Filed to story: Bring It On My Mafia Life Novel (Rhea & Lukas)
Her grandfather had been furious as expected after they hid the truth from him for fourteen years and threatened to cast them out of the family. Although he didn’t make good of the threat, the cold treatment he gave them was as good as it.
However, to Winters, that was freedom. Freedom to be who she was supposed to be! Freedom to stoop down and pee freely instead of standing upright and standing the chance of wetting her pants in that position!
Freedom of growing her lustrous dark hair! Freedom on crushing on cute guys without being seen as weird or gay! Freedom to let her growing beasts rest without binding them to hide her sex. It was reliving freedom or so Winters thought.
When she started her first day of senior high dressed as a girl having grown out her hair during the summer break, Winters had expected to be welcomed with open arms, however, she was treated like a freak and bullied by everyone. No one understood why she had to live like a boy and that it wasn’t her fault.
Some of them claimed she was actually a transgender while others said she was a pervert who intentionally pretended to be a guy to get close to the other guys. Winters didn’t have any female friends since she acted like a boy throughout her life, only a few male friends. But that was the beginning of her nightmare.
One of her male friends pretended to sympathize with her situation only to get into her pants. As if that wasn’t enough, the news spread throughout the school the next time and she became an object of ridicule.
She heard most of the guys ask the asshole who took her virginity, “How was it? Did it feel like having sex with a boy?” They made crude jokes about it.
As if that wasn’t enough, when Winters got home, she constantly got abused by her mother who clearly lost her mind after her identity leaked.
Her mother would grab her hair and scream, “It is all your fault! Why did you have to grow?! Why did you have to develop those boobs? Why couldn’t you be muscular?! Why weren’t you born a boy?!” She would slap and hit her till the nanny or her father came to her rescue.
In one word, Winters was in a dark place for a long time.
Damaged Beyond Repair
The darkness lasted for a long time until one day, Winters snapped. She changed. She became an entirely different person; Winters couldn’t take their shit lying down. She was in charge of her life and no one would make her feel inferior.
In one word, Winters became a rebel. She made her first debut in school as a changed person by paying back each and every person who made her life a living hell.
Good with her computers, Winters exposed all of their dirty secrets, ruining their social life or academics. She even went as far as sending one of them to jail – the one who took her virginity. In one word, she framed him. His crime was having possession of cannabis, however, add cocaine to the list. That sounds cute, right?
Then she made a video of her mother’s abuse go viral and the woman was forcibly admitted to the hospital to avoid facing charges. Her father had always known something was wrong with her mother, but he waved it aside, claiming she would come around. Unfortunately, she suffered from her father’s neglect of her mother’s behavior, so Winter decided to take matters into her own hands.
And as for her grandfather, with his overwhelming arrogance, authoritativeness, sexist view, and toxic femininity, it turned out that he wasn’t a saint as he claimed to be. Winters discovered that he took the life of one of his business partners, amongst others he crushed, just to grow his companies. Not to mention him abusing his wife might be the reason she died early due to health complications.
So she threatened him with that. Although the murder crime had passed the statute of limitation and she couldn’t sue him for that, however, all of his crimes were enough to destroy the conglomerate he built over the years.
So she convinced him into making her the number one shareholder in the company. Winters wasn’t interested in inheriting the company, being an heiress was too much work. However, she was going to be richer than her uncle who he already chose as his heir. So in one word, while her uncle worked his ass off taking care of the company, she enjoyed her wealth as the top shareholder without lifting a finger.
Her other female cousins were given a reasonable amount of property as well. Yep, she made her grandfather readjust the will. Winters didn’t care what he gave to his treasured male children, her female cousins would not be left out.
Winters kept her end of the deal and didn’t release the information she dug up on him. As cruel as it was, this was the world and only the strongest survived – everyone in her life taught her that. Moreover, she was his karma. The man had worked hard throughout his life only to hand his resources to the female sex he detested so much.
…..
Aside from that, her grandfather would get his reward in hell. She was sure of that.
A week after their negotiations, her grandfather died and Winters became the richest young daughter in the family. Of course, most of her family members, including her father, didn’t understand how that was possible knowing their grandfather had no regard for his female children, not to talk of grandchildren, however, there was nothing they could do. The will was legit.
