THE MAFIA DON'S DEADLY HEIR

Aiden’s POV

I hit the retaining wall at forty miles an hour. The initial moment wasn't painful; it was simply loud. The sound was a horrific, hungry, tearing a metallic scream of pressurized steel folding in on itself, followed by the sickening, explosive thoomph of the airbags that swallowed the rest of the noise. Then, the silence. A heavy, ringing, absolute silence broken only by the frantic, staggering rhythm of my own heart in my ears.

I was suspended in the ruin, tangled in the shoulder harness, dizzy from the sudden stop. Blood, warm and slick, was already weeping down my cheek from a gash above my left eye. The air stank of burnt rubber, hot oil, and the sharp, chemical tang of the exploded airbag powder. I should be dead, and I should be shaking, crying, terrified. But the adrenaline that always ran thin and cold in my veins surged, bringing with it a horrifying, clear-eyed focus. I didn't feel panic; I felt the chilling, irrefutable certainty that this was not bad luck. This was not chaos born of my own reckless hand.

This was the intent, and the driver’s side door was irrevocably jammed, a crumpled parody of its former elegant shape. I unclipped the seatbelt and scrambled, bruised and aching, over the center console, kicking out the passenger side door with a frantic energy I didn’t know I possessed. I tumbled onto the pristine, well-manicured curb of a street where billionaires slept, the impact sending a fresh, white-hot stab of pain through my left shoulder.

I straightened up, shaky and disoriented, surveying the wreckage of my beloved vintage Porsche. It was a mangled husk, its front end crumpled like paper against a low, decorative stone wall. My expensive bespoke suit, a gift from the last time my extended family pretended I mattered, was torn, oil-stained, and mirrored the ruin of my evening.

An accident, and that’s what they’d say. The reckless Sinclair heir, speeding again, finally paid the price for his dangerous habits. They were right about my habits. I courted danger because danger was predictable; it offered a simple equation. But this? This was different. I forced myself to walk around the hood, ignoring the increasing wail of distant sirens that promised the arrival of local law enforcement, a law enforcement that had long been bought and paid for by the Sinclair political influence. I had to know.

I dropped to a knee, wincing sharply as my shoulder protested, and peered through the twisted spokes of the shattered wheel. The tire was deflated, the frame bent, but my gaze locked onto the thin, metallic tubing of the main brake line, half-hidden in the darkness.

It hadn't been ruptured by the impact. It had been neatly, surgically severed a full foot behind the wheel well. The cut was precise, almost surgical, and had been lightly dusted with road grime and grease, a professional camouflage that almost worked.

The air left my lungs in a ragged gasp, and they wanted me dead. The first time, the "food poisoning" had put me in intensive care for a week, my father’s lawyers calling it a kitchen mistake. The second, the "mugging gone wrong," left a shallow bullet wound in my thigh, dismissed as bad luck in a bad neighbourhood. But this was a clean, professional kill attempt designed to look like my own foolishness.

My uncles, Raymond and Samuel, were tired of waiting for my inevitable screw-up. They were moving in for the kill, hungry to seize the political leverage, the controlling shares, the obscene wealth of the Sinclair empire. I was the last, inconvenient thread they needed to cut. Terror, cold and absolute, finally settled in. It wasn't just the physical fear; it was the chilling realization that my world was empty of genuine allies. The family was trying to kill me. The police were their instrument. The lawyers were mercenaries hired by the Estate.

I was twenty-one, the reckless heir to a dynasty, and I was entirely disposable. I scrambled up, stumbling away from the blinding flash of the approaching police lights. I had to run, but where? I needed help, but the kind of help required to fight off a high-level corporate assassination plot, the kind of silent, brutal muscle that operated outside the law, was not among my normal contacts.

I fumbled for the burner phone I always carried and, clinging to the desperate hope that someone clean could help me, I scrolled to the name of my friend, Leo. Leo ran a respectable, if occasionally shady, downtown bar and knew how to handle minor trouble, but this was a war he wasn’t equipped for. I hit the number, and my fingers were slick with sweat and blood.

