Ruthless Prince (The Mancini Mafia #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

VINCENT

I remember growing up somewhere warm … until I moved to New York and was forced to become accustomed to the cold. And my life was forever changed.

Twenty-Three Years Ago

“Are you all tucked in for the night?” my mama asks, pulling the covers up to my chin.

“I want another bedtime story,” I whine, my three-year-old legs kicking the blanket.

“I already read you one, Vincent. Time to go to sleep now.” She kisses my head—my pretty mama with her hair like gold. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I snuggle into my sheets and quickly fall asleep.

And then a loud sound wakes me up.

Sitting up with a gasp, I clutch my teddy bear to my body and listen. What’s happening? All I can hear is screaming and shouting and loud bangs. I’m scared.

I crawl from my bed and shuffle into the living room. “Mama?”

And the sight before me terrifies me. A man I don’t know stands in my living room, holding a knife to my mama’s throat. My daddy is shouting at the man to let Mama go.

“Mama?” I scream, running toward her.

“Vincent, no!” she shouts back.

The man shoves Mama away and grabs me instead. “Your boy is even better leverage, Nico,” the scary man says. “He’s mine now.”

“Give me my son,” Daddy growls.

“I think not.” The man slowly backs out of the house with me in his arms. Mama tries following, but Daddy stops her. Why does he stop her? What’s happening?

“Let go,” I scream, struggling in the scary man’s arms.

The man laughs. “You’re not going anywhere, boy.” He shoves me into the back of a van then jumps in himself. The van speeds away before my parents can get me.

“Mama!”

“Your mama can’t save you now.”

I fall to my knees and cry, clutching the pendant around my neck. It was a present from Daddy so I would always know who I belonged to. I hold onto it for dear life.

“I’m Igor,” the scary man says. The van stops, and outside, I see an airplane.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“To New York. You’re my son now, Vincent.”

“No! Mama and Daddy are my parents.”

“Not anymore. See, your daddy pissed me off by trying to snub me out of money, so I’m getting payback. And I’ve always wanted a son of my own.” Igor grabs my arm and forces me out of the van, pushing me to the airplane. I’ve always wanted to go on airplane, but Mama told me not until I’m older.

I try fighting Igor, but he eventually just picks me up, carries me onto the airplane, and sets me in a seat, buckling me up. “Let me go,” I whine.

A woman walks past us in a uniform. “Can I get you guys anything?”

“Get the kid some candy,” Igor grumbles.

The woman offers me a kind smile as she hands me a chocolate bar from a cart. “Here you go.”

I stare down at the chocolate. Mama told me I needed to be careful with treats, but this looks so good, and I’m hungry. I end up eating the entire chocolate bar.

“That’s a good boy,” Igor says, chuckling. “Eat up. It’s a long flight to New York.”

AURORA

“He stole our son, Nico,” I sob into my husband’s arms. “Our son!”

“I’ll get him back. You know I will. And if I know anything about Igor, he’s taking him to New York.”

“But you can't go back there. The police will arrest you if you step foot into that city.”

“Not if I’m careful. And besides, it’s been a few years. The police will have moved on to someone else by now. I won’t use my real name. I’ll get our son back, Aurora. Don’t you worry.”

I cry harder. It was hard enough to conceive Vincent in the first place. After I got stabbed in the stomach a few years ago, the surgery I underwent made my chances of having a baby slim.

Through some miracle, Nico and I managed to get pregnant, and we brought our son into the world. We’ve been living in Italy for years now, hiding out from our past. But Nico couldn’t stop his Mafia ways. He continued to make deals for guns and drugs to earn us money, which brought Igor into our world.

A Russian man who wanted too much.

And now, he has our son.

“What if he kills him?” I whisper.

A flash of pain enters Nico’s eyes, but he pushes it away—for me. He’s trying to be strong for me. “I will save our son, Aurora. I will get him back.”

“Just don’t let it kill you.” I can’t stand the thought of losing both my son and husband in one go. I think I’d rather be dead than face that reality.

“I’m Nico Mancini. I’m a tough man. I don’t kill easily.”

I don’t say what’s on my mind. Nico may be not be killed easily, but Vincent is only three. He’s so fragile and easily breakable. He doesn’t have his father’s strength yet.

I give Nico a kiss for good luck so he can go and save our son.

VINCENT

Igor takes me to a large mansion. It’s a lot bigger than the house I grew up in even though where I grew up was large, too.

