Owned By The Mafia Don

PROLOGUE

***

LOVE... The rubbish people deceive themselves with, to blind themselves to reality. Its only use is to sell novels and sell out movies and groom weak, delusional people. I was deluded once, thinking love conquered all. My family was dirt poor, but it didn't matter to me as long as they loved me and we had each other. But I was just ten when I was sold like I was a piece of bread. That was just the beginning of my torment, the rest would come on my journey across the ocean to a strange land. The end, well, It would be my retribution to the world for turning their backs on me.

***HAKAN***

Filth, blood, piss, tears, and death. The stench was so thick in the air, it was impossible to separate one from another. I was in a container with about a hundred other children of varying ages, being transported to an unknown place. Some of them had been kidnapped, but some like me had been sold by parents, relatives or friends. There was no way to tell time inside the air tight container, and breathing was a chore with so many others in here and so little air to go around.

Lack of air wasn't our only problem, we were hardly fed while being transported and water was a scarce commodity. Our captors didn't care if we lived or died, whichever one of us was still breathing when we finally arrived would be taken and the corpses would be dumped into the ocean. They couldn't risk their illegal business being discovered by naval authorities.

The boy seated next to me was seconds away from dying and I was so hungry that I contemplated feeding on his flesh when he finally died. Maybe it wouldn't matter, maybe I would die either way. Maybe it was better than whatever fate awaited me if I lived. I closed my eyes and the same scene I had been reliving for hours, replayed in my head.

~

"Mama! Don't let them take me!" I pleaded with tears in my eyes as a big man tried to take me away.

"You have to go, Hakan. You have to go. We can't take care of you anymore. Stop crying, be a man." My father said to me with a frown while my mother cried beside him.

"It's okay, Kan." My mother said as she rushed forward to embrace me.

"Please, I don't want to go." I pleaded as I looked up at her.

"They promised to take you to a better place. They will take care of you. Be brave for Mama, okay. Some other children from the village are going too, if they see you crying they will laugh at you. They will return you back to me, your father assured me of it." She used her clothes to clean my face.

"But you're crying too, Mama."

"I..."

"Leave him, he doesn't need your tears, woman."

Mama immediately stood and walked back to stand beside father. As I looked up at him, I realised that Mama didn't want me to go, it was father that was giving me to these men.

"Go back home, let the men handle business." Father said to her and she walked away.

I hated how he treated her, how he spoke to her. I was a child, but I still understood that it was wrong. Just the same way I understood that I wasn't being given to these men when my father was given some money. I was being sold and my mother had been lied to, they would never return me. I bit the hand of the man holding me and ran forward but before I could get far, I got caught by my father and he slapped me so hard that my ears began to ring.

"You better behave and be thankful that I finally found a use for you. Your mother won't be there to protect you if you misbehave. Your sister would have brought me more profit, but I have two more sons to replace you and she is the only daughter. The drought has killed our crops and we need to feed one way or the other."

I didn't understand what my father meant by drought, but when he mentioned the crops I knew he was lying. Our farm didn't do so well this year, I knew that, but we still had something to live on for now. And we had already started preparing to plant more in the part of it that had already been harvested. My siblings and I no longer went to school, so there was nothing else to pay for.

He just wanted to use the money to drink and play games at the joint that was close to the market. That was why he didn't want Mama to know that he received money for me, and also because she would have never agreed to let me go if she knew.

"Put him with the others." A short man with beards told the man that had been holding me and I was put into the back of a truck with some other children from my village.

The last thing I saw was my father's happy face as he counted the money he had been given before I inhaled a gas that made me fall asleep. When I woke up, I was in the container with more children than had been in the truck.

~

I heard the exact moment that the boy beside me took his last breath, and I closed my eyes. My mother's face was the last thing I wanted to see before death took me too so I tried to remember her smile, her scent, her voice. I remembered her scolding me when I injured myself while also soothing my wounds. I remembered her singing to me and my siblings. I heard a loud noise and the container shook so hard that all of us were thrown about. A child from the corner began to cry and I wondered how the person had the strength to do more than breathe at this point.

There was a creaking sound as the container door opened, and the first thing I did was take a deep breath of fresh air right before a gun was pointed at my face.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello dear readers. Welcome to my corner of the storyverse. As you read, please don't forget to drop your comments so I'll know your thoughts, I love to hear from my readers

P.S: This chapter is like a flashback, Hakan's backstory will continue later on in the story.

Keep reading!

NIGHTINGALE

***

My cheeks stung and there was a ringing sensation in my ears as his hand connected with my cheek. My eyes watered, but I refused to let the tears drop. I haven't cried in front of him since I was a teenager. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he made me cry as an adult.

"GIVE ME THE MONEY!" He shouted and spit flew from his mouth. I moved backward to avoid getting sprayed and to put some distance between me and the stench coming from him.

