Chapter 1

I sat on the cold, hard floor of the dimly lit room, my small body trembling as pain echoed through me. The walls were painted a dull gray, their color fading beneath years of neglect. A single light hung from the ceiling, flickering every few seconds as if even it wished to escape the room. There were no windows, no clocks, nothing to tell me how long we had been sitting there. In Papà’s house, time belonged to him just as everything else did. Even our very breaths belonged to him, and if one day he decided we had taken one too many, it would all come to an end.

I had lost count of how many times the light had flickered. Perhaps it had been minutes, perhaps hours. It was difficult to tell when every second felt like an eternity, and every sound reminded me that we were still trapped within these walls. The silence was almost unbearable, yet neither of us dared to break it. We had learned that silence was safer than words, that keeping our mouths shut could sometimes save us from things we didn’t want to experience again.

Sometimes, I wondered if the house itself knew what happened behind its closed doors. The polished floors, the expensive furniture, the portraits hanging in the hallways. Everything looked perfect to anyone who visited. Everything was exactly where it belonged. There was no sign of the shouting, the punishments, or the fear that lived in the rooms we were forbidden to speak about. Our home was beautiful in the same way a prison could be beautiful when its walls were built from money rather than stone.

The heavy, metallic scent of blood lingered in the air, mixing with the silence that followed Papà’s harsh strikes. Somehow, with every drop of blood that fell, I felt my love for death grow. It was a strange thing to love, wasn’t it? Most children feared it. They feared the dark, the monsters beneath their beds, the things that went bump in the night. I had learned to fear something far worse: the man who called himself my father.

Death, at least, seemed honest to me. It made no promises. It did not pretend to love you before reminding you how little you were worth. It did not call itself family, demand your loyalty, and punish you for failing to understand rules that changed whenever it pleased. Death was an ending, and there was something comforting about the thought that even the most powerful men in the world would eventually have to face one.

Papà, however, seemed to believe that he was above such things.

Papà was a man of rules. His word was law, his anger our punishment, and his expectations a weight neither of us could escape. In our family, blood meant more than love ever could. The Morana name carried power beyond the walls of our home, spoken in hushed voices by men who bowed their heads rather than risk displeasing its owner. To the outside world, we were a family to be respected. Inside these walls, respect was something demanded, never earned.

And beyond the walls of our home, Papà was a Don. Not just any Don, but a man whose name carried enough weight to silence a room before he even stepped inside. He was the head of the Morana family, a man who controlled businesses, men, money, sex, drugs, and lives with the same cold hand. People feared him, respected him, and obeyed him. Those who worked for him never questioned his orders twice. Those who crossed him rarely had the chance to make the same mistake again.

His position had not been built on kindness, nor had it been earned through the sort of honesty people praised in ordinary men. The Morana empire was built on loyalty, fear, and the understanding that every favor came with a price. Nothing was given without a reason. Nothing was forgotten. And nothing belonged to you if Papà decided he wanted it back.

Men came to our home dressed in tailored suits and polished shoes, carrying expensive gifts and wearing smiles that never quite reached their eyes. They shook Papà’s hand, called him Don Morana, and spoke to him with a carefulness that made even their compliments sound rehearsed. They laughed when he laughed. They listened when he spoke. They never interrupted him.

I watched them from the edges of rooms, learning things they never intended to teach me. I learned that a man could be terrified without showing it, that a smile could hide resentment, and that the most dangerous person in a room was not always the one speaking the loudest.

Papà noticed everything. A misplaced glass. A hesitation before answering. A glance held for a second too long. He remembered names, debts, promises, and insults, no matter how insignificant they seemed to everyone else. He could sit through an entire dinner without saying much, yet every man at the table would leave knowing exactly where he stood.

To them, he was a powerful man. A businessman. A leader. A man who had built an empire through blood, loyalty, and fear. Men twice his size pissed when he spoke, and even those who considered themselves powerful knew better than to challenge him. His word was law, and his silence could be more terrifying than his anger.

I used to wonder whether he had always been this way. Whether there had been a time when he was a boy who laughed too loudly, ran through the house, or reached for his father’s hand without wondering whether it would strike him. I wondered if someone had taught him to be cruel, or if cruelty had always come as naturally to him as breathing.

I never asked.

Questions were dangerous things in the Morana household. They suggested doubt, and doubt suggested weakness. Papà had little patience for either.

But to me, he was simply my father.

The man who taught me that love was a weakness, that kindness was something people took advantage of, and that fear was the easiest way to make someone obey. He never needed to raise his voice to remind us who held the power in our home. Sometimes, all it took was a look. A slight tightening of his jaw. The quiet tap of his fingers against his desk. We learned to recognize every little change in his expression because missing one could cost us dearly.

