Burning The Syndicate For My Broken Girl

I was the daughter of a powerful Mafia Capo, but behind the grand estate doors, my parents treated me like a defective asset.

My only comfort in this brutal world was a stray kitten named Tangerine.

When my mother found out, she threw my kitten into a dumpster, and my father whipped my back with a heavy metal belt buckle for daring to shed a tear.

I fled to the Syndicate Academy for sanctuary, only to find everyone staring at me in terror.

My mother had weaponized our family's power.

She broadcasted forged medical documents to the entire underworld, diagnosing me with severe schizophrenia and violent delusions.

"She is completely detached from reality," my mother lied to the public.

No one believed my bloody wounds, and the Academy ordered me to be sent back to my abusers to be locked away forever.

I wasn't sick, I was just terrified of them.

Why did a system built on "honor" protect monsters who gaslit their own blood and called it discipline?

Stripped of all hope, I threw myself off the roof of the Academy to escape them.

But my story didn't end when my broken body hit the cold cobblestones.

Floating above my own corpse, I watched Dante, the most ruthless boss in the Syndicate, pick up my fractured phone.

He uncovered the truth, rescued my surviving kitten, and turned his lethal gaze toward my parents.

"I will protect your truth, even if I have to burn this whole city to the ground."

Chapter 1

Anya POV

The veal bled into the porcelain.

My mother had ordered the meat prepared al sangue-barely seared-and the juices, thin and pink, seeped across the white plate like a slow bruise. I watched a single drop slide down the rim and pool against the gold filigree. The sight made my stomach clench, a tight fist of nausea pressing up under my ribs.

My hidden phone vibrated. The buzz traveled through my thigh and up into my chest, a second heartbeat.

I slipped my hand into the pocket of my dress, thumb sliding across the cracked screen. One message. A kitchen boy from our estate, the only servant who still slipped me scraps for the kitten when no one was watching.

Your mother found the orange kitten. I heard her order the guards to dispose of it in a dumpster inside rival territory. I'm so sorry, miss. Run, or you will lose the only thing you love.

My breath stopped.

Not slowed. Stopped. The air locked in my throat, trapped there like a bird with broken wings. The red fluid on the plate blurred and doubled. I stared at it, unblinking, and behind my eyes I saw orange fur, small paws, a round belly that purred against my chest in the dark.

Tangerine.

The fork in my hand rattled against the porcelain rim. Sharp. Brittle. The sound cut through the dining hall like a bone snapping. My fingers convulsed around the silver handle, knuckles straining white. I could feel the tendons in my wrist pulling tight, the ache spreading up into my forearm.

Above us, the patriarch's portrait stared down from its gilded frame. Painted eyes, hollow and black, fixed on my straining fingers. He had built this Syndicate on blood and fear. His descendants had perfected it.

No one spoke.

The silence wasn't empty. It was a living thing-thick, cold, pressing in from all sides. It settled on my shoulders like a weighted coat. I could feel it in my eardrums, a low pressure that made every small sound too loud: the clink of silver against china, the wet shift of my mother's tongue against her teeth.

Camilla slammed down her wine glass.

The crystal base cracked. A hairline fracture snaked up the stem, and a bead of deep red Cabernet slid down the side like blood from a wound.

"Stop that trembling." Her voice sliced through the silence. She didn't look at my face-she looked at my shaking fingers, her upper lip curling back from her teeth. "You pathetic stray. Your depression. Your anxiety." She spat the words like they tasted foul. "Fabricated diseases. Weakness. You bring shame to this bloodline before our honored guest."

I didn't look at the guest. I don't remember who it was. Some associate. Some uncle. It didn't matter. They were all the same.

My legs pushed against the floor. The chair groaned, oak against polish, and the sound echoed through the cavernous hall like a warning.

"I need to go." My voice came out wrong-scraped raw, barely a whisper. Every word burned in my throat.

"Sit down."

My father, Carlo, spoke from the head of the table. He didn't raise his voice. He never needed to. His baritone carried the weight of absolute authority, the kind that had governed his territory and his family with the same closed fist for twenty years.