He stank of alcohol and sweat. I doubt he had even showered in the past few days, but he didn't care and neither did I, not anymore.

"We need it. We haven't eaten today, you took my morning pay and I had to go work for this so we wouldn't starve to death."

His palm connected with my cheek again, this time it was hard enough to send me to the ground.

Don't talk back at me, you filthy piece of shit. Give it to me."

I yelped as he dragged me up by my hair and pinned me to the wall with a hand wrapped tightly around my throat. His other hand began to search in my pockets for the money I had just been paid for walking Mrs Elm's five dogs.

"Where's the rest of it?" He asked as he brought out two notes from my left pocket. I couldn't speak with his hand wrapped around my throat. He had already searched the right pocket so he moved to my back pockets and I began to squirm.

He must have taken that as a sign that there was money in it because he spun me around and pressed my face to the wall so my back was presented to him. He held me down with a hand at the back of my neck while I tried to free myself.

I knew that there was no money in my back pockets. The reason I had been squirming was to get rid of the feel of his hands against my ass, and I had made it worse. Now that my back was to him, my backside was exposed to him. His hands lingered more than was appropriate while he searched my back pockets. Did I say more than appropriate? That was wrong because none of this was appropriate at all. My father shouldn't be forcing me to give him the little money I wanted to use to buy food for my sister and me. He shouldn't be hitting me whenever he doesn't get his way. When he didn't see any money in my back pocket, he pushed me to the floor again and I scraped my elbow.

"This money is too small. You're fucking useless." He kicked me once in my midriff and I curled into a ball.

I would have laughed at the irony of his statement. The drunkard, negligent father calling the person who works and makes the money he spends on his habits, useless. If it weren't for me, he would starve to death. He muttered angrily to himself and stomped out of the house.

"Nightingale!" Quetzal said as she rushed to help me up.

I had warned her to never interfere while our father was having one of his fits. It was an unspoken agreement between my father and I that I would take all of his insults and the physical abuse as long as he keeps my sister out of it. But that was as long as she stayed out of the way. if she got between him and me while he was at it, it would kind of be a breach of agreement and all bets were off.

"Are you okay?" She asked as I sat up and leaned against the wall.

"I'm okay." I said as I looked up at my seventeen year old sister.

We both looked alike... Olive skin, curly brown hair, with amber eyes and full heart shaped lips, just like our mother. My sister had a light dusting of freckles over her nose and cheeks and she was the most beautiful of the both of us. I have protected her from the harsh reality of our lives as much as I can, but there was only so much I could do. We just seemed to be cursed.

Our mother was now one of the country's top politicians and she was married. She had been engaged to the heir of a wealthy family when she met my father. He had been her driver. She hadn't wanted to marry the man chosen for her by her parents so out of spite, she got pregnant for her driver. That wasn't enough to stop her parents though. They made her deceive her fiancé into thinking the child was his and that hastened the marriage plans. Then when she gave birth, her parents paid the doctors to kill me so my real paternity would never be discovered. They would have made her abort me, but I was useful at that period to make my mother's fiancé marry her less than a month later. And while she lived with him, it was impossible to get the abortion so that was why they had waited.

My mother paid the doctors more than her parent's had to pretend that another dead baby was me and then give me to my father. They continued seeing each other even while she was married, till her parents found out about it. By then, she had given birth to a child for her husband and was already pregnant with Quetzal. They did the same trick as before and gave my sister to my father. He was offered a huge amount of money and made to sign a contract by my mother's parents in order to get it. The agreement was that he would disappear from their lives with my sister and I, and never return, never show his face, never try to publicize us or there would be dire consequences. He took the money and left. My mother didn't care enough to fight for us, my father had just been a means to defy her parents, a distraction and a way to pass time.

My father had squandered the money he had been given while gambling, but he always blamed my sister and me for his misfortune. He had repeatedly told me this story while adding how we were nothing but bad luck to him. He had always been a negligent father, but every attempt to get us taken away by social services never worked. My mother's parents made sure of it. We looked like our mother too much so if we somehow got into the government record, someone may become suspicious and find out our identity after a little digging. That was also the reason why I couldn't report the abuse I've endured for years to the police. Who knows if they'll send someone to assassinate us.

Our mother must love birds a lot because she named us both after them. Or maybe we weren't important enough to actually name so she gave us bird names. Who knows.

"Nightingale, You're bleeding!"

NIGHTINGALE

***

As Quetzal's eyes widened when she informed me that I was bleeding, I looked down at myself. I was indeed bleeding. I saw a few drops of blood on my arm and touched it, but the blood wasn't from there. I knew where I was bleeding from when Quetzal touched my lip. Usually, our father avoided hitting me on the face where his abuse would be visible to anyone who looked at me. But today he seemed more edgy than usual so he had no qualms about it. Maybe he had realised as I had that nobody would really care what he was doing to me, and if they actually cared even a little, that there was nothing they could do to help me.