I learned to study him before I learned to understand him. I memorized the difference between his silence when he was thinking and his silence when he was angry. I learned which footsteps belonged to him, how the atmosphere in a room changed when he entered, and how quickly a pleasant evening could turn into something none of us wanted to remember.

There was no comfort in knowing him so well. Understanding a storm did not mean you could stop it from destroying everything in its path.

Papà believed that a family was only as strong as its weakest member. He believed that mercy invited betrayal, that affection made men careless, and that fear was a far more dependable foundation than love could ever be. In his world, people did not stay because they wanted to. They stayed because leaving came at a cost.

And we were his sons.

We belonged to the Morana family before we belonged to ourselves.

Being his son was never enough. Being a Morana was never enough. We were expected to be stronger, smarter, colder. We were expected to understand that our family came before everything, even ourselves. Papà didn’t believe in childhood. He believed in preparation. Every lesson had a purpose, every punishment had a reason in his mind, and every mistake was proof that we weren’t yet worthy of the name we carried.

Other children were allowed to make mistakes. They were allowed to cry when they fell, to ask questions when they didn’t understand something, and to seek comfort when the world frightened them. They were given time to grow into the people they would eventually become.

We were not given that luxury.

In the Morana family, a mistake was never just a mistake. It was a flaw to be corrected, a weakness to be eliminated before someone else discovered it. An apology did not erase what had happened, and regret meant nothing if you repeated the same mistake. Papà wanted results, not excuses. He wanted obedience, not understanding.

He wanted sons who would never hesitate.

I didn’t know what he expected me to become. Sometimes, I thought even he didn’t know. Perhaps he only knew what he refused to allow me to be: weak, disobedient, or anything less than the perfect heir to his empire.

The Morana name was an inheritance, but it was also a burden. One day, the empire would belong to me. One day, the men who bowed their heads to Papà would bow theirs to me instead. That was what he wanted. That was what everyone expected.

There could only be one heir.

I didn’t understand what those words truly meant when I was younger. I thought being the eldest meant I had more responsibilities, that I had to protect my little brother and set an example for him. I didn’t realize that, in Papà’s eyes, there was no room for weakness. No room for hesitation. And certainly no room for two sons who might one day stand beside each other instead of competing for the same throne.

I had always thought that being the eldest meant I was supposed to look after Katchua. If he stumbled, I was supposed to help him up. If he was frightened, I was supposed to stand between him and whatever scared him. If the world was unkind to him, I was supposed to make it a little less cruel.

Those were the things I believed brothers were meant to do.

But the Morana way was different.

Here, affection was a liability. Loyalty was a test. And even blood could become a reason to turn against the very person you were supposed to protect.

I didn’t understand that then. I only knew that Papà expected something from me that I could not yet name, and that every day seemed to bring me a little closer to becoming the sort of man I had learned to fear.

My little brother, Katchua, huddled in the corner, curled into a tiny ball. His eyes were wide, glistening with unshed tears. Every shaky breath reminded me that he was just as afraid as I was.

“Why don’t you fight back, Nicko?” Katchua whispered, his voice barely audible over the fading sound of Papà’s footsteps. “You’re stronger than him. You have to.”

I looked at my brother, my expression as cold as Papà’s whenever he spoke to his second-in-command. I had watched that expression countless times, memorizing the way his eyes narrowed, the way his jaw tightened, and the way his voice remained calm even when the men standing before him were visibly afraid. I had learned that a man didn’t need to shout to make others listen. Sometimes, silence was enough.

I wondered if Papà knew I was becoming like him. If he noticed the way I watched people, the way I kept my face still even when I wanted to cry, or the way I had begun to swallow every emotion before it could escape me. Perhaps he did. Perhaps that was exactly what he wanted.

“If I fight back, it only gets worse for both of us.” My voice sounded distant, even to me. “We endure, Katchua. We always have. It’s what we were born into.”

“But it’s not fair!” he cried, his fists tightening. “Why can’t we be like other families? Why can’t we be free?”

His voice cracked on the last word, and I glanced toward the door.

“Keep your voice down,” I warned him.

“Why?” he demanded, tears gathering in his eyes. “Papà already left!”

“Because he can come back.”

Katchua’s mouth fell shut.

That was the thing about living in Papà’s house. Even when he wasn’t in the room, he was still there. In the silence between our words, in the footsteps we mistook for his, in the way we looked toward every doorway before daring to speak. We never knew when he might return, and we never wanted to find out what would happen if he heard us saying something he didn’t like.

I had learned that lesson long before I understood why it had to be learned.

“Because we’re Moranas,” I answered quietly. “Fear is our power. Pain is our reality. Trust is death. Love…”

I paused.

“Love doesn’t live here.”

