Leo POV
The dormitory suite at the academy held the mixed odors of industrial floor polish and the lingering salt of corn chips. I put a shoulder to the door and surveyed my new territory: two sets of bunk beds, two metal desks, and a considerable acreage of empty floor.
My roommate was sprawled on the bottom bunk near the window, his thumbs a blur against the plastic buttons of a gaming controller.
He paused his game and looked up. "You must be Leo," he said. "I'm Marco."
He pointed a thumb toward the top bunk near the door. "That one is yours."
I nodded, swinging my duffel bag onto the thin mattress with a dull thud.
My own unpacking was a silent, measured affair. Shirts were folded into precise squares, their creases sharp enough to cut paper. My shoes were aligned with the bed frame, their heels forming a perfect, unbroken line. I made the bed with the severe, tight corners of a military barracks.
Marco watched me for a long minute before turning back to his screen without another word.
Later that night, the lights were out, and the room was quiet except for the distant hum of late-night traffic.
"Why did you move to the dorms so suddenly?" Marco asked from the darkness below me. "It's the middle of the semester."
I traced the faint lines cast upon the ceiling by the streetlights filtering through the window blinds.
"It is no longer convenient at the estate," I replied, the words stripped of any inflection.
I closed my eyes, but sleep did not come.
Instead, an image of my mother, Elena, formed against the blackness, her form rigid in my bedroom doorway. I saw her white knuckles and the guilt that pulled at the corners of her mouth. I knew some part of her wished for me to stay. But her desire for the illusion of a normal life was the greater force.
My mind drifted back to middle school, to the day my parents had summoned me down to the living room. The divorce had been a quiet affair, but the reasons for it were steeped in violence. My father was consumed by the Family business. He was the Boss. The constant threat from rival cartels and the leaden weight of Omertà had slowly ground my mother down. She could not endure the ritual of checking under her car for explosives each morning, nor could she abide the heavily armed guards posted outside my classroom.
So, my father had let her go. He had ceded the heavily guarded estate entirely to her and me, arranging a massive monthly allowance disguised as simple alimony. And he stayed away.
I only saw the Don a few times a year, always under heavy security and in fortified locations. A great distance had grown between us. I did not know how to forge a bond with a man who presided over a network of docks, warehouses, and union halls that the newspapers called an empire.
Then came March.
Elena met Victor through a supplier at her boutique supermarket. Victor presented himself as a divorced sales executive. He wore neatly pressed slacks and smiled with a disquieting number of teeth. His first visit to our estate involved a bouquet of flowers and a toolbox. He spent an hour under our kitchen sink, mending a dripping faucet. He projected the perfect image of a capable, harmless civilian provider.
He greeted me warmly that day, wiping grease from his hands.
"You look just like your mother, Leo," he had said.
Victor became a permanent fixture in our house. He brought expensive chocolates and procured tickets to local theater shows. Elena started wearing dresses again, and her unfeigned smiles returned. I stayed out of their way.
That held, until the afternoon I walked out onto the second-floor balcony.
Victor was standing on the patio below, a cheap burner phone pressed hard against his ear. His voice was a low, urgent hiss.
"The mark is secure," Victor said. "The estate is prime real estate. Worth at least two million on the open market."
There was a pause as he listened to whoever was on the other end.
"I told you, the debts will be settled within six months. The wife doesn't suspect a thing."
Another pause.
"Don't worry about the kid," Victor spat. "He's no obstacle. Just a dumb teenager, easy to handle."
I had frozen on the balcony, the cold of the flagstones seeping through my socks. The disrespect was a physical blow that stole sleep from me for weeks.
I lay awake, debating whether to shatter my mother's fragile new happiness. In the end, I chose to remain silent.
Elena and Victor legally married in May, and held the banquet in September. Victor's smiles around me grew increasingly patronizing.
I caught him once, late at night, rummaging through the bottom drawer of Elena's heavy oak desk—the very drawer where she kept the estate deeds.
When I flipped the light switch, Victor jumped.
"I was just looking for a spare bankbook," he stammered, his eyes darting to the door.
A knot of ice formed in my stomach, the chill of it creeping up my esophagus. My mafia instincts, inherited from a man I barely saw, were now sounding a silent, insistent alarm I could no longer afford to disregard.
I rolled over on the narrow dorm bed, the springs groaning beneath me. The encrypted phone was a cold, hard rectangle beneath my pillow.
I pulled it out and stared at the dark screen.
Victor thought he was dealing with a dumb teenager.
But my father didn't raise a victim. He raised a heir.
I just wasn't ready to claim that inheritance yet.
