Not Afraid of the Mafia Heir’s Threat Chapter 01
Lorenzo, the boy I had grown up with, had sweet-talked me into taking nude photos for him.
He had promised they were for his eyes only.
I had been scared, but I’d also felt lucky. Lucky that after all those years, I had finally won his heart.
Then Gianna Bellini, a scholarship student, stepped into the picture, and suddenly she and I were neck and neck for the grand prize of the vocal competition.
Lorenzo had said it casually, as if my dreams meant nothing to him.
“Sera, let her have it.”
“You don’t want those pictures all over the internet, do you?”
“You promised you’d delete them all.”
It was the middle of a brutal summer, hot enough to melt the pavement.
But I felt a sudden, paralyzing chill, as if I’d been plunged into a freezing lake after a violent blow to the head.
My lips parted, my voice shaking. “You promised me…”
Lorenzo cut me off. “I did. I promised I’d be the only one who saw them.”
His eyes stayed locked on mine as he spoke, his tone dropping into a dangerous, steady murmur.
“And I won’t go back on my word. Not as long as you give first place to Gianna.”
I tried to argue, but the words caught in my throat. “The singing competition… is supposed to be won fairly.”
“I’m… not giving it up.”
Lorenzo looked like he’d expected that.
He dragged my chair closer, trapping me between his arms, then pulled out his phone.
Enclosing my hand in his, he forced my fingers to tap open his encrypted vault.
The images that filled the screen were graphic enough to make my blood run cold.
He laughed under his breath. “Sera, you really do have an incredible body.”
His lips brushed my ear, and his voice turned intimate in the cruelest way.
“This one’s my favorite. You were flushed all over, looking straight into the camera with your mouth open…”
“Like you’d already been wrecked.”
My fingertips started trembling. “Please don’t look,” I whispered, my voice cracking.
He paused, then turned the screen dark.
His thumb was warm when he brushed the tears from the corner of my eye. “Easy, baby. Don’t be scared. Do we have a deal?”
My fingers twisted together without me realizing it. My mind went completely blank.
“Okay.”
Lorenzo smiled then, satisfied, and rose to his feet.
He smoothed down my messed-up hair and spoke in the same gentle tone he always used when placating a child.
“There’s a family gathering tonight, so I’m not going home with you.”
“I’ll have the driver take you.”
The air-conditioning in the vocal classroom was blasting.
I wrapped my cardigan tighter around myself and curled up in the chair.
I was freezing.
So cold I could hardly breathe.
I covered my mouth and cried as quietly as I could.
Lorenzo had been the person I trusted most in the world.
When I was seven, my parents finally secured their place in New York’s underground power structure.
They brought me in from the farm and took me to the family estate.
The shabby farmhouse of my childhood became a gleaming mansion overnight.
But I never fit there.
I didn’t understand their rules, their manners, or the way they moved through those rooms like they had been born to own them.
They mocked how timid I was, mimicked my accent, and found one way after another to make me feel small.
I was always getting picked on.
All I ever did was hide somewhere and cry.
I used to think that if I didn’t fight back, they’d eventually get bored and leave me alone.
Then one day, a group of boys cornered me and tried to yank my pants down.
I burst into tears, grabbed a dead branch off the ground, and held it out in front of me. “D-don’t come any closer!”
They didn’t stop.
If anything, it only made them worse.
That was when Lorenzo showed up.
He came in carrying a brick and sent them scattering.
Back then, Lorenzo had already been the young prince of our world, the heir to one of the most powerful mafia families in the city.
He held out his hand to me and said, “Come on, stutter girl. I’ll take you home.”
But my legs had gone completely numb.
Lorenzo frowned, looking irritated as hell.
Even so, he crouched down in front of me. “Get on.”
I hesitated for a second, then climbed onto his back.
He carried me home, steady and unhurried.
After that, I followed him everywhere, timid and quiet, like a shadow.
I followed him for eleven years.
In college, I finally worked up the courage to tell him how I felt.
Maybe Lorenzo had softened for me. Maybe he had just given in. Either way, he had looked at me with a faint smile and nodded.
So when he asked to take pictures of me, I had swallowed my fear and asked softly, “No one else is ever going to see them… right?”
He had lifted the camera and soothed me in that same gentle voice.
“No. They’re just for me.”
I had hesitated for only a moment before slipping off my nightgown.
Then I posed for him, one shot after another.
Now all those intimate moments, the ones that had once felt like proof of how close we were, had turned into knives aimed straight at me.
I had trusted Lorenzo that much.
And in the end, I broke.
I cried until there was nothing left in me.
I didn’t know how long I sat there before my tears finally dried up.
Then my phone lit up with a message from Lorenzo.
Just like always, he sounded thoughtful and attentive. “You cried today. Your throat’s probably going to hurt.”
“Drink some warm honey water when you get home.”
I clenched my phone and made my way back in a daze.
At one point, I nearly walked straight into a semi.
My whole body was numb by the time I got home, and my hands were shaking so badly I almost missed the keypad when I entered the code.
The living room was pitch-black.
I didn’t turn on the lights. I just sat down on the couch, hugged my knees, and stared into the dark.
The clock kept ticking away, measuring the empty hours.
When my phone chimed again, I picked it up almost mechanically.
It was a message from Vanessa Hart.
Her tone was unusually serious. “Sera, tell me the truth.”
“Did Lorenzo… take nude photos of you?”