Queen of the Empire ✓ | #1 |

Chapter one: Family over mafia

Being the queen of a mafia empire isn't easy. My whole life people looked at me with disgust and regret. My father wanted a boy, so he could take over the family; however, I was born first. In fact, I was the only firstborn daughter in the entire Rossi and Rossini families.

A female on the throne seemed amusing and stupid to my relatives. In addition, it didn't change after I was born. They immediately told my father to have another child and to hope it was a boy. They didn't believe that a girl could rule the mafia world. They were wrong.

My family history is a bit difficult to understand. It begins with the Rossini royals. The royal blood in us died after my great-grandfather Angelo Rossi betrayed his family by marrying a non-royal. In other words, he married out of love. His family disowned him so he had to find a new way of living. Angelo was a power-hungry man and after years of hard work, he started his world of the Italian mafia. The illegal way of making a fortune and ruling the world.

He could not have done all of it without his sister Gabriella being by his side. Gabriella was the second and last child of the Rossini family. She was clever and brave - the two qualities that made a great mafia leader. Gabriella could not be fooled and wasn't afraid to make big decisions. One of which was to make a deal with the Bianco family. She married Martino, not only for an alliance that was still alive today but also out of love. This alliance slowly made the Rossini's one of the most powerful mafias in the world.

To leave the past behind, Angelo changed his last name to Rossi. He began making many connections with fellow organizations and after his son, Vincenzo was born, the Rossi family became the most powerful mafia not just in Italy, but the entire world.

Gabriella had two kids: Antonio and Matteo. Antonio, later on, married Camilla; they had a daughter and became the right-hand man to Vincenzo. Matteo married his high school sweetheart Martina and had a daughter – Valentina. Unfortunately, Matteo died at the age of thirty due to heart failure and Martina committed suicide after Valentina's murder. Antonio had a daughter Francesca, who married Martin and even made him change his last name to hers, in order to keep the family name going. She had a son Lorenzo. He married his childhood best friend, Marco Caruso, at 22. He works for the Rossi family and is one of the best financial advisors and IT specialists for the family.

After many years of ruling, Angelo stepped down from the throne and made his one and only son the king of the empire.

Vincenzo was a cruel man and killed many of his enemies, which led to having even more. The biggest mistake happened when Vincenzo married Isabella. At least we thought that was the worst mistake. She was supposed to marry Valentino Martinelli. That later escalated to Valentino killing many of Vincenzo's men and Vincenzo stealing and destroying Valentino's properties. This feud never ended until Francesco Martinelli made a very bold move to steal a shipment from the most powerful Russian mafia - Usoro.

Vincenzo had two kids: Dante and Luciana, Dante being the oldest. Luciana married Damiano Marino and had a daughter – Laura. Luciana to this day works for the Rossi family as the second in hand to me, since Luciana was very clever and trustworthy and we had an amazing bond.

After Vincenzo crowned him as the king of the empire, Dante married Giorgia and inherited all of his father's enemies. Soon after, Giorgia gave birth to me (the current queen of the empire) and Dante stumbled upon the Usoros. He made a few deals for weapons and a few properties that went great. However, it did not mean that Vlad had good intentions.

Giorgia and Dante had two more kids: Aldo and Giorgio, who became the right-hand men to me and despite being younger, they protected me at all costs.

The family was definitely complicated but simplicity is boring. Besides, the world of the mafia was never simple. If it was, no one would know who you were and you most definitely would not be powerful. On the other hand, everyone would have everything and jealousy would take over, killing everyone in the process.

Since I turned fifteen, I began to imagine what my life would look like after I was the queen. Unfortunately, it almost never happened. My father had no such intentions to make me the next emperor. He made it very clear that he wanted a son on the throne and never spoke about it until I turned eighteen. I had hoped that papa would eventually crown me and he did. Well... in a weird way. Not the coronation but the way he changed his mind.

Right before his meeting two weeks after my eighteenth birthday, he disappeared somewhere, and after coming back, he agreed to crown me.

Apparently, he attended another meeting, but just those two hours changed his perspective of a female on the throne, which he was very strict about for over forty years.

During all these years of being a part of the Italian mafia, I learned many things. Such as to never trust anyone apart from yourself, to always be aware of everything that goes on around you. Moreover, family over mafia. Some mafias around the world went by the opposite "mafia over family" concept but in our four generations of existence, no one has ever valued mafia more than family.

Oh, and blood does not define family. To be family to someone you had to earn it. It didn't matter if you were born into it. What mattered was how loyal you were willing to be. How much you were willing to sacrifice.

We lived in a huge four-wing and two-story mansion in Rome. Our estate was not somewhere public. Angelo built the house in a huge field in the middle of the woods and made sure security monitored it five kilometers around the mansion. No one has ever broken in, and if people tried, they were dead by our doorstep. Some to this day rot in our underground cell.

After becoming the queen, I requested the top-north wing to be mine. I have my office, separate gym, gorgeous white and light grey bedroom, a massive walk-in closet and a balcony connected to my room.

The south wing had an entryway, two massive curved staircases and it led to the other wings. The west wing on the first floor had the kitchen, the family dining room and the huge one hundred and fifty people formal dining room. The second floor contained bedrooms shared by the Biancos. The east wing had a living room, a museum hall and a throne room. It was special because it represented the new Rossi royalty.

The second floor had the guest bedrooms and the Rossi rooms. The mansion also had a cinema, a giant backyard with a pool and a big rose garden that my grandmother Isabella created.

As much as this world of the mafia was cruel, I wouldn't change it for anything. After all, it was how I grew up. Moreover, I was very fortunate to have everything I did.

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