"I have to go."

The words came out louder this time. I could hear the desperation bleeding through. Tangerine. Three weeks I'd kept him hidden-in a shoebox in my closet at the Academy, lined with my old sweaters. I'd syringe-fed him warm milk every three hours. I'd woken at dawn to clean his tiny messes before my roommate could report the smell. He was the only living creature who looked at me without expectation. Without disgust. Without the cold calculation of what a Mafia princess was worth.

"You are not going anywhere."

Camilla raised one manicured hand and snapped her fingers. The armed soldiers flanking the doors moved in perfect synchronization, stepping inward, blocking the exit. Their hands rested on their holsters. Their faces were blank, empty-carved from the same dark wood as the paneled walls.

"I know about the rat you hid in your room," Camilla said. She examined her nails, a ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I ordered the guards to dispose of it. A Capo's daughter does not play with street filth."

The words hit like ice water injected straight into my veins.

"No." The sound tore out of me, raw and animal. My vision swam. Hot pressure built behind my eyes, blurring her face into a smear of pale skin and dark hair. "Please tell me they didn't hurt him. Please. Please, Mom."

The word Mom cracked in half on my tongue.

Camilla laughed. Soft. Hollow. A sound with no warmth behind it, like wind through dead branches.

"You're crying over a cat?" She tilted her head, studying me with the detached curiosity of a child examining a crushed insect. "You're mentally unstable, Anya. You need discipline."

I ran.

I didn't think. I just moved-legs pumping, lungs burning, the side door the only thing in my vision. I made it two paces. Maybe three.

My father's hand closed around a fistful of my hair and yanked me backward.

The pain was instant and blinding. My scalp screamed. My neck snapped back so hard I felt something grind in my cervical spine. The Persian rug rushed up to meet me-thick wool, woven with gold thread, a ten-thousand-dollar family heirloom that smelled of dust and old wine. My tailbone struck first, then my shoulder blades, and the impact jarred every tooth in my skull.

"You disrespect your mother." Carlo's voice came from above me, calm and measured. A judge delivering a sentence. "You disrespect me. You disrespect the Don."

I heard the sound before I understood what it was.

Clink. Metal sliding through leather.

He unbuckled his custom belt-black Italian cowhide, a heavy silver buckle engraved with the family crest. The strap pulled free of the loops with a wet, hissing rasp that sent ice flooding through my stomach. Every muscle in my body locked. The cold started at my spine and spread outward, finger by finger, toe by toe, until my hands were numb and my feet were blocks of lead.

"I'm teaching you loyalty."

The belt whistled.

The buckle hit the center of my back, and the world went white.

I couldn't breathe. The pain was too big for my body to contain-a supernova blooming between my shoulder blades, radiating outward in waves of liquid fire. The thin silk of my dress split open. Cold air hit wet, exposed flesh. A second later, I felt the heat of my own blood sliding down my skin, slow and thick, tracing the ridges of my spine.

I curled into a ball. My teeth sank into my lower lip, deep, and the taste of copper flooded my tongue. I would not scream. I would not. His enforcers stood like caryatids against the walls, their faces blank, their eyes empty. To them, this wasn't a girl being beaten. This was a defective asset being corrected. They didn't see me. They never had.

He hit me again.

Lower this time, across the ribs. I felt something crack-a thin, sharp snap that echoed inside my chest. The second blow hurt worse than the first. The third stole the breath I'd managed to draw.

"Look at her." Camilla's voice floated somewhere above me. The click of her heels circled my prone body, slow and deliberate. I heard her kneel, felt her fingers slide into my pocket. "Secret phones. Fake illnesses. Disobedience."

She pulled out the burner. I watched through blurred vision as she stood, raised her heel-red-soled Louboutin, six inches, sharp as a blade-and brought it down.

The first stomp spiderwebbed the glass.

The second crushed it inward with a sickening crunch. The phone's frame bent, the motherboard inside cracking audibly-a sharp, final snap of dying electronics.

I felt the tiny vibration through the hardwood floor. A death rattle. The screen flickered once, a weak pulse of light, then went dark.

