My Mafia King Destroyed My Face, So I Took His Throne

Six years ago, I walked into the Callahan family wearing a dead heiress's face — a silicone mask surgically sewn into my living flesh — delivered as a ceasefire hostage to stop a war. I took three bullets for their Boss, Declan. Three. And when the threat was neutralized, he had me pinned to the floor in front of a room full of guests and ordered the mask torn off my face for sport. His exact words: "It's just a fake face. When it's dead, we order another." Six years later, I walk back into his contract renegotiation as the Chief Arbiter of the Five Families' United Tribunal — the highest judicial authority in the American underworld. Declan's new fiancée is parading my old face around the table in a specimen jar, waving it like a trophy she won. When four godfathers simultaneously tear open their shirts to reveal the judge's brand I burned into their chests years ago — thorn-wrapped scales, seared into the flesh above the heart — every person who ever mistook me for a stand-in finally understands whose real face they have been bowing to all along.

Oleh Fire