The Mafia Kidnapped Me

(1) When It All Started.

"I fell out of love."

"Oh, did you Dorothea?"

"Mother, Pamela." She tore her eyes from the paintings and turned to regard her daughter. "I'm your mother and you will call me that." Her voice was soft but firm.

Pamela sighed. She turned again to the window. "You'll always be Dorothea to me." She muttered bitterly. "You lost the privilege when you destroyed my father. Now he's gone."

Dorothea's voice broke. "I loved him Pamela, I still do." She sighed and massaged her temple. "But our divorce is another thing entirely, please try to understand."

Pamela opened her mouth to reply but a rasp knock on the door cut it off. Her bodyguard, Philip entered, looking so mellow, as if feeling sorry for ruining an intimate moment. Pamela almost snorted at that. She would prefer whatever it was that Philip had come to say to having another argument with her mother with such a sensitive topic.

"His body is about to be transported to the morgue, ma'am."

Her mother let out a heavy, forlorn sigh and buried her face in her handkerchief and that made Pamela want to burst into tears. But she stood, head raised, chin jutted and all, letting off a radiation that screamed composure. She walked to the mahogany desk of the study and grabbed her purse. There was no time to waste. Today, she would fill out the necessary forms for the internment and by tomorrow, her father would be buried.

"Lead me there." She said to her bodyguard and gave her mother a quick look. "You coming?"

She shook her head from side to side in negation. "You go ahead."

"This way, ma'am." Philip said and opened the door for Pamela and walked closely behind her. She had had a bodyguard since she was a kid. She remembered asking her father when she was six why she needed a guard. He had said simply,

"There are lots of people who are jealous of our happiness, and would do anything to take it away." He had ruffled her hair fondly. "And you, my dear Pam Pam, is all the happiness I've got in the world."

Well, that was twenty years ago. So far yet so near. She sighed. Time flew by when no one was looking. Her bodyguards were replaced every four years - her father's rules, but Philip was the longest she'd had, and that was six years.

When she got to the bottom of the stairs and saw the medical examiners preparing to place the corpse into the ambulance, her walking faltered. Seeing her father so lifeless and unaware of her presence made her pain skyrocket. The pain became so intense that she could feel her heart ripping into shreds. It dawned on her that he was really dead. Dead.

"Miss King?"

She was brought back to the present from her pain-clad reverie. She swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked tears from her eyes. "Yes. Let's go."

She raised her head courageously and walked towards the ambulance which was parked outside the King's Manor. Her father's body was in a cadaver pouch and the medical examiner unzipped it for her to take a look. She walked slowly towards the body, dreading the pain that would spill from her heart and misery that awaited her by seeing his body. As her father's face came into view, her breath hitched and her heart became very heavy, as though lead blocks had been forced down her throat.

She mentally braced herself and went closer.

"Can I touch him?"

The Emergency Medical Technician who stood beside her nodded and handed her rubber gloves. She thanked him and put it on. When she touched his face, it was so cold and so lifeless. His facial expression was calm, as if he'd been smiling when he breathed his last and that expression was frozen on his face for all of eternity. She couldn't have stayed with him as he passed even if she had wanted to; it would have been too painful to bear. She cradled his face between her palms and her eyes filled with tears.