Before she could kick the shattered pieces away, I lunged. My fingers closed around the broken device, the cracked glass biting into my palm. I shoved it deep into my pocket, pressing it against my thigh, feeling the faint warmth of the dying battery against my skin. Even broken, it was proof. It had to be proof.

My father wrapped the belt around his knuckles. The leather creaked, stretched over his heavy fists.

"Get up." His voice was flat. No anger. No heat. Just cold, mechanical command. "We're going to your uncle's house. You will smile. You will apologize to the family for your disgusting behavior tonight. And you will mean it."

I pressed my bleeding palm against the dead phone in my pocket. Somewhere across the city, a tiny orange kitten was alone in the dark. And no one was coming to save either of us.

Anya POV

They dressed me in clean silk.

White. Virgin wool cashmere lined the collar. A Peter Pan neckline that covered the bruises blooming along my collarbone but couldn't hide the way my shoulders hunched inward to protect my shattered ribs. The dress was backless-they'd chosen it deliberately-and the raw welts wept clear fluid that soaked through the fabric in patches within the first hour.

Beneath the silk, my back was a ruin. Every breath stretched the torn skin. Every heartbeat pulsed against the swelling. The blood had begun to dry, a stiff crust that cracked and pulled when I moved.

The Underboss's mansion rose before us, an obsidian monolith against the black winter sky. Every step up the marble stairs sent a hot needle through my spine. One step. Breathe. Two steps. Don't fall. Three steps. The blood is seeping again, I can feel it sliding down my back, and if anyone sees-

My mother's fingers clamped around my arm. Right over the bruise from where she'd grabbed me at dinner. The pressure was precise, deliberate-her thumb digging into the tender muscle until I saw stars.

"Smile," she hissed into my ear. Her breath was hot and smelled of gin. "Cry in there, and you'll regret it when we get home."

I didn't answer. I didn't know how to smile anymore. My face had forgotten the mechanics of it.

The grand living room swallowed us whole.

The air was thick with cigar smoke and expensive perfume-a nauseating cocktail that coated my windpipe like grease. Crystal chandeliers threw fractured light across the crowd. Aunts dripped with heavy jewels. Cousins sipped champagne from flutes so thin the glass was nearly invisible. Syndicate associates clustered in dark corners, their laughter low and guttural, their eyes tracking every movement in the room.

My mother dragged me into the center.

The piano stopped mid-note. The low hum of chatter died in stages-first the women, then the men, then even the servers frozen in place with their silver trays. Every head turned. Eyes from every angle, pinning me in place like a butterfly to a board.

"Look at this liability."

Camilla's voice rang out, clear and theatrical, a performer commanding her stage. She pressed a manicured hand to her chest, fingers splayed, the picture of maternal suffering.

"She caused a massive scene at dinner tonight. Over a cat." She let the word hang in the air, her lips twisting into a grimace of disbelief. "A worthless, diseased stray animal. We give her everything-money, protection, a name that opens every door in this city-and she repays us with fake panic attacks and hysterical tears."

A murmur rippled through the crowd. Not shock. Not sympathy. Just the low, satisfied hum of people witnessing a scandal that wasn't theirs.

My uncle, the Underboss, frowned at me from his leather armchair. His cigar burned, a single red eye in the dim light. The smoke curled around his head like a warning halo.

"You're getting much too old for these childish games, Anya."

"She's useless," my father added.

He strode to the bar. His footsteps were heavy, deliberate. The room parted for him-bodies shifting aside, creating a path, because no one in their right mind stood between Carlo and his target.

He poured himself four fingers of whiskey. No ice. His knuckles were still red and raw from where the belt had rubbed against them.

"No talent for the family business. Too soft for enforcement. Too stupid for finance." He took a long swallow, his throat working. "And no Mafia heir will marry a girl who shakes at the first loud noise."

Laughter.

Not loud. Not open. A low, mocking ripple that moved through the room like a current. My cousins whispered behind their crystal glasses, their eyes glittering with amusement. My aunts shook their heads in practiced pity-the kind of pity that was indistinguishable from contempt.

