Chapter 5
Everyone in the room went white as sheets when they heard that voice.
They tried to turn around, but they already had guns pressed to their heads.
Auren’s face just collapsed. He stared at me in the freezer and yelled.
“Nerissa! What the fuck is this?! Are you done with your little tricks?!”
Through the glass, I watched the figure walking slowly into the room behind him.
When I saw who it was, I started sobbing.
Auren followed my gaze and slowly turned around.
The second their eyes met, Auren’s legs gave out and he hit the floor.
He pointed at the man walking toward him with a trembling finger.
“Mr. Vale… you… you died six months ago,right?!”
When everyone heard Auren say my dad’s name, half of them just crumpled like wet paper.
My father was a big shot in our circle.
At thirteen, he took over what was left of the Vale empire from my grandfather.
Business is war, and after grandpa died, every other family had been picking our bones clean.
The day thirteen-year-old Dad took control, every family in Boston partied for a solid week.
The Vale family tree was falling, which meant jackpot time for everyone else.
And yeah, it went exactly like they thought.
Less than a week after Dad took over, we went bankrupt.
Everyone figured the Vales were history.
But two years later, at this huge land auction, some dark-skinned kid bought every single piece of property-over three hundred billion dollars worth.
Everyone thought he was insane, figured he’d get arrested when he couldn’t pay up.
Three days later, he paid in full.
That’s when someone recognized him.
“Holy shit, that kid looks just like… Henry Vale…”
Yep, that fifteen-year-old was my dad.
14:32
No More Rings. Only Crowns Mafia Princess Took the Throne Herself
6.6%
Chapter 5
At thirteen, he’d taken on all the family debt and disappeared to some war zone.
Nobody knew what kind of hell the kid went through over there.
All they saw was him walking back two years later with hundreds of billions, ready to rebuild everything.
People tried to dig into what Dad had been up to, but word is, none of those investigators ever made it back.
In those early years, plenty of people tried to take him down while he was rebuilding.
But every time someone made a move, their own shit would get destroyed a thousand times worse.
In just three years, Dad had everyone in the city remembering exactly who the Vales were.
And nobody’s been stupid enough to challenge us since.
So all of Auren’s little bootlickers were scared shitless of my father.
Especially Auren.
He came from nothing-everything he had was because Dad pulled him up.
All these years, he’d been getting “educated” by Dad on the regular.
So he was absolutely terrified of him.
Dad was telling his guys to break down the freezer door while staring at Auren on the floor.
“Bet you’re real disappointed I’m not dead, huh?”
Dad’s voice wasn’t even that loud, but it had this power that just cut right through you.
Auren went even whiter. He was shaking and trying to crawl backward.
“No way, Mr. Vale! When I heard what happened, I cried all night. You made me who I am-I pray for your health every single
day…”
“Even thinking you were gone, I kept everything you taught me right here in my heart…”
Dad glanced at the freezer door his guys had just busted open.
His face went stone cold.
He grabbed Auren by the shirt and screamed.
“Then why the hell did you do this to Nerissa?! Explain that shit to me!”
“Why couldn’t my daughter turn on the AC for thirty goddamn minutes?! Why did you throw my pregnant daughter in a freezer and torture her like this?! Why?!”
I hadn’t seen Dad this pissed in forever.
Last time he was this angry was when Mom died-he’d cried from pure rage at himself for not protecting her.
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No More Rings. Only Crowns Mafia Princess Took the Throne Herself
7.1%
Chapter 5
Auren had never seen Dad like this.
He was shaking even harder now.
When Dad didn’t calm down, he dropped to his knees and started slamming his head on the floor.
“Mr. Vale, it’s not what it looks like! Nerissa was just getting out of line. I thought this would teach her some respect-I wasn’t trying to hurt her! Even if you hadn’t shown up, I was gonna let her out…”
“You think you get to teach my daughter anything?! Who the fuck do you think you are?!”
Dad cut him off mid-sentence.
He punched Auren square in the face, his eyes going red as he fought back tears.
“You fucking guy!”
Then Dad looked over at Auren’s crew huddled in the corner.
“Same goes for all you pieces of shit. If my daughter so much as whimpers, you’re all going to the hell with her!”
They all looked like someone had superglued their mouths shut.
Nobody even dared to breathe.
“Mr. Vale, we got her out…”
I tried to reach for Dad’s hand, but the moment my frozen fingers touched his warm palm, I couldn’t hold on anymore.
Everything went dark…
14:32
No More Rings. Only Crowns Mafia Princess Took the Throne Herself