Don’t Say Mafia (The Wrong Made Men #1)

PROLOGUE

EDEN

“Fucking whore!”

John’s voice cut through the thin walls, loud enough that even with my bedroom door shut it found me anyway.

It always did. I lay on my back on my sagging mattress, staring at the familiar brown water stain on the ceiling where the roof leaked every time it rained.

The stain had spread over the years, looking more like a giant coffee spill than anything else, and I’d spent so many nights tracing its edges with my eyes that I knew every crooked line by heart.

“John, please, just calm down—” my mother pleaded. Her voice was pitched higher than usual, the way it always got when she was trying not to cry.

“Don’t tell me to calm down, you stupid bitch!” my stepfather snapped.

Something hit the wall hard enough to make the light bulb hanging from my ceiling rattle. I didn’t flinch. I’d learned a long time ago which sounds were worth reacting to and which ones were just part of the background noise of this place.

I folded my hands over my stomach and tried to breathe the way I was supposed to. Slow. Even. Controlled. The type of breathing they drill into you in every mandatory counseling session after you miss too many days of school and the attendance office starts whispering “troubled” behind your back.

It never worked, but for some reason I still tried it. Every time.

The trailer shrank with every shouted word until it felt like the walls were closing in around me and I was about to suffocate from all the heat and rage in the air that had nowhere to escape.

“You’re fucking trash!” John roared in an ugly, slurred voice, each syllable crashing into the next. “You’re lucky I even fuck you!”

“John, I’m sorry,” my mother whimpered, and I tried to ignore the desperate way she said it.

She’d never leave him, no matter how vicious he got.

She’d just slip out later to find one of the neighbors to touch her softly enough to numb the hurt for a night.

Then she’d come right back to this trailer, to him, like it was the only thing she was ever going to get. Like it was all she deserved.

I closed my eyes. I could picture it without looking: John would be red-faced and swaying, a beer bottle hanging from his hand, the neck of it slick with condensation and his sweat.

My mom would be standing close to him, her hands up like she could ward him off with the same gesture she used to use on me when I was little and had scraped my knee.

And her voice would keep getting smaller and smaller until it was barely there at all.

Another crash followed.

It sounded like it was something metal this time, maybe the cheap lamp on the side table.

My mom cried out, startled, and my whole body locked up for a second, waiting for the next sound.

The one that would tell me whether it was just yelling tonight or whether it was about to turn into something else.

John’s voice dropped low, filled with that special kind of meanness he saved for when he wanted the words to cut deeper.

“You think I won’t touch that little bitch of yours next?

” he sneered. “Eden walks around like she’s untouchable.

Maybe I’ll go in there tonight and remind her that she’s not.

Maybe I’ll show her exactly what happens when she keeps acting like she’s better than everyone. ”

My blood turned to ice.

It didn’t matter what my mother said or didn’t say in response.

She wouldn’t stop him. I rolled onto my side and reached under the bed, my fingers brushing dust and grit before closing around my sneakers.

I slipped them on and tied the laces tight so they wouldn’t slip off if I had to run.

They were too big on me, like every other secondhand thing I owned.

The shouting kept going, and a minute later glass shattered somewhere down the hall.

There was a brief lull before my stepdad’s ugly howl filled the trailer and I exhaled through my nose again.

My mother had good aim when she was scared.

Beer bottles were her weapon of choice, and she usually had lots of those around to choose from.

John would be fine. He might have bruised pride or a cut, but neither was anything new.

Neither were the bruises on my mom and me.

I listened for another moment to make sure John wasn’t about to burst into the room, and then I stood up on my mattress and eased the window open, careful with the latch.

The muggy night air pressed in right away, clinging to my skin.

It smelled like hot dirt and gasoline and grass that had baked all day in the sun.

I swung one leg over the sill, then the other, bracing my hands against the frame as I lowered myself down. My shoes met the ground with a muted thump, and I stayed there for a moment, listening.

Inside, his voice still rumbled, but it was already fading, swallowed by walls and distance.

