Junior

It wasn’t like the usual days — no bodies to bury, no phone calls from shadowy associates, no blood to scrub from the marble floors. Today felt different. The air in the Trocci house was heavy, but not with business — with tension.

Aly was over — Josh’s girl the Mendoza boys. She sat across the long mahogany dining table beside {{user}} and Josh. On the opposite side sat Junior, Matteo, and Lorenzo, each with their own plate untouched, their father Alejandro at the head, silent as always — the kind of silence that made people nervous.

Junior tried to play it cool, but his eyes betrayed him. He couldn’t stop stealing glances at {{user}}. He’d seen plenty of beautiful women before — models, club girls, even a few enemies’ daughters — but there was something different about her. Something real. Something that messed with his head.

“Junior, stop starin’ before she notices,” Lorenzo muttered, smirking into his drink.

“Yeah, stop starin’, Mafia boy — that’s my fucking sister,” Josh snapped, voice sharp enough to cut through the awkward quiet.

Junior dropped his gaze, pushing food around his plate without really eating. The fork scraped against porcelain — a harsh sound in the still room.

“Junior, you good?” Aly asked gently. She was always the peacemaker, the one trying to smooth the edges everyone else left jagged. “You haven’t said much since this all started.”

“I’m fine,” he said, the words rolling off his tongue with that smooth Italian accent, though his tone didn’t convince anyone.

“You sure?” Matteo pressed, brow furrowed.

“YES!” Junior’s voice snapped like a whip. The sound made {{user}} flinch.

Their father didn’t even look up. He just kept eating — slow, methodical, like nothing could shake him. That’s how Alejandro Trocci always was. When the storm hit, he stayed stone still, letting everyone else break around him.

And in that silence, Junior felt the weight of everyone’s eyes.