The Mafia King's Unknown Doctor Wife novel Chapter 1

Elena Vitale never should’ve come back to her childhood home. It was a mafia den of cold cruelty that choked out anything good in life. That’s why she had left in the first place.

But she needed to get the money from her old savings account to pay off her student loan—an account her father technically owned. It was linked to his banking account, after all. He used it to show the U.S. government how much of a good, law-abiding citizen he was.

“I could’ve saved you the trouble. It’s empty.”

Her father was already in the doorway. The look on his face promised an incoming storm.

“What?”

Blind or uncaring to Elena’s dismay, her father walked into his study unbothered.

“Your brother wanted a new sports car,” he said simply.

“That’s not fair. It was mine!”

The second the heated words left her mouth, Elena knew she’d made another mistake.

“Not fair? Not fair?” Her father towered over her like a raging flame. His face was nearly as red as one.

“I let you go to school to be a doctor, didn’t I? I let you live under my house for eighteen years, didn’t I?”

Elena wanted to protest that he hadn’t let her do anything.

She had to pay her own way through medical school—that’s why she had killer loan repayments. Afterwards, she had to find her own apartment to prevent her father from using her as a pawn in his latest power play within mafia circles. Everything Elena had done, she had to do by herself.

She wanted to spit at her father for his arrogance.

“You’re my daughter, Elena,” he said. “Family. You remember what that means, don’t you?”

Truth be told, Elena didn’t. Her real family broke apart when she was just three years old. When her mother left the mafia life behind and never looked back.

Her father grew cold afterwards. He moved on fast, remarrying and having a son within a few short years. But as for his first child, Elena might as well have been invisible.

Family had always meant shadows and secrets. Power and control. A tight fist and held breath.

Her father looked down at her, clueless as to her thoughts. His nostrils flared.

“If family needs money, you give it. My word is law. I would’ve thought you learned that after your marriage proposal.”

“I told you already, I’m not marrying Don Morello,” Elena spat back.

The Morellos were everything Elena’s family, the Vitales, pretended to be. Rich, powerful, and unquestionably in charge. Where Mr. Vitale played at being an old school Italian mafia boss, he was a simple capo compared to the don that was Mr. Morello.

Don Morello was the actual boss, the leader of both the Vitale and Morello families. And he was no doubt pissed at the Vitales for their late payments of tribute.

Now, Elena had become that tribute.

Her father laughed. “You don’t have a choice. He’s family, and you’ll-”

“I won’t be a tool so you can move up the mafia ranks.”

Elena has no idea what Don Morello promised her father, but it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t trade her own freedom for anything.

“Don Morello always gets what he wants. And sooner or later, you’ll learn there’s nothing more important than family.”

“Is that why mom left?” Elena asked harshly.

Her father slapped her face. Hard.

Elena’s face stung and her eyes were watering. But she still glared at her father before she retreated from his office and his dark prison of a home.

Back at her apartment on the other side of town, Elena tried to calm down. Her money being stolen was unfortunate, but she’d be fine.

She’d be fine.

Elena checked her phone. She had a missed call telling her that, despite her qualifications, the hospital she applied to had chosen to go with a different candidate. About a dozen similar rejection emails waited in her email inbox, too.

This really wasn’t her day.

Nobody wanted to hire Elena Vitale, the eldest child of a mafia family, as a doctor. Despite how hard she had worked, her degree was useless.

Her phone rang. Elena almost didn’t answer, but the name on her caller ID made her change her mind.

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