“This is where you’ll sleep,” Igor says, showing me to a bedroom with a large bed and nothing else.

“Where are the toys?” I ask.

“You don’t need any toys. What I want from you is something different. I want you to learn to fight, Vincent. I’m going to train you to be the best street fighter who ever lived so you can make me a lot of money when you’re older.”

I frown. “But I don’t want to fight.”

“You don’t get a choice.”

His words send a chill down my spine. I just miss Mama and Daddy. This new place is cold and creepy, and Igor scares me.

“Come along,” he says, leading me into a basement. There’s a mat on the floor and large punching bags similar to what I’ve seen my Daddy use. “This is where you’ll learn to fight. This is where you’ll make me proud, Vincent.”

I hold my pendant closer to my chest. “I just want?—”

“I don’t care what you want!” he shouts, making me gasp and jump back. “You’ll do as I say. And you’ll do it without a complaint. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Good.”

Another man walks down the stairs with a young boy at his side. The boy is older than me, but not by much.

“Good, you’re here,” Igor says. “Vincent, this is Dimitri and his son, Maxim. You’re going to fight Maxim. I want to see what you’re capable of.”

Afterward, I’m left with scratches and bruises all over my body. Maxim kept kicking and hitting me. After Dimitri and Maxim left, I’m left alone with Igor, who stands over me, staring down at me with disappointment in his eyes.

“You have no natural talent for fighting,” he says. “You’ll have to learn if you want to impress me.”

“Why?”

“Why do you have to impress me?”

I nod, still curled up into a ball on the mat.

Igor kneels beside me and places his cold hand on my head. “Because I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

I think, deep down, this is the moment I realize I’ll never see Mama and Daddy again.

NICO

I still have contacts in New York who tell me where Igor lives. It doesn’t take me long to find his house and a way to break in. I worked as head of the Italian Mafia in New York for a long time. I know the ins and outs of everything.

Not bothering with a team of men, I break into Igor’s house. My objective isn’t to fight. It’s to find Vincent and take him home.

I kill the guard by the front door with a silencer. His body would have flopped to the ground with a loud bang, but I catch and lower him quietly. Then I sneak deeper into the house.

The cover of darkness helps me not get noticed, but it does make moving around harder. I search every room in the house and don’t find Igor or Vincent.

Sweat begins to bead on my head. This is what panic feels like, I realize. Knowing my son is gone and I can’t find him is tearing me up from the inside.

The lights turn on.

Igor stands before me, holding onto Vincent’s pendant. “Looking for your son?”

“You know I am. Where is he?”

“I killed him.”

I stumble back, unable to hide how Igor’s words affect me. “What? No. You need him as leverage. Without him, I’ll just kill you.”

“Not if I kill you first.” He pulls a gun out and fires at me. The bullet hits me in the arm as I duck behind a couch. Grimacing, I hold my arm to my body to keep the blood from gushing out.

“Your son is dead, Nico,” Igor taunts. “You’re no longer a father. How does it feel to try and screw me over? You thought you could avoid paying me my fair dues. Well, now, you have nothing.”

The image of Aurora’s face fills my hand. She’ll be crushed when she hears this news.

“I demand to see his body,” I say.

“Fine.” Igor slowly approaches me, holding his phone up. On it, I see a video showing a basement and a little body lying on the floor. It’s Vincent.

His eyes are open, and he’s staring at the ceiling. His chest isn’t rising and falling. He looks dead.

“No,” I say. “No. Take me to his body. I need to know he’s dead.”

Igor presses his gun to my head and walks me down to the basement, where Vincent is lying on the ground.

“Vincent,” I say. “I’m here. Wake up.”

And yet … he doesn’t. He doesn’t move an inch, and it’s obvious he’s not sleeping.

“No,” I sob, falling to my knees.

“I want you to feel like absolute shit before I blow your brains out,” Igor says.

A sudden rage fills me, and I spin around, grabbing Igor’s arm and tossing the gun out of his hand. I run for Vincent’s body, but Igor shoots at me again, landing a hit to my shoulder. Fuck. If I don’t make it out of here now, I won’t survive, and I can’t do that to Aurora.

With a growl, I barge into Igor, pushing him back, and run up the stairs. Vincent is still down there. I need to get his body.

But I can’t get him just by myself.

I manage to run outside and down the street to my car. Igor doesn’t bother following me. He knows I lost.

I lost.

After getting patched up by a private doctor I used to work with, I call on some of my old contacts to help me get back into Igor’s mansion and retrieve Vincent. He deserves to come home.

