Her Mafia Brothers

Everything is wrong

If I thought Jack being home would fix everything, I was sadly mistaken. He's been home for three days now, and everything is even more wrong than it was before he left. Damon and Alex still aren't home. All of my brothers, Jack included, are grumpy and stressed. Jack spends most of his time in his study, working. At least, I think he's working. His arm is still in a sling, but he can probably still work fine, even being a bit disabled. Nick is mostly in the left wing. Rocco wanders between the main part of the house, his bedroom where he's studying, and the left wing. Logan is bored winding me up when he feels like it, ignoring me when he doesn't, and lying on his bed in his dark bedroom blasting really loud music. Both my friends and I are all still grounded, so even though I have my phone, it's small consolation because I can't talk to them, because they don't have their phones. All I can do is scroll on TikTok. Read. Get bored. I still can't leave the house. Still can't go to school. I'm bored. I'm grumpy. I miss my brothers. I miss my life.

Both Nick and Rocco snap at me. Jack tells me he's busy and not to bother him unless it's urgent. Logan yells at me to get out of his room. So I just stay in my room. Here I am, in a luxury mansion, surrounded by everything money can buy: a pool. A cinema room with every movie imaginable. A library with hundreds of books. All the food I can eat. A games room with a huge choice of video games and a big screen. Even my bedroom has everything I could ever want. And yet I'm miserable. I miss my brothers. I miss my friends.

So I sit in my room, curled up in my beanbag, sulking. Reading. Coloring. Drawing. Flicking through the multiple channels on my TV, trying to find something that will hold my interest. Avoiding homework.

I don't come down for lunch. We don't eat lunch together as a family anyway - we all just get our own (or ask the staff) so I don't bother. None of my brothers notice, they're all busy doing their own thing. Mafia stuff. Work stuff. School stuff. I don't know. All I know is they don't have any time for me. They want me to just leave them alone because they have stuff to do. Very important stuff and I'm just a nuisance and a bother.

I don't want to do anything. So I take to standing at the threshold of my bedroom and slamming the door. Open. SLAM! Open. SLAM! Open. SLAM! Over and over again. It's insanely satisfying. Far more satisfying than something so mundane should be. The loud bang echoes through the house, bouncing off the walls of the stairwell, shaking my brain. I practice slamming it so hard that it bounces open again. Eventually, I get so good at it that I can slam it so it bounces open, then rebounds off the doorstop and slams shut again.

"Yes!" I yell triumphantly, raising my fist in the air like I've just landed a goal. "I win!"

"Yes Carrie, you win." Rocco's voice behind me makes me jump. I didn't hear him coming, probably because the bang of my door is still ringing in my ears and it drowned out the sound of his footsteps. He holds up a cordless drill. "You've just won the prize of losing your door. Well done."

I don't think he's serious at first, so I give him a big grin, acknowledging his joke. But he's not joking. He's frowning, albeit slightly ridiculously with only one eyebrow, but still. He's angry, and it's now really obvious he's not joking. My slamming annoyed him so much he actually is going to take my door.
"No!" I scream, shoving against him with all my might but he doesn't budge. "No you can't take it!" I scream again. But Rocco ignores me, holding the drill up, carefully taking the screws out of the hinges, one by one.

"Jack!" I scream at the top of my lungs, but Rocco just smirks.

"He can't hear you. His office is soundproofed, remember? How the hell do you think you got away with slamming your door for this long? If Jack could hear it, he would have been up here stopping you the first time it happened."

He's got all three screws out of one side of the top hinge now, and he slips them into his pocket, ignoring me completely as I tug on his arm, trying but failing to physically stop him.

"No! Please!" I scream miserably, tears of desperation streaming down my face. "Why are you doing this to me? Noooooooo!" My final no is a long, drawn-out wail, like a dying cow, but Rocco doesn't stop. And nobody comes to my rescue.

"Nick can't hear you, he's in the left wing. Jack can't hear you. I highly doubt Logan can either, over that shit he calls music. So it's just you and me sis, and I'm taking your door. You already know you're not allowed to be slamming the thing, yet you've been doing it for half an hour straight and I'm sick of listening to it. I'm stressed enough without you adding to it."

I grab my phone. "I'm telling Damon!" I yell, immensely happy with my threat. That will learn him! I think. But it doesn't. My asshole brother just smirks again, his one eyebrow making him not look scary so much as funny.

"Go ahead. That's a good way to get yourself spanked, isn't it? Do you think he's going to be happy to hear you've been slamming your door so hard? Do you really want to have a sore ass as well as no door?"

Hmmmm. Maybe he's got a point.

"But Damon's not here so he can't spank me!" I tell him gleefully, just as he pockets the first hinge.

Rocco fixes me with a stern glare, before going to work on the second hinge. "I can spank you on his behalf. Or Nick will. And that's after Damon scolds you bad enough to make you cry."

I hate Rocco right now. I hate that he's right. I hate that a telling-off from Damon can reduce me to tears. I hate that I still have three brothers here who are all perfectly capable of spanking me, should Damon give the order. Or two brothers, anyway. Jack might not be able to, with his arm in a sling. But that still leaves Rocco and Nick, and I'm pretty sure they can both spank as hard as Damon. Most of all, I hate that he's still taking my door.

Rocco is crouching down to remove the bottom hinge, so, crazy with fury, I draw back my foot and kick him as hard as I can. My foot glances off his thigh and I nearly topple over from being unbalanced. Rocco snarls in a really scary way that I've never heard before and straightens up, reaching out for me. But I don't stick around, I run. As fast as I can, I take off down the stairs, running full-tilt to Jack's office, Rocco after me. He can run faster than I can, but I got a head start, so I make it to Jack's office first, barely. I fling the door open without stopping to knock, yelling at Jack to help me, screaming at the top of my lungs that Rocco is going to hurt me and he's stealing my door and....
"Stop." Jack gets to his feet and holds out his hand, silencing me. Rocco runs into the room as well, but he freezes with one look from Jack. Fortunately Jack wasn't on the phone or anything; I didn't even think about what he might have been doing when I came barging on in here uninvited.

"What's going on?" Jack asks. He doesn't sound happy.

I swallow hard.