every step felt like a small victory, proof that I could still choose something for myself even if the world around me had already decided otherwise.

I didn't make it three steps before floodlights exploded across the estate, washing the courtyard in white. Guards poured out from every side of the house, boots pounding against the gravel, radios crackling with voices shouting my name. Monroe guards, not his. They had noticed I was gone, and the entire household had been thrown into motion trying to find me.

My father appeared on the balcony above, still in the shirt stained with his own blood from hours earlier. For one second his face broke into something like relief, the kind of relief only a parent feels when a missing child is finally found. Then he saw who was standing beside me in the harsh white light, and that relief drained into something worse, something closer to grief.

I ran toward the house, toward him, my voice cracking as I shouted up at the balcony.

"Tell them to arrest him!"

Nobody moved. Not one Monroe guard so much as lifted a weapon. They stood frozen in place, eyes flicking between me and Zayden and the man on the balcony who was supposed to give the order that never came. My father gripped the railing, his knuckles white against the stone, and slowly shook his head, unable even to meet my eyes while he did it.

That silence answered everything I needed to know. There was nowhere left to run. Even inside my own home, surrounded by men who had sworn their lives to my family, no one was willing to stand against him. I understood then, in a way I hadn't fully understood before, exactly how far his name reached and how little mine was worth against it.

Zayden walked over calmly, unbothered by the chaos around us, and stopped beside me. He never grabbed my arm. Never touched me at all. He didn't need to. His presence alone seemed to hold the entire courtyard still.

"I gave you three days," he said.

"So?"

"You tried to run."

"So?"

"I don't reward broken agreements."

I laughed, bitter and sharp, the sound scraping out of me before I could stop it. "I never agreed to anything."

He looked at me for a long moment before he answered, and something in his expression shifted, subtle enough that I almost missed it.

"No," he said. "Your father did."

I expected him to force me into the car after that. I braced for it, my whole body rigid, waiting for hands that never came, for the moment he would simply decide my resistance no longer mattered. Instead he reached into his jacket and pulled out a sealed envelope, holding it out to me with the same unhurried calm he brought to everything.

"Read it."

I refused to take it. He didn't push it on me, didn't insist the way I expected a man like him to insist. He simply set it down on the polished hood of the Rolls-Royce, the paper stark white against the black, and let it sit there like a challenge I could either accept or ignore.

"Your father's promise," he said.

He turned, got into the car without another word, and left, the taillights disappearing down the long drive while I stood there staring at the envelope like it might catch fire on its own if I looked away too soon.

I didn't touch it. Rocco was the one who finally walked over and picked it up, his hands unsteady as he broke the seal and unfolded the first page. I watched the color drain out of his face before he'd read more than a few lines, his eyes moving faster and faster like he was hoping the words might change if he read them quickly enough. He folded it shut almost as fast as he'd opened it, his jaw tight.

"Don't read it," he said.

"What is it?"

He swallowed hard, and when he finally looked at me, there was something in his eyes I had never seen there before. Fear, maybe. Or grief. Possibly both, tangled together in a way that made my stomach turn.

"I wish he'd burned this instead," he said.

I went back inside and found my father still standing at the balcony doors, staring out at nothing, his reflection ghostlike in the glass. I didn't raise my voice this time. I didn't need to. Whatever fight had been left in me earlier had settled into something colder, something more determined.

"I want the truth," I said.

He was quiet for so long I thought he wouldn't answer at all. His shoulders sagged, and for the first time in my life he looked like an old man rather than the head of an empire. When he finally spoke, it wasn't anything I expected to hear.

"I should have let the Monroe family die."

I froze. My father had never once regretted anything in his life, not the wars, not the deaths, not the men he'd buried to keep our name standing above every rival who tried to bring it down. Hearing him say those words felt like the floor tilting beneath me, like everything I had ever believed about him was suddenly unsteady.

I didn't sleep that night. I sat at my desk with the lamp burning low, staring at the papers Rocco had left there, my fingers hovering over the edges more than once before I finally gave in and unfolded them completely.

Inside was a single sheet of paper. The first line read:

In exchange for the continued existence of the Monroe family...

My eyes widened, and I turned the page, expecting more, expecting the rest of the sentence to finish what it had started.

The rest of the contract was gone. Someone had torn away the final page, leaving only a jagged edge where the rest of the truth should have been, as if the answer itself had been ripped out of my hands before I ever had the chance to hold it.

A small handwritten note slipped out from between the pages and landed in my lap.

When you're ready to know what your father traded...

Come and find me.

—Zayden Brooks

My fingers tightened around the paper.

For the first time since Zayden Brooks walked into my life, I wanted answers more than I wanted freedom.