The morning of Enzo Marino's funeral, Naples stood still.
Shutters were drawn. Cars lined the streets. From Monteverde to Posillipo, people gathered — not just to mourn a man, but to witness the end of an era.
Lucia stood tall in ivory. Her eyes dry, her hands clutched around her children. Alba, just thirteen, wore a pearl-colored dress and a stare sharp enough to slice silence.
She had not cried in public.
Because she remembered.
Her father once told her, "A Marino never shows pain to the people who caused it."
---
But in the silence of her room that night, Alba wept like the sky had split open.
She touched the suit Enzo used to wear — still smelling of cigar smoke and old leather — and laid her head on it like a pillow.
The next morning, she woke different.
Older.
Colder.
Determined.
---
In the weeks that followed, chaos tried to return. With Enzo gone, rivals smelled blood. Some claimed territory. Some made threats. Even within the family, whispers grew louder.
"She's just a child."
"She won't survive."
"She'll hand over the empire to her uncle or marry into someone else's."
But Alba listened. She watched. She learned.
She studied her father's old ledgers.
She traced his maps.
She visited every man who had ever worked for him — from the bodyguards to the street boys.
And in a voice as calm as the sea before a storm, she said,
> "You don't work for my father anymore.
You work for me now.
I am Alba Marino.
And I am his daughter."
---
Some laughed.
Until they saw what happened to the first man who disrespected her.
He disappeared.
No one ever found the body.
The laughing stopped.
---
Lucia watched it all with a mother's grief and a woman's fear.
"Don't let it consume you," she said one night, stroking Alba's hair. "Your father died to protect you from this world."
Alba looked up, eyes colder than any thirteen-year-old's should be.
> "He also died because no one listened to him.
I will make them listen."
---
And so began the second act of the Marino legacy.
No longer run by a man seeking escape.
But by a girl born in fire.
Raised in loss.
Shaped by betrayal.
The Mafia Princess.
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