They Bullied the Top Student, Then My Mafia Family Arrived Chapter 01

They Bullied the Top Student, Then My Mafia Family Arrived Chapter 01

I was a nameless side character in a rich-kid campus novel, the kind who wasn’t even important enough for readers to remember.

When a cold, aloof scholarship student transferred in and refused to get close to anyone, I was studying.

When she stood in the auditorium and publicly tore into New York’s four affiliated Families for being arrogant and rotten to the core, I was studying.

When the heirs of all four Families got tangled up in her love life one after another, I was still studying.

Then the midterm rankings came out.

And I took first place from her.

Adrian Blackwood, heir to the Blackwood Family, locked me in a basement storage room and threatened to keep me there for three days so I’d “learn my place.”

Calmly, I pulled out my phone and dialed an encrypted number.

Like I said, this was one of those wildly over-the-top, cliché novels.

In a story like this, someone hiding their real identity was hardly unusual.

Three minutes later, over a hundred helicopters surrounded the entire campus.

…

Adrian stood in front of me, contempt written all over his face.

“I’m warning you, Grace… Grace what was it again?”

He froze.

Silence hung in the air for three full seconds.

I kindly reminded him, “Grace Miller.”

Adrian frowned, his disgust becoming even more obvious.

“You’re just some shopkeepers’ daughter who got in here on your grades. You really think I’d bother remembering your name?”

He paused, his voice turning even colder.

“If I weren’t doing this for Lina, I wouldn’t waste a single word on someone like you.”

I nodded in understanding.

He was one of the male leads, after all.

Of course he wouldn’t bother remembering the name of some irrelevant background character.

As far as he was concerned, I had nothing to do with the actual story.

I had carried the memories of my previous life since the day I was born.

It wasn’t until I got older that I realized I’d been reborn inside a painfully cliché novel about the ultra-rich.

The original story revolved around the complicated romantic entanglements between the heirs of four powerful Families and Lina Cole, a poor scholarship student.

As for me?

I got exactly one sentence.

【After Lina transferred in, the student who had always ranked first became second place forever.】

Yep.

That was me.

Unfortunately for the author, I had no intention of accepting that ending.

I had ten years’ worth of studying from my previous life still in my head, and I’d spent another ten years studying in this one.

That gave me twenty years of preparation.

Other people got thrown into novels and immediately started worrying about romance.

I went from basic algebra all the way to AP courses.

I was going to rank first.

No matter what.

So while the entire school obsessed over the heirs of the four Families, I studied.

While everyone ostracized Lina, I studied.

Adrian, Julian, Ethan, and Nolan fell for her one after another.

They held her in the rain in Central Park, confessed their feelings to her on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and secretly held her hand inside the New York Public Library.

And through all of it?

I studied.

Their love lives became the biggest scandal on campus.

I never looked up from my books.

When the midterm rankings were posted, my name sat clearly at the very top.

Adrian cornered me in the hallway, his expression dark.

“Do you know Lina was up all night because you took first place from her?”

He kept advancing until my back hit the wall, obviously expecting his status as an heir to be enough to intimidate me into submission.

“She worked harder than you can imagine to get here. Your family runs a laundromat, so why are you so hell-bent on going after her?”

I couldn’t help cutting him off.

“But Lina ranked eighty-fourth this time. There are eighty-two people between me and her.”

Adrian went silent for half a second.

Then embarrassment turned straight into anger.

“First place was hers! Then some nobody suddenly overtakes her and throws her off her game, and that’s why she fell to eighty-fourth. This is on you!”

I had to admire the mental gymnastics.

The next second, he shoved me into a basement storage room and locked the metal door behind me.

“Stay in there for three days and learn how things work around here.”

His voice came through the door, every word dripping with contempt for someone he considered beneath him.

“Work out where you stand before you start taking what was never yours.”

His footsteps faded away.

I looked around at the storage room packed with old desks and sports equipment, trying to figure out how I was going to get out.

Then my phone rang.

The call was coming through the Family’s private encrypted line.

“Sweetheart, first place again?”

My mother, Victoria Moretti, burst into booming laughter on the other end.

“That’s my girl! The capos went mad when they heard. They’ve got a hundred crates of fireworks waiting at the estate. Come home and let us celebrate. The Moretti Family is finally getting a lawyer!”

Then she asked excitedly, “Want your dad to come and get you? He just brought back a limited-edition armoured sports car from Europe. He turns up at school in that, and nobody’s going to miss you.”