The Mafia Boss’s Baby Refused Everyone—Until a Broke Waitress Held Him** The feared mafia boss went pale when his baby son re

The revelation hit me with the force of a freight train.

I stumbled backward, hitting the edge of the sofa. Leo whimpered in my arms, sensing my sudden panic.

My mother. The woman who had scrubbed floors until her hands bled, who had skipped meals so I could eat, was the rightful head of the Corsi mafia empire.

“You’re lying,” Gabriel snarled, stepping toward Carlo and grabbing the restaurant owner by the collar. “Vincenzo’s sister died in a car accident thirty years ago!”

“That was a cover-up!” Carlo cried, struggling to breathe. “She ran away! She fell in love with a civilian, and she knew Vincenzo would kill him. She gave up the empire to live in poverty. When she had twins, Vincenzo found her. I took Sofia and hid her in my family to protect the bloodline. But Vincenzo eventually found your mother and poisoned her.”

Gabriel let go of Carlo, his mind racing as the pieces of his entire life shattered and rearranged themselves into a horrifying new reality.

Vincenzo had stolen the empire. He had murdered his own sister. He had murdered Sofia when she discovered the truth. And now, he was hunting me, the final legitimate heir.

“The drawing,” I whispered, staring at the yellowed paper in Gabriel’s hand. Bring her home.

“He wants you to go back to the apartment,” Gabriel said.

“Why?” I asked, my voice trembling. “If he wants me dead, why didn't his sniper just shoot me? Why leave a message?”

Carlo slowly stood up, holding his bleeding forehead. “Because Vincenzo needs something you have, Elina. Something your mother hid in that apartment before she died. Something Sofia was looking for.”

I closed my eyes, desperately trying to access the memories of a traumatized ten-year-old girl. What had my mother hidden? We had nothing. No money, no jewelry, no safe.

Then, a sudden, vivid memory flashed in my mind.

The loose floorboard under my childhood bed. My mother used to make me promise never to step on it.

“I know where it is,” I said, opening my eyes.

Twenty minutes later, Gabriel, Marco, and I were standing in the hallway of a dilapidated tenement building on the West Side. I had insisted on leaving Leo at the safehouse with Carmela and four heavily armed guards.

The air in the hallway smelled of damp wood and old cigarette smoke.

We stopped in front of apartment 4B. The blue paint was peeling off the wood.

Gabriel kicked the door open. The lock shattered easily.

The apartment was abandoned, stripped bare of furniture, exactly as it had been left eighteen years ago when I was taken away by social services.

I walked straight into the tiny bedroom. The moonlight filtered through the dirty window, illuminating the scarred wooden floor.

I knelt down and pressed my hands against the floorboards under where my bed used to be. I found the loose plank and pried it up with trembling fingers.

Hidden in the dust and cobwebs was a heavy, rusted lockbox.

Gabriel knelt beside me, using his pocket knife to force the rusted lock open.

With a sharp snap, the lid popped open.

Inside wasn't money. It wasn't gold.

It was a stack of yellowed documents, bound by a leather strap.

Gabriel carefully pulled them out. He shined his flashlight on the first page.

It was a bank ledger.

“These are the original accounts,” Gabriel whispered in awe. “The off-shore trusts. The entire wealth of the Corsi family.”

He flipped the page, and his breath suddenly hitched.

I looked at the paper. It was a coroner’s report. But it wasn't my mother’s.

The name on the report was Antonio Corsi. Gabriel’s father.

Gabriel stared at the document, his hands shaking violently.

“My father didn't die of a heart attack,” Gabriel read, his voice cracking with a devastation that broke my heart. “Vincenzo poisoned him. He used the exact same undetectable toxin he used on your mother.”

Vincenzo had murdered Gabriel’s father to take over as Consigliere, and murdered my mother to remove the true heir.

Suddenly, a slow, mocking clap echoed from the doorway of the bedroom.

“I always knew she hid it here,” a cold, raspy voice said.

We spun around.

Standing in the doorway, surrounded by six heavily armed men, was a tall, silver-haired man in a bespoke suit. Vincenzo.