The Real Heiress Is A Mafia Princess

1 I was the kidnapped real heiress. After slipping through the fingers of child traffickers, I bounced through a dozen shady hands before landing in the care of an organized crime kingpin who decided to raise me as his own flesh and blood. I grew up sleeping with a Glock under my pillow. Lily Prescott, the girl who unknowingly took my place in high society, grew up sleeping with plush teddy bears in a four-poster canopy bed. I could come up with eight hundred untraceable ways to erase her from this earth before breakfast. Yet, on my very first night in the Prescott mansion, the girl came padding barefoot into my bedroom, shoving a plush yellow bear right between us. "Baby, can't you sleep?" she whispered softly, her eyes round and worried. "Don't be scared. I'm here to keep you company." My entire body locked up under the Egyptian cotton sheets. The cold steel tucked beneath my pillow suddenly felt like the punchline to a very stupid joke. I only agreed to return to the Prescott family because I was looking forward to a bloodbath. The plan was simple: play psychological warfare with the treacherous impostor, outmaneuver the hopelessly biased biological parents, strip the Prescott estate down to the copper wiring, and hand their corporate empire over to my fiercely protective mob boss of an adoptive father so he could expand his territory into legitimate private equity. Every soap opera and pulp novel had the exact same script. The sweet, innocent real daughter returns from the gutter, only to be relentlessly gaslit and framed by the adoptive darling, while the parents side with the fake one without using an ounce of critical thinking. The story inevitably ends with the real daughter coughing up blood from late-stage leukemia while the tearful, grief-stricken family weeps over her fresh grave, finally seeing the truth when it's entirely too late. Reading garbage like that gives me an aneurysm. If someone tried pulling that melodrama on me, the story wouldn't survive the first three pages. The second the counterfeit daughter threw a tantrum and the parents backed her up, I'd send all three of them on a one-way trip to a shallow ditch in the Pine Barrens. End of story. Roll credits. A genuinely happy ending. I wouldn't even let people like that cry over my headstone—it’d be too noisy. Scattering their ashes myself would be far more therapeutic. So, when the couple claiming to be my biological parents showed up at my doorstep with red eyes and trembling hands, I indulged in only a brief second of surprise. Then I gleefully spun on my heel to pack my bags. By the time I tossed two heavy ballistic-nylon duffels into the trunk of their Rolls-Royce Phantom, Richard and Eleanor Prescott were still standing on the pavement, looking like their brains had short-circuited. I rolled down the tinted window, leaned out, and waved enthusiastically at my bewildered personal bodyguard standing on the curb. "Uncle Ray! Tell my dad—wait, scratch that—tell my beloved adoptive father that I won't be home for dinner tonight!" Having delivered my status update, I turned my attention back to the frozen couple outside the car door. "Come on, Mom, Dad! Hop in! Aren't you taking me home?" I was practically vibrating with excitement, grinning like I’d just won the lottery. Snapped out of their trance by my reminder, they scrambled awkwardly into the leather interior. It didn't look like wealthy benefactors rescuing their long-lost child from a dark past; it looked like two terrified suburbanites who had just been taken hostage by an armed runaway. The Phantom rolled smoothly up the private drive of the Prescott estate before my biological parents fully rebooted from their state of shock. "Baby..." my biological father began tentatively, clearing his throat. Yes. Not an endearment. Not a pet name. Baby Donovan was the legal name printed on my driver’s license, social security card, and concealed-carry permit. You can't expect a street-brawler-turned-syndicate-boss to possess highbrow literary taste. The day he pulled me out of the foster mill, he decided I was a direct blessing sent from Heaven, grabbed a Sharpie, and slapped Baby onto my legal paperwork with zero hesitation. Minimalist. Direct. Richard Prescott, a man with two Ivy League degrees and a tailored three-piece suit, was clearly struggling to process my father’s brand of brutalist aesthetics. A titan of private venture capital, he looked completely unmoored, clearing his throat again with an unsteady cadence. I straightened my spine, turning toward him with a practiced, razor-sharp eight-tooth smile. "Yes, Dad?" Here it comes, I thought. The pre-entry lecture about the girl who stole my life. What would he say? 