The Mafia King's Controversial Bride

August 24th, 2012. New York.

Twelve-year-old Denyefa hovered over her dying mother, trying desperately to arrest the bleeding from her stomach. Her mother's blood stained the white tiles of the kitchen floor as the young girl's efforts seemed futile.

Tears flooded the young girl's face, mixed with sweat which glued stray strands of hair on her face. This might be the last time she saw her mother, and what a horrible sight it was. Just then, one of their attackers walked into the kitchen where Denyefa and her mother were. There was no time for them to hide. Denyefa quickly grabbed a knife and charged at the intruder. She was of a little frame and build, but had a ferocious and dogmatic spirit.

She rendered a couple of blows on her attacker who at first underestimated her. When she sent him reeling back, almost landing on the floor, he knew the girl wasn't just an ordinary twelve-year-old. They quickly got into a scuffle which earned the intruder a cut on his face.

Rosalie looked at her daughter fighting for life and regretted letting her get into this mess. There was a small dagger clasped on her knee pad underneath her dress. She tilted her body a little to get to the knife. An excruciating surge of pain sent a wave through her abdominal and pelvic area down to her legs and even her chest region. Tears trickled down her face as she finally laid hands on the blade.

The intruder had somehow managed to get hold of Denyefa and was pulling her away. Rosalie took her aim and with a swift move, she sent the dagger across the intruder's neck, slitting his throat. Denyefa gasped as the knife swished past, almost hitting her too. Blood gushed out of her attacker's neck and he dropped to the floor, dead.

Quickly, the young girl ran back to her mother who smiled weakly at her.

"Mother," Denyefa cried in a shaky voice.

"Mi amor, listen to me, run! Run away until you get to safety."

"No Mother! I need to save you."

Rosalie shook her head, feeling weaker by the second. Her vision was now blurry but she could make out the figure of their greatest nemesis, the mafia king. For some special reasons, he had chosen to prey on this particular family. Fear gripped Rosalie when he noticed them and she pushed the dagger into Denyefas hand. "Save yourself first! Now go, Denyefa! Run!"

Sensing the urgency in her mother's voice, the young girl stood up with the dagger and ran through the escape route in the kitchen. It was a canal dug through the floor by her father. Thinking of her father, where would he be? When the attack started he had asked Denyefa and her mother to meet him in the garage in five minutes while he went out to fight the intruders. More than twenty minutes had passed without any sign of him.

Denyefa crawled through the canal which triggered her claustrophobia. She hated small and tight spaces. The canal was dark too and it made matters even worse. She pushed away the slab covering the canal's exit and found herself in the garage.

"Dad?" She called, walking out of the canal. The garage door was pulled open and the car was outside. A sense of hope lightened the young girl's heart as she sneaked towards the car. Just beside the car, she stumbled over her father's frame on the ground with his back turned to her and she fought the urge to scream. She took some steps back in shock before kneeling beside him, scared to even call out his name. Tears stung in her throat and she found it difficult to breathe.

With trembling hands, she turned him over to reveal numerous bullet wounds on his chest and one on his head.

"Dad," she cried in a cracked voice. Someone had sighted her in the distance and was now walking towards her. Barely having time to recover from the shock, she quickly grabbed her father's gun and made way for the woods close to the house.

Her family had never lived in a completely urbanized area. It seemed to her like they had always been on the run and she used to wonder why. That day she got her answers in the most cruel way ever. Life handed her her share of lemons, overly toxic and excessive for her young age. What would a twelve-year-old do with such bitterness life had shown her?

The last thing her mother had told her was to run and that Denyefa did. She ran madly through the woods, hoping to get to old Sully's house before the attackers sought her out.

Two men appeared behind her from nowhere and she increased her pace, surprising herself at how fast she was running. Even with her newfound speed, these men caught up with her and dragged her back towards the house.

