Too Late For Regret: The Exiled Mafia Princess

But the day he took the throne, his first official decree was my absolute ruin.

He stripped me of my name and threw me barefoot into a brutal winter storm.

The men who used to bow to me ripped my coat from my shoulders. My own aunt rolled up her car window as I dragged my bleeding feet through the slush.

His ambitious new queen smiled down at me as the heavy iron gates slammed shut.

"If she doesn't survive the night, it will save the syndicate a great deal of trouble."

Hunted by my own bloodline, I was forced into hiding, washing dishes in a greasy diner just to survive.

For years, I told myself he did it to protect me from the traitors who massacred my father's crew. I thought he was playing a long game.

But the truth was far more monstrous.

He knew my father was still alive, chained and tortured in a flooded subterranean cell. He heard his screams and chose his gilded crown over my father's life.

When his elite enforcers finally kicked down the diner doors to silence me for good, I didn't run.

I wiped the grease from my hands, grabbed a blade, and prepared to tear their entire empire to the ground.

Chapter 1

Gianna POV

The slush of melting snow soaked through my torn silk stockings.

From the penthouse balcony, the man who once swore on his life to protect me looked down. He wasn't the Don yet-not officially. The ceremony was still hours away. But the Commission had already made their choice, and Angelo Moretti was no longer my shadow. He was the heir.

I had spent the morning in the estate chapel, lighting a candle for my father's soul. When I returned, the guards were waiting.

"The Consigliere requests your presence at the east gate," one of them said. His eyes couldn't meet mine.

I followed them barefoot, still in my silk dressing gown. I thought it was a formality. Some ritual before the ceremony. Angelo would be there. Angelo would explain.

He was there. On the balcony. Watching.

The Consigliere stood on the steps below, breath pluming in the frigid air as he read from a thick, leather-bound folder. Treason. Violation of Omertà. Association with my father's disgraced crew.

I looked up at Angelo, waiting for him to stop this. Waiting for him to descend those stairs and tell them all it was a mistake.

He didn't move.

An enforcer grabbed the back of my neck and shoved me downward. My face slammed into the icy pavement. The rough stone cut into my cheek, and the taste of copper filled my mouth.

"I accept the Don's judgment," I whispered, because what else could I say? There was no Don yet. There was only Angelo, and Angelo was letting this happen.

The enforcer kicked me in the ribs, sending me sprawling toward the massive iron gates.

Footsteps crunched in the snow in front of my face. I looked up. Red-bottomed stilettos. Valeria smiled down at me, wrapped in Angelo's old leather jacket-the one he wore when he drove me to the harbor on summer nights.

"The Commission needed a gesture," she said, crouching down. "A sacrifice to prove Angelo has no lingering loyalties to Enzo's bloodline. You understand, don't you? It was you or the throne."

I spat blood onto the snow, inches from her expensive shoes.

"Call him down here," I said. "Let him tell me himself."

Valeria's smile didn't waver. "He already did. This was his proposal."

She stood, signaled to the guards. The massive iron gates groaned shut behind me.

I dragged myself backward over the threshold just before they slammed together. The lock clicked with terrible finality.

I pushed myself up against the rough brick wall, cold seeping into my bones.

On the balcony, Angelo turned his back and walked inside. He never looked down.

Gianna POV

I walked barefoot down the desolate avenue, every step leaving a faint bloody smear on the frozen flagstones. My toes had gone entirely numb blocks ago.

Up ahead, the old bakery. Mr. Rossi used to hand me free cannolis whenever Angelo walked me home from school.

I stumbled toward the soft yellow glow of the storefront.

Inside, he was wiping down the glass counter. He looked up. His hand stopped mid-swipe. The rag slipped from his fingers.

He rushed to the door, flipped the "Open" sign to "Closed," and slid the deadbolt into place with a solid thud. Then he yanked the blinds down and refused to look at me again.

Omertà. The sacred code of silence.

I forced my stiff legs to keep moving. Past the pub where my father's men used to drink. The door was propped open, cigar smoke spilling into the winter air. Over the blaring jukebox, I heard the bartender laughing, calling my father a rat, boasting that Enzo got exactly what he deserved at the harbor.

I pressed my freezing hands over my ears and hurried past.

The low purr of an engine. A sleek black SUV turned the corner, slowing to a crawl beside me. The tinted window rolled down.

My aunt's profile. My cousin Isabella beside her, staring at my bleeding feet with wide, horrified eyes.

"Auntie," I whispered.

Her elegant face hardened to marble. She pressed the button. The window rolled up. Just before the glass sealed shut, I heard her hiss: "The Don confirmed the exile decree personally this morning. No one can associate with the traitor's daughter."

The driver hit the gas. A sheet of icy slush soaked through my thin blouse.

I stood dripping and shivering, watching the red taillights disappear into the blinding snow.

The Don confirmed it. Not the Consigliere. Not the Commission. Angelo. The ceremony was over. He had taken the oath. And his first act as Don was to make my ruin official.

I reached into my damp pocket and gripped the crumpled exile papers. I refused to cry. Tears would only freeze.

By the third block, my legs gave out. I collapsed against the rusted siding of an abandoned warehouse, pulled my knees to my chest, and let my heavy eyelids close.

I knew if I fell asleep, I would never wake up.

Just as the darkness began to pull me under, a small shadow fell over my face.

A scrawny little girl stood ankle-deep in the snow, no more than eight years old, swallowed by a faded oversized jacket. In her small hands, she held a pair of beat-up adult sneakers.

"If you want to survive, you need your feet," she said. Her voice was tough, devoid of soft innocence.