'Lily is your age, and none of this was her fault. We made the mistake, not her, so you two need to play nice and be sisters'? Or maybe something even more sanctimonious: 'Lily has been dying for a sister her whole life. This is wonderful—now you girls can share everything'? I was armed to the teeth, ready to counter every psychological play in the book. Richard looked even more terrified than I had anticipated. He traded three anxious glances with his wife, wringing his hands before finally mustering the courage to speak. "Baby... you’ve suffered so much out there all these years. It’s entirely our fault. We failed you. We didn't keep you safe." I blinked. My mental gears ground to a halt. In every trashy novel I’d ever skimmed, not a single set of wealthy parents ever thought to apologize to their flesh and blood. "We want to make this right," Richard continued in a rush, desperate to lay down his cards. "You know our family has some assets. This afternoon, I’m taking you straight to corporate legal. We’re transferring fifty percent of the voting shares in Prescott Holdings directly into your name." A bolt of lightning couldn't have stunned me more thoroughly. Half the company? Just like that? What was I supposed to do with all the corporate sabotage scenarios I’d spent the last forty-eight hours drafting in my head? My mobster dad had been grinding his back teeth down to dust trying to cut into Prescott's shipping logistics. Now, while he was away on a weekend business trip, I had casually walked into the keys to the kingdom. The only hitch was that I might have to change my legal surname. I wasn't sure whether Frank would praise me as an entrepreneurial prodigy or scream that I was an ungrateful turncoat. While my brain was still spinning, Eleanor Prescott took her turn on stage, reaching across the leather seat to gently take my hand. "Baby..." I straightened my back again, looking at her with renewed anticipation. Fine. Dad was a pushover, but surely the mother had some drama reserved for me. In every dramatic script, it was always the society mother who fiercely protected the polished, delicate fake daughter. "Lily is waiting for you in the living room right now," Eleanor murmured, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. "Over the last few days, she’s been more anxious and excited to meet you than anyone." Ah, here's the hook. I perked up, tuning my ears to catch the manipulation. "Our home is big enough for both of you," Eleanor continued softly. "Your father and I love you deeply, but we love Lily too. I won't lie to you and pretend eighteen years of raising her didn't happen." I pressed my lips together and lowered my gaze, letting a meek, submissive expression mask the cold amusement in my eyes. Typical. Trying to have it both ways. Dropping hints that I shouldn't be petty, nudging me to accept Lily with open arms. Saying she loves both of us while expecting me to watch the girl who hijacked my entire childhood parading around my house every day—what kind of maternal love was that? If she were truly so noble, she’d buy the girl a condo and pack her bags, saving her maternal conscience and saving me the trouble of a turf war. "So don't worry, darling," Eleanor added, as if she had just read my inner monologue. "Your father and I have already deeded a townhouse under Lily’s name. Her things are packed. She moves out tomorrow morning." The air left my lungs in an abrupt gasp. I froze for ten solid seconds. I snapped my head up, staring at her in sheer disbelief. The math wasn't mathing. How did my revenge script derail this fast? If the impostor was getting shipped off before the opening credits rolled, who was I supposed to destroy? I literally had a suppressed handgun tucked in the bottom lining of my duffel. "Baby? Are you still upset?" Eleanor read my shock as simmering rage, her voice turning panicked. "The townhouse is all the way across town, I swear! You won't have to see her at all! She... she just wanted to see you once, face to face, to apologize to you in person." Richard began wringing his hands again, sweating through his custom collar. "If having her in the house makes you uncomfortable, even for one night... we can put her in a car right now. We'll send her to a hotel before you step inside!" Richard was a man of terrifying efficiency. Before the sentence was fully out of his mouth, he had his hand on the door handle, ready to physically haul Lily out to the curb. "Wait! No! Don't do that!" I lunged forward, grabbing his arm to physically hold him back. "Meeting her is fine! She's just a kid! She's already here anyway—the more the merrier!" After several agonizing minutes of frantic persuasion, I finally talked Richard down from the ledge, securing my front-row ticket to an actual confrontation with the impostor. With Richard holding my left hand and Eleanor holding my right, they escorted