My Stepfamily Locked Me In The Library To Steal My Fortune. They Didn’t Know I Had The Mafia King On Speed Dial.
Chapter 1: The Landline
"Open the door, Harper."
My father’s voice didn’t sound like a father’s. It sounded like a heavy boot pressing into wet gravel—thick with bourbon and the casual cruelty of a man who owned the local police commissioner.
Thud.
The antique oak door groaned. Outside, the string quartet downstairs was playing Vivaldi for three hundred of Greenwich’s elite, their diamonds sparkling under crystal chandeliers while I bled out on a Persian rug.
"Don't make a scene, sweetheart," my stepmother, Celeste, chimed in, her voice dripping with fake pity. "Just sign the inheritance over to Paige and we can all go back to the party."
I backed away, cradling my right hand against my ribs. My father had slammed it in his desk drawer ten minutes ago. The pain was a blinding, white-hot line shooting up my arm, turning my fingers purple. Blood from my hairline—courtesy of my stepsister Paige and a broken champagne flute—was dripping into my left eye.
I didn't have a cell phone anymore. Paige had smashed it. But they forgot about the old rotary landline hidden behind the leather-bound encyclopedias.
With my left hand shaking so hard I could barely breathe, I lifted the receiver and dialed the only ten-digit number I knew by heart.
The number belonging to Dominic Kane.
The city called him a billionaire philanthropist. The underground called him The Ghost of New York. He was the mafia king who controlled every port, every judge, and every dirty politician on the East Coast. And for reasons I still didn't understand, he had given me his private number six months ago.
One ring. Two.
"Kane," a voice rasped. It was low, gravelly, and instantly cut through the panic in my chest.
"Mr. Kane... can you come get me?" I whispered, my voice breaking.
The line went dead silent. It was the kind of silence that happens right before a storm snaps a power line.
"Where are you, Harper?" His voice had dropped twenty degrees.
"Ravenshore. The library. They... they broke my phone. My father wants me to sign the trust. They're going to break my other hand, Dominic." I didn't even realize I used his first name.
Crack.
The library door splintered. Through the jagged gap, I saw my father's pale blue eye. He smiled.
"Harper," Dominic’s voice boomed softly through the receiver, laced with pure, unadulterated danger. "Move away from the door. Count to three hundred."
"Dominic—"
The door burst open. My father strode in, his tuxedo immaculate, flanked by Celeste and Paige.
"Who are you talking to?" Grayson Langford sneered, snatching the phone from my hand. He Squeezed my broken fingers as he did it. I screamed, dropping to my knees.
My father put the receiver to his ear. From the floor, I heard Dominic’s final words before the call ended: "Five minutes, Langford. Enjoy them."
May you like
Grayson scoffed, dropping the receiver and crushing it beneath his polished leather shoe. He looked down at me like I was trash. "No one is coming for you, you pathetic little freak. You're completely alone."
But exactly five minutes later, the mansion's front doors didn't just open. They were blown off their hinges.