She dropped the sneakers onto my lap, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a half-eaten bagel wrapped in a crumpled napkin.

I stared at the dry bread, a violent lump forming in my throat. My own blood had left me to die. A nameless child in an alleyway was offering me a lifeline.

"Thank you," I whispered.

Her name was Lily. She warned me the warehouse perimeter was bad for sleeping-prone to patrols. Before I could protest, she grabbed my sleeve and pulled me down a pitch-black alley to the rusted back entrance of a gritty, neon-lit diner.

A tough-looking woman with a lit cigarette hanging from her lips pushed open the screen door. Rosa.

Rosa took a long look at my bruised face, then at the blood seeping through the canvas sneakers. She didn't ask my name. She didn't ask who I was running from.

"Can you wash dishes?"

I nodded.

She tossed me a heavy, waterlogged sponge.

I stood in front of the deep industrial sink, freezing water blasting from the rusty faucet, stinging my raw hands. Gritting my teeth, I scrubbed dried egg off a heavy ceramic plate.

And despite the agony, I smiled.

True survival didn't require a mansion or a mafia title. It just required someone willing to hand you a dirty plate and a second chance.

I was still washing dishes hours after closing when the front door was kicked open with a sound like a thunderclap. Combat boots stomped across the linoleum. The clack-clack of a shotgun being pumped.

"Where is she?" a gravelly voice barked.

I gripped the slippery edge of the sink as a towering syndicate enforcer kicked the swinging kitchen doors open, holding up a glossy photograph of the exiled Mafia Princess-me, in a crimson gown at last year's gala.

Gianna POV

Flashlight beams cut through the dim kitchen, blinding me.

I ducked low, letting the billowing steam from the dish pit veil my face. Before Lily had brought me inside, I had rubbed gritty engine grease from the alley dumpster onto my cheeks and hacked my long dark hair into a jagged mess with dull kitchen shears. To anyone looking, I was a pathetic street vagrant.

Rosa slammed a cast-iron pot onto the stove. "What the hell is wrong with you people? You're tracking mud all over my freshly mopped floors!"

The lead enforcer ignored her. He marched toward the dish pit and grabbed my shoulder, yanking me backward.

"Look up."

I turned slowly, letting my shoulders slump.

He shined his flashlight into my eyes. "What's your name?"

"Gia Smith." I made my voice raspy and flat, stripped of every privileged inflection.

"Gia?" He narrowed his eyes.

Rosa stepped between us, crossing her thick arms. "I found her sleeping in a dumpster two weeks ago. She didn't even know her own name. I gave her one. Now back off before I charge your boss for property damage."

The enforcer pressed the cold steel of his shotgun under my chin, forcing my head up. "Can you read, Gia Smith?"

I shook my head slowly, eyes wide and vacant.

He shoved a glossy photograph inches from my nose-me, at the syndicate gala, diamond necklace, crimson gown, the golden crest behind me.

"Have you seen this woman?"

I squinted, pretending to struggle. Slowly, I pointed a trembling, soapy finger at the crest.

"Is that a pizza logo?"

The enforcer rolled his eyes in disgust and lowered the photograph.

He was about to turn away when his flashlight swept across my hands, still gripping the sink edge.

"Show me your palms."

My heart hammered. Cold sweat broke out on my neck. To hesitate was to die. I turned my hands over.

The harsh light illuminated thick, distinct calluses at the base of my index fingers and along the webbing of my thumbs-the marks of years firing heavy handguns and gripping tactical knives. A dishwasher didn't have hands like a trained hitman.

The enforcer's expression shifted to predatory realization. He raised his weapon, aiming at my chest.

"Wait."

A tall man in a tailored gray trench coat stepped out of the shadows by the back door. His voice was quiet but carried weight that made the enforcers tense.

They spun, weapons rising. The man calmly reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy silver token engraved with a snarling black wolf-a high-level operative marker granting absolute impunity, operating entirely outside the Commission's radar.

The enforcers lowered their weapons immediately, blood draining from their faces.

"Sir, we were just following the Don's orders-"

"Are you shaking down civilians without a Capo's direct order now?"

"No, sir."

"Then get out."

They scrambled out like frightened dogs. The door slammed shut. Silence fell, broken only by the soft bubbling of the pot on the stove.

Rosa let out a shaky breath. "Thanks for the assist, mister."

The man didn't look at her. His eyes stayed fixed on me.

"I didn't do it for you." He walked slowly toward the dish pit. "I'm collecting an old family debt."

He stopped a few feet away.

"My name is Pietro. I knew Enzo. Your father was a man who didn't deserve to die."

I gripped the sink edge so hard my knuckles turned white.

Pietro reached into his trench coat again and tossed something onto the steel counter. It landed with a heavy metallic clink-a fragmented piece of solid gold, tarnished but unmistakable. Half of a Capo signet ring.

I picked it up with trembling fingers. There was a deep scratch on the inner band. I had made that scratch with a pair of scissors when I was seven, trying to pry the ring off my father's desk.

"This is his," I whispered, a tear cutting through the grease on my cheek.

Pietro leaned against the counter. "The Harbor Massacre three years ago wasn't a rival ambush. Someone inside the Family deliberately left the gates open."

My chest tightened. "Who?"

He pocketed his hands. "If you want the whole truth, you need to stay alive long enough to hear it." He turned toward the back door. "The syndicate will keep hunting you, Gia. They won't stop until they confirm you're rotting in the ground."

He opened the heavy door, letting freezing wind howl into the kitchen.

"And when you finally find out who gave the order," he added, looking over his shoulder, "make sure you're ready to survive the answer."