I looked at their faces. Uncle Matteo, who had held me as a baby. Aunt Lucia, who had braided my hair at my First Communion. Cousin Marco, who had taught me to climb trees when I was six. They had all watched. They had all known. And they had done nothing.

The stone that settled in my chest was heavy enough to crack ribs.

They were supposed to protect me. They were family. But family didn't applaud when a father beat his daughter. Family didn't serve hors d'oeuvres while a mother tore apart her child's mind.

"I'm not sick."

My voice came out quiet. But it carried-cutting through the murmuring, the clinking glasses, the low pulse of classical music drifting from the hidden speakers.

Camilla's head snapped toward me. Her eyes narrowed, the pupils contracting to dark pinpoints. "Excuse me?"

I lifted my chin. The motion pulled at the welts on my back, fire blooming across my shoulder blades. But I held her gaze. For the first time in my life, I looked directly into those cold, calculating eyes and didn't flinch away.

"I'm not sick." The words came louder now, steadier. "I'm terrified of you. Both of you."

The silence that followed was absolute.

No one breathed. A champagne flute stopped halfway to someone's lips. A cigar burned forgotten in an ashtray. One of my younger cousins-twelve years old, wide-eyed, still innocent-clutched her mother's sleeve with white-knuckled fingers.

In our world, disrespecting a Capo in public wasn't an insult. It was a death wish.

"Do you really think your blood-soaked, abusive method is honorable?"

The word honorable landed like a slap. I saw my father's jaw tighten, a muscle jumping beneath his ear. A vein pulsed at his temple, thick and purple.

"You beat me until I bleed and call it discipline." My voice shook now, a tremor I couldn't control. "You kill innocent things and call it strength. You-"

Carlo's glass hit the marble floor and exploded.

Whiskey sprayed across white stone. Crystal shards scattered, glittering like ice under the chandelier light. A dark flush crept up his neck, staining his collar, spreading across his cheeks in mottled purple patches.

He lunged.

His fist came up, and I saw it coming-the same way I'd seen it coming a hundred times before. I didn't run. I didn't duck. I didn't even close my eyes. I just stood there, my battered body braced, my weight settled, waiting for the impact with the tired acceptance of someone who had stopped expecting rescue a long time ago.

"Not in my house, Carlo."

My uncle's voice cut through the chaos. He'd risen from his armchair with surprising speed for a man his size, and his hand clamped around my father's forearm. The two men locked eyes. Something passed between them-a silent negotiation, a reminder of hierarchy.

"No blood on my floors tonight."

Carlo's breath came in ragged heaves. His eyes, wild with fury, darted from his brother to me and back again. His fist trembled in the air, still raised, still ready. I could see the war behind his eyes-the primal need to hurt fighting against the cold calculation of a man who understood power.

After a long moment, he lowered his arm.

"You're a disgrace," he spat. The words came out wet, flecks of spit landing on my cheek. I didn't wipe them away.

Camilla had gone very still. The performance of maternal suffering had dropped away, and underneath it was something colder, sharper-the true face of a woman who had never loved anything that didn't serve her ambitions.

She pointed toward the front door. Her finger, wrapped in a two-carat diamond, didn't waver.

"If you walk out that door right now, Anya, you're stripped of this family name. You'll have nothing. You'll be nothing. The streets will swallow you whole, and no one will remember you existed."

I looked into her eyes.

And I saw it. Not hatred. Not anger. Something worse. Emptiness. A void where a mother's love should have been. She looked at me the way a gambler looks at a losing hand-with irritation, not grief. A defective asset. A bad investment. Something to be discarded before it dragged down the portfolio.

The truth settled into my bones with the weight of a stone sinking into dark water:

I was already nothing to them. I always had been.

I turned around.

The crowd parted for me the same way it had parted for my father-a path of bodies shifting aside, eyes down, breaths held. But this parting was different. This was the parting of people who didn't want to be contaminated by proximity to a falling star.