They tied her hands behind her back, blindfolded her, and put her in a dark van. So much treatment for a common twelve-year-old. Denyefa, despite her fear, felt a burning rage inside of her. She managed to grab her mother's dagger from underneath her night dress and used it to cut the ropes on her hands. Next, she removed her blindfold and tried to unlock the back of the van where she was imprisoned. It was useless trying to break through the lock so she kept still in a corner of the dark van. She put the ropes back over her hand and the cloth over her eyes, tearing holes through it which she could see through. Her heart raced and her body trembled with fear as she sat at a corner of the van, waiting for what they would do to her next.

When the van finally stopped, a guard came and hoisted her out of it. She jumped over him, pulling him to the floor of the van and slit his throat. It wasn't only her fighting skills that led to her successful kills but the fact that her attackers underestimated her. Their letdown was her secret weapon. Another guard came to her, this one was more prepared than the first. Maybe it was because he had heard the shout of the first guard who went in to get Denyefa.

He managed to get her out of the van although with some bruises and cuts on his skin. Denyefa was dragged roughly across the hard ground. It was a tough fight getting her to follow the guard, but he managed.

A man was sitting in front, outside a sprawling mansion with an exquisitely designed exterior. If one weren't careful they could mistake it for a family house only that this one was where these bandits lodged, planned their operations, kept their mercenaries, did their training and kept some of their victims which Denyefa was to become one. The house overall was dirtier on the inside.

The man sitting in front of the house was completely dressed in black. He had those piercing eyes that seemed to search one's soul and a carriage that screamed dominance. He wore a skull head ring on the forefinger of his right hand. It made him seem occultic. Denyefa was brought to kneel before the king but she stood up immediately and pointed her gun at the man.

The guard wanted to intervene but this man stopped him with a raise of his finger. After all the ordeal he had faced in his life, a little girl was the last person who could threaten him. He tilted his head a bit as he studied her. She did not even know how to use the gun properly.

"Who gave you a gun, little girl," the man asked in a surprisingly calm tone which almost threw Denyefa off balance. He was supposed to be agitated if not for any reason but the fact that she had a gun pointed at his head.

"I'm the one to ask the questions here. Why did you kill my parents?" Denyefa raged. "They did nothing wrong. They did not deserve to die. We always lived a peaceful life."

The man looked unaffected by her anger.

"Well, your parents are already dead, what can you do about it?"

This statement unlocked a new level of anger in Denyefa and she pulled the trigger. She continued pulling and pulling but there were no shots fired. She flung the gun at the man and charged at him with her mother's dagger. This time the guard caught her and held her in place.

The man stood up from his chair. He had an intimidating stature as he towered over Denyefa. He raised her chin to examine her face under the moonlight. She spat in his face and he looked away, wiping off her saliva from his eyes as he let out a low laugh.

"You are stubborn like your mother. Instead of worrying about the dead, we can use your energy for something better." He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. "Take her inside. Tomorrow, we'll send her to the big house."

As the guards dragged Denyefa away, all she could imagine was that this man was going to use her as his slave. Little did she know that he had bigger plans for her.

The Big House, New York. 2019

"Argh!" Denyefa cried. The guard brought his whip down hard on her bare back. "Stop please," she pleaded and the guard sent another stroke across her back making her scream.

"Shut up!" He spat.

The guard must have gotten enough of her after the countless amount of times the king sent Denyefa to him for punishment.

"That's what you get for disobeying the king," Cassidy said from the doorway. She examined her nails as if picking something out of them, then returned her attention to Denyefa and the guard mercilessly flogging her. "Enough of that. The king wants to see her," she said and walked away.

The guard untied Denyefa's hands and blood rushed to her fingers. She wriggled them back to life and picked up her towel from the floor. The punishment room was a bit isolated from the rest of the house there. There was no one in sight as she walked through the gloomy hallways towards the main quarters.

Normally, she would've gone straight to the infirmary but the mafia king wanted to see her first.

Though her performance had been lacking, it wasn't her fault that all she could think about was escaping the hellhole on her upcoming nineteenth birthday, just three days away. After years of serving the ruthless mafia king, doing his bidding, and living at his mercy, she had gotten her fill. The thought of spending another week in the oppressive "Big House", under the constant watch of the man who had brutally murdered her parents, was unbearable.