With the help of a few men, we break into Igor’s house without any problem.

Except … Igor and Vincent are nowhere to be found. I know what that means. Igor packed up and left so I can’t find him. He could be anywhere. I have a lot of spies, but even I’m not God.

Vincent’s body could be anywhere, and I’ll never find him again.

“Keep looking,” I tell my other men. “Everywhere in the city. If you get even a hint, let me know.”

“Where are you going?” one of them asks.

“Back home. I need to tell my wife …” That our son isn’t coming home. That I failed.

The flight back to Italy is long. It’s torturous. It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

Aurora opens the front door for me when I arrive in our driveway, hope in her eyes. That hope is quickly dashed when she sees my face.

“No,” she sobs, falling to her knees. “No.”

All I can say is, “I’m sorry.”

VINCENT

I wake up from the cold with Igor leaning over me. I’m no longer in the basement. I don’t recognize where I am—some bedroom.

“Wakey, wakey,” Igor says, pulling a needle out of my arm.

Tears rush out of me. “That hurts.”

“I had to give you medicine to wake you back up.”

It’s then I remember. When I was on the basement floor, Igor pushed a needle into my arm, and everything black until I woke back up here.

“I hate you,” I hiss.

“Get over it, kid. You’re officially mine now. Your mommy and daddy think you’re dead. No one’s coming for you. Come on. It’s time I start to train you on how to fight.”

VINCENT

Present Day

“Make room for the Kraken!” the announcer shouts, causing the crowd to go wild as I jump into the ring.

My opponent is a young man with green paint over his face. He likes to think of himself as a dragon. He’s not.

I use my speed to slither around the ring and grab my opponent in a neck hold. It’s why my stage name is the Kraken. I’m fast and slippery, and once I have a hold of you, I don’t let go.

I force my opponent to the ground and get on his back, wrapping my arms harder around his throat. It’s satisfying to see his face turn red.

It only takes seconds for him to pound on the floor, signaling I’ve won this fight.

The entire match only lasts a couple of minutes.

The referee holds my hand up. The crowd cheers harder for me, clapping and stomping their feet. This underground fighting ring has been my home for many years. My father, Igor, trained me to be the best fighter this city has ever seen.

The smell of sweat and blood comfort me. It’s what I’ve been trained in all my life.

I step out of the ring and am instantly swarmed by a group of women. Some I’ve fucked before; others are new. I eye a brunette I’ve never seen before, and she offers me a flirtatious smile in return.

I approach her to ask if she wants to come back to my apartment when my father storms up to me.

“We have to go,” he says.

“What? Why?”

“Just do as I say, boy.”

Despite being twenty-six, my father treats me like a child. Buying my own apartment was a godsend. Just to have some peace and quiet.

I’ve been fighting in the rings for years now, making my father even wealthier than he already was. I grew up in mansions with him. We always moved around the state of New York, never quite staying in one place for too long. I tried asking my father about it once, but he brushed me off, and I never got an answer.

I follow Igor toward the front door when I see a woman who looks so out of place I have to stop and stare. She’s beautiful, with soft brown hair and a petite frame. Dressed in an innocent summer dress, she doesn’t match the usual women who frequent this place of dirt and grime. I want to ask her who she is and why she’s here, but Igor grabs my arm and forces me outside.

The cold hair hits my bare chest, sending goosebumps over my body. When I fight, I like to wear nothing but pants. My bare feet slap on the sidewalk. Thank god there isn’t snow on the ground yet, but that’s not really a consolation when my feet are still freezing.

“Move,” my father growls, leading me to his car.

He opens the door …

… and an explosion rocks him onto the sidewalk. His car goes up in flames. Someone rigged a bomb to it.

“Father,” I shout, rushing to his side. The blast caught his chest, and he’s bleeding. “Who did this?” I know my father is involved in shady business, but I’ve never asked too many questions about it. The reason? Whenever I would ask, Igor would turn me away and punish me. I learned to just stop asking altogether.

He gasps, the sound ragged. “Nico Mancini,” he manages to say right before he passes out.

I call for an ambulance, but when they arrive, my father is already dead.

The great Igor Antonov is gone.

A part of me is … relieved. I’ve always sort of hated my father.

But someone killed him, and for that, I can’t sit back and do nothing. He would expect me to avenge his death.

He gave me a name.

Nico Mancini is responsible for my father’s death, and I will find him and kill him to avenge my father.