I walked toward the heavy oak doors. As I passed the entryway closet, I reached in and pulled out the first coat my fingers found-a thick wool overcoat, black, three sizes too big. Men's. It smelled of cigar smoke and cedar. I wrapped it around my battered body, pulling the collar up around my neck.

The doors swung open. The cold hit my face like a slap.

Behind me, I heard the deadbolt slide home with a dull, final thud.

It was the freest sound I'd ever heard.

But freedom, I would learn, was just another word for being hunted without a pack.

Anya POV

The cold was a living thing.

It found every tear in my dress, every gap in the stolen wool coat. It slid across the raw welts on my back like a blade drawn sideways. The wind cut through the streets with teeth, and by the time I'd walked two blocks, I'd lost all feeling in my bare feet.

No shoes. I'd forgotten shoes. The realization hit me with a laugh that came out broken and strange, swallowed immediately by the howling dark.

I found the alley three blocks from the estate-neutral territory, the narrow no-man's-land between Capo domains. I huddled in the corner, wedged between a dumpster and a brick wall crusted with old grime, and drew my fractured phone from the coat pocket.

The screen still glowed. One bar of signal. Twenty missed calls, all from the same number.

My thumb, numb and blue-tinged, fumbled the voicemail button.

"You stupid girl."

Camilla's voice poured out of the speaker, sharp and venomous, dripping with the kind of fury she never showed in public. I could hear Carlo in the background, barking orders at the guards.

"You think you can embarrass us and run? You think you've escaped? Your father has men looking for you right now. When we find you-and we will find you-you'll wish you were never born."

I deleted it. The screen offered up the next voicemail, left ten minutes later.

"Anya, honey. Sweetheart. Please come home."

Her voice had changed. The fury was gone, replaced by something sickeningly sweet, dripping with theatrical concern. I could hear the performance in every syllable-the careful tremor, the practiced pause.

"We're just worried about your mental health. You're sick, baby. You're not thinking clearly. Let us help you. Let us take care of you. Come home, and it'll be just like it was before. We love you so much."

My stomach heaved.

I gagged-a dry, wrenching spasm that bent me double. Bile rose in my throat, burning, and I spat it onto the frozen asphalt. She had beaten me. She had killed my kitten. And now she was trying to lure me back with the gentle voice she only ever used when there were witnesses.

I deleted the message. Turned off the phone.

The darkness of the dead screen reflected my own face back at me. Hollow eyes. Cracked lips. A bruise spreading across my jaw from where I'd hit the floor. I looked like a ghost. Maybe I already was.

I walked for two hours.

The Syndicate Academy was ten miles from the Underboss's mansion-an impossible distance in the freezing dark with no shoes and a spine that screamed with every step. But I walked anyway. Step. Breathe. Step. Breathe. The pain became a rhythm, a metronome that kept me moving when my body wanted to give out.

My feet left bloody prints on the frozen pavement. At first the cold had been agony-sharp shards of glass grinding into my soles with every step. Then the numbness set in, and that was worse, because I couldn't feel the damage anymore. I didn't know how bad it was until I looked down and saw the dark smears I was leaving behind.

The wrought-iron gates of the Academy rose before me just as the sky began to pale. Dawn was coming-gray and watery, leaking across the horizon like a wound that wouldn't close.

The armed guards at the gate recognized me. But when they waved me through, I saw their eyes. The way they tracked my movements. The way their hands stayed close to their holsters. The way one of them stepped backward as I passed, putting distance between us.

Something was wrong.

I crossed the courtyard. The sky was still dark enough that the motion-sensor lights hadn't turned off-pools of harsh yellow illumination scattered across the cobblestones. Students stood in knots, talking in low voices. When they saw me, they stopped talking. They turned. They stared.

And then they backed away.

Not subtly. Not politely. Viscerally. A girl I'd eaten breakfast with three days ago took two sharp steps backward, her hand rising to her throat. A boy from my mathematics seminar grabbed his friend's arm and pulled, hard. The circle of empty space around me widened with every step I took, an invisible force field of fear and disgust.

Whispers. Hisses behind cupped hands. Eyes wide and white in the gloom.

I kept my head down. I kept walking.