She turned the corner and arrived at the boarding section where most of the workers slept. Rooms lined the hallway on either side but the place was desolated. The boarding section was almost always empty until around midnight when the workers were allowed to rest before they were forced to start work again as early as three in the morning.

As one can imagine, the workers were living the most miserable lives and more pathetic was the way the mafia king had kidnapped and brought them to his lair to suffer. Most of the workers, just like Denyefa were made orphans by the mafia king. Although they had their differences, one thing they shared in common was their deep hatred for the mafia king. But no one could do anything because the last time someone challenged the mafia king, his head was on a spike at the centre of the common ground the next morning.

The common ground was where most of the workers spent their day. The mercenaries like Denyefa, were sent out on special missions like assassinations, stealing, deliveries and some discrete transactions that needed to be done physically without the use of the banking system.

She walked across the concrete ground of the common space to the hallway leading to the main quarters. A few guards stood at a fair distance from each other on either side of the hallway with their guns pointed to the ground. They looked in her direction as she walked down the hallway. She paid them no attention. These were the same guards who maltreated her when she was a little girl at the big house. their work was to maintain law and order among the workers but instead, they continuously threatened and molested the workers at every chance they got.

Denyefa climbed up the flights of stairs leading to the king's quarters. On the second floor, close to the king's quarters was a different atmosphere. Guards mounted every corner and only a few workers were allowed in the area. It was like a bridge demarcating the other parts of the big house from the king's quarters.

The guards barely acknowledged her as she passed by, she had been a familiar sight since she was six years old. The king would summon her to his quarters, initially for business matters only. As a workaholic, he would keep her there for hours, at any time of day or night. However, things took a dark turn one night when his behaviour became unsettling and inappropriate. He grew too touchy, making her deeply uncomfortable. Cassidy, his mistress and around her age, was of no help, being inept and hot-headed. The king's advances ceased when he noticed her unease, but only temporarily. When she turned eighteen, he resumed his unwanted touching, making her feel vulnerable.

She comes to a large wooden door leading to the King's quarters. Two guards stood at each side of the door as it opened automatically.

There were two flights of stairs leading up to a common platform where the king's room door stood, grand and imposing. It had gold designs etched on it, forming a vinelike kind of pattern.

Some of his top officials had their rooms in the area at the base of the stairs. Almost all the time there were officials there with whores, gambling, drinking or just hanging out and discussing. This was like their chill-out area and the king could join them anytime but he barely did.

This was the same place she met Dante. That night, about two years ago the king had called her to his quarters and these men were around. One of the king's top officials held her just as she was about to leave the quarters after meeting the king.

She refused to meet him and he got angry at her. He pinned her to the wall and forcefully kissed her, then started training kisses around the sensitive parts of her body. Dante was just coming out of King's quarters, they had been in there earlier although they had not spoken to each other. Denyefa had not expected him to help her.

All the men she had encountered were either perverts or just evil in their special way. She did not expect to find a half-decent man among them but Dante surprised her that day. He pushed the official away which turned into a big case. The both of them fought and Dante being one of the mafia King's top assassins and chief of security, would have easily killed the official on the spot. But he restrained himself.

The mafia king only spared Dante because Denyefa was involved. Although under the king's Empire, men were given more preference. So Dante was never going to receive much punishment regardless.

The King was very clear about his principles and rules which he believed were for the good of the people under his care. Of course, these rules involved the punishment room and the very harsh conditions the workers were subjected to.

Some of the men stared at Denyefa intrusively as she walked up the stairs. Most of the other workers didn't have the luxury of seeing how much of an as*shole these men could be behind closed doors. Outside the king's quarters, they were stern and brutal. Nobody ever smiled with or at them except who was their general plaything. Cassidy's fault for letting herself loose so much as to allow these men to objectify her. She was meant to serve only the mafia king as his mistress but she slept with most of the top officials. The King knew and was already tired of punishing her for her recklessness.