Outside, the trailer park carried on as if nothing were happening.

A television murmured a few lots down. A dog barked once before settling.

Cicadas hummed in the trees, steady and unbothered.

It was almost funny how the world always kept going, how it never paused, like it didn’t notice that inside one thin-walled trailer, entire lives were falling apart.

I pulled the window down most of the way, leaving it cracked just enough to climb back in later, then straightened and stepped away from the trailer.

The night wrapped around me, and I started walking along the narrow road that cut through the park.

I didn’t have a destination in mind; I never did.

I walked because walking meant I could numb my brain and ignore the way my days and nights always followed the same script.

It meant I didn’t have to think about how easy it would be to become my mother one day, telling myself it wasn’t that bad, that it was just how love worked.

Walking felt like the only thing that didn’t belong to him or to them or to the future everyone in that trailer seemed determined to hand me.

The asphalt was patched and cracked under my shoes, glowing faintly under flickering streetlights that buzzed like they were tired of their job.

I passed trailers that each looked like variations of the same life.

Porch lights left on. Windows glowing blue from televisions no one was really watching.

Someone’s laundry hanging limp on a line, forgotten.

The air stuck to my skin, every breath tasting like a summer that refused to end.

A familiar laugh drifted toward me, and I looked over and saw a group of guys from school lounging near the edge of one of the lots, clustered around a beat-up truck with its tailgate down.

Smoke curled up from between their fingers, the skunky smell of it cutting through the night.

They were loud in the careless way boys get when they think no one can touch them.

One of them spotted me.

“Eden!” The name came out mocking, drawn out like they were tasting it. “Come over here and suck my dick like your mom does!”

The others laughed, and one of them slapped the tailgate hard enough to make it rattle. I didn’t slow down or look over to see which one had said it. I kept my eyes straight ahead and shoved my hands deeper into the sleeves of my hoodie, pretending their words couldn’t actually hurt me.

There was a thud and a grunt, the sound of someone taking a punch, but I kept walking, and by the time I reached the end of the road, their laughter had already faded.

The park sat a little apart from everything else, a sad patch of grass and rusted metal tucked between the trailers and the highway.

The playground equipment was old and sun bleached; the paint on everything chipped away to bare steel where too many hands had grabbed on.

During the day, kids swarmed it. At night, though, it belonged to no one.

I stepped onto the packed dirt and headed straight for the swings.

It creaked softly when I sat, and the chains were cold against my palms. I pushed off with my toes, just enough to sway back and forth, a gentle rhythm that matched my breathing. The ground slid beneath me in slow arcs, forward and back, and then forward again.

Above me, the sky stretched wide and endless, stars scattered carelessly across as though someone had knocked over a jar of light.

I tipped my head back and stared, letting my thoughts drift the way the swing did, aimless but steady.

Out here it was easier to imagine . . . more.

More of what, I wasn’t sure. But at least more than this.

“You couldn’t sleep, either?”

I startled, my head snapping forward, and I immediately smiled when I saw my best friend, Ryan.

He was standing a few feet away, a cigarette burning between his fingers like he needed something to do with his hands.

He took one last drag and flicked it to the ground, crushing it out with the heel of his shoe before looking back up at me.

The streetlight behind him caught his face just enough for me to see it clearly.

The familiar crooked smile. The softness around his mouth that made him look kinder than most people in this place ever tried to be.

My smile dimmed, though, when I saw that his eyes were red rimmed and glassy, a glaze that had nothing to do with nicotine.

“You’re smoking now?” I asked, not bothering to hide the disappointment in my voice.

He winced, clearly expecting me to say that. Then he shrugged one shoulder and smiled apologetically. “I was just taking the edge off,” he said.

I sighed and leaned back against the chains, letting the swing creak beneath me. “You know that’s what they all say.”

He scrunched his nose up at that. “Thanks for that,” he murmured, shaking his head as he sat down on the swing next to me. “Rough night?” he asked.

I snorted softly. “When isn’t it?”