me through the double mahogany front doors. The girl waiting in the cavernous living room had clearly been pacing for hours. The moment the latch clicked, she bolted off the sofa and came sprinting across the marble foyer. Curiously, she wasn't dressed to intimidate. No designer labels, no diamond tennis bracelets meant to put me in my place. She was wearing an oversized Winnie the Pooh t-shirt and matching cotton pajama pants, the hem of the shirt crumpled into wrinkled knots from where she’d been nervously twisting it between her fingers. "Hi, Baby! You must be exhausted from the trip!" She beat everyone to the punch, her greeting ringing through the vaulted ceiling like a church bell, shouting my ridiculous name with utter, unironic sincerity. For the first time in my life, I actually felt embarrassed by my own name. I had half a mind to clap a hand over her mouth. Lily didn't notice my existential dread. She just flashed a wide, blinding grin, her teeth neat and white. Throughout dinner, she clung to my side like a golden retriever. She spent the entire meal ladling soup into my bowl, shelling buttered prawns for me, and bombarding me with earnest questions about my favorite foods. I wasn't used to physical proximity that didn't involve a chokehold. Balancing my plate, I subtly shifted an inch to the left. Without missing a beat, Lily dragged her chair an inch to the left. I glared at her. The threat completely bypassed her radar. She merely tilted her makeup-free face, smiling at me with an expression so fundamentally sweet and guileless it made my teeth ache. Every psychological countermeasure I had prepared for a manipulative socialite withered on the vine. I spent the entire meal running a tactical retreat around the mahogany dining table. She pursued; I retreated. I was trapped. By the time our chairs were hanging off the edge of the rug near the sideboard, Richard finally reached his limit and cleared his throat loudly. "All right. I think that's enough for tonight. Baby just got home; she needs to shower and get some rest. Let's head upstairs." It felt like a stay of execution. I abandoned my napkin, threw out a brisk, polite goodnight, and bolted up the grand staircase. Something was rotten in Denmark. Completely, utterly wrong. Not a single person in this three-man unit was playing by the rules. It made me, with my tactical preparation and eight hundred hidden motives, look like an absolute clown. Thoroughly defeated, I took a hot shower, fell onto the king-sized bed, and tried to convince myself that today had been a bizarre fever dream. Just as I pulled the duvet up, my encrypted burner phone buzzed on the nightstand. "Little Boss," my lead bodyguard’s gruff voice rasped through the speaker. "Perimeters are secured. We've got six operatives rotating twenty-four-hour surveillance around the perimeter of the estate. You are green to go." Of course. Frank would never let me walk into another man's house unprotected; he always kept an extraction team on standby. Still... I visualized the heavily armed mercenaries lurking in the bushes with night-vision goggles, and then I pictured Lily Prescott standing in her Winnie the Pooh pajamas, happily offering me a buttered shrimp. It felt like aiming a rocket launcher at a marshmallow. "Call them off," I snapped, rubbing my temples. "Tell them to get lost." I ended the call, yanked the covers over my head, and tried to force unconsciousness. Just as sleep was dragging me under, a faint tap echoed against the wood of my bedroom door. When I didn't answer, the hallway went dead silent for a few seconds. Then, slowly, the brass doorknob began to turn. My eyes snapped open in the dark. Every instinct hammered into me since childhood took over. I flattened my spine against the mattress, my right hand slipping silently beneath the goose-down pillow, my fingers closing around the cold, textured grip of my Glock. Frank had drilled this into my muscle memory before I was old enough to ride a bike. When I was seven, I told him I was terrified of sleeping alone in the dark. I begged him to buy me a stuffed bear like the ones the girls had on the sitcoms. Frank hadn't bought a bear. He’d placed a sleek, compact semi-automatic into my small hands instead. 'A toy can't shoot back, kid,' he'd grunted, his thumb smoothing over the slide. 