My room was on the third floor. The stairwell was empty-everyone was outside, in the courtyard, staring at the spectacle. I pushed open the heavy wooden door and found Elena standing over her bed, shoving clothes into duffel bags. Her hands were shaking so badly she kept dropping things. A sweater. A phone charger. A framed photograph of the two of us, which she shoved face-down into the bag without looking at it.

"Elena?"

She spun around. Her face was ashen, drained of all color, and when her eyes met mine, I saw something in them I'd never seen before.

Fear.

Not concern. Not pity. Fear. The kind of fear you feel when you're trapped in a room with something dangerous.

"Don't come near me, Anya." Her voice cracked, barely above a whisper. She held up both hands, palms out, as if warding off an attack. "Please. Please don't."

I took a step toward her. She flinched-a full-body recoil-and my foot froze in midair.

"Elena, what's wrong?"

She pointed. Her finger trembled so violently I could see it shaking from across the room.

"The tablet," she choked out. "On your desk."

I walked over. My legs felt disconnected from my body, moving on their own. I picked up the tablet. The screen was already lit, already loaded, already waiting for me.

The Syndicate's internal communications network. The logo burned at the top of the screen. And beneath it-

My mother's name.

She had sent a direct broadcast to the entire underworld. Every Capo. Every soldier. Every associate. Every student at the Academy. Thousands of eyes, and she had given them all something to see.

I scrolled down.

Scanned medical documents. Dr. Rossi's signature-the family doctor who had been on Carlo's payroll for fifteen years. The diagnosis, written in cold clinical language:

Schizophrenia, severe. Delusions, violent type. Auditory and visual hallucinations. Paranoia with persecutory features. Patient presents a danger to herself and others.

Below the documents: a photograph. High-resolution, professionally taken. My father's forearm wrapped in bloody bandages. He'd gotten that wound from a rival gang hit last month-I'd watched the medic stitch him up in the kitchen. But the caption didn't mention the rival gang. The caption didn't mention the truth.

The caption read: "This was Anya's last episode. A kitchen knife. No warning. She attacked her own father while he slept."

My mother's message was pinned at the bottom:

"Our hearts are broken. We've tried everything-treatment, therapy, prayer-but Anya's illness has completely consumed her. She suffered a severe breakdown at the family gathering tonight. She fled into the cold, delusional and dangerous. We are terrified for her safety and for the safety of anyone who approaches her. If you see her, do not engage. Contact us immediately. She is completely detached from reality."

I stopped breathing.

The tablet shook in my hands. Or maybe my hands were shaking. I couldn't tell anymore. The words blurred together, swimming on the screen, and I read them again and again, trying to understand how a mother could do this to her own child.

She hadn't just lied.

She had built a fortress of lies. She had taken every piece of evidence-my fear, my bruises, my desperate attempts to hide-and twisted them into weapons. She had weaponized Omertà. She had weaponized the Syndicate's code of silence. She had ensured that if I showed anyone my wounds, they would see only a self-harming lunatic. If I screamed the truth, they would hear only the ravings of a schizophrenic. She had made it so that no matter what I said, no matter what I showed them, they would only see a crazy girl and her delusions.

The heavy wooden door swung open behind me.

I didn't turn around. I didn't need to. I could feel the weight of the presence filling the doorway, could feel the temperature in the room drop by several degrees.

Consigliere Zane. The Syndicate's chief advisor. The man who settled disputes between families with the impartial coldness of a judge.

"Anya."

His voice was flat. Professional. The same voice he used for arbitration hearings and casualty reports.

I turned. He stood in the doorway, his tall frame blocking the corridor light. Behind him, four armed guards. Their hands rested on their holstered weapons. Their eyes scanned my body the way soldiers scan a threat-calculating distance, trajectory, the fastest path to neutralization.

"Step away from the other student." Zane's gaze flicked to Elena, who had pressed herself flat against the far wall, tears streaming silently down her cheeks. "You're coming with us."

I clutched the tablet to my chest, my mother's broadcast still glowing on the screen. The truth was locked inside me. And I was beginning to understand that in this world, truth meant nothing without power.