“Aiden? Seriously, it's two a.m. Did you total another?” Leo’s tired voice cut off sharply as I spoke.

"Leo, listen," I hissed, ducking behind a tall, sculpted boxwood hedge as the police car’s headlights swept past. "It’s not a joke. They cut the brakes. The car is totaled, and the cops... they’re already here. They’re working for Raymond. I need you to come get me. Now. I need a place they won't look." A heavy silence followed, thick with dread. Leo knew enough about my family to understand the severity, but his mind couldn't grasp the scale.

"Cut the brakes? Aiden, who "

"I don't have time! I'm begging you. I need your cellar, your secure room, anything. If they find me, they'll know who to lean on next."

"The bar... the storage cellar. It’s secure, but it’s downtown. I'm leaving now. Where are you?"

I gave him the exact coordinates, near the main park entrance. But even as the words left my mouth, two uniformed officers were already stepping out of their cruiser, their movements too fast, too controlled for a routine crash report. They were walking straight to the front wheel well.

"They're here," I whispered, the adrenaline turning cold in my stomach. "The cops are here. It will take you twenty minutes, maybe more, Leo. I need now."

Leo’s voice was filled with helpless, civilian panic. "Aiden, I’m trying! I can't teleport! Just hide, stay out of sight."

"No," I interrupted, the word sharp and definitive. The harsh reality solidified: Leo was a good man with a beat-up truck and a fragile business. He was too slow, too clean, and too exposed. Dragging him into this was signing his death warrant, too. I might be chaotic and self-sabotaging, but I wouldn't sacrifice an innocent friend.

"Forget it, Leo," I said, my voice hardening into an unfamiliar metallic edge. "You don't exist tonight. Don't leave your place. Don't answer calls. You never heard from me. Stay safe."

I hung up before he could argue, the gesture feeling like the definitive severing of the last safe thread connecting me to the world. I threw the burner phone into the tall, damp grass, ensuring its signal could not be traced. I scrambled away from the streetlights, deep into the shadows of the park’s tree line. I ran on pure, cold instinct, ducking behind thick oaks, the distant sound of the police radio crackling behind me.

I was utterly alone and was running from my family's assassins and toward nothing. My back was against the wall, but I still had one option left. A choice so dangerous it terrified even the part of me that craved reckless adrenaline. I pulled out my primary, encrypted phone. On it was a single, highly specialized number I’d acquired through a disastrous business deal years ago. It belonged to a man whose reputation was not built on law, but on absolute, chilling power. A man who commanded a private security and consulting empire that specialized in making problems disappear or, in my case, ensuring a high-value asset survived.

I did not know his face. I only knew his legend. I knew his organization’s name was whispered in fear in circles far above the petty political squabbles of the Sinclairs. My fingers hovered over the screen, trembling violently. Calling him wasn't asking for help; it was an act of total surrender to something possibly more lethal than my uncles. I was trading a guaranteed death sentence for an unknown, terrifying captivity. But I was alive, and survival, right now, was the only currency that mattered. With a ragged breath that tasted of fear and copper, I hit the contact, severing my ties to the light and plunging willingly into the dark.

" F*ck" I cursed as the severe pain hit me and I detected that my end was near.

I ran.

I did not think or breathe. I did not exist outside the rhythm of my feet slamming the pavement and the fire burning through my lungs. The pain in my shoulder, a deep, pulsing throb from where my uncle’s men had slammed me into a marble pillar, faded under the greater agony in my chest. Every inhale felt like knives. Every exhale tasted like blood.

But stopping meant dying, so I kept going. The Sinclair estate sprawled out behind me like a labyrinth designed to trap its own heirs, its manicured hedges, and polished pathways slick with the stale scent of generational violence. I was running away from the sanitized brutality of the people who shared my blood and straight toward a different, self-selected poison.

A stupid poison. A forbidden one, and I could still feel the echo of that single reckless call in my fingertips, my thumb trembling as I had hit the number marked LETHAL CONTACT. A number I was not supposed to have. A number that could