The words left my mouth so easily that, for a moment, I wondered if I had heard them somewhere before. Perhaps from Papà. Perhaps from one of the men who visited our home, men who spoke about loyalty as though it were sacred but treated the people beneath them as disposable. Perhaps I had simply learned to believe them on my own.

I was too young to understand what love was supposed to feel like, but I knew what it wasn’t supposed to be. It wasn’t supposed to make you afraid of the person who claimed to care for you. It wasn’t supposed to leave you wondering what you had done wrong or whether being better, quieter, or stronger would make someone treat you differently.

And yet, in our house, that was what love seemed to mean.

Katchua wrapped his shaking arms around his knees, trying to make himself smaller.

“I don’t want to be like Papà,” he whispered. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

For a moment, I didn’t answer.

I looked at him, at the tears he was trying so desperately to hold back, and something unfamiliar stirred in my chest. I wanted to tell him that he wouldn’t have to become like Papà. That we could leave this house someday, that we could find somewhere far away where nobody knew our name, where nobody expected anything from us simply because we were born Moranas.

I wanted to tell him that we could be ordinary brothers.

But promises were dangerous, especially the ones you couldn’t keep.

“You’ll learn,” I murmured, almost to myself. “One day, you’ll understand why it’s necessary. One day, you’ll understand what it means to survive. What it means to be the son of a Don.”

I spoke with a certainty I didn’t feel. The words sounded like something Papà would say, and perhaps that was why I trusted them. I had spent so long listening to him that his beliefs had begun to sound like my own. I didn’t know where his lessons ended and my thoughts began.

I only knew that fighting him would accomplish nothing. Papà was a Don. He had men who obeyed his every command, an empire built on fear, and a name that made grown men lower their eyes. What chance did two children have against a man like that?

We were his sons, but that didn’t make us untouchable.

If anything, it made us his to shape.

My knees burned from kneeling for so long. My body ached, and the cold stone beneath me felt unforgiving. But I was still young, not even eight years old, and I already understood that this was my life.

Pain was proof of loyalty. Fear was obedience. And the whip was Papà’s way of teaching us the truth.

My mother, Матушка, had watched without a word. She stood there like a ghost, present but never truly there. She had given birth to two children she had never seemed to want, and she remained silent as we suffered.

I had looked at her more than once that evening, waiting for something I couldn’t quite explain. A word. A gesture. Anything that might tell me she saw us as her children rather than another part of the household she had learned to endure.

She never moved.

Perhaps she was afraid of him, too. Perhaps there were things about my mother that I was too young to understand. I knew very little about the woman she had been before marrying into the Morana family, and even less about the person she might have been if she had never met my father.

But whatever her reasons, they did not change what happened in that room.

She was a witness, not a shield.

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the taste of blood in my mouth and the ache in my limbs.

I will survive.

I will endure.

I will protect Katchua.

I will become more than this.

I repeated the words inside my head, holding on to them as though they were the only things keeping me together. They were promises, although I was too young to understand how difficult promises could be to keep. I didn’t know what survival would demand of me, what I would have to sacrifice, or how much of myself I would lose along the way.

I only knew that I couldn’t remain the frightened little boy sitting on a cold stone floor forever.

But even those thoughts felt fragile, like something that could disappear with a single word from Papà.

Hours passed. Darkness pressed against the walls, and I remained where I had been left, my mind filled with lessons I didn’t want to learn but couldn’t escape. The room grew colder as the night settled in, and the flickering light above me continued its endless struggle against the dark. I watched its weak glow stretch across the floor, growing brighter and dimmer, brighter and dimmer, until I could no longer tell whether the light was failing or my eyes were simply too tired to follow it.

I wondered how many nights I would spend in rooms like this. How many times I would be expected to stand up, wipe away the evidence of my weakness, and pretend nothing had happened. How many lessons I would have to learn before Papà finally decided I was worthy of the name I carried.

I didn’t have the answers.

In the Morana family, children weren’t given answers. We were given expectations and left to figure out how to meet them.

Every punishment taught me the same bitter truth: this was the world we had been born into. Only the strong survived. Only the cold were respected. And those who showed weakness were the first to fall.

So I would learn.

I would endure.

I would become the boy Papà demanded.

The heir of pain and power.

I would learn to keep my face expressionless when I wanted to scream. I would learn to recognize a lie before it was finished being told. I would learn to make people think twice before standing in my way. If fear was the language of my family, then I would become fluent in it. If power was the only thing that kept a man safe, then I would have more of it than anyone could ever take from me.

I would never again allow myself to be so helpless.

And I would never forget what it felt like to sit on that floor, waiting for someone to decide whether I had suffered enough.

Yet, somewhere deep inside me, a tiny ember remained. I didn’t understand it then, but a part of me still wondered whether I could become something different.

Not soft.

Not weak.

Just something more than a Papà had ever allowed me to be.

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