On getting to the grand door of the king's room, Denyefa turned into the passage at the left. Two narrow passages lined the sides of the king's room. Each passage had two doors through which different parts of the room could be accessed. Only one door which was at the left passage, led to the inner chamber of the room. This was the door the king had ordered Denyefa to always use when visiting him. Even Cassidy couldn't access this door. Another reason is to make the blonde angry.

Denyefa walked into the king sings inner chambers to find him on the bed, fast asleep. He had never called her while he was asleep. Now she had only wasted her energy walking down there.

"Denyefa?" The king called to her just as she was about to leave.

She turned and faced him.

"Come," he beckoned and she moved closer to the bed. He sat up and tapped the bed beside him. "Sit down, let me see your wounds."

The last thing Denyefa wanted was to be in the same bed as this man but couldn't possibly disobey him. Her back wasn't strong enough for another round of flogging neither were the other parts of her body. The king was kind to her but he would still send her to the punishment room if she fell out of line. He was an evil man who schemed some of the assassinations in the area, but he was disciplined and kept to his rules.

He wasn't much of a talker so no one heard his voice around the house. Once he passed an order he followed it with immediate action. There was a time he banned Denyefa from using phones when she was sixteen. He had taken the phone immediately and smashed it right in front of her.

He only had one major flaw and that was his love for younger girls. He was over forty but his mistress, Cassidy was twenty-one, his former mistresses were both twenty years old when he brought them in and in Denyefa's case, he couldn't wait until she was twenty years old. It was unlike him to go for a girl younger than twenty.

Denyefa sat beside him apprehensively and he reached for her shirt, pulling it up her back to reveal her wounds.

"You're hurt," he said in a soft tone.

Denyefa looked away in discomfort. Enzo stood up from the bed and walked into the wardrobe and returned with a first aid box.

"Remove your shirt, mi Amor."

Denyefa hesitated and he forcefully removed the shirt himself, leaving her with nothing but her bra in front of him. She clung onto her chest trying to salvage what was left of her dignity.

"Sir, please... I'm not comfortable with this."

"You know I hate when you call me sir. Now lie down, let me clean your wounds."

Denyefa had no other choice but to obey. She couldn't possibly fight the king.

Feeling like a lamb on the slaughter table, she kept still. Enzo had never done this for her before and it scared her to allow the same man who killed her parents to clean her wounds while she lay on his bed in his secret chamber. Everything about the situation felt wrong. Goosebumps spread rapidly over her skin and she tensed at his every touch, her breath catching in her throat.

Denyefa flinched at the sting of the medicine on her open bruises.

"Sorry, this medicine will make it heal faster," Enzo spoke in his thick Spanish accent. Sometimes he was warm towards her, sometimes he was cold.

He finished cleaning her wounds and she sat up to wear her shirt when she felt his large hands over her breasts. She flinched and turned to face him, still holding her shirt in her hand. He grabbed her by the waist and trailed kisses over her chest. She could barely move in his grip. Her breath hitched in her throat as she bore the pain in her heart. If things continued like this he might just get her pregnant.

"Enzo, please, I don't want to do this," Denyefa pleaded with him. One part of living at his mercy was not having the will to fight him. If he were any of the other officials she would have knocked him out by now.

She gently pushed away from him but he held her even tighter as he squeezed one of her breasts and forcefully kissed her.

A tear drop rolled down Denyefa's cheeks and she sniffed, making Enzo stop for the first time to look at her face.

He let go of her and watched her closely as she pulled on her shirt

"You're a grown woman now, mi Amor. Don't tell me you don't feel anything."

Denyefa shook her head as the tears rolled down her cheeks. He must be delusional to think that she will feel anything for him.

How did he expect that relationship dynamic to work? She was eighteen, although turning nineteen in two days and he was in his forties already.

"All this fighting must have messed with your system. I always suspected it."

Denyefa stood up from the bed and looked away from him. His eyes were still fixed on her.

"Don't get me wrong, mi amor. Despite the fact that you give me so much pleasure, I'm only trying to look out for you."

"I'm fine, sir... Enzo."

