Chapter 1 - THE THREE-YEAR-OLD BOSS
My name is Luca Moretti, and for ten years, fear had protected me better than friendship ever could.
As head of the Moretti organization, I controlled half the city from behind a mahogany desk inside my private estate. Men twice my age lowered their voices when they entered my office. Nobody touched my belongings. Nobody sat in my chair.
Until three-year-old Mia did.
Mia was the daughter of Elena Rossi, the quiet widow who had worked as my estate maid for three years. One evening, the little girl slipped past my guards, climbed into my enormous leather chair, grabbed my brass paperweight, and announced with a grin that she was the boss.
Instead of becoming angry, I played along.
I asked for her first order.
Her smile disappeared.
Mia whispered that a “bad man” in the basement had been hurting her mother. Then she pointed toward the whiskey my stepbrother Marco had poured for me minutes earlier.
The bad man, she explained, had forced Elena to bring upstairs a tiny vial containing “quiet poison” that smelled like sweet vanilla.
My blood turned cold.
I had already swallowed two mouthfuls.
Almost immediately my vision began blurring.
Then the office doors opened.
Marco walked inside carrying a silenced pistol.
For years, Marco Moretti had been my right hand. We had grown up beneath the same roof after his mother married my father. I had trusted him with money, territory, weapons, and my life.
Apparently, my life was the one thing he had finally decided to take.
He raised the pistol toward my chest while the poison spread through my body.
But Marco had forgotten one thing.
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There was still a three-year-old girl sitting in my chair.
And Mia had already proven she was much braver than any grown man in that room.
