Born in the Mud, Crowned the Mafia Queen Chapter 06

Born in the Mud, Crowned the Mafia Queen Chapter 06

With Valerie around, I started finding my footing abroad.

I stopped going home mukh, even skipped the holidays, staying overseas instead.

Vivian flew out a few times a year.

She knew I didn’t want to go home and never pushed me about.it.

Knowing I wanted into the family company, she got me a position there in tay junior year.

She trained me personally.

My days were packed, juggling school and work, often not getting to sleep until deep into the night.

But even so, it beat the endless, hopeless grind of the jobs I’d worked before.

I treasured every bit of it.

After graduation, I came back home.

It happened to be my mother’s birthday. Juliet brought the kids over for dinner too, and the Moretti house was full of laughter, warm and cheerful.

My showing up just made things awkward.

My mother looked flustered when she saw me.

“Clara, you’re back? Why didn’t you tell your mom?”

I answered calmly, “I called two days ago.”

She didn’t know what to say.

I handed her the birthday gift I’d brought, went to my room, packed a few essentials, and got ready to leave.

Before I left, my mother stopped me. “Clara, won’t you stay and celebrate with your mom?”

Her eyes were full of pleading.

I smiled a little, glancing at Juliet’s uncomfortable expression. “I don’t think I belong here.”

Everyone in the room reacted differently.

As I walked out the door, I heard the laughter pick right back up behind me.

Without me around, they could go back to being one big happy family.

At this point in my life, I still craved family, sure, but I didn’t cling to the idea of “relatives” anymore.

I liked spending time with Vivian. ̧

She’d never married, never had kids of her own. She treated me like her own daughter.

She personally taught me everything she’d learned clawing her way through the business world over the decades, and pushed me to take bold risks.

Knowing I had someone backing me up, got braver.

Once, I went head-to-head with Marco on a bid and didn’t flinch. I won it in the end.

Marco’s face went dark that day.

Three days later, I found out why he’d cared so much about a project that shouldn’t have mattered much to

him.

Turned out the De Luca family company had sunk a huge amount of money into a tech startup, trying to get

ahead in AI, and the company had imploded. The founders skipped town with the funds, leaving nothing but

an empty shell.

Marco’s side was in a cash crunch, and like dominoes, it triggered one problem after another.

Marco desperately needed that project to recover, to turn things around, and to project an image of a

healthy company to attract new investors.

I’d just wrecked all of that.

My mother, worried, came to talk me out of it.

“Clara,” she said. “You don’t need this project. Can’t you let Marco have it? If his family really goes under,

what happens to Juliet?”

Just thinking of Juliet brought tears to her eyes.

“You two are practically sisters. Think of her. She has kids to think about.”

“Mom, she and I aren’t sisters,” I said calmly. “I won’t do it.”

My mother’s crying stopped instantly. “You’re doing this because you’re mad at Juliet?”

“Yes, I’m mad at her. But at the end of the day, the real reason I can’t help being mad at her is you people. I’m mad at all of you.”

My mother had nothing to say to that.

After she left, my father and brother came to talk me into it too.

Both of them furious. “Everything has to be a competition with Juliet! You have to take everything from her!

How selfish can you be?”

Against all their scolding, I could actually smile through it.

“If you can’t beat me, why don’t you go blame Marco for being incompetent? Because that’s really what this is. He’s just not good enough.”