We lived in a rundown neighborhood where everyone had their own problems, and everyone minded their business. Someone could be getting killed and the neighbors would just shut their curtains and pretend like it never happened. Gangs operated around the area and clashes were normal so everyone tended to stay out of their way. The only somewhat normal person in the neighborhood was Ms Alisha. She had a garden that produced the food that a lot of families around the area depended on. She grew all sorts of things in her garden and people came to buy because it was cheaper to buy from her than from the stores, and also more fresh than the packaged products.

She had been a fairly wealthy woman at one point in her life, but she ran away from her city after her sons used her business as collateral while gambling. The gang that operated the casino where they had lost the bet threatened her life if she didn't immediately vacate the place. She became almost penniless after that and ended up here. My sister and I were employed to work with her, but the pay wasn't much because she had other workers in the fairly large garden. Other children from families in the area worked there too and we all had our allocated slots. She preferred to employ a lot of us and pay us smaller amounts, than just two or three being paid more. That was her way of taking care of us, and making sure everyone at least got something.

I couldn't resent her for that, most of the other children either had drug addicts, drunkards, hookers and so on as parents so they were also fending for themselves. They needed the money as much as I did. A lot of them were also uneducated even though there was a school in the area. It was illegally run by Mr Omer and two others... Mrs Green, and a guy named Justin.

Mr Omer used to be a principal in one of the biggest schools in the country, but he was arrested for embezzling funds from the school's account. He had been sentenced to five years in prison after only being able to pay half of the money he had stolen. When he finished serving his sentence, he ended up here and started a small illegal school because he knew that he would never be allowed to work in another registered school with his criminal record. Most of the children didn't see the need to learn and preferred doing petty jobs or petty crimes to earn money instead.

Fortunately for me, my father had put us in school. I had been halfway through high school and Quetzal had just gotten into high school when he decided that schooling was a waste of money. It was a public school a bit of a distance from our neighborhood so we didn't have to pay fees but there were other expenses like bus fare, books, etc. to pay for. My father decided that he would stop paying it, and that was when I started working in other places apart from Ms Alisha's garden to make more money to pay for the other expenses of our schooling.

I graduated years ago, and Quetzal was almost done with high school now, we had a plan to run away together when she graduated. Then maybe we could both apply for college when we were safely far away from here. Ms Alisha didn't know it, but her garden had our most prized possession. We had a box of all our savings buried deep in the earth somewhere in our own work section of her garden. We would have run away sooner, but we didn't have enough money yet. By the time she finished high school in a few months, we would be home free.

"Don't worry, it's just a little cut. I'll be fine." I said to her as I stood and pulled her up with me.

"You're not fine." she said with a shaky voice as tears dropped from her eyes.

Another reason why I don't cry anymore, Quetzal cried enough for the both of us."

I'm okay, Quetzy. It's just another Friday." I said with a smile that was meant to make her stop crying but instead, she sobbed even harder.

"Your face is swollen and you're bleeding." She said and I hugged her.

"Ssh! Stop crying, Quetzy. Save your strength. You haven't eaten properly today, and you just got back from school." I rubbed her back. I almost laughed at the irony, I was trying to soothe her when I was the one that had just been hurt.

"You should be more worried about yourself. You gave me a doughnut before I went to school. I'm sure you haven't eaten at all today." She said as she pulled back to look at me.

After our father had taken the money I had been paid for taking out garbage for some businesses two blocks away, I had stolen a doughnut from my regular morning job at the coffee shop to give to her. I couldn't stand the thought of her going to school without eating something no matter how small. The doughnuts had just been brought to the cooling trays so they hadn't been counted yet which made it easier to take one for Quetzal. I didn't regret stealing it. I would never steal their money, but if my sister needed to eat, then I had no problem stealing doughnuts. When I made a tip tomorrow or next, I would pay for the doughnut so no harm done.

"Did you get the lead role in the play?" I asked her to distract her.

Her eyes immediately lit up and I knew the answer before she said...

"Yes!"

The high school was having a play in a month and the audition for roles was today. I always encouraged Quetzal to join extra curricular activities, so when she told me that she had put her name down for the lead role, I was happy. We had practiced her lines together and I'm glad to see that it had paid off.

"That calls for a celebration. We'll grab some food and get ice cream too." I said to her and her smile faltered.

"Father took all the money you made after your coffee shop shift ended." She said sadly.

The coffee shop paid weekly not daily like some of my other jobs and I wasn't due for payment till Monday morning so after our father had taken my morning pay for garbage disposal, I had to search for something else to do and get paid. My search was futile, but thankfully, Mrs Elm called me to come walk her dogs.

"He didn't take all the money. I have some more money on me and I hid it where he wouldn't think to check." I said and winked at her.

"Where?" She asked and I smiled.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Where did you think Nightingale hid the money? Any ideas?