At her grandfather’s funeral, Winters had cried the hardest and everyone assumed she loved the old man and missed him, without knowing she didn’t hold even a trace of affection for him – not after everything that happened.
She only wept for the childhood she missed out on, for the normal life she could have had if only her mother did not lied about her gender.
Winters knew her mother had been scared then that she would be chased out of the family for giving birth to a girl child and losing her womb as well. Her mother never had faith in her.
But look where she is now! Winters accomplished what none of them could have done. What they never thought a girl could do. Hence after she was done with high school, she ran away from home. Fuck Harvard! What does she need that for when she was a young billionaire?
So Winters dyed her hair silver to mark a new beginning and though she kept her original name, no one could find her with that because she was too good at what she does, nor does she stay at a place for a long time. What thrilled Winters in this life was a challenge and she found that in the life of crime. She found the underworld to be comfortable, it was the perfect place for people like her – damaged beyond repair
“You really didn’t have to tell her everything,” Winters scowled at Lukas after he narrated almost her life history to his girlfriend, Rhea.
“You really went through all that?” Rhea sniffed, receiving the tissue from Lukas before he handed the box to Victor who snatched a few tissue paper and passed it to Mimi crying as well.
They were currently seated in the bean bag chairs with Rhea sitting properly on Lukas’s laps this time and Mimi wasn’t left out while Winters was alone.
“It is so sad. I thought I had a hard life, but compared to you ….” Mimi blew loudly into the tissue before folding it and giving it to Victor who held it in the air with no idea what to do with it.
“Alright, I don’t need your pity. Don’t feel sorry for me because I am living comfortably well and happy. So can we concentrate on this now?” Winters hated that look in their eyes. She wasn’t weak!
“Please do,” Lukas said, while running his hand soothingly through his girlfriend’s hair to calm her down. She was embarrassing Winters right now. The young girl was stronger than they thought.
She began, “So, I went through the footage last night, and apparently, there’s this young girl they keep locked away. Care to confirm if she’s indeed your sister?” She played footage and handed the laptop over to Lukas.
Rhea made space so Lukas kept the laptop between them and she was able to see the footage clearly as well. The moment she felt Lukas stiffen, Rhea knew the answer to that question.
The Escape
Lukas stiffened behind her, his hand reaching out to touch the screen that was showing a recording of the girl on her bed with her legs brought up to her chest. Although the room was lavishly decorated and it didn’t look like the girl was being held hostage, however, anyone could easily sense the loneliness lingering around the girl.
She couldn’t exactly make out the young girl’s features from the recording but it was obvious that she and Lukas looked nothing alike starting from her dark hair. After all, she had been adopted but Lukas took her as his biological sister – the young girl was the remaining link between him and his late mother.
Rhea turned to look at Lukas in concern and though he had a passive expression, she knew he was not okay. The girl was the only family he had left and yet he couldn’t protect her, Lukas must be blaming himself for what happened.
Knowing that Lukas had to put on a brave front, Rhea didn’t say a word and only took his other hand in hers and squeezed it tight, providing silent comfort to him.
‘Don’t worry, we’d get her back,” Her gaze seemed to communicate with him, and then Lukas took her hand in his instead, caressing the top of her palm while smiling at her.
Rhea stared at the lopsided smile Lukas gave her and she froze. For some strange reason, Lukas looked incredibly handsome and her heart went, “ba-dim!”, “ba-dum!”
What was happening to her?
Flustered, while her cheeks burned, Rhea looked away at once. She had no idea what Lukas was doing to her.
Lukas’s brows furrowed when Rhea turned her face the other way, as if she didn’t want to stare at him. Hence he couldn’t see her flushed expression, he didn’t say anything as he handed the laptop back to Winters with confirmation.
…..
“Your suspicion is right, she’s my sister Chloe. Tell me then what else you found out before I start working on getting her out of that hell hole,” Lukas was determined.
“Well…” Winters took a mouthful of breath that caused a bit of suspense as they all wondered what she was not telling them.
“That’s the part where we have a tiny bit of a problem,” Winters said and Lukas flinched behind her. Of course, anything titled “problem” was bad news.