"No, you're not. Too much fighting is killing the woman in you. I'll put you in a new position."

Denyefa looked down at him. "But I love fighting. You said it's the best way I can channel my energy."

"Correct, but you can't continue down that line. I want to make sure you're balanced as a woman. Therefore, from tomorrow, you'll join Cassidy and become my second mistress. I trust you'll do a better job. I'm tired of that slut."

Denyefa fought the urge to eye him. He accused the girl of being a slut after brainwashing her into being one. Well, Denyefa wasn't having any of it.

"Your second mistress? Enzo! I'm not trained for that kind of job. I'm used to fighting. What if I choke you in your sleep thinking you're one of my targets."

"It's not like you haven't done that before," Enzo shrugged.

Denyefa would do anything to get out of that situation. Imagine sharing a bed with such a dangerous man who was the target of many people.

If Denyefa were his mistress she wouldn't have to bother about boarding sections and the punishment room. But the prospects of sharing the same bed with Enzo and Cassidy too? She would rather spend her days on life-threatening missions and in the punishment room. Yes, the punishment room. Who knew the kind of activities the king carried out with Cassidy? She frequently visited the infirmary even more than Denyefa did.

"Sir, I would like to decline your offer. I'm satisfied with my position and don't want a change."

"I see you're adamant. Or you're scared. I understand that for someone who has lived her life fighting, this change might be overwhelming. I'll give you time."

Denyefa started walking away when he called her attention.

"You know, I spared you, sending you on easy missions. Join Dante tonight on his current mission. See what it's like to be an assassin and tell me if that's what you want. And note that if you fail on this mission, there will be consequences."

A tempting offer, but Denyefa knew better than to fall for traps like that. She went out in search of Dante.

Enzo surely wasn't going to back down, he had his end goal in all of this.

Dante was in the control room when Denyefa arrived there. Her body still felt a bit tingly from her early encounter with the king but she pushed aside the feeling.

"Denyefa!" Dante's expression lights up on seeing her.

She returned his smile as she went to stand by him at his computer desk. The control room was a very large space with all the digital devices they needed to monitor an operation. While Dante and the mercenaries went on missions, others stayed back in the control room to oversee their operations and provide the needed assistance. Dante had a special corner of the control room where he had his computer.

"What's that?" Denyefa pointed at the computer screen.

"Uh... It's the layout for our attack today."

Denyefa rolled her eyes. What's up with these men who always think women are dumb? "I know, I mean the particular location. Where's that?"

"Oh Yeah, this is Guyon's canal, south of Mount Caliber."

The name sounded strange to Denyefa. Over six years she had worked for the king and he had never sent her to this canal.

"What's this place about?"

"It's a major link between two army bases. It's heavily guarded but not as that of the army base since it's just a resting point for those transversing that area."

Denyefa drew her brows together and looked at Dante. "So what's so special about this place?"

"The type of travellers it houses, and the things they travel with." Dante paused and zoomed in on a tape playing on his screen. He paused it and pointed at something making denyefa move closer to the screen. "You see that truck there, it's filled with gold."

"Gold?"

"No, not like real gold, our type of gold. Weapons. "

"Oh," Denyefa nods in realization. A good gun was better than a pound of gold cause a good gun could make a pound two.

"But sometimes there's real gold there. It's a catch, don't you think?"

Denyefa nodded. Her attention was fixed on something on the screen. "What's happening there?"

Dante moved closer to the screen to inspect it. "They're handing over to the evening shift."

Denyefa looked at Dante, noticing their proximity. He turned to look at her and their faces were just inches away from each other. Neither of them moved away as they both stared into each other's eyes. Dante had always been attractive to her but this urge she felt to move closer to him and take his lips in hers was new to her.

Dante couldn't take his eyes off her. The leftover feelings from her earlier encounter with the king arose in her body again. She couldn't help moving closer to Dante. She closed her eyes and their lips brushed. Dante moved away and she opened her eyes. Embarrassed, she withdrew from him too.

The mafia king forbade anyone from touching his ámor.