'Comfort doesn't keep you alive. Being dangerous does.' I’d believed him. Yet, when I’d walked past Lily’s open bedroom door earlier this evening, I had caught a glimpse of her room—shelves and beanbags practically buried under an avalanche of plush animals of every shape and size. I couldn't pretend... that a small, quiet part of me hadn't envied it. A shadow slipped into the room, creeping toward the edge of my mattress with cautious, feather-light steps. My muscles coiled tight. My index finger rested lightly against the trigger guard. Then, something massive, soft, and furry was shoved under the covers, pressing right into the small of my back. The cold, hollow emptiness behind me was suddenly filled with absurd warmth. "Baby? Are you awake?" Lily’s voice was barely a whisper. "...What are you doing?" I rasped. I was supposed to despise her. Breaking into my room in the dead of night without an invitation should have triggered an immediate defensive response. I should have assumed she was executing some late-night ambush, planting evidence, or sabotaging my position. Yet my fingers went slack against the grip of the gun. There wasn't a single predatory frequency coming off this girl. My nervous system simply refused to register her as a threat. Hearing me speak, Lily let out a long, audible sigh of relief. She scrambled onto the mattress, wedged her oversized Winnie the Pooh bear firmly between our backs, and brazenly yanked half of my down comforter over herself. I lay there, completely paralyzed. "I figured you wouldn't be able to sleep," she whispered, utterly oblivious to personal boundaries. She reached an arm over the bear's rounded yellow stomach, barely managing to reach my shoulder, and gave me two awkward, comforting pats. "Don't be scared. I'm here." I kept my back turned, my limbs stiff as boards. I had slept alone in locked rooms my entire life. I hated being touched. I hated physical proximity. ...Yet, I didn't pull away. Lily seemed entirely blind to my icy silence. She simply lay there in the dark, her voice a gentle, rhythmic hum, rambling about the house. She told me that our parents were fundamentally gentle people. She told me Richard loved black coffee but secretly had a sweet tooth for jelly donuts, and that Eleanor couldn't stand the smell of lavender. She told me about a spot behind the hydrangeas in the south garden where she had buried a tin box of plastic treasures when she was nine... She was giving me the map. She was handing me the keys so I wouldn't feel like a stranger in my own home. Exhaustion crept up on me, heavy and warm, as the realization sank into my chest. "Did you get all that, Baby?" she mumbled, her words slurring with sleepiness. "Make sure you remember, okay? Because I’m leaving tomorrow morning. If you forget, there won't be anyone left to walk you through it." She let out a soft yawn against the back of the bear. "Then again, it doesn't matter. Mom and Dad are really patient. They’ll teach you everything." There wasn't an ounce of bitterness in her tone. No passive-aggressive resentment over being displaced. Just an unvarnished, transparent love for the only parents she had ever known. None of this matched the script. "Don't move out," I muttered, dragging the words from my throat with the last scrap of consciousness I had left. "I'm starting a new school tomorrow. I need someone to carry my bag." Before she could process the words, I yanked the duvet over my head, shutting out her breathless, delighted flurry of "Wait, really?!" and let the darkness take me under. The next morning over breakfast, Richard and Eleanor stared at me for three uninterrupted minutes. There was no burst of celebratory tears. Instead, they leaned across the table with grave, cautious expressions, asking me three separate times if I had truly thought this through. They weren't putting on an act—I could see two matching Louis Vuitton suitcases already waiting by the front door. I nodded until my neck hurt, swearing I was in my right mind. Thank God the clock was ticking down to the morning bell at Briarwood Academy; otherwise, the cross-examination would have lasted until dinner. "Alright, if you're sure," Eleanor murmured, adjusting my blazer collar with anxious hands. "Take care of each other. Lily, keep an eye on Baby. It's her first day—don't let anyone pick on her, understood?" "Got it, Mom!" Lily was practically spinning like a top, checking her leather backpack. "Binder, water bottle, extra pens..." Having audited her own gear, she immediately pivoted to mine. "Baby, did you pack a snack? Do you want the family driver to bring lunch, or do you want to try the dining hall? What if you hate the food there?" Her chatter buzzed in my ears like a persistent hornet. I swung my backpack over one shoulder and bolted toward the driveway. "I'm fine! Don't pack anything! Stop hovering!" Unbelievable. Seventeen years without a mother, and in the span of twelve hours, I had somehow acquired two. It was entirely too loud. It wasn't until we pulled up to the wrought-iron gates of Briarwood Academy that I realized I’d picked the wrong battlefield. The Prescott mansion was devoid of backstabbing, but the tactical mind Frank had spent years sharpening wasn't going to waste. It turned out my new territory was right here.