The Mafia Queen

CHAPTER 1: So It Begins

HARLIE

Most parents have a normal or heroic kind of job, to where when they come into the classrooms for career day and talk about what they do, they have the kids in the class get all hyped up about their future to where they want to be a doctor or a policeman or something along those lines. The kind of job where you can make an honest living and possibly help change the world.

Then there are parents like mine who were nothing like that. I had parents who were recognized everywhere we went. Not because they were famous from movies or that they had invented some amazing product. Yet they were treated as if they were a celebrity of some kind.

Growing up, I got many things. I was an only child who didn't know behind the scenes and truth about what my father did for a living until I was thirteen years old. That was the day I found out exactly what my father did and was the day my life would change forever.

He would always tell people like my teachers and other 'outsiders' - he would call them, that he owned his own construction business - which wasn't a complete lie.

However, in actuality, that was a facade and a complete illusion he made sure to always paint to them and to me. I believed him until I had turned thirteen and had witnessed my father shooting a man right between his eyes, in his office at our home.

My father became the most feared Mafia Boss in the world. He even made Al Capone look like an amateur when it came to running his business and earning the respect he got from everybody (including the law).

He was untouchable. He had built an empire that he had hoped to give to his son one day. Obviously that entire plan fell apart when he was stuck with me and mom wasn't able to have any more kids afterwards. Mainly because she didn't want to go through another pregnancy and have her, and I quote, 'vagina go through another surgical procedure to tighten herself back up again.'

Aside from all the bullshit and lifestyle, I always knew my mother loved me though. My mom and I were best friends and she had taught me so much.

Eventually she would open her own beauty salon and cater to the high-end clients who mostly were mob wives. My mom was great at what she did and had people from even all over coming to her. One time a woman flew in from Spain to have her nails and hair done and went back all in the same day.

Growing up I was what a lot would consider to be 'privileged' and spoiled. However, I wasn't a brat and didn't take it for granted neither.

I even still believed in earning my own money when I was old enough to get a job and try to make an honest living (despite how much my father despised the idea).

Now, I'm sure that this might sound crazy and further from the truth when I say that despite how I was being raised and the many nice things I was given, I truly always wanted to be normal instead and have parents that made an honest living.

In a way I guess you could consider my money being close to that but because she was receiving money from mainly other mob wives and they received it from their husbands who got it from taking people's lives, yeah, not exactly what I would call 'honest.'

I still loved both of my parents (mostly my mom) since we were closer and dad always had a level of hate towards me because I wasn't a boy.

Then one day when I was just a few days shy from having my fifteenth birthday, she had died from cancer.

She had been fighting it for a while neforehand but, by the time she was diagnosed with it it was too late to do anything to try and fight it.

I was devastated and felt like my world fell apart. I loved her so much that to have had her taken so fast like that, I haven't yet gotten over it entirely. I'm not even sure I ever will.

Like some fool, at one point, I had believed that losing her would have brought my father and I even closer but instead, it grew us farther apart than we already were to where we practically became strangers.

Without my mom being around anymore, I knew it would be bad and very hard for the both of us because of how much love we had for her. But still, not as bad as it has been. Not to the point where he makes me feel like I was a mistake and how I should have been a boy.

Then one day came along when I accidentally witnessed him have some of his men beating some guy to death all because he was late on his payment. He broke both of the man's legs and told me that is how you send people messages and keep them in line.

I learned very quickly after that incident, that it was after all part of being a Mafia Boss.

He explained to me that his job is to be sure he keeps everybody in line. Everybody has to pay him and that includes for any type of 'protection' they would need whether it was from others looking to get that person or to even save people's businesses from closing. He has a lot of men who work for him and many more who fear him.

Eventually we seemed to begin getting closer to one another but, soon our hopeful future of becoming friends with each other was cut short.

Two weeks ago my father was ambushed and and killed after multiple gunshots were fired at his car.

You'd think I'd be used to hearing news like that but when it's your own flesh and blood, it's a bit different. It hits your harder.

Never in my wildest dreams, did I ever think there would come a day when the empire he had worked so hard to build, was left to me. 

I was the last person I thought that he would want to leave it to, since deep down, I wasn't too much onboard with the idea of taking over and doing what he did for the rest of my life. Let alone him and I not yet being on exactly the 'best' of terms before he died, enough at least to leave me his legacy.

However, I have been told by his right hand man, Franklin, that my father wanted me to keep things going until Franklin himself could find a better person to take over and who I approved of as well.

Thank God I have grown a great friendship and bond with some of his men who have been like uncle's to me and who we have always considered being family to us.

One week has passed by since I had returned from my father's funeral who is now buried next to my mother and I am only twenty-one who doesn't know enough ins and outs to take over my father's business and run it as good as he did.

Franklin and the guys all had promised me they'd help me 'fake it til I made it' and I understand I can't just walk away either. There is more to it then that I am quickly finding out. I just hope I can do this.

No time was wasted in me having a bunch of information thrown at me a couple days after we had the funeral service and have been starting to feel like maybe I could handle some of his business affairs after all.

Some of what I have been reading already looks easy enough but there are a couple here I have noticed that may present an issue. One of those issues is one of the few most precious things my father left for me. That is our restaurant and winery in Napa Valley, California that I was promised. And that is something (if necessary) will take down people to keep it. All while keeping my mother's shop open as well and possibly opening one up ose to the winery.

This may have not exactly been the way I wanted things to turn out in my life but, if needed, so be it.

So it all begins......

Next chapter will be posted soon! :)