Falling Angel | a Mafia Story

Prologue

"And I was running far away

Would I run off the world someday"

"No!"

I heard a crash and Mommy's cry as her body slammed into the wardrobe that concealed me and my two little brothers. The impact against the cheap material caused a horrible crunch, as her body was forcefully pressed against the door causing a thin strip of light to fall onto my tear-stained face, but it was her desperate voice that had me chocking back my sobs.

She had told us not to make a sound. Just like hide and seek, she had said.

But I didn't like this game and all I wanted was for it to be over. For mommy to open the wardrobe door of this cheap hotel room and tell us it would all be okay.

But I knew she couldn't do that, because it wasn't okay. And she had told me to look out for my brothers, so I pressed them into the corner, hiding them behind mommy's big coat.

I could smell her sweet scent on it still, from the perfume I'd always see her put on in the mornings.

But she hadn't this morning. She had come into my room before the sun was up with my brother Dante asleep in her arm and Dino holding tightly onto her hand, his big green eyes bleary and still filled with sleep.

And she had told me to come with her. Quickly. Quietly. Before Daddy would wake up and get angry at us again. Like he was now...

"Did you really believe I wouldn't find you, Teresa?" he thundered, and it didn't take much to imagine his furious face with his small beady eyes and the pumping blue vein on the side of his temple.

"You can never run from me."